186 Responses to OPEN THREAD…

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  1. David Preiser (USA) says:
    May 5, 2011 at 3:12 pm

    Oh, goody!  The BBC has found a British relative of a 9/11 victim to say how loevely she thinks it is that the President is coming to Ground Zero to lay a wreath.  See?  It’s not about a victory lap or taking political advantage at all!

    Pro Obama at all costs.

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  2. David Preiser (USA) says:
    May 5, 2011 at 3:58 pm

    So now it turns out that the White House didn’t even get the live video feed of the raid, and there was in fact no video footage at all?  What were they all looking at in that group photo, then?  One of the interns playing Medal of Honor: Modern Warfare?  Is there any part of this story from the White House that was true?  It’s like they got everything wrong except the day of the week.

    The BBC should be all over this and not carrying His water and shifting blame.

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  3. George R says:
    May 5, 2011 at 5:14 pm

    INBBC relegates the reporting of this ‘jihad’ case in Manchester.


    But ‘Jihadwatch’ has this from ‘Daily Mail’:

    “Fight, kill and die”: Four Misunderstanders of Islam tried to recruit undercover police for jihad


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  4. It's all too much says:
    May 5, 2011 at 5:35 pm

    Here is an amazing story from yesterday.  Will it get any BBC coverage?

    http://www.birminghammail.net/news/top-stories/2011/05/04/bordesley-green-vote-fraud-trio-made-bankrupt-97319-28629819/

    “THREE shamed Labour politicians, sacked from the city council for their part in a notorious postal vote fraud, have been declared bankrupt due to overwhelming legal costs.
    Former Bordesley Green councillors Shah Jahan, Ayaz Khan and Shafaq Ahmed are thought to owe about £150,000 each in costs outstanding from the Election Court hearing which found them guilty of ‘corrupt and illegal practices’ during the 2004 local elections.
    Their creditors are believed to have forced bankruptcy in a bid to stop them resuming their political careers after completing a five-year ban from political office, campaigning or activity. The three councillors, plus another three from Aston, were sacked after Judge Richard Mawrey QC said they had taken part in a postal vote fraud which would ‘disgrace a banana republic’. He found postal vote fraud on a massive, systemic and organised scale.
    Supporters of the People’s Justice Party, which lost Bordesley Green council seats to Labour in 2004, brought the Election Court case and won around £250,000 costs against each of the Labour men. This was paid in part by the Labour Party, with the Legal Aid board covering the shamed councillors share of costs.”

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    • Grant says:
      May 5, 2011 at 5:45 pm

      Damn these Buddhists. Deport them to Tibet.

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    • Roland Deschain says:
      May 6, 2011 at 7:53 am

      Aside from being in the same party, I’m sure these former councillors have something else in common, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

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  5. George R says:
    May 5, 2011 at 8:23 pm

    BBC-EU: doesn’t analyse E.U. failures from perspective of British people; e.g. PORTUGAL –

    While ‘Daily Express’ has this:

    “THE BILLS OF EURO FAILURE”

    [Opening extract]:

    “IT IS outrageous that British taxpayers should have to share in the vast cost of bailing out Portugal from the consequences of its foolish decision to lock itself into the eurozone.
    “As this newspaper warned at the time Portugal, Greece and other southern European economies were hopelessly unsuited to a currency union with the industrial powerhouse of Germany.

    “So it has proved.

    “Britain has enough financial worries of its own without being made liable for the debts of others. As Conservative Euro-MP Daniel Hannan asked yesterday: ‘Why should we have to pay to support a currency which we declined to join?'”

    Read more: http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/244784/The-bills-of-euro-failureThe-bills-of-euro-failure#ixzz1LVl7Izl8

    BBC-EU only has this on Portugal:

    “Portugal recession ‘will last two years'”

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13293706

    Would ex-EU bureaucrat Patten (now BBC Trust) allow BBC-EU criticism of UK membership of EU?

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  6. George R says:
    May 5, 2011 at 9:41 pm

    Daily Mail, Ephraim Hardcastle column:

    [Extract]:

    “Quite keen on moolah himself, new BBC chairman Chris Patten seems relaxed about Corporation pay scales. So I don’t suppose he’ll think it odd the BBC wasted money by sending newsreader Mishal Husain to Abbottabad, Pakistan, yesterday.

    Re BBC expenditure, I wonder if Patten has ever listened to Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show? Yesterday his topic was today’s  AV referendum. Special guest: Peter Stringfellow, a strip club impresario.  Vine is paid £1million.

    Perhaps he is irreplaceable and would be employed instantly for more money by ITV or Sky if the BBC let him go. What do you think?
    ”

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1383633/AV-referendum-Who-does-Tony-Blair-support.html#ixzz1LW59E15T

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    • Millie Tant says:
      May 6, 2011 at 11:37 pm

      Vine is the idiot who appeared on a general election night results programme got up in a cowboy hat and western gear. Comment seems superfluous.

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  7. Deborah says:
    May 6, 2011 at 7:09 am

    My alarm came on this morning to enable me to hear the Toady programme with the results of yesterday’s elections.  Well I know Labour did badly in Scotland and they probably have done well in Wales, the Liberal Democrats have done badly everywhere …but the Conservatives in England … no, haven’t got a clue, they were scarcely mentioned.

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    • deegee says:
      May 6, 2011 at 7:34 am

      Lib Dems suffer election losses

      Reminds you of a story told about Bing Crosby. As a racing horse owner and enthusiast and celebrity he once was invited to call a horse race. Not knowing the other horses, riders, etc. he called the entire race from the perspective of where his horse was relative to the others.

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  8. Paddy says:
    May 6, 2011 at 7:37 am

    Labour get stuffed in scotland when they have the advantage of being the opposition in both the Scottish and uk governments. They may lose Wales. Early results show an increase in labour kite in england but not exactly mind blowing and yet the story is the limp dems go figure.

    Millibean has failed to capitalise on the shock of the hard economic medicine and yet it’s kick clog time.

    True the pinkos have been decimated but they are the third party. The real story is the abject failure of militant millipede to score.

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  9. deegee says:
    May 6, 2011 at 8:07 am

    Gaza Strip holds first marathon

    Perhaps quibbling but Gaza hasn’t been the Strip since 1967, neither formally nor in common use.

    For some reason  =-X  these colour stories are much more frequent about Palestine than they are about Israel where apparently nothing positive or normal ever happens.

    The marathon raised $1m (£600,000) for a summer camp for Gaza children. Would this be to rebuild the summer camp the Islamists trashed because it mixed boys and girls? Or would a Hamas summer camp teaching anti-Israeli doctrine and military-style marching, along with horseback riding, swimming and Islam, get a share? Background info, don’t you think?

    Raised a million from who?

    “You have the London Marathon, the Sydney Marathon, the New York Marathon and now the Gaza Marathon,” said UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness. What you don’t have for Gunness or the BBC is the Tel Aviv marathon run just under a month ago. More than 15,000 people participated. Race winner was Jospat Kikenboy, from Kenya, finishing the full marathon (42 kilometers) in two hours and 19 minutes. Perhaps Tel Aviv is too close?

    Palestinian runner Nader el Masri, who hopes to qualify for the London 2012 Olympics, finished first in two hours, 42 minutes, 47 seconds.  Good luck to him but that time is nowhere near the Olympic qualifying B standard of  2:18, even if (athletic expert) Tim Franks thought in December that his running style appeared nothing short of perfect: a picture of symmetry, his upper body still, his eyes cast downwards in imperturbable concentration.
    He could no more bodge his running – however meaningless that little sequence for the camera – than a concert pianist could slouch at the keyboard.  Just a coincidence that his name translates directly as the Egyptian. 

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    • Biodegradable says:
      May 6, 2011 at 9:45 am

      It’s quite amazing that those poor, starving Gazan Arabs even have the energy to run at all given the horrendous conditions they endure under the Brutal Zionist Occupation™… starvation, malnutrition, poisoned wells…

      I don’t remember Jews running marathons in the Warsaw Ghetto or Auschwitz.

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      • pounce_uk says:
        May 6, 2011 at 5:02 pm

        Tell you what I noticed during that video. (I was going to post on a new board..Hint,Hint)That for such a densely populated area (According to the bBC one of the world’s highest) there is a lot of open space. 

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        • deegee says:
          May 6, 2011 at 6:13 pm

          The first time I visited Gaza I expected it, as befits the world’s greatest population density, something resembling Hong Kong or Bangkok. When you see it you realise that not only is it nothing like as dense but the population figures are more than likely false.

          There is plenty of room to run a marathon.

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  10. Biodegradable says:
    May 6, 2011 at 10:21 am

    Meanwhile…

    HARDtalk

    Hamas deputy foreign minister, Ghazi Hamad, on why he thinks the West misunderstands Hamas

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  11. Bupendra Bhakta says:
    May 6, 2011 at 10:30 am

    Dimbleby covering the elections had Pantsdown, Pantsoff aka Goebbels Warsi 😛 , and Hideous Hattie round the table.

    Dimbleby spent the first ten minutes laying into Paddy and The Saucy Little Spanker 😛 – coots this, coalition that, Chris Huhne the other, and then turned to Hideous and said,

    ‘Music to your ears Harriet Harman, things seem to be falling apart’.

    Of course he could have spent the first ten minutes laying into Hideous about Middle England Ed’s ‘sleep apnoea’ operation, MEE being barely ahead in the polls, MEE having no clear message and then turned to The Gay Little Frisker 😛 and said,

    ‘Music to your ears, Baroness Frisker 😛 , things seem to be falling apart’.

    But no.

    Sack the man, two decades past his sell-by (and three decades past his Best Before).

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  12. cjhartnett says:
    May 6, 2011 at 11:46 am

    Poor old Dimbleby…think he was waving the Big Issue in the face on an embarrassed Philip Hammond only a few minutes before the malt took a hold!
    How do we recycle such has -been hacks? Does the E.U have a mountain of them somewhere?(we`can`t be alone in getting saddled with aged soixante-huiters drooling on can we?) . What colour bin do we use for them-and is there a marathon or song I can do to raise awareness of SBS(Sour Boot Syndrome-Yasmil Alabiah Brown clearly is contagious with it!)? Wristbands for Rest Homes…but not on my screen please!

    If the Dimblebys and Paxmans,Humphrys and the like need to ask for blankets and flasks-for Gods sake,let us be generous…but let`s not pretend that they have any role in a fresh dynamic and oh so positive BBC Community like Marcus and assorted Russells exemplify!
    Someone tell Chris Patten when he gets out his OWN (his latest-if not his last!)recycling skip-Ashdowns,Kinnocks,Shirley abound ,but at least we don`t need pagers to keep track of them…one call to Brussels or Bush House does it usually!

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  13. As I See It says:
    May 6, 2011 at 1:57 pm

    The more damaging BBC bias does not come from the likes of Jim Naughtie on Today or Kirsty Wark on Newsnight. We all know where Lord Haw Haw and Tokyo Rose are coming from. (Lord Jaw-Jaw and Saughiehall Rose?)

    No, the more insidious bias is in the mass market entertainment output. This is the most effective place to propagandise and they know it.

    We really ought to ‘watch’ things like The One Show. Last night there was a perfect case in point. Those in the know could – I’m sure – put names to the left-leaning clique that control the editorial content of the show.

    This is how it comes over on-screen…we see an item (and this is where my attention was grabbed) in which oddly for the BBC we hear a conservative voice.

    Former Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins argues that working women are not helped by adding ever more layers of maternity leave legislation. She says this simply makes females less employable and suggests new mothers should get back to work asap. Now there was plenty of difference of opinion in the piece because it was filmed at a mother and baby group – where I guess the women were on maternity leave. To give some idea of how they set this up here’s the shout-out for a location posted on Mum’s Net….
    I work for the One show and we are currently making a five minute film looking at working mums and maternity leave and I am looking for a mother and baby group to film at where we could speak to some mums about maternity leave and being a working mum. I am looking for a group somewhere in London and it would need to be running this Thursday – 28th April. If you know of any groups that might be up for some filming please do drop me an e-mail at melanie.hill@bbc.co.uk

    You get the idea? Daniel in the Lion’s den. In the event it was a reasonably balanced piece with arguments on both sides.

    Then we switch back to the studio…Alex Jones and Matt Baker are aghast. You might have thought Ms Hopkins had suggested new mum’s eat their babies such was the outrage. As is the way of the One Show they look to luvvie Richard E Grant (btw I thought he was good in Withnail & I) for his reaction. General diapprobation and practically a call for the lasses to man (sic) the barricades.

    Contrast with a report about the flooding of a Welsh village errased from the landscape in the 1950s to provide a new resevoir of water for Liverpool. The tragedy somehow exacerbated by the fact that the former residents were ‘Welsh Speaking’ (yaki da!). Apparently Liverpool City has since appologised for this ethnicly aggravated attrocity! And the editorial pay-off line …

    ‘it wouldn’t happen now, not with a Welsh Assembly’. In short there was one narrative line, with lots of emoting and lots of arguable and contentious claims.

    Reaction in the studio: What a sad story. Richard E? How could he disagree? He’s got stuff to plug. They know where their bread’s buttered.

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  14. My Site (click to edit) says:
    May 6, 2011 at 2:49 pm

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/may/06/pcc-press-twitter-feeds?CMP=twt_gu

    Interesting how this may impact Aunty’s merry tweeting ‘the views of me as an employee of the BBC do not reflect those of my employer’ crew.

    Already it is noted the efforts at establishing ‘personal’ vs. ‘professional’ accounts to say one thing in one place…

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  15. cjhartnett says:
    May 6, 2011 at 2:56 pm

    Quite right sir!
    The bias IS insidious and all pervasive these days-remember Katie Hopkins on Question Time getting the silent treatment every time she said anything-no matter how sensible.

    Noted on the rolling news 24 strapline that Bin Laden was only “believed” to be behind the 9/11 attacks…BELIEVED?

    For Allahs sake-after all those videos and tapes he sent us, I think it only right to “believe” that he bankrolled it and more besides!
    Yet the BBC narrative is firming up-all right thinking people like them “care about the rule of law”, and they must be seen to do so.

    How else do they get  on their high horses  if they don`t talk such bilge and we take choose to take issue? That they have to be seen to say it at all shows that their precious “rule of law” lets Hamza rant- lets De Menezes death be a matter of poor Health and Safety practice. Their idea of “justice” would earn Osame a community service order once Gareth, Michael, Clive,Shami and Geoffrey had been allowed to crawl all over him! Lack of empathy Your Honour-here`s Ali Gs cousin to confirm it!

    Need to know how these two bob stringers and Wolfies on secondment are able to use weasel words like “alleged” and “believed” so slyly, and get away with their massaging of the news agenda! There will of course be “no call for an enquiry “into this though

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  16. My Site (click to edit) says:
    May 6, 2011 at 3:34 pm

    http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/5/6/black-scared-of-comments.html

    I have always wondered why some pieces are open to response, and some are more ‘broadcast only’.

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  17. George R says:
    May 6, 2011 at 5:00 pm

    Wot, no INBBC mention of Anwar al-Awlaki jihad threat to UK?


    Of course, reflecting its liberal arts, ‘multicultural’ presumptions. BBC News website has NO sections on:

    a) Science;

    or, as relevant to case below, on

    b.) Military and Defence –

    -we get more information from  ‘The Sun’ on the jihad threat than we do from INBBC, on the day when the 7/7 hearings, and Al Qaeda threat is supposed to have us on the alert.

    ‘The Sun’ report, as picked up by ‘Jihadwatch’:

    Anwar al-Awlaki urges Mumbai-style attack on U.K. in email sting

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  18. john says:
    May 6, 2011 at 6:54 pm

    As the NO vote passes the 10 million count, I’m sure that there will be two letters of thanks going into the Post Box from the NO campaign.
    The first to Eddy Izzard and the second to the BBC.
    Without whose heroic failure to convince, it could well have been alot closer.
    Also interesting are the few areas which voted YES – And you can read into that what you like.

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  19. joseph sanderson says:
    May 6, 2011 at 8:39 pm

    BBC attempting to spin the NO to AV vote:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13280105
    We have provisional figures for the final turnout in the AV referendum. According to the Electoral Commission, 42% of registered voters took part – which would be the second lowest figure for a referendum in British history. Participation was highest in Northern Ireland, where 55.8% of people cast ballots. Turnout was lowest in London – at 35%.

    What the BBC have not mentioned is that their has only been two UK wide referendums ever, so actually the headline should say the highest turnout for a UK wide referendum ever.

    This is a clear example of the BBC attempting to distort the picture, shocking.

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