about an article, UK personal wealth at £6 trillion, featured on BBC Views Online over the weekend. The main point of complaint was the final section: Other figures, published by HM Revenue and Customs, show how rising house prices have provided a tax bonanza for the government. Stamp duty on residential property sales in the UK brought in £6.44bn for the chancellor in the last financial year, 2006-07. That was … Continue reading →

A BBC spokeswoman said the incident happened when two hours of Whiley’s usual three-hour show had to be pre-recorded, because the presenter was attending the opening by the Queen of the new Broadcasting House. However, listeners were not informed that part of the show was pre-recorded. “The show is always live,” the spokeswoman said. “This was an exceptional occasion.” The BBC said the fact that the competition was pre-recorded did … Continue reading →

You’re on the ropes on inheritance tax. You need to take over the news agenda. What do you do? Get your bruiser of a spin doctor to phone up Nick Robinson and tell him some troops might, at some indeterminate time in the future, just possibly, be pulled out of Iraq. Sure enough, it becomes the lead item on the BBC News bulletins with copious use of the phrase “The … Continue reading →

Please use this thread for BBC-related comments and analysis. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not (and never has been) an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or use as a chat forum. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts. Click through to read and contribute comments on this … Continue reading →

When Dr Jerry Brotton, then an English lecturer at Royal Holloway department and now part of BBC favourite Lisa Jardine’s English department at Queen Mary’s London, came out two years ago with his “It’s The Turks Wot Won It” theory – that action by the Ottoman Empire at the request of Elizabeth’s spymaster Francis Walsingham had “fatally weakened” the Armada, the Guardian were quick to follow up, seemingly claiming in … Continue reading →

doesn’t mention the devastating article in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday quoting Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, a former BBC Governor, speaking about the BBC. I am sure this is just a simple oversight, so, ever helpful, I’ve sent them an ‘e-mail’ (as they put it) using the form on the BBC Editors Blog page: Hello, I see from your BBC In The News section today that you’ve omitted the Mail on Sunday … Continue reading →

. Yesterday morning they started off a new [Don’t] Have Your Say thread with the following question: Will this year’s Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool enable the Tories to regain support from Labour? With rumours of a possible snap election, a poll for the Observer suggests that just 13% of voters view party leader David Cameron as the party leader most able to handle a crisis – compared to 60% … Continue reading →

reports the Mail on Sunday: BBC Five Live’s award-winning presenter Peter Allen has been snubbed for a job fronting Radio 4’s flagship Today programme “because he is too much of an Essex boy”. Friends of Allen – who left school at 18 to work for his local newspaper and did not go to university – believe he is a victim of “Oxbridge snobs” who control the BBC. According to a … Continue reading →

*, hangout of sundry lefties, ‘activists’ and ‘edgy’ wannabes, among others: I has a new job! For the next three months, anyway. I will be helping shape the views of middle England on the Jeremy Vine programme on Radio Two. Most importantly, it means that I will have all weekends and evenings free, and will be able to attend more Urban events. Hurrah! I hope the BBC will identify this … Continue reading →

reports Saturday’s Daily Mail: First her kitchen turned out not to be her kitchen. Now it seems Nigella Lawson’s trip to the shops on a London bus for her cookery show wasn’t quite what it seemed either…. Producers have admitted that they hired the bus Miss Lawson rode on, filling it with extras pretending to read the newspapers as normal passengers. So while Miss Lawson, 47, was telling viewers to … Continue reading →