Question Time 4th March 2010

Question Time this week comes from London; soon to be the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. So don’t expect any questions on how much money that will lose. The panel is Mayor of London Boris Johnson, the improbably named Lord Adonis, BBC favourite Shirley Williams, AllSeeingEye’s childhood fantasy Carol Vorderman and the mind-numbingly smug Will Self. For those who wish to take part … Continue reading

Battle of the First Night Stand-Ups

Richard Bacon (Radio Five Live, August 27, 2009) vs Sarah Palin (Tonight Show, March 2, 2010) Varying levels of cringe arise from both first-time efforts (and, yes, some people in Palin’s Leno crowd seem overly keen to express their support, though no more so than your average please-reinforce-our-worldview Now Show audience) but I think she wins with the better gags and snappier delivery. The self-obsessed BBC presenter (and renowned Palin-hater) … Continue reading

Shhhh

I’ve been busy recently, but yesterday I started to write this: ***** What with the election, the fuss about Lord Ashcroft, and the BBC falling apart, you’d think they would tell us about this.The infiltration of the IFE into the British political system – I hear it’s not just Labour, — that’s news, isn’t it?I mean it’s as significant and deeply troubling, if not more so, than this, wouldn’t you … Continue reading

Naughtie: Can I Plump Your Pillows, Lady Ashton?

Jim Naughtie to Baroness Ashton this morning: You’re a hundred days into the new job now. I mean, this is the kind of long term work that you have to do. Do you feel at all drained by some of the arguments that have been erupting in Europe about the settlement after the Lisbon Treaty was ratified and the way the appointments were made and so on? What touching concern … Continue reading

BLACK AND PEW….

Behind the BBC’s warming fanaticism are a series of financially-driven motives. Richard Black, as readers of this site will know, is the BBC’s web environment correspondent. He – like many of his BBC colleagues – also makes a tidy income from chairing conferences. Back in 2008, for example, he was a lead facilitator at a Pew Symposium in Tokyo which considered the likely impact on whales of climate change (!), … Continue reading

More on that Now Show Green thing

As the John Hathorne character in the ongoing witch-hunt against the poor, voiceless, victimised comedians of The Now Show it would be remiss of me not to note (with ignorant sadistic crypto-fascist foam-flecked glee, naturally) that the Tory candidate for Brighton Pavilion is asking the BBC for a bit of clarification. Update. Brigstocke: “we had to be very careful to ensure that The Green Party were not hosting or organising … Continue reading

Another Twitter Genius

One more from Twitter: Piotr M. Kaczynski works for the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), a think tank which claims “high standards of academic excellence” through “quality research”. Roughly a third of its funding comes from EU institutions and national governments, and one of its main research areas is climate change (it gave a number of presentations at Copenhagen). And one of its leading “thinkers” believes that the earthquakes … Continue reading