IN THE JUNGLE

BBC bias is a curious beast, spotted this morning lurking in “the jungle” near Calais. Listen to the report here by Andrew Hosken. It is entirely from the perspective of those illegals trying to get into the UK, by hook or crook. Where is the perspective of the local French people, how do they feel? What about the people in the UK who will be forking out benefit to these immigrants? Why is Mr Hosken only presenting one perspective, namely the one most sympathetic to the inhabitants of the jungle?

QUESTION TIME LIVEBLOG RETURNS!

Hi all! Just to let you know that after our summer break (what summer?) we will be returning with the LIVEBLOG of BBC Question Time. I will flag it closer to the time, on Thursday coming but wanted to give you a heads-up!

Marking 30 years on air, Question Time returns on Thursday 24th September and will be in Bournemouth as the party conference season kicks off. The panel will include Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman.

Harriet Harman MP
Be still my beating heart, the not so fragrant man-hater class warrior returns to give us all a laugh. I want this one to be the BIGGEST and BEST ever so please log it in your diary and come along for the entertainment. What else are you going to do on a dark Thursday night?

SHILLING FOR DEATH…

BBC taking a Sympathetic view concerning the softening of the law on assisted suicide.

BBC via Mark Mardell giving thumbs up to the Obama leftist media blitz Stateside (‘Bama ignored Fox, of course. None so brave, eh?)
BBC giving us Ed Balls truly ludicrous “cuts” strategy positive spin.
News? No. Liberal propaganda? You betcha!

POSTING OK!

Just to say the upgrade has taken place and I want to thank the All Seeing Eye for all his efforts. There is a lot of technical work behind this kind of thing – way beyond me – and we all owe him a vote of thanks!

INTERCHANGEABLE…

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

Anna Carragher

The Equality Commission has appointed former BBC Northern Ireland controller Anna Carragher as one of four new commissioners. Also appointed are human resources consultant Lyn McBriar, academic and former UUP MLA Dermot Nesbitt and retired policeman Peter Sheridan.The appointments to the body were made by NI Secretary of State Shaun “Where’s my Butler?” Woodward. He said the four new commissioners would “bring a wealth of knowledge, skills and understanding”.
Congrats to Ms Carragher – and what jolly good luck that BBC NI has taken such a pro-Good Friday Agreement line from which the Equality Commission flows.

MAINTENANCE

Hi All. We have some scheduled maintenance at 8pm UK time. Can I ask that everyone stops posting from that time until I advise otherwise? We’re preparing for the commenting upgrade and fingers crossed all goes well. Thanks for your patience, I will ensure you are kept posted.

A WORD ON COMMENTING…

Ok folks, come tomorrow evening there is going to be a change as to how commenting works here! Our leading technical expert, Professor All Seeing Eye, explains how it will work.

Tomorrow we are upgrading the Comments facility and you will see some changes. The new system is called Echo (which used to be called Haloscan).

Comments will now be integrated in to the main webpage rather then in a pop-up box and some form of identification will be needed. This isn’t difficult or onerous as there are plenty of options.

Above the Comments box, when you first wish to leave a response, choose the drop-down arrow next to “Guest”. This will let you identify yourself with your Google, Twitter, Yahoo, Blogger etc etc names.

The Comments box itself has extra features to make your contribution more interesting. For emphasis, highlight a portion of your text and click on the Bold, Italicise or Underline buttons. To turn a word or phrase into a link to another site, highlight that word and use the sixth button to insert the destination. If you’ve made a mistake then use the Unlink button next to it to remove it. There are also options to use emoticons in your message or insert a YouTube link (although be aware that this does not work on all browsers)

Underneath the Comment box and using a standard file browse function is an option to upload a picture with your message, and if you wish to be emailed with any replies to your post then choose the “Follow” option.

There are two ways of contributing to a thread. Adding a comment will place it at the end of the thread in the normal way. However if you wish to address a particular comment then choose the Reply option underneath it. This will put your reply indented and directly below, enabling a discussion to take place on sub-issues within the thread as a whole. Try it and see! Any replies like this will generate an email notification if you’ve chosen to Follow your comment.

Comments will continue to appear in real-time…there will be no general moderation queue. However any comments with swearing in them will automatically be held up until approved.

There will be an open comments thread for experimenting with and helping us all to get used to a slightly different way of doing things, but hopefully this and a few changes to the background code of the site overall should address most of the issues which are mentioned from time to time.


I will cover this again tomorrow before it goes live but there are several virtues and few vices. I don’t imagine it will please everybody but there you go, we try our best. Trolls will vanish under this new system (Missing you already) and swearing will also be flagged up as the ASE points out.

DISPUTING THE OCCUPIED…

Mr Mitchell has prolonged his trip to the Middle East for several days as he works for a deal on freezing Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.”

No. It is NOT the “occupied West Bank”. This is the repetition of Palestinian propaganda. They are the “disputed territories” and the fact that the BBC refuses to embrace such a neutral term tells you all you need to know. The idea that Israel “occupies” Palestinian territory is essential to the anti-Israel meme that lies at the heart of BBC thought but every time we let this pass we accept their bias.

THE NUMBER ONE AREA FOR CUTS….

Did you see the BBC is revealed as voters’ number one area for money-saving measures, followed by the Culture, Media and Sport department, the £6billion annual overseas aid budget and benefits and tax credits? I hope the BBC will pick up on this and allow those who see it as a vast bloated parasite to have their say. At a time of economic recession, the State Broadcaster needs the axe taken to it and I hope Mr Cameron will do what is necessary when he is elected PM next June.