175 Responses to OPEN THREAD…

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  1. Jon S says:
    August 6, 2011 at 11:42 pm

    oh god, this riot thing in Tottenham has now been referred to the 1980s, can’t there be ‘riots’ in the Soho gay bars?

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  2. My Site (click to edit) says:
    August 7, 2011 at 6:59 am

    Tottenham.

    Before i switch off the entire broadcast media mess that claims to be ‘news’ these days. my ears ring to the claims of ‘anger’ in the community.

    So ‘angry’ with injustice, that the only outlet is to trash the, er, community, and loot anything not set afire.

    Rather belying the claims of various ‘spokespersons’ rushed in, especially when rather quickly and conveniently linked to Tory cuts (not sure that the outrage at the number of single mother support centres losing their funding will play quite as well in the normal hard-working family sector, though the MSM seems keen to whip this up). David Lammy, MP (Lab) seems under fire for being public school educated and issuing a statement as opposed to walking around and… issuing a statement.

    And as the justification for this seem to be a bunch a folk, from ‘protestors’ to pompous journos, whinging that ‘no one has spoken to them, I think the priorties are well and truly skewed. Again, the 24/7 maw needs feeding, and it’s a lose lose for common sense. You either knee jerk and look a prat, or you get a twat in a suit saying ‘so and so has not made a statement yet’. But… ‘keep your views coming in’.

    Certainly the media seems to have zero interest in resolving this and is more than happy to whip up a ratings frenzy based on ‘community anger’ with endless excuses being used to justify the inevitable results of media making sorry PC excuses for thuggism.

    The talking heads, and their political and media affiliations will be interesting, if predictable.

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  3. As I See It says:
    August 7, 2011 at 8:13 am

    So, in the style of BBC’s Mock The Week….Things you won’t ever hear from one of the BBC’s battalion of left-wing satirical comedians…..

    When a young man in athe community is shot dead by the Police, understandably the community want answers – and they have a sudden urge to loot electrical goods and set light to things.

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  4. As I See It says:
    August 7, 2011 at 8:31 am

    Hearing a lot on BBC News 24 about some ‘peaceful protest’ outside a Police station that unaccountably blew up into a riot.

    Yeah, like a peaceful petrol bomb that was understandably ‘angry’ as it flew harmlessly through the air until it….well who would have guessed that fire might happen?

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  5. My Site (click to edit) says:
    August 7, 2011 at 8:35 am

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8685950/Stephanie-Flanders-admits-to-being-nauseated-by-George-Osborne.html

    Hey, at only £4Bpa, if you want ‘well-considered’, you are in the wrong place.

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    • George R says:
      August 7, 2011 at 9:08 am

      Yes, Tim Walker of the ‘Telegraph’ gives some sense of Flanders’ political proclivities :

      ” ‘It has been mildly nauseating the last few days the way the Chancellor has sort of crowed here about how we are a safe haven and no one is worried about our commitment to cutting the deficit.’ One would expect a Labour politician to say such a thing on Newsnight, but not Stephanie Flanders, its presenter, who is supposed to pay lip service, at least, to the BBC’s obligation to be impartial.
      “Flanders, who has dated – although not simultaneously – Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, has form. An unmarried mother, she once asked David Cameron if the Tory party would like her to get married. Of her latest remark, she tells me: ‘It wasn’t particularly well-considered, I will accept. I took a fairly informal approach to the discussion – perhaps because at that point I had been broadcasting on the subject since 7.30am on Today. I had also done the bulletins at 6pm and 10pm – and the one at 1pm.'”

      -So presumably Labour-Flanders will be in line for another promotion at BBC-Labour, after this.

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      • My Site (click to edit) says:
        August 7, 2011 at 9:46 am

        Was she on the barricades/nicking a 50″ 3D LCD last night?

        According to some on the scene media emoters and their gob on a mic ‘spokespersons’, the closing of support for the single muvva community seems to have sparked this off, and nowt to do with the results of a good partner and father taking his gun for a stroll in a minicab not being to the taste of the rest of the boyz in da hood.

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      • Millie Tant says:
        August 7, 2011 at 11:42 am

        For anyone who wants to listen, it’s  here at 22.40 – 22.50:

        http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013201f/Newsnight_05_08_2011/

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      • David Preiser (USA) says:
        August 7, 2011 at 4:20 pm

        One would expect a Labour politician to say such a thing on Newsnight, but not Stephanie Flanders…

        No, one definitely expects it.  Where has he been?  My favorite part is where ‘Two Eds’ defends her remark by saying that she was more informal because she was tired after so much “broadcasting”.  So she admits she has a bias, and only accidentally let it out.  Which means this blog has been right about her all along, and that she lets it out a lot more often than this piece claims.

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  6. George R says:
    August 7, 2011 at 9:18 am

    “This is not a riot.”

    “It is a celebration of cultural diversity. It is what our politicians and the multi-cult industry have been working for. And now they’ve got it.”

    (Richard North, ‘EU Referendum’.)

    http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/08/this-is-not-riot.html

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  7. George R says:
    August 7, 2011 at 12:31 pm

    Islam Not BBC (INBBC) and Islamic ideology in British armed forces.

    Of course, INBBC campaigns daily for the Islamisation of Britain, including Britain’s defence forces.

    It was not surprising to see this political eulogy for Muslims in relation to Britain’s armed forces (by INBBC ‘Asian Network’, Feb 2011):

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12504162

    Here’s an update report on a Daily Mail’ account:

    “Ayatollah of the RAF: Academic ‘university’ head is Muslim convert who claims Nazi gas chambers were British propaganda and criticises Libya air strikes”

    http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/37060

    A completely different story:

    “Spencer: ‘Moderate’ Muslim Plots Jihad Mass Murder at Fort Hood”

    http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/08/spencer-moderate-muslim-plots-jihad-mass-murder-at-fort-hood.html

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  8. Craig says:
    August 7, 2011 at 1:40 pm

    For services to Gordon Brown, Paddy O’Connell’s programme ‘Broadcasting House’ was re-named ‘Gordcasting House’ (by me). He’s still at it!

    During this morning’s paper review, economist Louise Cooper began with the ‘Observer’ and our holidaying leaders, including Cameron.

    Enter the host of ‘Gordcasting House’: “And we should record, I think, as a review that Gordon Brown has written an article for the ‘Independent on Sunday’.”

    Louise then obligingly quoted Brown but then went off-message, saying that she finds his attack on current leaders “quite extraordinary” as “History has taught us Gordon Brown was one of the many leaders who helped create this crisis. He spent way too much money in the good times and he didn’t leave a cushion in the bad times. And now he’s saying we need to spend even more.”

    Could Paddy then that pass? Of course not.

    Paddy (breathlessly), “I mean, that’s your view! It’s also..many papers are reporting he IS one man who said ‘no’ to joining the euro, so that’s also in the mix this morning but thankyou for your review and for taking us through those issues.” He then changed the subject.

    The exchange begins at 32.38:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b013026n

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  9. Craig says:
    August 7, 2011 at 1:43 pm

    Past incidents of this sort of thing from Paddy O’Connell and ‘BH’ include –

    11/10/09 – When Gordon Broiwn was asked to pay back some more expenses money, Paddy interrupted the BBC reporter to remind listeners “And of course David Cameron also had to pay back money as well” – though that was earlier, and that wasn’t the story of the day.

    6/12/09 – When Brown made his ‘Eton’ attack on Cameron, ‘Broadcasting House’ sent a reporter to ask Labour backbenchers what they thought of it. They all approved. They all added some more attacks of their own. Another BBC reporter told Paddy that Brown had “landed a killer blow on David Cameron”.

    21/2/10 – When Andrew Rawnsley’s book on Brown came out (which we now know to have been spot on), Paddy interviewed Lance Price and kept interrupting him, saying “I should say that, as I’ve read it this morning, the book says he’s also got a softer side, being incredibly solicitous at times of family emergency and bereavement” and then tried to play it down, saying “I wonder if the fair-minded listener thinks ‘here’s a book, here’s a new look newspaper, here are the chattering classes chattering.” He later read an e-mail – the only e-mail! – which said “this is a media obsession”.

    21/3/2010 The Sunday papers were previewing the ‘Dispatches’ programme that caught out a whole load of Labour politicians offering themselves for hire. One of his guests picked it. “You want to review it. Go ahead,” said Paddy, with a palpable lack of enthusiasm. Usually other guests then comment. Not here because Paddy intervened to stop them & defend the Labour MPs: “And I will just put before our listener what the MPs have said. Patricia Hewitt said she made it plain she’d only work in this way after she was no longer an MP and Stephen Byers wrote an e-mail saying he’d overstated his case, but you’ve stated yours and you’ve reviewed the paper for us there so let’s leave that if you don’t mind, just for the sake of time at this point.” Despite apparently running short of time, the paper review then continued for another four minutes, largely discussing fashion in the 1970s! Unfortunately (for Paddy), reviewer Zandra Rhodes then began an attack on Gordon Brown (“”…against the headline that’s in The Sunday Times which says ‘Gordon’s doing Sweet BA because of his pay-off from Unite’s cash'”) which brought pro-Labour Paddy crashing in to say, “Right, well we certainly haven’t got time to go there!!”

    2/5/10 – After Mrs Duffy and Bigotgate, he held a sly discussion about whether “ill-informed voters have a right to be heard.” During his questioning he talked (without naming names) of “pensioners”, and people who “bleat without actually backing up what they’re going on about”. He never mentioned Gordon Brown.

    9/5/10 – When Anthony Howard brought up the ‘heated’ telephone exchange after the election between Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg, Paddy interrupted to say “Although that was strongly denied in the briefings that were given”.

    Gordcasting House!!

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  10. Craig says:
    August 7, 2011 at 2:52 pm

    Being a former BBC business presenter, Paddy O’Connell isn’t very keen on what he (as today) likes to call “capitalism”. In his guide to the latest economic crisis, he played a clip of Paul Mason, and then added his own thoughts: “Now you can hear what he’s talking about by heading to Italy. Since investors change their mind in a constant fight between fear and greed, it works like this: To them Italian debt seems seemed safer 6 months ago and more risky 6 days ago.”

    That’s what “capitalism” seems to boil down to for PO’C – fear and greed.

    A few more examples of this from the past:

    11/4/2010 Paddy O’Connell went to a demo by public sector workers before staging a debate between a businesswoman and a teacher. Paddy sided with the latter. One of his questions ran like this: “It seems to many people that it was capitalism and it was greed and it was breaking the rules that got us into this trouble as bankers flogged debt that they didn’t understand around the place. Do you accept that who led us into this was a great deal of private enterprise?”

    9/5/2010 Paddy refers (gratuitously) to Sunday as “an oasis free from stock market speculation”.

    28/11/10 Paddy introduces Richard North as a “free-marketeer”, immediately asking him “Is this a tough time to be a free-marketeer, because the banners in Ireland blame the free market for destroying the land?”

    And then there are the bankers:

    15.11.09 Tro CNN’s Richard Quest: “Richard, what I think you’re getting at is, people who saved are being punished by not being compensated from the Equitable Life fiasco, whereas people who borrowed, and bankers who’ve misled, are effectively having the tab picked up”.

    12/12/10 Paddy interrupts James Delingpole, following some student riots, to say, “the students will have noticed that the bankers swizzed everyone, didn’t they? There was money and then there was debt and the bankers themselves didn’t understand what they were doing and the students say ‘Why should we be plunged into future debt because of the sins of our parental generation?'”

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  11. cjhartnett says:
    August 7, 2011 at 3:00 pm

    I see in todays Independent on Sunday that the BBCs favourite black female commentator-Bonnie Greer-is “writing” an opera about her appearance on Question Time with Nick Griffin.
    Does Chicagos answer to Jonathan Miller have any credentials to write an opera?…not at all!
    Does she have a free pass to anything multicultural at Edinburgh/Opera House and BBC should she feel the need to be our favourite multicultured black American?…You betcha!
    What`s the betting that the BBC will be filming and finding a convenient berth to give us the answer to the questions only Bonnie n Beeb would think of ever asking?…what is Arabic script for “Axminster” and could Abu Hamza read it better if it were tattooed or done in batik?
    After the rip roaring genius of “Jerry Springer-the Opera”; we can look forward to Bonnie n Beebs take on Nick and the hdeously white country that ponies up to get its face slapped by the BBC and its house trained Yank of convenience!
    At least Al Capone didn`t appear on “The Culture Show” to bemoan the lack of suitably ethnic pizza restaurants when HE ran his rackets…nor did the British taxpayer have to pay for his “views”!
    A bit of Omerta may yet be what we should be seeking from our Bonnie-who never seems to “lie on the right side of the Ocean”…always on ours!

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    • Millie Tant says:
      August 7, 2011 at 4:21 pm

      She writes plays. Why she is on the Board of the British Museum is harder to understand than her writing an opera. 

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      • Buggy says:
        August 7, 2011 at 10:47 pm

        “Why she is on the Board of the British Museum is harder to understand… “

        Surely the BM is always on the look out for ethnic relics ?

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  12. ltwf1964 says:
    August 7, 2011 at 3:08 pm

    picked this up from tvlicenceresistance.info

    The BBC should not be affected by any changes to media plurality laws, Labour leader Ed Miliband has said.

    However, broadcasters on digital channels – notably BSkyB – could find new limits introduced regarding cross-platform ownership as part of the forthcoming Communications Act.

    Speaking in the House of Commons on Wednesday, the leader of the opposition described the previous act, passed in 2003, as “an analogue act in a digital age”.

    “The Act needs to be updated as such a concentration of power is unhealthy,” he added. “If one thing comes out of what we have seen in the past two weeks and over many years, it must be that we understand the point about concentrations of power in our society because large concentrations of power are more likely to lead to abuses of power.”

    Labour has already been pressing for the act to be fast-tracked in light of recent events.

    Challenged on the extent of the BBC’s power by Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke, Miliband insisted the corporation was “much more tightly bound by public interest guidelines than newspapers” and that there was “a distinction” not only between broadcasters and print, but between the BBC and all other media.

    “We should be careful about lumping the BBC in with all this because it is in a different category,” he told the Commons.

    can’t have restrictions placed on liebore’s pet broadcaster now can we?

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    • Millie Tant says:
      August 7, 2011 at 4:34 pm

      Well, indeed there is a distinction between the Beeboid Corporation and the rest: it’ not obliged to earn its keep and it’s not voluntarily funded. That’s not a good distinction, though. Nor is its distinctive ubiquity in our households and elsewhere in the world a good thing.

      The distinction between print and broadcast isn’t as clean a cut as it once was, either. Now that we have Beeboids printing merrily online and the newspapers doing the same it begins to look more and more anomalous that they should be differently regulated.

      It’s also bizarre to bang on about the evils of market share and domination yet to argue that the Beeboid Corporation’s domination doesn’t count. That’s just perverse.

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    • My Site (click to edit) says:
      August 8, 2011 at 7:56 am

      ‘Miliband insisted the corporation was “much more tightly bound by public interest guidelines than newspapers” and that there was “a distinction” not only between broadcasters and print, but between the BBC and all other media.  
       
      “We should be careful about lumping the BBC in with all this because it is in a different category,”

      That’s a awful lot to try and cram into or under ‘unique’.

      And I fear also a boat long since sailed, holed, sunk and now on the sea bed.

      I recall argument of this calibre when my kids were about 4.

      On presumes when things drift off message in future, his PR agency may next be advising MiliE to hold his breath until he turns bl… er.. redder.

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      • As I See It says:
        August 8, 2011 at 11:55 am

        I take it that given Miliband’s pronoucement Labour are perfectly happy with the BBC as is. Who knew?

        Still, by the BBC’s own rule of thumb that criticism received from both sides means they get things ‘just about right’…..what happens when only one side think they are doing just fine and dandy?

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  13. Span Ows says:
    August 7, 2011 at 4:19 pm

    Still no news at all about David leigh

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=David%20leigh&video=on&audio=on&text=on

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    • My Site (click to edit) says:
      August 8, 2011 at 7:58 am

      Ah, well, it’s not like he did anything wrong.

      When questions are being asked, it  is clear that they get asked only of folk who need to be exposed on national TV ‘in the public interest’.

      Not mates.

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  14. Craig says:
    August 7, 2011 at 4:31 pm

    The ongoing series on homelessness featured on ‘Broadcasting House’, where Emma Jane Kirby follows in the footsteps of George Orwell’s ‘Down and Out in London in Paris’ is worthy stuff, of course. Call me cynical, but I can’t help suspecting that we’re going to be getting more such investigations from the BBC in the coming years..at least until the Conservative-led government falls.

    In 2005 there were, it seems, 150,000 people classed as homeless in England. By the first quarter of 2011, that stood at around 60,000. So there seems to be far less of a problem these days that there was, say, in the year when Labour won its third term in office.

    Yet, searching ‘homelessness‘ for identical lengths of time on the BBC website and comparing the number of results shows the following News totals:

    11/5/2010 -7/8/2011 – 252
    11/5/2008-7/8/2009 – 170
    11/5/2006-7/8/2007 – 151
    11/5/2004-7/8/2005 – 160
    11/5/2002-7/8/2003 – 106

    While the BBC website search engine isn’t the most reliable (!), these totals seem to suggest that while there hasn’t been a spike in homelessness in the last year or so, there has been a significant spike in reports about homelessness on the BBC website – ‘coincidentally’, ever since the Conservative-led government came into office in May 2010!!

    Hmm.

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  15. Craig says:
    August 7, 2011 at 5:21 pm

    ‘Sunday’ with Ed Stourton had some items of interest, such as a debate on whether people should be paid to donate their organs. However, it also pushed a lot of the usual BBC agendas. (Is it OK to have ‘agendas’ as a plural?)

    The programme began with Spending CUTS, specifically that report from False Economy, the anti-cuts group linked to the TUC, which the BBCC made so much of last week.

    The opening report gave us voices from one of the charities facing the cuts. We heard how “fantastic” the work the Rochdale-based organisation is doing and how cutting the funding will “kill the community”. So much for the Big Society, one man said.

    Still, Ed Stourton did then speak to the leader of Rochdale Council, so balance restored? Well, the council leader agreed with the sentiments expressed in the report and both he and Ed converged on the idea that the group’s funding would not have to be cut by so much, given that cuts in other areas lead to greater need for things like community centres. He turned it into an attack on government cuts, bemoaned his council’s fate and attacked Eric Pickles. Ed Stourton didn’t give him a hard time.

    What might have helped was Ed Stourton telling us that Councillor Colin Lambert is the Labour leader of Rochdale Council. 

    Still, housing minister Grant Shapps was interviewed next, so that surely made amends? Well, Ed Stourton pressed him harder than he pressed the council leader who is actually making the cuts, putting both the charity’s concerns and the (Labour) council leader’s points back to him, asking him twice about how central government must shoulder a lot of the responsibility for this, and undermining Grant Shapps moral case for deficit reduction by casting doubts on his motives with ‘even for all the good reasons you say you’re doing it’…

    Still, I’ve heard worse.

    Next it was off to Edinburgh to talk to a festival organiser, Rev. Donald Reid of ‘The Festival of Spirituality’. It will be concentrating on inter-faith matters this year, ten years after 9/11. Here’s what’s on the programme, according to Rev. Reid:

    “Well, we’ll be kicking off tomorrow with Yasmin Alibhai Brown and David Pratt, who’s the foreign editor of the [left-wing] Sunday Herald…But we’ll be concluding the series with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who shot to prominence this time last year around the controversy to do with the so-called Ground Zero mosque. So he’ll be in a sense our keynote and our climactic speaker..”

    Sounds well worth avoiding.

    We had another inter-faith feature later, with lots of well-meaning “social enterprise” and charity people talking about peace and “social justice”.

    On the rioting, a Reverend Nims Obunge from the Freedoms Ark church in Tottenham was on the line, talking about ‘Mark’. Rev. Obunge was with the family and the community at the police station. He said they’d not been able to get “effective responses from the level of police or..the IPCC coming to speak.” Hence the “frustration”.

    Chuck in a piece about how funerals are now too expensive, featuring someone who accused funeral directors of “making too much profit out of people’s grief,” and it was a pretty typical ‘Sunday’ (except for not having anything on Palestinians, Catholic child abusers or ‘right-wing nutters’ in America).

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    • John Anderson says:
      August 7, 2011 at 5:32 pm

      You deserve a medal, Craig.  I always switch over to LBC Sunday mornings,  can’t stand the BBC stuff.

      I switched back at 1pm for Radio 4 news.  This was followed by half an hour eulogising some lowlifes – she a druggie single mother now dead (4 kids evidently) he sounded a total waster – and how romantic it was that he had spray-painted a message to her on a motorway bridge during the short time they had a fling together.   Strung together by a vapid and giggling presenter.

      Half an hour of prime time Sunday afternoon listening.  Gee thanks,  BBC.

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    • cjhartnett says:
      August 7, 2011 at 9:51 pm

      When the BBC are able to park the likes of “posh Ed” onto the dawn patrol under “religious affairs” then we know that Christians are the broken backed apologists for the liberal elite. Sticky back plastic for the BBC Trust-now THERE`S an oxymoron these days.
      Stourton got the push from Today for being too preppy-unlike that authentic voice of the tribunes/banlieus that is Justin Woods-Webb. Bur Ed was happy to be edged off the sofa-because they made him Pope of all the faux fops who really should be at Morning Prayers and not listening to Ed and his Muslim Minder.
      Not that Ed will ever be a threat to the Anjems or the Abus…

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  16. Craig says:
    August 7, 2011 at 6:23 pm

    Kevin Maguire (who else?) was the paper reviewer on ‘Breakfast’ this morning.

    Lots about Cameron and Osborne being on holiday, with Maguire saying “it was never a good time for a prime minister to go on holiday” and Naga agreeing, “No.” 

    A bit of mockery for Osborne going on a water-ride (“double drip”) from Maguire followed, with the male presenter chiming in that “it’s not the best time for a chancellor to go on a rollercoaster really, is it?”

    After the usual joky bit from Maguire, came the serious face and the serious point. He assumed the government would stagger the holidays of its top bods, “certainly Labour did.” That got another  loud “hmm” of agreement from Naga.

    An attempt by the male beeboid to say that they’re all connected by modern technology wasn’t going to stop Maguire from putting on his serious face again and making his killer point, “It doesn’t look good. We’re all in this together. They’re all on holiday”. Again, more long ‘hmms’ of agreement from Naga.

    Kevin Maguire can say what he likes, but BBC presenters shouldn’t back him up.

    Since the beginning of July, Kevin Maguire has been the ‘Breakfast’ paper reviewer 3 times. Margaret Doyle of Reuters has been on twice. Everyone else has been on just once. They do like Kevin Maguire at the BBC.

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    • My Site (click to edit) says:
      August 8, 2011 at 8:04 am

      ‘“it was never a good time for a prime minister to go on holiday”

      It may have been worth checking with almost all the senior BBC types whose blogs seem currently closed, somewhat ironically, as they are all on holiday. And loooong ones.

      Mr. Maguire seems to be the acceptable one degree of separation at the BBC for the ‘sneer smear’.

      Surprised he didn’t sneak in a “Tory Toffs’, but after doing the cricket season with his public school mates that may have been a level of hypocrisy too far.

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  17. Craig says:
    August 7, 2011 at 9:09 pm

    Mariella Frostrup was standing in for Andrew Marr today. Have to say she made it a lot more watchable.

    On the bias front, and following on from my last comment, the ‘Observer’ columnist (with “left-of-centre views”, according to Dez’s Wikipedia) certainly seemed very keen to push the line that Cameron, Clegg and Osborne shouldn’t be all on holiday at the moment.

    Her introduction talked of “prime ministers and presidents” in their “holiday villas” and promised an interview with John Prescott by saying, “Here Labour’s former deputy leader Lord Prescott has been drawing attention to the absence simultaneously of the prime minister, the deputy prime minister and chancellor, saying it wouldn’t have happened when he was in government.”

    Her sofa-guests were Maureen Lipman (once a famous Labour supporter. Is she still?) and left-wing Lib Dem malcontent Lord Oakeshott (the one who resigned calling George Osborne “incompetent”). They didn’t think it was a big deal, what with it being a global world, modern technology, etc, prompting an interruption from Mariella to argue, “But what does it make you feel as a member of the public when you look at a piece like that, which is George Osborne having a whale of a time at a theme park in America while the rest of the headlines are about financial meltdown?”

    Prescott got to have his go at the Tories over the issue, having been asked about it, ignoring the tailpiece to the question asking where Ed Miliband is.

    Then interviewing Conservative foreign office minister with responsibility for Afghanistan and the Middle East, Alistair Burt,  she began by twice asking him about Cameron and Osborne being on holiday and ended the first part of the interview by opining, “I think the public probably think they’re working pretty hard towards that goal. It doesn’t help when they see pictures of the leaders of the government, you know, enjoying themselves in far-flung places, but let’s turn now to Afghanistan and this dreadful helicopter crash.” (That’s something Andrew Marr has a bad habit of doing – making a critical point, then changing the subject so the Tory interviewee can’t answer it).

    [Lord Oakeshott, incidentally, mentioned the hypocrite Ed Balls, who has been criticising the leaders of the government for being abroad at a time of crisis – from a camp in the Pyrenees!! (which Mariella might have put to Prezza, but didn’t).]

    The rest of the press review went through all manner of left-wing talking points between Mariella and Lord Oakeshott. ‘Vince’ was praised for resisting calls for tax cuts and calling for more QE (printing of money). Mariella brought up his lordship’s attacks on the boss of Barclays, & Oakeshott duly threw a few more ad homs at the banker. He agreed with her that the ring-fenced foreign aid budget remains “essential” and he mocked a Tory minister who said the Campaign for Rural England and National Trust are taking part in a “left-wing smear campaign” over the government’s plans to relax planning regulations. “I think I’m not supposed to smile, but I’m smiling”, said Mariella, laughing.

    The Prezza interview had some good moments, especially when she asked about the power of the unions in the Labour Party and said Ed Miliband was long overdue a success, but she really pressed the point that he had had a success over the phone hacking scandal:

    “His MPs were pleased with his performance over the phone hacking saga.”
    “Arguably Ed Miliband’s handling of the phone hacking scandal has been his finest hour to date. He even got the public enquiry that he was campaigning for.”
    “Talking of Ed Miliband, of course he had the success with the whole hacking scandal…”

    Expectations might have been raised when she began, “…this week with Heather Mills’s allegations against the Daily Mirror, further proof I suppose that the net goes far, far wider.” But, no, there was no mention of David Leigh of the Guardian. Naturally.

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  18. George R says:
    August 7, 2011 at 9:25 pm

    Mariella FROSTRUP and Gordon BROWN (2007):

    “Gordon the tease melts Mariella “http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7014868.stm

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  19. Will says:
    August 8, 2011 at 7:13 am

    John Sopel is slumming it on R5 standing in for a holidaying Dame Nikki. We wait with baited breath for the opening of the markets in order to find out how much less our pension fund is going to be worth. We get a very reasonable report from the trading floor at Societe Generale. As we return to the studio Sopel’s deappan remark is that he thought he could hear a fruit machine in the background of that report.
    Yes, we know John, the capitalist system is just a casino, and when you’re rich & have a secure pension why not just sneer? Why can’t it be more like that super cool & efficient soviet system?

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