Monday morning – a fresh week dawns – and time for George to welcome you to a new Open Thread.
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- JohnC Nov 27, 03:05
Midweek 27th November 2024
What we know about Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2d3gj9ewxo Here we have another excellent example of the BBC protecting the Leftist-infested… - StewGreen Nov 27, 00:18
Midweek 27th November 2024
Paul Thorpe says he’ already arranged for the females in his family to move abroad “Then a 100 yards from… - Nibor Nov 26, 23:29
Midweek 27th November 2024
Two aspects the BBC like to tell us . Britain sends more people to jail than any other Western European… - Fedup2 Nov 26, 22:48
Start the Week 25th November 2024 -petition
Philip – despite the constant ‘awards’ spring gets – I reckon the deceitful CV has done her long term damage… - StewGreen Nov 26, 22:36
Midweek 27th November 2024
Link to Fed’s post near the end of the old thread It’s a DailyTelegraph article about BBC Verify - StewGreen Nov 26, 22:31
Midweek 27th November 2024
Battle of Ideas on BBC fact checking https://youtu.be/P4RUSjrfQWs - Northern Voter Nov 26, 22:23
Midweek 27th November 2024
The currency exchange rates provided on the Red button were useful here in France. It mean’t I could see what… - Up2snuff Nov 26, 22:07
Midweek 27th November 2024
… rely on anything the BBC says. If you really want to read my bletherings I have put up the… - Up2snuff Nov 26, 22:03
Midweek 27th November 2024
Fed, the edit facility is not working properly. I think it just my PC. That edit worked OK. For some… - Up2snuff Nov 26, 22:00
Start the Week 25th November 2024 -petition
TRIED TO POST THIS AT THE HEAD OF THE MIDWEEK THREAD BUT FOR SOME REASON THE EDIT FACILITY DID NOT…
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
I wonder if this has had any coverage anywhere on the BBC? Muslims supporting the NYPD’s monitoring of Islamists. Muslims making common cause in defending democracy.
No, the last thing the BBC would want to do is risk offending Moslem terrorists.
I posted in another thread how I’d been following the latest Palestinian bombardment of southern Israel from some Israeli sources.
This story is a perfect example of the extremely low standards employed by Palestinian supporters and which are readily accepted by a watching world which is all too ready to believe the worst about Israel. The way the Palestinians and their supporters use children is the true abomination in the Middle East.
http://www.idfblog.com/2012/03/12/photos-gaza-aerial-strikes-proven-false/
Easy to understand that this sort of propaganda works in poor countries with useless education systems ruled by religious psychos but it is truly shocking how educated westerners can be so bloody dumb! I am deeply embarrassed that anyone could go through their life abusing the education that we all have to stump up for them to get and be such a useful idiot !
This was picked up by Honest Reporting too. One of the tweeters responsible was Khulood Badawi, who happens to work for the OCHA – the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs where, according to a UN Contact List, she works as an Information and Media Coordinator.
You know how the BBC love to quote anybody from the UN to give their report a ‘must be true if they said it’ kind of spin.
George SOROS.
-Not a Rupert Murdoch story for BBC-Democrat:
“George Soros ‘offers ex-girlfriend $250,000 to drop $50million lawsuit after he reneged on promise to buy her $1.9million apartment'”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2113757/George-Soros-offers-ex-girlfriend-Adriana-Ferreyr-250k-drop-50m-lawsuit.html#ixzz1ouGWUwa8
AFGHANISTAN.
The following article seems relevant on INBBC’s double standards:-
Robert Spencer: A Heinous Crime and a Double Standard
[Excerpt]:-
“It is noteworthy, however, that in the riots and rage that followed the discovery of the burned Qur’ans at Bagram Airfield, Afghan Muslims have murdered numerous civilians. Just last Monday, a jihad-martyrdom suicide bomber murdered at least two civilians at the gates of the airfield. Thirty people have now been killed in protests over the burning of the Qur’ans, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that Obama and other American officials have apologized repeatedly, profusely, and abjectly for the burning of the Muslim holy book.
Yet no apology has been forthcoming from Karzai or any other Afghan official.”
Because.
Muslims take apologies as proof of weakness. A simple fact the Left will NEVER grasp.
I suspect that most of the West is failing to grasp it.
I drop in here from time to time since it’s in my bookmarks. I continue to be depressed by the fact that a forum which is obviously so necessary is merely a home for bile and vitriol. The BBC (as with all other state broadcasters) is a tool for the gov. of the day to publicise its current whims and to coerce whatever social change it sees fit. Since it harks back to freer times Auntie comes with a legacy where the news was simply reported, not massaged and edited by spin doctors. It’s a proud legacy, which is the basis of this sites febrile rantings against their continuing decay. Accusing it of absolute bias, say pro-muslim or anti-Israeli, or even just general leftiness is always going to be futile since any number of soundbites and contra-examples will be wheeled out in refutation. Railing against the likes of Andrew Marr etc on grounds of being ‘soft’ with certain people will likewise fail, there is the looming Paxman defence, which states that a ‘soft’ audience on a Sunday morning isn’t looking for confrontation or impassioned debate.
There is a truism which states that a country gets the government it deserves, implying alongside that gov. will be a broadcaster. We therefore deserve the BBC as it is because the general population still thinks it’s the best in the world and is not looking for evidence to the contrary. Indeed any evidence presented will be ignored as the ramblings of loonies, who seem well represented on this blog.
At some point these supine masses will wake up, get themselves a coffee and demand changes from the multi-tentacled monolith which is slowly but very determinedly brainwashing them (for the good of society of course). Until then, they will probably respond to gentle nudging better than mere haranging. <- Spinning for Labour with a loudhailer? Grow up!!!
Steve,
You made some good points, and I was reading your post with interest, until you started using the “bile and vitriol” that you condemn others for. Pity to spoil an otherwise thought-provoking post.
lol that was right at the end tho, couldn’t resist it 🙂
Thx for the qualified praise however
The acid test of the nation’s ‘love affair’ with the BBC would, of course, be the change from an enforced licence tax to the option of subscription, & that elusive word ‘choice’. Inevitably that would result in a huge reduction in the beeboid budget, & a natural, & desirable, curb to their expansionist policy, fuelled by our extorted money. Given the option, I could easily live without the ‘revolutions’ kicking off inside Paul Mason’s febrile brain, or even Mr Portillo Changes Trains. I suspect millions more would feel the same way, & the BBC would either die from exposure to real competition, or shrink to a corporation that has to work to win its audience. Its days of wine & roses would certainly be over. Amen to that.
I am witty and caustic
You are condesending and abusive
He is full of bile and vitriol.
Some vitriol and bile are probably inevitable when people feel strongly about the imposition of views and propaganda over the airways; some of it is a matter of tone and how people express themselves. Just like your comment!
However, this State broadcaster is not currently a tool for the government of the day: rather it is a tool for a Labour opposition plus old Labour has beens and any ragbag collection of people or causes who are anti the Conservatives. It is very much Get the Tories, pour scorn on them at every opportunity and undermine the aims and policies of the mainly Conservative government as much as possible even if it harms the country and the economy. It really is parti pris and is more interested in taking positions and indulging in agitprop than in straightforward news reporting and reflecting the interests of the majority of the public.
Steve Root wrote:-
>>I continue to be depressed by the fact that a forum which is obviously so necessary is merely a home for bile and vitriol.<<
The last entry I see on his Twitter feed is:-
“Steve Root@lonesometwin
@leeavy dickhead”
Thank you Steve for deigning to come down from the olympian heights of your moral superiortiy. I’m sure we all feel edified that you have graced us with your presence. Pity you got your head stuck up your bum on the way down.
See what I mean about the realname thing? 🙁
Soooo….. Is forum for actual debating or merely for name calling and mutual back scratching?
How about addressing Millie Tant’s point?
We should simply feel honoured that he has descended from the mountaintop to walk among us. Ours is simply to bask in the celestial aura of his presence.
So, if the BBC is simply a ‘tool of the government of the day’ then can you give examples of where the BBC has supported Government policies on say, the NHS, immigration or the economy?
The Left, inc Beeboids and their supporters, merely dismiss as looney non-Left arguments; it’s part of the Left’s hegemonic political presumption. It’s easier than argument and analysis, as BBC-NUJ knows.
Thank you for illustrating my point so vividly.
which point?
This point?
“Indeed any evidence presented will be ignored as the ramblings of loonies, who seem well represented on this blog.”
Mr. Root makes a post with some good points as Kanburi noted but then goes on to insist that followers of B-BBC do absolutely nothing about the BBC until the supine masses awaken. No one is haranguing them as he claims. I have gently nudged some of the same supine mass to this blog and a few have had their eyes opened. If some look at the BBC in a different light after visiting this blog that is all to the good.
I am not prepared to sit down and shut up in the belief I have the public broadcaster I deserve. (In Mr. Root’s opinion.)
(BTW, Mr. Root – any relation to the (in)famous Henry? You could always take a leaf out of his excellent book and send a fiver to the blog. I know he only sent a quid to lucky recipients but we must change with the times.)
I’m not saying do nothing, just be less voluble about it and refrain from language which ‘normal’ people would need to Google. To strain the metaphor slightly imagine MY supine mass on the sofa. It’s not pretty, but humour me here! Will you get a better response from me by wafting that coffee under my nose or by shouting in my ear?
No relation to Henry btw (derrr), nor as far as I know to the plethora of other Roots currently infesting the Beeb. Wondering whether using my real name was a good idea however 🙁
Steve Root said: “I’m not saying do nothing, just be less voluble about it and refrain from language which ‘normal’ people would need to Google.”
How on earth is it possible to be less voluble than posting to a blog? I’m not shouting from the rooftops nor posting my views on the Telegraph or Mail sites, nor even shouting in your precious ear. Why do you come here if you do not wish to read what posters like me are trying to say?
What you actually seem to be saying is:
“Shut up! Know your place in this life! We know what is best for you!”
I’ve heard a great deal of that talk in my long life and it usually came from left-wing socialist types who despised anyone with a contradictory viewpoint. Just like the “warmers” of the present day and BBC supporters.
(And another BTW, I know a few comprehensive educated youths who would need to Google not only “metaphor” but also “supine mass” so get up off your sofa and climb down from your high horse. There again the state of education in Britain today is another subject where the left knows best, isn’t it?)
I’ll take my ‘supine mass’ and raise with your ‘hegemonic political presumption’. But enought gainsaying. Please.
As with all blogs, we come here to see what people like us are saying, hopefully for confirmation that whatever outlandish views we hold have some support out there on the interwebs.
My outlandish view is that the BBC is an unelected body trying to impose its own views and ethos on an audience which is too politically comatose to see what is being done to it. News in particular is a political issue, both in what is reported and what’s left out. Across the entire ediface there seems to be only one ‘news’, cut’n’pasted everywhere from R4 to CBeebies. I maintain that there is a single editor setting the daily agenda and would very much like to know who they are and where their accountability is.
As for my ‘supine masses’, they occasionally rouse themselves and go to the pub. Stand at any bar, listen to any conversation, and consider how much of that conversation could be publicly broadcast. Chances are not very much. That, my angry old friend, is disenfranchisment in action, and is at the very core of what is wrong with the BBC.
Steve, I think you’ll find that everyone here agrees with everything you say after “My outlandish view…”. The issue now is whether or not you think there’s any point to a blog highlighting and analyzing the bias at the BBC, and calling them out on it. You seem to feel that this blog is entirely a screed-filled waste of time, lumping in any cogent analysis any of us may have posted with the angry outburts. In many cases, there simply cannot be soundbites wheeled out to counter our arguments, because they don’t exist. It’s unfortunate that you’re dismissing the entire output here based on a partial assortment.
Additonally, any forum of complaints about BBC bias is by definition going to be filled with like-minded opinions. That should not automatically disqualify this blog.
Every once in a while we get someone telling us that they agree that the BBC is biased but we’re doing it wrong. But they never give us a demonstration of how to do it right, or attempt to join in and lead by example. Doing so would be far more constructive than merely telling us we’re a bunch of vitrolic bile-spewers and nothing more.
You [this forum] is doing it wrong simply by being too emotive and abusive. Appellations such as BBC-NUJ are schoolboyish and the wider public will treat them with the contempt they deserve. Abuse will never win minds over, nor will sarcasm, otherwise Thatcher would have gone after the 1st series of Spitting Image!
Doing it right would at the very least mean being more inclusive to people like me, rather than having cohorts of the Daily Mail Dispossessed descend at the slightest hint of an unbeliever.
There must be many thousands of people who are uneasy about the BBC but have no interest in Jewish bias, Islamic bias, warming bias or any other single issue. Nonetheless they hear the news with its 2 Foreign, 1 Health and (time permitting) 1 ‘real’ story and are uneasy that its just not speaking to them. The moderation of BBC online comments does nothing to comfort them either.
So come on then. Where are the weak points of the BBC? Where can answers be obtained to difficult questions and most importantly how can those answers be publicised? Not here, this place is way too cliquey 🙁
Steve, your points are well argued and as Henry pointed out there is much in what you said that most on here would agree with. However, you say “There must be many thousands of people who are uneasy about the BBC but have no interest in Jewish bias, Islamic bias, warming bias or any other single issue”.
Probably true too, but this site is called “Biased BBC” and as such it is the bias that is the main raison d’etre of the site. If all people said is the BBC is biased against Israel, Conservatives, Republicans, Global Warming realists etc. then it would soon die due to lack of interest.
What people are doing, therefore, is to document the most blatant pieces of bias they come across on the whole spectrum of Aunty’s output to show that they can prove their accusation. I notice you said earlier that people could find examples where the BBC appears to favour the other side. I think if you could find a small handful of examples where it might look that a newsreader, say, favour’s the right or, preferably, gives a more balanced opinion it would be outweighed by the thousands of examples highlighted on this site that prove the opposite conclusively.
I believe you also said that as it is an arm of Government it will always favor the government of the day. Well that stopped in 2010 after 13 years of supporting the last one.
That’s already been pointed out. I have challenged that statement re the government of the day. However, he has not responded or substantiated his claim. Yet he has complained that people here post abuse rather than debate issues. He’s not debating and he is not arguing his point at all, let alone well. I did not descend on him either. Still less abuse him. It seems to me that he is wrong and a little contradictory in some of his comments.
Steve Root:
Where are the weak points of the BBC? Where can answers be obtained to difficult questions and most importantly how can those answers be publicised? Not here, this place is way too cliquey
Answers to what? Which difficult questions? If you haven’t already given up and vanished, please explain what sort of bias you believe exists at the BBC. So far as I can tell, your only objections are that it is the mouthpiece of the Conservative-led Coalition and that there isn’t enough domestic hard news. Am I correct in this assessment?
You say that nobody is interested in charges of anti-Israel, pro-Muslim, or pro-AGW bias. In other words, you dismiss the concern that the BBC is biased on these issuas as fringe opinion, unworthy of anyone’s time. A I correct in this assessment?
It’s impossible to engage in debate with you or figure out a way to construct a better argument against BBC bias unless you define, even a little bit, what kind of bias you see at the BBC.
The Master wrote:
“Abuse will never win minds over, nor will sarcasm”
Someone, who must be a false Master, wrote:-
“Indeed any evidence presented will be ignored as the ramblings of loonies, who seem well represented on this blog”
Broadly speaking I think He makes some valid points, but if he manages to extract himself from his arse before making them they would be better made.
Basically ‘The Master’ needs to follow the advice he is so keen to offer.
Well, my flabber is truly gasted! We are in absolute agreement so far as your not so outlandish view of the BBC goes. Your single editor theory is, I suspect, not so far off the mark but I reckon it will be some form of very small committee setting the daily agenda for all departments to follow, including CBeebies. Mind you, you really ought to be careful about voicing such a theory for there are many visitors to this place who will simply dismiss you as a loony. 😛
I doubt if I will see it in my time but I am sure one day the whole rotten Corporation will come tumbling down. In the meantime they are making many more powerful enemies as time goes by. As mentioned in last week’s Spectator comment column concerning the Leveson enquiry and the possible outcome being a “more fearful press”, [The BBC] “has been unable to contain its glee.”
-Never mind the need to master the English language; BBC-NUJ switches to Mandarin:
“It’s the Wei of the future: BBC launches cartoon Mandarin lessons to prepare children for a Chinese-dominated global economy.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2113781/BBC-cartoon-Weis-Mandarin-lessons-prepare-children-Chinese-dominated-economy.html#ixzz1ov9BAbqv
No wei…!
Wei ei ei ei ei ei ei ei ei ei . You make me want to SHOUT!
Copywrite Lulu circa 1964
Steve said “We therefore deserve the BBC as it is because the general population still thinks it’s the best in the world and is not looking for evidence to the contrary.“
Interesting comment but can you provide the foundation for this statement.
This is a publicly funded organisation but in contrast to normal democratic norms the public are unable to determine who runs it and have a voice in what it puts out.
Further the organisation is put beyond the reach of ordinary people because the official body that is accountable for the media, ofcom, has made the BBC responsible for its own complaints.
This puts the BBC beyond the reach of its owners (the public).
I disagree that it is the mouthpiece of the elected Govt. The BBC is now so large and has so much money that it is a political animal in its own right. It has so much power now that it can be a game changer. Recent figures demonstrate that the BBC is effectively a monopoly which makes it the most powerful media organisation in the UK. This is amply demonstrated by it’s vicious assault on the News International. It needs to neuter NI to ensure that it maintains its media dominance.
It is a mouthpiece in the sense that he who pays the piper calls the tune. As a monstrous organisation steering is slow and imprecise but it will find the general direction eventually.
I wouldn’t say that the attack on News International was particularly vicious, even less that such an attack wasn’t fully deserved. I still believe that majority of journalists on the Beeb are relatively decent people who probably struggle to square their inherent truth seeking ideals with the edicts sent down from on high. Not a popular view in these parts I’ll hazard.
The unaccountability of the BBC has always worried me, and I think has increasingly served to mould opinion. Every presenter is given a set of rules to follow, for instance to make sure they substitute ‘British’ for ‘English’ wherever possible and to force them to do cod impersonations of the way the Spanish would say Barcelona. Wonder if these ‘guides’ are up on their website?
“he who pays the piper calls the tune”
If only!
So far it’s just the EU that calls the beeb tune as it pays the piper.
Every presenter is given a set of rules to follow, for instance to make sure they substitute ‘British’ for ‘English’ wherever possible and to force them to do cod impersonations of the way the Spanish would say Barcelona. Wonder if these ‘guides’ are up on their website?
This is very good. Many’s the time people here complained about Beeboids referring to “Cheel-ay” when reporting on those trapped miners, but no BBC reporter ever says “Pa-ree” or “Mün-chen”. Also, I’m sure you’ll agree that the BBC treats the Cross of St. George as a racist symbol except during sporting events.
Steve Root “We therefore deserve the BBC as it is because the general population still thinks it’s the best in the world and is not looking for evidence to the contrary.“
So, have I got this right, Steve would like to pay his licence fee for a BBC that tells him how rubbish the ‘general population’ of Britain is?
I’m sorry but I think we are there already. Steve, I suggest you are an anglophobe leftie! When you refer to BBC bias what you have in mind is its failure to bring down Cameron and provide some sort of radical vanguard. Am I right?
Umm no. Wrong in each and every particular. But that sort of blinkered thinking is why this forum has no huge foothold in the public imagination. Saynoto0870 is much more widely known. BBC bias is a much more important topic, and it deserves wider attention. It’ll never get it while the inmates all have such closed minds.
Steve, I’m sorry but I don’t get it.
You say ‘I wouldn’t say that the attack on News International was particularly vicious, even less that such an attack wasn’t fully deserved’.
I seriously think that it is difficult to objectively argue that the BBC’s assault on NI was ‘not particularly vicious’.
Perhaps at a pinch one could argue it was more hysterical than vicious?
I have no special regard for Murdoch but when you state that the attack ‘was fully deserved’ then I reckon you must be pretty comfortable with the BBC’s general political direction.
I’m guessing that like most of the left in this country you want to protect the BBC because in your heart of hearts you acknowledge that it gives your view point a pretty fair crack of the whip. Your negative reference to the ‘general population’ is the giveaway.
You seem to be saying by all means criticise the BBC but don’t be negative about it?
You are a typical leftie.
Or are you just trying to be cryptic?
It all depends on what BBC coverage we’ve seen I guess, but I got very little sense of overt axe grinding by the BBC against News International. Here and there I did, but on the whole I found it quite straight. There again, I cannot stomache listening to TODAY or watching Newsnight.
Sorry AISI but you are completely wrong. For once the BBC has done the UK a service by bitch-slapping NI. Of course it did it for no other reason than to stop the Sky-BSkyB share thingumy and, maybe as a favour to Labour for Murdoch’s ‘betrayal’.
In the end a dead NI is only to the benefit of the UK.
And NO I do not support labour nor the BBC – a falser dichotomy you couldn’t dream of.
Makes me think: “We therefore deserve the Austin Allegro as it is because the general population still thinks it’s the best in the world and is not looking for evidence to the contrary”
Is this not part of the problem. Those who hate the Murdoch press, those who defend it and those who have no particular view one way or another are seeing this as an ‘attack’ on News International. News outlets, especially the BBC with it’s public service remit, are supposed to just report the news without bias or favour. That ALL parties seem to have subconsciously recognised some sort of agenda in play in the coverage of this story does rather demonstrate that there is a problem with bias, and the BBC have been very much leading the way.
When I visit this site, I’m made aware of many different concerns regarding bias, both subtle and blatant. This site’s commenters all seem to have their own take on the issues. Some would like to scrap the BBC altogether, others appear only concerned with the bias they perceive in the news, but value other departments of the broadcaster. There is both agreement and disagreement here. I don’t see that this is indicative of a site full of ‘closed minds’.
Steve, I’m really not sure what it is that you think is missing from this site, or what is present that you think shouldn’t be. ‘Cryptic’…indeed.
Can’t reply to all the ‘you’re/I’m confused’ posts, so I’ll pick this one. I’ve been generally castigated as left-wing, yet I’m not, I take a particularly Clarksonesque view of the world.
What I think is missing from this site is an overall aim. All I see is general whinging that the BBC is too far to the left and wilfully excludes the points of view of most of the followers here. There does seem to be a strong pro-israel/anti-global warming theme to a lot of the content. Neither of these issues is inherently left- or right- wing yet dissent on either would be seen as rabidly Lefty. It’s a stereotype which has little currency in the modern world, those boundaries have blurred.
This is, or should be, a lobby group. The main object should be to UN-bias the BBC. But if most posters here had their way, it would simply be re-biased in the opposite direction. All I would like is news which is actually news, the ability to laugh at political correctness and the acknowledgement that an adult should be allowed to think their own thoughts without intervention by either an Auntie or a Nanny.
Yesterday I saw an awful program on The House of the Future, hardly an original concept but updated for extra greenness and state intervention. It featured a robot that nagged you about what you ate and a particularly smug git who positively sneered at the concept of independance and opined that the future held much much more state control ‘for the good of society’. I fear he may even be right. It’s a chilling concept, well worthy of George in the banner above and it’s the BBC which will deliver it. If I can I’d like to help the cause that prevents this dread outcome.
That is all, I’m going to the pub. It’s not the alcohol I go for, but the (relative) freedom of expression.
The main object should be to UN-bias the BBC. But if most posters here had their way, it would simply be re-biased in the opposite direction.
I believe that actually instead of de-bias-ing the bbc,many of the contributors here would prefer the dismantling to a very large extent the bloated monster it has become,the removal of the compulsory tv tax and the forcing of the bbc to stand on its own 2 feet on a purely commercial footing
“All I would like is news which is actually news”
Amen to that, Steve, if what you mean is news stripped of opinion and deviod of surreptitious(or often naked) agenda. I think we would ALL agree to that.
“But if most posters here had their way, it would simply be re-biased in the opposite direction”
I’m not sure this is true at all. I think it’s possibly an assumption derived from the fact that many of us on this blog perceive the same slant to the bias of the BBC – to the political left – and that we are therefore advocating a swing in the other direction to suit our own personal politics. Personally, and I’m sure it’s the same for most of us, I would like that swing to head to the centre point – a position of neutrality – and no further. I would be as opposed to a publicly funded Fox News as I am the current pro-left BBC.
I should add that I think it vital that there are commenters on this blog who provide views that dissent and challenge (even Dez, Scott etc). I think there is always a danger that a blog of this kind can become the sort of slavish echo-chamber that we so often decry in regard to the BBC and it’s staff. As this blog clearly has an extremely open and tolerant policy to comments of all kinds, I don’t see that being a problem.
Dissent and criticism, provided it is constructive, is always a good thing.
The problem with Cottez, particularly the Scott half, is not that he dissents from or challenges views expressed here – I have no problem with that. It is that he comes here to throw out insults, jeers and smears at individuals. It is for that reason that he doesn’t deserve house room. Anyone who comes here to sneer and insult simply wants to bait and provoke rather than engage in discussion or debate. That is commonly known as a troll. And a troll doesn’t merit respect.
Bless. Let’s conveniently forget about the personal abuse people like ltwf1964 (who, conveniently, agreed with your misrepresentation) fling my way, and the way of anybody who attempts to engage on facts.
If you’re seriously concerned about trolls, stamp on ltwf1964 on every occasion where he posts nothing but expletive-laden insults. if, on the other hand, you think his behaviour is acceptable, stop whining like a petulant teenager about other people’s far more reasonable contributions.
Not me. I want them to give me the facts not give a neutral position. Just tell me what happened and I’ll make my own mind up. They can even tell me what Hama said as long as they tell me what Israel said in response.
That’s not being neutral it’s being un-biased.
If you think that “if most posters here had their way, it [the BBC] would simply be re-biased in the opposite direction” you are an idiot.
To put it more diplomatically.
It’s enough that we see a clear and consistent agenda by what is supposed to be our national broadcaster, in defiance of its charter which demands it to be fair and impartial, to know that this makes it evil. Especially with the power it wields.
Try thinking of it from there Steve.
Another point to consider is that we are able to air alternative facts and truths which the BBC prefers to stifle and give each other a more rounded view of reality.
It is a threefold argument 1) The BBC is a platform which promotes the views and interests of the Liberal Left and (since the freedom to type your opinions in a blog has not yet been outlawed) some people come here to express their contempt for the views of Liberal Left; it is called believing in freedom of speech. 2) The BBC is a Public Sector broadcaster which seeks to exclude or demonize any views which threaten the economic interests of the public sector: it is called believing in consumer choice. 3) The sheer dominance of the BBC (by virtue of its tax income) threatens media plurality (as its recent attacks on its potential rival [News International] has amply demonstrated); it is called believing in a free society.
A dominant State broadcaster telling people what to think is hardly unusual in the world. A dominant State broadcaster promoting the interests of a ruling minority (or a faction amongst a ruling minority) is hardly unusual in the world. A society that lacks basic freedoms is hardly unusual in the world. What is unusual is a country whose people have the freedom to express their opinions, and mock the greed and narcissism of a ruling elite, who will bring down the grey monolith that seeks to enforce correct thinking amongst its serfs.
The BBC is a cancer. It enforces conformism, it sneers at the working classes, it sneers at the middle classes, but above all it sneers at England, because England represents everything they loathe, its pride, its tradition of courage, and its independence, and freedom.
The BBC stands for mediocrity, cowardice, and moral bankruptcy. They are what is left when the heart still beats but the soul has exited the building.
Steve Root, when I want a certificate of correct thinking from you, I will tell you.
I don’t think you have been generally castigated as left wing. I noticed that one commenter called you a lefty. I’m not sure why you think that is a general opinion. One commenter here doesn’t speak for all the others.
Trying to read some sense into his comments I suggested Steve might be a lefty and wondered if he wanted to confirm or deny. Just so we could understand where he is coming from. His comments at that point seemed to be saying the BBC is biased but you lot on here have got it all wrong. Or something along those lines.
Now he reckons his views are ‘Clarksonesque’. You can see why I (and others) are confused. So he now relates his views to someone who is a bit of a professional iconoclast but who makes a packet out of the BBC.
Left and right can indeed be confusing titles.
You know there may come a day when Britain is a republic, drugs legalised, euthenasia commonplace, the CofE disestablished, the only crime punishable by prison is ‘hate crime’, the age of consent is 12, all decisions are made in Brussels….
BBC agenda? What agenda? It weren’t us gov, wot done it!
Perhaps as Steve says we should be more constructive?
The new TV FILM Game Change is all about the relationship between Sarah Palin and John McCain. The BBC tells us so:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17323606
It’s based on the book Game Change by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. But wait! When it was published it created a rumpus because most people saw the central drama in the book coming out of the poisonous relationship between – not Palin and McCain – but Hillary Clinton and Barrak Obama. Evidence this 2010 edition of Hardtalk with Chris Matthews:
So why the change in emphasis? Ask yourself: what is more relevant: exploring the relationship between Palin (now a Fox commentator) and McCain (who failed in his Presidential bid)? Or Clinton (the current Secretary of State) and Obama (the current President?)
Maybe because this is really part of the propaganda push by Hollywood in support of their supreme leader?
And talking about propaganda: the most laughable exchange of the week was on CNN where Piers Morgan interviewed Davis Guggenheim director of the new Obama ‘documentary’ narrated by Tom Hanks (who also produced HBO’s Game Change.)
Morgan: “Most documentary makers balance these movies with the negative as well as the positive. What are the negative in your movie about Barrak Obama?
Guggenheim: “The negative for me was there were too many accomplishments, you know, I had seventeen minutes to put ‘em all in there”.
“Too many accomplishments”. So I guess Guggenheim wins the Mark Mardell Award for Journalism.
(Note: the even handed Mr. Guggenheim also directed the Al Gore “documentary” An Inconvenient Truth)
More Palin Derangement Syndrome. She’s not running, not a factor. Yet the left-wing US media and Hollywood Leftoids are still on the attack, and their fellow travellers at the BBC dutifully promote it.
HBO is going to lose subscribers because of their overt political activism. Too bad the BBC can’t be similarly held to account.
People addicted to hate have to get their fix somehow. Imagine the withdrawal symptoms so many people are going to suffer when their nemesis Margarat Thatcher passes on to the grave. It just wont be the same hating someone whose not alived and who lived to prove that everything you believe in is posturing poo.
Guggenheim: “The negative for me was there were too many accomplishments, you know, I had seventeen minutes to put ‘em all in there”.
wonder how many of these he managed to squeeze in?
First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then
deny he was a foreigner.
First President to have a social security number from a state he has
never lived in.
First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States
First President to violate the War Powers Act. .
First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally
obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
First President to defy a Federal Judge’s court order to cease
implementing the Health Care Reform Law.
First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a
third party.
First President to spend a trillion dollars on ‘shovel-ready’ jobs
when there was no such thing as ‘shovel-ready’ jobs.
First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of
companies to his union supporters.
First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act
through executive fiat.
First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the
deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those
with criminal convictions.
First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of
his political appointees.
First President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space.
First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.
First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law
unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.
First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly
spoke-out on the reasons for their rate increases.
First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state
it is allowed to locate a factory.
First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath
to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).
First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been
properly issued years ago.
First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-Corps for
catching one of his friends in a corruption case.
First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in
his office. .
First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half
years in office, 90 to date.
First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.
First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.
First President to go on multiple global ‘apology tours’.
First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights
and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by
the taxpayer.
First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.
First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year
at taxpayer expense.
First President to repeat the Holy Quran tells us the early morning
call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound
on earth.
First President to take a 17 day vacation.
FDR hid his medical records. and the press colluded because the gatekeepers felt the public didn’t need to know. Can’t really argue with the rest of this, though.
wow!
To read the clever tirades from SR he has plainly missed the point of this blog and therefore all blogs. Blogs, or at least their owners, have a point to make and write pieces about their point of view. The rest of us may agree or disagree and we have the ability to say so within the bounds of the blogs rules. We can vent our fury one way or the other and move on with our lives because we know its all good harmless fun. Or it should be. It would be nice if the powers that be listened but in our hearts we know they probably won’t.
So to complain about the process, insult the passion of the people who write on a blog and then do exactly the same thing is a bit lame, some would say hypocritical of course. SR’s post is not making any point that I can see other than telling us to complain more quietly and when did that last work? He has therefore served no purpose here other than wind a few of us up, which is a bit daft when his more recent ramblings now seem to agree with this blog’s aims.
Of course I could have just said his post was grandiose piffle but that would be an insult.
Anyway darlings, back to the nice BBC advert with the busy mother feeding her baby dog food because she is confused about paying her TV tax on time and then there is that lovely Pointless show followed by The News from the Taliban website and why won’t that nasty Tory party send more of our solders to get killed saving those brave Syrian Freedom Fighters, after a bit of Shock and Awe of course. You know the routine by now, it’s when we bomb them flat first. And now it’s time for the Climate Change forecast for your area.
Remember that Question Time from Dewsbury, where the question about Islamophobia in the Uk was brought up, well here is a current news story from the bBC
Teenager charged over Facebook soldier death comments
A West Yorkshire teenager will appear in court on Friday after allegedly making comments on Facebook about the deaths of six soldiers in Afghanistan.Azhar Ahmed, 19, of Fir Avenue, Ravensthorpe, faces a racially aggravated public order charge.He was arrested on Friday and charged over the weekend, police said.
and here is how Wikipedia describes Ravensthorpe to the Public:
Ravensthorpe is an area of Dewsbury, in West Yorkshire, England.
Gee I wonder why the bBC never mentioned that ravensthorpe is a part of Dewsbury.
They probably didn’t know…
They are, after all, the BBC – the country’s national broadcaster.
.
Sounds like this guy could be a candidate for a jobwith Trevor Phillips or a nice position with the UN or at least a government funded post at one of our universities.
Well his spelling and grammar certainly won’t hold him back.
The bBC, how it defends Rapists and not even half the story.
Antoni Imiela trial: Serial attacker ‘raped stranger’ in 1987
A serial sex attacker violently raped a stranger and was traced through his DNA years later, a court has heard. Antoni Imiela, 57, is on trial at the Old Bailey accused of raping Sheila Jankowitz near her flat in south-east London on Christmas Day in 1987. Prosecutor Richard Hearnden said Mrs Jankowitz, who has since died, suffered a “horrific ordeal”. Mr Imiela denies the charges. Years later he was convicted of raping seven other women.
So reading the above story, tell me where you think Mr Imiela currently lives. London? Well all the bBC has to say on the matter is:
Mr Imiela, originally from Appledore near Ashford, Kent, denies rape, indecent assault and another sex offence.
Well actually he is banged up in Wakefield Prison and has been since March 2004. But the bBC don’t mention that. Oh and by the way bBC the f-ing rapist isn’t originally from Appledore, he’s originally from Berlin.
And just who is Antoni Imiela, why he just happens to be better known as the M25 rapist. You know that piece of shit who raped 7 females and the attempted raped of another (Including 2 10 year old girls) But from that shoddy bit of reporting the bbC tries to pass off as news you don’t get to hear about anything of his past exploits other than:
Years later he was convicted of raping seven other women.
Women bBC? Here’s his rap sheet:
15 November 2001 – a 10-year-old girl is kidnapped from a leisure centre in Ashford, Kent and raped in woodland nearby.
1 July 2002 – a 12-year-old girl is raped after being abducted whilst cycling in Bracknell, Berkshire.
11 July 2002 – a 30-year-old woman is raped in Earlswood, Surrey. Six hours later, a 26-year-old woman is raped on Putney Common in London.
16 July 2002 – an 18-year-old woman is raped in Goldsworth Park, Woking, Surrey.
6 August 2002 – a 52-year-old woman is raped on Wimbledon Common, London.
7 August 2002 – a 26-year-old woman is raped in Epsom, Surrey.
6 September 2002 – a 13-year-old girl is taken from her bicycle and raped in Woking, Surrey.
16 September 2002 – a 22-year-old woman is attacked in Ripley, Surrey. The attacker is bitten by her dog, and runs off.
25 October 2002 – a 14-year-old girl is abducted from Stevenage, Hertfordshire and raped at knifepoint.
21 November 2002 – a 10-year-old girl is indecently assaulted in Birmingham.
6 of his victims were children, not women, unless of course the author of this crap happens to believe also that little girls are ok for sex. which kind of explains why not one link can be found on the article about his evil man.
The bBC, the traitors in our Midst.
Fart from being shoddy reporting, because this reporting relates to open procedings the reporter is only allowed to report what was said in court.
It is a contempt of court to bring up his previous record while the case is being heard. Technically you, by doing so, and David Vance by hosting this sit, are in contempt and could be imprisoned for doing so.
Geoff Watts opines :
“It is a contempt of court to bring up his previous record while the case is being heard” Technically you, by doing so, and David Vance by hosting this sit, are in contempt and could be imprisoned for doing so.”
Really, then they best get a few cells ready as here are a few worthy news orgs reporting the very same facts:
Evening Standard
A convicted serial rapist today faced a new allegation at the Old Bailey based on evidence from a woman who died six years ago.
The Northern Echo:
Years after the alleged assault Imiela went on to commit a series of seven rapes for which he was convicted in 2004.
This is local london
The court heard Imiela has since taken part in a “savage and perverted campaign against total strangers” between November 2001 and autumn 2002 before being convicted of seven rapes from that period.
I’m sure if I really tried I could find a lot more. But hey good to see odious people being fdefended by folks like you. What next from your keyboard, that Mohammed was a man of peace… Tell you what geoff, try being smarter and I may try to be nicer.
I am not defending anyone — although I am not quite sure what Mohammed has to do with this story. I am simply saying that there are reasons why not everything can be reported.
In reporting a court case, as I said, a reporter can only report what was said in court.and there are limitations on the use of a defendent’s previous convictions. If you read the This is Local London report, it is all sourced to the prosecution case: “The court heard…”, “Jurors were told…”, “The court was told…” etc.
As to the details you pubished, if the details that you listed were not read out in court then you are in contempt and at least in theory, could face a fine or being sent to prison. The likelihood of either happening are zero.
Pounce, Geoff is correct. You are in contempt of court. All the reports you link to (including the BBC’s) describe what has been said in court. What you have done is link the defendant to a notorious series of crimes which has clearly not been discussed so far in the case. I would encourage you or David V to remove this post.
What pounce lists isn’t substantially different from the Standard.
It’s really hugely different. Clearly mention has been made of the other crimes in court, but not the details or in particular their infamous nature. It really is pretty clear contempt. And for what it’s worth the BBC is simply obeying the rule of law as does every other report mentioned above.
What Pounce has done could lead to a fine and prison term for him and David Vance and could lead to the case collapsing and a retrial.
Really, David? Arrested and imprisoned for copying and pasting from publicly available information from Wikipedia? Or should Wikipedia remove that information on penalty of imprisonment?
The issue of information on the web is a very interesting one for contempt. We seemed to have arrived at a situation where juries are warned not to google the case they sit on and judges ignore websites with information posted pre the start of the trial. That seems a pretty sensible approach. But what Pounce has done is different. To actively pull together information like this and post it online is contempt. And while it is unlikely he will face consequences it is possible. It’s certainly very likely the BBC will be seen in contempt if it did the same. Which is why the BBC (and all the other sources quoted here) have only repeated what has been said in court so far. Which also negates the point of the original post.
David G, pounce copied and pasted information which was already collected in that form by Wikipedia. Jurors would be no more influenced by his post than by Wikipedia, and I’d wager that the latter would be far more likely to turn up at the top of a Google search result.
Your description of what he has done as “actively pull together” is a false representation.
Having said that, it’s probable that blogs which are not mainstream and do not have the readership of, say, Guido Fawkes, do not have to live by the same contempt rules as broadcast and print media.
I’m not sure that pounce’s post is negated, though. The BBC in fact reported even less of the rapist’s past offenses which were revealed in court than the Evening Standard. All the BBC article mentioned was the prosecutor’s statement about the rapist having carried out a “savage and perverted campaign against total strangers”. All three sources pounce then linked to provided more substantial information, including about convictions. So the BBC did sanitize what was revealed in court, whether you like it or not.
@DG – ‘Could’ but very unlikely. Nevertheless, a point worth making and well made.
‘BBC killed my husband’: Bridalwear shop owner says investigation broadcast on consumer affairs show led to suicide
Apparently a Beeboid consumer programme called X Ray – which I have never heard of – went with a film crew and hammered on the door of a house at 8am. The house belonged to the owner of a bridal wear business about which there had apparently been some consumer complaints about the quality of the goods. The husband of the owner of the business committed suicide on the evening the programme was broadcast and mentioned the programme in his suicide note.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2113907/BBC-killed-husband-Bridalwear-shop-owner-says-investigation-broadcast-consumer-affairs-led-suicide.html#ixzz1ovkWZpzO
That makes two BBC-driven suicides this year. Not that fears of such a thing should prevent them from doing investigative journalism. But it does make one question their approach.
What was the other one?
Perhaps this should be part of the Leveson Inquiry.
Last month, some poor pig farmer killed himself after being villified on Farming Today. Chuffer called our attention to it on the Open Thread from Feb. 15 (pg. 3). When the BBC mentioned the man’s death two days later, they allowed only that an activist group had gathered footage about him. While the footage was gathered by an activist group who apparently set him up – and the undercover activist appears to have deliberately allowed cruelty for purpose – Farming Today ran with it, which drove the pig farmer to suicide. The BBC wouldn’t even admit to their own connection to it, although they took care to point out how many hours of footage there was. Just in case a reader might have mistakenly wondered if the man deserved to die, you know.
Ah, yes, of course. How could I forget? Drat! I even posted a clip of the Beeboid Farming Today announcement of his death which pointedly highlighted the very worst instance of alleged cruelty on the farm – as you say, just in case anyone might have wondered if he deserved to die.
UPDATE: I failed to notice earlier that the BBC did admit in another news brief that Look East asked the poor man a question about the footage. No mention of Farming Today in any of the “cruelty probe farmer” news briefs.
The propaganda arm of Islamic terrorism –The bBC- asks if Israel’s hopes on its anti missile system is well founded.
Israelis place hopes in Iron Dome against Gaza fire
But alongside that familiar sense of dread, there is a growing sense that the military balance, which has long been tilted in Israel’s favour, has tilted a little further in the same direction….There is a clear sense of confidence that the new missile system and the sophisticated high-speed radar to which it is hooked up are doing much to render the rockets fired from Gaza less threatening… There is, of course, suffering and anxiety on both sides here, as one civilian from the building hit today in Ashdod told me. And of course it is worth noting that the very fact that the rocket got through is an indication that Iron Dome is far from infallible.
And what the wanker from the bBC doesn’t tell you, is up to last week the success rate for Iron dome was 70%, as of today that has moved up to 90%. But the beauty about Iron Dome isn’t about how many missiles it takes out, it’s more about how its computer brain allows its to distinguish between missiles that will land in a populated area and those that won’t, thus allowing it to target only those that may threaten life. The fact remains that the missiles that they are targeting have anti-personnel warheads. Coming in at around with 45kg warheads, these are packed with up to 3000 ball bearings in which to try and inflict as much hurt as possible. You know to terrorise the local populace. But to to people like Geoff , these are militant weapons designed to militize folks. Err Geoff the correct term is terrorism. You know why because the idiots who do so wish to strike terror into the minds of all non-muslims. Maybe there explains why you, like the bBC proclaim that Islam is a religion of peaceful followers. Because you are a jellyfish….spineless.
one man’s terrorist is a bbc man’s militant
I can’t help but think that your case would be improved without having to resort to insults everytime. Or do you think that trading ad hominems in someway strengthens your case?
Not that you are even slightly interested in the argument (an open and enquiring approach is not a characteristic of this site) but do you agree that the peeople involved in the attacks agaisnt Israel are militants? They may well be terrorists as well (I would certainly describe their actions as terrorism) but do you think it is factually incorrect to describe them as militants? I am not asking if there is a term you would prefer, simply the truth value of that statement.
do i think they’re miltants?
possibly,since they use guns
do i think they are terrorists?
definitely
pity the bbc prefer to prevaricate-try calling a spade a spade for a change
(an open and enquiring approach is not a characteristic of this site)
why do people who can’t stand this site keep coming back again and again?Is it some kind of compulsive masochism?
Watch out for Geoff everybody, he’s a very sensitive soul and takes disagreement with him as an insult.
He’s still on the ‘can’t understand the difference between militant and terrorist’, and for him they’re both ‘value judgements’.
He can’t understand the difference between using military force against miltary force to achieve objectives, and targetting civilians to create fear to achieve objectives.
Like Islamists have done with the BBC for example.
So be gentle with him, he can’t help it, he suffers from terrorised thinking.
The problem with this blog, as is evidenced by the comments from someone who actually agrees with you (Steve Root), is that it is not really open to debate.
If someone disagrees there is a very strong tendency, as is evidenced by Pounce and Teddy Bear, to resort very quickly to ad hominems.
If, as someone said, you want debate, then why insult the people providing a counter-argument? If all you want to be is an echo-chamber then remain doing what you are doing.
I perfectly well understand the difference. In an earlier exchange someone (Reed) said that what they wanted was “a position of neutrality” in news reporting. If you describe someone as a terrorist then you are taking a position, you are no longer a neutral observer.
ltwf1964: I think the idea of holding the BBC to account is a good one. This site is not taken seriously which represents a wasted opportunity. With more rigour and more self-discipline you could actually be a part of what you seek to achieve.
If, as someone said, you want debate, then why insult the people providing a counter-argument? If all you want to be is an echo-chamber then remain doing what you are doing.
I would prefer people didn’t resort to insults. It’s perfectly possible for someone to be mistaken, or have a different opinion to myself, without them being an idiot. However it’s naive to think you can argue against the general thrust of a blog without some being somewhat bullish in defence. I wish they wouldn’t, but I guess it’s human nature.
You’re also fighting against the fact that many who disagree are not here to argue rationally, but to derail the discussion and many will suspect you of doing just that. All I can say is don’t take it personally, continue to argue your points rationally and most here would, I hope, come to accept that you make your points in good faith.
Even if you are talking bollocks. 🙂
“If you describe someone as a terrorist then you are taking a position, you are no longer a neutral observer. “
No. If a person commits terrorism then they are, by default, a terrorist. It’s like saying that if one says “a Rolls-Royce is a large, expensive car” makes one no longer a neutral observer as that is a judgement call as to what a Rolls-Royce is. However, the only people who might think that a Rolls-Royce is neither expensive, nor large would be millionaires with a fleet of stretch Lincoln Continentals.
The point is that a terrorist IS a terrorist, it doesn’t matter how the BBC and the other left-wing ants pretend that they are really only freedom fighters: It is not a judgement call it is a fact.
The BBC are the ones making the judgement calls when they are equating terrorism against a people or state, with justified retaliation by the victims.
Geoff – that’s all blogs, isn’t it?
“If you describe someone as a terrorist then you are taking a position, you are no longer a neutral observer.”
The EU, the US and UK governments all classify Hamas and their various splinter groups as terrorist organisations. If the BBC described them as terrorists they would be reporting as neutral observers. As it is by calling them “militants” the BBC is taking a position and therefore is no longer a neutral observer.
“The EU, the US and UK governments”. So you are saying that the BBC should follow the prescriptions of those governments? That is not a neutral stance. Would the governments of Egypt, Jordan and the Arab League describe them so? I don’t know.
Neutrality means just that. Using language that is not value-laden.
Wild: Then carry on doing what you are doing, shouting impotently in a room filled with like-minded people. You have a choice, you can either try to change things you don’t like, or you can moan about it and do nothing. At the moment this site is falling into the latter camp. You don’t have any influence.
Of course moaning into your beer is a lot easier and allows you the luxury of intellectual idleness. Just don’t expect anything to change. But maybe that is what you want, after all blaming other people is a lot easier than taking responsibility yourself.
Thanks for the permission to express my opinion Geoff.
Yes it would be great if I was not forced to pay for the near radio/television current affairs broadcasting monopoly of the BBC in the UK, and it would be great if the BBC did not abuse their power in a sustained attempt to re-educate their audience into accepting the values and interests of an intellectually and morally bankrupt Leftist elite.
Meanwhile back in the real world, the “Tory” hating Guardinistas at Broadcasting House will fight tooth and nail against any diminishment of their power and perks. But as an ex-public sector worker (indeed I am assuming that you are the Geoff Watts who used to work for the BBC) you already know this don’t you.
P.S. I appreciate that as an ex-BBC journalist you will have encounted a great deal of intellectual idleness (climate science anybody?) but how about taking responsibility for your own actions. I may be wrong but I do not recall you making a single criticism of the BBC on these pages. If it is so great I wonder why you do not promote the idea that people should have the freedom to pay for it if they want it. Or would that be a NUJ turkey voting for Christmas?
I hadn’t thought about who Geoff Watts is. Now that you mention it, the name is very familiar to me…so I’ve just looked it up and he is or was a science programme presenter. I must have listened to him many many times over the years on Radio 4. Oh, well, good on him as a Beeboid for coming on here and putting his point of view. 🙂
Welcome Geoff, although I may not agree with your stance, you`re views are welcome here.
“This site is not taken seriously which represents a wasted opportunity. With more rigour and more self-discipline you could actually be a part of what you seek to achieve.”
Pompous twat. It is a forum for people to express their views about the BBC not gain the approval of those who are or were on the payroll of the BBC. The naivety of your suggestion that if only commentators did not use such demotic terms such as “pompous twat” the BBC would acknowledge its bias and disperse its journalists back to The Guardian, The Independent, and the New Statesman, is laughable.
P.S. A terrorist is a terrorist; the viewer and listener will make up their mind about the justification. Language control (as Orwell pointed out) will always be a favored weapon of the thought police.
Geoffrey, if you wont take offence at people disagreeing with you, I wont take offence at you insulting my intelligence.
This is NOT an NOT an ad-hominem attack – This is NOT an Insult – but you Geoff are a moron. 4 times already I have described the difference between and militant and terrorist as the latter specifically attacks CIVILIANS. You choose to ignore this distinction and repeat that the difference has to do with perception. A CIVILIAN IS A CIVILIAN. Look up the definition and you’ll see it’s not based on any objective observation as to what that means. Spare us any further ‘hurt feelings’ and get somebody to explain to you first what has been put forward for you to consider and reply to.
If you choose not to reply, don’t worry we’ll understand.
“If you choose not to reply, don’t worry we’ll understand.”
If you do it will be the first thing you have understood. I will draw stumps now because your assessment of me is exactly the same one I have of you. There comes a point where talking to a halibut fillet would be of more use, and more illuminating, than attempting to continue this conversation with you.
You could not have chosen a more apposite moniker.
Thank you for your time.
You don’t even have enough sense not to reply, because I notice you AGAIN avoided the point being made.
MORON! For somebody of your mentality I have no doubt it would be way more enlightening for you to share your ideas with halibut fillet. They won’t argue, and you can make believe you’re clever.
You realise team that the fact they have so many of these Beeboids posting their worthless opinions must mean they are perceiving us as a threat.
Recognition at last 😉
I thought his position was that terrorist is a value judgment and militant somehow isn’t.
To me, the very fact of electing to use the word militant suggests that it is a value judgment. It just suits the Beeboids’ purpose better.
It`s a joy to be on this site…very much the broad church needed, and I value the likes of Geoff, Steve and all the others.
On this one story, I heard Rupert Wingfield-Hayes doing his piece for the 10 O Clock news…I only got bits of it, but to be honest: I knew “where he was coming from” (BBC School of Prescribed Journalism)-the caricatured “show and tell” angle that London would require of him (angry Palestinians and blood-stained soil near burning cars)…and of course “the direction of travel”…to Jenny Tongs second home in effect.
And here`s my point-Rupert Double-barrel gives me NO history to this/these attack(s)…tells me NOTHING about the Islamist Militants targetted so successfully in their cars…and is content to emote, inflame and stick the jackboot once again into a soverirgn nation that would only live in peace if it were not under daily attack from across its borders.
The continual attack on Israel by the BBC and the Guardian is despicably sly and forever skewed…no history, no analysis of the dads willing to sacrifice yet more of their boys to no purpose; and no balancing views. I don`t count some graduate general by his tank as the necessary response to Katyushkas falling as civilians of Israel have to flee nightly.
So Geoff, Steve etc…when the BBC begin to be honest about Israel… or for that matter the USA/EU or what Blair/Brown did to this country…THEN I`d imagine the tone might improve.
Until then you`re safe here to say as you like, I`m sure…some of us have had years of Beeboid pish to put up with…I`ve only had a couple of years, so still try to be the voice of sweet reason, as Jesus tells me to be…well sort of, and when it suits me!
I think strapping bombs to children to use them as bombs to blow up other children merits a term somewhat stronger than ‘militant’. Bob Crow may well be a militant but he certainly isn’t a terrorist.
The BBC debase language because:-
1) They are scared of moslem terrorists
2) They seem them as natural allies to the totalitarian left and wish to spin for them.
Now what about you Geoffrey? Would prissy or plonker best describe you?
“If you describe someone as a terrorist then you are taking a position, you are no longer a neutral observer.”
This is a false argument.
For a news broadcaster to take a position of neutrality does not require it to jettison all common sense and prohibit the use of all descriptive terms. The application of the word ‘terrorist‘ to the 7/7 bombers, for example, isn’t a ‘subjective label‘, it’s a description. Only in the warped world of BBC moral relativism is the word ‘terrorist’ a barrier to understanding and ‘extremist’ considered a value judgement. This is not commendable neutrality, it is intellectual cowardice. If a news broadcast cannot simply tell it like it is, what is it’s purpose? Does this nebulous use of language serve to aid understanding or obscure it?
“It is always good to keep an open mind, but not so open that one’s brain falls out.”
No, Crow is not a terrorist.
But given the opportunity I suspect he would just love to build camps and start populating the showers.
He’s that sort of chap.
“An imam has been killed in a fire at a Shia mosque in the Brussels suburb of Anderlecht, in what is believed to have been a deliberate attack.
Anderlecht Mayor Vincent Van Goidsenhoven was quoted by local media as saying the suspect threw a petrol bomb at the mosque.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17346927
There is , of course, background to this, readily available in the Belgian Press. It looks as if the arson attack is Sunni versus Shia…in the midst of the Belgian capital which is also the seat of the EU.
This is a breaking story so more will emerge…trust the BBC will give fuller details in due course….it is, of course, fatal for the narrative.
A Shiite mosque in Anderlecht, a suburb of Brussels, fears attacks by Sunnis, especially as a result of the war in Iraq. Threats have already been made according to the Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique.
The mosque and its association ” Rida-Association islamique” (Rida Islamic Association) are located in Dokter de Meersmanstraat in Anderlecht. There have been several incidents in the past few weeks in the area around the mosque. Tensions are high and there is fear these tensions will come to Brussels as well.
The Rida association has notified the Anderlecht police of its misgivings and the police is taking the case seriously. Police patrols were asked to be especially vigilant and the central bureau of operations is collecting information.
According to Jacques Simonet, Anderlecht’s mayor, the fear of the Rida association must be seen “in light of the Iraqi context”.
Early ‘Telegraph’ report:
Imam killed in arson attack on Brussels mosque
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/9139693/Imam-killed-in-arson-attack-on-Brussels-mosque.html
This is another cost to Europeans of the continuing mass immigration from Islamic countries.
And as the numbers of these savages rise ever higher they bring with them their ancient hatreds. Sunni Vs Shia and its coming to our streets soon. Obviously the BBC will hide the evidence for as long as it can.
Thanks to the stunning foresight of our leaders they have imported all the ingreadiants for a Balkans style bloodbath AND an Iraq style bloodbath AND just to put the cherry on the top invited eveey crime syndicate and gangster crew from all over the EU to set up shop. The rivers of blood speech was meant to be a warning not an instruction manual.
Further to RGHs post about the bitternes which can be found between the 2 branches of Islam is this snippet from the US:
A mosque near Brussels was the target Monday evening of an arson attack in which the imam died, Belgian authorities said late Monday.
One man was arrested — a Muslim who said he was born in 1978 — in the attack on the mosque in Anderlecht, a suburb of Brussels, the Belgian capital, said Jean-Marc Meilleur, a spokesman for the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office.
“It seemed that this person showed up and pulled out a knife and an ax, and that he spread flammable products — petrol we assume — in order to start a fire and threaten the mosque occupants,” Meilleur said.
He said the man’s name and age could not be verified, as he had no identification papers. He said the man had been locked in a room by worshippers at the mosque before authorities apprehended him.
I wonder why the bBC hasn’t got round to mentioning any of this?
“Belgium: Sunni-Shi’ite jihad suspected in mosque attack”
[Opening extract]:
“Words you hoped you would never have to string together: Sunni-Shi’ite jihad in Belgium.”
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/03/belgium-sunni-shiite-jihad-suspected-in-mosque-attack.html
Troll
For BBC-NUJ, and its candidate for London Mayor:
“Ken’s tax affairs show he’s slimy as his newts”
(by Trevor Kavanagh).
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/4187860/kens-tax-affairs-show-hes-slimy-as-his-newts.html
Last night’s File on Four was about tax avoidance. I did not manage to hear it all but did hear mention of footballers and local government employees. The blurb here mentions ‘As the Treasury reviews tax avoidance by senior government employees, it has emerged that employees in other parts of the public sector are using payment schemes that keep them off the payroll. There is growing concern that paying public servants through personal service companies may be inappropriate.’
Was there any mention of Ken Livingstone? Need I have asked?
During amusing (to herself) conversation with Game Show Nicky this morning Rachel Burden quips about the the GB – US ‘Special relationship….no one believes in that anymore, do they….?’
All discussion on that subject short circuited then?
Useful at times when Beeboids editorialise.
Perhaps it is reassuring to know that Beeboids have views of their own. Funny how predictable those views are.
Did Obama refer to David Cameron as ‘light weight’ (snigger).
BBC guest expert dispels that. ‘Oh no, that doesn’t sound like Obama, he is far too clever’. Maybe it was one of his team? Because, you know, that is kinda what we think he is (snigger).
Photo ops in Washington all about the US election? Oh no, who in the US cares a fig about SamCam.
Special relationship? ‘That’s a term used by weak powers’. Get it now? UK = rubbish little country.
Oh, I do hope we can strike up some kind of rapport special or spezielle Beziehung before we sink beneath the waves.
This must be the one time where the BBC doesn’t trust their friends at the New Statesman, who reported this as fact.
Still, didn’t the BBC tell us that The Obamessiah would fix all international relationships with the US and everyone would love us again? What happened, BBC? Do some issues trump your love for Him?
Casual anglophobia from Dame Nicky this morning. In conversation with Mary Doll actress Elaine C Smith. Nicky confuses Glasgow with Blackburn in West Lothian and both Scots cover his tracks by agreeing ‘no one south of Watford knows the difference.’
Nicky is keen to parade his superior ethnicity so he appeals to Elaine ‘….Not me….I’m one of yours’.
To quote the late great Gill Scott Heron ‘There ain’t no such thing as a superman’
Geoff Watts said “If you describe someone as a terrorist then you are taking a position, you are no longer a neutral observer.“
A terrorist is defined as someone who uses violence against people and the population in general to intimidate them into their way of thinking. i.e. they don’t follow the principle of open dialogue and debate to persuade others to achieve their objective through collective reason.
A current example of the success of terrorism in the UK is the BBC. Islamic terrorism is winning against the left leaning section of the population. The BBC is doing everything it can to avoid offending the perpetrators of terrorism in the UK for fear that they will perpetrate more acts of terror. The BBC and its ilk have already been defeated in the psychological war and now slowly they are moving towards acceptance that Islamic terrorist principles are a good thing and persuading the population at large that they must submit to this new order as it is good for them.
So when you call someone a terrorist you recognise that they are trying to impose their way of life on their target by violent oppression. This is not taking sides it recognising the obvious and opposing a system that use violence to impose its policies on someone else.
Great post, and as you implied, when you dont call a terrorist a terrorist you are letting him know you’re willing to let yourself be ruled by fear. ‘Wanting to be the last one to be eaten by the crocodile’ as Churchill once described liberals.
hp – before Dez/Scott get there first, the great man said that of appeasers, not liberals.
After last week’s embarrassment on Mastermind when some poor contestant had to answer a question on The Eddie Mair Show – PASS – in this week’s Dog-Licking-Its-Own-Jacksie masquerading as Mastermind we had 5 – count em 5 – questions about the BBC.
I mean why not change it to BBCMind and be done with it.
It is the envy of the world after all.
This just in from BBC news 24:
BBC reporter live from Gaza says some “projectiles” (rockets?) have been “launched” (fired?) “from Palestinian territories” (at Israeli civilians?). According to the reporter this amounted to “a minor breach of the ceasefire”. Unbelievable.
“Steve said “We therefore deserve the BBC as it is because the general population still thinks it’s the best in the world and is not looking for evidence to the contrary.“
I do find this British superlativism bewildering – as if anything British is, by default, the “Best in the World”.
This is a standard line of BBC defenders who state confidently something along the lines of:
“Have you seen TV in other countries? It’s dreadful..”
“British TV is the best in the world” or something similar.
How do they know how dreadful foreign TV is? Do they speak enough languages to be able to make an assessment?
The trouble in Britain is, the BBC own all the shops in the street, where is the alternative to gameshow Nicky and his kind in the uk? If it isn’t a music radio station then forget it. Thank goodness there are blogs where folks can get different angles to a story, weigh them up and form an opinion. But mostly sheeples in the UK are spoon-fed left wing tripe so often they actually believe it. Wish I had a million or so to set up another radio station, free society – my a**
“I do find this British superlativism bewildering”
You should get around more. It’s quite easy to find its equivalent in France, Germany, Italy, USA, Australia, Japan etc. Sometimes, people like to feel that they’re particularly good at something and express it in these terms. The BBC used to be excellent. The fact that some people think it still is is not a sign of some deep British psychological malaise.
Be fair, the BBC does sometimes bat for Britain. They love it when ‘brits’ win at the Oscars and they are really getting behind ‘Team GB’ for the Olympics.
It’s only in every other known field of human endevour that Beeboids seem to reckon Britian is rubbish.
I can tell you from experience, that French tv is pretty dire. But in my opinion, not as dire as “British” tv, not least because (especially on the BBC), you have to watch the same programme several times in a week, and then several times more, for the rest of your life.
The puzzling thing is why, having paid to watch it once, you continue to pay to see it time and time again. In many ways, your telly licence is just another tax.
I find the BBC (for example its drama) completely spiritually dead. It is not mirroring the nation back to itself, it is devoid of anything except maybe the odd spasm of self-pity. It is the wasteland that is left once the Leftist thought police have finished their work. It does not engage with any reality. It is a cynical Stalinist slab at the heart of the nation, filled with people who can’t remember the last time they had an idea of their own. Not that they parade their spiritual emptiness with any pride, they seem to be time serving their way to what they hope will be ample pensions.
I did live in Germany for many years and found Germans quite modets about their acheivments (albeit tempered by recent history).
My point is quiute a simple one with regard to language – how can beeb sipporters decide how awful foreign TV is if ( as with many Brits) they are mono-lingual?
..modest about their achievements……tch!
Not a BBC-NUJ report on the English Defence League:
“Teenager charged over Facebook soldier death comments”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-17343409
‘Daily Mail’:
“Teenager charged over ‘racist’ Facebook taunts at six British soldiers killed in Afghanistan”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2113955/Teenager-charged-racist-Facebook-taunts-British-soldiers-killed-Afghanistan.html#ixzz1ozjWCrFw
There have been so many mentions of fucking climate change in just about every programme this morning, that I’ve lost count.
Is the BBC embarking on a fresh push to make us all believe? From drought to eating red meat, from birds to Captain Scott, climate change, climate change, climate change, Will they ever stop?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/
You and Yours discussing drought, and all the good peoples’ ideas about how to save water (which, of course, they all do), and other stupid thoughts. As yet, no-one has mentioned (or been allowed to mention) over-immigration. I will wait and see.
Incidentally, I for one, will be SO glad when you manage to host this on another site with a more successful means of posting – this is becoming absolute shit to use, in my humble, goaty opinion.
Added to which Countryfile on Sunday was all about why it is better for the climate and our CO2 footprint to eat an imported banana that a locally grown tomato (and if you believe it you will believe anything)
“BBC bosses not included in civil service pay review.”
http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/bbc-bosses-not-included-in-civil-service-pay-review-1-2169326
I wonder what Dr. David Gregory thinks of his colleagues at Today defining Ursual Arens of the British Nutrition Foundation as a “scientist”? She has a bachelors degree in Dietetics, and some sort of graduate diploma in Marketing (which is a bit of a giveaway, I’d say).
Perhaps the BBC will ask Dara O’Briain : ‘A dietitician is to a nutricianist as a dentist is to a toothiologist’
Meanwhile BBC 5 Live this morning tells me bacon is bad for me. (In large amounts, and I guess I already knew that). Why pick on bacon and headline that particular meat product? The story seemed to be about some research into red meat in general.
Is this the Beeb trying to make up for poor reporting on Israel? Or are we coming into line with Sharia?
i thought you meant Richard bacon
in which case any amount makes you violently ill
I’m with Dara on that one.
“Imam dies trying to save worshipper after axe-wielding attacker stormed into Belgian mosque and set it alight”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2114244/Belgium-mosque-arson-attack-Imam-dies-trying-save-worshipper-Brussels-suburb.html#ixzz1p0M8pEjg
In INBBC report here, note the inaccurate, cryptic attempt, at end of piece, to obscure the intra-Islamic jihad murders over the centuries:-
“Imam dies in mosque arson attack in Belgian capital”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17346927
Curious silence from the 55 Beeboids working the US beat on this:
Obama’s sudden polling crash
Is there an innocent explanation for two new surveys that show his approval rating falling to ominously low levels?
Maybe they’re all too busy salivating over the anti-Palin “Game Change” to come up with an angle to spin this away. Or they just don’t want you to know.
With Obama’s likely opponents I can’t see him losing.
INBBC on Shariah murders in Islamic IRAQ.
So, in INBBC Orwellian language, this wasn’t a case of Muslims committing scores of Islamic Shariah murders, but:
“Iraqi ’emo’ youths reportedly killed by conservative militias”
NO, INBBC:-
‘Jihadwatch’ –
Iraq: Interior ministry allegedly knew of planned massacre of “emo” youth
[Extract]:-
“More on this story. Note the freewheeling conflation of the suspicion of homosexual tendencies, allegations of devil worship, and whatever else the government’s thugs please to level at their targets. The all too literal witch-hunt is ultimately an indiscriminate, arbitrary display of power designed to terrorize the populace into line, and into erring on the side of not calling attention to themselves that could put them in harm’s way.
“This is the test case, the prototype for things to come, if no one has the political will to resist. The extrajudicial terrorizing of the population on ‘moral’ grounds will not stop with the persecution of “emo” Iraqi youth.”
The BBC does its bit to propagandize the ‘drought’ in the UK as a ‘global signifier of climate change’ or some such bollocks.
Speaking at the 6th World Water Forum in Marseilles, former Soviet president Mikhael Gorbachev told the assembled rent-seekers:
“…We therefore need to rethink the goals of economic development… The economy needs to be reoriented to goals that include public goods such as a sustainable environment, people’s health, education, culture and social cohesion, including an absence of glaring gaps between the rich and the poor.”
Wow. That’s quite a leap. Now we see how climate zealots (cheerled by the ever-compliant BBC, of course) join the dots between a bit of dry weather and the need for massive wealth transfers. You really can’t make this stuff up.
So that is what happened to Gorby. I remember he presided over the downfall of one global superpower. Nice to see has found himself some gainful employment in the West.
Biased report here regarding the proposed extradition of Richard O’Dwyer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-17355203
This story is delicious for the BBC as it combines two cherished BBC themes –
1) The US are big bad, unjust, bullies
2) The government are bad, and in thrall to the US.
What it says
“Mr O’Dwyer was told at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in January that he could be extradited despite no criminal charges being brought by the UK authorities.”
Well yes! If he had been charged here the Americans wouldn’t need to extradite him. That’s what extradition is for. The US is the appropriate venue to try someone accused of making hundreds of thousands of pounds in profits by facilitiating the piracy of AMERICAN movies.
“The Sheffield Hallam University student said he was “surprised” when police officers from the UK and US seized equipment at his home in South Yorkshire in November 2010.”
He was surprised?
So when his domain was seized: http://www.tvshack.net/ and there was scary warnings of criminal prosecution put in its place , and he ignored it by moving his domain to http://www.tvshack.cc within TWO DAYS, he was SURPRISED when they took further action?
If the US were to drop a bomb on my house, that would be a surprise, but being involved in commercial piracy, getting caught, and ignoring the warnings, that can hardly be described as surprising.
The News Channel is covering this right now. Apparently the current legal agreements create “a lopsided arrangement”, favoring the US. Still, there is a tiny but definite improvement in BBC reporting on this issue.
Previously, legal corresondent Clive Beeboid described O’Dwyer’s crime as “merely linking” to sites with pirated content. This time, he omitted the biased qualifier. So credit where due, a tiny step back from biased reporting.
Unfortunately, he did lay out the BS defense that O’Dwyer’s website was a “signpost”, just like “Google is a signpost” to other sites. Also, having Asperger’s ought to be considred as a mitigating circumstance.
Then the boy’s mother is given full air time to explain that it’s all wrong, nobody else extradites their citizens to the US, the US isn’t the world’s policeman, there should be laws or something.
I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that bank robbery, yer honor. I just drove a car with people in it to a bank. Just like buses let people out near banks all the time.
To be clear Richard O’Dwyer does not have Aspergers. Gary McKinnon does, apparently, but the two cases are not really comparable.
McKinnon was a hacker and had quite different motives from O’Dwyer.
O’Dwyer was simply in it for the money, no different to a bloke selling fake DVDs in the market, albeit that O’Dwyer’s site was one of the largest in the world and far, far more content was downloaded (many millions of illegal copies) via his website than any market trader could ever achieve.
The difference between TvShack and Google was Google simply indexes the whole internet and accepts ‘takedown requests’ if someone identifies pirated content index in Google, O’Dwyer specifically insisted on pirated content ONLY (no movie trailers or legal content), and indeed he indexed a great deal of it himself, in order to get the site up to a critical mass. The ‘just a link’ defence only works if you don’t do it knowingly.
Nicely explained Matthew. From memory McKinnon’s Aspergers diagnosis appeared after he was initially found guilty. Before that he appears to have been able to hold down jobs but since then the campaigners seem to be trying to set the agenda that he is a total skip licker. He is kept clear of the media who aren’t encouraged to look into his background or what he did to deeply.
David Preisser asks in an earlier post when the BBc will do a story about Obama’s shapr fall in poll numbers. They must be in the “spin room” as we speak.
The start of the public’s reassessment of Mr. Obama began with the incident of the Cambridge police and Prof Henry Louis Gates in 2009. The president said at a news conference: “the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.”
Later, he admitted he was not in full possession of all the facts but his reaction raised eyebrows. This was the turning point. There have been many such statements made by the President on the hoof – and every time he makes one, he betrays his true self, causing ordinary people to become more suspicious of who he really is – a radical, left wing politician and not some all-knowing, all seeing- visionary figure, a Ghandi or Mandela. They now see him as Hillary Clinton did during the nomination campaign, “an empty vase into which people are pouring their hopes”
However, to BBC viewers, radio listeners and readers of the BBC website, this has never been made clear. The BBC USA office is still in love with him. When British reporters venture out of DC and their New York comfort zone, they deliberately seek out toothless freaks in trailer parks and crazed felons on death row to reinforce their own willful blindness. The “silent majority” (as Richard Nixon termed it) not only remains unheard, but when it cries out for attention (the Tea party is one example) it is ridiculed and derided.
Mr. Obama’s latest pronouncements on subjects like contraception, gas prices and Sandra Fluke have made even my normally bewitched Democratic friends shuffle uncomfortably. As long as the President allows his natural instincts to drive his public words, his polls numbers will continue to fall.
However, it seems he is still buoyed up by his circle of friends and a BBC narrative of the misunderstood boy genius surrounded by a stupid population.
And when people in the UK wake in a post-Obama era blinking in the light asking what happened? How has the hero fallen? the answer will have to be: “The media lied to you.“
That Anderlecht Shia mosque attack.
BBC reporting more detail now.
But there is missing information which is reported by the European Press Agencies.
This is what the BBC says about the possible motive….a very tentative observation:
”
It is not yet clear why the man attacked the mosque, but some local people said he was a “Salafist”.
Salafists are very conservative Muslims who try to emulate the earliest followers of the Prophet Muhammad. Some Salafists preach hatred of Shia Muslims”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17346927
This is what the DPA says: (Translation below)
“Die Organisation der Muslime in Belgien forderte «zur Ruhe und zur Zurückhaltung» auf. Die unterschiedlichen islamischen Glaubensrichtungen in ganz Belgien müssten zum Dialog und zum Zusammenleben bereit sein: «Nichts kann diese Gewalt rechtfertigen, wer auch immer die Täter sind», heißt es in einer Erklärung. Nach dem Brandanschlag kam es in den Straßen von Anderlecht zu einer Reihe von Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Muslimen.”
The Muslim organisation of Belgium appealed for calm and restraint. “The various Muslim ‘confessions’ must be ready for dialogue and be prepared to live peaceably together. Nothing can justify violence..whoever committed the crime.” according to a statement.
After the arson attack a series of incidents between Muslims took place on the streets of Anderlecht.”
It seems that the Muslims have a fair idea of what is going on in their community….after all it is a reflection of the great sectarian split between the two branches which is raging throughout the Muslim world at the moment.
The BBC cannot bring itself to be more than coy….some Salafists preach hate….does not hint at what is going on in Brussels where 25% of the population is now Muslim.
“Brussels: The New Capital of Eurabia”
(Nov 2011)
http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2602/brussels-eurabia
P.S. Beeboid Mark MARDELL, who was Europe correspondent based in Brussels for years, did not mention the Islamisation of Brussels in his reports.
Katya Addler just claimed that the “English prime Minister” is visiting with the US president.
I didnt know we had our own PM in England, I didnt even know we had been recognized as a nation.
But hey, when you have to give voice to your inbuilt prejudice anything will do, in her tiny spite filled mind “English” is an ultra derogatory word.
She’s just using the President’s language there, Cassandra. After all, the BBC made no comment when He referred to the “English embassy” when the Iranians smashed it up last year.
How is it prejudice? Americans often say England when referring to the UK or Britain. It’s just how they think of it. Anyway, I am sadly grateful to hear someone using the word at all! Beeboids avoid it like the plague.
If George Bush or Sarah Palin had said it, the howls of derisive laughter from Broadcasting House would have been heard all the way across the pond. But since it was Him, nothing.
But is Adler now one of the batallion of Beeboids working in the US? Only a temporary assignment?
I believe there may be some inherent bias here. Bearing in mind the BBC’s supersensitivity to the feelings of the celtic nations and their extensive PC training it is odd that such careless mistakes should still happen.
Then again, I get the impression that in the BBC it counts for a lot if you claim to be anything but English. Rizla Teeth is, as the Beeb tell us, ‘the new face of London’.
So Engish is a bit of a derogatory term in Beeb land.
Katya Adler was born to German parents and is an experienced journalist on world affairs so it is strange that she should fall into an English colloquialism or should make such a page one error.
I doubt she would describe Angela Merkel as the East German Chancellor. Not quite the same thing I know.
But then when you see yourself as the Beeboids do as an internationalist elite, way way above petty concepts of nationality – well the derogatory expression English PM might just slip out.
http://www.causes.com/causes/544540-take-action-against-the-bbc-s-anti-english-racism/about
Correction: I see from the comment below that she is not American.
Last year the BBC made a Valued Judgement whilst reporting the unseemly behaviour, arson, muggings and liberation of 40″ Plasma TV’s by referring to them as the ENGLISH RIOTS.
The inference being that this barbaric conduct could not have taken place in other parts of the UK.
So the ENGLISH are now a very important group to hate, courtesy of BBC lexicon.
Whilst Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland conduct themselves in accordance with Buddhism, we it seems, have to put up with being labeled trouble makers.
Well that will change at the next General Election. If the BBC sniff a chance that Labour could win it, then the English will become virtuous and basically jolly jolly nice.
Here’s someone who doesn’t think much of that programme about the Empire (which I haven’t watched):
Paxman’s version of the story of General Gordon in Khartoum was so laughably inaccurate that I thought I must be hearing things. I had to watch again on BBC iPlayer to check that my ears hadn’t been playing tricks.
In a few minutes of television, Paxman managed to misunderstand every stage of the tale. …
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidblair/100143406/jeremy-paxman-on-gordon-of-khartoum-so-laughably-inaccurate-that-i-thought-i-must-be-hearing-things/
Thanks Millie.
Absolutely devastating critique of the endemic laziness and ignorance that the BBC apply to anything that they make that is factual and needs some level of historical competence.
No wonder that the Beeb are far happier filming “melting polar bears as they walk backwards shedding sea lion tears” from Longleat…because that`s all pictures and Patience Strong as opposed to knowing your arse from your elbow.
Paxo will soon sneer at a Cambridge undergraduate for not knowing Pat Phoenix` Corrie character, but leave his calling card all over Victorian History.
Maybe Blue Peter might find an old cereal box, get someone clever to write Gordons story on it in large maker pen, and then hang it round Jezzas fat nack…then beg Hugh Scully or Esther Rantzen to start agin with the smug fly fishing fool…
i note with interest, how el beeb was wetting its pants earlier as a belgium imam was killed/mosque firebombed ( pant pant! breivik far right bnp edl drone drone drone).
aahhaaarrr! whoops! its just another islamic outrage, pull down the shutters … how many act of aggression israelli bombs have killed innocent “the poor” palestinians, today
mosque? … belgium?? … imam??? … what mosque????
oh! … and as another point of interest, i haven t heard from el beeb
(or ANY of the muslim organisations), just how many Qurans were burned during this heinous act. 😀
and this was deliberate! 😀
You would think that one of the best known national television presenters, earning in the region of £1million pounds a year, and picked to present a history programme on the British Empire, would make sure they got their facts straight before they did.
But it appears, the BBC is just as inaccurate in their knowledge of history as they are in their knowledge of current affairs, so I suppose there’s quite an irony about this story.
Jeremy Paxman on Gordon of Khartoum: so laughably inaccurate that I thought I must be hearing things
I happened to catch the following snippet on World at One on BBC Radio 4 today. I see the BBC have found another way to get the views they want aired without having to balance them with alternative views. They simply invite a group of young students to ask questions of the BBC ‘chosen one’, in this case Alex Salmond. This way they can make sure the questions they want to have answered will be, without any opposing views to complicate matters.
One of the questions was whether 16 year olds should be given a vote. Naturally the likes of the BBC and scum like Salmond would very much like to have young minds with no real experience of the world to have this power. They’re so much easier to brainwash.
The particular section is about 30 minutes in, and is available to listen again for the next 7 days.
Only heard the last two minutes of this.
Yet when I heard the cringing prep school kid from Jean Brodies Guardian Academy, I knew by the toady tones that it HAD to be Alex salmond that they were “interviewing”…or polishing his spats as he`d call it!
Unlike Cameron…no sneering questions allowed, such as “this free tuition stuff Alex…racist? discriminatory…and who is ACTUALLY paying for it , so it “looks free” to you?”
Are they at it again? Faking scenes on Top Gear.
This time they showed a mega expensive car in a traffic jam with three learner driver cars – only it turns out the learner cars were driven by the driving instructors! Anyway, the Beeboids say viewers are intelligent enough to know it’s all just jolly japes, so that’s all right then.
In the film, May voiced his fears over the possibility of an accident.
He said: ‘I’m on real roads, with real cars.’
Top Gear said today the show was ‘not a documentary and the viewers are intelligent enough to know some elements of the programme are for entertainment.
‘But sections, for example race results, car reviews and challenges are sacrosanct and never manipulated.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2114478/Top-Gear-new-fakery-row-traffic-jam-staged-James-May-claims-real-roads-real-traffic.html#ixzz1p2cT6I9M
Ok so the transit van (or Range Rover, or whatever) with the camera crew in kept up with a Bugatti Veyron when Clarkson Raced a plane from somewhere in Europe to London with the truffles?
http://www.topgear.com/uk/videos/veyron-v-plane
About as likely as the Reliant Robin Space Shuttle
INBBC’s political chums at ‘NYT’ also inculcate biased treatment against Catholicism, compared with special treatment for Islam.
Director General, Mark THOMPSON (a Catholic) who proudly propagandises similarly for Islam at INBBC, will be nodding in agreement with the ‘NYT’.
New York Times runs anti-Catholic smear ad, rejects ad that tells truth about Islam and jihad
Must pay tribute to Geoff Watts’ input on this thread. No-one takes this site seriously but it might just be taken seriously enough for David Vance and Pounce to be sent to prison.
Damn, I do hope I don’t get sent to prison, I mean after splashing out a grand on a new door today. (Its a wood composite door) I would like to appricate it a little. But then what is there to worry about the justice system in the Uk. Today a window licker received £25 grand for getting arrested, well actually he didn’t he was handcuffed after jumping into a swimming pool fully clothed and then placed in the back of a police van (Note how the bBC reports he was locked up in a cage) until he calmed down and he was allowed to walk away. But his human rights were breached and he won a pay-out. So if I did get sent to prison I would sue the bBC and win a huge payout for all the bad feeling I felt they are directing my way via the use of making me pay for a TV licence.
Not to worry, pounce. Just smash up a few shops on the high street and rob a couple old ladies instead, and people like David Gregory won’t be threatening you with any prison time because they don’t seem to be complaining about how the soft magistrates these days will let you walk.
8.30am this morning and BBC Rachel Burden puts a shout out to the students.
‘…students will be boycotting lectures and holding demonstrations today in response to rises in tuition fees…’
Fingers crossed they will, eh?
A friend’s son at Sheffield University and all his flat mates have already handed in all their work for the year…no exams either – their year is finished and they are home ..so not attending lectures (nor attending demonstrations) because they have no lectures to go to.
Universities simply provide you with the most expensive library card in the country.
My kids managed to meet a couple of lecturers in a pram for Rag Week…before their thirty “Reading Weeks” and a picture of a seminar!
Thank you Blair!
Sheeeeesh!
BBC 5 Live this morning and I am warned of the dangers of Hookah Pipe cafes. Fire risks – they are going underground apparently due to new smoking laws. And water pipe smokers are subject to the same health risks as cigarette smokers.
So I consider myself warned. Well worth the licence fee.
Oh but look here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/content/articles/2005/06/15/sheesha_chic_feature.shtml
BBC Birmingham Features (2005)
Sheesha Chic by Sarah Loat, BBC
‘Birmingham may be making steps to impose a smoking ban but a counter-culture is flourishing. Puffing on an Arabian sheesha pipe is fast becoming the coolest pastime, say those who enjoy it.’
‘Smoking lounges are popping up across the city where customers can indulge in a traditional Middle Eastern and North African pastime of sheesha smoking. It’s exotic, sociable, friendly, and a little bit different say those who choose to relax with a sheesha.’
‘In Moseley you could be forgiven for thinking it’s midnight at the oasis. Stepping through the doors of Sheesha Lounge on Brighton Street you are transported away from Birmingham to what could be a smart coffee shop in downtown Cairo.’
BBC promotion of the delights of diversity 2005 and now in 2012 a little bit of backtracking?
Ah bless…what smoking ban?
If it`s culturally appropriate it`ll only be whitey getting fined for smoking-think smoking is a necessary thing for Muslims…they get tetchy if they don`t get their fags…oo er!
cj – it looks like you’re directing your wit at the wrong target for once. Gotitaboutright is being sarcastic against Geoff Watts’s assertion of this site not being taken seriously enough, and later that David V and Pounce could be sent to prison.
It’s Geoff Watts who is cleverly trolling, by pretending to almost agree with us but saying that a site dedicated to BBC bias shouldn’t talk too loudly about BBC bias.
I thought it was Call Me Dave who was saying about prison.
And it was Steve Root who said he agreed with us but we shouldn’t be so voluble about it!
Certainly I was wrong about Steve Root, who I should have said. I apologise for naming the wrong troll – I should have gone up the thread rather than using my obviously defective memory.
But my point still remains that it wasn’t Gotitaboutright who was calling for the imprisonment of esteemed members of this site.
Glad you put me right there Mr 1001!
I`ve drawn a line under it, lessons have been learned and have awarded myself an inflation-busting pay increase!
Now to sack an intern or two who failed to stop me making an arse of myself!
Thanks for the chuckle CJ 🙂
No problems cj, I always enjoy your sense of humour and you often make me laugh out loud, but I realised your interns were letting you down a bit there. Now whatever happened to that cigar of your’s?
Jo Nova tears into the BBC in general and Richard Black in particular by comparing the BBC coverage of Climategate and Fakegate. But, you know, the BBC couldn’t care less. It’s now totally out of control – or rather completely under the control of the metropolitan left – and is pursuing its own agenda: and the Conservatives? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
PS H/T to Bishop Hill
“A show that proves the BBC is sacrificing its voice for its ratings”
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/business/markets/a-show-that-proves-the-bbc-is-sacrificing-its-voice-for-its-ratings-7566184.html
This was inevitable once they changed the Charter to make it so that ratings = value for the license fee.
Yesterday’s news but I’ve not seen it reported elsewhere as yet. I suppose good news from that area does not suit certain broadcasters.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/153723#.T2C7QvWBV8E
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/News/tabid/178/nid/23156/language/en-US/Default.aspx
Great Scott Alive!
This is about football so if you are not interested read no further.
The BBC do have their favourites. Not just in the world of politics and social commentary but in sport too.
This week BBC praise has been heaped on David Moyes (Scottish former footballer) current manager of Everton. 5 Live dished up a simpering radio interview (afraid I don’t recall who the Beeboid was).
There is an online version of the Beeb hagiography by Paul Fletcher.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/17274632
‘In his decade at Goodison, the 48-year-old Scot has forged a reputation as one of the most respected managers in the Premier League.’
Now the problem is that all objectivity goes out of the window when the Beeb get to work with the praise.
The radio interview contained the observation that Moyes had worked with several young players who had since moved on. Words to the effect : ‘…bringing through a young players such as Wayne Rooney…that must really make you proud’.
I’m sorry but bringing through a young player like Wayne Rooney ought to make him ashamed. Sure he has a natural ability as a footballer. But are we to admire the influence Moyes has had on this young man? Gosh Rooney must be a great sporting role model to engender such pride. Where should I begin? Allegedly: prostitution, dodgy agents, family connections to match fixing…..
Perhaps BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year 2002 was the kiss of death?
And hasn’t he done well as an England player recently …2010-11, 16 appearance 3 goals.
World Cup 2010:’Rooney made a comment as he left the pitch to television cameras saying, “Nice to see your home fans boo you, that’s loyal supporters”‘
The Euros 2012:’qualifications will be remembered for Rooney’s 74th minute tackle in a last group stage game which saw him getting off the pitch with a direct red card’
To be fair Moyes’s reaction did sound as though he were a little nonplussed.
Perhaps this is why….
‘On 1 September 2006, Everton manager David Moyes sued Rooney for libel after the tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail published excerpts from Rooney’s 2006 autobiography that accused the manager of leaking Rooney’s reasons for leaving the club to the press. The case was settled out of court for £500,000 on 3 June 2008, and Rooney apologised to Moyes for “false claims” he had made in the book’
BBC: Worldclass sports broadcasting!
…and Alan Green, we know you want Steve Gerrard to be England captain so stop going on about it at very opportunity.
BBC 5 Live is an akward mix of sport and leftie comment.
Hope Greenie has stopped putting his foot in it…..
‘Green was censured by Ofcom in October 2004 after he made a comment deemed in breach of the regulator’s Code on Standards live on-air about Manchester United’s Cameroonian midfielder Eric Djemba-Djemba implying he may be speaking pidgin English with the referee’
‘He….described Manchester City’s Chinesedefender Sun Jihai as wearing shirt “Number 17 — that’ll be the Chicken Chow Mein, then” during a live radio broadcast.‘
‘In January 2007, Green was again in hot water on Merseyside over comments made on 5 Live during the Everton v Reading match. Film star Sylvester Stallone was paraded on the pitch, and Green quipped as to whether Stallone’s limousine would still have wheels when he returned to it. This prompted an official complaint to the BBC by Liverpool City Council upset at his stereotypical views about the city being a hotbed of car crime’
Are you sure his name’s not Prince Philip?
The jokes Katty Kay retweets – using her officially sanctioned BBC account – leave no doubt about her partisanship. Defenders of the indefensible are asked to find one single tweet or retweet of Katty’s from the other side of the political spectrum.