Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.
General BBC-related comment thread
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Unrelated to the Beeb but on the theme of government spin paid for by the taxpayer:
http://www.realhelpnow.gov.uk/
Is this for real?!
There is a complaints link at the bottom for anyone as, at first bemused but then, disgusted as I was.
DB: Well they won’t ever call him a British tax payer that’s for sure.
Martin: I wonder if there is any mechanism to check whether he paid his TV licence fee last time he was here?
Wouldn’t you just love to grass him up to the BBC. I wonder if they woudl have the balls to prosecute?
DB: I don’t see why they couldn’t have referred to him as formerly resident in the UK.
But then of course the BBC has no regard for accuracy over spin and various social and political agendas.
What a shock. Stafford-Smith is involved.
BBC decides that EVERYONE, yes, EVERYONE in Britain supports the release and settling in Britain, (after he has received ‘compensation’) of Mandela Mohamed, the Ethiopian, whom the BBC has adopted as a ‘British resident’:
“Reaction to Guantanamo detainee’s return”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7906248.stm
BBC: It’s the way we tell ’em; yes, quite a result -we helped Labour keep Dutch MP Wilders out of Britain, and get Mohamed in.
What a shock. Stafford-Smith is involved.
martin | 23.02.09 – 6:09 pm
Appearances on Start The Week and the Simon Mayo show guaranteed, then.
Talking of Start the Week – this morning’s anti-Western love-in was further proof that complaining about BBC bias is futile. Let’s face it, the BBC is proud of its ideology and where it stands politically, and fuck you if you don’t agree because your opinions don’t matter.
I see the BBC is touting that there is yet another British resident at Gitmo.
Why don’t we just left all the frigging Taliban and Al Qaeda come here? They might even vote for Gordon Brown, probably the only ones in this Country who will.
Tonight on the One Show they have Chris Moyles. A man who thinks Poles make good prostitutes and whose has made disgusting comments disrespected the victims of Auschwitz. And Carol Thatcher is the one who is kicked out. It would be unbelievable if it weren’t the BBC.
Also Piers Moron revealed the other day that Christine Bleakley was dining with Gordon Brown. So that’s both Chiles and Bleakley have been kissing the ring (not the one on his finger).
Now why would Binyam Mo get accomodation here ? He is single, and there are plenty of other singletons on the housing list .It must be because he is an asylum seeker with exceptional leave etc. But if he is an asylum seeker, he cant be British, unless we have British people seeking asylum in …. Britain.
George Bush was described by the BBC as Texan, because he came from Texas even when he lived in Washington DC.They never called Margaret Thatcher a cockney when she resided in London (and I do believe they didn`t think she should live at no 10 ).
Hi everyone, this is my first comment although this great website has been keeping me ‘entertained’ for some weeks now. Plenty of generally well observed opinions and nothing wrong with that! I would like to draw your attention to how the Beeb has politicised it’s…quiz shows! In doing what I can to avoid the Six ‘o’Clock News, I usually watch the BBC2 double bill of ‘Battle of the Brains’ followed by ‘Eggheads’. BOTB is hosted by the irritating Nicky Campbell, but if you can put up with his style, you cannot help noticing the slant of some of the questions. Today’s programme had a category on Politics and all the questions, almost without exception, centred on who/what/when of the Labour Party or a Democrat if it concerned something across the pond. The only reference to a Tory was in connection to a misdemeanour. I noticed this trend several times last week and Jeremy Vine’s Eggheads has exhibited the same bias of some backroom beeboid. Even when the category is General Knowledge and then a political question arises…you guessed it, it’s connected to Labour.
Has anyone else noticed this?
‘Guardian: Media Diary’
“BBC starts a lunch crunch”
– but perhaps the first part of this snippet is more instructive about the BBC political police –
“The fallout from the Carol Thatcher ‘Golliwog’ controversy is reaching every part of the BBC. A junior member of staff at BBC News approached a senior presenter last week and asked, without irony, where she could find the corporation’s list of banned words. Separately, BBC News has slapped a £50-a-head spending limit on hacks lunching their contacts. Other organisations have imposed restrictions too, but considering the BBC Trust recently revealed its members ran up £100,000 of expenses in just six months, the timing could have been better.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/22/daily-mail-lord-mandelson-bbc
Brown won’t be the first prime minister to meet the chosen one. What a shame
“Japanese PM First Foreign Leader to Visit President Obama”
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-02-23-voa16.cfm
bassman | 23.02.09 – 7:41 pm |
Well observed – I don’t tend to listen that much to these quizzes, but if your right it is par for the course. The BBcs left leaning has infected the whole of the BBC output – not just the news.
bassman,
Welcome to B-BBC! Hope you comment some more.
bassman: Well spotted!
In fact, the BBC’s biases come in many shapes and sizes and have seeped into almost all of its programming – not just not what the BBC would have us believe is ‘factual’ material.
I’ve occasionally posted the synopses of R4’s afternoon plays here, showing how they follow a Left-liberal agenda. Others have illustrated the point with storylines to BBC TV programmes.
In fact there isn’t much the BBC does that isn’t slanted from a ‘liberal’ perspective.
Binyam Mohamed is the new Obama. Adulation as his flight arrives at Northolt. Ethiopian Al Queda trained terrorist is now the official emblem and cause celebre of the Left.”He was TORTURED” (quick wank by Bush-haters: “Waterboard me again, I’ve been bad”). Clive Stafford-Smith, professional terrorist worshipping American lawyer interviewed, journalists begging for another soundbite. Jesus wept. This is insane. Right and wrong stood on its head, you have to hand it to the terrorist lovers, they know how to work our useless media.
So, invite Binyam to your next dinner party. Available for after dinner speeches, weddings and barmitzvahs, errr cancel that last one. Celebrity terrorist, sorry, innocent victim. Jonathan Ross’s next guest….”So tell me Binyam. What was it like being in Gitmo and tortured personally by George Bush? And why didn’t you just tell them everything in the first place, save all that unpleasantness?”
From George R’s link of 6.25pm, one reads William Hague of the Conservative Party welcoming Binyam Muhamad’s entry into the UK. I will now tie this to the recent thread on the rise of the BNP because, as is surely now clear, the BNP is the real Opposition.
On the Marr programme,was the delicate position of adultery under Sharia discussed?
I have to admit, the stance of Hague and the Conservative Party over the return of this terrorist has ensured that, however much I despise ZaNuLabour, I will not be voting Conservative at the next general election.
I won’t be voting BNP, either (lest the chorus of Beebophiliacs starts whooping with glee) but it is a measure of how much the liberal ‘elite’ has so far poisoned the cultural climate of this country, that even the Conservatives are too afraid to talk sense and tell the truth.
‘Financial Times’
“The BBC’s public service grip is tightening”
(Philip Stephens):
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/86c957d2-01e0-11de-8199-000077b07658,s01=1.html?nclick_check=1
This could be fun. It looks like the BBC will be required by the Information Commissioner to reveal the scale of payments to presenters etc :
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/nationalised-banks-and-bbc-must-reveal-top-salaries-1629473.html
Is it just me is does it look like the UK is due for a “Le Pen Moment”?
Then one party or the other will wise up and do a Sarkozy. Maybe you’ll have to have your own Mohammedan bonfire night before that happens. I hope not.
The BBC is partially to blame.
David Preiser wonders: “Is it just me is does it look like the UK is due for a “Le Pen Moment”?”
I’ve thought that for several years.
Polite society in the UK (much as it does in the USA) engages in a courtly social dance where people carefully sound one another out before daring to open up on the subjects of race and immigration.
When they do, there is a surprising degree of unanimity which runs completely counter to the prescribed wisdom of the ‘elites’ of both countries.
This has been an increasing pressure for decades but it has needed something to jolt people out of their complacency, before it was given voice.
That something is now happening.
Where we will go from here is anyone’s guess but I doubt it will be a very comfortable ride.
And yes, I agree. The BBC is eminently culpable – not least for having screwed the pressure cooker’s lid down so hard and for so long.
Has anyone else noticed this?
bassman | 23.02.09 – 7:41 pm |
——————————–
I’m afraid I had to give up watching Eggheads because I could not endure that irritating stretched whine of Jeremy Vine with its peculiar misplaced and exaggerated emphasis on random words or syllables.
Where did he get that strange way of talking? Must have been the B’oid Farm that taught him to talk in that painful over-enunciated way. He is from Epsom and they don’t talk like that there. Well, no one I’ve come across there, does.
This is a Le Pen moment. What a terrific president he would have been for France. The contrast with Sarkozy is seen a couple of minutes into the speech as Sarkozy’s blood appears to have drained from him.
GCooper:
bassman: Well spotted!
In fact, the BBC’s biases come in many shapes and sizes and have seeped into almost all of its programming – not just not what the BBC would have us believe is ‘factual’ material.
I’ve occasionally posted the synopses of R4’s afternoon plays here, showing how they follow a Left-liberal agenda. Others have illustrated the point with storylines to BBC TV programmes.
In fact there isn’t much the BBC does that isn’t slanted from a ‘liberal’ perspective.
GCooper | 23.02.09 – 8:31 pm | #
————————————–
Yes, indeed, Mr Cooper, because that is exactly what they deliberately set out to do.
Ms Tant – one too many ‘nots’ in that comment of mine. Apologies.
Bassman 7:41
Nice to see your post ! I don’t watch quiz shows, but your observations, that even quiz shows exhibit BBC bias ,don’t surprise me at all.
“Garden Trash:
On the Marr programme,was the delicate position of adultery under Sharia discussed?”
Garden Trash | 23.02.09 – 8:44 pm |
Not that I heard. Even by BBC stds this segment of the show was remarkable in its lack of sceptically-framed replies from the rest of the panel to Mr Crooke’s shining-eyed evangelising for absorption into the Umma as the fix for Western ennui & dysfunction. His concession that Islamist regimes are well below standard was that “even the leaders there will tell you these societies are not yet finished”. I dare say Pol Pot assured everyone all would be well once a few more traitors to the revolution had been disposed of, too.
I don’t know if anyone listens to the R5 Mayo show Friday afternoons for the film reviews. Cineaste gobshite Mark Kermode, whilst intermittently entertaining, attains much of his ‘stimulating’ quality from his uber-liberal values and frequent unapologetic/unqualified reference to a hard-left past (involvement with the SWP IIRC).
sitting in for MK last week was…Andrew Collins, more openly political in his stances (so I’ve found) which are all of course on the Internationalist rights-based I-hate-Tories Student-Gwant arc of the spectrum (he is Film Editor at BBC’s own ‘Radio Times’ listings mag, natch).
R
Reimer: I used to listen to Mayo and Kermode when stuck in the car on Fridays and there was the usual rubbish on R4.
I had to stop once I realised I was shouting at the radio.
I thought we were a more sensible country than to want or need a Le Pen, but it seems not. We are stuck in mud and feeling very frustrated but don’t see a way out. Our leaders have been too arrogant and full of their own power to bother about what the rest of us thought or wanted. They could get away with it, so they did.
Brown is peculiarly stubborn and heedless of anyone else’s opinion and will plough on regardless, or in fact, even more determined than before, when faced with opposition.
Labour’s response to contrary public opinion has been to say that they only need to get the message across more to us proles and then we will see the light; so they redouble the spin and smoke and mirrors while ploughing on in exactly the same furrow as before.
(Maybe with a bit of useless tinkering at the edges.)
Millie Tant writes: “Labour’s response to contrary public opinion has been to say that they only need to get the message across more to us proles and then we will see the light; so they redouble the spin and smoke and mirrors while ploughing on in exactly the same furrow as before.
(Maybe with a bit of useless tinkering at the edges.)”
It’s not just the Labour way. I recently heard an imbecile on R4 telling us that the reason we have such a high number of teenage STDs and pregnancies in this country is because of ‘ignorance’.
It apparently occurred to no one on the programme to raise the counter argument: that children in the UK receive ever-increasing amounts of sex ‘education’ and have done so, for many years. Years during which the levels of STDs and unwanted pregnancies have been increasing.
The Left is so certain of its beliefs that the rubric is always: this isn’t working we must do more if it!
Here’s a story the BBC will surely ignore
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23650618-details/White+schoolboy+in+race+claim/article.do
Apparently only white people are racist
A significant BNP victory will give the establishment the provocation they need to “re-construct” the polity into something more politically appropriate.
We have had rehearsal for future events in former Yugoslavia.
Newsnight Michael Prick (the man who hasn’t yet worked out how to turn on a shower) doing a job on the Tories again.
Nice to see him attacking the Tories over Lord Ashcroft, yet despite the Tories saying they’ve not broken the law (Jacqui Spliff anyone?) the man who never washes (have you seen his greasy hair?) stuck the knife into the Tories.
Can we expect the same of the rich Labour donors like Mittal?
Oh and the BBC kept repeating the claim from Spliff that she hadn’t broken the law or the rules.
One rule for the Tories on the BBC and another for the Liebour party.
martin – looking on the bright side, no one regards Crick as anything other than a complete fool. He probably has less influence than the leader writer on Exchange and Mart.
Millie Tant | 23.02.09 – 9:54 pm |
He must have been to the Robert Peston school of elocution. Er…Um….Ahh… etc etc. ad infinitum.
Apologies if this is a repeat post but Haloscan is acting up again.
Introduction link on the World Service Homepage
Highlights
Happy birthday
African Perspective celebrates Robert Mugabe’s 85th
Not my choice of words.
The Zoe Wanamaker edition of “Who Do You Think You Are? threw up an interesting sidelight on the McCarthy era in the US. At about 8:40 into the program (see link below), ZW and her sister are discussing why their father (Sam) left the US.
It became clear later in the program that he wanted to avoid testimony to the hearings. However, according to his own notes (which SW and sister are reading at this point in the program) he left the US communist party in 1947 because of the way that the the party was trying to make its members in the acting profession act in certain prescribed ways.
THIS WAS ENTIRELY THE POINT OF THE McCARTHY HEARINGS.
(IOW, Sam Wanamaker knew before the hearings that the communists were trying to undermine the US.)
But, in order to comply with its internal groupthink position about McCarthy, the beeb has to ignore this point and soon rushes headlong into the standard denunciation of McCarthy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hvtyc/b00hvtnd/Who_Do_You_Think_You_Are_Series_6_Zoe_Wanamaker/
No surprise to see that “Sahnoun Daifallah”, an Algerian living in Britain (not sure why), who “sprayed a mixture of urine and faeces in two supermarkets, a pub and a bookshop”
is described not as an Algerian, but “of Bibury Road, Gloucester”
on the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/gloucestershire/7906639.stm?lss
No mention of his motivations either, found here:
http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/gloucestershireheadlines/Man-sprayed-faeces-shops-court-heard/article-720221-detail/article.html
On searching the house they found messages scrawled all over the walls with what the prosecution say are fantasies about biological weapons.
One message said: “The ants get out to every direction to get food, then they bring it back to Tesco and Asda. If you poison those then you kill the ants.”
Can you imagine the noise the BBC would be making if a similar person had connections with the BNP? As it is, the guy’s background and religion don’t even get a mention.
Oh, dear. Matt Frei has momentarily questioned whether or not the Obamessiah has no clothes when it comes to economic policy. The anger of the betrayed disciple was in full display just now when he was pretty much complaining that the numbers in the Spendulus-But Slashing the Deficit – But Spendulus – But Spending Cuts…Er, Something Plan just don’t add up. The stock market knows it, the Congressional Budget Office knows it, half of Washington knows it, half the states’ governors know it, and it’s slowly dawning on Matt Frei. He’s an old Clinton worshiper who knows all about Democrats who knew they had to prove a little fiscal responsibility to make everyone swallow their liberal agenda, and he knows Obamessiah can’t do it. Frei is also a Hillary supporter who ended up praying for The Obamessiah more out of Bush hatred than racial profiling. He was never as emotionally invested in the candidate as was Justin Webb, but his hatred of George Bush was much, much stronger. So he must really be pissed off that the wheels have come off so quickly.
Frei had two guests on to discuss the economic boondoggle, Mark Zandi from Moody’s economy.com and another talking head in the studio, whose name and shingle I missed.
President Obamessiah pulled a bold publicity stunt today by holding a “Fiscal Responsibility Summit” during which a bunch of Congressmen were filling the seats where reporters would normally sit. As if to prove that this was a stunt, but “I won”, Sen. McCain was given the first question. He asked a total flufflball question, but Frei Boy said that this was very “bold” and “confident” of The Obamessiah to allow this. For the rest of the session, the President did his usual fan dance, revealing nothing of substance, not that you’d hear it from Matt Frei.
Zandi was trying desperately to work out some positives, but just couldn’t come up with anything. Frei’s spurned-lover act got worse and worse, because Greg something-or-other in the studio was pretty negative. No prodding from Frei Boy could get anything other than a “pass” from either of them after a while.
Fortunately, Binyam Mohamed is a free man in London once again, according to the BBC. It’s “been a long time since he was a free man” in London, says the fey Beeboid overlooking the Thames. To be fair the report did say that Binyam the British resident might have been tortured by nasty US associates, and the UK government possibly knew about it. According to the BBC reporter, this would trump any concerns about what he might have got up to while traveling abroad. That’s right, any possibility of mass murder is trumped by allegations of beatings and rough handling, even claims of genital mutilation. The entire story was presented as if Binyam made an innocent mistake while traveling, and not picked up under the most suspicious of circumstances in the middle of a freaking war. We’re also supposed to believe that his allegations of mistreatment concern only his time under US and UK supervision, and not when he was initially captured by those paragons of virtue, the Pakistani military.
Agenda, what agenda?
…a courtly social dance where people carefully sound one another out
Brit middle-classes have been ‘carefully sounding’ for decades and their credibility is long gone; many are bellied up to the public trough and corrupt as well as cowardly, hypocritical and pointless.
Britain’s best hope, maybe only hope, is its working classes, often demoralized and ignorant but still with a sharp nose for bullshit and now justifiably angry.
The big unknown is the ‘multiplier’ effect of that anger when translated into political action. Relatively few folks need to be truly angry and motivated in order to cause big changes. Also, there’s a big difference between revolution and rebellion, the later being a lot quicker and much less bloody. The definitions of sedition and direct action are written by the winners, not by the BBC or by Jacqui Smith or her politically correct senior cops.
But, put bluntly, your pansified middle classes aren’t worth shit. They can be counted on to keep on ruminating — Le Pen, eh… mmmm, mmmm… — but will do only what used to be called Sweet FA.
Bono a Lefty who wants us to give our money to basket case Africa.
The BBC has been accused of handing U2 more than a million pounds’ worth of free publicity with a series of special shows and appearances.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1153578/The-Bono-Broadcasting-Corporation-Bosses-hand-U2-1m-free-advertising.htm
David Preiser
Associated Press still shilling for the Messiah ?
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Old-Executive-Office-Building-White-House/photo//090223/480/75195d74d61547198470fb0fb469bacb//s:/ap/obama_economy
I preferrred Bobby Jindal pointing out that The Emperor Has No Clothes :
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/02/23/video-jindal-explains-fiscal-responsibility-at-obama-summit/
Martin 11:17
The BBC rule is simple :-
Tory, guilty until proven innocent.
Labour, innocent until proven guilty.
I wonder if any BBC programs will mention that today is Shrove Tuesday ?
Giles Fraser, the lefty vicar of Putney, mentioned it on Thought for the Day. It’s a celebration of anti-religion, apparently.
The bBC, its use of the term ‘militant’ and half the story.
Public ‘favour religious values’
A BBC poll suggests that most people want religion and the values derived from it to play an important role in British public life. Of 1,045 people questioned by ComRes, 62% were in favour. Meanwhile, 63% of those questioned agreed that laws should respect and be influenced by the UK’s traditional religious values…..
Secularists, including an increasingly militant atheist movement, have stepped up their campaign to “free” the public from what they see as the burden of a lingering attachment to religious belief
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7906595.stm
Ah I see the followers of no faith have stepped up their campaign in which to free themselves (And us) from the occupation of their homelands from the nasty Catholics, Prods and druids. To that end they have been launching homemade rockets at bonfires, New Years day and at the otherside at football matches. They have insisted that women wear what they want when they want on a Friday night. They have allowed to gain an education , find work by allowing them to burn their bras.
They have held numerous protests around the world over their right in which to air ‘Jerry Springer the Movie’.
And in many parks/bedrooms around the Uk, Gays go about losing their head over deciding just what to wear on a Friday night.
Militant atheist movement indeed.
The bBC, its use of the term ‘militant’ and half the story.
The BBC gives enormous propaganda space to the Islamic Quilliam Foundation on how to deal with Islamic jihadism:
“Mosques ‘fail to tackle radicals'”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7907037.stm
The BBC has no critique of the political position of Mr. E.Husain, nor of the Quilliam Foundation,
But ‘Militan Islam Monitor’ does:
“UK stealth jihadists profit from forming Quilliam Foundation”
[Extract]:
“The Quilliam Foundation purported to be a think tank which combats extremism made up of self proclaimed ‘ex’ terrorists has just gotten a 1 m. pound grant from the UK government. ‘Almost £1 million of public money is being given to a think-tank run by two former Islamic extremists, despite reservations being expressed by members of the Government and the Opposition…
“The scale of the funding has aroused concerns that the Government is relying too heavily on a relatively unknown organisation in its desperation to counter extremism. ‘The Times’ understands that the foundation, which has 18 full-time staff, is paying about £110,000 a year to rent offices at one of Central London’s most prestigious addresses, which, for security reasons, have no name plate or sign outside. Inside, the offices are expensively furnished with state-of-the-art computers and plasma screen televisions.Mr Husain and Mr Nawaz, the organisation’s directors, are believed to be receiving salaries of about £85,000 each a year. The foundation refused to discuss individual earnings.
“An unnamed government minister told ‘The Times’ that the size of the grant was outrageous, and saying Britain had seen the rise of an ‘ex-Islamist industry.’ (Times’ reference at end of this piece below.)
MIM: In a reply to a piece by Ed Husain blaming Israel for the Gaza offensive Melanie Phillips (author of ‘Londonistan’) wrote that Ed Husain incited Muslims to violence and that she had mistakenly given him the benefit of the doubt that he had become a moderate.
‘The British government has invested huge hopes in Ed Husain as an attractive and plausible antidote to Islamist extremism in Britain. But how can anyone now believe anything he has ever said when he promulgates such a gross libel as the canard of Israel’s ‘massacre’ of hundreds of ‘innocent’ Gazans? How can the government believe that Ed Husain will de-radicalise British Muslims when through articles such as this one he is inciting them to yet more hatred of Israel, the west’s forward salient against Islamist aggression?
‘Of course, his arguments are — tragically, appallingly — replicated in large measure amongst the British intelligentsia, media and indeed members of the government itself and the broad political class. Indeed, this is a far, far wider problem than one not-so-reformed-after-all Islamic extremist’. (M.Phillips).”
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3825
See also: ‘Times’ on Quilliam Foundation –
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5549138.ece
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3197296/on-the-other-side-from-civilisation.thtml