THE FIRST MARTYR OF THE LSE….

Sir Howard Davies is being treated by the BBC as if he were the first martyr of the London School of Economics given his resignation over LSE closeness to the Libyan tyranny. However I get the impression from BBC coverage of this issue (On Today 8.34am and 8.49am, a double whammy!) that the BBC thinks Sir Howard has perhaps been a little precipitative in his resignation over this “unfortunate” issue … Continue reading

THE KIND HEARTED EU…

To all of those cynics out there who consider the EU a black-hearted tyranny, chill. Richard Black, BBC Environment correspondent brings us good news… The European Commission will not call for tougher targets on carbon emmissions despite analysis showing doing so would be cost-effective. If you read the item he has posted, there is a distinct sense of disappointment that the noble Eurocrats have not imposed even stiffer targets on … Continue reading

BBC DEMI-GODS

If you examine the 2005 report by Lord Wilson of Dinton into the BBC’s coverage of EU-related matters, what leaps out is bias by omission, the crude but systematic ignoring by BBC journalists of important EU issues. Six years on, nothing has changed. Transcripts of relevant items on yesterday’s main news programmes on BBC radio and television show that there was scarcely any discussion of UKIP’s remarkable second-place result in … Continue reading

TRICKY VICKY GOES MANUFACTURING….

…on the BBC at least. A B-BBC reader writes… On 5Live on Wednesday Victoria Derbyshire gave us a fine example of the BBC manufacturing a news story. Riven Vincent. the mother of a disabled child who caught the headlines in January for her criticism of provision for respite care, was dragged into the studio by Derbyshire for an interview….she wasn’t a ‘current’ story in the news so…. Why? This is … Continue reading

COMPARE AND CONTRAST – PART ONE.

Here’s one view on US unemployment; The U.S. unemployment rate hit 10.3 percent in February, up from 9.8 percent at the end of January, according to the Gallup polling agency. The rate of those considered to be underemployed, meanwhile, reached 19.9 percent last month, up from 18.9 percent at the end of January, Gallup says. Results are based on a 30-day rolling average. Here’s another; The US unemployment rate fell … Continue reading

No Bite in the Bark

Sir Howard Davies was given an easy time this morning by rottweiler Humph.Sir Howard’s resignation may have been a noble selfless thing for the sake of that fandabbydozy institution the LSE, but I felt we never got to the nitty gritty.What about the influence this dosh from despots might have on the teaching? Humph did ask, but he let Sir Howard get away with a distinctly cavalier denial. Where was … Continue reading

Question Time LiveBlog 3rd March 2011

Question Time tonight, on the day of the Barnsley by-election, comes from Derby. On the panel we have Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith MP. Fresh from her recent victory over Cathy Ashton in the regional heats of International Face Like A Horse, there is the local Labour MP and former foreign secretary (really) Margaret Beckett. Also former Labour minister ‘Lord’ Malloch Brown, historian David Starkey and economist and journalist Liam … Continue reading

PEOPLE’S ENEMY

I have reported before that the PR outfit Futerra is a BBC-linked organisation that trains BBC people on how to spread climate change propaganda. Here, Richard Black, bemoaning the scrapping of the useless quango the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), fantasises that it might wash its hands of dirty government funding and transmute instead into a body that becomes “a people’s watchdog” on green government. He spouts with enthusiastic glee: The … Continue reading