Category Archives: Uncategorized

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 be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated!

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 be moderated. Suggestions for stories would be appreciated!

As someone who likes to wake up with Alice Cooper and a bit of Zep and a touch of Rush, rather than the honeyed self-importance of John Humphreys, the news that my favourite radio station Planet Rock is to close comes as a bit of blow.
I also can’t help but notice that it has a bigger audience than the BBC’s Six Music. But, owing to the uniquely-funded… yes, you know how it goes. Planet Rock goes, and Six Music inherits a slice of its audience.

How I love paying my licence fee.

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 be moderated.

Well now, didn’t the Archdhimmi of Canterbury cause quite the media firestorm which his shilling for Sharia? It’s been good to see the near universal condemnation he has attracted, proving that the majority of people here aren’t prepared to see Islamic law given any form of equivalence with our own. But I note that the BBC leads with a piece in which Williams gets to “defend” his ineptness. Apparently on his website, Mullah Williams does his je ne regrette rien routine. He’s shocked, yes shocked, at the vehemence of criticism send his way. Good. I reckon the BBC is shocked as well.

But there were a couple of weasel lines inserted into this piece by the BBC. Consider this; “Islamic Sharia law is a legal and social code designed to help Muslims live their daily lives, but it has proved controversial in the West for the extreme nature of some of its punishments.” Sorry, but Sharia law may be legal in downtown Tehran where they hang the homosexuals and stone the adulterers but it sure as heck ain’t legal here. It is tolerated within the scope of English law, wrongly in my view. There is a big difference between something being tolerated and it being legal. Also, the author implies it is only we in the West that have an issue with Sharia. Really? I guess those tens of thousands of Somalians that flee their land to escape the Sharia Courts didn’t get that memo. As for the “controversial” aspect to it, isn’t that a tad of an understatement? Further, if only “some” of its punishments are extreme in nature, do we assume that the writer of this article thinks others form of Sharia punishment are OK? Also note how the Muslim Council of Britain – that vipers nest much loved by Al Beeb- rush to defend Mullah Williams. Why is this unrepresentative group given the chance to pose as the voice of British Muslims, when in fact many British Muslims want nothing to do with it?

The BBC article concludes with the Bishop of Hulme, the Rt Rev Stephen Lowe, saying that in Williams… “We have probably one of the greatest and the brightest Archbishops of Canterbury we have had for many a long day. He is undoubtedly one of the finest minds of this nation.” And on that note, the BBC items concludes. I’m in tears, aren’t you? Oh the injustice of it all. The Beeb must be so upset that their pal Williams has taken such a pasting in the past few days and it’s nice to see them doing their level best for him. Always fair and balanced, right?

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 be moderated

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 be moderated

I was scrolling through the BBC’s main UK news-site and noticed that it features a story about Amy Winehouse being questioned by police in connection with a video apparently showing her smoking a crack-cocaine pipe. Now I am sure this may be of some interest to the troubled singers’ fan base, but I ask you if this story is MORE important than the debate which is happening in the Commons concerning the ramming through of the European Constitution, sorry, Treaty – something which will effect each and every one of us? If it isn’t, why does the BBC not provide more prominence to the fact that contrary to previous Labour claims, there is NO opt out for the UK from the EU Charter of Fundamental rights? Surely the news story is that the Labour political leadership LIED about something which they failed to even ask for? And if they lied then, well… you can guess the rest! The Romans kept the people diverted with bread and circuses. The BBC seem to follow the same process.

: 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 be moderated

One of the enduring aims of the political left is to seek to continually grow the size of the Welfare State. The child poverty industry has become quite an effective propagandist tool in this regard and true to form the BBC swallows and then regurgitates several myths. As this story over on the BBC’s Scotland news site proclaims, child poverty could be assisted if means testing was abolished. I bet. It then repeats the claim that a mere £4 billion a year – what a bargain – would help ease this awful problem in Scotland, where 250,000 children are living in poverty. (That’s almost one in four of all Scottish children living in this dire state) You should check out the report – it only puts forward arguments in favour of all imagined neo-Dickensian squalor. Just one problem – it’s deeply flawed.

For starters, the political left have changed the definition of child poverty to one that is no longer absolute but relative. A family is thus considered to be officially poor if it is living on less than 60% of Britain’s median (average) level of household income. This economic sleight of hand sets up an endless narrative in which the stormtroopers for socialism can gripe just how unfair it all is and how we need to redistribute income to those that they define as needy. If the UK median income was £100k tomorrow, poverty would then be located at £60k. Who in their right mind believes this to be a credible formulation? Of course there is child poverty, we see the terrible images of kids starving in Africa and frankly it is insulting to suggest that because some UK families can’t afford two holidays a year or the latest computer game, then they sunk in poverty.
The BBC should seek comment from those who do not buy into this socialist dogma and who are quite able to challenge it – but it does nothing of the sort. Instead it allows the child poverty industry a very public platform from which it can pump out this socialist propaganda. The drip drip drip of bias comes in many subtle forms.