Monthly Archives: March 2012

Question Time LiveBlog 29th March 2012

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Tonight Question Time comes from Portsmouth.

For those who don’t know, TheEye did some time at the Royal Naval Hospital Haslar and stood for  election when living in the Gosport constituency next door. TheEye  stood up to be counted in that part of the world…. DV has done so too so we are both immune to armchair political warriors. Much as I loved the Gospit and the enthusiastic  Navy wives I will echo the immortal words of Dick Tuck when he lost in California in 1966 “The people have spoken, the bastards.”

It is easier to quote the BBC today:

David Dimbleby presents Question Time from Portsmouth. On the panel: the comedian Alexei Sayle, shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander MP, children’s minister Sarah Teather MP, conservative Anna Soubry MP, and the columnist and chair of the National Trust Sir Simon Jenkins.

The odd and rather strange bloke gets the first nod and the lady from the majority party in Government gets fourth billing? Ah, make your own minds up.

Your Moderators line-up consists of David Vance, David Mosque, TheEye and John Ward. For those who don’t know – JW has been unwell in a serious way and I’d like to welcome him back. Good luck John. Best wishes from B-BBC.

It’s a 10:30pm kick off and afterwards we will suffer the maddess that is This Week

Don’t forget to look for Blue Nun Bingo updates on David Mosque’s website dedicated to the game.

BBC Forgets To Report Criticism Of Obama By Friend Of Murdered UK Tourist…..

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Plenty of stuff on the BBC website about the conviction of Florida teenager Shawn Tyson for the cold blooded murder of two young British tourists with coverage of the touching tributes given by their friends.  But, as far as I have checked, the BBC, unlike ITN, has obviously forgotten to include another statement by one of the friends.

Joe Hallett, a friend of James Kouzaris and James Cooper has spoken of his “dissatisfaction” at the lack of messages of support or condolence from the US government or President Obama.

He said Mr Kouzaris’ father has written to President Obama on three separate occasions and has yet to receive the courtesy of a reply.

I wonder why?

Perhaps it’s because President Obama avoids any statement about specific crimes to avoid inflaming an already emotional issue….

BLAME THE PARENTS?

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Did you read this coverage the BBC affords the report from the The Riots, Communities and Victims Panel,  which highlights the “500,000 forgotten families” that contributed so considerably to the gaiety of street life in London and elsewhere last summer? It’s interesting to note how the BBC leads with the “poor forgotten us” angle, before then accepting that “poor parenting” played the major role. In fact the communities themselves all pointed out poor parenting as a driver of the excesses. Remarkably, when poor parenting is accepted as a primary cause, the solution is…yes, for the State to provide more help to these poor parents. I suppose it’s natural for the State Broadcaster to think it natural that the State should take on the role of mentor to those unable to parent but maybe some more forensic questions could be asked? Why are so many poor parents? How many are single parents? How have parenting skills gone missing in action? Where is the sense of responsibility certain parents should have but clearly don’t? Of course since this is the BBC, we will never get to hear them.

STARRISH MARK

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Interesting prime time debate here on the Today programme focusing on the shooting of Mark Duggan by the police in London last year. Showing that renowned impartiality we had Duggan’s aunt demanding to get to “the truth” and then we had a lawyer  demanding to get “to the truth”.  The suggestion was Duggan was “executed” on the streets of our Capital city but the Police seek to hide the details of the operation.

DIVIDING AND CONQUERING FOR UNITE

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Comrade Len McClusky of the Unite trade union must love the BBC. Having set in motion the threat of a nationwide strike of the fuel tankers that could wreck our economy, the BBC angle on it is to take the words of Francis Maude and parse them in a way that suggests it is the Government causing all the stress for the British motorist. Had Maude and Cameron said nothing, the BBC/Unite axis would suggest they were being negligent; when they say something we are told that they are fueling (sic) the panic for fuel. Labour, funded by Unite, are getting away with pious murder on this one. Unite are being allowed to shelter behind entirely bogus “‘elfnsafety” allegations. It is the Government that is being attacked by the Labour/Union axis of hypocrisy and the BBC news channel (as heard on PM this afternoon) is giving every assistance!

Biased BBC Site Upgrade

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We’ve all seen the serious problems on the Biased-BBC site over the last few weeks.

Please let me explain them and also say what we have been doing to sort them out.

Two separate problems occurred almost simultaneously and you may have assumed they were connected – but they were not.

* Google began a rollout of regional blog identities. This is designed specifically to allow them to control/censor content in different countries. In practice for us that means that we have been commenting on at least 5 different B-BBC sites and so our comments have been scattered. There’s no useful fix for this.

* Google also withdrew the Google Friend login facility last month. As our Comment provider, Echo, is no longer being supported by its original developer because they have moved on to bigger, shinier and more profitable things we also lost that ability to log in here and they will not fix that.

As a result it became an unexpected and rapid project for us to move to a new solution.

The response to David’s appeal was fantastic and enabled us to organise new hosting with a new comment system. We’ve chosen WordPress and to use their comment system – which doesn’t require registration if you don’t wish to do so.

The new address is biasedbbc.tv

This will be the last post on the old Blogspot URL although the site will remain here as a reference.

Several things to bear in mind please:

The move to the new site has been rushed through because of the Google and Echo problems. There will be teething problems. Some things will not work straight away. I will be working on these constantly until they are resolved. Please email me with problems or use the Open Thread that I will set up on the new site for issue reporting but I will not be able to respond to everybody instantly or even maybe individually due to the number of comments that I anticipate. Also, technical issues will be given priority over cosmetic comments.

Important: I will not be able to import Comments from the previous site until next week. Please do not report missing past comments as an issue.


I want to say thank you especially to a friend of this blog and a friend of mine MaxFarquar for again designing the new blog graphics. Max did the design for the previous blog too – as a favour – and if you feel like popping over to his place and leaving a small thankyou in his Donation jar then I am sure it will be appreciated.

If you have any error reports, problems, issues, questions…email me here. I can’t guarantee to get back to you promptly because I’m expecting a busy few days pulling this all together but as always I’ll do my best to help.

AllSeeingEye

AND A FINAL WORD FROM THE PROPRIETOR

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Hi all!

The sun is shining outside and the world is looking good. Our own world at Biased BBC is about to change however, as you will have read in the post below this from All Seeing Eye. We’re moving to our new dedicated server with our brand new comments system and I have to say some thanks to the people who have made this possible so quickly!

First, to the remarkable ASE, a dear friend who works so hard behind the scenes here and does not get anything like the credit he deserves. His dedication, cheerfulness and “can do” spirit keeps me going at times of difficulty. I want to publicly thank him for all he does and yes, one of these days I will get to “The Rock” and buy him that drink (or two) promised!

Next up, I want to express my thanks to another great friend of this site, Max Farquar. His superb design skills have been brought to bear on making the new Biased BBC site look great. Like ASE, Max just gets on with it, sorts things out, and puts up with me! Cheers, Max, Biased BBC thanks you for all you have done! May I also commend Max’s site to all readers, it’s a great daily read.

Third, I want to thank ALL my fellow writers on the site. I really do appreciate the sharing of the writing burden. You are all so gifted in your own ways and bring a plurality of view and incisiveness of opinion that really helps! I do hope that you may find time to contribute even more to the new site. Can I also say that I am very open to guest posts – just email them to me. I do my best to publish. Some of you do this regularly but others should not be shy, if you want to get your posy

Above all, I want to thank YOU, dear reader. This site has THE most splendid followers and I remain stunned by your shared appetite to help me tackle the BBC bias. It is your daily visits, your comments, your enthusiasm, that motivates me to keep on toiling.

As ASE says, the new site will have teething issues, of that I am sure. Some things may take a little while to settle down, that’s just the way it is. But in terms of stability, room to grow, space to comment and opportunity to become an even bigger on line destination point for all who share our mission to hold the BBC to account – BIASED BBC.com is the future.

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