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- harry142857 Nov 21, 22:02
Midweek 20th November 2024
The emoluments for the Chief Executive for the year was £154,044. - Philip_2 Nov 21, 21:40
Midweek 20th November 2024
BBC presses ahead with Radio 2 60s and 70s spin-off station despite admitting it will harm rivals The “arrogant” BBC… - Fedup2 Nov 21, 21:39
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Plenty on twitter suggesting Reeves will be resigning on Friday – they have no honoure- she won’t - StewGreen Nov 21, 21:36
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screenshot [img]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gc8E_QvXUAAgfzM?format=jpg&name=small[/img] - Zephir Nov 21, 21:29
Midweek 20th November 2024
FFS this lot should be jailed for treason… “The Biden administration is loosening some key immigration restrictions ahead of President-elect… - Zephir Nov 21, 21:26
Midweek 20th November 2024
Regarding the lying (and plagiarising) Reeves. When the lying Starmer said this would be a “government of service” I never… - MarkyMark Nov 21, 21:21
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Rosie Millard, 59, accused the charity of “institutional failure” accused the charity = WASN’T SHE IN CHARGE? - StewGreen Nov 21, 21:15
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Every time I see @GBNEWS there’s a typo across the screen. This evening they’re calling @AllisonPearson ‘Allison Person’ 🤦🏻♀️
Categories
agw anti-American anti-conservative anti-Israel anti Israel. pro Palestinian Antisemitism BBC - sickeningly biased at all times. BBC agenda BBC bias bbc bias and balance. bbc bias by omission BBC censorship BBC Question Time BBC selectivity bias Biased BBC climate change dhimmis general thread immigration Islam israel Mark Mardell obama obama bias Obamalove open thread pro-labour pro-palestinian pro EU pro Hamas pro Islam pro Labour bias pro Obama PRO OBAMA AT ALL COSTS. pro Obama BBC agenda question time question time live Richard Black save gordon. USA politics US economy US News US politics US presidential elections
Everything’s fine in the BBC’s utopian world:
‘BBC’s chum Ahmadinejad reaches out to BBC’s best chum, Obama.”
OR, in BBC’s own fantasy headline (‘Middle East’ page):
“Iran’s Ahmadinejad reaches out to Obama”.
Never seen a word from the BBC on the ‘No Sharia Law in the UK’ and ‘Respect our Troops’ demonstration in Luton town centre? Daily Mail
Have you SEEN this puff piece about how joining the European Union has made Poland rich and has proved nothing but a success for our dear fellow-Europeans?
“Ambitious Poles see EU enlargement as an opportunity, not a threat,”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8066680.stm
Wow, it seems that flooding the West with cheap, hard-working labour eager to earn hard currency is down to the EU alone.
Decades of Communism keeping Poland underdeveloped and Poles badly-paid doesn’t seem to have had any effect – or didn’t even happen in BBC-world.
So when they stopped acting like a Soviet siege-economy and opened the borders, oddly enough many people left and some recently went back.
Nothing remarkable with that.
Obviously too, there are absolutely no social problems as a result of this free movement of people between countries, and the BBC is all for free trade in ideas and people, which is why it’s relocating its production offices and technical departments to Poland straight away, right?
EU free trade good – everywhere else’s free trade (ie, globalisation), bad.
Honestly, I don’t know why the Beeb spend a whole decade opposing Western rearmament against the Soviet Union by adopting CND’s propaganda for its editorial policy when a future without the USSR was going to be this good…
Incidentally, for those of you on Facebook, there is this group: “10 Million for NO TV LICENCE” if you aren’t already aware of it.
This has been a public service announcement!
Am I alone in finding it strange that the BBC does not deign to respond to criticism on this post and elsewhere?
The corporation has a massive and expensive army of spindoctors, PR bunnies, and corporate communications specialists and so forth yet they seem to pay no attention to the continuous stream of criticism, here, on other websites and in major newspapers around the world. When people are making the effort to create things such as “Generic Radio 4 Comedian”
see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TVVZ75J7cQ
you know you have a serious PR problem! Also “10 Million for NO TV LICENCE” as noted above.
Surely you would expect an organisation with such a PR problem and the resources to address it to do actually do something. Many of the posts on B-BBC make serious allegations; good PR practice would be to, at the very least, issue a clarification, rebuttal or a denial. In an ideal world they would take the criticism on board. From a strict communications viewpoint they are being neglegent in their duty by not protecting the BBC brand, which is, after all, owned by the British public.
Are the Beeb’s spindoctors really so useless that they cannot do the job they are (over) paid to do? Or do they think us licence payers are beneath their contempt? Or do they know that they cannot defend the indefensible?
Why do you think the BBC does not effectively defend itself?
I heard about the Luton troubles on the ITV news last night but couldn’t see anything about it on the BBC news website or on Sky’s either. I did wonder about that.
Had I dreamt that it was on the news? Was the BBC news team on holiday enjoying the Bank Holiday weekend?
Radio 4 this eveing slides seamlessly from David Hare’s 30-minute rant about the Israel/West Bank barrier at 8pm (how on earth can anything but bias at the BBC give one person a full half-hour platform on a controversial issue ?)
…….to Costing the Earth and loads of naive stuff about the evacuation of the Carteret islands – “the first casualties of global warming”. These tiny atoll islands in the Pacific are probably sinking through tectonic action or through natural erosion of volcanic structures, But no – the BBC says it MUST be through the oceans rising – and have steadily through the programme moved to the Maldives and now the bloody Orkneys !!!
“Climate change seems to be delivering more violent qeather atop a higher sea”…”maybe we need a tax on air travel to pay for future evacuations”… yada yada yada.
………….
From time to time over the past 12 years I have visited the Cook Islands and Fiji in the South Pacific. I have seen NIL sign of beaches disappearing – and people I know in Rarotonga and in the small Yasawa Islands of Fiji say that they see no change. But that doesn’t stop BBC wallahs jetting off to the Pacific at our expense to preach at us. I wonder if they’d pay my fare next time to preach the opposite view ?
nrg
Why do you think the BBC does not effectively defend itself?
9:21 PM, May 25, 2009
———————————————
I thinks it’s quite simple: the BBC is so arrogant it believes itself to be untouchable…
Labour urges bank ‘decline’ probe
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8067386.stm
Blatant bias as shown here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/briantaylor/2009/05/letter_from_texas.html#P80530186
I know it’s off topic, but….
Well done the Clarets! 33 long years.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8066680.stm
Have a look at his route around europe –
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8066680.stm
Notice how he skips around the EU, but misses Holland, the Czech Republic and Denmark. Funny that, missing out the countries that aren’t always as on message as the rest.
JohnA – I try to avoid commenting on the BBC’s anti-Israel campaign (I dont have a dog in that fight and I think it gets more than enough coverage on here as it is) but I nearly dropped my watering can when I heard Hare’s outrageous claptrap on R4, this evening.
Still, the Corporation has always been pretty open about its contempt for contrary opinions on this subject. ISTR the faux urbane ‘John Reith’ getting awfully close
to revealing his blatant partiality on the subject of Israel.
That was what led me to conclude he was one of the BBC’s world-weary foreign correspondents – all white jackets and no knickers.
Hare set a new standard this evening.
I turned off before ‘Costing the Earth’ began. I had the first strawberries to pick and didn’t want them soured by that hippy pseudo-scientific nonsense.
Re George R 7:26pm
Even the BBC are unable to write a report to chime with their headline Iran’s Ahmadinejad reaches out to Obama as reading to para 7 we get So Mr Obama’s hopes for a new and constructive dialogue with Iran on the nuclear issue look as far away as everIn fact they even get the real low down from Ahmadinejad but still look on the bright side On the campaign stump for the presidential election on 12 June, Mr Ahmadinejad has compared Iran’s enemies to “dogs”, saying: “If you retreat, they attack; if you attack they retreat.”
Tonight’s Panorama did a number not so much on expenses though it did have a go at politicians of ALL parties (shock, horror).
But then moved on to the thorny questions of their other benefits such as multiple jobs and employing relatives at inflated ‘wages’.
But their lack of authority on the subject was quickly glossed over as they brushed aside the fact that an MP earns less a panorama reporter you have never even heard of.
No mention of the BBC expenses and scams.
The BBC is about as effective on this as it would be to use a peashooter to attack an elephant.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
In “Washington Diary: Cheney’s Party” our old pal Matt Frei writes this:
“…George W Bush is so silent in retirement he appears to have gone into a witness protection programme, and his floundering party seems devoid of ideas, direction and plausible leaders.
But wait! There IS a Republican shuffling to centre-stage. The man who spent part of the last administration in an undisclosed location has popped out like a Jack-in-the-Box to take the Obama administration to task. With the thawing of Spring and the greening of dead lawns, Dick Cheney has sprung back to life like a forgotten prickly plant. He has dominated the airwaves. Now even his daughter Liz is jousting on his behalf.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8047062.stm
So here is the choice in Matt Frei’s world: if you are not a Democrat you are either “silent” like someone in the “witness protection programme” etc…” or you “spring back to life like a forgotten prickly plant.”
In this article Frei’s sneering betrays his politics, his arrogance and his disregard for his public role – he is just a BBC reporter, nothing more. But Conservatives can’t win in the self-referential world of this narcissistic little creep. And seriously folks, does anyone think with this sort of bias you can expect to know what is really going on in the USA?
The consequences of the (BBC’s tacitly approved) mass immigration, multiculturalist project of the European Union, are imposed on the European people.
Example 5,732:
“Punjab riots after Vienna killings”
(BBC report, ‘South Asia’ page).
Why do you think the BBC does not effectively defend itself?
Because it doesn’t need to. There’s lots of hot air and self-righteous rage, but no effective opposition.
In the BBC’s shoes, what would you do?
North 8:41
I wish the BBC would re-locate to Poland , although would feel sorry for the Poles.
Unfortunatley, at great expense, part of the BBC is re-locating to Salford. Still, at least they will have plenty of their muslim brothers to chat to.
Cameron was then then attacked at if his idea was crazy. It is the usual Tory bashing. There is no way if the idea was Browns would it have been anything but a brilliant idea. I cant believe BBC can get away with this deceit almost every day.
On Today Naughtie interviewed a BBC employee (David Cowling) and Ed Davey, LibDem foreign affairs spokesman ostensibly on “the extent to which policy will be the main deciding factor for voters” but, in reality, on how the section of the political class who “represent” us in Brussels will be affected by the latest revelations concerning Westminster MPs.
To Naughtie’s (opening and sole) question which concerned MEPs apparently becoming millionaires after one stint in Brussels, Davey’s response (which took up the rest of this segment) comprised 1. a claim that the LibDems are in the forefront of the fight to control MEPs’ (legal) thievery 2. launching an ad hominem attack on UKIP, and 3. another claim (which is probably true) that without the LibDems, the European arrest warrant (you know, the one where any UK citizen can be arrested and deported on the orders of a Rumanian magistrate without any prima facie case being presented to a UK court) would not be in place and the Costa Crime would still be in being (as if it isn’t!).
After exhausting himself with that one nominally EU-sceptical question, Naughtie sat there and allowed this blatant piece of political propaganda to go out unhindered and unchallenged: so much for BBC impartiality in the run-up to the EU elections.
‘Independent’ (25 May):
“Stephen Glover: With fewer friends, the BBC may yet be reined in by the Tories”
[Extract]:
“Let us assume the Conservatives win the next general election by a clear majority. Unless they muck up things on a grand scale, they would probably be looking at two terms in power. Ten years is a long time in which to set about reshaping the BBC.
“At the moment, of course, the BBC gives David Cameron a very fair wind. But Tories recall the days before the Iraq War when they thought of the BBC as the Blair Broadcasting Corporation – the days when, following the ukase of its sinisterly styled ‘chief political adviser,’ any mention of Peter Mandelson’s sexuality was officially proscribed by the Corporation. They remember being treated as exhibits at a freak show.”
Interesting report from Pakistan by Owen Bennett Jones on "Today".
It seems that the Pakistani media are whipping up anti-Taliban sentiment by repeated showing of video of a young woman receiving a punishment lashing from the Taliban. In addition the local media even proclaim their support & admiration for the national armed forces.
Thank god it doesn't happen here.
How to tackle BBC political bias?:
‘American Thinker’:
(May 26)
“How to talk to a liberal If You really want to change his mind”
[Extract]:
Many of us have friends, family and colleagues who still cling to liberalism, and worship at the Obama altar. Usually, they are not bad people. They’re neither stupid nor pusillanimous — they’re just shockingly ill-informed, having received a lifetime of news and opinions solely from the liberal media. “
BBC still refuses to criticise its political chum, Ken Loach, over his censorship campaign against Israeli director at Edinburgh Film Festival.
‘The First Post’:
[Extract]:
“If this had happened to a British artist the liberal left literati would be up in arms”
(Shirley Dent, 21 May).
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
‘newcultureforum.org.uk’:
“Left-wing bigot gets film-maker banned”
[Extract]:
“Loach on Monday urged film goers to boycott the” [Edinburgh film]”festival after pro-Palestinian activists protested the grant for the Israeli film.
“In a statement, festival representatives said that Loach spoke ‘on behalf of the film community, [and] therefore we will be returning the funding issued by the Israeli Embassy.’
“Which is worse – this appalling act of vindictive censorship by the left-wing bigot Loach, or the fact that the organisers can so readily and unselfconsciously accord him the status of spokesman for the film community? ” (Peter Whittle.)
And the BBC says:…………
…………………………
Monday night’s half hour Panorama programme on MPs expenses and double jobbing was a cheap, shallow and shrill effort, notable only for the enormous cast of staffers who came up on the credits’ list.
However its depth was illustrated by the use of David Miller of Spinwatch.
For his unmentioned second job is as Professor of Sociology at Strathclyde University.
Why were we not told and will they do a follow up programme about academics who have the time to run extensive campaigns while holding down full time jobs?
Perhaps some even don’t do academic work during all of their three months’ long summer break!!!
‘Blaney’s Blarney.com’ (24 May):
“Most hated website:-
“The ‘BBC News’ website.
“I pay for it through my taxes and it reeks of smug sanctimonious leftist bias.”
‘Multiculturalist’ BBC RADIO 5 gave over much of programme this morning to propagandise about the problems of black children in Britain, and how more resources should go their way.
Sophie Raworth, 1pm News BBC1 – Introduction to a story on fears of the over 50s losing their jobs and not getting another…
“As the economic downturn continues…”
NO for crying out loud, the word you’re not using is RECESSION.
BBC, you had no problem using that word in the 80s and the 90s when we had a Conservative Government so kindly stick to it please while we have a Labour Government.
It’s NOT a downturn it’s a RECESSION.
How does the European Union work?
“MEPs recently passed a law significantly cutting the cost of texting from abroad. They’ve also banned seal products being imported into Europe; and they’ve stopped airlines from using misleading adverts that suggest we can fly to Spain for 50p.”
You see, the EU only does good things. Now stop being so sceptical, you plebs.
Llew 1:15
For the Beeboids it is not even a downturn, it is boom time as usual !
Llew said.. 1.15PM
Sorry, Llew, wrong again.
It’s a DEPRESSION. That’s why 50+ year olds won’t be getting another job.
The BBC continues its vilification of Sri Lanka – a vile interview on World Service last night with the young and stupid-sounding BBC guy (foreign, I think) aggressively questioning the Sri Lankan representative, then Martha Kearney at News at One on Radio 4 just now, attacking the Sri Lankan interviewee and then trying to fish from the UN guy a statement that the Sri Lankans had committed war crimes.
That is – the BBC STARTS FROM an assumption that the Sri Lankan government and armed forces are guilty of war crimes. STARTS FROM the assumption that NGOs have no axes to grind. STARTS FROM the idea that the UN is a high moral authority.
…
Likewise a trailer from Matt Frei for his Americana prog this weekend will ask “who knew and who did not know about torture” – the BBC STARTS FROM its own belief that waterboarding is torture, when that is a sharply divided question, legally as well as morally.
The BBC should not have any such prior beliefs or views. That is – it should not have an agenda lifted wholesale from Uman Wites activists. The first human right in any state is to have protection from your government – and this includes protection from terrorism. Or – as a sick BBC reporter put it over the weekend, – “the LTTE, who the Sri Lankan Government regard as terrorists”.
Anonymous said…
Monday night’s half hour Panorama programme on MPs expenses and double jobbing was a cheap, shallow and shrill effort… .
However its depth was illustrated by the use of David Miller of Spinwatch.
For his unmentioned second job is as Professor of Sociology at Strathclyde University.
Why were we not told …?
…
11:12 AM, May 26, 2009
===================================
Maybe we WERE told. Every time the presenter began to speak, they started up some annoying music to distract you from what was being said. As a result,I couldn’t hear half of it properly.
That’s why they needed such a long list of staff: they are there to ensure that the programme is so messed about that we can’t sit and watch it in peace and listen to the presenter delivering the findings.
For some reason, as far as I recall, these amateur messers didn’t play the annoying noise over Vine the Whine speaking his piece at the beginning and the end (which, incidentally is itself another annoying irrelevance on this programme.) No such courtesy or consideration was extended to the presenter of the actual content of the programme. Why?
Taboo subject for BBC, especially in run up to 4 June E.U. elections:
‘brugesgroup.com’ –
“Immigration: The Impact of the European Union” (Sir Andrew Green; 9m:31 sec. video)
‘atlasshrugs.com’:
“The Halimi Cover-Up”
by Pamela Geller:-
“Death in an Islamic
‘homemade concentration camp’.
[Opening extract]:
“Warning! The following contains descriptions of extreme brutality.
“The abduction and murder in Paris of a young Jewish man by a gang of Muslim immigrants calling themselves ‘the Barbarians’ shocked the whole of France in 2006. But now that the accused are on trial – silence.”
And does the BBC report this Paris trial of Muslims?
Nothing so far.
Wato today.
Top news item – David Cameron on Constitutional Change.
First interview – from 38degrees (who?) representative.
Second Interview – Jack boring – Straw (we were going to announce all this but the expenses row blew up!).
Where was Cameron? Where was Clegg?
Amazing bias.
38 Degrees are eco-socialists. So expect to be hearing and seeing a lot of them on the Beeb.
Info on 38 degrees courtesty of Guido ( http://www.order-order.com )
New Left-Wing Pressure Group Supports MP Recall
38 Degrees, the UK version of MoveOn has finally launched. It has no formal link to MoveOn, but is advised by one of the MoveOn team. MoveOn was itself an online campaign launched to shore up the Clinton presidency when Matt Drudge mired slick Willy in scandal and possible impeachment over his lying about Monica Lewinsky.
David BabbsThe campaign is however keen to not be seen as pro-Labour, in truth it is not a Labour project, it is however of the progressive left-of-centre aiming to “advance fairness, defend rights, promote peace, preserve the planet and deepen democracy in the UK”. The holding company behind it is called Progressive Majority, which gives the game away. The leading figure is David Babbs, who comes from Friends of the Earth, in fact most of the leading figures and finance are from the green movement. Blue State Digital UK did the website, which is a cut above the usual with fancy but meaningless imagery.
John Bosworth @ 12:24 AM, May 26, 2009
And seriously folks, does anyone think with this sort of bias you can expect to know what is really going on in the USA?
Matt Frei is dishonest. He knows perfectly well that it’s traditional for ex-Presidents to keep their mouths shut, especially in the first months after leaving office. Former Presidents do criticize their replacements once in a while, but Carter went way beyond the pale when he called the Bush administration “the worst in history”. And they don’t do it in the first three months of the next guy’s term.
But Frei doesn’t care about decency or honesty. It probably doesn’t even register with him that Carter’s venom was unusual or out of order. He was only too happy to aid and abet Carter in an interview in 2007 in which he got Carter to launch “a scathing attack on the Bush administration”.
All Frei cared about for the last few years was bashing Bush and anyone not left of his beloved Bill Clinton, and he’s still at it now.
Does anyone know if the BBC have ever done a documentary on torture in North Korea or, say, Cuba ?
SO THAT’S ALRIGHT THEN?
My formal complaint:
Just switched on R4 – Woman’s Hour – where BBC was pushing terrorist propaganda. A terrorist in the studio all nice and cosy. A female Tamil tiger. Soft questions such as “how important were woman to the Tamil cause”. What she should have asked was: “did you barbaric scum enjoy killing those thousands of civilians?” Or “are you proud of inventing modern suicide bombing.”
Why did the BBC help terrorists with their propaganda?
Will there be a representative voice of the victims of these barbarians?
Will BBC mention the cause of the 6000 brave Sri Lankan soldiers killed putting the Tamil Tigers out of their misery?
Or is it BBC policy to help terrorists and piss on the graves of their victims. Why do we poor suckers have to pay for this filfthy abomination.
BBC response:
Thanks for your e-mail about ‘Woman’s Hour’ on 22 may.
I understand you objected to a former Tamil Tiger member being interviewed on the programme.
Jenni Murray stated at the beginning of the item that “the Tamil Tigers were the first terrorist group to use a woman as a suicide bomber” the item then continued to investigate the role of women in the organization with input from academic Kanchana Ruwanpura. The line of questioning, focused on the female aspect of the Tamil Tigers and Jenni Murray, posed questions to this former member in an attempt to ascertain why a middle class female would join Tamil Tigers.
The choice of guests and interviewees featured on any programme is somewhat subjective and we recognize that not everyone will agree with the choices made.
However, it’s not always possible or practical to reflect all the different opinions on a subject within individual programmes. Editors are charged to ensure that over a reasonable period they reflect the range of significant views, opinions and trends in the subject area. We don’t seek to denigrate any view, nor to promote any view but to identify all significant views, and to test them rigorously and fairly on behalf of the audience.
Nevertheless, I do acknowledge your concerns and can assure you that your comments have been fully registered on our audience log. This log is made available to all members of the BBC, including the production team of ‘Woman’s Hour’ and senior BBC management.
Thanks again for taking the time to contact us.
Regards
Nicola Maguire
BBC Information
A question which the BBC, inc. Mr. J. Bowen, may not care to discuss in relation to their politically biased ‘liberal’ morality:
“AND ANOTHER question that has been a thorn for me for a long time. It’s a question for my human rights colleagues. Why doesn’t the fate of the Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit trouble you in the same way as does the fate of the Guantanamo prisoners?…
“But during the two years Schalit has been held by terrorists, the world human rights community has done nothing for his release. Why? He is a wounded soldier, and fully falls under the protection of the Geneva Conventions. The conventions say clearly that hostage-taking is prohibited, that representatives of the Red Cross must be allowed to see prisoners of war, especially wounded prisoners, and there is much else written in the Geneva Conventions about Schalit’s rights. The fact that representatives of the Quartet conduct negotiations with the people who are holding Schalit in an unknown location, in unknown conditions, vividly demonstrates their scorn of international rights documents and their total legal nihilism. Do human rights activists also fail to recall the fundamental international rights documents?”
-Are you listening, BBC and S. Chakrabarti?
Excellent full article is at:
‘Harry’s Place’:
“Speaking Power to Truth”.
On Saturday I left a long comment saying how unimpressed I was with Matt Walker’s article pushing climate change as a major cause of large tree decline in Yosemite National Park. I concluded:
“I’m willing to bet I’ve spent far longer looking into the claims made in Matt Walker’s article than he did.“
I couldn’t say the same about Richard Cable, the excellent BBC climate change blogger. He’s actually had a look at the findings (rather than some press release) and decided that,
“…scientifically-speaking there’s nothing in the research that would lead you to stress climate over other possible causes…
That isn’t to say that climate isn’t a factor, but we should at least look at some dead trees and conduct a study into a) whether or not there is water scarcity at Yosemite; and b) what’s causing it before jumping to any conclusions.“
That’s more like it. Proper objective journalism.
Sorry, I posted the same like twice above. Here’s the link to Richard Cable.
From Matt Walker’s article (link above):
“Climate change appears to be a major cause of the loss.“
The bullet-point conclusions from the research precis, my emphasis:
• Large-diameter trees of most species are declining
• Change varies by species and forest type
• If climate-driven, decline may increase.
Hmm, not quite same thing at all, is it?
David Preiser
As you say there are 2 linked conventions – previous Presidents do no criticise their successors, and new Presidents do not criticise their predecessors.
Conventions which Frei fails to mention.
Obama’s entire election campaign was an attack on Bush – not specifically on McCain. OK, so he won. But from the off he has heaped criticisms on Bush, everything is Bush’s fault, Bush’s administrations was immoral etc etc.
But the clear pattern on item after item of policy regarding national security, dealing with terrorist threats etc has been :
1 Obama trashes Bush’s policy totally – it is wrong, immoral, ineffective etc
2 Obama claims to be the most moral Pres ever – above the partisan fray
3 Obama then makes slight cosmetic changes to Bush’s policy
4 Obama claims his “new” policy is pure and good.
Anyone “reporting” on America realises this has been the pattern on half-a-dozen security issues. Matt Frei and Justin Webb are paid lots of money to report this pattern to us – instead they hide it from us. There has been precious little reporting of the detail of Cheney’s debate with Obama – even though it has been in the US headlines for weeks now.
Obama is a fraud – and so are Webb and Frei. Difference is – we here are forced to pay for Webb and Frei.
Check out this massive bit of chutzpah from the BBC:
Is there a problem with paintball?
Germany is considering a crackdown on paintball after a teenager killed 15 people in March. But is it harmful to dress up in overalls and run around the woods covering each other in goo?
The narrative of the report is that paintballing might give ideas to people who already have violent tendencies. Germany is reacting to some teenager’s murderous gun rampage at his school. The BBC even gets on some female paintball enthusiast talking specifically about how one can take out one’s aggressions and “learn teamwork”.
Except, there’s one little detail they leave out. Does anybody remember this:
BBC ‘took terrorist trainers paintballing’
The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and failed to pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police, a court was told yesterday.
Mohammed Hamid, who is charged with overseeing a two-year radicalisation programme to prepare London-based Muslim youths for jihad, was described as a “cockney comic” by a BBC producer.
None of the comments on the BBC report page mention the infamous “Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic” either. Is that because nobody remembers, or because the Beeboids want that to disappear down the memory hole?
Unbelievable.
Interesting interview with Sandi Toksvig about The News Quiz on Radio 7 over the weekend. Apparently they look for those with a political viewpoint but just cannot seem to be able to find any right wing people to put on the panel to counter Jeremie (how will I manage to run down Margaret Thatcher this week) Hardie et al.
Apparently ST also greatly misses Linda Smith who was apparently part of something called Red Wedge at some time. I wonder if they are still out there proselytizing on behalf of New Labour or keeping their heads below the parapet at the moment?
For information of BBC, via ‘Huffington Post’:
-the HALIMI murder trial –
“PARIS — The presumed leader of a group of 27 young people charged with participating in the torture and killing of a young French Jew took his seat in juvenile court Wednesday with the defiant declaration, ‘Allah will be victorious.’
The 23-year-old victim, Ilan Halimi, was found naked, handcuffed and covered with burn marks near railroad tracks in the Essonne region south of Paris on Feb. 13, 2006. He died on the way to the hospital after being held captive for more than three weeks.
Youssouf Fofana, 28-year-old presumed leader of a group of 10 young women and 17 young men, stands accused of a crime that shocked the nation. He is charged with premeditated murder, demanding ransom, and acts of torture and barbarism, and faces a possible maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
He smiled as he took his seat in the Paris court and said, ‘Allah will be victorious.*
Asked his last name, he said, ‘African barbarian army revolt Salafist.’ Asked his birth date, he replied, ‘February 13, 2006’ – the day Halimi was killed.”
{*’Allahu akbar’ are the accurate, less sanitised words used.}