Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

: one of the saddest sights for an opponent of deceit is to see politically-correct bias managing to deceive someone who is not its natural or willing dupe. Jeremy Clarkson, though he jokes about his anti-U.S. bias, is not the most natural target of left-wing propaganda. Most of his programme on the gun (‘Inventions that changed the world’, shown this evening on BBC 2) was, by BBC standards, a watchable … Continue reading

Public money

Nature may abhor a vacuum, but BBC’s website seems to have an insatiable desire to fill up bandwidth. The front page of the New York Times on 11 January had an interesting piece about the lengths of film credits – http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/11/movies/11CRED.html. Surprisingly, the BBC news website had an interesting article bylined Michael Osborn ‘Last Updated: Tuesday, 13 January, 2004, 17:41 GMT ‘ on: BBC: ‘The Lord of the Rings trilogy … Continue reading

Kilroy woz everywhere.

Stephen Pollard in the Evening Standard and Fiona Govan and Chris Hastings in the Telegraph have both written on the Kilroy-Silk affair. Apologies for repeating myself, but I say again: the BBC’s offence in withdrawing ‘Kilroy’ was not that it exceeded its rights but that it was demonstrably biased and hypocritical given its tolerance of Paulin and many other commentators who have made less murderous but still vituperative blanket condemnations … Continue reading

If there were an award

for Beebwatcher of the week, then Scott Burgess would have won it on the basis of recent postings. He put together a pretty much purple patch of posts, giving the Beeb (and us) the special honour of sharing in his Daily Ablutions. So go and wash your ears out with this excellent addition to the Blogosphere, if you haven’t already followed Glenn Reynold’s recent tip that is. There’s plenty about … Continue reading

Repeat after me : Right-wingers are the root of all evil.

Tonight’s hourly Radio 4 news summaries are carrying a story from Iran about how a few hundred political candidates have been stopped from electoral participation by Iran’s Guardian Council. This Guardian Council is a part of the theocratic political system in Iran. Fair enough. Except that the newsreader adds “…the Guardian Council is dominated by right-wingers”. So the Guardian Council believe in individual liberty and responsibility, free markets, and a … Continue reading

The Kilroy-Silk affair

. As you probably know, Robert Kilroy-Silk’s talk show has been taken off the air following outrage against an anti-Arab article he wrote for the Sunday Express. You can see what I think about his article in this Samizdata post here. You can see more about the case in this BBC article here including a quote from Perry de Havilland, of Samizdata and Libertarian Alliance fame. The CRE threatening the … Continue reading

Reader Mark Adams wrote to the BBC

regarding this piece about Gadaffi and WMD. This is what he said: “This biased opinion piece is just that – biased opinion. The obvious interpretation that Libya acted in response to the Iraq example rather than sanctions which have long been in place is ignored. Do publish biased opinion if you think that’s your role (I don’t) but do not present it as disinterested analysis. Your social and political biases … Continue reading