Author Archives: Ed Thomas

General BBC-related comment thread

By | |
125 Comments

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

BBC Climate Blog

By | | , ,
50 Comments

The extent of the BBC’s faith in the global warming mantra was in evidence today as they worked up an articleto claim that- contrary to all the actual trendlines of temperatures in existence- we are facing a greater threat from climate change than so far believed.

It really feels like a flame-war between blogs- the more the BBC find their tendentious theory challenged by reality and by the people who inconvenientlly notice it, the more they ramp-up the rhetoric.

Well, this is perhaps not totally fair to them- but earlier this week there was a report released by the Met Office and covered by the Guardianwhich criticised global warming exaggeration. I didn’t hear anything about it on the BBC, and couldn’t find reference to it on the BBC website- showing perhaps that the BBC are not afraid to diverge from their climate mentors when a sacred cow is threatened. Yet when one scientist squeals that global warming is underestimated, it adorns the Sunday morning frontpage of the BBC website.

As the excellent Wattsupwiththat? website says, the BBC misreported the issue raised and misrepresented the qualifications of the scientist featured. Ignorance and bias going hand in hand, unsurprisingly.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

General BBC-related comment thread!

By | |
150 Comments

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Timewarped BBC

By | |
53 Comments

The BBC online Have Your Say tonight is a classic. A 1950’s classic. The BBC evidently consider it a relevant 21st century question to ask: “Have 20 years of capitalism been good for E Europe?”

The most recommended comment thankfully sets things a bit straight:

“What a typical topic here on HYS. Only the crypto commies and sofa socialists on this site (and apparently the HYS staff who pose these questions) would even come up with such an absurdity as this. Communism appeals only those who have never lived under it. And they cannot get their head around the fact that it’s not economics but human liberty and personal freedom that it cannot ever enable or tolerate. It’s as simple as that. Unless you live in Islington or Berkeley.”

Difficult to put it better than that.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

News they feel you just ought to hear

By | | ,
37 Comments

No, not that some parent has fed his fourteen year old heroin, but that an evil Devonian has been riding his motorbike at 122 mph with his son on the back. This is featured among the top news stories in the UK tonight.

Riding a motorcyle in this way is of course irresponsible and wrong, but the selection of this 50 something white male to be made an example of is pure BBC preachiness. They love to tweak the nose of middle Britain, they probably consider it part of their job of (ahem) educating and informing. In fact it is attempting to add a trial-by-media system to our court system. It’s an endemic attitude at the BBC and it’s one of the things that shows how it acts out what Andrew Marr (see right) called the BBC’s ‘cultural liberal bias‘.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

No one really cares

By | |
84 Comments

that the new Prime Minister of Iceland is a lesbian. What I care about is the BBC’s incessant need to have a news agenda and to pursue it. We can see the agenda at work in this report from the omission of a key fact which the Guardian (as so often) doesn’t miss out.

The key fact is that Ms Sigurdardotti spent a lengthy time married to a banker (male) and has two grown up sons to show for it.

Guardian readers, no doubt, can be trusted with these facts which suggest rather bisexuality, or confusion, or even bitter ex-banker’s wife syndrome (there’s a nice little revenge motif in this saga which Icelanders might just be appreciating :-). Nuanced Guardian readers can cope elastically with all the real and tough twists and turns of adult life, unquestionably. Not so BBConline readers, apparently. Maybe their re-education process is still incomplete.

I don’t pretend to understand the liberal mindset, but I know that it’s much more impressive to think of people with innate characteristics, distinct from other people, which make them homosexual. It’s the difference between the exotic and the banal. Choices are banal, and we all make them. Ms Sigurdardotti made hers twice in two directions, but we’re only informed about the one which makes her the paragon the BBC are intent on making her:

“It’s not only a victory for lesbians, it’s a victory for women, actually make that a victory for all!”

(the last line from the BBC’s “Gay milestone” commentary)

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

General BBC-related comment thread!

By | |
107 Comments

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

General BBC-related comment thread!

By | |
Comments Off on General BBC-related comment thread!

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

General BBC-related comment thread!

By | |
122 Comments

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

General BBC-related comment thread.

By | |
134 Comments

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.


Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.