Battle of the First Night Stand-Ups

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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

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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?

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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….

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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

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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

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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 →

The Trials of The Diaspora and Other Stories

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When Melanie Phillips went to Australia she thought she had died and gone to heaven. She discovered that down under, unlike here in Blighty, supporting Israel does not have to be done in private, by consenting adults. For your information, Melanie Phillips is “known to be an extremist Zionist insane warmongering Islamophobe” who must be treated with circumspection and labelled “Mad Mel” by all liberal-leaning followers of the BBC. She … Continue reading →

MITCH BENN RETIRES HURT…

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The comedian Mitch Benn, having been fingered as an active Greenie by taking part in a Green party fund-raising event, attempted to justify in a series of responses to this post his partisan approach. I suppose I sort of congratulate him for at least making an effort; but his foray into what he clearly regarded as enemy territory ended in tears – he departed waspishly calling all the contributors to … Continue reading →