Author Archives: Natalie

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.

Every now and then the cool squish of mouse innards under a naked foot as one steps out of the bedroom door reminds the cat owner that the animal he or she thinks of as “dear little Tibbles” thinks of itself as Devourer of Prey And Spitter-Out of Their Discarded Internal Organs.

Thus I mused while trying not to put my foot on the carpet. I mused also on the fact (brought to my attention by commenter Alan) that the BBC’s Justin Webb is to host a series of programmes on Anti-Americanism. Mr Webb writes:

It is time that we understood that this attitude, this contempt for what democracy can do, is at the heart of at least some of the anti-Americanism we see in the world today.

My impression, looking over the numerous references to Mr Webb on this blog, is that having experienced the Mouse Intestine of Nasty Consequences resulting from the actions of the Tibbles of the Politically Correct Worldview he has now begun the long slow hop to the Bathroom of Reality. A good thing, and – seriously – good for him, but since change is always painful, expect it to be three hops forward, two hops back.

And some don’t. A drama commissioned by the BBC about how Private Johnson Beharry won his Victoria Cross in Iraq was cancelled as being “too positive”, according to the Telegraph.

Remember The Falklands Play?

Commenter DG writes:

http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/8577/bbc1mt9.jpg

The above link is to a screenshot of a BBC Football webpage. Please do not view the image if you are offended by four-letter swear words.

Sport isn’t covered on B-BBC very often but, certainly in Scotland, the most frequent examples of BBC Bias are in this area, nearly all aimed at Rangers FC (the above being just the latest example).

The article concerns the recent transfer of Kevin Thomson from Hibernian to Rangers, and displays a picture of Thomson in his first outing for his new club. The issue is that the image’s filename contains his first and last names with a choice obscenity in between (which I doubt will be found on his birth certificate).

The obscenity was on the filename on that page for about 12 hours before being changed, but the original filepath is still valid!

Despite hundreds of complaints, no apology has so far been issued or disciplinary action confirmed.

The BBC in Scotland has a history of rank indiscipline as far as Rangers are concerned. Not only are they ultra-sensitive to the actions of Rangers and their (considered un-PC) supporters, they have consistently used the airwaves and website as a platform for snide digs and outright insults poorly disguised as humour.

I could also discuss the travesty of their many undertalented sports reporters setting themselves up as social commentators, but that’s for another post…

The BBC story is here.

UPDATE: The Sunday Mail has a story about this.

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 commenter “will”, Newsnight editor Peter Barron quotes this blog in his weekly email:

One of the consequences of ‘Paxman slams the BBC on climate hyprocrisy’ [Out of date link to original “This is London” article deleted] has been a prominent posting [link] on Biased BBC, a website devoted to pointing out what it sees as the politically-correct institutional group-think of much of the corporation’s output.

This time they weren’t accusing Jeremy of bias – they’ve elevated him to their role [sic] of honour for his honesty in saying: “People who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that [global warming] is the consequence of our own behaviour. I assume that this is why the BBC’s coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago”

Read more here.

Jeremy Paxman’s comments can be read here.

from Perry de Havilland at Samizdata:

“What particularly made me laugh was when the BBC voice over said “and the fact over one hundred governments have endorsed this report will add to its credibility.” So let me get this straight… the fact one hundred states which exercise political power over people have endorsed a report that will be used to justify imposing even more political control over people, and that makes this more credible? I wonder if the BBC would report a pro-tobacco report endorsed by tobacco companies the same way? What do you think?”

said Rizzo the rat, as he was used to clean a window.

Heard on Radio 4 this evening at 7.20pm (quoted from memory):

“Hamas can now claim to speak for the majority of Palestinians. This means an end to the conflict is inconceivable without their involvement.”

The BBC’s unquenchable belief that conflicts invariably end by mutual agreement is kind of sweet really. Don’t take this as an endorsement of any particular course of action, but just as a matter of historical interest, I can think of quite a few conflicts that have ended without the involvement of one party. Or at least, where the involvement of one party was involuntary, and abrubtly terminated.

A BBC report headed Iraq blasts kill Ashura pilgrims contains this sentence:

Ashura, the most important Shia festival, has witnessed serious sectarian violence since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

That, alas, is true.

But the BBC should have made clear (as it did in the report from 2004 I am about to link to) that the reason for the relative absence of of bombings of Shia pilgrims at Ashura prior to the US-led invasion was not that the Americans had not yet arrived to spoil the bucolic peace. It was because Saddam Hussein suppressed Ashura. In the same way, his Sunni-dominated regime suppressed as dangerous to his rule many other expressions of the Shia branch of Islam followed by the majority of Iraqis.

These public commemorations of the death of Husayn Ibn Ali – the self-flagellating aspect which I admit I find somewhat distasteful, but if the practice is meaningful to these pilgrims, then it’s (literally) no skin off my back – have only freely taken place at all in Iraq since the OK-BBC-we-get-it “US-led invasion.”

*For an explanation of “sincing”, see here.