Compare And Contrast

Looks like the Men Of No Appearance have struck again in Croydon, comparing the BBC descriptions of the robbery suspects with that of the local paper.

UPDATE – and (possibly for similar reasons) this goes unreported. Sixty years back it would have been all over the media. That’s two rape/torture convictions in Greater London (we covered the other here) in the last three weeks that the BBC have failed to report. Is a pattern developing ? We know that, like pretty much everyone else, the BBC is against rape and torture. Do they just feel more comfortable reporting torture where MI6 are allegedly involved, and rape allegations that fit an existing BBC narrative ?

Some Are More Equal Than Others …

I would love to be a fly on the wall at the conferences where the items for BBC television and radio news are decided – to try and work out why some stories make it and some don’t.

Murders are a case in point – there are about a thousand a year over the United Kingdom – three a day. Yet not only do 90% of them not make the national news – many of them aren’t even reported on the BBC web site.

At the same time, every single death of a serviceman in Afghanistan is reported on national news.

Yet the BBC finds the resource to report a non-fatal traffic accident on the same day that it ignores a homicide.

Again, as should we all be, the BBC are very down on rape – and also on torture (especially if MI6 or America may be involved).

Yet this deliberately planned rape is featured, while this deliberately planned rape and torture is ignored. This unpleasant rape and assault also seems to fly under the BBC news radar.

Two knife-wielding burglars who gang-raped a young mother in her home as her young son begged them to stop have been locked up. The drink and drug-fuelled pair took turns to rape the woman after horrifically killing the child’s pet in front of him.

Is that not “news” ? If you stab a child’s pet, does it not bleed ?

I cannot think* why the murder of James Houliston and the crimes of Reon Hall and Aaron Fitzgerald Gelly, Mansoor Shah and Stefan Reed, should not be considered worth even one report from the organisation that gives us “city tram restrictions continue“. Would anyone from the BBC like to comment ?

* (well I can, but it reflects so badly upon the BBC that I hesitate to air it).

Edit Them Pretty

Been watching the Apprentice? I have. Of course it’s all in the editing. A bunch of people are given an impossible task. To do something none of them knows the first thing about in a ridiculously short time, and then being forced to go head to head in the boardroom where the object is to make the other person take the blame for your own incompetence.

We all know from the start that the winner will be the best looking, and the first ones to go will be the unprepossessing ones, and the annoying ones with grating laughs and raucous voices will be kept on for entertainment purposes till they get too gross. The one with a misplaced faith in her own infallibility and a glum expression got fired first.

There’s a parallel with our leaders in there somewhere. I caught Harriet Harpy on the radio rubbishing some proposed Tory policy, presumably the one about inheritance tax. “It’s a tax for millionaires!” she was shrieking. Oh those wicked millionaires, she had to say, because she was supposed to be in the labour party. How ironic that sounded when all her labour colleagues are doing their best to rake in as much as they can via allowances for multiple unnecessary extra homes and all.

Then there’s our new hero Daniel Hannan. What a speech, and without a single teleprompter. What a shame the BBC omitted to show it. It’s the editing you see. Policy. Not newsworthy. Never mind, we all saw it on the internet. Despite his eloquence, his clear fluent delivery, his open features and ringing tones, there still lurks the matter of his fondness for The One. Can such steely powers of judgment have deserted him altogether when apllied to the telegenic one? Oh well we can’t all be perfect.


The most unnerving thing in that clip was the shot of Gordon’s terrible grin. What a haunting image. “Gordon, what was you doin’? You put yourself up for project manager, you’re a total disgrace. You’re fired.”

Imagine the lot of them in the boardroom, all trying to make the other person take the blame for their incompetence because they’ve failed the impossible task they were given that none of them knew the first thing about, with the voters baying for blood and Sir Alan waiting to point.