DODGY DVDS? BLAME THATCHER!

It’s a laugh, isn’t it. The BBC were salivating this morning about the fact that retailers who sell violent video games and 18-rated DVDs to children cannot be prosecuted because of a legal blunder 25 years ago. Yes – made under the evil Thatcher junta! At no point does the BBC query why after more than a decade of Socialist nirvana nothing has been by Labour done to fix it. Nor, for that matter, did it pursue the point why a BRITISH law made by a BRITISH government carries no force in BRITAIN because of the EU!

GREEN SHOOTS EVERYWHERE!

It’s been a big day for the UK economy if one believes the BBC. Green shoots of recovery are everywhere. “The recession is at an end” goes one headline. Confidence is shooting up ( just like the unemployment figures, sssh!) and it looks like Captain Brown, employing his formidable Keynesian skills, has saved the day. Such is the fantasy being peddled by the BBC today – how long to go before Party conference time?

B-BBC READER POST OF THE DAY!

Tip of the hat to DB for this rather excellent contribution!

“If you fancy a laugh, have a re-read of Matt Frei’s November diary, a Republican-bashing hope-filled brown-nosing paean to America’s then recently elected president. Extract:

Earlier this week he announced a plan to get 2.5 million Americans back to work. Then he vowed to have his new director of the congressional budget office go through the existing budgets with a scalpel or an axe, depending on what is needed, to cut out any waste. Previous presidents-in-waiting have also made such claims. But such is Mr Obama’s steely-eyed determination and unsmiling sense of purpose that you actually believe him.

No Matt – YOU believed him, like the partisan star-struck hack you are. So, how’s it all working out for your boy, the uber-cool super-intelligent bringer of hope and change? Approval ratings plummeting. Unemployment far worse than expected. Vast amounts of pork barrel spending hurried through unchecked. Deficit projections now up to nine TRILLION dollars. Well over half of senior policymaking positions still unfilled. And total chaos over health care reform, not least because President Clever and his mega-bright administration were wrong-footed by none other than Sarah Palin. That last one must really hurt, Matt.

CRUDITY IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST

Here is an excellent demolition of BBC “standards” in 2009.

In defending Mr Ross, then, and allowing him to be paid £18 mllion to ask questions such as whether the Leader of the Opposition had masturbated at the age of 12 while thinking of the then Prime Mnister, the Director-General considered that he was serving the sustenance of citizenship, the promotion of education and the stimulation of learning and cultural excellence: a misjudgment so bizarre that only utter contempt for the charter itself, corruption, delusion, stupidity or abysmal incompetence could explain it.

None of these explanations would suffice to justify his continuance in office.Mr Thompson, the Director-General, said that Mr Ross was ‘outstanding’, among ‘the very best’. He said he gave enormous enjoyment and represented good financial value. What good financial value is to a public corporation which is not profit-making he did not explain in detail; but there is little doubt one might be able to say the same of public executions, were they broadcast, namely that they gave enormous enjoyment and, being cheap to arrange, represented good financial value.

In the very week after his suspension, which suggested that he had been guilty only of an error of judgment rather than of something far worse, and which left him to scrape by on only £4,500,000 of public money that year, he again made a tasteless sexual joke. Speaking on air to his producer, who had claimed while in Spain to have been accosted sexually by a woman in her eighties who lived near his villa there, Ross said, ‘Eighty, oh God! I think you should, just for charity, give her one last night. One last night before the grave. Would it kill you?’ Admittedly in this case Ross did not know that his joke was about a woman who, as it turned out, actually existed and was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (of which sexual disinhibition is sometimes
a symptom). But he must have known that either she did not exist, in which case the joke was merely pointless and crude, or that she did, in which case it was likely to be
offensive as well as crude.

OLD MACDONALD…

The BBC dragged on former SNP harridan Margo MacDonald to Today this morning to provide her with an opportunity to put forward her notion that the United Nations should set up a Committee to look into the “facts” of the Lockerbie bombing. Margo’s a bit of a truther when it comes to the Lockerbie and hinted at all kinds of shocking revelations coming out of her fantasy enquiry. Margo also informed us of “fervour” on the other side of the Atlantic being whipped up by “talk-show hosts.” She then said that newspapers should be “put beyond use”. Anyone know what she was talking about? I also noted that Margo mentioned that she has “quite a lot of sympathy” for the relatives of those lost on Pan Am Flight 107. “Quite a lot”? Honestly, having this truther on might ring a few bells for the BBC but it adds NOTHING to debate. How long before we hear that the US/UK was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing? The decision to release a convicted mass murderer is a shameful indictment on the Scottish devolved Parliament and it might have been a little more helpful if the BBC had directed MacDonald to address that simple fact.

CASH FOR CLUNKERS

Obama’s “cash for clunkers” scheme has just finished and the BBC ran this item on it this morning, suggesting that it has been a hugely popular success. The meme is that the stimulus is working. In a four and a half minute item, the BBC kindly provided 30 seconds to the view that this has been far from economically effective and may cause more harm than good. The bias is clear – cash for clunkers is just swell and Obama is on the right path.

NO SHAME

It’s almost surreal. In the endless quest to undermine ANY benefits stemming from the Afghan election, the BBC sends the witless Hugh Sykes to woodland near Calais in northern France. He is there to interview the hundreds of Afghan “refugees” squatting there awaiting entry into welfare central – the UK. It’s just terrible for these poor refugees, apparently. No “facilities” and awful weather. But on the bright side the unanimous view of all these welfare tourists and future UK residents was that the election result back home makes no difference to them. BBC mission accomplished. Love the way Hugh didn’t probe too deep as to why they had travelled half way round the world to get into Britain – put it down to “facilities” – natch.

OPEN THREAD

Sunday morning and a new open thread. Watching Nicky Campbell’s “Big Question” with a Muslim lecturer claiming that those who attend Christian courses convert to….Islam! Perhaps the BBC should become the Sharia Broadcasting Corporation such is the relentless advocacy of this dark ages pathology? Over to you, but as a lead question, do YOU feel that the BBC treats Islam different to how it creates Christianity/Judaism? If you agree, please provide evidence. If you don’t, perhaps you could explain how the BBC sustains impartiality?