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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Not picked up by the BBC, of course:
“Gordon Brown’s Nonsense and Lies”
(Hugh Fitzgerald)
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/19895
George R
Frightening ignorance, here and in the US. Walking over the cliff.
Three more Obama nominees withdraw from running
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/4950518/Three-more-Obama-nominees-withdraw-from-running.html
Obama is a dud and going nowhere fast, just dont expect the BBC to tell you that the Messiah cant fly.
Radio Scotland between 4 & 5pm. :- item about special forces operating in Northern Ireland to counter the attacks on police by dissident Sinn Fein/IRA gangs. Two interviews both with Catholics, one SDLP one Sinn Fein/IRA. There’s balance for you!!
Dagobert,
Yip -that’s about right. Biased to the rotten core.
FFS Stop the protectionism and let the British banks die, Gordon. They have failed, therefore they should be left to die natural deaths, not be propped up by welfare handouts.
Lloyds and RBS are worth nothing to this country.
We can always use foreign banks; we live in a global economy.
A section of Jonah Golberg’s comments on his experience of the BBC whilst promoting his book.
“Penguin • my esteemed British publisher • booked me on a slew of shows. The amazing thing was that they were nearly all on BBC. I don’t think you can appreciate what behemoth the place is until you realize that they’ve got the equivalent of a dozen Fox or CNN headquarters. Between TV and radio, BBC dominates Britain on a scale I never fully realized. It’s like NPR owning NBC, CBS and ABC.”
http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTRkNjY5M2E5OGMzMTEwZDY3OTAxNjM0ODNkMDllN2E=
He also links to an article of his on politics in Britain where oddly he fails to make the connection between the leftward drift and the lack of a genuine free press.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YWRkNDljNzEzMzk5N2MzZmU0YTQzYjhiMGVkOWI3N2Q=
Not all American conservatives seem to appreciate the free press they have. I enjoyed this.
http://www.marklevinshow.com/levin-vs-frum/
Came across it from here that isnt interesting but links to Frum’s view of the encounter.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/alexmassie/3413786/david-frum-vs-talk-radio.thtml
SKY News has shown this from Venezuela:
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Inside-Venezuelas-Prisons-Alleged-Drug-Smuggle-Couple-Paul-And-Laura-Makin-Remain-Locked-Up/Article/200903115235749?lpos=World_News_Second_Home_Page_Feature_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15235749_Inside_Venezuelas_Prisons%3A_Alleged_Drug_Smuggle_Couple_Paul_And_Laura_Makin_Remain_Locked_Up
Don’t expect the Beeb to be so critical of that jumped-up latter-day Nero, Chavez.
More AGW hilarity from the oh-so-not-biased BBC.
I’m simply copying what appears on programme info for next week’s Radio 4 plays. This one is on Thursday.
It really doesn’t need any comment, does it?
“Getting to Zero
By Sarah Woods
Drama-documentary exploring how a fictional family can eliminate their carbon footprint, with a panel of real advisers: George Monbiot, Paul Allen, and Peter Harper from the Centre for Alternative Technology, Wales.
Producer Jonquil Panting.”
Good post at DK eviscerating the BBC for uncritically peddling yet more bullshit from government-funded fake-charity-cum-leftist-pressure-group, Alcohol Concern.
Israel’s very existence is racist. Israel is the Jewish state for the Jewish nation, and notwithstanding substantial indigenous minorities, it is inherently racist because one can only become an Israeli by virtue of being a Jew or possessing “Jewish Lineage”. This is undemocratic, unegalitarian, racist and discriminatory.
All countries are social constructions and Israel is no exception. We must socially construct a new multi-faith country according to the universal principles of multi-ethnicity. “Israel” and the West Bank and the Gaza strip must be unified into a new country called Palebosnia, dedicated to the virtues and strength of diversity and tolerance.
George R | 06.03.09 – 9:43 pm |
Its strange how Brown always seems to be talking for the “world”. But the BBC never ask him about Britain. He must be the only “leader” who keeps telling the world what to do when all the others are thinking about their own countries.
Of course to anyone outside the BBC, the reason is obvious – he hasn’t got a clue, and wants to blame anyone but himself.
“As chancellor Mr Brown has won widespread praise for having secured the UK’s economic stability and for the country’s extremely strong economic performance. Prime Minister Tony Blair has described him as “brilliant” and a “tremendous asset to the country”.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3804449.stm
Now any normal journalist would ask: If he was the architect of all this stability, how come he has no responsibility for the “down turn”?
Turned on my TV a while ago saw the perfect BBC paring, Annie Loonox with Woss on BBC1. TV was then promptly turned off.
This is nothing to do with the BBC
“Obama’s safety net: the TelePrompter”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19663.html
The bBC, does my bomb look big in this? and half the story.
Train disruption after bomb scare
Trains on the East Coast Mainline were halted after a man claimed he was carrying a bomb.
British Transport Police said the man had been asked for a valid ticket at Grantham, Lincolnshire, when he said he was carrying the device. The line, which goes between London and Scotland, was brought to a standstill for just under an hour during Wednesday evening. An 18-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the incident.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lincolnshire/7925306.stm
And how the good people of Grantham see the above story;
SUSPECTED fare dodger caused havoc at Grantham station on Wednesday evening by claiming he had a bomb in his rucksack.
The 21-year-old Iraq born Iranian Kurd was ejected from a train just before 5pm. He then began walking along the railway line saying, “there’s a bomb in my rucksack”.
Police were called at 5pm. When they arrived the man told police he was only joking but when they began searching him he again repeated that he had a bomb in his rucksack.
However, the search found only clothes in the rucksack.The man was arrested and handed over to the British Transport Police who are investigating.
http://www.granthamjournal.co.uk/news/34There39s-a-bomb-in-my.5041841.jp
The bBC, does my bomb look big in this? and half the story.
Zev,
I know its easy to sit back and think the banks deserve to die. However reality is that lloyds and DBS directly employ a quarter million people between them in the I’m, not to mention several million others indirectly.
Letting them die will turn recession into depression.
Mailman
Last nights Newsnight was a how can we save Gordon Brown edition.
The BBC has not given up on him yet.
“Producer: Jonquil Panting”
Fantastic name!
The current edition of Private Eye publishes two e-mails from a BBC researcher in a section called “How the BBC works”
The first is seeking an ‘inner city school’ – really dodgy’ – not the sort that you would send your kids to’. It had to be low achieving and very multicultural / diverse’.
This was necessary, apparently to demonstrate an explicitly ideological conclusion set out in the second email (which apologises for “poor wording”) I will quote this as the eye doesn’t have a link
“The idea is to say that even children without much money and from different backgrounds can work brilliantly together to create a lovely garden – rather than children from all the same type of background and / or those who have rich parents”
So there we have it the BBC encapsulated in two emails. It is almost a manifesto of the liberal elite. The sh*t hole beldam school selected (where you wouldn’t dream of sending your kids) was to be used as a model to demonstrate how the ‘narrative’ triumphs yet again
is this working – my post about “how the BBC works” in private eye has not appeared?
It has now! How odd
mailman:
Zev,
Letting them die will turn recession into depression.
Mailman
mailman | 07.03.09 – 2:13 am | #
That’s the same argument that was had in the ’70’s about British Leyland. ‘We’d never recover’, ‘it would be the end of the UK car industry’, ‘it would be a disaster’.
Until recently there were millions more people employed in the UK car industry than in the ’70’s. Capitalism was, eventually, allowed to work and fixed the problem.
Capitalism would fix the banking problems too. If it was only allowed to.
Oh, and the goverment will turn this into a depression by the actions they are taking. 100% guaranteed.
The difference is though that the banks do contribute to the economy and likely to do so again in the future. British leyland on the other hand was a pig, always had been with no possibility of ever being anything else.
Btw todays problems is what you get when you let people get on without controls. I’d rather live under capitalism than socialism any day.
Mailman
@Zevlyn:
“Lloyds and RBS are worth nothing to this country.”
Lloyds -was- worth something. If I were a Lloyds shareholder I’d be spitting blood, because Lloyds stayed out of all this mess. Then, because of their stability, the government foisted the disastrous HBOS on them and now the Lloyds name is going through the mud.
Had the government not railroaded that deal through, Lloyds would have remained in reasonable shape. The deal should be scrapped and HBOS taken directly by the government or allowed to go under. But that, of course, would be an admission of government stupidity and failure so it will never take place.
So there we have it the BBC encapsulated in two emails. It is almost a manifesto of the liberal elite. The sh*t hole beldam school selected (where you wouldn’t dream of sending your kids) was to be used as a model to demonstrate how the ‘narrative’ triumphs yet again
It’s all too much | 07.03.09 – 8:51
And the strange thing is how many BBC employees who love sh*t hole bedlam schools for their programmes tend not to send their own children to them. They either send them to grammar schools (‘it’s against my principles but I am doing what’s best for my child’), or private schools (Shirley Williams) or move to the best areas to be near the best schools like Tony Blair did. And they have private medical insurance. No top BBC executive will be found queuing up in ‘the envy of the world’ casualty department.
There was a programme on Sky freeview (I think) about Iran. They had the BBC man on in full self-righteous mode who was in charge of BBC World service broadcasting to Iran in the 70s. It goes without saying that they broadcast all the Ayatollah’s speeches daily throughout Iran, thus helping to destabalise the country and help the Ayatollah overthrow the Shah.
The BBC man said smugly how the Foreigh office kept having meetings (the nest was not completely full of vipers) with BBC officials asking them to desist, but they would not. These are not the exact words, but the gist of it was that the BBC HAD to broadcast as they were just impartially broadcasting news and the Ayatollah was an important person.
I wonder if the BBC world service are now applying the same principle and are daily broadcasting the speeches of the PMOI who are the non-terrorist and democratic opposition in Iran?
-No need to answer than one.
here is a link to Christopher Booker Sun Tel:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1571193/Christopher-Booker-Iranians-freed-from-ban.html
19/4/08 In a street off London’s Chancery Lane on Friday 400 Iranians celebrated a court victory that has left the British Government in a deep double embarassment. Not only were ministers found to have acted illegally in outlawing the chief Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI)…
On last night’s News at Ten Justin Webb reported on Obama’s visit to a police graduation ceremony in Ohio. Over film of a small crowd holding banners and placards Webb said:
“There is still real support for this President in his efforts to combat economic disaster. The scene on the road to the police ceremony in Ohio made that clear.”
A large banner saying “thank you Obama” could be seen (screenshot) but as the camera panned quickly down the line of people I spotted what looked like a red flag with a hammer and sickle (screenshot). Either the Communist Party was out declaring its backing for Obama (not all that unlikely, admittedly) or not all the crowd was showing “real support” as Webb claimed. A little surfing uncovered this photo of the people with the red flag and, sure enough, they weren’t there to support Obama. Note also the anti-abortion protester in that picture. And they weren’t the only anti-Obama demonstrators in attendance, as this account from someone who attended the event makes clear:
The crowd seemed to be divided into thirds: about a third of those assembled were there to cheer on Barack Obama as he passed, and seemed pretty excited to see him. About a third of those assembled were there as part of an organized bloc apparently from the SEIU and Planned Parenthood to support universal health care legislation. A final third had a libertarian to conservative anti-Obama point of view, part of the “tea party” movement that wants nothing to do with the spending bills spanning the end of the Bush administration and the beginning of the Obama administration.
http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2009/03/06/protest-photo-obama-columbus-appearance-march-2009/
That link also provides some more photos showing people with signs saying “Obama – Don’t Make Our Children Slaves to Banksters”, “B.O. Is Wrong”, “Hurricane Barack-Nancy A National Disaster!” and, my favourite, “Rush is Right”.
In November Webb claimed that the BBC would be as a sceptical of the Obama administration as any other, but it’s quite clear that is simply not the case. Claiming that protesters are actually supporters is propaganda of the sort more commonly associated with totalitarian regimes. The only difference is that the BBC’s journalists do not need to be coerced into twisting the truth • they do it willingly for the Dear Leader.
(Here’s a link to last night’s News at Ten. The relevant segment is about 3:10 in :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00j32mc/b00j32lc/BBC_News_at_Ten_06_03_2009/ )
The new richly diverse combined Palestinian/Israeli state will be called Palisrwanda. One state solution and final solution rolled into one.
God. That ugly Harpe Harman is on the TV spouting on about the pay of ‘wimmin’
Doesn’t she ever change the record?
caveman: You could have added in fatty Harman and Diana Abbot as well. They come to mind.
From this comment thread alone – a Catholic-only response to Northern Ireland policing; an eco-drama which sounds like something Viz’s Thoroughly Modern Parents would come up with (the producer even sounds like a Viz character); anti-Israeli celeb Annie Lennox on Jonathan Ross; a classic example of the BBC omitting facts about a suspected bomber; an item from Private Eye proving the agenda-driven motivations of BBC programme makers; and Justin Webb propagandising for Obama.
The BBC’s claims that it isn’t biased are as genuine as those of cabinet ministers defending the latest policy failure. We all know it’s not true, but at least we get to vote out the politicians. Don’t pay the licence fee, but don’t expect things to change any time soon. The BBC belongs to the left and it’s not going to give it up.
BBC 2 TV ‘Newsnight Review’ last night, chaired by the imitable gabbling, interrupting Ms. K. Wark, consisted of a panel of three various strands of politically ‘liberal/left’ guests who assessed G. Brown’s speech to the US Congress, (so that’s four, including the politics of Wark).
The only drift of criticism of Brown was that he was not ‘left’ enough in his speech, with Wark chipping in:’no rendition, no McCarthyism, no Vietnam’. But they all seemed to like that ‘climate change’ was in the speech. There is a classic comment that the speech was a ‘backward-looking version of history’.
This panel did not analyse the content of Brown’s speech ( on the lines of Hugh Fitzgerald: see 9:43 pm above).
The whole Brownite panel seemed to go into hyperactive gabbling Wark mode, so we ended up with the usual BBC Brown diarrhoea.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00j24l6/Newsnight_Review_06_03_2009/
It’s all too much: those 2 emails I think sum up the BBC mentality in all its tawdry glory
1. Wark is known for here left of Labour connections. That the producer allowered her to include a section bigging up the one eyed Scottish idiot on an arts programme is appalling. It is no secret that Brown’s recovery strategy is based on being seen as a “world leader” NN Review delivered perfectly on that agenda.
They do not care any more and are throwing everything at trying to salvage a few labour votes.
2. Filthy little beeboid on “from our own Marxist propagandist” on R4 at the moment, giving a polemic diatribe intertwining Churchill and George Bush and cast them as evil Moslem bigots and colonists. Islamists of course are opressed ethnic innocents.
Is there no faeces ridden pit of depravity and treachery that the BBC will not inhabit to broadcast their twisted propaganda?
ere… should habe said “anti-Moslem”
HELP
====
I’m trying to compile a list of the joke panellists on Question Time and Any Questions. So far I’ve got Marcus Brigstock and William Young. Can anyone add to this list?
The bBC, illigal immigrants and half the story
University administrator jailed
A university administrator from Nottingham who falsely claimed he was entitled to be in the UK has been jailed for nine months. Hitcham Yezza, 31, was originally arrested under the Terrorism Act after he printed off a copy of an al Qaida manual for a friend.
Both men were released without charge but Yezza, of Barker Gate, Nottingham, was rearrested. He was found guilty of offences under the Immigration Act last month.
Travel documents
The jury at Northampton Crown Court heard the Algerian national was rearrested after police found the passport he claimed had been stolen. He had told officials that the travel documents were stamped by immigration officials, extending his stay in Britain until December 2007, before they went missing. In fact, Yezza had failed to get them stamped since 2003 and his stay in the UK was now illegal.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/7929621.stm
The bBC, illigal immigrants and half the story
Bush, Blair, Olmert, Bush, Blair, Olmert,Bush, Blair, Olmert, Bush, Blair, Olmert,Bush, Blair, Olmert, Bush, Blair, Olmert,Bush, Blair, Olmert, Bush, Blair, Olmert (ad infinitum)………………………………….the predictable gist of the World Have Your Say programme on “Should Omar Al Bashir be arrested?”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/whys/
Hi,
I was reading ur blog posts and found some of them to be very good.. u write well.. Why don’t you popularize it more.. ur posts on rediff took my particular attention as some of them are interesting topics of mine too;
BTW I help out some ex-IIMA guys who with another batch mate run http://www.rambhai.com where you can post links to your most loved blog-posts. Rambhai was the chaiwala at IIMA and it is a site where users can themselves share links to blog posts etc and other can find and vote on them. The best make it to the homepage!
This way you can reach out to rambhai readers some of whom could become your ardent fans.. who knows.. 🙂
Cheers,
Ray
Hugh Oxford
How could you forget
1. Hardeep Singh kohli. beturbanned alternative Glaswegian comic, ‘journalist’ and rogue landlord
2. Paul Heaton, alleged singer, practicing lunatic and front man of the band the Beautiful South
3. I can’t recall her name but I think she was the vacuous show biz editor of the Sun at the time
All 3 a screaming embarassment, but in the BBC eyes ‘edgy’
We must socially construct a new multi-faith country according to the universal principles of multi-ethnicity
Oh, we must, must we?
Well, I am telling you that you must fuck off, antisemitic bastard.
All the British casualty departments I have been to, as a patient and a relative, have been outstandingly good.
Red Nose Day is coming up, and will of course be running non-stop on Al Beeb.
Reminder – the money goes where they want it to go, not where you would prefer. This includes the following antisemitic ‘charities’:
Oxfam,
War on Want,
and several others.
nrg | 07.03.09 – 11:51 am |
Re: “from our own Marxist propagandist”
I heard that too, also on the web:
Owen Bennett-Jones had gone to Sudan to make a “history programme” about the war between the Mahdi Army and the British in the 1880s. He hints at the agenda the programme was to have:
“depending how you look at it, a religious revival intended to purify Islam or an anti-colonial struggle to expel foreign rulers.”
His reverential description of a Sufi ceremony hints some more at how Owen B-J will “look at” it: “Their faces filled with the joyous smiles of religious fervour and then some started dancing – or perhaps I should say moving their limbs ( a jokey reference to Islam’s way of excusing anything resembling dancing)- in the middle of the circle.
“As I looked into the men’s faces I thought this here, right now in the late evening, in a small courtyard on the outskirts of Khartoum is why being a foreign correspondent is such a privilege”
Love-struck Bruce Parry type romanticising of bizarre unpleasant rituals?
Suddenly Owen B-J quotes Churhill. One might have assumed ‘for balance.’ had he not gone on to compare his statement with one from George Bush:
“Churchill had some fairly strong views on Islam:
“No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. And were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall.”
Churchill knew what he was talking about, you might think. But that’s the wrong message.
“That was Churchill. This is George Bush: “There are extreme elements that use religion to achieve objectives. And they want us to leave. And they want to topple government. They want to extend an ideological caliphate that has no concept of liberty inherent in their beliefs.”
THIS is the message: “Scaremongering fools! Nasty intolerant remarks about the ROP!”
Owen Bennett-Jones got booted out by Pres. Bashir, but he’s not bitter. He ends with a poignant question, asking what Churchill would have made of the Sufi dance. He provides the answer too.
“Churhill said “a degraded sensualism, depriving life of its grace and refinement.”
Were we meant to marvel at Churchill’s unenlightened narrow mindedness, or what? And I hope he never gets to make his “History programme.”
The panellists on Newsnight Review are always a joy to behold.They always have to tick a box
Of course, for the BBC, BRUSSELS is the city of its E.U. bureaucrat chums; so, it quite predictable that the BBC is interested in this aspect of Brussels:
“Brussels EU quarter to get revamp”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7927763.
What the BBC doesn’t report about is any other quarter of Brussels, for example the Islamic quarter ( because Brussels’ population is about 25% Muslim, mainly composed of Moroccan immigrants), but this CNN report gives some impression of that:
“One Woman’s War” (by Nic Robertson)
[Extract]:
“When I got off the Eurostar train I’d taken from London to Brussels there was nothing to suggest I was in a city that has ties to radical Islamic terrorism.
“Quite the reverse, the very nature of Euro train terminus at the Gare du Midi is, dare I say it, quintessential busy modern Europe. Neat Euro bistros bustle with a cosmopolitan collection of travelers from as close as the suburbs to people like me who’ve taken the short two-hour ride from Britain.
“So I suppose it felt a little strange to be here in a city that on the surface doesn’t have a terrorism problem.
“Indeed, compared to many places I travel like the Middle East or Afghanistan, it felt positively tame.
“I’d come to tell the story of Malika el Aroud, a 49-year-old Belgian-Moroccan woman who had one husband killed in a high profile al Qaeda suicide attack and has herself been convicted in Switzerland of running a Web site promoting terrorism.
“Somehow I felt in the wrong place. Not so, when barely an hour later we are being accosted by a bunch of angry young men while filming in a neighborhood barely five minutes’ drive from the station. I was coming face to face with an undercurrent that passes most people by. It was to be an undercurrent I would come across again and again during my stay.
“The Belgian police chief told us that because of high levels of immigration, seven out of 10 children at schools in Brussels cannot speak either of Belgium’s mother tongues — French or Flemish. He explained that Brussels’ immigrant population has become segregated, in some places physically, from the rest of society.”
(-See also CNN video in 3 parts, linked on page below.)
http://edition.cnn.com/CNNI/Programs/untoldstories/blog/archive/2009_02_08_index.html
Sue
But wasn’t it fun – for me the first time ever – to hear on the BBC some of Churchill’s famous condemnation of Mohammedenism ? I bet that caused some hiccups elsewhere at the Beeb.
For Hugh Oxford
3 more joke Question Time “panellists:”
1. Alex James, bass player and cheese farmer
2. Davina McCall
3. The Blessed Shami (PBUH)
Sue | 07.03.09 – 1:47 pm,
I recall that a few years back on the World Service Owen Bennett-Jones interviewed one of Iran’s vice presidents – a woman who was one of the leaders of the crew that took the hostages at the US Embassy. Some “interview.” He was positively star-struck by her.
And he was dismayed when the Czech Foreign Minister expressed the jarring opinion that Israel has the right to defend itself by going into Gaza.
“Doesn’t Hamas have the right to defend itself?” asked Bennett-Jones indignantly.
Man has obviously never heard of Islamic terrorism, or he has but he doesn’t believe it should be fought. Typical BBC idiot but a dangerous one.
I have an idea he has converted by now to the Religion of Peace.