Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:


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.

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94 Responses to Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:

  1. backwoodsman says:

    Interesting that al-beeb can always find room for some guff on immigrants rights. But not however for the Commissioner for Public Appointments’ criticism that nulab activists are FOUR TIMES as likely to be apponted to govt quangos as Conservative supporters !!!!
    beeb has a bit of previous in this area, they didn’t make much of a splash about the Lord’s committee which criticised the appointment of michael lyons as chairman of the bbc trust, because of his close links to gordon brown, either !!!

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  2. Matthew says:

    Great BBC glee at this story

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7044734.stm

    The Conservatives have lost a battle to keep an £8.3m bequest by a man whose son described him as delusional.
    Pharmaceutical mogul Branislav Kostic left the cash in his will in the 1980s.

    But his only son Zoran, 50, contested the bequest, saying his father was “deluded and insane” and he was entitled to the entire estate.

    A High Court judge, who ruled that the Tories could not keep the money, said Mr Kostic would not have left the money to them if he had been “of sound mind”.

    The last paragraph is particularly egregious, strongly implying that the judge said that anyone leaving money to the Conservative Party was insane, instead of saying that ‘Mr Kostic would not have left his son out’, which seems to be more the point.

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  3. Matthew says:

    If you were to read a less biased source than the BBC, you’d find the truth – that the man was actually insane, and suffered from delusions for the last 20 years

    A mentally ill tycoon left his £10million fortune to the Tories so they could save him from a “Satanic plot”, a court heard yesterday. Branislav Kostic gave the staggering donation — a Conservative Party record — in his will after suffering psychiatric delusions for 20 years. Kostic, who died aged 80 in 2005, sent letters to ex-PM Margaret Thatcher and top Tories asking for help to battle “dark forces” trying to kill him

    http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007330168,00.html

    Don’t expect the BBC to mention that, they’d much rather imply that leaving your money to the Tories makes you mad, deep glee at this at BBC HQ.

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  4. Martin says:

    More BBC lies and spin from 5 lite. Over the 8 million pounds left to the Tory party.

    Did Radio 5 lite report the facts? No of course not. The Tory party never used the money but simply put it aside. However, listening to the 5 lite fembot reporting you would be thinking the Tories preyed on this old man to get his money. A bloody disgrace. Typical BBC.

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  5. Matthew says:

    update: the article above has been expanded now

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  6. Haversack says:

    Yentob says he didn’t mislead over the Scott Walker show, even though he re-did the commentary, because the film’s original maker agreed to it. But it’s not about whether he misled the original film-maker. It’s about him misleading the viewer by creating the impression that he made the film.

    I remember seeing it at the time, and the impression was definitely created that the BBC team had scored a coup in getting this reclusive (but highly-over-rated, in my view) star to finally allow a TV doco team to record him.

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  7. will says:

    It seems that despite JR’s claims, worldwide enthusiasm for BBC News isn’t sufficient to avoid indirect subsidy from the tellytax payer.

    The BBC is losing up to £15 million a year on a rolling news channel which is not available in Britain but is being protected from the widespread cuts to be unveiled this week.

    The scale of the losses incurred by BBC World, the BBC’s worst performing service, is similar to the savings that the corporation’s news division is being asked to find, expected to amount to £100 million over six years.

    The BBC try spin as usual

    The corporation says that BBC World is not dependent on the licence fee and receives no public subsidy or grant, surviving instead on a loan “in the low double-figure millions” from the corporation’s commercial division, BBC Worldwide.

    But the profits of BBC Worldwide are used to fund BBC programmes

    http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article2658695.ece

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  8. MattLondon says:

    Matthew:

    Great BBC glee at this story

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po…ics/ 7044734.stm

    SNIP

    The last paragraph is particularly egregious, strongly implying that the judge said that anyone leaving money to the Conservative Party was insane, instead of saying that ‘Mr Kostic would not have left his son out’, which seems to be more the point.

    It might be more to the point but it isn’t what the report said the judge said.

    If they are misquoting the judge – fair enough – attack them – but if it is what he said I don’t think you have anything to complain about.

    I certainly see no evidence of the “glee” you mention in the report.

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  9. Martin says:

    Anyone noticed the BBC spin over failing NHS Dentistry?
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7041291.stm

    There never was a golden age of dentistry we are spun by Nu Laobur and the BBC. So why have my taxes gone up like a rocket to fund the NHS then?

    I really can’t believe what a soft time Gordon Brown is getting over this.

    Does anyone think if tihs were a Tory Government the BBC would be going so easy?

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  10. Chuffer says:

    Remarkable sentiment on Radio 2 today (Monday, 1215 ish), with Jeremy Vine ‘interviewing’ Ben Bradshaw: is it not the case, he said, that wealthy people have a moral duty to use private dentists, thus freeing up the NHS ones?

    Seeems a very long way from the BBC line on schools.

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  11. Ritter says:

    Conservative Shadow culture sec ponders a future without the tv tax…

    Shadow culture secretary tells BBC to ‘get a grip’
    http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,2191549,00.html

    …”Mr Hunt, appearing on GMTV yesterday, also appeared to reopen the debate about the future of the licence fee by saying his party was looking at alternatives.

    “The BBC constantly has to justify the fact that we have one of the most expensive licence fee regimes in the world and it has to justify it in the context that increasingly a lot of this content is available free of charge on the internet anyway, so I think there is still a big discussion that has to be had as to the shape of the licence fee in a broadband TV internet era.”

    Mr Hunt added that the Tories were giving “serious thought” to the future of the licence fee as well as alternatives such as subscription and advertising.

    “We’re looking at all the options,” he said. “What we need is a structure that actually preserves what’s great about the BBC, what really works about the BBC, whilst at the same time works in a multichannel, multiplatform era where people have hundreds of TV channels they can pick from.”

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  12. Matthew says:

    MattLondon, the report has been rewritten since my complaint. At the time it was showing version 0 here

    http://www.newssniffer.co.uk/articles/72498/diff/0/1

    which does not mention the man’s pyschiatric delusions, and implies only that he was mad BECAUSE he wanted to give money to the Tories.

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  13. BaggieJonathan says:

    Yet another HYS debacle.

    A discussion gets closed with 2% rejected, around a third published and near two thirds unpublished.

    We all know that this majority unpublished have in fact been rejected ‘by the back door’.

    Its not one discussion, its time and time again.

    If it were sale of goods the BBC would be liable to action for misrepresntation.

    Is there no way to make them change the name to reflect the level of accepted contribution and make them call it “DON’T Have Your Say”, at least that would be more honest.

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  14. pounce says:

    The BBC, news from Afghanistan and how it promotes a pro-Taliban agenda.

    Anybody notice the only story on the BBC webpage for today from Afghanistan.
    Civilians ‘killed in Nato raid’
    Three civilians were killed and seven injured when Nato planes attacked insurgents outside Kabul on Sunday, a senior Afghan police officer says. The deputy chief of police of Wardak province said Nato called in air support after militants had ambushed a convoy of international peacekeepers. He said the air attack left five insurgents dead and three civilians, including a husband and wife.
    …….
    The issue of civilian casualties has had serious repercussions over the past 18 months with President Karzai criticising international troops for not taking more care when fighting insurgents.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7045091.stm

    Yet again the fifth column that is the BBC here in the Uk paints a negative picture of news from Afghanistan. Why in a story about an attack on troops trying to defend democracy in the region from a belligerent racist, sexist theological bunch of thugs does the BBC paint a picture of aggression from the victims. Lets be honest here the BBC does nothing but promote the Taliban as the true leaders of the country and any story which puts them in a negative picture is either heavily censored or omitted entirely. On that note here are a few stories from today the BBC hasn’t published;
    Afghan suicide bomber kills 3 family members
    KABUL (Reuters) – A suicide bomber killed his mother, sister and 11-year-old brother when his explosives vest blew up prematurely in southern Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry said on Monday.
    http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSB43924420071015?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews

    16 fighters under Most Wanted warlord killed in Afghan airstrikes
    KABUL, Afghanistan – Airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan killed 16 militants fighting under a wanted Uzbek warlord with a US$200,000 bounty on his head, while seven militants were killed elsewhere, officials said Monday. A suicide attack against a NATO convoy in the south, meanwhile, wounded two civilians.
    http://www.cp.org/english/online/OnlineFullStory.aspx?filename=w100819A&newsitemid=12473011&languageid=1

    Injured Afghan Children Fly To Germany For Surgery
    October 15, 2007 — German health authorities say a flight carrying 57 injured Afghan children requiring surgery is to arrive in Hamburg this week.The authorities said the children would be sent to 30 hospitals across Germany for treatment under a scheme run by the organization “Children need us.”
    http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/10/f195afc2-7188-41db-b873-f0ebb72ef71f.html

    I’m sure that the BBC if it wrote up the last story there would ensure they mentioned the impact on the environment by flying those children to Germany. Well they do quote this on one of their articles “The Taleban take advantage of solar energy”
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7039661.stm

    How much lower can the BBC when it blows the flute for radical Islamic terrorists.

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  15. Austin Allegro says:

    On the BBC1 news yesterday evening there was an item about Barak Obama, the mixed-race US presidential candidate. It reported him as saying that the problems of blacks in the US being economic rather than due to racism.

    The BBC’s correspondent clearly didn’t like this, and she was shown buttonholing Mr Obama at a rally and challenging him on this. Mr Obama said ‘that’s a silly question’ but then the sound was faded out and we could hear no more, despite it being clear he was still answering the question.

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  16. matt says:

    I think that Obama piece was a news package from Sunday’s Panorama, so i guess you can see the full intv there.

    Have i missed it or has anyone talked about the IPCC rubbishing the BBC’s Stephen Lawrence documentary of last year? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7043064.stm

    Seems like a big deal to me but no TV news coverage and a news article published to the London News website on a Saturday.

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  17. pounce says:

    The BBC hollow point rounds and half a story.

    ‘Special bullets’ killed Menezes

    Specialised bullets designed to kill instantly were used by the police marksmen who shot dead Jean Charles de Menezes, the Old Bailey has heard. The bullets “immediately incapacitate” the victim and flatten, rather than pass through the other side of a body, the jury was told.
    ………
    Specialist firearms officers used hollow-point 124 grain bullets, employed by US air marshals A senior firearms advisor, known as “Andrew” to protect his anonymity, said the decision to use this ammunition was made to help police chasing the failed 21 July suicide bombers.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7045122.stm

    So according to the BBC the police are using ‘special bullets’ which are designed to kill. Well silly old me as I thought that all rounds killed if they impacted in the right place. But anyway I digress. Those ‘special bullets’ are used by the police as they stay in the target and do not pass through and endanger anybody else or even penetrate the skin of an aircraft which is a few miles up in the sky. (Which kind of explains why American air marshals use them) But hey the BBC isn’t going to pass on such information onto the great unwashed when they can slate the police who are only trying to stop the idiots whom the BBC worships as their ideological masters.

    The BBC hollow point rounds and half a story.

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  18. Martin says:

    The BBC and the Nu Labour scum are at it again. On the BBC 6pm news. Firstly, no mention in the report about the lack of NHS Dentists that this crap third rate Government changed their contracts. But I did note the dig at the Tories where they quoted the increase in Dentists since 1997. What about the rpevious 10 years?

    Next we have the stupid pathetic garbage at the BBC spinning the pointless story that we have to start drinking UHT milk because it’s greener. So then that’s fatso Brown’s next stealth tax?

    Then we get the pointless story of some Guardian reading BBC prat up in the Artic telling us that the North West passage is now passable. What a surprise they never mentioned that it’s been passable before.

    God, I give up with these Guardian reading prats.

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  19. MattLondon says:

    Matthew:
    MattLondon, the report has been rewritten since my complaint. At the time it was showing version 0 here

    http://www.newssniffer.co.uk/art…/72498/diff/0/ 1

    which does not mention the man’s pyschiatric delusions, and implies only that he was mad BECAUSE he wanted to give money to the Tories.

    Fair enough – if their version 2 better reflects what the judge said then I quite agree they were wrong to plce the words they put in quotes in version 1 as the judge’s words and doing so does indeed imply the bias you accuse them of.

    I often notice that cheap shots like these get through in the morning and are re-edited a bit later. I wonder if those originally responsible ever get told off.

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  20. dai bando says:

    http://www.thisissouthwales.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=161366&command=displayContent&sourceNode=232789&home=yes&more_nodeId1=161375&contentPK=18673182

    The Swansea magistrates managed to fine a dead man £180 for not having a TV licence, even though his widow had a licence in her name for the property. Nothing about this on the BBC News of course.

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  21. Bryan says:

    They opened a new topic on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this morning on HYS:

    http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&forumID=3682&edition=2&ttl=20071016000043&#paginator

    And, as always, it’s led to a fierce debate and the usual discrepancy between the comments the moderators are prepared to publish and the popular comments – as shown by the recommendations.

    And there’s always some irritating little arsehole who is convinced that the recommendations are engineered by a Jewish conspiracy. This rebuttal of such idiocy had me chuckling at the monitor:

    Added: Monday, 15 October, 2007, 15:50 GMT 16:50 UK

    By reading the “most recommended comments” one can see the Israeli’s or Jews have a program in place to “squat and jam” this message board.
    Jim, London

    Don’t be ridiculous! We Jews have to control the world’s finances from our secret bunker in the Swiss Alps, and make Hollywood films to corrupt your children (that is, the ones we haven’t already kidnapped). After lunch, we have to poison your wells and spread the bubonic plague. Who has time for message boards?

    Rachel Harpaz, Boston, United States

    Recommended by 290 people

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  22. James of England says:

    I don’t know if this was covered earlier, but I’m pretty astonished by this account of the reduction in charges against Marine Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich. He and three other Marines were charged with the murder of Iraqi civilians in Haditha in 2005. Of those other three, only one still has charges against them, and his investigating officer has recommended that they be dropped. This BBC story is about the only remaining defendant, Sgt. Wuterich, having his charges recommended to be reduced from murder to negligent homicide.

    The story starts with an ambiguous paragraph, goes into a more obnoxious paragraph and ends with a horrifically misleading passage.

    Heading and first paragraph: Marine may escape Haditha charge

    Sgt Wuterich says he was operating within military combat rules
    An investigating officer has said no murder charges should be brought against a US marine accused of leading a massacre of Iraqi civilians.

    “escape… charges” seems unsupportive of the idea of innocence and odd, in that, if found guilty, Wuterich could still face 21 years in jail. Still, the ambiguity of “accused of leading” is less strong than in the next para:

    “Sgt Frank Wuterich is alleged to have been the ringleader of US troops who killed 24 Iraqi civilians in November 2005 in the town of Haditha.”

    He’s not “alleged to have been the ringleader of” the US troops involved in the incident. He was their squad leader. In his own words: “As a sergeant and a squad leader, I am responsible for the decisions made to employ the tactics we used that day.”
    The “alleged” (para 2) and “accused” (para 1) isn’t that he led the troops. It’s whether they committed a “massacre” at all.

    The final paragraph is the worst, though.

    “Among the most serious allegations against Sgt Wuterich is that he and another marine shot dead five unarmed Iraqis while they had their hands in the air.”

    Seven of the murder charges are being recommended to be reduced to negligent homicide. The charges referred to in the last paragraph are being recommended to be dropped. Even if you think that the US system of justice is corrupt and that this is all lies and such, surely it’s wrongful to give the impression that the most serious of the negligent homicide charges likely to go to trial are ones that will, in fact, never go to trial. It’d be nice if they gave the system some respect and suggested that he probably wasn’t guilty of those crimes for which charges are being dropped, but for the Beeb to actively go forward and effectively fabricate charges is horrific.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7029183.stm

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  23. James of England says:

    Sorry, should have given a link to an actual news story on it.
    http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/10/05/news/sandiego/21_19_0510_4_07.txt

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  24. Stephanie clague says:

    More Government propaganda on the BBC TOADY SHOW this AM! The object of this show seems to be to diseminate NULAB “information” only! We had some scientists on a pointless junkett to remeasure Arctic ice thickness(aleady known). Then Milliband flogging the “red line” rubbish! I counted the phrase “red line” 30 times! What is the point of a very soft interview with no other point of view to offer a different perspective? According to the presenter only the Tories are scared and worried about Nick Clegg becoming leader, nothing about the NuLab regime being worried! Do the TOADY SHOW commisars know what a pathetic joke they have become? Do they even care? Who is going to call these NuLabour shills to account?
    News just in.. MMGW/AGW is proved because there are, wait for it… more wasps! Oh dear! can the BBC doom mongers get anymore desparate? Wasps have ALWAYS been present in the UK ecosystem and they play an essential role! For millenia the wasp population has varied with the natural climate cycle and its NATURAL! it almost beyond belief how the BBC can get away with such onesided and partial reporting on climate change! Is it too much to ask that we have balanced and sensible reporting of the real facts? The stock in trade of the BBC seems to be scare stories and eco loony propaganda!

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  25. backwoodsman says:

    xAnother classic from the urban guerrillas who bring us Farming Today.
    A topographically challenged mung bean muncher , suggesting we could end climate change by growing nut trees in the mountains instead of sheep.

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  26. noobie says:

    From NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html

    Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. “Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic,” he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.

    “The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century,” Nghiem said.

    This is one of the science things you never see on the BBC. I wonder why…

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  27. Abandon Ship! says:

    Here is the truth about Ming Campbell – he just wasn’t good enough. Oliver Kamm makes the point here:

    http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2007/10/gone-with-reaso.html

    What has this got to do with the BBC?

    Much. In my opinion Ming’s star was elevated far above its deserved position because on the Today programme, for 4 years or more, he was presented as the authoritative voice of those opposed to the Iraq war. So he grew in stature amongst a certain section of the population, based on him being given free rein to pontificate about Iraq, the UN etc. And Naughtie and Humphreys never once heckled or seriously questioned his views, but listened sympathetically and cooed in agreement.

    Fast forward to 2007 and Ming is a party leader. He can’t rely on Iraq any more, and when serious questions are asked about Lib Dem policies or vision, he is a nothingness in political terms. Decent, but a nothingness. And this was all because the BBC repeatedly gave him an easy time, building a gravitas that was, at the end of the day, made of cardboard.

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  28. Martin says:

    The vile Victoria Derbyshire was at it again today on 5 lite. She was squarking out Government statistics as “facts” in relation to the new proposed 20mph speed limit. Needless to say anyone that offered a different opinion was cut across by the awful Ms Derbyshire.

    And funny how the BBC found plenty of people in favour of the 20mph proposal. Was that a scientific survey they undertook? I doubt it.

    Despite 15000 speed cameras and a Gestapo Police force road deaths have stayed the same for the last 10years at around 3200. Anyone ever thought that perhaps a different approach to road fatalities is required?

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  29. Ayayay says:

    What they don’t tell you about road deaths is the UK is already one of the safest countries in the World. BUt that would spoil the story.

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  30. Andrew Cramb says:

    Bias in the BBC is often so difficult to pin down. One example is the BBC’s anti-Turkish bias.

    There was a classic on Radio 4 “World at One ” today.

    The report was about a possible incursion by the Turkish military into Northern Iraq to attack, in Martha Karney’s phrase which she used twice , ” Kurdish separatists “.

    There followed an interview with the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq who as a Kurd himself was, unsurprisingly against Turkish military action.

    No attempt was made to put the Turkish view or put the story into context.

    The BBC failed to mention that any military action is against the PKK, recognised as a terrorist organisation by the UK, US, EU and many countries. Terrorists who have murdered over 30000 people in the last 2 decades.

    Instead they are ” Kurdish separatists ” , a sort of Middle East version of the Scottish National Party !

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  31. Firefoxx says:

    More on the militant / terrorist debate.

    I’ve just had a look at the Wiki ‘Project for Palestine:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Palestine

    Its main goal is to “Create and maintain fair and unbiased information on Palestine and Palestinians […]”

    If we expand the contents to show ‘Palestinian militants’, we get:
    * Palestinian militant groups
    – Fatah
    – Hamas
    – Palestinian Islamic Jihad
    – Terrorist attacks attributed […]
    * Palestinian terrorists
    – (no subcategories)

    So there are no Palestinian terrorists. Given the BBC and MSM’s use of these terms, I found that funny 🙂

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  32. will says:

    Is the reviewer from the BBC’s Radio Times hinting at the inevitable when he writes about tonight’s “spooks”

    Iran and Britain are about to sign an agreement that could seal peace in the Middle East. But rogue Iranian elements aren’t happy, and plan to ruin everything by attacking London with a deadly biological weapon. At least, that’s how things start, but nothing is ever what it seems

    ie it’s really the Yanks/Joos doing the sabotage.

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  33. Martin says:

    Spooks. Don’t watch this BBC crap. But wasn’t there a stink a while back over and episode where white BNP supporters were going around blowing up London?

    Can’t move for BNP terrorists can we? But Muslims? No such thing is there in the BBC world.

    No doubt next it will be climate change deniers blowing up London.

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  34. Lee Moore says:

    Stephanie – there WAS an alternative view to Milliband on the Today programme this morning. David Heathcott-Amory was on (before 7am.)

    Conspicuously absent from the BBC today, though, is Gisela Stuart’s attack on Gordon Brown’s veracity (in the Times) for claiming that the constitution and the reform treaty are different.

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  35. Ritter says:

    Authoritative Ming

    In pictures: Sir Menzies Campbell
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7046027.stm

    Picture 5, caption “Sir Menzies earned a reputation as an authoritative figure, particularly regarding foreign policy.

    So say the BBC. I never regarded Ming as being any more or less ‘authoritative’ on foreign affairs than anyone else. He had an opinion, that’s all. What makes his opinion ‘authoritative’? When it chimes with the BBC mindset perhaps?

    Iraq was Ming’s ‘one-trick’, that the BBC loved and adored him for. He had no other.

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  36. D Burbage says:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7046288.stm

    See bottom of story. Let’s not publish the main poll ratings, let’s publish a graph that shows David Cameron and the Tories are actually worse than Ming Campbell.

    Oh yes.

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  37. David Gregory (BBC) says:

    Martin
    Oh come on. Spook rather presciently had a storyline involving home grown suicide bombers in series two. Many people thought it was far fetched at the time. How wrong they were.
    Do watch the new series, word is it’s a cracker!

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  38. Haversack says:

    Oh come on, David. Every time Spooks is criticized some BBCite drags out that *one* episode from series 2. I think there was supposed to be one other in the last series, by which time I had given up. That’s out of 46 episodes (over five series).

    For God’s sakes, Howard Brenton wrote a ton of episodes. He’s a radical political playwright. But radical left or radical right, you may ask. Well, what do you think?

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  39. David Gregory (BBC) says:

    Haversack
    Well there’s such a long list of radical right-wing playwrights to pick from isn’t there?

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  40. John says:

    Watch out for the forthcoming edition of QI with Stephen Fry.

    There’s a section on Euro Myths – done as a Call My Bluff parody – where all the tired old canards such as bent bananas, etc, are raised and duly exposed as “Bluff”. There’s nothing “True”, to provide balance.

    But of course: all criticism of the EU is by definition false propaganda, to be sneered at by the bien pensant. (See Polly in today’s Guardian, for further confirmation).

    Shame Christopher Booker wasn’t consulted.

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  41. Haversack says:

    There are plenty of right-wing playwrights and writers out there (they tend not to be radical, that’s usually the province of the left). Many of them don’t get far in the world of the BBC or subsidized theatre. But some do fine, especially in the real world — Stoppard, for example.

    None of them, as far as I know, write for Spooks, so that tells us something about where Spooks is coming from.

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  42. David Gregory (BBC) says:

    Haversack
    Tell you what, lets watch this series and see how it pans out, eh?

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  43. Haversack says:

    No, David, that’s just stalling. We’ve had five series of Spooks, are you saying we can’t make a decision based on all that?

    Perhaps the next series will be far more realistic and then we’ll applaud and say “Well done series 6”, but the past 46 episodes are more than enough go on.

    Anyway, even if series 6 is good, which it doesn’t look like it will be, that wouldn’t change the fact that for five or so years in the midst of Islamic terrorism we’ve had this ridiculously unrealistic show which has managed to create a completely false picture of what the security services do (and how competent they are).

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  44. will says:

    ie it’s really the Yanks/Joos doing the sabotage.
    will | 16.10.07 – 3:05 pm |

    Spooks – well the yanks are already identified as the baddies.

    Gordon Brown is within an ace of peace in our time (unlike his predecessor “who wouldn’t rule out military action against Iran”), but MI5 are conned into blowing up a potential terrorist on a train in Tehran. This unleashes a US manufactured bio-weapon, originally supplied to US ally Saddam. There is no antidote to the virus that is spreading through London as well as Tehran.

    & who conned MI5? To be revealed but that may be where the Zionist entity comes into thr frame. Also the footsoldier baddies are mercenaries, Blackwater perhaps.

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  45. David Preiser says:

    will | 16.10.07 – 10:17 pm |

    “This unleashes a US manufactured bio-weapon, originally supplied to US ally Saddam.

    Well, this must be pure fantasy then, since it was the French and Russians who helped Saddam with his bio-weapons programs, not the US. Anything to support The Narrative, apparently.

    US Agent: “It’s our baby.”
    Harry: “You must be so proud.”

    Brilliant.

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  46. The Fat Contractor says:

    David Preiser | 16.10.07 – 10:43 pm |
    Well, this must be pure fantasy then, since it was the French and Russians who helped Saddam with his bio-weapons programs, not the US. Anything to support The Narrative, apparently.

    Did Saddam actually have any WMD? According to our beloved BBC there weren’t any to be found …

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  47. Anon says:

    Didn’t he have them at some stage, and then destroy them?

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  48. Abandon hope! says:

    BBC fact that we doin’t want to give much publicity to number 20567:

    The vast majority of Saddam’s arms were supplied by China, Russia and France. The evil USA supplied practically nothing, except perhaps the odd fake turkey.

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  49. Abandon hope! says:

    BBC fact that we don’t want to give much publicity to number 20568:

    The polar bear population has increased markedly over the past 20 years.

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  50. gordon-bennett says:

    paxo on newsnight this evening failed to nail the eu Referendum issue: partly because he only spoke to nulab people, partly because IMHO he doesn’t understand the heart of the issue.

    1. gordon brown has said that if he doesn’t get his red lines he will veto the Treaty.

    2. Even if the red lines are granted they automatically lose all force after 5 years.

    3. Ergo, after 5 years the UK will be subject to the unqualified treaty that gb (see 1. above) would have vetoed.

    Is that what we should allow? I think we need a Referendum.

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