OPEN THREAD..

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161 Responses to OPEN THREAD..

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  1. Roland Deschain says:
    May 25, 2009 at 9:13 am

    They also point out that the Commons rules specifically state that professional advice IS an allowable expense.

    And so we come full circle to the “it was all within the rules” argument again. Wasn’t it generally agreed last week that this argument simply won’t wash? Who made these rules? The same people who made the rules that say professional advice in similar circumstances is not allowable for you and I.

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  2. JohnA says:
    May 25, 2009 at 11:55 am

    I stumbled across this article dated 24 May by Pounce. It is sharp and succinct – brilliant.

    http://tinyurl.com/quc6py

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  3. George R says:
    May 25, 2009 at 1:24 pm

    LUTON.

    Non-Muslims arrested in Luton,

    OR, as BBC has it (‘England’ page):

    “Nine held after trouble at march”.

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  4. George R says:
    May 25, 2009 at 2:04 pm

    BBC – true to form – supporting Islamic jihad suspects – on BBC News TV ‘Reporters’; of course, Binyam Mohamed is propagandised for, along with other suspects. BBC states all of them are proved innocent – but no evidence is investigated.

    No BBC report on innocence of non-Muslim protesters in Luton.

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  5. David Preiser says:
    May 25, 2009 at 4:21 pm

    I keep forgetting to bring up Mark Mardell’s blatantly biased post about “green” Germany in his Euroblog.

    It’s possibly my imagination, but the air here seems to taste cleaner.

    Advocate much, Mark? The whole thing reads as a propaganda piece. Mardell goes on and on about how everybody walks and uses public transportation, green this, green that.

    In one suburb that’s home to 5,000 people, Vauban, they take things further. The flats are overflowing with quite literal greenness, vegetation tumbling down their outside…”

    Unless they eat it, or burn it to keep warm in winter, that vegetation contributes nothing whatsoever to the “greenness”. Except superficially, of course. This is a totally misleading observation. But, of course, the BBC loves superficiality, and there’s a certain “impression” Mardell wants to create for you, so reality can be an obstacle.

    After gushing over how an essentially medieval town is able to live a slightly cleaner life than a major modern city (although he doesn’t quite put it in that context), Mardell mentions that the English and Welsh Greens have a “very radical manifesto”. They want to end economic growth, although they use postmodern rhetoric and take the position that there are other ways to measure jobs and the economy. This is left as the party political statement that it is, no comments from Mardell.

    In comparison, have a look at a report on Freiburg from the BBC’s arch-enemy: Fox News

    .

    The tone is much more sober, but one actually gets a clearer picture of just what Freiburg is doing. They have photos showing practically every rooftop covered in solar panels. Freiburg gets plenty of sun, much more than most places in Britain, so this can actually work.

    The one glaring difference – other than the absence of breathless promotion and economic musings from neo-Marxists – is this quote:

    “We can either pay Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, or we can pay our own energy companies here,” said Martin Schoepe, an official at Germany’s Ministry for the Environment. “I’d opt for the latter.”

    That’s the best reason of all to stop using oil as fuel, as far as I’m concerned. The only time you’ll hear a comment like that on the BBC is in a documentary trying to make certain people out to be racists.

    In the end, the BBC’s arch enemy demonstrates that it’s possible to do an accurate, positive story about Green energy without acting like a tool. And Mardell is going to replace Justin Webb as BBC North America editor. I can’t wait for more of his brilliant, objective reporting.

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  6. DB says:
    May 25, 2009 at 4:29 pm

    Michael Sandel, the Harvard professor chosen by the BBC to deliver the Reith Lectures this year, was on Start the Week today. Andrew Marr asked him the following:

    “If we are to have a re-moralised politics, a new kind of citizenship, gives us some indication of where politically this new morality or ideology is going to come, what it feels like. Is it a soft leftism? Is it a new environmental leftism? What is it?“

    It reminds me of the bar in The Blues Brothers which has both kinds of music: country AND western. At the BBC they’ve got both kinds of ideology: leftism AND environmental leftism.

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  7. DB says:
    May 25, 2009 at 4:36 pm

    Matt Frei was on CNN yesterday discussing cable news channels Fox and MSNBC:

    “I guess you have to decide what you are. You know, if you’ve got people crying — anchors crying on television, if you’ve got them pushing agendas, if you’ve got them getting in touch with their emotional side rather than they’re kind of cerebral side, that’s fine. It’s therapeutic, it’s very entertaining but it’s not news, but it’s not news.

    Don’t call it news. News is something else.“

    OK Matt, I’ll remember that the next time you’re telling us how like totally great the Obamas are.

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  8. Craig says:
    May 25, 2009 at 5:11 pm

    Another area of Beeb bias: Europe.

    Jonny Dymond (on ‘Today’, this morning) stops off in Poland on the latest leg of his taxpayer-funded jaunt around Europe.
    He begins by interviewing a businessman whose company has conquered Europe since Poland joined the EU (“like someone waved a magic wand”). Isn’t the EU great?

    Dymond then talks to a Polish girl who has returned from London, leading her by his questions to describe us Brits as “too proud, too fussy” (though it’s in our favour that London is “cosmopolitan”), as compared to the hard-working Poles. This may well be true, but its truth is not Dymond’s end, only his means to an end – to shame us into seeing how great the EU is and how Eastern European immigration to Britain (and, so, immigration in general) can only be good for us.

    He then talks to two IT “guys” in Krakow and invites them to say that Brits should welcome Eastern European immigration, & even (in time) move to Poland themselves (when the EU has led to further enrichment for the country).
    This is all “good news” for a British trucker’s children, Dymond concludes.

    You can check out Dymond’s other biased reports on the BBC News website (“In Search of Europe”).

    He began his grand tour of Europe in France, where he talked to a Europhile Socialist and a Europhile Green candidate, as well as a few voters. He then went to Sweden and talked to “former MEP Annelie Hulten”, a Europhile social democrat.

    When he trotted off to Ireland he found lots of voters who voted “no” to the Lisbon Treaty in the last referendum. Jonny finds that they will be voting “yes” next time. Every last one of them. Jonny then seeks out the views of “many on the left”, & they too think that a “yes” vote is coming next time.

    Austria, Italy and Germany are still to come.

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  9. George R says:
    May 25, 2009 at 5:16 pm

    LUTON. Re- 2:24 pm above.

    ‘Times’ report, (in contrast to BBC report):

    “Trouble flares as Luton residents protest over Muslim extremists”

    [Extract]:

    “Nine people were arrested yesterday after trouble flared during a protest march against supposed Muslim extremists.

    “The march in Luton was said to be a protest against an earlier demonstration during the Royal Anglian Regiment’s homecoming parade when soldiers were heckled on their return from a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

    “Yesterday there were about 500 protesters, some carrying banners with slogans such as ‘No Sharia Law in the UK’ and ‘Respect our Troops’. “

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  10. David Preiser says:
    May 25, 2009 at 5:33 pm

    DB @ 5:36 PM, May 25, 2009

    No mirrors in the Frei household, I see. Unreal.

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  11. Ethan says:
    May 26, 2009 at 9:50 am

    In the ‘we’re all dooooooomed…DOOOOOMED! motif that the BBC reports. Gentle readers may like to see this article.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/22/bbc_whitehouse_climate/

    Seems an ex BBC science reporter agrees with us that the Global Warming bias of the BBC is obvious and detrimental to science. It’s not science as we know it Jim it’s pseudo disaster movies. Al Gore has much to answer for!

    Ethan

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