Today had on Sir David Higgins urging us to buy into the HS2 lunatic express scheme…the quicker the better….time, as he said, is money!   Jim Naughtie didn’t press Higgins hard at all….and seemed to accept the basic premise that HS2 is the best way of spending £80 billion that the nation doesn’t have….never mind flood defences, road maintenance, broadband, improving the existing rail network and so on…all … Continue reading →

  Just for interest here’s something from Al Jazeera…hosted by possibly the world’s most untrustworthy journalist, Mehdi Hasan….a devout Muslim, a Muslim preacher no less…but who tells us he is ‘secular and progressive‘. Whilst the subjects are of interest Hasan probably isn’t the best person to be adjudicating over them as he has a dog in the fight being essentially a hardline Muslim activist himself….though that is a judgment based … Continue reading →

  From Feedback……   Who decides the news agenda? Richard Clarke, the Editor of the BBC Radio newsroom, on the stories that make the news. Deciding the agenda…’We have our own ideas…but also use the Today programme, World at One, and PM, all of which influence us.‘ ‘We test each other’s judgement….I make a much better decision when editing if I test my judgement against the rest of my team.’ … Continue reading →

    Plenty of coverage for this BBC report: Sue Lloyd Roberts hears how a religious sect that believes in Aliens and the pursuit of pleasure is trying to help victims of female genital mutilation in Burkina Faso FGM, Clitoraid and The Pleasure Hospital       I heard the report on FOOC, it’s been on Newsnight and it’s in the Independent (as above) as well.   On FOOC we … Continue reading →

    From the BBC Duty Log….a listener complaint:  “I was annoyed that a report presented the ‘big bang’ theory as fact. It is only scientific fact, not what many Christians believe.”       “Sometimes I wish I was Jesus, I’d get my Air Max on and run across the sea for you”   Apparently that sentence in a song lyric was so offensive, or something, that the BBC … Continue reading →

  Paxman has once again been rampaging around the country on his obsessive hobby horse making highly political comments about Tory ministers…and calling Cameron an idiot because Paxman thinks commemorating WWI is somehow the same as celebrating it. Jeremy Paxman reopens war of words with Michael Gove over the WW1 centenary: ‘A charlatan’ who scores ‘cheap political points’     Can’t quite see how the BBC can continue to use … Continue reading →

  You can’t keep a good man down, but it seems ex BBC climate change activist, Richard Black, has slipped off to pastures new…and unknown? He was Director of Communications at the Global Ocean Commission but hasn’t tweeted since December 17 and that position looks to have been filled now by a ‘Justin Woolford’. Justin Woolford, Director of Communications Justin joined the Commission in January 2014 bringing extensive experience in communications … Continue reading →

    Tony Hall clearly has no control over the direction of travel the BBC takes politically….how can he claim impartiality is in the BBC’s DNA when it’s prime time current affairs programmes are stuffed full of people with quite obvious leftwing tendencies?   Guido reveals that Newsnight has, unbelievably?, hired a Labour stooge as its economics editor: Newsnight Hire Pro-Labour TUC Wonk as Economics Editor TUC’s senior economist Duncan Weldon … Continue reading →

First Bob Crow, now Tony Benn. It’s been a tough week for the comrades at the BBC. The floor is yours…

    Nice bit of a puff for Balls….nothing too rigorous from Robinson….just enough to allow Balls to paint the pretty pictures: Ed Balls ‘daunted’ by chancellor task Ed Balls has told me that he is “daunted” at the prospect of becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer, given the scale of cuts a future Labour government may have to make. “I’m daunted, because it’s going to be such a task with … Continue reading →