Author Archives: Andrew

Study these excerpts from today’s news. Excerpt 1:

Britons held in Somali clash

Several British terror suspects have been captured during the fighting in Somalia, it was claimed yesterday.

At least seven Britons are said to have been picked up as they fled with fighters from the Islamic movement when they were forced out of the capital, Mogadishu. The men, all carrying British passports and including one said to have been badly wounded, are reportedly being held by Ethiopian troops.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said last night that it was still waiting to check the identities of the men and establish what the Ethiopian authorities intend to do with them.

Excerpt 2:

Britons may be hurt in US strikes

Reports that seven Britons have been hurt in US air strikes on suspected Islamist fighters in Somalia are being investigated by the Foreign Office.

A spokeswoman said the FO was aware of the reports that “British nationals had been injured and detained”.

But she added: “We do not have British officials on the ground there or actual evidence that they are British.”

The US attacks come amid claims by the Somali deputy PM that some of the Islamists’ support came from Britain.

Using your skill and judgement, can you tell which one is the BBC Views Online view (at a cost of £3bn p.a.) and which is from The Times (at a cost of, er, free). For those few who need help with this quiz (hello Beeboids!), click here for the former, and here for the latter story.

Read the rest of The Times story for an in-depth view of the activities of these British passport holders (as distinct from Britons) in Somalia.

on BBC Views Online’s Entertainment page whenever they think there’s half an excuse to do so, whether it’s an award gained or a minor ratings triumph over ITV or whatever.

Strangely, there’s a BBC entertainment related story just now that hasn’t made it on to Views Online’s Entertainment page. For some reason, Casting Director ‘groped’ actors, has been hidden away in the London/South section at the bottom of the England page, that well known hidey-hole for stuff the BBC feels it ought to report but doesn’t really want anyone to see.

Even within the story, the name BBC doesn’t get mentioned until the fourth paragraph. What’s the betting that if the story concerned an ITV casting director that it would have been on the Entertainment page and that ITV would have been in the headline or at least the first paragraph?

The BBC. It’s what we do…

at the end of last week there were many, many Beeboid references to ‘the Prophet Mohammed’, as if Mohammed was generally accepted as being a, or even the, prophet.

The BBC would, quite rightly, never refer to Jesus in their coverage as ‘the Lord Jesus Christ’, so I’m at a loss as to whether it’s plain laziness or multiculti-zeal that permits such reverential treatment of Mohammed. Mercifully, Martha Kearney on Newsnight showed the rest of the BBC how it should be done, as shown in her introduction of the clip below from Friday’s programme. Note how the correspondent, Andy Tighe, then lazily refers to Mohammed as ‘the Prophet Mohammed’.

Martha Kearney correctly denotes Mohammed as ‘the Islamic Prophet’,
rather than the usual lazy BBC acceptance of him as ‘the Prophet’.

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

According to the The Register, an irreverent but generally respected technology news site, there’s been a bit of a punch up on the BBC Radio 4 message boards. Apparently:

“Only messageboard hosts will start new threads”. Oh dear. Cue indignation, to which the Beeb replied: “We believe these changes will allow the Today programme to better reflect the thoughts and opinions of its listeners, making it more relevant to its audience”.

Yeah right, replied AH:

No you don’t. You believe that it will enable you to control what people talk about and will also enable you to avoid talking about “sensitive” issues.

“Your thoughts, your views, your space”

What a joke.

Another disgruntled poster adds:

I can see it now.

“How can people be forced to appreciate the benefits of multiculturalism?”

“George Bush. Evil dictator or sexual pervert?”

“Are YOU a victim of homophobia?”

“Diversity. Fantastic or amazing?”

“How can we unite to defeat the right?”

Etc etc.

We PAY for the BBC. We PAY for this service. We generally don’t LIKE the political and ideological agendas of the BBC. So they shut the boards.

Sounds typical of the BBC we all know and love. If you’ve been following this debate please feel free to update this story in the comments.

Putting on my hat marked Lazy BBC (since there isn’t such a blog), here’s a great example of BBC Views Online lazily re-publishing corporate puff dressed up as news:

Websites face four-second cut-off

Shoppers are likely to abandon a website if it takes longer than four seconds to load, a survey suggests.

The research by Akamai revealed users’ dwindling patience with websites that take time to show up.

It found 75% of the 1,058 people asked would not return to websites that took longer than four seconds to load.

The time it took a site to appear on screen came second to high prices and shipping costs in the list of shoppers’ pet-hates, the research revealed.

“Research by Akamai”? Now, tell me, just what is it that Akamai are well known for selling? Let’s have a look at their About Akamai page:

If you use the Internet for anything – to download music or software, check the headlines, book a flight – you’ve probably used Akamai’s services without even knowing it. We play a critical role in getting content from providers to consumers…

Our global platform of thousands of specially-equipped servers helps the Internet withstand the crush of daily requests for rich, dynamic, and interactive content, transactions, and applications.

Now there’s a surprise. I feel a Mandy Rice-Davies moment coming on: “Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they”, although that appears to have escaped the fearless notice of our inquisitive BBC ‘journalists’ in their hurry to cut’n’paste the news.

about the trial over the awful murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky in Bradford. Today’s proceedings have centered on Yusuf Jamma, described by the BBC in each instance as being ‘from Birmingham’.

Er, no. Birmingham might be where he was arrested, but he’s from Somalia, the same Somalia that was his apparent reason for being given refuge in our country, and the same Somalia to which his brother, Mustaf Jama, is believed to have fled to avoid British justice. I guess when the chips were down he figured that Somalia wasn’t so bad after all.

, according to a startling article by Stewart Payne in today’s Daily Telegraph:

…a leaked memo revealed that phone-in presenters on a local radio station have been barred from allowing callers who sound old on air.

Mia Costello, managing editor of BBC Radio Solent, told her broadcasters: “I don’t want to hear really elderly voices.”

She instructed presenters to appeal to an imaginary couple she called “Dave and Sue”, who would typically be aged between 45 and 64. “Only do caller round-ups about people in this age range,” she said.

Her memo was leaked after she axed several of her older broadcasters, including the BBC’s disability affairs correspondent Peter White, who had a Saturday breakfast show on the station until last week.

Do read the rest of the article. An absolute disgrace, quite typical of today’s BBC, and something for which heads should roll, but they won’t, also quite typical of today’s BBC.

Remember, to paraphrase Rageh Omaar’s nauseating BBC adverts from a while back, “It’s not your BBC, it’s their BBC”, and, courtesy of Simon Walters in the Daily Mail a few weeks back (which I meant to blog about at the time), We are biased, admit the stars of BBC News, we have it from the horse’s mouth, well, Andrew Marr’s at least:

“The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias” – Andrew Marr

The leaked account of the summit recounted in the Mail also revealed that:

BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians

To which I feel compelled to respond in the vernacular: No shit, Sherlock!