MID WEEK OPEN THREAD…

1ST July and a new month beckons! Here is a new Open Thread. Please detail the bias here. Can I also request civility in the comment threads? I am aware of some impersonation that has been going on here and a plan is in place to permanently stop this. I also wanted to say that the credibility of the site with you – our excellent readers. Please be careful that you choose links with care and that you don’t accidentally damage the site by saying or linking to lunatic sites (right or left!) Many thanks.

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355 Responses to MID WEEK OPEN THREAD…

  1. AsISeeIt says:

    What is the typical template for a BBC current affairs report?
    It goes something like this – ask a question that suckers the audience in, put on an authoritive-sounding self-important tone with which to lead us through some information that is readily available elsewhere, fail to answer the question posed at the outset, and of course never forget to have a sly swipe at something British or conservative.
    Check this report from the BBC

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-33245094

    ‘Why do African presidents insist on calling themselves doctors?’
    There’s your interesting question.
    ‘I [Elizabeth Ohene] simply couldn’t resist it after the announcement from the Office of the Gambian President that another title was being added to the already absurd long list of titles held by the president. According to an official release, the Gambian leader will now be known formally as “His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr Yahya AJJ Jammeh Babili Mansa”.’
    ‘The practice of acquiring a long list of titles started with our earliest presidents as soon as independence came’
    ‘That, after all, is how our traditional chiefs are addressed and the new presidents saw themselves as big chiefs – that probably explains why they couldn’t come to terms with term limits and wanted to be presidents for life.’
    Careful now, we may be straying onto slightly un-PC ground here….
    ‘Exactly why the title of “Dr” had to be an obligatory part of that list, I haven’t worked out.’
    Looks as though we’ve given up on answering that opening question. Perhaps we should be hearing from someone actually willing to stick their neck out?
    Anyway we get a quick tour of ludicrous titles assumed by Ghanaian, Malawian, Zimbabwean and Ugandan head honchos.
    But wait, what a about the BBC trade mark sly side swipe at Britain?
    ‘The obsession with titles as I have pondered in previous columns is not reserved for only our leaders, it seems to be an African disease. Or so I thought until a friend of mine pointed out to me recently that it is not unlikely that it is something that we inherited from the British colonialists. Indeed who else has all these Sirs, Dukes, Duchess, Baroness, Viscounts, OBEs, CBEs etc etc? We have probably simply been trying to emulate them.’
    There it is! It’s still all the fault of the BRITISH.
    But wait, I’m no African expert but somewhere in the back of my mind I recalled the big daddy of African super-titles, someone I would have thought our intrepid BBC African expert would have remembered : Bokassa I of Central Africa and Salah Eddine Ahmed Bokassa, was a military officer and the head of state of the Central African Empire.
    A former FRENCH colony.

       39 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      Napoleon would possibly approve?

         7 likes

    • David Brims says:

      Africans equate self worth with the amount of possessions they’ve got, that’s why they cover themselves in bling or in this case, how important you are with ludicrous titles, Emperor Bokassa for example.

      Europeans on the other hand, put self worth on family, relationships, education, etc etc.

         18 likes

    • deegee says:

      juliuserving4.jpg

      Julius Erving, popularly known as Dr. J. is a retired American basketball player who helped launch a modern style of play that emphasizes leaping and play above the rim.

      African heritage?

         2 likes

      • Up2snuff says:

        Seem to recall one or two African leaders (possibly now deceased – back to my childhood here) were awarded their PhDs after the appropriate period of study & assessment at British Universities. Can’t remember who. A quick G**gle hasn’t helped.

        So, your starter for ten (will fry your brains on another hot day) – African leaders with a PhD: anyone help on this? (I know a former Kenyan policewoman with a PhD who’d make a good leader but she’s busy trying to help people at grass roots level.)

        Aah! Just typed the above and Julius Nyerere has sprung to mind. So that’s one. Any more?

           0 likes

        • deegee says:

          King Mohammed VI – Morocco
          Doctorate in law (PhD) with “Very Honorable” distinction and the Congratulations of the Jury on 29 October 1993 from the French University of Nice Sophia Antipolis for his thesis on “EEC-Maghreb Relations.”

          President Dr. Thomas Yayi Boni – Benin
          Paris University, he completed a doctorate in economics in 1976.

          Peter Mutharika- Malawi,
          Doctor of Juridical Science (JSD) from Yale University 1969 (JSD is considered a PhD equivalent and he has taught in various universities)

          That would seem to be all. I can’t give a list with former African leaders but I doubt there were more. Source TOP 10 MOST EDUCATED AFRICAN PRESIDENTS

          To be fair how many British leaders have, or have had a PhD? Success in politics would seem to work against spending the time required.

             1 likes

          • Al Shubtill says:

            You’d think with such impressive qualifications; that they would be able to make something more of their countries, than they have done.

               8 likes

            • Up2snuff says:

              Thanks, deegee. Have an idea there’s also one with a Phud from a Theological College/Uni (in Scotland?) but it’s buried deep within my skull & will not move forward.

              Al, think they (or some of them) probably tried but that’s a big job for one and you only need one other with a gun & a bullet to terminate the work.

                 0 likes

  2. Will all end in tears says:

    Not bias but……….

    The newly formatted Wimbledon 2Day (urgh) has been panned for it’s huge dumbing down (but as Balding ticks a few of the “diversity” boxes all is well, natch).

    Listening to Five Live this morning and the dumbing down continued apace.

    George Riley, noticing that it was summer and hot, decided to ask one of the Wimbledon officials about the use of “ice towels”.

    To paraphrase;

    “So what exactly is involved?”

    “Erm…….we wrap ice in a towel.”

    We also learnt that sometimes they stick it in the fridge to keep it cold.

    Insightful, cutting edge journalism at its best

       58 likes

    • Geoff says:

      Balding scares the kids, reminds me of one of those kids from that classic ‘B’ movie Village Of The Damned’ as does her partner for that matter.

      McEnroe and Davenport mush be thinking WTF has happened? The bBC are a national embarrassment.

      039A8B6400000514-3144935-Clare_Balding_s_wife_Alice_Arnold_pictured_together_has_jumped_t-a-2_1435701476416.jpg

         63 likes

    • harryurz says:

      Indeedy, they repeated the ‘Ice towels’ segment on breakfast News this morning, but concentration on the subject itself was difficult, as Carol Kirkwood was wearing a rather tight plunging powder blue number……ensuring early morning weather forecasts are one of the few events worth watching on the BBC?

         25 likes

  3. flexdream says:

    Let the cake wars begin …
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-33330864

    He should have gone to Northern Ireland, you can get any message on a cake there.

       14 likes

    • Roland Deschain says:

      If you just read the initial story, you’re left with the impression that the apology is for producing a cake with the IS flag. Only when you read down do you discover the story is about refusing to sell the Confederate flag cake as well. Which one Walmart have actually apologised for isn’t clear. Probably neither, if we were to see the actual wording.

         15 likes

  4. flexdream says:

    Even the Irish Times seems more interested than the BBC in the 99th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme.
    http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/ministers-to-attend-battle-of-the-somme-events-1.2268663

       18 likes

    • dontblamemeivotedukip says:

      Here’s another centennial the BBC seem a little reticent to remember

      other longer and more harrowing documentaries marking the 100 anniversary are available on YouTube

         15 likes

  5. Roland Deschain says:

    During last night’s News at Ten there was a report on the French strikers at Calais, which included a section on the “migrants” trying to get across the Channel. It finished with, “Solving this requires solving the needs and dreams of vast numbers of people. Here, they’re migrants. Back home these are law students, teachers, husbands, sons.

    I wonder how Lucy Williamson, the reporter, knew this with such certainty? Or was she making it up in order to make them all sound harmless and only of benefit to the UK economy if we’d just let them in? If we know these details we must know who they are and where to send them back (unless they’re all legitimate asylum seekers, not economic migrants – aye, right). Lucy omitted to give other possible qualifications – thieves, layabouts, scroungers, fathers (of multiple offspring) Islamists, terrorists. It was pure emotive reporting designed to sway opinion.

       102 likes

    • TrueToo says:

      Lucy omitted to give other possible qualifications – thieves, layabouts, scroungers, fathers (of multiple offspring) Islamists, terrorists. It was pure emotive reporting designed to sway opinion.

      Quite agree. This vile scum shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near our Christian white country. Why doesn’t the BBC stand up for the real British man on the street. Could we not put them aa on a tanker and leave it to the Somali pirates?

      Is the BBC trying to silence this site for speaking the truth?

         52 likes

    • Grant says:

      Roland, it has been a long time ! I now live in Gambia where many of the “migrants” originate and I know some of the families. It is accepted among Gambians that they are all economic “migrants”. Also, I am not aware of any students, professionals etc. among them.
      To be fair to the dearly beloved President Jammeh (see above) there is a government campaign to stop people choosing “the back way “.
      But, as usual with the BBC, the truth cannot be allowed to interfere with the propaganda !

         67 likes

      • Roland Deschain says:

        Good to hear from you. It’s a hot day and I’m on the IrnBru as I type.

           10 likes

      • ROBERT BROWN says:

        As i asserted in a post days ago, they all say they are ‘useful’ types, electrical engineer a favourite, lawyer, student……they are told to say that by the smugglers, so the gullible, lefty twerps here can get them in……

           37 likes

        • IsItMe? says:

          If they all had the qualifications and experience they claim, they could apply to immigrate into the UK using the normal channels. You know, with a job, a visa and criminal record and medical checks. Probably cheaper than paying a people smuggler and certainly safer.

             33 likes

          • ROBERT BROWN says:

            Precisely my point Isitme, they are not what they say they are, they are chancers.

               13 likes

    • John W says:

      …or doctors.

      You know like those who tried to blow up Glasgow Airport a while back. Being a professional is no guarantee against being a nutcase

         6 likes

      • dontblamemeivotedukip says:

        See also;
        Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army major and psychiatrist.

           3 likes

  6. flexdream says:

    “Australia’s public broadcaster has conceded it was wrong to let a man acquitted of terror offences appear on live television.”
    Opening paragraph of http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-33341005
    Er, isn’t it slightly misleading to say he was ‘acquitted’ when the article says near the end “..was jailed for two and a half years after pleading guilty to threatening to kill a government officer.”

    Maybe I’m old school but ‘threatening to kill a government officer’ sounds like terrorism.

       42 likes

    • noggin says:

      He was only acquitted on a technicality … AND! … The BBC cant wait to give him airtime

         26 likes

      • noggin says:

        Here is the actual ABC segment, (note the panel give him very short thrift, some even ignoring him completely)

           12 likes

  7. Geoff says:

    Ha! Sturgeon tops the Radio 4 list of ‘most powerful women’ for company she is joined in the list by Caitlin Jenner…

    Did they do such a pole for men?

    BBC agenda? Nah never!

       50 likes

    • Geoff says:

      Before the grammar police step in I meant ‘poll’

         15 likes

      • Roland Deschain says:

        For a second there I had an awful vision of Nicola Sturgeon pole dancing.

           27 likes

      • ROBERT BROWN says:

        I’m sure there are plenty of Poles willing to compile such a poll…..thousands of the bastards in fact…..sorry, i don’t like them much….experience i’m afraid.

           8 likes

        • Joseph says:

          Perhaps you should go to Poland and you might find that the majority of Poles are decent, hard-working and educated people.

             3 likes

          • ROBERT BROWN says:

            Joseph, i have no wish to ever go to Poland, my ex-firm shut an efficient, profitable factory and sent it to Poland. 500 British jobs gone. And yet they come over here in thousands, still with a home there, but get another in this country….force wages down for us, swamp our services. I wish every Pole would shove off back to Poland frankly, i have no time for them. They should build a life there.

               25 likes

      • Rob in Cheshire says:

        To be accurate, Caitlyn Jenner’s still got his pole.

           7 likes

        • IsItMe? says:

          Caitlin Jenner is not a woman. He can call himself Caitlin if he wishes, he can wear a dress and have breast implants. He is no more a woman than Rachel Dolezal is a black person.

             25 likes

          • Sickofitall says:

            Or that “Scott” could ever get a sh@g from anyone without a guide dog.

               6 likes

            • Dr Freud says:

              Once again, this obsession with Scott and the act of gay sex. All very interesting.

                 1 likes

              • Sickofitall (the real one). says:

                Another fraudulent post I’m afraid.

                I really couldn’t give the remotest flip about someone’s private life……..

                   6 likes

          • Pounce says:

            It’s the new cause, gays have got equality so now they push this in our faces as an example of human rights abuse . Jeez

               2 likes

    • Crazy Ivan says:

      Caitlin Jenner still has ‘her’ penis so should have been discounted from the poll on a technicality.

         3 likes

  8. David says:

    TrueToo, putting words in someone’s mouth? Clever. They are threatening lorry drivers with bars and knives (I was there last week) as they pass through and guessing what they are is allowed for the BBC but not the rest of us? I do suspect that there are not a high number of teachers amongst them, but in any case law students? that in it’s self is a good enough reason to bar all of them even without ISIL’s threats to flood us with their operatives.

       38 likes

    • G.W.F. says:

      Law students coming from Islamic countries to Britain. Makes sense – seriously. Check London University Law Departments and courses in sharia law, international law (same thing) etc. Taught by muslims to muslims.

         36 likes

    • TrueToo says:

      That TrueToo was not I. I posted below at 11:41 am and further down the thread tonight.

         0 likes

  9. TrueToo says:

    That TrueToo at 10:54 am is not me and I don’t hold those views.

    Here follows the genuine TrueToo:

    Here is an extraordinary photo of Islamic terrorist Rezgui walking along the beach with a string of ten men following about ten metres behind him. Scroll down a few feet:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3145112/Sunbed-gunman-high-COCAINE-Witnesses-say-laughing-fanatic-took-pictures-victims-police-reveal-unexploded-bomb-body-shot-dead.html

    This is either during his murderous spree or after it ended. It can’t have been beforehand because he arrived at the beach with his rifle concealed in an umbrella and here he is carrying it openly at his side. This begs a number of questions:

    *Why are these men, all apparently young and able-bodied, not helping the wounded left on the beach in the wake of the atrocity?

    *Since these men are evidently unafraid of Rezgui turning around and shooting them, are they terrorist minders keeping him safe from anyone who might think of tackling him from behind?

    *Taking a logical step from that hypothesis to another, was the extraordinary delay of 25 minutes before the police arrived caused by Islamic terrorist backup intimidating hotel staff and others so that nobody would call for help?

    *Or was the delay simply due to a mix of incompetence and poor leadership by the authorities?
    Well, we have a number of intrepid BBC journalists such as Jeremy Bowen, Alan Johnston, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, Barbara Plett, Paul Adams, Lyse Doucet, Kevin Connolly, Jon Donnison, Orla Guerin, Tim Franks, Jon Leyne, Hugh Sykes, Yolande Knell, Nick Thorpe, Matthew Price and Jim Muir, recently or currently embedded in the Arab world (or who would love to be embedded in the Arab world).

    No doubt a few of them will be heading to Tunisia soon to undertake unflinching investigative journalism to find out what really happened there.

       49 likes

    • pah says:

      I thought that photo was odd too as he is clearly armed, gunshots on a beach are very audible and the dead and dying must have been a big clue too. However it has always amazed me at how confused people can be in dangerous situations and often they behave as if they don’t believe what they are seeing. It could be that, possibly.

      As to the Police not turning up well it is Tunisia and they are probably not that efficient. Interestingly enough I read one report that stated that a couple of Tunisians wrestled a cop’s gun from him and chased after the killer. The cop had not been too keen on intervening as he had left his bullet proof vest at home.

      It is often wise to not underestimate the power of self deception, cowardice and incompetence when the bullets start to fly …

         24 likes

      • IsItMe? says:

        Reportedly, he was telling Tunisians that they weren’t his target and he was looking for British and French people. There are numerous reports of bravery shown by Tunisians in trying to protect tourists and to dissuade and/or disarm the terrorist. One Tunisian man stood in front of a group of four tourists and shouted “Allahu akhbar” and this stopped the terrorist from shooting them.
        Although there is a disturbingly high proportion of Muslims who are sympathetic to Isil’s cause, they are certainly not all like that.

           17 likes

        • TrueToo says:

          Although there is a disturbingly high proportion of Muslims who are sympathetic to Isil’s cause, they are certainly not all like that.

          True. And Tunisia is one of only two Arab countries that still has a Jewish population, the others, apart from Morocco, having forced all their Jewish citizens out through systematic oppression, pogroms, dispossession and expulsion around the time of the establishment of Israel. That major refugee crisis of the time is ignored by the BBC, lest it upset its Arab masters.

          Several years ago a synagogue in Tunisia was attacked by members of the Religion of Peace and people slaughtered. Tunisian Jews keep a low profile as a matter of survival.

             14 likes

      • TrueToo says:

        Interesting comment, pah. Yes, people do weird and out-of-character things in stressful situations, but to follow close behind a murderer who has just murdered people would be totally bizarre unless they were his accomplices. The instinct for self-preservation would be the most prevalent one, I imagine, in a situation like that.

        I’m not into conspiracy theories but this really does look like a conspiracy to only kill infidels and one involving several people.

           8 likes

        • Up2snuff says:

          John Humphrys was a bit strange on this on the TOADY prog on Monday morning, was it, or maybe Tuesday? Asking whether there was a second gunmen when the BBC had already had this:
          http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-33287978 < 3rd photo down
          on their web-site on Saturday.

          Then, yesterday, I caught them in one or two news bulletins or bits of news programmes stating "There was only one gunmen. He acted alone". There appears to be something strange going on in BBC News at the moment and, to my mind, it has become distinctly less trustworthy in the last couple of years or so.

          Today, we have news of ten arrests in Tunisia.

             12 likes

          • pah says:

            it has become distinctly less trustworthy in the last couple of years or so.

            … and the prize for Understatement of the Year goes to … 😉

               6 likes

    • Beltane says:

      Oh how could you, TrueToo? You forgot Fergal Keane (OBE, though I’ve no idea why). When it comes to doom-laded delivery, only our Orla can trump him.

         16 likes

      • TrueToo says:

        Oh how could you, TrueToo? You forgot Fergal Keane….

        Sorry, I was in a bit of a rush!

           1 likes

  10. TrueToo says:

    I wont be around till late tonight so anyone posting under my name till then is a fraud.

       9 likes

    • Geoff says:

      The post @ 12.07 wasn’t mine either, still if it confuses Scott that’s OK.

         11 likes

      • Guest Who says:

        ‘I am aware of some impersonation that has been going on here and a plan is in place to permanently stop this. ‘

        As it appears trolls are even trolling trolls, that plan may not be before time.

        [BBC Commentary zeroed in. Teasing dial gets turned right down]

           11 likes

      • Geoff says:

        Can I make it clear to the troll using my name, I despise gays, gay marriage, immigrants and Islam. Any post saying otherwise is clearly false.

           11 likes

        • GCooper says:

          Well, let’s just hope that David Vance is collecting IP addresses and will be passing them on to the fraud’s ISP for action under their terms of service agreements. – if not the police in some instances.

          The SJWs love bothering the Twitter police, so why not give them a taste of their own medicine?

             18 likes

          • Roland Deschain says:

            I’m all for giving them a taste of their own medicine, but it raises an interesting question. In a land of supposed free speech, shouldn’t one be free to despise gays, gay marriage, immigrants and Islam without fearing the heavy hand of the police unless you’re advocating violence? Just as one should be free to despise UKIPpers, Tories, white heterosexual males and Christians.

            People shouldn’t be prevented from expressing their idiotic views. Their views should be shown for the idiocy they are, and that doesn’t require the intervention of Plod.

               34 likes

            • Geoff says:

              Wasn’t me, I’m far better looking!

              Interesting that the trolling has been stepped up over the last few weeks, often when a certain unmentionable appears.

              Lest hope David sorts it, far too easy to do so.

                 18 likes

            • GCooper says:

              It’s not the juvenile babble that’s the problem – it’s impersonating other people in an attempt to bring them into disrepute.

              That’s where m’learned friend’s ears start to twitch.

                 16 likes

            • John C. says:

              Roland- I couldn’t agree more. Free Speech means just that. If a person’s views are crazy, argue against them . Often, they reveal their craziness as they try to defend their ideas.
              If they refuse to reason, but just resort to abuse, you clearly won’t change or modify their views, but neither would banning them have changed or modified them.
              I greatly distrust this “thought-crime” movement. You should be entitled to think what you please, and it should only be considered an offence if actual illegal action takes place.

                 22 likes

            • Up2snuff says:

              Agreed.

              Roland, is not the Interwebby intended to be democratic space where people of differing backgrounds, beliefs & ideals can exchange views, debate, argue, question, inspire, disagree, agree, be left conflicted – all without coming to physical blows, without war?

              That is surely better than millions of taxpayers’ money being wasted on bombing flights, boots on the ground, property destroyed, people killed, homeless & refugees created. That ought to be to everyone’s accord. Something of an ideal, but at least one that the BBC would be right behind.

              Which makes it strange that the promotion of the Web and the BBC’s part in it was promoted mightily up until the first year of the Coalition Government but has been in serious decline ever since. Monday was a new low with only one Blog/article open to comment for most of the day – the one on Empathy – apart from Peston’s ongoing Blog from Sunday. In the last three years, there seems to have been a distinct dislike of democracy & discussion on the Beeb’s bit of the Internet.

                 5 likes

          • Lincoln says:

            Funny that TooTrue’s supposedly false comment is so popular, more so that the true TooTrue comment or is that really the false TooTrue?

            BTW the police are very interested in this site. I believe its under the incitement to hatred legislation. I’m sure they would love Vance to give them access to your information!

               4 likes

            • dontblamemeivotedukip says:

              Speaking of ‘“thought-crime” movement.’ here’s the Stasi hall monitor and yes it is funny that people hold views that give you the vapours , in fact its f#cking hilarious

                 10 likes

            • TrueToo says:

              Funny that TooTrue’s supposedly false comment is so popular, more so that the true TooTrue comment or is that really the false TooTrue?

              The first TrueToo on the thread is the false ‘popular’ one. I use inverted commas because it’s a simple matter, so I’ve heard, to falsify the number of likes.

              BTW the police are very interested in this site. I believe its under the incitement to hatred legislation. I’m sure they would love Vance to give them access to your information!

              All the more reason for Vance to change the system so that one’s user name is linked to one’s email account and password.

              Seems to me that legislators will be extremely busy in coming years amending existing laws and passing new ones to deal with Internet hate.

              For example, going onto the comment section of a political video on YouTube can be hazardous to one’s peace of mind.

                 7 likes

            • Up2snuff says:

              Perhaps the BBC web-site is, too? Maybe that goes some way to explain why the BBC are turning away from the Internet.

              (I should have read down a bit further. Doh!)

                 0 likes

  11. noggin says:

    BBC-
    “Last week’s disruption lasted 36 hours and saw blockades at the French port and the Channel Tunnel in Coquelles.
    Several Eurostar trains were also forced to return to St Pancras, while in France migrants sought to exploit the port strike by attempting to climb onboard UK-bound lorries caught in slow-moving traffic.”
    … Migrants? ….
    Do they mean the Illegal Immigrants, trying to force their way into Britain?.

       51 likes

    • John C. says:

      I think sometimes it’s just easier to call them “migrants”. “Illegal immigrants” is a bit of a cumbersome phrase if you have to use it time after time.

         0 likes

      • Al Shubtill says:

        Also “migrants” has a much nicer ring to it, like they’re just here for the summer then returning to warmer climes when the colder days come – you know like swallows and ospreys and other delightful creatures.

           13 likes

  12. The Old Bloke says:

    You know, I get angrier every day. As I’m sure we are all aware of, and mainly being made aware of through the agenda riddled BBC, today Britain will be sizzling hot with record temperatures. No, it will not. Such is the desire to prove to the World that “look, temperatures are on the increase” that all sense of abilities to actually forecast and report the weather correctly has been thrown out of the window. It was blindingly obvious from simply looking at any internet weather radar of Europe and of Great Britain, that G.B. was not going to be sizzling with 100 degrees (sounds higher that 30 degrees doesn’t it) but maybe just one little corner of England with a dodgy positioned thermometer might record 30 degrees., but many would, with a review of the radar/satellite imagery, find themselves under grey laden clouds and rain. Well guess what BBC?
    As I write this, Gatwick Airport (yes you know, a place of hot exhaust jet blast) is showing 31 degrees. BUT, 5 miles down the road at a qualified weather reporting station, the max temp posted so far today (in rural England) has peaked at 28.9 degrees and has now shown a cooling trend to just 27.6 degrees. A scan across the U.K. shows Newcastle at 21 degrees, Aberdeen at 19 degrees and most of the West side of the U.K. at an average of just 21 degrees and rainy.
    So, this is sizzling Britain is it? I think I’ll just eat my “ice towel”. This is what is causing “travel chaos”? God help us all.
    God help us all. The Met Office and the BBC together, are not fit for purpose. Do us all a favour guys, call it a day and get some real jobs.

       50 likes

    • GCooper says:

      I use the BBC’s weather app and can report that it was wrong every single day last week for my location in the South East – on some days not just a little bit off the mark but very considerably so.

      I don’t blame the BBC for the lamentable inaccuracy of the forecasting, but I would blame the Corporation for not having the intelligence to infer from the Met office’s unreliability that there may be something deeply flawed in its methodology and a management that seems to specialise in telling itself how good it is – and little else.

         25 likes

    • Pat (the original) says:

      BBC Spotlight (South West) this week did a piece on how this ‘heat’ was having a good effect on the tourist industry. Multiple sandy beach shots, surfers and interviews with people who had come all the way down from the North West, etc. The hoteliers were all delighted that bookings were up and so on and so on. At the end of the piece the presenter reminded us, a propos of nothing, that it was Ramadam and we must bear in mind all those who could not even have a drink of water!

         44 likes

      • Old Goat says:

        Fuck ’em…

           40 likes

        • Rob in Cheshire says:

          …is the correct answer.

             30 likes

          • Lakesman says:

            AM I the only one not concerned about the number of families “changing planes in Istanbul”? After all, this will help the net immigration figures if the trend continues.

            As long as the government cancels their citizenship then it’s a win-win for all.

               30 likes

      • Nibor says:

        Which shows he’s ignorant of his favoured religion . You can drink water during Ramadan.

           13 likes

      • NotasheepmaybeaGoat says:

        Seriously? Even for the BBC that seems somewhat gratuitous.

           5 likes

        • Pat (the original) says:

          I saw the item I referred to on Spotlight broadcast from Plymouth yesterday at 6.30. I have tried to find it on the iPlayer but only the 10.30 version (just about) remains. The comment has been removed from the later edition. It was a report by Carys Edwards from Exmouth. I found her piece about Ramadan a bit strange as there is only a small Muslim community in Plymouth with only one mosque/meeting place, as far as I know.

          Most people here, up to about 4 or 5 years ago would, in all probablitity, have had no idea what Ramadan was, I didn’t. I can only presume they made the item for viewing in perhaps the Bristol area as well where it may have had more relevance.

          In the BBC’s defence – they have just moved to a newer studio so are perhaps still sorting things out.

             7 likes

    • Old Goat says:

      It’s just the same in France (mind you it HAS been hot) – canicule warnings, and doom laden predictions of “extreme chaleur”. Yes it’s hot, as it always is for a period in the summer – some summers are hotter, with longer spells of heat (2003 springs to mind), some are not.

      The truth is, we’re all used to it, it rarely lasts long, and is merely and influx of Saharan air.

      They make it sound as if the apocalypse is on the doorstep.. Mind you, don’ t warmists always do that?

         38 likes

    • 'Nother Old Bloke says:

      Hi Old Bloke, you may remember (like me) that coal tar was used as a surface binder for road construction in the 1950s. As children, we used to have a lot of fun (takes all sorts!) popping tar bubbles and making shoe prints in the soft tar on the roads as we walked home from school during the hot summers of the time. (I don’t think Mum was so happy though!)
      Point is, coal tar has an approximate softening point ranging from 30°C upwards, so temperatures would likely have been a few degrees higher both on the road surface or a few feet above and I can’t really see that they would be any different from those obtained by slinging a thermometer a couple of feet over a runway at Gatwick or Heathrow today. No Met Office warnings or global warming frighteners back then though. Btw, Heathrow is our local BBC approved temperature gauge at the moment.

         28 likes

    • Here is the weather forecast? says:

      Crawley Down? Five miles south east of Gatwick?
      http://cdvweather.crawleydownvillage.co.uk/wx.htm
      Peaked at 31.8 by the look of things. Did a taxing jet go for a bit of a wander through the Sussex countryside?

         5 likes

  13. Dave says:

    IS attacks town in Sinai, with attacks claimed by IS

    BBC feels the need to to report the perpetrators as “terrorists”.

    Why the qualification? They’re terrorists pure and simple. (and Islamic terrorists at that but that would really be pushing the boat out for ISBC)

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-33340458

       20 likes

    • As you were says:

      They’re quoting the Egyptian military there. The first paragraph has the standard BBC ‘militants’. Degsy Hatton should sue if they’ve referred to him as a militant in the recent past.

         10 likes

  14. David Brims says:

    It’s Wimbledon and for the next 2 weeks we have to put up with giggling Sue Barker and Andrew Castle, she was never a great player, ranked 9745, never won anything, her career didn’t amount to much, her main claim to fame is she presented a breakfast show and does those irritating insurance adverts.

       12 likes

    • Roland Deschain says:

      Actually, she won the 1976 French Open. And reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon in 1977, the year Virginia Wade won.

      But I suspect you’re not the real David Brims.

         12 likes

      • David Brims says:

        I wasn’t talking about Sue Barker.

           3 likes

        • Geoff says:

          “she was never a great player, ranked 9745”

          “her main claim to fame is she presented a breakfast show”

          In both cases it was Andrew Castle, but you use the words she and her???

             5 likes

    • Sickofitall says:

      Didn’t she once date Sir Cliff at one time too? (Guffaws).

         0 likes

  15. David Brims says:

    Andrew Castles commentary, inane supercilious banter, you can’t concentrate on the match when he’s wittering on like a gossiping old fish wife, he’s very distracting.

       7 likes

  16. David Brims says:

    Wimbledon Highlights presented by Clare Balding, it’s a train wreck, I notice the new thing now in TV shows is to get members of the public, cool trendy 20 somethings, hipsters and metrosexuals, let’s say this they’re not UKIP voters, to stand behind the host and GAWP at the camera, it’s like being at the Zoo but in reverse, very off puting.

       33 likes

    • +james says:

      Yep, ripped off from that reactionary program Top Gear.

      The BBC have run out of ideas.

         10 likes

  17. Roland Deschain says:

    Jesus he knows me
    And he knows I’m right
    I’ve been talking to Jesus all my life
    Oh yes he knows me
    And he knows I’m right
    And he’s been telling me
    Everything gonna be alright

       5 likes

  18. Roland Deschain says:

    And, in breaking news, it seems another British family may have buggered off to Syria.

    I say British, but those who suspect they aren’t called Jim, Sue or Barbara or wear 3-piece suits may be correct. But their relatives are shocked, shocked I tell you. Are we going to have another week of the BBC saying how awful it is and anyone who can get a word in edgeways saying, “Good riddance, actually”?

       60 likes

    • Geoff says:

      Yep family of TWELVE, all over the bBC tonight, will it take priority over the returning bodies?

         30 likes

      • hadda says:

        Bangladesh?! Not a destination often associated with the phrase ‘family holiday’. I wonder what the attraction was.

        As for them, so long as their benefits get stopped, and they don’t return alive or dead, I don’t care.

           57 likes

        • G.W.F. says:

          Someone contact Vaz for a photo opportunity as he requires Knacker of the Met to make a public apology for not persuading them to stay.

             25 likes

          • Geoff says:

            Oh come on! I bet they’re just a nice ordinary family, their family, friends and neighbours will be shocked…

            Anyway I bet its all the fault of the Police…

               38 likes

            • chrisH says:

              Hope Luton Housing haven`t lost any time in tipping out their tat, and signed the houses over to some families that need them.
              The very least any sane society would do to Syrian slime like this lot of nutjobs.
              Which is why there`ll already be Muslim goons protecting the house for yet more shooting-throughs to occupy.
              Luton may well be the very tinder box to go first-hope Tommy Robinson`s OK.

                 36 likes

              • IsItMe? says:

                People aren’t “missing” if their whereabouts is known.
                Really, who gives a sh*t if they want to throw in their lot with the likes of Isis. I doubt they are unaware of what life out there is like. Good riddance.

                   39 likes

            • John W says:

              The standard line about how they all seemed such normal people and nobody realised is meant to reassure but actually is what worries me the most.

              I’m a church minister and I like to think that if any of my congregants were plotting to go blow up (say) the Methodists down the road I would pick up on it. But mostly they just talk about baking cakes for the charity stall.
              So what is the usual talk about in your local mosque that the family who want to wage violent jihad against the infidel don’t stand out as unusual…

                 6 likes

      • Lobster says:

        I love the “feared to have travelled to Syria” bit. Feared by whom? Nobody I know gives a shit.

           62 likes

      • MartinW says:

        Waddya mean, feared? In my language, the statement would simply say “thought to have …” or “may have …”

           34 likes

        • hadda says:

          Or “are hoped to have”

             16 likes

          • TrueToo says:

            Or “are hoped to have”

            Thanks for the chuckle.

            Strange how sometimes it’s entire families that go over to that raging hell hole.

            I guess they take this Islamic caliphate thing really seriously and join it as soon as they can so that they won’t be accused of being slack latecomers to the wonderful caliphate.

            Perhaps the sooner one arrives with one’s entire family, the sooner a place in Islamic heaven is assured for all.

               12 likes

      • John C. says:

        I can’t understand this use of the word “feared”, as if we’re all going to feel poorer at the departure of these people. I’m sure they’re entitled to go if they want, but clearing off to a gang with whom we are “at war” (P.M. Cameron) seems to me to make them traitors and to mean that they would be tried if they were ever to run out of bennies and decided to return.

           37 likes

      • Will all end in tears says:

        Happened already Geoff.

        Five Live 7.30pm news.

        The Luton 12 usurp the Tunisian dead.

        Only on the BBC

           36 likes

      • +james says:

        “will it take priority over the returning bodies?”

        Yes it did. Quite frankly the BBC sucks dead farts out of Jimmy Savile’s arse.

           11 likes

    • ICBBC says:

      Looks like a nice family, except for the eyes – good looking, educated & and very productive.

      Sad loss to the UK.

      I hope someone pays for this.

         8 likes

      • brett says:

        Good riddance to em, and while they are at it, maybe try to persuade all their friends and family to go too. Sad loss my arse

           38 likes

    • Onewaytosomearabshithole Travel Ahency says:

      Business is thriving.

         19 likes

      • ICBBC says:

        It would be good were it not for the possibility that we might fund their way back, or even sending a RAF plane to bring them to the safety of their “beloved” Lutonistan, if they dont like the caliphate. OTH they are not doing it for comfort in this life, but for eternal bliss in the Islamic paradise.

           12 likes

        • Al Shubtill says:

          It would be better to send an RAF plane to bomb them and a not insignificant number of their new friends.

             8 likes

  19. D1004 says:

    Nah, no time for Jesus, Claire Baling is my saviour. The saying of the holy Claire are many and the insight is huge, why else would el beeb give her such space ?
    When do they give our saviour Claire ( for she is amongst us ) the cup ?

    In the immortal words of L/cpl Jones, ” they don’t like it up ’em!” Neither her or her missus

       9 likes

  20. Phil Ford says:

    How Climate Change Works at the BBC

    Hottest July day ever recorded in England screams the headline here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-33324881

    Wow. Impressive. But read a little further on and the BBC’s usual misdirection takes effect…

    England is basking in sunshine as temperatures reach the hottest they have been for nine years.

    Oh. So…not the ‘hottest day ever recorded in England’, then?

    Hold on…

    Hottest temperature ever recorded in the UK – Faversham, Kent in August 2003.

    Anyone know what the hell the BBC are actually trying to say here (apart from CLIMATE CHANGE!)..?

       46 likes

    • Roland Deschain says:

      Ah, but they did say hottest ever July day. I suspect, however that this will prove later on to be a dubious claim after no-one is paying attention.

      It was forecast here that after a flipping cold June, barely referred to by the Beeb, it would take a couple of days’ hot weather before the BBC started implying “global warming” and yep, here we are 3 days into the hot weather and lo, it has come to pass.

         33 likes

      • Ian Rushlow says:

        I think they actually said it is the hottest ever July 1st (sub-category Wednesday) in 2015. Which is absolutely correct (think about it!).

           17 likes

    • Old Timer says:

      The 1976 United Kingdom heat wave led to the hottest summer average temperature in the UK since records began. The month of May saw a few thunderstorms and then had four consecutive days with temperatures above 25 °C The hottest day of all was 3rd July, with temperatures reaching 35.9 °C (96.6 °F)

      Large areas of woodlands and heath turned brown and were devastated by fires, which in some cases had to be left to burn because of the water shortage.

      The high temperatures continued right through August, with highs of 25-30 °C on many days. It lasted until the last week in August followed by spectacular thunderstorms.
      2015 has some way to go before it beats 1976. Sorry BBC.

      And to say the hottest day EVER is daft. It is just one of the hottest days since thermometers were invented. The first person to make a thermometer with improved glass-working techniques, which then led to a much more accurate thermometer was Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736).

      So it is possibly one of the hottest days recorded in just 200 hundred years or so. In the grand scale of the BBC however that is for ever apparently. Duh!

         42 likes

      • Merched Becca says:

        Great alarm!
        Al Beeb (and others) telling us that record temperatures have been reached, since when?
        Warnings to ‘old’ people to keep cool and drink plenty of fluids etc. A bit like a nanny state?
        Most ‘old’ people have been abroad on holidays to much hotter climes, some have served aboard in the Middle East and the tropics serving in the forces and the National Service for much longer than a holiday.
        Its all about brainwashing the younger generation on ‘so-called’. Global Warming.
        Well, the weather in far West Wales has been ‘s..t.’ , to be polite.
        Its bloody summer, heat waves were frequent when I was a kid, some were followed by ‘cloud bursts’ Anyone in Al Beeb remember 1976?

           21 likes

    • Essex Man says:

      Faversham , home of Shepherd Neame , Englands oldest brewery , now that`s English tradition , real ale .

         11 likes

      • Merched Becca says:

        Essex Man – Shepherd Neame , Good choice!
        We’ll have you voting UKIP next .
        Go for it .

           4 likes

      • by looney left says:

        EM
        Shepherd Neame, you must be kidding.
        SN makes zillions of pints daily.
        Pints of Accountants beer.
        Not the oldest brewery in England.

           1 likes

      • feargal the cat says:

        Apologies to Monty Python; I find ‘Shepherd Neame’ a bit tinnie for my taste. Not a fault, to each their own.

           1 likes

    • Fiddy says:

      You appear to have failed at pretty basic reading comprehension, Phil. It makes perfect sense.

         1 likes

      • Roland Deschain says:

        I think you’ll find the error was pointed out a fair while ago. But hey, why not come late to the party and point it out in a condescending fashion just to be sure?

           5 likes

  21. Dave666 says:

    Actually not hotter here than yesterday I’ve been working on the extension yesterday and today for interest I took my thermometer out with me,

       9 likes

  22. chrisH says:

    I think the BBC are never more unctuous, servile and odious than when they`re filming a showcase event like the repatriation of British victims of Islam.
    Flummery, low tones and lots of silences-might as well have Orla Guerin writing the “Why” cards on the back of a Kelloggs box, might just as well put out those portashrines that emote and do damnall.
    Look BBC rubberneckers and editors of national emotion!..your craven sucking up to Anjem, your hobbling of efforts to deal with these Muslim murderers, your contempt for white trash on foreign beaches as well as your worship of passionate types who are vulnerable like IS pondlife?…you might as well load your boyfriends Uzi and let him rip on a Med beach resort.
    Every death on those beaches would be avenged twentyfold by any self-respecting country.
    As it is, all we`ll be getting are daily processions of smart young men who are now trained to carry coffins, as opposed to guns to deal with the enemy.
    The one that picks off random grannies, workers and teenagers, as the BBC tell us that Islam-Muslims-have nothing whatosever to do with this evil…and all those others they seem to inspire .
    Gloves off sometime-but in the meantime listen to the sonorous tones of serial lefty haters of this country…and admire those creases, as seen at Wooton Bassett.
    THe BBC at their hypocritical, uncritical worst-when will we rid ourselves of these Oxbridge Oil slickers?

       32 likes

  23. chrisH says:

    Yes it was a bit warm today.
    Oh those poor children and old folk-however will they shop or go to school?
    Anybody even TOLD them to drink some water and stay in the shade?
    No NHS counsellors to rub the sunblock on the bald head?…bloody heartless Tory cutpurses to blame.
    As well as global boiling .
    Yet there is ONE group of women who must be awful hot in those black boiling binbags, no skin on show to lose the heat-and covered up on the head where so much heat loss occurs.
    I talk of Muslim women-but no NICE, no NHS, no Age UK representatives around to tell us how the heat puts these women at real risk of overheating, especially seeing its Ramsden.
    But no Justin or Sarah seems to cry for the powerless bunnies boiling in their abayas-why not BBC?

       31 likes

  24. Pounce says:

    Remember the other day when the bBC reported on that Gaza flotilla
    Ex-Tunisian president on board diverted Gaza-bound boat
    The Israeli Navy has intercepted a Gaza-bound vessel sailed by pro-Palestinian activists and diverted it to an Israeli port, the military says…The activists said the vessel was carrying humanitarian aid, including medicine and solar panels.

    Well the Washington Post has done an article on that Aid.
    The ‘humanitarian aid’ aboard a recent flotilla to Gaza fit in two cardboard boxes
    Asked to provide some evidence of the humanitarian aid, Ann Ighe, a member of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition sent this photograph:
    https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2015/07/IMG_4058.jpg&w=1484

       26 likes

  25. Deborah says:

    What is happening in Greece? Presumably nothing because it is far too important for the BBC1 news to tell us that a family have emigrated to Syria; not my choice but each to their own. Went to the kitchen and switched on the radio to hear the 6pm Radio 4 news telling me in funereal tones how the BBC’s funding will be cut; well if some daft person employed by the Beeb can buy £50 cashmere socks and claim the purchase on expenses to give someone they are paying to appear the socks as a gift, I think there is still some fat. Then I switched on Look North to hear how women’s football in Canada is inspiring girls in this region. I have switched off; had a moan here and will now go and prepare supper in silence.

       36 likes

    • Phil Ford says:

      Deborah, I often end up doing the same – putting Radio 4 on for something to listen to whilst I make a brew and have smoke – and then just as smartly turning it straight off again as soon it’s clear R4 is up to its usual dimwittery.

      Just seems far more preferable to enjoy my cuppa in agreeable silence, given the choice.

         35 likes

  26. stuart says:

    the bbc and lbc radio have just agreed under pressure from the goverment not to use the word islamic state any more and now will be using the word isil and daesh to describe these muslim terrorists,just pathetic caving in and pandering to the muslim street again.not sure yet if channel 4.sky news and other media outlets will cave in and follow in the same footsteps.but the word islamic state is a banned word now on the bbc and lbc.

       25 likes

  27. Geoff says:

    Anyone else cheering on Japan tonight? The bBC’s sport department will be unsufferable if the ‘Lionesses’ (sic) make it through to the final…

       28 likes

    • desperatedan says:

      wot a shame the bbc have rammed it so far down your throat, you cant enjoy it, i quite enjoy seeing just how crap the ladies are at footie, though be reasonably impressed by a couple of the keepers command of the area

         12 likes

    • chrisH says:

      Classic case of the BBC poisoning the garden with their toxic gushing guff over womens football.
      I myself was an early advocate for it-I valued some techniques, the spirit in which they played etc.
      But along came the BBC with their agendas and hype-their sneering at the blokes, their 24/7 shilling for mediocrity and endless gestures about how great they were.
      Like the paralympics and the like-the virtue gets sucked out of anything that the BBC are so desperate to make us all “get with”.
      Like their search for the gay footballer-these pimps have taken a great game and turned it into a vehicle for “equality, anti-racism and whatever crass signalling and agendas that they deem suitable for the plebs, white poor trash blokes like us.
      There I can do no other but hope that the girls/ladies show solidarity with their male counterparts…and lose on penalties in extra time as England is called to do.
      Shut Channel 4 and the BBC up-come on girls, we couldn`t bear another shovel of your vacuous cliches and pleasuring liberal fops like Snow and Webb.

         31 likes

      • Angrymanupnorth says:

        I have enjoyed the bits of the games I have watched. I’ll be supporting the English girls tonight (Go get ’em). Like in most sports, if the opponents are easilywell matched, the contest can be enjoyable one to watch and these girls are representing England.

        The sentiments expressed above are correct. Why can’t the BBC stick to the sport without going all gender equality rights on us all. The BBC doesn’t explain why they compare pay levels of professional women footballers to the men. I couldn’t see the women’s team getting a result against Barnet or Halifax Town, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the contest. Stop making these girls out to be more than they are, talented at playing a game. Their pay should relate to an equitable portion of the gate receipts that their entertainment attracts. So they’ll probably need part time jobs. They should feel lucky and show more humility – They get paid to play a game FFS!

        Anyway. Come on England!

           21 likes

        • hadda says:

          Oh dear, last-minute OG hands it to the Japanese. Wonder if the ‘heartbreak’ will push the Luton 12 off the front page.

             15 likes

  28. AsISeeIt says:

    Previously I posted here that I was dubious about an important detail within BBC man Fergal Keane’s report of his interview with injured Tunisian hotel worker Imen Kechiche Guiga.

    Keane appeared in his tv report to be at pains to emphasise that the injured woman ‘believed’ she had been spared because she ‘spoke to the gunman in Arabic’.

    He reiterates this notion in his BBC on line article

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-33321921

    ‘[He] pointed his gun at her and she believed he spared her because she spoke in Arabic’.

    On the contrary, my assumption would be that he spared her – because he understood that she was a Muslim.

    This reading of events now appears to be borne out by Evening Standard reporter Kim Sengupta : ‘She shouted in Arabic and Rezgui who stated during his shooting spree he only wanted to kill “Kufirs” (unbelievers), apologised immediately’

    Now I’m afraid this is important. I feel Fergal Keane is fudging, avoiding – at best employing sly euphemisms. He is supposed to be a journalist reporting facts. He is not supposed to be an apologist or PR spin doctor for Islam.

       47 likes

    • GCooper says:

      I struggle to find words to describe Fergal Keane. Journalist is not among them.

         20 likes

      • Phil Ford says:

        “…I struggle to find words to describe Fergal Keane. Journalist is not among them.”

        Too true. How about ‘serial awards-chaser’? Or perhaps ‘self-obsessed purveyor of cheap emotional reportage’?

        Keane hopes one day to ascend to the holy ranks of established BBC upper-echelon Foreign Correspondents such as John Simpson and Kate Aide. He’s convinced he just has to fiddle about with the emotional waterworks every time he’s parachuted into some hell-hole and we’ll all keep falling for it and that elusive press gong will be his again.

        Then again, he only needs to keep right on doing it and I’m sure eventually his BBC-approved apotheosis will arrive in the post.

           10 likes

  29. flexdream says:

    Armando Iannucci ‏tweets,

    “Could those complaining to me about ‘left-wing’ bias in the BBC point me to specific examples? Otherwise it’s difficult to respond.”

       10 likes

    • Geoff says:

      Oh the irony he is only followed by sycophantic lefties so he knows he ain’t going to get any objective replies.

         29 likes

    • 60022Mallard says:

      Employing Armando Iannucci will do for a start to bring standard leftie “humour” to BBC’s “humour” department.

      He has never left me in any doubt about his great admiration for Margaret Thatcher from listening to his broadcasts, which as soon as anything with him in it or related to it comes on now leads to the automatic retuning of the radio!

         8 likes

    • 60022Mallard says:

      Perhapa Armando, who suckles at the generous teat provided by the BBC for “funny men” like him, can advise the equivalent anti Labour BBC joke to the one contained in the News Quiz chairman’s script “It’s the Tories that put the “n” in cuts”

         23 likes

    • +james says:

      “Could those complaining to me about ‘left-wing’ bias in the BBC point me to specific examples? Otherwise it’s difficult to respond”

      They employ you for a start?

         14 likes

  30. The Old Bloke says:

    Well the results are in and as one might expect, it was billed as the hottest July day eva, but in reality (a bit like Labours predicted election victory) things haven’t quite gone to plan. The hottest July daytime temperature eva, turns out not to be but for the last 10 years. Even this claim is now being scrutinised as this temperature was at the Heathrow Airport site. Hmm. The thermometer is right next to a runway turnoff so aircraft passing the station are going real slow and the station prone to jet blast. Also, many on here will have heard of the Urban Heat trap, where as this suggests, temperatures are higher in cities than they are in rural areas even if they are only a couple of miles apart. The CET (Central England Temperatures) hypothesis has tried to adjust to this, but that is all the CET is, an Hypothesis. Looking at the Met Office’s own data, it is noted that all the highest temperatures today were recorded west of the Meridian line and were steadily rising and then suddenly spiked at about 14.30. The wind is also shown at these stations, Heathrow, Northolt, Kew, Wisley which are all to the west of the Meridian line. So what caused the spike? Well, as we all know the Thames through London is tidal and the high tide in London today was 14.15. Anyone who lives near a tidal river knows only too well that the wind shifts with the tide and this is reflected in the data that an increased Easterly prevailed during the coming of the high tide. What this did was to saturate already warm air with even more warm air from the City of London, in effect, the temperatures were downwind of a fire. The temperatures recorded at stations east of the Meridian around London were many degrees cooler.
    But hey, who am I to tell the Met Office and the BBC to inform the public of the reality of what happened today and to cast doubt on the covenant that is “Global Warming”?

       31 likes

    • Manonclaphamomnibus says:

      Ha ha ha
      You madam are a laugh a minute. I think if you pan back a bit
      You’ll notice the whole of Europe is on fire. Quite apart from your back of the envelop readjustment of Heathrows figures I think you may have lost sight of the bigger picture. Global warming is not Heathrow. Its about the warming of the planet!
      What you are chatting about is Weather. Sometimes people
      Ike you make me weep.

         4 likes

      • Merched Becca says:

        New wheels Manon ?
        Why are you on this site ?
        This is what you posted on March 15, 2015 at 1:09 pm
        “I contribute here because I am highly critical of BBC news……”
        I haven’t seen any criticism as yet, only ‘Trolling’.
        Have you and your passengers voted here yet…………………….
        https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/end-the-bbc-licence-fee
        It will save you money.

           19 likes

      • Arthur Penney says:

        Ah – but it’s only weather when it’s cold. When it’s warm it is climate change.

        Sometimes (sorry always) you nincompoops show you’re sixpence short of a shilling. Like the Graiai – you AGW proponents seem to share one brain cell – and it isn’t a particularly good brain cell in the first place.

           13 likes

      • by looney left says:

        MOCO
        “Global warming is not Heathrow. Its about the warming of the planet!”
        Totally wrong, yet again.
        Climate change is concerned with biosphere alone.

           4 likes

        • The spider in my bath is a philosopher says:

          Silence. Quelle Surprise. Come on BBC.
          We need a challenge, send us a real intellect to deal with.
          Our brains are becoming soft and flabby sparring with the SNIOA.
          BBC, you extort 107 trillion *NUCUPRHRENEC annually from the Britons. Surely someone from BBC Radio -IQ can be spared.

          *Newspeak Universal Compulsory Unigender Postracial Historically Revised England Never Existed Credits

             1 likes

    • Richard Pinder says:

      BBC says it’s the hottest July day ever. 98F at Heathrow. I looked into my Guinness book of records, given to me by my Grandfather in the 1960,s. It says that it was 100.5F at Tonbridge on 22nd July 1868, and also 100.5F in London on 8th July 1808. I have also written notes in the book. One says that it was 101F at Wimbledon on 24th June 1994. As for Me personally, living in Yorkshire, I have a note that says that the highest temperature that I have ever experienced was 99F on 3rd August 1990. But today, the highest temperature recorded where I live was 80F. I did not even bother to take off my vest, or open the windows, like I did during the Global warming trend. But then when the BBC said Heathrow, It reminded me of that picture of an automated weather station at that airport with that jet aircraft lined up perfectly. No need for Met Office adjustments to present day measurements at Heathrow then. But indications are that the tarmac and Jet exhausts at Heathrow added about 5F on top of the natural background temperatures. So that means 7.5F lower than the hottest July day ever, if you remove the bias of the office worker charlatans at the BBC/Met Office.

         30 likes

      • Essex Man says:

        Mr P. where`s your nearest met office , station ? A lot of them tend to be at RAF Stations, or airports like Humberside or Robin Hood Doncaster . They do have automatic ones in more remote locations like Fylingdales ,or out in the Dales or Wolds . You should get Mr P Hudson on to it, as he is a climate scientist , I am told .

           1 likes

    • Fiddy says:

      “The thermometer is right next to a runway turnoff” Not true. You can check the location of the station and it’s nowhere near the runway.
      http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/forecast/gcpsvg2yz
      If a jet does trundle past it then we have bigger problems than a sunny day.

         4 likes

      • Geoff says:

        It’s all academic, once the summer is over it will turn out that average temperatures were slightly down.

        Already this morning its 10deg down on what it was this time yesterday.

        BTW I didn’t hear anyone bleating that June was colder than average.

        It’s just weather regardless of where the thermometer sits.

           17 likes

      • 60022Mallard says:

        Entering the co-ordinates given on your link on Google seems to indicate the station is about 150m away from the runway and is opposite several turnoffs which, if used. would direct jet efflux directly towards it.

        Was it only last month that we had the coldest June day on record? Was that at Heathrow too?

           11 likes

        • Fiddy says:

          If used is key. If they were we’d have bigger problems.

          Plenty of comment on how cold June was even on the BBC.

             0 likes

  31. Jerry Owen says:

    Wimmin’s football is top of the sports agenda both on tv and radio.
    Apparently we shouldn’t compare it to men’s footie but that doesn’t stop the feminists taking a poke at the fact that they are in the semis something that the male side hasn’t done for a while.
    Also the talk is that they should have pay parity ( yawn ) with the men’s football…. but we mustn’t compare wimmin’s footie to men’s footie of course !
    Apparently they are playing some little Japanese people, imagine the Japanese men’s side getting that far, which gives a clue of the standard of the wimmin’s game.
    Any way best not compare the two, to me one lot looks feeble and awkward, the other lot overpaid and acting like prima donna’s.

       24 likes

    • Manonclaphamomnibus says:

      Defonitely dont compare it to womens football. Unlike the men they seem to be winning!

         3 likes

      • Mat says:

        And with a that comment from the pro multi billion media corporation puppy , they crash out !
        Gordon Mcdoom broon could have jinxed it better pmsl !

           20 likes

      • D1004 says:

        Winning what clapped out bus ? The match for third place against the Germans ? That will go well then……
        Hint, don’t count your lionesses until
        They beat the Japanese !

           7 likes

        • pah says:

          The Germans are the number 1 seeds, that Japs 4th (and current champions). England are 6th.

          England have done well to get as far as they have done so let’s be magnanimous and congratulate them on their, however limited, success.

          It is an England team after all.

             4 likes

          • by looney left says:

            pah
            “It is an England team after all.”
            But it is not an English team.

               2 likes

      • Jerry Owen says:

        Man on a bus to nowhere. Err… they lost! Feel a bit of a tit eh lad?

           3 likes

  32. The Old Bloke says:

    Good evening Manon. Still trying to prove everyone else is wrong and you are always right? You must be exhausted by the end of the day. “Sometimes people like you make me weep”. So who do you think I am then? Obviously, not someone who has spent a lifetime in meteorology, unlike you, but please why don’t you tell the BBC what the difference is between weather and climate, because it is patently clear, they do not.

       24 likes

  33. AsISeeIt says:

    I see Armando Iannuchi is busy Twitter campaigning with his mates on behalf of his BBC

    He would appear to be a Labour supporter who wants to keep campaigning against the policies of the elected government

    Armando Iannucci ‏@Aiannucci May 8
    I hope parties opposing austerity don’t start crying and arguing but keep opposing.Tories got 34.5%: it’s not a mandate for more austerity.

    And yet he scoffs at the suggestion that BBC comedy is biased to the left!

    cognitive dissonance
    nounPsychology
    noun: cognitive dissonance
    the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioural decisions and attitude change.

       27 likes

  34. An English Gentleman says:

    bbbc press review this evening…urgently squeezes in at the end of the review was an invented news item that ‘there were pictures of five different wimmin’ on the front page of one of the newspapers……….At first I thought the host (a typical emasculated, subservient, obsequious, inoffensive male with no noticeable personality at all) was joking but no, it was a serious item
    How can this possibly be noteworthy.

    Who are the bbbc broadcasting to? Certainly not me

    How can any reasonable reporting include this a an item worthy of mention.

    More importantly, when the in/out referendum becomes close how can anyone expect any fair reporting/interviews/viewpoints to be relayed without bias to the public at large?

       23 likes

  35. logiebored says:

    The beeb’s own Rosa Klebb of the newsroom (Wark) does a Newsnight interview with Chris Rapley on climate change that is so ludicrous that I haven’t laughed so much for, er, 18 years and 6 months, coincidentally the last time we had global warming.

       30 likes

  36. logiebored says:

    ‘…the sun beating down on us serves as a reminder of our planet warming faster than at any time before, and by our own hand….’

    Kirsty Wark- Former journalist turned Climastrologist and liar.

       42 likes

    • Richard Pinder says:

      If we look at temperatures at Heathrow, the temperature has increased from about Zero in January to 36.7c in July, so by my calculation, Global Warming according to the BBC‘s Kirsty Wark, will produce temperatures of about 160F by Christmas. The “by our own hand” must be something to do with Jet exhaust temperatures measured at Heathrow. Also I don’t think she is a liar, as she has to be as thick as that, to retain a job at the BBC, as intelligent and therefore “former” BBC staff have commented, about this, as regards that realistic documentary called W1A.

         15 likes

  37. flexdream says:

    Israelis have noticed the BBC bias, this from 2012

    “But from what sources did the chief writer of these two episodes of “Spooks” draw inspiration for this plot? Is the story based on evidence of Israeli Mossad agents wantonly killing civilians? Or is it sufficient to say that credible source material is not necessary since the genre is fiction; there is no need for accountability — just plausibility. Did the episodes’ writer, Raymond Khoury, a Christian Arab, introduce his own prejudices into the storyline?

    Might the management of BBC Entertainment be guilty of excessive political correctness in an effort to counter “Islamophobia,” and also, perhaps, to please Great Britain’s large and growing population of Muslim viewers? Interestingly, in the following episode of “Spooks,” MI5 uncovers a Christian extremist group planning to take retribution on a Muslim community.”

    http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/stranger-than-non-fiction/

       22 likes

    • Roland Deschain says:

      C Rapley. What an awesomely suitable name.

         14 likes

    • More Like The Soviet Bloc Every Day says:

      Was chatting to someone at the weekend who works in the Dept of the Environment and Climate Change in London, she told me that the place is run by economists who everyone else has to kowtow to in there. Makes sense to me…

         1 likes

  38. flexdream says:

    BBC drama

    “Rida is a Glasgow teenager. Like a lot of teenagers she argues with her mum, stresses about exams and spends too long on her computer. But as a young Muslim the pressures that she faces in her life, and the escape that she dreams of online, may contain dangers she has yet to imagine.

    This innovative radio drama all takes place in Rida’s online world – the place where she feels she can most be herself. We listen to the YouTube clips she finds, her instant messaging with friends and the bloggers she reads.

    A WORLD ELSEWHERE is a sensitive portrayal of one girl’s path to radicalisation.”

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0608dvt

       23 likes

    • Sickofitall says:

      FFS why are we being forced to pay for this shyte?????????

         39 likes

    • John Anderson says:

      I listened to the play. It was very sentimental about the schoolgirl (guess what, she wanted to be a doctor !). No way did it explain radicalisation. There was a huge and sudden leap from her Skypeing with someone in Syria/Iraq, a female from the UK, and her texting her best schoolfriend from Glasgow airport evidently on the way abroad.

      Above all, as with all BBC output, it fails to “explain” that any child brought up in a cultural background of hostility to the West and infused with all the violent and intolerant verses in the Koran is already fertile ground for radicalisation.

         38 likes

  39. Sheik Yertits says:

    Amen brother.

       1 likes

  40. Techno says:

    I can’t help but be suspicious about this: Saudi prince to donate $32bn fortune to charity

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-33353370

    Uncritically reported, but there has been worries that the Saudis are funding extremist views in British mosques, helpfully summarised by Iain Dale here:

    http://www.iaindale.com/posts/2015/06/28/why-wahhabi-salafist-mosques-should-be-banned-from-receiving-foreign-funding

    I checked out the website of Alwaleed Philanthropies and it states that some of its projects are for “empowering women”. I suppose we have to take that at face value, but is this massive donation basically a PR exercise to divert attention from what Saudi Arabia is getting up to in mosques in Western countries?

       19 likes

    • TrueToo says:

      This is the same Saudi Arabia that at first pledged to pay the BBC’s Frank Gardner a million dollars compensation for the attack on him by Islamic terrorists, then refused to pay – obviously because he is basically an infidel though apparently a convert to Islam.

         12 likes

  41. Stuart B says:

    Not sure if this is ‘bias’ as such, but it does seem to be a rather strange attitude on the part of the BBC: I have just listened with mounting astonishment and horror to the Today piece on ‘Chem-sex’. How can proponents of a homosexuality lobby proclaim themselves members of a Gay “Community” if that “community” can condone the degradation, depravity and sheer squalor of what was being described here? What kind of “community” is that, for heaven’s sake? I am very rarely shocked, but the description given just left me initially jaw-dropped and speechless, and I had to write this.

    I just cannot believe that the BBC seriously expect any of their listeners to approve of what was, basically, a value-free, normative, discussion of this phenomenon. What kind of people are they, that they can fail to understand or reflect the horror that most listeners will obviously feel?

    As I write this, the topic is now the apparent rise in child abuse – a somewhat different ‘attitude’ on this, I think.

       32 likes

  42. Dave666 says:

    BBc Breakfast. Kirkwood is still telling us the weather from Wimbledon. Serious faces as reporter is in Luton on a surprisingly brief piece about the latest missing 12. The “lionesses” crash out of the world cup Back to it was hot yesterday .

       16 likes

  43. deegee says:

    Google apologises for Photos app’s racist blunder

    Blunder? Yes and they should have apologised but it wasn’t a ‘racist’ human who miscategorised the photo or even a ‘racist’ programmer who designed the algorithym. Image identification is still in its infancy and a piece of code made the ‘mistake’.

    http://googleresearch.blogspot.co.il/2013/06/improving-photo-search-step-across.html

       8 likes

    • JimS says:

      Racist BBC falsely identifies Anglo-Kenyan as Black Slave descendant:
      “None of America’s previous 43 presidents could have delivered this kind of eulogy, which sounded in parts like a sermon, in others like a state-of-the-union address and, at the end, a salvation meeting where, extraordinarily, he broke into [or broke the?] song – Amazing Grace.

      Often Barack Obama has been reticent to talk about America’s racial dilemma [Harvard lecturer arrested at home, my son Travon, etc. etc.] . He has never wanted to be typecast as its first black president [he just wanted the job].

      But here, in one of the most memorable speeches of his presidency, it sounded like he was almost ventriloquizing [what!] the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King. This was perhaps his most expansive elucidation of the race issue to date.”

         14 likes

      • OMG says:

        Often Barack Obama has been reticent to talk about America’s racial dilemma [Harvard lecturer arrested at home, my son Travon

        Reticent? LOL! He jumped on these.

           16 likes

  44. Jerry Owen says:

    Will the feminists shut up now about the ‘greatness’ of wimmin’s footie now they have been beaten by a team of Japanese tiny tots?

       24 likes

    • JimS says:

      I don’t care for football whichever sex plays it but the BBC makes it sound like ‘their girls’ have taken on the best (male) footballers in the world rather than a bunch of other…

      …women, who are somehow goliaths of the game.

      So what?

         22 likes

      • Old Goat says:

        That cheered me up this morning! Wimmen copped out, by an own goal? Oh, dearie me, what a shame, never mind.

        Everyone, apparently, is slagging off the BBC tennis “coverage”, they admit (ha-ha!), but they are at pains to declare that Clare Balding is the best, er, “presenter?” since records began – they lurve her.

        They obviously turn a blind eye to this site, and most of the mainstream press, too, where they are utterly pissed off with an overload of Balding bollox.

           29 likes

        • Cockney says:

          Surely as a nation it would be nice to be competent at some sport, somewhere, ever?

          Didn’t watch much but it looked like a Euro 96 / Italia 90 style stumble into the semis via luck and a nice draw despite not very good at all. Might inspire some kids and keep obesity down though so not all bad, unless hating “wimmen” trumps everything?

             4 likes

          • deegee says:

            How about some patriotism. The UK is not exactly the greatest sporting nation in the world. It’s nice to win — at anything.

               7 likes

            • Al Shubtill says:

              You’re right dg it is annoying, especially as we invented most of the major sports played internationally – football, tennis, rugby, golf, basketball etc etc etc.

                 2 likes

            • The Lord says:

              /// The UK is not exactly the greatest sporting nation in the world.///

              We are!!!

                 2 likes

  45. noggin says:

    After this BBC puff piece, with the lightest of light touches
    tiffs with mom etc’
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0608dvt
    meanwhile … in the real world
    someone erm “getting closer” to Islam, becoming “more religious”
    … remember those notes to recognise?

    “I can’t wait to die as a martyr – an Italian woman converts to Islam, then promotes hate and beheading? … yep! Happy Ramadan!

    “Yet Western authorities remain remarkably uncurious about how conversion to Islam all too often leads people to espouse hatred and violence, to say nothing of treason. Although this is a recurring phenomenon, it is never discussed in public”
    R Spencer

    Anti-Semitic Rally In London? yes, type that into BBC news page you get something from ……. 2002!
    Neo-Nazis To Protest ‘Jewish Privilege’ In UK
    Anti-Semitic Rally In London
    http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/police-swoop-in-race-hate-arrest-ahead-of-gg-rally/
    Imagine if it was a anti erm … muslim rally?

       19 likes

  46. Biased BBC Bitesize History says:

    Nicky Campbell’s Your Call’ on should we allow people to travel to Syria to fight. A caller makes the point that Britain allowed people to travel to fight in the Spanish Civil War, to which Nicky replied that he had take the words out his mouth. He had. Nicky has made this point himself on a previous programme.

    Britain did not allow people to travel to Spain to take part in the Spanish Civil War. Britain did make some attempt to stop them. The government disapproved of the volunteers to the point of invoking the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870.

    http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/thirties-britain/spanish-civil-war-volunteers/

    However, this would prove futile.

    This article examines the official response to the policy problems raised by the over two thousand Britons who went to fight for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War, with particular reference to the Foreign Enlistment Act (1870). Revived in January 1937 as a means of reducing the flow of volunteers and curbing the recruiting efforts of the Communist Party of Great Britain, the act proved embarrassingly unenforceable. Ambiguity over its applicability to the situation in Spain, combined with problems of evidence, meant that no charges were ever laid against volunteers caught attempting to leave for Spain or members of the recruiting organization of the CPGB. Though a complete failure as a legal tool, the Foreign Enlistment Act nevertheless symbolically underlined the British government’s declared support for international non-intervention in Spain, and was never rescinded.
    http://tcbh.oxfordjournals.org/content/10/1/52.abstract

       23 likes

    • GCooper says:

      Thank you for posting that – it exposes one of the current Leftist memes – and as such, one of the BBC’s favourite talking points!

         12 likes

      • Demon says:

        I overheard one plummy man in a Cambridge restaurant (lecturer probably) saying that we shouldn’t stop these people joining ISIS as it’s nothing to do with us, and we let the people join the Spanish republicans, and we should let them come back when they want with no prosecution.

        Nothing to do with me – anyway you couldn’t hope to change the closed mind of a left-wing fascist – and I had more important things on my mind. (A forthcoming op.)

        But I thought to myself a more realistic comparison would be what should the British Government have done about Britons in 1945 returning from fighting in the French Resistance against those who had joined the Britischer Freikorps of the SS. I haven’t checked but I’m pretty sure the government would have treated these two types of individual quite differently. We should do the same with those that fight with the Kurds (our allies at present) and welcome them back, and those that fight and murder with ISIS (our, and mankind’s, enemies).

           19 likes

        • RJ says:

          There have been credible reports, even on the BBC, that members of the Islamic State have tortured and murdered their way cross much of Northern Iraq. There must be a strong possibility that anyone from the UK who has gone to the Middle East to join the Islamic State has been involved in this murder and torture, and so has committed criminal acts in Iraq.

          Any ex- Islamic State member with a British passport who wish to return to the UK should first be processed by the Iraqi authorities. Anyone they clear of wrong-doing can return, the rest they can hang.

          No need for Theresa May or CMD to get involved.

             9 likes

    • Leamas says:

      About twenty minutes or so after that a caller came on and started an anti-English rant that went unchallenged for a good couple of minutes.

      He even differentiated between the evil English and the wonderful Scots, Welsh and Irish. Nicky sat there quite happy to allow it. Five Live’s agendas are clear and obvious. Close it down.

         34 likes

    • Glen says:

      I caught a small bit of gameshow nicky’s show this morning. It had some lefty tosser on saying how badly done to the muslims are in this islam hating country that has an anti islam bias on every media outlet going and that we, as a ‘liberal democratic’ country, should cow tow to these people for our own good!!

      Really? We are? Only, I swear the lib dems were wiped out at the last GE, the liebour party suffered a humiliating defeat and the tories and UKIP gained much of the vote! The guy was a typical lefty..arrogant, full of hate and talked over and disagreed with every contrary point made.

      It took an Iranian Kurdish woman to point out that the UK’s gvnmnt and police had nothing to answer for when it comes to these traitorous scum and that we should do nothing to help these people. Let them leave, they don’t deserve our help, was her point.

      And therein lies the problem, a UK hating media outlet giving homegrown UK hating fifth columnists a platform to spew poison and bile whilst an immigrant with everything be thankful for praises her adopted country to the heavens and tells it as the majority sees it. Embarrassing.

         14 likes

  47. Geoff says:

    Balding and the bBC taking another forearm smashing today at the Mail.

    Something that seems to have gone under the radar is that another woman (and Scot) has been employed to do the post match interviews, Lee MacKenzie. Mackenzie is the bBC F1 pit lane reporter (a good one) but what does she know about tennis? Although we did see her playing Swingball with one of the women players….

    So now we have three women in the Wimbledon main roles, are there any men left at the bBC to present sport (what little they have)?

    Gender balancing PC tosh and it ain’t working…

       39 likes

  48. Gunner says:

    If anyone is in any doubt about the urgent necessity to remove the licence fee, they need only read the extraordinary on-line outburst from Mark Mardell ” Cameron is not asking the big question on Islamic State”. At bottom , according to Mardell, IS is not about a violent, medieval fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, but “an explicitly political reaction to the actions of the West”. So there you have it, according Mardell, it is all our fault. Oh and just to add’, Mardell doesn’t like the PM using the phrase “so-called Islamic State”. Indeed Mardell “loathes” this phrase. Well I for one loath Mardell’s arrogance, and feel no obligation to pay his wages any longer.

       44 likes

    • dave s says:

      Mardell is on a par with the vast majority of commentators and politicians. Ignorance is peace of mind.
      Isis thinks it is a state – a recreation of the Caliphate- and is going to act as if it is.. A Caliphate true to Islam and founded on literal readings of the Quran and Hadiths. It thinks it possesses the truth.
      It has money and seems well led and no shortage of willing recruits. it is determind to remove the West from Islamic lands and then spread it’s rule to Europe and hopefully the entire world. So that the world will be all part of the Dar al Islam.
      It quite deliberately is using extreme terror tactics as a weapon.
      We cannot compromise with Isis because it does not believe in compromise. Why should it? Isis is sure the future belongs to it.
      If Mardell is unable to understand these simple facts then he either needs to quit his job or make a real effort to do it properly.

         24 likes

    • Charlatans says:

      Mardell appears to have got the point that Islam is a radical, addictive, brutal ideology that has not evolved like the rest of the world

      We should not forget that Christians used to chop heads off, hang draw and quarter, burn at the stake even in our own lands just over few hundred years ago!

      Islam fundamentalism does not believe in our way of life. Democracy, equal rights for women, gays and we non-believers are an anathema to their ridiculous beliefs, which have not been changed since they were written 1,400 years ago.

      The NTDWI – Nothing to do with Islam – mantra is stupid! Of course the Palestinian, Iraq, Afghan business has radicalised millions of them! Almost every evil act they commit they state or publish these validations and we all know so why the attempt to indoctrinate us otherwise is total propaganda.

      Perhaps the brutal regimes like Sadam, Saudi, Syria, Gaddafi’s Libya is the only way of keeping them under control from the millions now on a permanent death cult agenda?

         10 likes

      • Laska says:

        I think regarding Christian martyrs, this only happened on scale in UK. Thus “English Martyrs” churches you see dotted around. I think the whole burning and beheading was spread over centuries and probably equalled what Islam can get through in a week. I know, you are going to go after Inquisition – Monty Python sourced – but the key there was very legalistic. Most people opted for Inquisition rather than civil courts because they were more evidence based and less prone to use torture. Feel free to disabuse me. This attempt to make Christianity and Islam analogous fails on two counts. Firstly, because the religions are so differently founded, one on rules and punishment as a group; the other, Christianity, on principles and mercy, as an individual on the whole. Secondly, Islam is a religion of conquest, in the main; Christianity spread through conversion without state involvement until Constantine. Anybody that suggests that Christianity went through the same phase as Islam – and by the way, Islam does not have “phases” – is ignorant and attempting to attribute the peculiarities of Islam to all religions. And that’s called bad faith.

           6 likes

      • Up2snuff says:

        Charlatans, think that should be ‘Christian’ (with non-BBC-type apostrophes added) doing the head chopping, burning, Inquisitioning & Crusading in your post.

        A theologian might observe that ‘the Church’ has been through various stages. Some of these, where true Christians were definitely not running the show and may well have been in short supply within that ‘Church’-era, were thus distinctly un-Christian. Please note the lack of apostrophes on that last word. 😉

        If Wolf Hall didn’t make us grateful for the BBC & its historical dramas, then it should have made us even more grateful for living in the UK well after the Reformation!

           1 likes