Author Archives: Laban

Suggestio Falsi …

By | |
55 Comments

“Holocaust denier gets MP backing“

This is such a dishonest headline, sticking to literal truth while implying that Chris Huhne (in deploring an arrest in Britain, under EU law, for an offence which is not illegal in this country) is somehow ‘backing’ the (IMHO) eccentric view that the Shoah is “a lie”. Mr Tobin is being extradited to Germany for what he has written on his Australian website.

I’ll let Ross say it :

What part of free speech don’t they understand ?

Obviously if he backed a Holocaust denier then he would be unfit for office, but of course that is not what he has done, he has simply made it clear that he regards free speech as being for everyone even if you disagree with them.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

You really can’t blame the Labour Party …

By | | ,
18 Comments

… for arranging for a few dozen of their activists to protest outside the Conservative Party conference, cunningly disguised as “financial services workers”. It’s just the cut and thrust of politics, and while a neutral observer might wonder how the Tories are implicated in the current crisis, having been out of power for eleven years, trying to associate them with the sins of the incompetent banking fat-cats is all part of the game.

But did BBC Television news tonight have to (prominently) report it straight-faced as a demo “by financial services workers” ? Even my (thin) cat could see the whole thing was a set-up. Are the Labour Party paying them, or do they do it for love ?

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

“Rejoice ! Rejoice !”

By | |
27 Comments

Even if we no longer expect the BBC to have any role in – or indeed concept of – supporting the British national interest, you’d think they might take a more … er, neutral tone in reporting the sale of a major UK strategic asset to a foreign government.

“EDF agrees to buy British Energy”

Gosh. Decent of them, taking it off our hands like that.

Of course the BBC could have used a headline like “Control of Britain’s nuclear industry passes to French government”, but that, while true, would have overtones of xenophobia, wouldn’t it ? Isn’t the French state just as valid as the British one ? And besides, as current BE boss Adrian Montague said in a Today interview (Ed Stourton, I think it was, well out of his depth – Montague often ignored his questions and answered ones he hadn’t asked), “historically the UK has been extremely open to foreign investment“.

“Historically” as in “crime is historically low” – i.e the last twenty-odd years. Prior to that, UK energy generation was UK-controlled and for 50-odd years it was a state utility. No matter.

Economics editor Robert Peston, whose BBC blog has some of the best and most insightful credit-crunch coverage, toed the party line as well.

“EDF’s acquisition of our nuclear power industry can be seen as a powerful message of hope … it’s a spectacular vote of confidence from La Republique no less that the United Kingdom is anything but bust.”

Bust ? I thought tractor production was going up every year !

UPDATE – commenter NotASheep points out that the UK director of communications at EDF, one Andrew Brown, is by strange chance a former BBC reporter and Newsnight editor. He’s also, by an even stranger chance, the brother of the Prime Minister.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

“A honky bitch from Alaska”

By | |
88 Comments

When you hear a sub-Mockney accent attacking a politician from the left on Radio Four, you’ll usually find it’s a comedy show featuring several privately educated left-wing comedians who met at university. For some reason, privately educated left-wingers appearing on the Today programme are allowed to keep their middle-class accents.

I think this is Marcus Brigstocke on Radio Four’s “Charm Offensive”. They got half the name right.

Brigstocke :

This phrase, ‘you can put lipstick on a pig’ has been used by Obama before, and by McCain talking about Hillary Clinton – it’s been wilfully misinterpreted – and they deliberately do this, you know, Fox news and lots of the right-wing press in America deliberately misinterpret stuff that the Democrats have said – I mean he also said in that speech “You can nominate Sarah Palin but she’ll still be a honky bitch from Alaska” (laughter) – and they just grab that … (laughter)

Iannucci :


“It’s just another phrase for hockey mom”

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

“Sikhs and Hindus accuse BBC of pro-Muslim bias”

By | |
47 Comments

Via the late Archbishop Cranmer, this in the Independent.

Hindu and Sikh leaders have accused the BBC of pandering to Britain’s Muslim community by making a disproportionate number of programmes on Islam at the expense of covering other Asian religions.

A breakdown of programming from the BBC’s Religion and Ethics department, seen by The Independent, reveals that since 2001, the BBC made 41 faith programmes on Islam, compared with just five on Hinduism and one on Sikhism.

Critics say the disproportionate amount of programming is part of an apparent bias within the BBC towards Islam since the attacks of 11 September 2001, which has placed an often uncomfortable media spotlight on Britain’s Muslims.

The godly Archbishop notes :

Apparent bias?

The Christians have been saying this for years. The BBC has said it would be content to consign the Bible to Room 101 but not the Qur’an, and there are numerous instances of the denigration of the name of Jesus but not that of Mohammed; scorn being poured over the declining Church of England but not the ascending Mosque of England; and the incessant questioning to the point of ridicule of the foundational tenets of Christianity (frequently during Christmas or Easter), while the claims of Islam are treated with reverence and submission (especially during Ramadan and Eid).

Of course Hindu and Sikh licence-fee payers should feel cheated.

But there is a very simple remedy. If a few more Sikhs were to become as militant as those who forced the closure of a theatre in Birmingham; and a few Hindus became as militant as their co-religionists in Orissa, the BBC would feel obliged to redress the imbalance.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Unequal Life-Chances …

By | |
7 Comments

Nick Robinson reports on Harriet Harman’s new National Equality Panel :

She spoke instead of “investigating how “people’s life chances” are impacted by “where they were born, what kind of family they were born into, where they live and their wealth” as well as their gender, race, disability and age.

It does seem so wrong that a child’s life chances are so dependent on who their dad is :

James Naughtie was out covering the Republican National Convention in Minnesota for the Today programme last week.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but notice that the name of a certain Andrew Naughtie appeared at the end credits of Newsnight’s coverage of the same event.

Was this a coincidence, I wondered, or could they by any chance be related?

“Ah yes, that is Jim’s son,” says a BBC spokesman when I call.

“He’s one of a number of students we’ve got on work experience at the moment.

“They are all helping out with our election coverage – though I’m not certain how many of them were actually sent to the convention.”

(The Indie piece is by Henry Deedes, grandson of the late William Deedes, former Telegraph editor and newspaper veteran. Can’t say the BBC aren’t conforming to generally accepted industry standards.)

Hat-tip – Peter in the comments.

UPDATE – via DB in the comments, young Master Naughtie reviews the film ‘Rendition’ in the Bristol University paper :

Rendition is a major foreign policy issue for the US since the extent and implications of its use were uncovered in 2002; the torture and human rights abuses that rendition involves have severely tainted the USA’s international reputation …

In these dark times, we need mainstream Hollywood films that will tackle uncomfortable subjects like this head-on and dare to show us that those acting in American interests may not be good people … the shocking truth of Rendition just isn’t enough.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

More on Sarah Palin …

By | |
71 Comments

Following Hugh’s post on the ‘redneck’ item – I listened on the weekend to the views of that people’s tribune Liz Forgan (Benenden and Oxford) on Any Questions.

Ms Forgan’s career took her from the Guardian to Channel Four and then to the BBC, where she was MD of BBC Network Radio. When she left the BBC she became a Guardian columnist and is now chair of the Scott Trust, owners of the Guardian. Do we see a pattern here ?

Let Ms Forgan speak for herself. Apologies for the illiterate transcriber (I found ‘roons’ for ‘runes’, ‘principle’ for ‘principal’ and ‘electrics’ for ‘electorates’).

On Charles Clarke’s attacking Gordon Brown’s premiership :

“Charles has nothing to lose, he thinks he can do that and encourage real debate in the Party. Unfortunately the consequences of his doing so has been absolutely a lead balloon. Everyone is still under the table, with the tablecloth pulled around their ears …”

On male and female equality :

You know you have a vision of a progressive struggle towards a sensible disposition of society and its work and when people choose to roll backwards from that it makes me really very sad … the problem is not women, it is men … and I think that although it is illegal to ask a woman who applies for a job are you intending to have children and what are you going to do about them I actually think we should legislate to compel employers to ask men when they apply for a job do you have children and what is your intention to look after them.

And on Sarah Palin :

I have been a card-carrying feminist for 40 years and this woman has found somewhere in me a little kernel of sexism. She causes me to make a failure of sisterhood. Sorry Charlie but I cannot stand her candy coated philistinism, I hate her crass creationism, I loath her parading of her family about the place, God forgive me I even hate her teenage hair … I do really fear the fact that she touches something deep in America, something real in America I agree with you about that and that makes me very afraid and the only solution I can see to it is that the principal governors of super powers should be elected by global electorates … There is a ray of hope. History shows that people who arrive with a stock in trade of being pure, innocent and untouched by civilisation often end up having terrible skeletons in their cupboards. And I am really hopeful that the dreadful hacks will find them out.

Ms Forgan, as we’ve seen above, thinks of herself as a left-winger and a feminist. Par for the BBC course. But what we’re hearing there isn’t just hatred of Sarah Palin’s politics. What comes over strongly is hatred of Sarah Palin’s class. An upper-class liberal looks down on a hick from the sticks. God, have you seen her hair ?

Once, within living memory, the Left used to have something of a bias in favour of ‘ordinary people’. Whatever happened to it ?

(Much of the US liberal media shares Ms Forgan’s dismay. The phenomenon’s neatly summarised in this Clive Crook FT piece)

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Do We See A Pattern ?

By | |
23 Comments

When politicians or pressure groups come up with proposals to gladden the heart of a right-thinking Guardian reader, accentuate the positive. Think the ongoing pro-euthanasia campaign (aka “helping people die“).

When they come up with proposals to horrify same, look around for negative quotes – and make the negative reaction the headline.

The recent formation of a cross-party group calling for a cap on immigration illustrates this neatly.

The papers report this development pretty straight – even the leftish Indie and Mirror. Only one national paper leads on negative reaction. I’m sure you would never guess which one.

The BBC follow their lead (or does the Guardian follow the BBC ?) with this – opening headline and introduction focused on negative reaction rather then the proposals of the newly-formed group.

(The BBC do have a bit of previous on this topic)

UPDATE – here’s another example – also immigration-related – of the BBC reporting the negative reaction as the headline. I wrote at the time :

There’s a pattern here. When a proposal fits the agenda the Beeb present it straight. When it offends liberal sensibilities the (negative) reaction – rather than the proposal – becomes the headline.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.