241 Responses to OPEN THREAD

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  1. Steve says:
    June 1, 2012 at 9:37 am

    So the Leveson “Enquiry” has been disbanded now I take it after they failed to get their man ?

    What a monumental waste of taxpayers money, just like the BBC.

       40 likes

    • DavidLamb says:
      June 1, 2012 at 11:24 am

      Has the Leveson really really finished? I have been waiting for the BBC hacks to get their grilling. Or have I missed that? I was hoping it would outrun the Archers.

         18 likes

      • johnnythefish says:
        June 1, 2012 at 12:34 pm

        On the lunchtime news yesterday the newsroom anchorperson asked Smith if they had found the ‘smoking gun’ yet. My guess is they’ll keep going with this in the hope of finding one.
        At the very least it will serve as a reference point for a ‘government in crisis’ or for Murdoch-bashing so will keep rolling in BBC news programmes, Question Time etc. long after Leveson has shut up shop. You only had to listen to Esler’s introductory spiel on Newsnight last night – he couldn’t have fitted more government-bashing into 2 sentences if he tried.

           17 likes

  2. Guest Who says:
    June 1, 2012 at 9:37 am

    T’s & RTs. It’s the circle of BBC life…
    BBC Newsnight ‏@BBCNewsnight
    Jeremy Hunt “misled the House of Commons” and David Cameron has torn up the ministerial code, Harriet Harman tells #newsnight.

    Harriet Harman ‏@HarrietHarman
    I’ll be on @bbcnewsnight later talking about Jeremy Hunt and #Leveson
    Retweeted by BBC Newsnight
    Makes me think of mashing up a few famous sayings..
    “Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,
    And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
    And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on,
    While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.”
    And…
    ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.’
    Plus…
    “Lie down with dogs and rise with fleas”
    Certainly reading the above exchange it’s hard not to feel a shudder at who is in bed with whom, with what consequence.
    This woman is the only person in the UK tweeting worthy of an RT, when the subject is simply her invitation from them?

       22 likes

  3. Pounce_uk says:
    June 1, 2012 at 9:57 am

    How the bBC has become a slave to Islam.
    Mauritania slave activist Biram Ould Obeidi charged
    A prominent Mauritanian anti-slavery activist and six others have been charged with threatening state security.Biram Ould Obeidi had protested against slavery by burning religious books, sparking a wave of demonstrations.Mr Obeidi said he burned the religious texts because they promoted the use of slavery – and to highlight inaction over slavery in Mauritania.The West African state has outlawed slavery, but it is still practised.
    Mr Obeidi, himself a descendant of slaves, led a protest against slavery after Friday prayers on 28 April, during which he burned copies of a text from the Maliki School of Islamic law. He later went on to apologise for the book-burning, saying the “intention was certainly not to hurt the pride of the Muslims” but to highlight that slavery still exists. Mauritania is a deeply conservative society and is sharply divided along racial lines, where Moors, descended from Berbers and Arabs, ruled over and enslaved black Africans known as Haratine.
    So reading the above what did you learn? That Mauritania is a conservative country, that a bloke has been jailed for offending Islam , and that some people still practice slavery there.
    Here is what the bBC doesn’t tell you.
    Mauritania has a population of just over 3 million people of which ½ Million are slaves. Yes around 1/6th of the population have a yoke around their neck, but according to the bBC that huge percentage equates to only ‘some’ people practicing this odious way of life.
    He was jailed for burning books belonging to a school of thought , not the Koran, but a school of thought. Now when the populace of any country can be attacked for burning a non-religious book, then question should be asked about the regime in place. Seeing as Mauritania is almost 100% Islamic, the answer to my question can be found in how Islam suppresses any freedom of expression by playing the victimcard. Yet not only does the bBC not mention any of this, it covers up how Slavery is enshrined as a right in the unholy Koran I quote:
    33:50 – “Prophet, We have made lawful to you the wives to whom you have granted dowries and the slave girls whom God has given you as booty.”
    Can you imagine the outcry from the liberals in the Uk if the Bible still promoted the above. Yet the Koran does and it has many more passages where it is deemed a right for Muslims to have sex with their captives and the bBC tries to cover up this basic human rights abuse by trying to say only ‘some’ people practice slavery in Mauritania
    The bBC, the traitors in our Midst

       38 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:
      June 1, 2012 at 2:23 pm

      Nice one, pounce. It seems blatantly obvious that the guy was burning Mohammedan texts specifically because Islam and slavery are connected there. Yet the BBC refused to make the connection, carefully choosing words to dance around it.

         9 likes

    • wally greeninker says:
      June 1, 2012 at 2:57 pm

      It would be nice of the BBC to emphasise at some point in their muliculti revision of Britain’s horrible history how the British, in the 19th century, stamped out the (almost entirely Islamic) slave trade, wherever their writ ran, in Africa.

         12 likes

    • Henry Wood says:
      June 1, 2012 at 3:04 pm

      There is a report on the BBC site about “Mauritania’s best kept secret” together with “SEE ALSO” links but every one of them dates from 2002 and 2004. So it appears that the BBC decided sometime after the end of 2004 that this best kept secret should remain so.

      Going by the initial report by Pascale Harter http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4091579.stm
      I would have thought this the perfect subject for the likes of “Panorama” to dig deeper into, for we all know how they do not accept the commercial abuse of peoples in the Third World, or at least not when they claim some Western company is guilty of this abuse and “Panorama” proves them guilty by using faked videos.

      So, why did the BBC seem to drop the subject of slaves in Mauritania after 2004?

         9 likes

    • George R says:
      June 1, 2012 at 6:31 pm

      ‘Jihadwatch’ (a month ago):

      “Mauritania: Anti-slavery activists arrested for burning
      Islamic law books justifying slavery.”

      (-includes MEMRI video link.)

      http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/05/mauritania-anti-slavery-activists-arrested-for-burning-islamic-law-books-justifying-slavery.html

         2 likes

    • dez says:
      June 1, 2012 at 8:50 pm

      “Can you imagine the outcry from the liberals in the Uk if the Bible still [?] promoted the above.”

      A bit like this you mean?

      “When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment.” Exodus 21

      Or this?

      “When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property.” Exodus 21

      Or this?

      “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ.” Ephesians 6

         0 likes

      • Demon says:
        June 1, 2012 at 10:26 pm

        And in what Christian countries do they actually follow these laws on slavery?

           13 likes

        • dez says:
          June 2, 2012 at 1:42 am

          Perhaps you should think about that next time you / or someone you know buys a t-shirt from Primark for £5.

             0 likes

          • johnnythefish says:
            June 2, 2012 at 10:53 am

            The murky practice of moral equivalence, guaranteed to muddy the waters, is still alive and well on Planet Left.

               14 likes

          • Reed says:
            June 2, 2012 at 2:32 pm

            Tut tut. You’ve been taken in by that fake footage on Panorama. You need to be less trusting of the sacred national broadcaster.

               4 likes

          • RCE says:
            June 2, 2012 at 3:43 pm

            I can assure you Dez that those people who haven’t yet reached the sweat-shop stage of economic development (known by serious people as ‘industrialization’) are eager to do so at the earliest opportunity. That is because when you and your family are starving, working very hard for very little money is better than not working and having no money.

            You see most humans beings don’t have the monocultural, decadent and arrogant luxury of your relativism, Dez.

               10 likes

      • Dave s says:
        June 2, 2012 at 12:17 am

        The Koran is the literal unchanging word of God. It cannot be revised or altered. If you don’t know this then I suggest you consult an Iman. It is not a book as we in the Western tradition understand that word. You are ,as most of this benighted Western generation do, trying to confuse the issue by comparing what should not be compared. The only person you confuse is yourself.

           8 likes

        • dez says:
          June 2, 2012 at 1:20 am

          “The Koran is the literal unchanging word of God. It cannot be revised or altered.”

          The Koran is interpreted in many different ways which is why there are so many different sects within Islam (with members of those sects frequently arguing amongst themselves).

          Just as it is within the numerous branches of Christianity [they all believe in the Bible – they all think it means something different].

          Bear in mind you are writing on the blog of David Vance – who uses a Bible quote from Genesis to justify his support of the death penalty.

          Kind of inconvenient that, isn’t it!

             5 likes

          • chrisH says:
            June 2, 2012 at 2:10 pm

            Apologies Dez!
            I pressed the wrong thing in error.
            I do NOT like what you`ve said-how the hell do I remove this grievous error.
            I`ll say it again…this “Like” button was pressed in error by me, CJHartnett..
            Sorry to everybody who thinks there`s some eejit that thinks this comment is “liked” by anyone outside Dez` orbit of weirdness.

               6 likes

          • Reed says:
            June 2, 2012 at 2:39 pm

            …but followers of Islam DO believe the Koran to be the written word of God. Thus the harsh penalties for even the slightest of criticism and the harshest of all for apostasy. The same cannot be said of Christianity, but I’m an atheist so what do I know.

               6 likes

          • RCE says:
            June 2, 2012 at 3:50 pm

            How many versions of the Koran are there Dez?

            And how many versions of the bible?

               4 likes

      • TigerOC says:
        June 2, 2012 at 8:57 am

        Dez this has to be one of your classics.
        Christianity; belief in the teachings of Christ. The clue is in the name.
        The quote comes from Exodus and shows context and the evolution of Christianity out of Judaism but is not the basis of Christian teachings or a Christian way of life.

           10 likes

        • Sophie B says:
          June 2, 2012 at 12:44 pm

          And there I was thinking that the Old Testament was still a canonical text of Christianity. Silly old me. Seriously, condemning the entirety of Islam on the basis that the Koran contains a few dodgy sentiments is cretinous. The Bible contains approving accounts of child murder, rape and slavery, for goodness’ sake. If you think that all Muslims regard every word of the Koran as binding and unalterable you simply don’t know what you’re talking about. 1100 years of Islamic jurisprudence would suggest otherwise. Muslims who’d treat the Koran in this way are about as representative of Islam as David Koresh was of Christianity.

             3 likes

          • chrisH says:
            June 2, 2012 at 2:06 pm

            There goes Dez…grease and oil, landmines which are merely whoopee cushions…but revealing profound ignorance, allied with a need for attention.
            Dez-it`s said above, but I know you`ll not get it if it was tattooed on your forehead…but the Old Testament is called just that for a reason.
            The Ephesians bit is Paul…not Jesus…and comes from the time of the Roman Empire…and not an imperative I feel inclined to go around applying.
            You are gutless if you equate Judeo-Christian scriptures with 9/11 Islamist fundamentalism in regard of slavery.
            Neither Israel, not Western Europe condones slavery, even though hypocrisy is rampant at times-but I can say this without either of us getting beheaded, you blockhead.
            Bring your ballbearings and grease gun to Riyadh for a few days, and then come back and tell us that slavery is not alive and well-Fridays in chop-chop square is a good place to see what happens to Filipino maids or Bangladeshi/Sudanese coolies that upset the Sheikhs and those who supply the women, drugs and booze for them.
            You`re beneath contempt Dez-grow a pair and learn the difference between the threat to you from a Muhammad Atta and a Giles Fraser will ya?

               8 likes

            • Sophie B says:
              June 2, 2012 at 2:54 pm

              I’m not Dez and I have a degree in theology. I’ve also studied the history of early Islamic jurisprudence in some depth. Why don’t you go and pick a fight at the Anti-Fascist League or something. They’re more like your intellectual level.

                 1 likes

              • RCE says:
                June 2, 2012 at 3:53 pm

                What about later or contemporary Islamic jurisprudence, Dez… Er, I mean Sophie?

                   5 likes

              • johnnythefish says:
                June 2, 2012 at 5:07 pm

                And so…enlighten us all as to how Islam spread so rapidly in the Arab lands and beyond up to, say, um, the Crusades? Very peacefully, presumably. And the Dhimmi laws? Just a slightly inconvenient added extra to your daily life if you happened to be Jewish, maybe.

                   7 likes

              • chrisH says:
                June 2, 2012 at 5:23 pm

                We`ll be wanting our fees back then, if you really have an -ology.
                Astonishingly ignorant and patronising.
                If you have your Qu`ran to hand, do check Surah 9.24-9-basically, they`re at war with the likes of you.
                I`ll probably be alright, being a person of the Book…and male as well.
                Let`s hope that stiff`kit of yours and all those years of Islamic Jurisprudence will save that (covered) head of yours-indeed, there are many interpretations of the Qu`ran, but you should not have been taught any of them according to those cheery chaps of the Taliban.
                They`ll not be too pleased at the “intellectual level stuff” either, and tend not to wonder what the anti-Fascists have got to say…their “Islamofascism” tends towards indifference, in the case of me and you-if only you`d shown up to those lectures, you might be worth further instruction.
                We`ll let the other Surah about your like wait ,eh?

                   8 likes

              • Andrew Johnson says:
                June 2, 2012 at 8:59 pm

                Dear Sophie, I also am a practising theologian. It’s great that you have studied early Islamic jurisprudence, but I’m sorry to say, it’s no longer relevant to contemporary Islam. It is accepted by all followers of the Prophet, that Allah dictated the Qur’an in Arabic, word for word. It is therefore the immutable unchanging word of God for all time. That there are different intrepretations of minor specific passages is not in dispute. However, any Muslim who ignores what any part of the Qur’an says is guilty of blasphemy. So your friends would certainly not make their views publicly known at their local Mosque. Currently Islam is increasingly moving to a literal fundamentalist reading of the Qur’an. The problem for a lot of Westerners is they don’t understand that Qur’an believing Muslims, including those who take Jihad to include physical violence against all infidels, implicitly believe that they are carrying out the very commands of God himself. That is what inspires and justifies all their actions.
                I’m fairly certain that your lecturers would have taught you that when disputing, it’s always best to do it through logical argument rather than resort to insults.

                   7 likes

      • Andrew Johnson says:
        June 2, 2012 at 8:20 pm

        Galatians 3:28
        There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. = Equality for all in Christ.
        It is a generally accepted tenent of Christianity since the Reformation that the Old Testament should be read in the light of the New. Jesus taught that If you want to be great in the Kingdom of God then you must learn to put the needs of others first and be a servant to all. Interesting to note that when the Devil was tempting Jesus in the wildnerness he misused Scripture, and three times Jesus corrected the misuse by quoting the correct Scripture. How many Christian slaves have you come across in your lifetime Des?

           6 likes

  4. Reconstruct says:
    June 1, 2012 at 9:59 am

    Here’s my problem. I stopped watching the BBC News years ago – it was simply beneath me. I stopped listening to the Today programme a few months ago, because, really, why would I want to start my day with that.

    I now get my news from Channel 4 and the internet, basically, although for economic stuff I’ve got Bloomberg. So where’s the loss? Only this: that the absence of a credible source on domestic political news leaves open the possibility that I’m ignoring important stuff.

    The case in point is the Leveson Enquiry. Now, it’s weeks, possibly months, since I switched off about this, and the sheer interminable tedium of it, combined with the distaste I feel for the Guardian/BBC/Labour Party nexus that’s driving it (after literally decades of sucking up to Murdoch). As of now, the only thing I want to hear of the Leveson Enquiry is that it’s over.

    But there’s this niggle. What if there really was some serious wrongdoing here. I’m not talking about the ‘closeness’ of the relationship between the government of the day (of whatever colour) and the Murdoch empire, but something really bad. Something that would shock and surprise me?

    Because, as of now, I’m pretty sure it’d just pass me by in the wash of prejudice and party politicking that has characterised the mainstream coverage. Does the BBC realize that once you lose sufficient credibility, you represent a real threat to the democratic accountability you claim to uphold and to monitor.

    For me, they’ve got there with their coverage of Leveson. It worries me.

       60 likes

    • 1327 says:
      June 1, 2012 at 11:57 am

      I wish I could help you but sadly I can’t. I stopped watching the BBC TV news a couple of years ago then Radio 4 news last year before finally tiring of MSM news in its entirety a few months back. These days I avoid Sky News , C4 and rarely read a newspaper.

      The problem with the MSM is the feeling that they are covering “news” I read about months ago in various blogs. The recent crisis in Greece and Spain which seem to have come as a bolt from the blue to the Beeb and 90% of the MSM were covered last year in Richard North’s EU Referendum blog. Now the MSM seem to be finally realising that the Coalition government hasn’t cut spending at all but has increased the debt. Again all of this was in 4 or 5 of the blogs I read last year.

      I would advise you to start using Google Reader and find some good blogs to read.

         22 likes

      • Henry Wood says:
        June 1, 2012 at 3:22 pm

        “I would advise you to start using Google Reader and find some good blogs to read.”

        Quite agree. I have a list of blogs I run through each morning and keep tabs on all day:
        Guido / Biased BBC / EUReferendum / Witterings from Witney / Raedwald / Cranmer / Your Freedom and Ours.
        Reading those seems to keep me au fait with what’s going on at home and serious things abroad. (And not a word of an Eastenders boob job/footballers misdemeanours, wives, girl friends/Reality TV or any other rubbish which clutters today’s MSM.)
        During the afternoon I might while away an hour or two flipping through newspaper sites and have even left the odd comment at the Daily Mail.
        I last had the TV on many months ago though I honestly now forget what it was I wanted to see – definitely not BBC “News” or current affairs programs. My radio is now tuned mainly to Classic FM and BBC Radio 3, thought at night I listen to Radio 4 tuning in at Midnight for Big Ben (when will they get rid of that, I wonder?) but only listening with half an ear to the news as I read my bedtime book. I tune back out of Radio 4 after the Shipping Forecast (ex mariner).
        I’ve also purchased a Roberts Internet radio which has wordlwide access to all sorts.
        My greatest grouse is being forced by law to pay for the BBC though I use very little of their services. I would happily subscribe to Radio 3 but the rest could go whistle, *especially* Humphrys, Naughtie & Co., in the mornings. (And the World At One is not much better!)
        There – got that off my chest. Ready for a peaceful and BBC-free weekend.
        Keep up the good work Biased-BBC!

           15 likes

        • Nicked emus says:
          June 1, 2012 at 7:19 pm

          So where do you get your political balance? It seems you are in a classic filter bubble. Your news sources are all from the same part of the political spectrum, and indeed feed off each other. All of your news sources are right wing, and from a particularly trenchant corner. They are also not subject to any fact checking or other editorial process. They are also highly-selective in the items they chose to write about.
          Where do you get news that challenges, rather than simply reinforce, your existing views? certainly not here. There is no challenge on this site.

             4 likes

          • Fred says:
            June 1, 2012 at 8:15 pm

            Yes, a bit like someone who listens only to the BBC.

               20 likes

          • Henry Wood says:
            June 1, 2012 at 8:16 pm

            Would that be the same sort of fact checking and editorial process which saw the BBC publish a photo taken in Iraq in 2003 and claim it was a photo of corpses in Houla taken last week? Challenges like that I can do without.

               19 likes

            • Nicked emus says:
              June 1, 2012 at 10:26 pm

              “Would that be the same sort of fact checking …” Yes, exactly that, because it was corrected. Who corrects mistakes here?

              “Yes, a bit like someone who listens only to the BBC.” Exactly — source your news from a variety of places.

              The great thing about the internet is the ability to get comment and news from a variety of different places. Now there is no excuse not to.

                 1 likes

              • Demon says:
                June 1, 2012 at 10:48 pm

                I assume you have lurked here awhile as I believe you’ve been coming on here under different aliases recently. I’m sure “Nicked Emus” is an anagram of something that I can’t be bothered to work out – probably “Sick nude me” or something. Whatever, I believe you have been on here long enough to see a whole variety of sources linked to here, including the screaming nutcase lefties like the BBC and Guardian. Normally to show how bad they are, but at least both sides get an airing – unlike the afore-mentioned extreme left-wing media outlets do.

                   11 likes

              • Henry Wood says:
                June 1, 2012 at 11:00 pm

                In an organization the size of the BBC with its huge budget, slapdash errors like the one mentioned should be rarer than hen’s teeth. They are not.
                They fit the news to their agenda and that photo was another example.
                I am almost seventy, my politics have been the same all my life. I was an avid listener to the BBC most of my life at home and when working overseas. I no longer trust the organization. I have not changed my lifetime views but the BBC has changed. By all means let their pundits voice their views but it must be balanced with opposing views to ensure balance and impartiality as their charter states.
                And as for your view that news should be challenging – NO! NEWS SHOULD BE FACTUAL! It is the commentators who should be challenging, NOT the reporters.

                   16 likes

                • Nicked emus says:
                  June 2, 2012 at 11:35 am

                  Yes news should be factual (a lesson, by the way, that the Daily Mail appears to have forgotten in the way it editorialises on its news pages), but there is news selection. If you take this site as an example, there is a dramatic over-representation of certain subject areas. If you go to sites that all talk about the same subjects then they will, of course, appear to be more significant than when compared to a broader range of topics.
                  Observer bias is very strong.

                     5 likes

          • 1327 says:
            June 2, 2012 at 9:52 am

            I also read several of the independently minded “lefty” blogs. Chris Dillow’s “Stumbling and Mumbling” plus the “Yorkshire Ranter” both contain good stuff you won’t read elsewhere.

               0 likes

          • chrisH says:
            June 2, 2012 at 2:17 pm

            Nah!
            Don`t think that I`m the only one who is doing penance for being a useful idiot back in the late 70s and up `til 1997.
            Since then, the scales have fallen from my eyes-and all I said and thought back then turns out to be mainly shit.
            That I keep getting my face rubbed in it by fellow stooges and fools who have learned nothing from life, Blair, Maastricht, Gore, Toynbees and Huttons, Hari s and Penneys really annoys me-especially if my taxes are being used to ensure the likes of me are first against the wall if we don`t scrape before GW/EU/Islam as they all do.
            Don`t be scared pal…the learning curve needs to be begun -and quickly!

               5 likes

          • David Preiser (USA) says:
            June 2, 2012 at 4:23 pm

            Yeah, I read and source stuff from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the HuffingtonPost, Politico, MSNBC, and CNN. Totally trenchant right-wing outlets, the lot of them. Not.

               4 likes

            • Nicked emus says:
              June 3, 2012 at 12:25 pm

              @David Preiser That sounds like a wise policy — sourcing your news and comments from a wide range of places. My comment was to the person who said they read only a selection of right-wing blogs and a newspapers with a strong right-wing bias

                 0 likes

          • johnnythefish says:
            June 2, 2012 at 5:12 pm

            Easy. We all get our political balance from the BBC.

               2 likes

    • Deborah says:
      June 1, 2012 at 12:24 pm

      I still listen to the BBC but with always the question ‘is this making sense?’. Usually the answers to that question appear here, Guido or political betting by reading the comments as well as the posts. There is the risk of bias by ommission that the BBC does so well but of course those of us still listening there miss that too. I find the comments here usually answer many international questions but there are other good blog sites if you look.

      My husband would love me to give up the Today programme on the alarm as he says it raises his blood pressure for the rest of the day and could we listen to Classic FM instead!

         15 likes

    • Harry says:
      June 1, 2012 at 1:06 pm

      The second I hear Leveson I instinctively switch off. It has been going on for months now and I cannot think of one significant finding.

         19 likes

      • Curbishly says:
        June 2, 2012 at 12:09 pm

        There is a finding. The “finding” is how the BBC and The Guardian are working hand-in-glove in order to prevent competition from Murdoch. The BBC has an almost monopolistic market and is trying to prevent that from being lost.

        Simples.

           10 likes

    • johnnythefish says:
      June 2, 2012 at 11:10 am

      And it’s not just the news/current affairs programmes. Whenever I turn to Radio 4 there is nearly always a leftie theme to the fore, whether it’s racism, gay rights, multicuturalism, global warming, ‘the cuts’ etc. etc., it’s an endless stream of leftist propaganda – even The Archers which has become a bizarre Pythonesque satire. Similarly with their choice of ‘guests’ – carefully restricted to a pool of Islington (or in the case of Billy Bragg – country mansion) bien pensants.
      Wears you down after a while, so you just give up listening. Great shame, really, as there are some excellent, intelligent programmes on there, but it only takes one gratuitous ‘….as a result of climate change’ and the off button gets the clunking fist treatment.

         11 likes

      • chrisH says:
        June 2, 2012 at 2:24 pm

        I don`t live a million miles for the estate of Sir William of Bragg.
        I reckon he gets sent to London using a vacuum sealed contraption akin to those old money-chuting ones once used in department stores.
        How else do we not hear the “bellicose quacks” of Britains most “challenged” self-educated bard whenever he schleppes up to the Cotwsolds, Hampstead, Hay or anywhere befitting our velvetteened maestro of Guthrie toothpicks and Seegers shoe scrapings.
        Woiuld anyone book the bugger for the third weekend in July…or else he`ll cloud over Tolpuddle.
        Does Wigton need a Ronald MacDonald that weekend I wonder?…any other schemes to get him out of Dorset for mid-July will be greatly appreciated!

           7 likes

  5. As I See It says:
    June 1, 2012 at 10:01 am

    Mr Hunt played Leveson with a pretty straight bat yesterday. Consequently the star BBC bowling attack of tricky spinners are retreating disappointed back to the changing room. Their attitude was typified by John Pienaar who was warning that there was no smoking gun even before Hunt took the stand.
    So where the BBC leaves off Ms Harman is brought on to continue the attack.
    Only Michael Gove had the nerve to question the rules of the game. How is it that where certain journalists were found to be breaking the law we end in a position of an unholy alliance of the Labour Party, left-leaning Liberals, BBC, Guardian, a liberal Judge, the Daily Mail et al getting togother to force Murdoch money and investment out of the country?

       41 likes

    • starfish says:
      June 1, 2012 at 10:09 am

      I thought Louse Mensch did an excellent job on 5Lite dissecting Harman’s ‘arguments’

      The point about Gordo not resigning despite Damien McBride’s loathsome activities was particularly telling

      As was the point that being responsible for a SPAD’s activities only goes as far as the direction and guidance they are given – if they exceed their brief I don’t see how a minister should be responsible. It is not true of any other walk of life.

      Interesting how Leveson has suddenly dropped down the BBC’s headlines (been low on everyone else’s for weeks)

      The point here is that there was no politician in the UK that did not have an opinion on the Sky proposal. Hunt seems to have done a pretty good job of assembling expert, non-political advice, and taking it.

      The BBC, notably partisan in this whole affair, doesn’t like the way things are going.

         42 likes

    • Andy S. says:
      June 1, 2012 at 7:27 pm

      Ah, yes, the Daily Mail. The paper is quite schizophrenic under the editorship of Paul Dacre. Couldn’t bring himself to criticise his good friend Gordon Brown and even published very flattering articles about McDoom while some of his other columnists such as Richard Littlejohn and Melanie Phillips ripped apart the Brown government.

      Dacre wasn’t asked too many hard questions at the Leveson Inquiry regarding his close friendship with Brown which seems strange at an inquiry into the relationships between politicians and the press.

         10 likes

  6. Umbongo says:
    June 1, 2012 at 10:07 am

    The BBC is loyal to its chums, particularly to those left of centre (are there any others?). Otherwise, why would our national broadcaster persist in giving airtime – this time round on HIGNFY tonight – to Alastair Campbell. Michael Howard’s evisceration of Campbell on Newsnight to a silent (for once) Paxman should have definitively ended Campbell’s BBC career or, indeed, any of his further involvement in decent society. But no, he continues to flourish, particularly at the BBC where it seems they can’t get enough of his particular brand of gutter politics and “humour”.

       28 likes

    • Guest Who says:
      June 1, 2012 at 10:47 am

      Speaking of Newsnight, I have missed their blog since it was disappeared in favour of a move to twitter and FaceBook for reasons of … well, no good reason at all.
      Twitter is of course a waste of space. They can control the RTs so it’s a pure bias filter, and of course they can also block.
      I was prepared to tolerate FaceBook, despite its limitations, because it seemed, at least, more ‘open’.
      Today I have discovered that is also not the case.
      In fact, it is worse.
      Before if you were referred or House Ruled, there was a record, and advice and an opportunity to appeal.
      Now you and your comment simply… ‘disappear’… if not fancied. That… is freaking creepy.
      I only noticed when a subject came up in another thread and I went back to refer to one I had posted that was relevant… and it was simply no longer there. I know where it was because these days I page grab as well as cut & paste.
      Coincidentally, today is the deadline for an appeal I am making to the Trust who soon meet for their June gathering.
      I have added the above to other feedback that demands answers, including their setting a team of snoops around the internet (to such as this blog) to try and tie critics throughout the blogosphere to those who also bring complaints to the heart of their vipers nest.
      I have used no more than facts, pages grabs and, more often than not, their own BBC URLS.
      I have told them that ‘belief’ that they are getting ‘it about right’ will not be adequate.

         17 likes

      • Roland Deschain says:
        June 1, 2012 at 1:13 pm

        “I know where it was because these days I page grab as well as cut & paste.”

        What a sad indictment of the trust one can put in the BBC to play fair that you should feel the need to do that.

           6 likes

        • Guest Who says:
          June 1, 2012 at 1:24 pm

          Amen.
          It was a ‘fool me once…’ situation that lead to it.
          I made a complaint on a story, but by the time the weasels had got around to ‘investigating’, other weasels had ‘evolved’ it so what I was originally complaining about did not, as far as the left hand was concerned, exist… so they were not obliged to pursue any further.
          Now I keep as many A/V records as I can.
          And, as I know the BBSTASI do monitor posts here, I have on occasion kept back things (if not to the substance of a main complaint) to see how deep a hole they will dig in default cover up, and have seldom been disappointed. Hi guys!

             8 likes

      • johnnythefish says:
        June 2, 2012 at 11:15 am

        Think ‘Ministry of Truth’. We half-joke, but it is beginning to become cause for serious concern.

           6 likes

  7. Pounce_uk says:
    June 1, 2012 at 10:34 am

    How the bBC have overtaken the NAZIS in promoting Anti-Semitism
    Israeli and Palestinian killed in Gaza border clash
    An Israeli soldier and a Palestinian have been killed during an exchange of fire along the Gaza border. The Israeli army said that the Palestinian cut through the border fence and opened fire on Israeli troops, who then shot back. The incident comes after several months of relative calm along the Gaza border, a BBC correspondent says. There are reports that there was heavy mist in the area making it easier to approach the fence undetected.
    So, the bBC reports on more trouble between Gaza and Israel. Lets look at how the bBC in reporting a story about how a gunman sneaked into Israel and opened fire on soldiers.
    For a start, they always report on how Israel says, thus promoting this view that actually we can’t actually verify if they are speaking the truth. This practice of subliminal propaganda is also used by the bBC when reporting on NATO in any Islamic country.
    Then the bBC reports that this incident comes after several months of relative calm. Really? How about the story how 2 IDF soldiers were shot from across the border with Gaza last week. How about how 10 rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza in April and 3 in May and lets not forget how In recent months, there has been an increase in hostile activity along the Israel-Gaza border, including the planting of explosive devices, shootings, and RPG fire. Yet according to the bBC its all quiet on the Western Front.
    Now lets look at how the bBC reports on the IDF follow up to this terrorist infiltration into Israel.
    Residents of southern Israel, quoted by the Associated Press, said they heard gunfire in the early morning and heard Israeli helicopters circling in the air. They also said tank shells were fired into Gaza that set fire to fields.
    Yeah nasty jews overkill as always using tanks in which to punish innocent Muslims for the actions of one man. But something didn’t seem right, I mean the Islamic terrorist sneaked in during a heavy fog, so how could fields be set alight when they would have been soaked in dew. (The action took place at 4am) So a quick search on the Palestinian news found the exact same story but with a slight difference, I quote Ma’an news agency:
    The Israeli army said in a statement the Palestinian was “infiltrating Israel from the southern Gaza Strip (and) opened fire at IDF soldiers, who responded with fire,” which killed a Golani soldier and the Palestinian.Local witnesses heard shooting near Abassan, a border village in southern Gaza that is also close to the Egyptian frontier. They said Israeli forces set off smoke bombs to obscure the view as helicopters landed at the scene.
    Get that, so as to prevent the effective targeting of Israeli helicopters as they landed close to the border, the Israeli military set off smoke to provide cover. The bBC rewrote that to say Nasty jews set fire to Palestinian land in revenge. Even the Nazis could have learnt a thing or two about promoting racial hatred from the so called impartial bBC.
    The bBC, whose pro-Islamic terrorist coverage has given rise to the highest rate of Anti-Semitism since WW2

       46 likes

    • Demon says:
      June 1, 2012 at 10:42 am

      That’s shocking Pounce, even for the BBC! Where are the defenders of the indefensible?

      Scotty, Dez, Jim Dandy, any other lefty sheep – where are you? And how do you excuse this coverage? Hurry up please, we know you are reading this and we want to know how you can spin this vile BBC racism.

         24 likes

      • Louis Robinson says:
        June 1, 2012 at 1:39 pm

        The decision on what angle to take on any given Israel story must be made by editor(s). Do we know who these men and women are and what their political and religious stance is? The bias against Israel is so blatant that I fear foul play in the newsrooms of our trusted national broadcaster.

           16 likes

        • NotaSheep says:
          June 1, 2012 at 1:47 pm

          When I complain about anti-Israel bias on the BBC news website, replies usually come from:
          ‘Tarik Kafala
          Middle East editor
          BBC News website’

             14 likes

          • David Preiser (USA) says:
            June 1, 2012 at 2:34 pm

            To be fair, they did have two useful Jews as correspondents in Israel for a while: Katya Adler and Tim Franks. That didn’t change anything, really, just gave the BBC an amulet against criticism (even though they claimed that wasn’t why they hired the Jews). They’ve both since moved on. Franks is now a sports correspondent, and I’m not sure Adler even works for the BBC at this point.

               2 likes

            • Daphne Anson says:
              June 2, 2012 at 7:15 am

              Based in Paris, Katya Adler covered the French presidential elections recently.
              I did not find her particularly fair when she reported from the Middle East, and neither did Melanie Phillips and Honest Reporting, among others.
              She is, after all, on record as saying that Jeremy Bowen is her journalistic mentor.
              Franks seemed OK.
              If there is a BBC reporter who is consistently impartial and fair in his reporting on Israel/Palestinians, that man is surely Paul Wood, an excellent reporter imho.
              (I hope I don’t have occasion to eat my words!)

                 2 likes

          • Umbongo says:
            June 1, 2012 at 2:46 pm

            At least he’s not an Israeli so there can be no suspicion of any bias. BTW is this the same Tarik Kafala who wrote this 2003 report on Hamas’ Qassam rockets? Completely impartially the gist of the article is that 1. not many Jews were killed so what’s all the fuss?: and 2. the Israeli response was disproportionate (although that theme hadn’t yet been introduced in all reports of the Israelis defending themselves)?

               10 likes

            • David Preiser (USA) says:
              June 1, 2012 at 3:18 pm

              Ah yes, the old “X number of Jews need to die before Israel can respond” meme. Haven’t heard that one in a while.

                 10 likes

              • Louis Robinson says:
                June 1, 2012 at 8:35 pm

                David, the term, if I remember is, “appropriate response”. (Whatever that is). This is closely allied to “a disproportionate level of force” – usually by the good guys against the bad guys.

                   5 likes

          • wally greeninker says:
            June 1, 2012 at 3:15 pm

            Apparently he originally came from Libya:
            “Tarik Kafala returns to the country he left as a child,” (a ‘from our own correspondent’ piece with a photo of him)

            http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16070835

               5 likes

          • RCE says:
            June 2, 2012 at 12:29 pm

            That’ll be the same Tarik Karfala who is willing to speak of the Arab Spring countries as democracies, but not Iraq.

            Can’t think why that would be…

               3 likes

      • Demon says:
        June 2, 2012 at 12:49 pm

        Dezzie. I asked for you to comment and explain away the BBC’s blatant anti-semitism. You havee failed to respond. Why?

        You have been busying yourself further down this thread with irrelevant comments, where you are immediately corrected. Why did you not answer this clear request for a justification?

        If you do finally decide to respond it will be that “the BBC are not being anti-semitic because Arabs are semites too” or some other tautological absurdity. Just please answer a main point for once!

           4 likes

    • Pounce_uk says:
      June 1, 2012 at 2:05 pm

      I see the bBC in typical hate the jew mode have changed the headline of the above story to read as:
      Two killed in Gaza border clash

      Get that, two killed, the bBC in typical Islamic terrorist cover up mode , gives the slightest information and that information that it does give, points in the direction of the IDF killing two innocent Palestinians (As only the bBC can remake the terrorists of Islam)

      The bBC, mouth piece of Islamic terrorism at the British taxpayers expense

         16 likes

      • David Preiser (USA) says:
        June 1, 2012 at 2:35 pm

        Now that’s just silly. What’s the point of shortening it like that?

           1 likes

    • Andrew Johnson says:
      June 1, 2012 at 4:39 pm

      Mr. Pounce of the UK you are a reporting star! When is someone in authority ( or concerned citizens with access to a legal team) going to start investigating the anti-semitic reporting of the BBC with a view to prosecution via stirring up religious hatred. It’s getting worse by the day and it needs to be stopped.

         13 likes

  8. SteveB says:
    June 1, 2012 at 10:40 am

    Interesting (and depressingly typical) to hear the wretched Webb this morning, questioning William Hague about the lack of “fairness” in his policy of refusing to supply the Syrian rebels with arms, given the Russians’ willingness to arm the regime.
    Is one to suppose that he wants to see the streets of that country running with blood as a result of a nice “fair” fight?

       23 likes

    • Demon says:
      June 1, 2012 at 10:46 am

      They just want an excuse to attack the government for getting involved in another “illegal” war. Basically, they attack the government for not intervening, but will attack the government for intervening if they eventually do.

      A very clever policy this. Blame the government whatever they do. And if they do ultimately go in, they can add an accusation of U-turning as well.

         22 likes

      • uncle bup says:
        June 1, 2012 at 11:03 am

        yes, the pretrendy left are very dilettantish when it comes to their causes.

        Witness how much shrieking they do on Guantanamo (not Castro’s prisons there but the other one) and the Pallies but almost completely ignore, say, Darfur and 300,000 dead and counting (except no-one’s counting).

        Did I say ‘dilettantish’?

        I meant ‘rank hypocrisy’.

        My bad. 🙁

           15 likes

      • Fred Bloggs says:
        June 1, 2012 at 2:12 pm

        Better start dusting off the dodgy dossier and insert the relevant clauses. Oops forgot Labour and the bBC are not in power.

           9 likes

    • chrisH says:
      June 1, 2012 at 6:59 pm

      Good points sir…and Webb is at his most wretched when he pleads for “fairness” from the likes of Syrias Assad, the Chinese, the Russians and all manner of Islamic snakes in the Arab scrub grasses.
      In the mind of this Beeboid with a pith helmet-it`s up to whitey to play fair, act fairly, arm the opponents of Assad so it`s a fair fight. In short, give them all the rules of the Eton Wall Game, and sit back with the tiffin.
      How Hague doesn`t swat the likes of Webb , once and for all; only shows how pathetic and cringing the Tories are these days.
      Wonder if Webb would go and make up the numbers by personal example…to balance the teams as it were, and reduce the handicap to Assads opponents…believe they stop the throat-cutting for cucumber sandwiches at 4pm for ten minutes Justin!
      Yet I guess that Webb does not want either himself or his lads to facilitate fairness wherever it is perceived to be somewhat in short supply…but would happily send a few squaddies under 25….they`ll not be listening to the Toady Show, so won`t harm the ratings should they be somewhat unfairly butchered.
      What a Webb we weave…when all the Beeb can do`s deceive( Taliban Poets Anthology 2012)

         8 likes

    • johnnythefish says:
      June 2, 2012 at 11:49 am

      No mention, presumably, of what The League of Arab Nations might be doing about it. I’m sure they have a rifle or two in a cupboard somewhere.

         2 likes

  9. uncle bup says:
    June 1, 2012 at 10:48 am

    Anyone familiar with Tonight On The Big Wheel Nikki and his interviewing technique viz –

    mossies, wimmin; emote/ sympathise/ burst into tears: everyone else -interrupt/ crack stupid joke/ corpse at stupid joke

    would have smelled a large rat this a.m. when he dealt rather forensically (in its loosest description) with Louise Mensch finishing with

    ‘yerburworrabout section 3.3?’

    Section 3.3 ???

    Pudding proof that he was sat there with an email in front of him from Labour HQ entitled ‘Lines of Attack For Mensch Interview’.

    Needless to say because she’s way smarter than him (and the Labour Party) she swatted them all off.

       17 likes

    • chrisH says:
      June 2, 2012 at 11:14 am

      Thanks for the tip here, Mr Bup as well as our other Radio5 testers!
      Thanks to the Harman/Mensch reference somewhere here, I got a wonderful little foretaste about the future of the BBC….as portrayed by Campbell and Derbyshire.
      The Campbell bit was a turgid Scot playing God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols….the BBCs idea of a good rebellion, even though Rotten proudly walks his OWN path, and not the BBC/Guardians.
      The next hour was the usual slew of bores and chippy types sneering at the hagiography and cringing toadying about the Queen.
      Oddly enough though, I stumbled upon Derbyshire 50 minutes into her show…and she gave over 20 minutes near enough licking Gordon Browns boots and more besides, I`d imagine.
      Don`t think I`ve ever heard cowardice described as courage, dereliction of duty as an MP as being the mark of a real Parliamentarian or sheer economic madness and incompetence described as mere bad luck, before.
      The bit about a reluctant Brown being slyly shoehorned into the economic train crash by nasty Uncle Tony is a masterpiece of Kim Jong Il standards.
      5 Live therefore slates a granny who has selflessly worked for 60 years to hold the God-forsaken EU Landfill together-for doing nothing, for being a drain on the public purse and for being unaccountable and remote.
      But celebrates the nastiest, most venal do-nothing featherbedded hypocrite who pissed our kids inheritance into Damien McBrides chamber pot-who actually DOES nothing but hide away in Scotland being a useful role model to dads on an estate.
      Castro, Chavez…if any of them ever got twenty minutes of State-sponsored rimming, fisting as Brown-tongued as this…I`d be pleased to know of it.
      Imagine Brown will be giving a portakabin to his 300th Twitter follower , when he stops throwing his things around at the likes of the Queen.
      “The BBC and the Guardian-“they make you morons, potential H-bombs”.
      How true ,Sir John of Finsbury Park!

         9 likes

  10. will says:
    June 1, 2012 at 11:17 am

    On Newsnight last night Essler continued with the BBC’s inability or reluctance to separate NoW hacking from the BSkyB affair. This was displayed by that grand dame Norman Smith between coughs when confronted by the No10 spinner. “Milly Dowler” they whine as justification for their obsession with all matters relating to the “Murdoch Empire”.

    On Newsnight “Tory” Daniel Finkelstein claimed that the public were not that interested in Hunt. “Milly Dowler” retorted Gavin.

    BBC continuing to conflate the 2 strands of the NI story does smack of a wish to ensure that the half-attentive public is left with the feeling that Cameron knew all about NI’s crimes & misdemeanors from day 1.

       22 likes

    • starfish says:
      June 1, 2012 at 11:31 am

      More to the point why hold Cameron responsible for the past 2 years when he initiated the enquiry and not lambast New Labour when they were in power for 13 years and did absolutely nothing about it?

      I still maintain virtually no-one has been hurt by this phone ‘hacking’ (I don’t see it as hacking if anyone is terminally stupid enough to not reset factory default passwords on their voice mail, or permit embarrassing voicemails to be left on a voicemail with virtually no security)

      But there are plenty or real crimes going uninvestigated while this huge diversion is going on

         28 likes

      • uncle bup says:
        June 1, 2012 at 1:06 pm

        agreed – minor breaches of The Telecommunications Act here, minor bungs to plod there, and a bit of big whoop perversions of the course of justice.

        Fine, let the law take its course, don’t subcontract 170 detectives to it, don’t have a pointless show trial costing a ridiculous amount of money, and most germane to this site – don’t have the ‘world’s greatest broadcaster’ (paid for not by the world but by us mugs) leading every news bulletin for a year with it.

           17 likes

  11. will says:
    June 1, 2012 at 11:38 am

    Does this headline make the NHS seem super-efficient
    NHS ‘too quick to resuscitate’? I would consider the inquiry’s conclusion that a third of hospital patients’ cardiac arrests could be prevented by better care as the more telling statistic.

       10 likes

    • DavidLamb says:
      June 1, 2012 at 1:24 pm

      Note the insertion of 77 as the age when DNR orders are best implemented. As always, the BBC turns a health story into a plea for euthanasia, passive in this case

         10 likes

    • Restoring Britain says:
      June 1, 2012 at 7:23 pm

      I watched this being reported on on Breakfast this morning and saw them make that 38% claim about arrests being preventable.

      The report on the BBC omitted one word in their coverage which put a very different slant on it.

      The word missing is “potentially”.

      Makes a difference doesn’t it?

         4 likes

      • chrisH says:
        June 1, 2012 at 7:48 pm

        You could tell by Radio 4s take on this story that-not enough old people are being allowed to die-despite their clear expressed wishes.
        When a doctor gave reasons for why this might not be as it seems to the BBC (i.e more senior doctors that might save the patient, the fact that the case can change in a trice etc)…this didn`t seem to satisfy the Beeboid.
        The BBCs euthanasia fantasy comes a little closer-these bloody doctors are getting too good, and those free licenses are beginning to anchor us to missed revenue streams.

           4 likes

  12. Betty Swollocks says:
    June 1, 2012 at 11:51 am

    The BBC are a load of old left wing poo…sorry just fancied saying that.!!Happy Jubilee to everyone.

       18 likes

  13. As I See It says:
    June 1, 2012 at 11:55 am

    The BBC need to keep screaming Milly Dowler!
    They do this whenever Leveson goes off the boil.
    Frankly considering the good Judge’s long, slow, ponderous and often alarmingly inconcise interventions, I don’t imagine that his eventual conclusions are going to set the world aflame with excitment. The BBC will have to work very hard to spin his report.
    The harping on Milly Dowler certainly smacks of being a little ‘tabloid’ for the self-righteous Beeb but they can’t rely on any other tactic. Norman “but Labour say….” Smith and his anti-Conservative arguments came over as a puffed up joke.
    So we ought to ponder where would the BBC Guardianista elite be without the labour tribal vote?
    This is an interesting question because – I would contend – it lies at the very heart of BBC bias. The pinko liberal elite have a love affair with all things red because otherwise they would be out in the cold – shown up to be a tiny unrepresentative minority.
    If you want a glimpse of that trendy minority exposed by the desertion of the blind rank and file died in the wool labour followers just look at the results of the AV referendum.

    (Funny how this has been expunged from all debate but I’m going to keep on banging on about it)

    According to Guardian sources from 440 areas voting there were “Yes” vote majorities in just 10 districts : Cambridge, Camden, Edinburgh Central, Glasgow Kelvin, Hackney, Haringey, Islington, Lambeth,
    Oxford and Southwark.

       13 likes

  14. will says:
    June 1, 2012 at 12:03 pm

    The BBC licence fee should be abolished for all on a state pension, unemployed and in full time education studying away from home.This should be wholly funded by the BBC

    http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/33814

    I’d be all right, Jack!

       6 likes

  15. noggin says:
    June 1, 2012 at 1:39 pm

    can t find anything el beeb on Warsi on her all expenses,(oops! touchy subject), jolly in Indonesia. i wonder why
    😀
    If you look at the pictures in the mail, makes you wonder which country shes supposed? … to be representing?, by the look of them its … Pakistan or maybe the OIC
    (fetching hijab, and huge sunglasses, nearly a burkha 🙂
    just right attire for erm … modern/moderate Indonesia eh!

    Irshad Manji is having second thoughts on Indonesia,” Jakarta Post
    Lady Gaga cancels Indonesian show after threats,” Associated Press,
    Moderate Indonesia: 17 churches closed in Sharia province
    Jakarta Globe

    the link
    daily mail
    http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=warsi%20indonesia&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CBUQqQIwAg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailymail.co.uk%2Fnews%2Farticle-2152994%2FBaroness-Warsi-visits-Indonesia.html%3Fito%3Dfeeds-newsxml&ei=ULPIT8eHJMzB8gOfrLkM&usg=AFQjCNHLSbWDljOvD3mHIYmQEl0aHzToHQ

       7 likes

    • noggin says:
      June 1, 2012 at 1:46 pm

      adage

      http://youtu.be/-eKpgX2AFw4

         3 likes

    • uncle bup says:
      June 1, 2012 at 2:14 pm

      I got plenty of time for Warsi – one of the very few tories prepared to sock it to Labour and the general public rather than feeling the need to be all ‘modern’.

      ps http://www.tinyurl.com

      😉

         7 likes

      • noggin says:
        June 1, 2012 at 6:13 pm

        have to agree to disagree there then.
        I have no time at all for an unelected OIC plant, who has an obvious agenda
        and far too much sway.

           8 likes

        • noggin says:
          June 1, 2012 at 6:22 pm

          actually i don t mind her jetting over, i just wish it was a one way ticket.
          ps
          i wonder if she, jumped straight in, in Aceh, and fiercely defended, the christians being terribly persecuted, and the 17 churches closed, because of abhorrent sharia law.

             7 likes

  16. Backwoodsman says:
    June 1, 2012 at 1:43 pm

    Congrats to DV and team for putting in the time and effort to bring the bbc to book. Great job guys (and Sue !)

       16 likes

  17. Pounce_uk says:
    June 1, 2012 at 2:42 pm

    Exposed the Hatred the bBC have for anything British
    (Except so called British citizens who have had a holiday in Cuba)
    A universal plug socket… at last?
    Three pins. Two pins. Slanting pins. Straight. Circular. In a world where there is no global standard for plug design, taking electrical items abroad can be fraught with difficulties. But now a solution may be at hand – and already in use in China.
    An innocuous article about electrical plugs you think. Nah this is the bBC and their so called Global business correspondent, ‘Peter Day’ cannot help himself from poisoning the minds of anybody who cares to read his so called business report about how the Brits are evil and how everybody hates us. I quote:
    “There are also mighty British three-pinners with an enormous earth socket that seems rarely to be used, themselves a 1950s replacement for several curious smaller three-pinners which must have dated back to the days when electricity was invented. Australians and New Zealanders have their own three-pin plugs to keep the “Poms” (and everyone else) at bay.”
    So according to dick splash, the British plug is archaic . However during a recent trip to China he opines:
    All this is a long-winded way of expressing my delight the other day when I found in my bedrooms in two new hotels in China a simple all-purpose wall socket that took the plugs of many nations – including those of the UK. I have not previously encountered such a thing in years of travel. It is wonderful not to have to struggle any longer with those converters that never exactly fit, or fail to have a vital hole or pin. It is normally discovered only when a shave is vital or a flat battery urgently needs a recharge to enable recordings to continue. Oh, what pleasure to plug in my three-pin British plug the other evening in Inner Mongolia, so very far from home.
    So what could have brought this about?
    Since China now includes Hong Kong, Hong Kongers travelling to their own land needed to be able to use the three-pin plugs they inherited from all those decades of British rule, instead of the two- or three-pronged flat Chinese plugs.
    Ah so!, Chinese immigrants who migrated to Hong Kong for work, on visits back to the mother country not happy with carrying plug sockets have instead got hotels in the areas they visit to fit multi-function plug sockets so they can carry on as normal. So how does dick splash explain this?
    So the UK three-pin plug has taken China by stealth, in a last gasp of British imperialism. What a slogan: “One socket, two nations.” Or even: “One socket for all.”
    Last gasp of British Imperialism? Says the bBC dickhead of a reporter. Hang on, didn’t he say the plug socket he used could be used by numerous plugs from around the world:
    when I found in my bedrooms in two new hotels in China a simple all-purpose wall socket that took the plugs of many nations – including those of the UK.
    So really is this really about British imperialism winning the day, or more about the Chinese thinking lets accommodate our foreign guests, by fitting multifunction plug sockets into the wall that nobody can walk . To the bBC, it’s a British Imperial conspiracy to take over China. When in fact all it is ,is a simple practical solution to an age old problem
    The bBC, the traitor in our midst.

       11 likes

    • George R says:
      June 1, 2012 at 3:09 pm

      This is not a plug for the BBC.

         8 likes

    • Roland Deschain says:
      June 1, 2012 at 3:27 pm

      ”One Socket to rule them all,
      One Socket to find them,
      One Socket to bring them all,
      And in the darkness bind them.”

         8 likes

      • Barry says:
        June 1, 2012 at 3:33 pm

        Is that from Lord of the Ring Main?

           6 likes

        • NotaSheep says:
          June 2, 2012 at 11:51 am

          It’s a trilogy:
          The Fellowship of the Ring Main
          The Two Powers (AC and DC)
          The Return of the Three Pin King

          There is of course the follow up – The Simmaringmain

             2 likes

    • Barry says:
      June 1, 2012 at 3:31 pm

      Imperialist mains plugs? Strewth.

      In actual fact, the shuttered socket is a good design, if a little on the large size. Countries without shuttered sockets have had to resort to blanking plugs to make them safer – something which has been mindlessly copied here. Unfortunately, these child proof elf ‘n safety measures can make the sockets less safe by retracting the shutters and leaving gaps for children to insert paper clips and such like.

         5 likes

    • Millie Tant says:
      June 1, 2012 at 4:33 pm

      It’s a reasonably interesting subject but that reads like one of those filler articles which Beeboid correspondents seem to have to provide when they really have nothing to report and nothing better to do. They also seem to have too much space to fill. That should have been cut down to size by an editor, if only to spare the writer his descent into embarrassment and triviality with stock reference to British imperialism and empty musings about stupid slogans.

         4 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:
      June 1, 2012 at 4:43 pm

      Surely it’s no more Imperialist than the BBC forcing their way into every single media market in the world, trying to “spread influence”.

         7 likes

    • johnnythefish says:
      June 2, 2012 at 12:00 pm

      ‘Poms’, ‘British Imperialism’ – then we wonder why the BBC are selective with their version of history.

         4 likes

  18. George R says:
    June 1, 2012 at 2:54 pm

    BBC-NUJ reprints UK criticism of ‘green’ E.U farm subsidies.

    BUT, BBC-NUJ’s political chums, ‘Friends of the Earth’ (subsidised by E.U)
    get the last word, of course.

    “MPs criticise ‘green’ EU farm-subsidy conditions”

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18263737

    ‘Taxpayers Alliance’ (2011):

    “Tell the EU Commission to stop spending our money subsidising environmentalists”

    http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/eu/2011/02/eu-commission-stop-spending-money-subsidising-environmentalists.html

       4 likes

  19. David Preiser (USA) says:
    June 1, 2012 at 3:14 pm

    The other day, I posted about Mark Mardell being unhappy about the President’s “Kill List”, which He uses to personally choose who will be killed by a drone strike (or, presumably, other methods, like shooting an unarmed Bin Laden in the face). One of the big concerns about the drone attacks is that they’re also used to kill US citizens without trial or due process of law.

    So I found this on the White House website rather amusing:

    We petition the obama administration to:
    Create a Do Not Kill List

    The New York Times reports that President Obama has created an official “kill list” that he uses to personally order the assassination of American citizens. Considering that the government already has a “Do Not Call” list and a “No Fly” list, we hereby request that the White House create a “Do Not Kill” list in which American citizens can sign up to avoid being put on the president’s “kill list” and therefore avoid being executed without indictment, judge, jury, trial or due process of law.

    I assure you it’s quite real. The White House geniuses decided last year to give the public the ability to speak their mind, and to create petitions on issues for the President to consider. All part of that alleged transparency and direct connection to the people He’s so great at, yeah. As far as I’ve been able to find out, only one of these petitions has ever resulted in anything other than an Administration official writing a response assuring everyone that the President had heard their concerns and would get it about right. I paraphrase, of course, but read this and tell me it doesn’t remind you of something from the BBC Complaints Dept. I guess it’s nice that the people have a way to make their voices heard, sort of, but I always thought the point of a petition was to get some action done, not just to get a “thank you for your concerns” from some official.

    The one result (that I know of) was the President adding someone from the National Guard (who carry a very heavy burden in Iraq and Afghanistan) to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I don’t know if this was going to happen anyway, regardless of the petition, but the Administration acts as if that was the case. Which, I have to admit, is nice.

    But somehow I doubt this latest petition is going to change anything.

       4 likes

  20. Henry Wood says:
    June 1, 2012 at 3:33 pm

    WAIT FOR IT

    I surmise a meeting is taking place right now in BBC HQ as to the spin to be put on this story:

    http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/156439

    IDF Retaliates After Deadly Kidnapping Attempt, Mortar Fire

    The IDF shortly after noon on Friday identified a terror squad in Gaza preparing to fire rockets into Israel and scored a direct hit. The Bethlehem-based Maan News Agency said four people were killed and four were wounded in the attack. The strike came less than an hour after terrorists, also operating in northern Gaza, fired several mortar shells into Israel’s Eshkol Regional Council. [contd.]

    The BBC have already reported an earlier incident about a gun battle with a terrorist where one IDF man and the terrorist were killed with the usual propaganda at the end about Israeli disproportianate reactions to such incidents.

       6 likes

  21. alan says:
    June 1, 2012 at 3:45 pm

    Irish vote for austerity…..how will the BBC spin that when Ed Ball’s favourite new refrain is that Europe has had enough of austerity and just wants to go shopping?

       15 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:
      June 1, 2012 at 4:05 pm

      No serious spin here, but at least one of the Narratives the BBC set up on Wednesday in the event of a Yes vote is there. Low voter turnout will mean that it’s not the true wish of the majority (although they don’t come out and say it here). Although at the time, the BBC report I saw certainly said nothing about low turnout helping the No vote.

      They didn’t say this on Wednesday, but it’s also a good excuse: the dominant political parties were on the Yes side, while poor Sinn Fein and the Socialists had far fewer seats. Silly Irish sheep just do what their leaders tell them, I guess.

      There’s a new Narrative put forth by the BBC’s NI Dublin (an oxymoron?) correspondent: a Yes vote is based on fear. Legitimate policy concerns don’t enter into it, of course. Not when it’s not the result the BBC wanted.

         9 likes

      • As I See It says:
        June 1, 2012 at 7:11 pm

        I agree, the BBC appear to have been looking for a “No” vote with which to spin their anti-austerity mantra. 5 Live had Sheila Fogarty (one of their sizable bevvie of plastic paddies) embedded in some pub in Dublin that just happened to be a Sinn Fein hotspot and we learn bucked the trend to vote 90% “No”. Is this balanced reporting? Said it before and will say it again: when the BBC report outside of the UK the political kid gloves really come off.

           11 likes

        • chrisH says:
          June 2, 2012 at 2:33 pm

          I agree sir.
          Yet the Beeb were caught weren`t they?
          Their reflex sucking up to Prodi, Dragi, Borrossa, Ashton and Von Rumpoy was traduced by their Masonic Tendency to back the workers and say no to austerity.
          So-like other dilemma like Islam or gay, Islam or women etc, etc…the BBC adopts its lofty head in the clouds, head in the sand techniques.
          A time of reflecion-time to think it over as the global warming loons knit us some tumbleweed and use blow football straws to send it across the BBCs screensavers.
          In short-an eerie silence, and awaiting commands from Gramsci College…or the Guardian.
          Kicked into to marram grass….oh, but up the Provos in the interim!

             3 likes

  22. wally greeninker says:
    June 1, 2012 at 3:51 pm

    Surely there’s a rough and ready American tradition that ran parallel to that of due process: what about those ‘wanted dead or alive’ posters you see in westerns? – and it wasn’t just racists in the deep south who went in for lynchings. Personally I think heads of state should be allowed at least an element of discretion about ordering killings in the murky world of informal jihadi warfare, particularly since the enemy’s main tactic of choice is to commit acts of mass murder. Surely American citizens who join their ranks have become enemy combatants.

       6 likes

    • Henry Wood says:
      June 1, 2012 at 4:11 pm

      I agree with you, Wally Greeninker, that heads of state should have that option open to them, but what sickens me is the nauseating hypocrisy from Democrats and the Left when Bush was in office and such options were used.
      Just like they apply different standards to Israel compared to its enemies, they apply totally different standards between Democrat and Republican Presidents. (Just like wot the BBC do too!)

         9 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:
      June 1, 2012 at 4:37 pm

      On the battlefield, yes. But not just bombing US citizens on a whim, based on the same kind of intelligence information everyone said was bad when Bush was in charge. Whether we agree with the policy or not, this is not the Hope & Change the BBC told me was going to happen. ‘

      Four years ago, He said this:

      “The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

      Only now He’s doing it all the time. And I thought The Obamessiah was supposed to redeem us from the Cowboy stuff?

         8 likes

    • Reed says:
      June 2, 2012 at 3:14 pm

      From the Telegraph…

      But while Bush tortured foreign soldiers, Obama has killed American citizens. He has expanded the scope of the war by launching strikes into sovereign territories to massacre communities that pose a largely existential threat to the US. When the Prez signed the National Defense Authorization Act, he extended he right to indefinitely detain to US citizens. One whistleblower at the NSA recently asserted that Obama is, “Worse than Bush. I have to say that. I actually voted for Obama. It’s all rhetoric for me now. As Americans we were hoodwinked. He’s expanding the secrecy regime far beyond what the Bush even intended, interestingly enough. I think Bush is probably like, “Whoa.”

      http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100161507/barack-obamas-war-on-terror-is-nastier-and-less-ethical-than-george-w-bushs/

         2 likes

  23. George R says:
    June 1, 2012 at 4:05 pm

    “Calls over ‘abused’ government credit cards”

    Do Beeboids have government credit cards too, or do they just spend our money as though they have?

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18291615

       8 likes

  24. George R says:
    June 1, 2012 at 4:23 pm

    “Liberty Lost”

    by Diana West.

    http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2133/Liberty-Lost.aspx

    The woman convicted is white, so BBC-NUJ uses this headline:

    “Race rant which saw woman jailed”

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-18252672

       13 likes

    • Mice Height says:
      June 1, 2012 at 5:40 pm

      Great article. I’m currently piecing together a letter to my local M.P., Jeremy Hunt, to ask why they are over seeing this two-tier police and judicial system, and exactly what they hope to achieve by doing so.
      I’ll post his side-step, err, I mean his ‘answer’.

         8 likes

  26. George R says:
    June 1, 2012 at 5:56 pm

    INBBC: – NOT understanding Islamic jihad infiltrating murderers in AFGHANISTAN (and globally).

    INBBC is unable to understand why Muslim Afghan jihadists infiltrate Afghan ‘security’ forces and murder Western troops.

    “British servicemen voice fears over Afghans they train”

    Of course, there is not a single reference to ISLAM, MUSLIMS, JIHAD, KAFIRS.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18280345

    An analysis which INBBC censors:-

    “A First Step”

    by Bill Warner

    http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/a-first-step/

    and:

    ‘The Basics’

    by Bill Warner.

    http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/the-basics/

       2 likes

  27. Pounce_uk says:
    June 1, 2012 at 6:15 pm

    How the bBC rewrites History to support its leftwing bent.

    RFA Fort Rosalie in Havana to mark 250 years of British rule
    A British Royal Navy ship arrived in Cuba to mark 250th anniversary of the capture of Havana by Britain. In 1762, British forces took control of Havana for just 11 months before swapping with Spain the port city for a part of Florida.
    The above is a story about how the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Fort Rosalie (Not Royal Navy bBC, but RFA) is carrying a port visit of Havana to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the capture of Havana by Great Britain. But nowhere in the article does the bBC mention why the British took Havana. So if you knew nothing about History the impression you would get from the above is the UK ruled Havana for 250 years and that this was typical of British Empire building.
    And here is what the bBC don’t tell you, Cuba was ruled by Spain. In Europe a huge war was on going with Germany (her then various states) Great Britain and Portugal on one side and Austria, Spain, France, Sweden, and Russia on the other. It was known as the 7 year war and if anything was the first real World War. You know that war where General wolf took Quebec , which lead to the annexing of Canada into the British empire. The same war which saw the British defeat the French in Calcutta, Senegal and Gambia.
    You know that war where after the French captured the British Island of Minorca they thought they could do the same to Great Britain however after a number of sea battles where the French came off third best . They decided to call it a day and look for somebody a little softer to invade and thus they invaded Portugal (Along with Spain)
    Yet the bBC doesn’t mention any of the above instead they promote this view that Great Britain just jumped on the Cubans for the sake of it.
    The bBC, the traitors in our Midst.

       18 likes

  28. Merlin says:
    June 1, 2012 at 7:32 pm

    Hi folks,

    Just to say that be you Monarchist or no, I sincerely hope you all get a wee chance to be proud to be British this weekend with the Jubilee celebrations. I, myself, never hesitate to put the Union Jack up in the old window to show my love for my country once in a while; mind you, my neighbour’s a bit of a left wing busy body tosser so she’ll probably accuse me of voting BNP lol!
    Anyway, have a good weekend everyone, I’m off to the pub!

       22 likes

  29. Pounce_uk says:
    June 1, 2012 at 8:15 pm

    So here I am looking around the country at different stories (In which to find gems the bbC keeps from the main page) and I come across this story:
    Prison absconder linked to second robbery
    A second robbery is being linked to a man who failed to return from day release at an open prison. Eithan Teanby, 40, absconded from HMP North Sea Camp in Boston on 21 May.Detectives wanted to speak to him about an attack on two members of staff at a post office in East Common Lane, Scunthorpe, the same day.During the post office robbery the two staff members, a man and a woman in their 60s, suffered serious injuries after being hit with a weapon.

    So a thug in jail for violent crimes has taken up violent robbery after not returning from day release the other week. The latest being how he severely beat up on two 60 year olds with a weapon and who does the bBC worry about:

    Teanby is believed to be taking prescription medication and there are concerns he may not have access to his required dosage.

    Ah bless, the bBC isn’t bothered about his victims , only violent thugs gain their pity.

    The bBC, the traitors in our Midst.

       9 likes

    • dez says:
      June 2, 2012 at 7:04 am

      ” ‘Teanby is believed to be taking prescription medication and there are concerns he may not have access to his required dosage.’ Ah bless, the BBC isn’t bothered about his victims, only violent thugs gain their pity.”

      The quote about Teanby possibly not taking his meds is from the Nottinghamshire Police website, and is a pretty obvious warning that he may be dangerous / acting irrationally.

      How you equate from that, that the BBC; “isn’t bothered about his victims”, is anyone’s guess…

      Do you not have access to your required dosage?
      ;p

         3 likes

      • chrisH says:
        June 2, 2012 at 9:58 am

        Classic Dez.
        Obtuse, and deliberately missing the point.
        Do consider what this bloke did to a couple of pensioners…and reflect on what exactly you are here for.
        There`s enough ball bearings on the floor-life is already difficult enough-without your aimless controversies.

           9 likes

      • RCE says:
        June 2, 2012 at 1:30 pm

        ‘The quote about Teanby possibly not taking his meds is from the Nottinghamshire Police website, and is a pretty obvious warning that he may be dangerous / acting irrationally.’

        1. I think the bit about him beating the crap out of two people is a rather more “obvious warning” of this, Dez.

        2. The BBC still chose to include this unreferenced quote in the all-too-often limited space available, and must concomitantly accept responsibility for doing so.

        3. Apropos 2. above, this is one of those police statements – along with the use of the word ‘white’ in the description – that gets the Beeb’s approval, like ‘no race/cultural element to [Pakistani Muslim] sex gangs grooming young [white] girls’, but in notable contrast with descriptions of non-white criminals, and anything related to, say, Mark Duggan.

        4. Good to see you out, dez. And equally satisfying to see your posts are of the same lamentable standard as ever.

           5 likes

  30. Merlin says:
    June 1, 2012 at 8:22 pm

    Some stats which the BBC don’t want you to see regarding the ethnicity of those who’ve committed crime in London…

    Click to access Charges%20by%20ethnicity.pdf

       10 likes

    • Span Ows says:
      June 1, 2012 at 8:40 pm

      Incredible really! 51 – 52% of all those crimes from a group that covers just 10% of the population (Black pop. in London, countrywide it’s only 3%)

         12 likes

      • dez says:
        June 2, 2012 at 2:18 am

        Typical lazy racism:

        “51 – 52% of all those crimes from a group that covers just 10% of the population”.

        No; It comes from 0.1% of “that population”.

        Is that really how you judge the character of the remaining 99.9%?

           1 likes

        • Barry says:
          June 2, 2012 at 8:15 am

          Having lived in part of London where white people were tarred with the same brush following the murder of Stephen Lawrence, I know all about “lazy racism”.

          People who willingly identify themselves as belonging to racial group can hardly complain when others do the same.

             14 likes

        • RCE says:
          June 2, 2012 at 1:43 pm

          Dez – based on these stats I’d like to live with my family in an area with the highest possible number of Japs, Chinese and SE Asians.

          As a result I can only honestly answer the quandary you pose with the word ‘yes’.

          The takeaways and schools will be much better, too.

             6 likes

        • Henry Wood says:
          June 2, 2012 at 4:22 pm

          Typical Left wing twisting of a poster’s words by Dez.

          The poster says more than half the crimes are committed by “10% of the population.”

          Dez says, ‘ “No; It comes from 0.1% of “that population”.’

          So Dez claims the poster is racist by talking of “that population” yet the poster wrote no such thing.

          Dez, are you now, or have you ever been, in the employ of the BBC? (Or trained by them to twist words?)

             5 likes

          • RCE says:
            June 2, 2012 at 4:33 pm

            That’s perhaps the main problem with Dez’s posts. Absolutely everything is wrong with them. The underlying world view and rationale is so twisted it is akin to a disease.

               5 likes

        • johnnythefish says:
          June 2, 2012 at 5:27 pm

          Please explain exactly what is racist about that post?

             2 likes

          • Reed says:
            June 2, 2012 at 6:06 pm

            In some people’s minds, inconvenient truths can indeed be racist, and should therefore be suppressed. It doesn’t stop them from being true, just inconvenient to those people’s world view.

               2 likes

    • Harry says:
      June 1, 2012 at 11:04 pm

      The first part specifically refers to the London disorders. Interesting. Could it be that all of these “racism” complaints against the Met could be a result of a vastly disproportionate number of ethnic minorities being arrested for crime? No, Never! Those figures are truly shocking.

         9 likes

    • Fred Bloggs says:
      June 2, 2012 at 10:58 am

      The ratio of 5:1 keeps coming up. Over representation in the Prisons, over representation on stop and search. The ratio stays constant, about the same as their bleating that they are being picked on because of their colour. ‘INIT’.

         13 likes

      • Fred Bloggs says:
        June 2, 2012 at 11:04 am

        Just thought the real name for this is ‘An inconvenient truth’; Al Gore got the name of the film right, he just picked the wrong subject.

           10 likes

  31. Dave says:
    June 1, 2012 at 8:48 pm

    This one is classic BBC:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-18280365

    Interesting how we only get to find out about the traveller aspect of the guilty family from quotes by the judge. Nowhere in the article does the BBC themsleves state these facts. Absolutely pathetic.

       6 likes

  32. Steve says:
    June 1, 2012 at 8:58 pm

    http://gaiusmarcellus.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/unacceptable-links-between-labour-and.html

    New Labour & The BBC; Architects & Cheerleaders of the destruction of “Great” Britain.
    Have a good weekend everyone, we have a load of Union Jacks & various pro Monarchist / Imperialist bunting all over the outside of the house so no doubt will end up in the gulag by the end of the weekend.

       13 likes

    • johnnythefish says:
      June 2, 2012 at 6:26 pm

      Great link. The ‘smoking gun’, if ever one were needed, which proves that Labour and BBC are, in fact, one and the same.

      Imagine the outcry if similar links could be proven between the Tory party and, say, Fox News (had to use an American news channel as we don’t have a right-wing equivalent here, strangely). The BBC would be like a Jack Russell with the loose sole of a tramp’s shoe.

         1 likes

  33. George R says:
    June 1, 2012 at 9:29 pm

    Decoding skills are needed to understand this BBC-NUJ politically censored report; key words are omitted:

    “Rochdale: Child safety ‘not guaranteed’ in care homes”

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18264112

       7 likes

  34. As I See It says:
    June 1, 2012 at 10:13 pm

    Tonight on BBC2 I caught up with Michael Wood’s happy clappy The Great British Story : A People’s History.

    The Anglo-Saxons were, I am reassured, ‘poor migrants who came to Britain for a better life’.

    I was just chuckling at that and wondering whether I was about to hear that the Viking invaders were really asylum seekers when I was was told ‘the Vikings came for the same reasons as the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons – for a better life’.
    Just to round things off Wood went on to assert that those poor old Vikings left their native lands because they were subject to political and population pressures. So there you go, they were just like modern asylum seekers.
    Now I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!
    This is not history, this is a televised primary school level multi-cultural propaganda leaflet.
    Mind you, all is not lost. Perhaps Michael Wood could liaise with Jeremy Paxman for another look at the British Empire. Maybe those British slavers and colonialists who went to Africa and India were afterall just poor migrants in search of a better life?

       26 likes

    • Merlin says:
      June 1, 2012 at 10:20 pm

      Yeah mate, I happened to catch a few minutes this programme and quickly realised that the BBC were up to their old tricks again by denying the English a true identity; in other words it’s subtext was one of uncontrolled immigration and that there is no such thing as an indigenous English people.

         16 likes

      • Merlin says:
        June 1, 2012 at 10:22 pm

        Please excuse the typos and poor punctuation as I’m drunk and have a drink in one hand whilst typing with the other.

           7 likes

    • Harry says:
      June 1, 2012 at 10:59 pm

      Well said. I failed to watch this week after last weeks travesty. Good to see someone else is keeping track of the bias.

         7 likes

    • Umbongo says:
      June 1, 2012 at 11:20 pm

      I seem to remember – from my primary school history lessons 60 years ago – that Hengist and Horsa (leaders of the Anglo-Saxons) were invited here by the then King of the Britons (Vortigern?) to help him fight his enemies. Unfortunately for the King and, even more unfortunate for his people, H&H and their tribes liked it so much here that they stayed! A strategic error of the first magnitude but, at least, Vortigern was trying to preserve his kingdom and defend his people.
      Michael Wood appears though to have failed to draw the lesson or make the comparison with more contemporary events. 1,500 years later, another “king” of Britain, King Tony (with his consort, the lovely Queen Cherie) invited another alien horde to Britain to help his Labour tribe against its enemies. This time there was no fighting and the native Britons were defeated before they knew they were even in a war: betrayed by their “king” and becoming strangers in their own land.
      Just legends of course but, on reflection, I don’t think Michael would dream of making that comparison. Although it’s only a story, the contemporary legend is too near the truth for it to be considered for broadcast by the BBC.

         21 likes

    • johnnythefish says:
      June 2, 2012 at 6:34 pm

      We should start to be very worried by this habitual re-writing of history by The Party – sorry, BBC.

      ‘Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth’. (1984)

      Coming soon to a television station near you ‘The British Empire – the story of a nation of immigrants and asylum seekers who conquered the world’. (Not)

         2 likes

    • Whitman says:
      June 2, 2012 at 6:57 pm

      This may be simplistic, but this independent website gives both reasons – that they were invited or that there land flooded often and so they had to come to find better land. Maybe, since 60 years ago and ‘Umbongo”s history lessons, new research has been done and perhaps it has been ascertained that this was the reason. It’s a bit of a leap to presume that it’s propaganda, is it not, when there is legitimate historical theory behind it, instead of the BBC trying to re-write history. Perhaps history just has a left wing bias.

         0 likes

      • Whitman says:
        June 2, 2012 at 6:58 pm

        Sorry, this website:
        http://www.chiddingstone.kent.sch.uk/homework/saxons/why.htm
        Independent of the BBC, and the only sources easily findable on the Anglo Saxons are a little childish, given when it’s taught in schools.

           0 likes

      • Umbongo says:
        June 3, 2012 at 11:32 am

        I’ve no doubt that the history I was taught was incomplete. After all, this was primary school and not Oxford. However, it’s an historic fact that H&H and the Anglo-Saxons came here and stayed. The reasons for their staying were, obviously, that things were better here than at home (else they’d have gone home). Why they came in the first place may be debateable but an invitation + an easier life seem to fit the bill.
        Nevertheless, the point I was trying to make (and evidently failed to do) was that Wood (and most of the other BBC frontmen and women dealing with our ancient past) can be relied on to push the standard BBC line about our antecedents: that the English are “mongrels”, that we’re made up of a succession of immigrant “communities” and , hey, whaddya know, all those immigrations since 1945 are only a continuation of that process.
        I observe that: 1. this is not so: those ancient tribes, the Celts, the Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons were related – and recognisably so (the offspring of a terrier from Newcastle and a terrier from Torquay are terriers, not a new breed of dog) 2. “immigration” of peoples from the continent into England stopped around the middle of the first millenium and the Normans were descendants of the Vikings after all (the clue’s in the name); 4. the immigrations of the Huguenots and the Jews were pretty small-scale. Even the substantial Jewish late 19th century immigration peaked at around 400,000 over, what, 20 years – a pin-prick compared to the major “surgery” of the last 70 years.
        I further observe that the immigration since 1945, unlike the others of the past 1,500 years has been massive in scale and highly disruptive to social peace. Furthermore it has been used – or deliberately introduced – to foment that disruption. Looking back over my life, it seems to me that the benefits (and there are many) of post-WW2 immigration to the settled population of 1945 and their descendants have been far outweighed by the financial and other costs, and the social destruction of that immigration. The BBC is forever bigging up the benefits and ignoring the costs and (more to the point) blaming those costs on the indigenous Brits.
        My point is that Wood would not dream of making that comparison between the Anglo-Saxon and the recent immigration: or, more likely, if he dreamt of it, he would be prevented from doing so.

           0 likes

        • Whitman says:
          June 3, 2012 at 12:08 pm

          I think it’s all a matter of perspective and what you see. There’s always an anti-immigration-ist on the BBC, whether it’s Farage or a Tory MP or minister. I can’t say I agree that the BBC paints England as a mongrel, especially around this time when there’s little coverage of non-patriots or Republicans. The BBC is proud to be British and doesn’t give your impression, in my view. If that’s what history is, and if historians are giving us the view that immigration helped Britain in the past, then we should read around it and find out more. That’s surely the point, you don’t just take history in any form as definitive, you have to read around and examine the sources on their merit, and see what conclusions can be drawn.

             0 likes

    • George R says:
      June 2, 2012 at 9:01 pm

      WOOD seems to fall into these student traps in his approach to ‘history’; but they serve his political purpose.:-

      “Finally, well-written historical narratives can also alert students to the traps of lineality and inevitability. Students must understand the relevance of the past to their own times, but they need also to avoid the trap of lineality, of drawing straight lines between past and present, as though earlier movements were being propelled teleologically toward some rendezvous with destiny in the late 20th century.

      “A related trap is that of thinking that events have unfolded inevitably–that the way things are is the way they had to be, and thus that individuals lack free will and the capacity for making choices. Unless students can conceive that history could have turned out differently, they may unconsciously accept the notion that the future is also inevitable or predetermined, and that human agency and individual action count for nothing. No attitude is more likely to feed civic apathy, cynicism, and resignation–precisely what we hope the study of history will fend off. Whether in dealing with the main narrative or with a topic in depth, we must always try, in one historian’s words, to ‘restore to the past the options it once had.'”

      http://www.nchs.ucla.edu/Standards/historical-thinking-standards-1/3.-historical-analysis-and-interpretation

         2 likes

  35. Umbongo says:
    June 1, 2012 at 10:40 pm

    A little aperçu concerning the de haut en bas attitude of one of the BBC “greats”:
    In tonight’s London Evening Standard John Humphrys flaunts his holier than thou ego by stating that he’s quite happy to be paid his £375,000/year BBC salary as a direct employee rather than through a personal service company. Fair enough, although we are not told how he deals with the other (greater?) part of his income from books, newspaper articles, personal appearances etc. Furthermore, there’s no mention that Humphrys – who while not a known expert on Greek politics or international finance but who, coincidentally, owns holiday property in Greece – was chosen from all the BBC correspondents available to go to Greece (at the licence-payers’ expense) to front a remarkably uninformative series of interviews with demonstrators and others in Athens.
    In the Standard article Humphrys comments that he won’t be in London this weekend and will in fact be visiting his villa in Greece. He says “I did not deliberately intend to be out of the country at this time, it just happened that way.” Again, fair enough but he can’t leave it there. Oh no! In the typical carping small-mindedness and knee-jerk republicanism we’ve come to expect from Humphrys and the other Today nomenklatura he shows his contempt for the Queen, the Jubilee and (most of) the rest of us in the UK by adding “But I have to say I am not entirely unhappy not to be here. I am not too keen on all that sort of thing“

       11 likes

  36. George R says:
    June 2, 2012 at 7:09 am

    “Azerbaijan foils jihad plot to attack Eurovision”

    ‘Jihadwatch’:-

    [Opening excerpt] –

    “Only in the sixth paragraph does the BBC let slip, and then only indirectly, that these ‘people’ are Islamic jihadists. Why? For whom are they covering, and for what reason?”

    http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/06/azerbaijan-foils-jihad-plot-to-attack-eurovision.html

       6 likes

  37. Guest Who says:
    June 2, 2012 at 7:49 am

    I collect quaint phrases.
    I wonder how long before this one gets absorbed, in its own unique way, into the BBC’s lexicon when what is actually being described just won’t do for what is actually yet more worthless assurances…
    ‘But he is more than just “neutral”’
    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100162100/the-obama-administration-knifes-britain-yet-again-over-the-falklands/
    I think I’ll put that in the ‘genetically impartial’ folder.

       3 likes

    • Louis Robinson says:
      June 2, 2012 at 1:02 pm

      It seems in this modern world, we speak more and more in code. Love the phrase you picked up. It seems a full dictionary should be written on coded language from “confirmed bachelor” to “more than just neutral”.
      My favorite is “British born”. In a BBC report describing “perpetrators” of a crime this phrase now leads me to the same (unspoken) conclusion every time. Fill in the blank.

         5 likes

  38. As I See It says:
    June 2, 2012 at 9:44 am

    Poor old Michael Wood. In the twilight of a long and illustrious career as Beeboid and TV historian (he was once – in less enlightened times – dubbed the thinking woman’s crumpet) he has at last unfortunately gone gaga. Last night during Britain: A People’s History he mistook a BBC memo on multiculturalism and diversity for his archaeological notes and in his confusion declared Britain’s Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Viking invaders to have been ‘poor migrants who came in search of a better life’.

       14 likes

    • As I See It says:
      June 2, 2012 at 9:49 am

      Naturally there is now deep concern at the BBC that this error could be repeated in reverse and Huw Edwards might stumble on Michael Wood’s original script and at 10 o’clock tonight suddenly announce modern Somali asylum seekers to be raiders on the high seas, exponents of slavery, rape and pillage, the sworn enemies of Christendom and would-be colonisers for a foreign creed and empire.

         11 likes

    • 1327 says:
      June 2, 2012 at 9:55 am

      Fascinating ! So do you also suppose he thinks the Boers in South Africa were also “a poor migrants who came for a better life” ? Answers on a postcard please 🙂

         9 likes

    • Guest Who says:
      June 2, 2012 at 10:03 am

      ‘Anglo-Saxon and Viking invaders … ‘poor migrants who came in search of a better life’.’
      Like Private Eye’s ‘tired and emotional’, I suspect ‘rapin’ & pillagin” has become the new ‘celebrating cultural diversity’ in parts of the Northwest and Tottenham (sorry, VD, make that Totnam). Plus, of course, Bush House, White City & Salford.

         13 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:
      June 2, 2012 at 4:20 pm

      King Canute was poor?

         0 likes

  39. chrisH says:
    June 2, 2012 at 11:20 am

    Noting that moderators are taking to their usual media sptos to denounce those of us that use words like “Bliar”, “EUSSR” and “racsist”….non-words and oh-so predictable according to the types who would rather we NOT abuse the likes of Blair and the EU with such composites.
    Therefore Ill be doing far more of them-they seem to get under the Guardians skin, anyhoo!
    I will henceforth refer to Blairs “camp followers” and lickspittle toadies as “Bloopies”…Blair meets groupies.
    Saves me having to name all those BBC/Guardian creeps who slobbered around his Calvin Kleins as he breezed into Leveson to keep us right.

       6 likes

    • Reed says:
      June 2, 2012 at 4:00 pm

      Related…

      http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100162004/a-banned-words-list-for-our-commenters/

      One commenter has your ‘crank it up a notch to frustrate them even more’ approach – which I fully support 🙂

      longlivedeath
      Oh, thank you very much, Mr Chivers. Yet another EUSSR cultural marxism ploy, by another graduate of the Common Purpose school of thinking. This used to be a free country, before the alumni of the Frankfurt School took it over, but of course, we can’t say that sort of thing these days, in this Multi-Kulti ZanuLieBore paradise.
      But you assume the sheeple will just sit back and take this PC-Nazi nonsense. That fine socialist Hitler would be pleased with you.
      Treason. Traitor. Tower of London.
      🙂

         2 likes

  40. Guest Who says:
    June 2, 2012 at 12:14 pm

    David Stockdale ‏@DavidStockdale

    @DanHannanMEP you’re kidding right?! The BBC political editor is about as Tory as a Tory can be!
    I think I sense a new ‘spokesperson of the people’ for the BBC green room ‘guest’ zone of the Force.
    Bet that one gets RT’d a lot, without irony or comment.

       2 likes

  41. wally greeninker says:
    June 2, 2012 at 12:19 pm

    Notice how the nationality of this man is mentioned only half way through the story (tucked away on the Oxford page of the BBC news site .) In fact the guy is a Kurd, and although they get a good press in the west for being pro-American, they in fact shock even most Turks by the way they treat honour killing as virtually their national sport..

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-18295608

    One little fact the BBC does not consider worth imparting to the ladies of the UK:

    “…a British study of family violence (reported by Geraldine Brooks in her book about Islamic women, Nine Parts of Desire) found that women married to men of Muslim background were eight times more likely to be killed by their husbands than any other women in Britain.”

       6 likes

  42. Pah says:
    June 2, 2012 at 1:18 pm

    What’s wrong with the BBC’s Outside Broadcast Team? Over the last couple of days when they have cut to a Jubilee venue the sound quality has been dreadful. Football Focus this afternoon was a joke with exterior sounds cutting in and out.

    Gremlins in the works or just republicans?

       1 likes

    • wally greeninker says:
      June 2, 2012 at 1:51 pm

      They covered a jubilee street party in Brixton this morning on r4: for refugees who have come to this country in the last half century. One interviewee was asked what Britain represented to him. Freedom to follow your own culture and diversity was the unexpected reply.

         6 likes

      • johnnythefish says:
        June 2, 2012 at 7:38 pm

        Well, blow me down! Not shared values of freedom, tolerance, rule of law, equality etc etc. then? Nah, come here to do what suits me, mate – stuff what you lot stand for….

           6 likes

  43. Beness says:
    June 2, 2012 at 1:43 pm

    Watching the Jubilee Celebrations on Sky News. Stuff the BBC.

       3 likes

  44. George R says:
    June 2, 2012 at 1:58 pm

    ‘Impartial'(!) BBC-Democrat’s opening words on George Zimmerman:
    …” charged with the murder of an unarmed black teenager has had his bail revoked and must surrender himself within 48 hours.”

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18304581

       2 likes

    • Pah says:
      June 2, 2012 at 2:14 pm

      From the same article

      In revoking the bond on Friday, the judge said Mr Zimmerman had a responsibility to prevent his wife, who testified at one hearing, and his lawyer from making statements they did not know were false.

      Eh?

         0 likes

    • George R says:
      June 2, 2012 at 2:19 pm

      “George Zimmerman’s Bond Revoked, Ordered to Turn Himself in Within 48 Hours”

      http://www.theblaze.com/stories/george-zimmermans-bond-revoked-ordered-to-turn-himself-in-within-48-hours/

         0 likes

    • George R says:
      June 2, 2012 at 2:26 pm

      “‘Trayvon Martin Day’ Indoctrination in D.C.”

      (2-page article).

      http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/30/trayvon-martin-day-indoctrination-in-d-c/

         0 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:
      June 2, 2012 at 4:17 pm

      The BBC still refuses to report the facts about Martin beating the crap out of Zimmerman. Shameful, but fully expected.

         8 likes

      • Potsdamer says:
        June 2, 2012 at 6:14 pm

        Again, I watched a report on this when it was last in the news, and it gave both sides of the story – the fact that Zimmerman had a bloody nose and had been beaten up. I don’t have a link to it but I remember distinctly the full facts being reported.

           1 likes

        • Guest Who says:
          June 2, 2012 at 7:30 pm

          ‘I don’t have a link to it but I remember distinctly the full facts being reported.’
          Who needs links when we have memories?
          Especially distinct ones.
          It’s such calibre of reporting that can get folk promoted to Heads of Editorial at the BBC.
          Good work that man… person.
          Any qualms I may have are now fully eased.

             3 likes

          • Whitman says:
            June 2, 2012 at 7:40 pm

            Firstly, you know what they say about sarcasm. I am simply saying that from my point of view, this isn’t true, and it’s going to be pretty tricky to find a report from a month ago, just to prove a point. I know that it’s correct, why don’t you search out all the reports on Zimmerman and Martin and prove to me that the BBC are biased.

               1 likes

            • George R says:
              June 2, 2012 at 8:33 pm

              My ‘Comment’ and link above at 1:58 pm today indicates BBC-Democrat’s strong and continuing political bias in reporting this current court case, as shown in its use of such words as: ‘black’, and ‘unarmed’ – words which will not appear on any official indictment sheet.

                 1 likes

            • Guest Who says:
              June 3, 2012 at 8:26 am

              ‘I am simply saying that from my point of view, this isn’t true… prove to me that the BBC are biased.
              Before I do anything, demanded, requested or otherwise, a little clarity still required.
              This seems to follow a post of mine, in turn to a post from a person named ‘Potsdamer’.
              However the ‘I/me’ following on appears to now be ‘Whitman’.
              Two names new to the blog, I believe.
              But here, beyond some e-schizophrenia, as the two appear not to have appeared before or in any comment flow I can discern from above, care to clarify if one is debating with a team now?
              Because there does seem a lot of it about now.

                 0 likes

              • Whitman says:
                June 3, 2012 at 11:38 am

                Yeah I changed my name.

                   0 likes

                • Guest Who says:
                  June 3, 2012 at 1:11 pm

                  Whitman says:
                  June 3, 2012 at 11:38 am
                  Yeah I changed my name.
                  There’s an entity I coined – Dr. Scezandy from Oslo – which was a homogenised commenter identified more by traits such as two-word snipes, demands for off-topic answers but refusal to answer pertinent questions, flounces, ad homs, cherry-picking, strawmen arguments, [sighs] and of course, the ever useful – in context – referring to ‘all the others’ who have come here in good faith, been disappointed in the massed inability to agree with them, and had to leave.
                  It was meant in jest, but appears to be a real phenomenon.
                  If you can change once so quickly and easily, you can do it again.
                  This makes you very much not worth bothering with in any incarnation you choose on a daily basis, beyond having little to say of value anyway, noting your continued inability to offer any evidence to support your assertions, much less time-supported ones.
                  I’d therefore estimate your contributions here are not sincere and only meant for heat over light disruption.
                  I’d suggest a new name pronto, but would ask the site owners to flag any engaging in this from the same PC to be labelled as serial chameleons.
                  Otherwise it all gets a bit ‘going postal from Tower Hamlets-styly’, with just one very bad apple enjoying more influence than their one-person, one-vote status warrants.

                     1 likes

                • Whitman says:
                  June 3, 2012 at 1:15 pm

                  Well what it was actually, I didn’t want to appear to be from Berlin, no matter how much I wanted to be. It wasn’t intended as trickery, and you still haven’t engaged with the debate, just self pitying moaning about ad hominem and straw man.

                     0 likes

                • Guest Who says:
                  June 3, 2012 at 1:26 pm

                  Well what it was actually, I didn’t want to appear to be from Berlin
                  So you initially plucked ‘Potsdamer’ out of the ether? Uh-huh.
                  What you want to be, appear to be and are seem pretty clear already.

                     0 likes

                • Whitman says:
                  June 3, 2012 at 1:33 pm

                  Yes, I did, as a place I love…

                     0 likes

      • dez says:
        June 3, 2012 at 2:54 am

        “George Zimmerman ‘had broken nose’, medical report says”
        http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18093420

        “George Zimmerman was ‘bleeding from the nose and head'”
        http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18111988

           3 likes

  45. Backwoodsman says:
    June 2, 2012 at 2:23 pm

    Saturday Afternoon and the latest story over at Anna Racoons blog is a humdinger.
    The bbc were sent a photo of rows of dead kids , by a friendly chap in the Syrian oposition, so seeing as how they are so short of staff and run on such a shoe-string budget, they stuck it up in a ‘news story’ without checking the veracity.
    It took some helpful blogger tenm minutes to track it down as a picture from Iraq taken in 2005 !
    Pretty shameful really !

       5 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:
      June 2, 2012 at 4:13 pm

      The photo was trending on Twitter. The BBC had no choice. “)

         5 likes

  46. +james says:
    June 2, 2012 at 3:36 pm

    Next week on the BBC, Michael Wood’s Operation Barbarossa. It is 1942 and poor German migrants travel across Eastern Europe and Russia in search of a better life.

       15 likes

    • RCE says:
      June 2, 2012 at 4:02 pm

      Classic!

         4 likes

    • chrisH says:
      June 2, 2012 at 5:43 pm

      Arf arf!

         2 likes

    • johnnythefish says:
      June 2, 2012 at 7:43 pm

      Brilliant. Keep them coming!

         1 likes

    • johnnythefish says:
      June 2, 2012 at 7:56 pm

      ‘In next week’s programme Michael Wood explores the events of 1066, and how Viking refugees were granted asylum in England following 200 years of internment in northern France.’

         6 likes

      • +james says:
        June 2, 2012 at 8:36 pm

        Next week on the BBC, Michael Wood’s Racist Gauls. It is 52BC, Vercingetorix and his followers launch a series of racially motivated attacks against Community Leader Julius Caesar and his poor Italian migrants who came to France in search of a better life.

           7 likes

  47. noggin says:
    June 2, 2012 at 4:01 pm

    el beeb.
    Victim critical after attack outside Small Heath mosque
    22-year-old man is in hospital with life-threatening injuries after being attacked outside a Birmingham mosque, and 2 …. “men” …… have been arrested
    mosque authorities are co-operating with officers.
    bbc.

    Sri Lankan Muslims say radical??? Buddhists are trying to damage aham “peaceful co-existence” 😀
    between the country’s main ethnic communities.
    bbc.

    a growing militant/aggressive stance by the muslim population, has been very concerning, to all communities in parts of sri lanka for quite a while, strangely not in the el beeb report though

    read much further down the report to find
    “The council said that radical Buddhist elements – against the will of the majority – were consistently undermining ethnic co-existence. It called on leaders of Sri Lanka’s majority Buddhist faith to re-establish good ties. ya da ya da …..
    Mohamed Saleemdeen, a board member of the mosque, denied it was an illegal (UH OH! 😀 ) building.

    He told the AP news agency that it had been there long before the area was declared a sacred zone about 20 years ago. but prominent monks in Dambulla say the mosque is illegally built on ground sacred to their religion … (never heard that one before)
    …… must be the unicorn of islamofauxbia rearing its ugly head.

       5 likes

  48. Millie Tant says:
    June 2, 2012 at 4:51 pm

    MUSIC on Radio 3
    5 00 PM – Jazz Record Requests
    6 00 – 9 30 PM Opera: Dvorak’s Rusalka
    A recording of the Royal Opera’s first fully staged production of Dvořak’s Rusalka. In a radical interpretation by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito, Dvořak’s “lyric fairytale” stars Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund in the title role and Yannick Nezet-Seguin makes his Royal Opera debut conducting the late Romantic score, which features the celebrated aria “Song to the Moon”. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jg7zd
    MIDNIGHT: Geoffrey Smith’s Jazz – the hits of swing bandleader Jimmie Lunceford.
    SUNDAY 11 PM RADIO 2: Sinatra – Voice of the Century.

       2 likes

    • chrisH says:
      June 2, 2012 at 9:10 pm

      Apologies to you Millie!
      I really should have listened to this.
      Instead I found myself listening to Front Row or whatever its called(just before 8pm Sat)…and heard the following.
      “Grayson Perry…an artist fearless in breaking boundaries and taboos discusses his new show on class and kitsch”.
      And here is Grayson Perry-one and same-as quoted in the Times(19/11/2007).
      “The reason I haven`t gone all out on attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat”…from an article “Artists too frightened to tackle radical Islam” just in case Perry isn`t being clear enough.
      Yes indeed folks-the same progressive caste that want boots on the ground in Syria to alleviate inequalities in fairness won`t even draw a cartoon of the Prophet of Peace and Cashews.
      Still eh….he may yet make it into the next edition of Gordon Browns “Heroes of Courageous Daringness” if only he could give an award for something akin to courage in an ITV Award…bound to be another one along soon Mr P!

         2 likes

  49. Guest Who says:
    June 2, 2012 at 5:02 pm

    OK, so it’s a pretty unreliable source (a BBC employees’ book), but some interesting snippets…
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2153434/What-earth-doing-Jeremy-Vine-reveals-Paxmans-words-joined-Newsnight–downhill-there.html
    Beyond the utterly vile human beings described at near every paragraph, I actually liked this one, simply made in passing, most of all…. ‘I put in a call to Tony Hall, head of the 2,500 BBC news staff. He was being chauffeured somewhere..
    Probably between lobbying a politician and an all-expenses lunch.
    Whatever the intention of this kiss ‘n tell, it may not have served any at the BBC well.

       4 likes

  50. David Preiser (USA) says:
    June 2, 2012 at 5:12 pm

    Guess what the BBC is refusing to report now:

    Obama apologizes in writing for ‘Polish death camp’ verbal gaffe

    President Obama has penned a letter of apology expressing “regret” over using the phrase “Polish death camps” in a ceremony earlier this week, which has drawn heavy criticism from Polish officials.

    “In referring to ‘a Polish death camp’ rather than ‘a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland,’ I inadvertently used a phrase that has caused many Poles anguish over the years and that Poland has rightly campaigned to eliminate from public discourse around the world,” Obama wrote in a letter released by the Polish government. “I regret the error and agree that this moment is an opportunity to ensure that this and future generations know the truth.”

    Must have been another nuance of his finely-tuned brain. Still waiting for the BBC to start mocking Him over this stuff like they did to Bush for his less frequent – and less major – gaffes.

       4 likes

    • Potsdamer says:
      June 2, 2012 at 5:58 pm

      I read this on the BBC news website, they published it therefore, so I fail to understand your qualm.

         2 likes

      • David Preiser (USA) says:
        June 2, 2012 at 9:41 pm

        Potsdamer: Link, please? I know the BBC reported the initial gaffe – eventually – but where is the BBC report specifically about this letter of apology? I haven’t been able to find it before I made my comment or since.

           1 likes

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