According to The Scotsman: Negligent prison staff ‘contributed to death of inmate’ Over on the BBC there’s a subtle difference: Private prison blame over suicide Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

, I chanced up their story about Private Johnson Beharry, VC, UK soldier wins highest honour. In it they include the line: Private Johnson Beharry, 25, becomes the first person to receive the award for more than 20 years. Would it really have been too much to mention, even in passing, that the last two VCs were awarded during the Falklands War in 1982, perhaps even going so far as … Continue reading →

A reader of Tim Blair’s pointed out a discontinuity between a BBC link and the story it linked to. The BBC’s link to a John Simpson column: Not quite Vietnam – the war in Iraq defies all predictions And what Simpson actually wrote: “The situation in Iraq is nothing like the Vietnam War, and it will not be.” Simpson has other views besides, not all of them happy reading, but … Continue reading →

As you can see from Andrew Bowman’s post further down, Kevin McNamara, a left-wing Labour MP, has distinguished himself by saying that Michael Howard’s views about gypsy encampments and the planning laws have “a whiff of the gas chamber about them.” For various reasons I am not Michael Howard’s biggest fan, but I do think that saying that to a man whose grandmother was murdered in the gas chambers of … Continue reading →

The BBC’s Britain’s Streets of Vice series is being repeated on BBC1, starting tonight with Sex in the City, described by Radio Times as follows: Sally Magnusson tells the story of a young prostitute struggling with her addiction to crack cocaine and heroin, one of more than 5,000 women thought to be working on the streets and risking violence, disease and a criminal record It’s on at 11.05pm – it’s … Continue reading →

(Realplayer, 224Kbps) spent its first seven minutes covering the Conservatives proposals for dealing with the problem of illegal traveller camps built in contravention of planning laws, both on their own land, and, more often, on other people’s land, often in the green belt. All the usual leftie hot-button words were used – racism, bigotry etc., with lengthy Going Live! reports from Vikki Young in Essex (with Michael Howard) and John … Continue reading →

Recently, a rather odious Conservative MP, Jonathan Sayeed, now expelled from the party, has been mentioned several times on BBC News Online, with headlines such as Sayeed to stand down as Tory MP and Tour row MP loses Tory party whip. BBC News Online’s coverage of old Seedy has been fulsome and detailed, leaving no doubt that Sayeed was, to use their term, a Tory. Compare and contrast this with … Continue reading →

was the headline in a news summary by Philip Hayter on BBC News 24 just now, followed by a brief mention of the Conservatives plans to reform the law to protect homeowners and the environment from the blight of illegal traveller encampments. This surprised me – the last thing the Conservatives would want to do is go anywhere near starting a race row, particularly knowing how the shrill harpies of … Continue reading →

to Andrew Bowman’s earlier post about CBS reporting of the meeting between President Bush and the McCartney sisters, I received an email from Fausta Wertz of the Bad Hair Blog, pointing out this post. Shamefully, this morning’s BBCA newscast, after reporting on the above, invited a former SF/IRA public relations man. His position was that the women were puppets of political opponents, nearly the same exact words Martin McGuinness, Sinn … Continue reading →

, the BBC ‘will cut 1,500 extra jobs’. This is one set of redundancies (sorry, ‘cuts’, as the News Online hacks call it) that’ll be given the full treatment whenever possible by BBC News staff. On with the reform! Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.