Bishop Hill blogged about how the BBC forced George Alagiah to quit his role as a Fairtrade charity patron. His Grace wrote: Does it strike anyone else that the BBC have got this the wrong way round? Allowing BBC journalists to make programmes about issues on which they are active campaigners would indeed lead to biased programming. But merely demanding that they leave their official posts in those campaigns doesn’t … Continue reading
Did you catch this interview on Today which debates the claim that the average student leaves University with £23,000 debt. The discussion was between one of the architects of the student loan system Nicholas Barr from the LSE and NUS President Wes Streeting. The interview manages to entirely miss the essential fact that a Labour government, ideologically driven by radical egalitarianism, is pushing far too many young people into debt … Continue reading
It must be awful to be a UK military family listening to the BBC for news of the campaign in Afghanistan. Radio Taliban would be less depressing than the State Broadcaster. The meme concerning Afghanistan has now morphed into the same one that prevailed when we were in Iraq. The cause is hopeless, we cannot win, UK lives are being sacrificed for no reason, we must get out. It’s defeatism, … Continue reading
Defending Israel is not the same as preaching *Israel right or wrong.*We have a tough time making our case especially when Israel does things we find hard to defend. But facing what Israel faces, we accept that it generally behaves with considerable restraint. As yet, we in the UK are not up against what Israel is up against, and who knows what we would do if we were. What we … Continue reading
Well, a brand new week and a brand new open thread. Off you go….. (Going forward, I will try to pick out some of the excellent observations in these threads and give them much greater publicity.) Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.
The BBC is obsessive on the need to tell us how wonderful the NHS is as a health-care system. It does so as a not so subtle battering ram to force the Conservatives into wasting the same huge sums of OUR taxes on it as has Labour when they come to power. This is all about positioning for future years. You can understand why the BBC admires huge taxpayer funded … Continue reading
I caught Kwame Kwei-Armah being interviewed on the BBC this morning concerning his documentary “On Tour with the Queen. The former Casualty actor and much loved neo political commentator was able to tell us that Australia did not want Her Majesty as Head of State, and it showed a clip of him being interviewed on Jamaican radio laughing uproariously at the suggestion by a caller that Independence has been a … Continue reading
What better way for the brave little class warriors at the BBC to start the week but by giving an easy canter to the hard-left Compass group’s lunatic suggestion that we need a “High Pay” Commission. In essence, Compass want Government to determine an upper limit on what we can earn and on the level of financial bonus we receive. The Compass spokesman got away with the canard that “greed” … Continue reading
An afterthought to (and some additional information on) the Today programme’s three-item (one, two, three) ‘don’t lock them up’ fest of last Thursday, noted by David here : Two points. One is the BBC double-whammy reporting – that not only do Barnardo’s think that too many young criminals are being locked up, but the Parliamentary Justice Committee think the same thing – which was reported as a separate item on … Continue reading
I was reading this BBC report on the law that has been just passed in Afghanistan that will allow a man to starve his wife to death if she does not agree to have sex with him. According to the State Broadcaster “Mr Karzai is selling out Afghan women for the sake of conservative Shia support at next week’s presidential election.” Let us be clear; there is nothing that is … Continue reading
