Monthly Archives: July 2010

TRICKY VICKY

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I try not to listen to BBC Radio 5 as it is usually too awful for words. HOWEVER, I did catch Victoria Derbyshire’s programme earlier and in particular a discussion on progress or otherwise of the Coalition. Anyone else hear it? I wasn’t surprised that the largest number of callers were unhappy with the Coalition – I am sure those manning the switchboard made sure of that – (Plus – some others are actually working!) but it was the tone Derbyshire took with those who dared attack Labour’s record. By any definition she came across as defensive and was plainly uneasy when callers dares to criticise the previous Great Leader. As I say, I try not to listen to this station – and will try even harder going forward!

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Hard Talk

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Insomnia prompted me to watch HardTalk at about 4:30am. Stephen Sackur was TalkingHARD to Nasser Judeh, Jordan’s foreign Minister. The whole point of Hard Talk, Mr. Judeh pointed out helpfully, is that the talk is hard. Fair enough.
If Sackur was interviewing a lettuce he’d have to press home forcefully the argument from the slug’s perspective. If God Almighty was in the opposite chair, Sackur would be obliged to be devil’s advocate. Or, if he was interviewing himself, he’d have to demand, from himself, some answers to the excellent points made by B-BBC.

One can only hope that this was the idea behind his questioning of Jordan’s foreign minister.

He accused Jordan of not being tough enough on Israel, not being sufficiently condemnatory of Israel’s behaviour during the flotilla incident, and asked why Jordan wouldn’t do the right thing and talk to Hamas, and why it wasn’t sending more aid to Gaza. He criticised Jordan for not being friendlier towards its own Islamist political parties. Sackur was trying to get the guy to admit, as though it was something to be ashamed of, that Jordan might want to stop radical Islamists securing a bigger grip on the country than they already have.

I mean. Give hm a grilling by all means. But give him OUR grilling, not Osama Bin Laden’s.
Episode not available on the website.

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The Going Rate

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Panorama, what is it for?
The one about teachers being unsackable. Melanie Phillips has written about this state of affairs here.
“Just imagine the outcry ” she says “if incompetent doctors weren’t struck off but were moved to another hospital, thus exposing yet more patients to dangerous treatment.”
Or if paedopriests were shunted away to other child-rich parishes.
Oh wait. Shocking innit.
Seriously, schools might be a shambles, state education may be all over the place, the teaching profession is probably in meltdown, but Panorama certainly didn’t add anything constructive to the mix.

The number of people who declined to be interviewed outnumbered those who agreed. Panorama pressed ahead regardless, making do with the oddbods they were left with.

The presenter styles herself on the appearance, but not the intellect, of Vanessa Feltz. The camera lingered on her expression while she cocked her head from side to side attentively whilst yet another shocking revelation was revalated.

Chris Woodhead suffers from motor neurone disease and is now in wheelchair. Pity he couldn’t have given Samantha wassaname and Jeremy Vine the day off and produced and presented the whole programme himself.

Now to Today. Charles Moore has decided, now that Jonathan Ross has gone, to pay his licence fee. “In the old days,” someone said, “icons like Sir Robin Day were paid a pittance, and they didn’t complain.” “They didn’t have all the competition from ITV then” said someone else. “It’s the talent. If you want talent, you have to pay the going rate.” It seems that the BBC does pay some of its employees rather handsomely. But where oh where is the talent?

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GAYBRITAIN

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BBC delighted to report that anyone who comes to the UK claiming asylum on the grounds that they are gay can stay. No dissent allowed. From Cameroon to the North of England – we’re all gay now. Not the first time Mike Lanchin has shown an interest in this subject… good to see Stonewall getting their say in as well. Nicely unbalanced from start to finish.

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Bloated And Biased

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In last week’s Telegraph Neil Midgley wrote a piece headed ‘BBC’s £12,000 for lawyers to help keep pay secret.’

The BBC Trust used Baker and McKenzie, an international law firm, to stop the National Audit Office disclosing figures that would allow ‘those in the know’ to make an approximate calculation of individual BBC staff’s paypackets. We’re going to know this soon anyway aren’t we?

I wonder how much more of the licence fee the BBC spends on suppressing things in addition to the hundreds of thousands forked out so far to bury the Balen report?

Another article by Neil Midgley in the Telegraph online concerns Jeremy Hunt and Sir Michael Lyons of the BBC Trust.

Before he became culture secretary and had the power to do so, Jeremy Hunt wanted to abolish the BBC Trust. Now that he has, he’s gone all soft and settled for changing the name a bit, from “The BBC Trust,” to the “Licence Fee Payers’ Trust”. He hopes that, and inserting a non-executive chairman onto Mark Thompson’s executive board, should be enough to address the troubles at the BBC.
Nobody has explained what specific changes Jeremy Hunt is after, apart from that the BBC Trust, or the Licence Fee Payers’ Trust, should be seen to be at arms length from the BBC.

However, as Sir Michael Lyons has secured a promise that the members of the new Licence Fee Payers’ Trust will still be the same old ex BBC members of the BBC Trust, the only way much change is going to happen is when, next year, Sir Michael’s term of Office comes up for renewal, and whether Jeremy Hunt replaces him with someone with very much longer arms.

It looks as though we’ll end up with the same ex BBC staff virtually investigating themselves, and at best giving themselves a token slap on the wrist once in a while.
Everyone agrees that the BBC is bloated, and needs to shrink. But it’s the bias, I’m afraid, that needs to be recognised and sorted out.

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Godzilla is back…

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Richard Black, the esteemed BBC environment reporter, reminds me of Godzilla; no matter what is thrown at him, he rampages on, extolling the perils of global warming.

For days, the blogsphere has been alive with further evidence that seriously undermines the credibility of the IPCC’s AR4 assessment, not least of which was its claim that 40% of the Amazon rainforest was at risk from minor changes in rainfall.

The back ground (for those who don’t know it) is that earlier in the year, in a story that become known as Amazongate, the Sunday Times revealed that this scary claim was based on propaganda from the World Wildlife Fund rather than any scientific investigation. Afterwards, the warmist bullies (as they do) squealed with anger, issued various threats, and shamefully, the Sunday Times backed down,publishing a retraction a couple of weeks back.

But Richard North, over on EU Referendum, who broke the original story, has continued his brilliant sleuthing on this subject – and has established that, despite a miasma of misinformation from WWF and warmists fanatics such as George Monbiot, the whole scare story was based on nothing more than cod science on a dodgy website that was taken down years ago. (I’ve linked to only one story on EU Referendum – there are dozens more.)

But that doesn’t bother our Richard. In true Godzilla fashion, here he is today, raving on:

Meanwhile, the Sunday Times was recently forced to apologise for claiming that IPCC projections on die-back of the Amazon rainforest were unsubstantiated.

Unsubstantiated? What would it take for Mr Black to acknowledge that he is wrong? Or to accept that the real facts of these matters are being established not by the so-called scientists (who are cynically being paid by governments to prove that AGW warming exists so that they can raise taxes), but by the blogsphere – by honourable people who have no axe to grind but to establish the truth.

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Boothing the Ratings

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We may not like it, but we have to accept that the BBC regularly employs controversial characters, the flakier the better, to boost the ratings.
The risk they’ll say or do something outrageous live on air adds a certain frisson. Will Self and Tracey Emin are popular for that, and Frankie Boyle. So is George Galloway. A number of viewers surely tune in to Question Time when he’s on the panel hoping for some excitement. Think how disappointed we all are when Gorgeous temporarily impersonates mister sensible, surreptitiously reverting back to bonkers as the final credits roll.

One person who gets to be on the BBC a lot is Lauren Booth. Being Tony Blair’s bête noire is probably one reason, and sharing the Scouse Git as a parent with half sister Cherie is another.
These credentials have procured for her many an opportunity to be mad as a hatter on air. She’s been on Question Time, Women’s Hour and Today, where she is inexplicably referred to as a journalist.

She has done some notable things in her own right. One of them is inciting people to attack Israel, another is training her children to perform Palestinian propaganda in rap form and uploading the embarrassing production onto YouTube, and the most notable of all is the ruthless exploitation of her family in a series of second rate misery memoir revelations in the Daily Mail.

My terrible childhood; My mother doesn’t like me; I had a row with my husband and now he’s in a coma; I dumped my husband on Facebook; My husband is an alcoholic; and the latest: My French dream is over.

She is also known for being photographed with Ismail Haniyeh, shopping in Gaza, and addressing rallies against Jews.

Don’t forget, we pay.

Now for something completely similar. Moving on from attention-seeking bigots we see too much of on the BBC, to an article expressing the kind of sanity we see far too little of, or not at all, on our state broadcaster.

“A Hamas that cares not to fill the bellies of those starving in Gaza is also the same agency spending millions of dollars on televised indoctrination designed to manipulate young, plastic minds. See for yourself: go to Palestinian Media Watch. Children, in the prime ages of 5-7 are critically vulnerable to developing attachment figure-like relationships to God. At precisely these ages, they are bombarded with “Hamas Box Office” productions: aspirational propaganda extolling the virtues of suicide bombing as vengeance. Through his work at Palestinian Media Watch, Itamar Marcus has revealed just how institutionalized terror has become in the territories. Work by Dr. Pehr Granqvist and colleagues at the University of Stockholm in Sweden has shown it is precisely at this time and stage of child development at which belief systems are most influenced, and concrete immutable beliefs can be established. Useful, therefore to introduce young minds to the concepts of self-destruction which are quickly embedded, and absorbed and nurtured. Who is decrying the morality of this manipulation? Who is the war criminal now?”

From a must-read article by Qanta Ahmed MD
Must-read is addressed to everybody including Ms. Booth and the BBC.
H/T Elder of Ziyon; CiFWatch.

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THE WORLD LOVES A TYRANT..

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You have to hand it to the BBC, they never shirk from expressing their admiration for tyrants and their hanger-ons. Listen to this item, on the mistress of Simon Bolivar. Note how Huge Chavez is given an approving name-check and of course Bolivar himself is presented as a lovable rogue. Two  tyrants in five minutes, stamp-marked with the tacit approval of the State Broadcaster.

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