"You can’t be racist towards white people"

Here’s BBC favourite Jo Brand during an interview with stand-in host Phil Williams on Radio Five Live’s Simon Mayo Show yesterday: Jo Brand: My personal opinion is that you can’t be racist towards white people. You can be prejudiced about them but being prejudiced isn’t an illegal act whereas being racist can be. Phil Williams: Don’t you think racism is just being derogatory about a race, regardless of the colour? … Continue reading

Twins

On the back of a series about the difficulties some children must overcome to receive any education, Katya Adler’s report on the lengths to which Gazan children must go for ‘learning’ was one of the most egregious examples of biased reporting ever. Repeated all day on BBC news 24, the project involves twinning British schools with schools situated in areas of conflict. As a project, it’s an updated version of … Continue reading

Evening Standard on the BBC, pt 2

“At heart, the BBC is a nine-to-five, public sector type of place, run by people who have never really worked anywhere else.”… Those at the top spend their whole time talking to each other, so they are genuinely surprised by outside criticism… Like most highly bureaucratic organisations which feel under threat, the BBC’s core instinct is to expand as a matter of self-preservation.It cannot see a piece of new or … Continue reading

GAZA SCHOOLDAYS

Interesting item from Katya Alder in Gaza here. The UN in Gaza is very worried that thousands of schoolchildren are living in homes and studying in schools in varying states of disrepair. Naturally Israel is to blame for this and Katja was able to provide those lovable inhabitants of Hamastan with plenty of opportunities to damn Israel. With this Israeli-induced cash crisis causing so much misery, I was a bit … Continue reading

BLESSED ARE THE APPEASERS

Had the misfortune to listen to Thought for the Day this morning. The Right Reverend James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool. gave a little three minute sermon on the wisdom of those who accept that it is right and proper to accept terrorists in government here in Northern Ireland. I do not deny the BBC the right to provide a bully pulpit for clerics who urge appeasement but in the interest … Continue reading

F-Bombgate News

Ben Jacobs hits back: BBC freelance sports broadcaster Ben Jacobs, the alleged prime suspect in a high-level BBC inquiry into the sabotaged early Saturday morning precording for a 5 Live sports news bulletin that contained inserted obscene material from the Beeb’s bloopers file, will take legal action if necessary to clear his name.Jacobs says in an email to BBC colleagues: ‘I now face being barred from potentially all BBC outlets … Continue reading

"Institutional Terror"

Lengthy article by Stephen Robinson in the Evening Standard: Fear and loathing inside the BBC. Some snippets: Bennett is Head of Vision, which is another way of saying she oversees the other executives who oversee television and the BBC’s internet output, for which she is rewarded with a salary package of £536,000.She is one of the 47 BBC executives who is paid more than the £197,000 earned a year by … Continue reading

RESPECT, RESPECT

Did you catch Hillary Clinton being “interviewed” by John Humphyrs on Today this morning. Note the deep respect afforded to the US Secretary of State and the absence of interruptions. I can’t quite recall the same toadying silence afforded to representatives of the Bush regime, do you? I wonder was Humphyrs on his knees during the series of monologues from La Clinton? It’s amazing to observe the difference in tone … Continue reading

MANDY ON MONDAY

So, the Conservative Party conference finishes and up pops Lord Mandelson on the Today programme to explain the genius idea by Gordon Brown to flog off various State owned assets. I think he was given a very soft ride not least on the fact that selling assets at the bottom of the market is unlikely to realise the prices Brown imagines – Davis could have pressed a lot further. He … Continue reading