Monthly Archives: November 2006

A link-rich article by Peter Glover in American Thinker was recommended by Ritter and Kulibar Tree.

– so Richard Lovelace wrote to his love Althea while imprisoned by the Roundheads during the Civil War. Apparently the BBC thinks that Lovelace’s philosophy is also an appropriate attitude for fallen women imprisoned in an Iranian House of Compassion. Although the story does make clear that the inmates are imprisoned, it is referred to as a “shelter”.

Commenter “pounce” examines the BBC story:

They include runaways, drug addicts and prostitutes. Many are suffering from severe mental health problems.”

Oh we have runaways (from what?) drug addicts and prostitutes why they even throw in the catch all “severe mental health problems” in other words what the BBC is saying is that every women there is partly to blame.

But it gets better contrast the above Oasis statement with the following;

The house rules say that women brought in by the police, cannot leave unless their families take them back. “I want to get out here,” she says, “I want to live my life, go shopping and go to the park with my friends.””

Oasis, more like a Prison. But just to reinforce it’s the women’s fault angle promulgated by the BBC they insert this;

“Her face is clouded by the shadows of drug addiction. When she holds up her hands, her fingers are permanently clenched – the tendons in her wrist have been severed by repeated suicide attempts.”

See its all her fault. But not to worry the BBC does try to claim that the refuge come prison does try to help them out, (but with little success)

“Staff at the shelter have tried to help the women turn their lives around by organising training courses and teaching them new skills. But so far they’ve met with little success. For many of the residents, it’s just too late to make a new start.”

Err BBC how about what’s the point of learning a new trade if you can’t leave the 4 walls of said refuge unless accompanied by one of the prison wardens.
“They like it when the staff take them on outings to the city. And they would love it if someone could buy them a tape recorder so they could have some music.”

It seems BBC that the above was written by somebody working at the ministry of disinformation in Tehran.

The BBC and half a story.

pounce

The House of Compassion in Teheran has many parallels with the Magdalen Laundries in Ireland. The attitude of the BBC to these institutions was different. It commissioned “a powerful new BBC screenplay.”

UPDATE: An anonymous commenter writes, “The photo caption says “Some of the women are reluctant to leave this haven of safety”!”

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

According to the The Register, an irreverent but generally respected technology news site, there’s been a bit of a punch up on the BBC Radio 4 message boards. Apparently:

“Only messageboard hosts will start new threads”. Oh dear. Cue indignation, to which the Beeb replied: “We believe these changes will allow the Today programme to better reflect the thoughts and opinions of its listeners, making it more relevant to its audience”.

Yeah right, replied AH:

No you don’t. You believe that it will enable you to control what people talk about and will also enable you to avoid talking about “sensitive” issues.

“Your thoughts, your views, your space”

What a joke.

Another disgruntled poster adds:

I can see it now.

“How can people be forced to appreciate the benefits of multiculturalism?”

“George Bush. Evil dictator or sexual pervert?”

“Are YOU a victim of homophobia?”

“Diversity. Fantastic or amazing?”

“How can we unite to defeat the right?”

Etc etc.

We PAY for the BBC. We PAY for this service. We generally don’t LIKE the political and ideological agendas of the BBC. So they shut the boards.

Sounds typical of the BBC we all know and love. If you’ve been following this debate please feel free to update this story in the comments.

Putting on my hat marked Lazy BBC (since there isn’t such a blog), here’s a great example of BBC Views Online lazily re-publishing corporate puff dressed up as news:

Websites face four-second cut-off

Shoppers are likely to abandon a website if it takes longer than four seconds to load, a survey suggests.

The research by Akamai revealed users’ dwindling patience with websites that take time to show up.

It found 75% of the 1,058 people asked would not return to websites that took longer than four seconds to load.

The time it took a site to appear on screen came second to high prices and shipping costs in the list of shoppers’ pet-hates, the research revealed.

“Research by Akamai”? Now, tell me, just what is it that Akamai are well known for selling? Let’s have a look at their About Akamai page:

If you use the Internet for anything – to download music or software, check the headlines, book a flight – you’ve probably used Akamai’s services without even knowing it. We play a critical role in getting content from providers to consumers…

Our global platform of thousands of specially-equipped servers helps the Internet withstand the crush of daily requests for rich, dynamic, and interactive content, transactions, and applications.

Now there’s a surprise. I feel a Mandy Rice-Davies moment coming on: “Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they”, although that appears to have escaped the fearless notice of our inquisitive BBC ‘journalists’ in their hurry to cut’n’paste the news.

about the trial over the awful murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky in Bradford. Today’s proceedings have centered on Yusuf Jamma, described by the BBC in each instance as being ‘from Birmingham’.

Er, no. Birmingham might be where he was arrested, but he’s from Somalia, the same Somalia that was his apparent reason for being given refuge in our country, and the same Somalia to which his brother, Mustaf Jama, is believed to have fled to avoid British justice. I guess when the chips were down he figured that Somalia wasn’t so bad after all.

, according to a startling article by Stewart Payne in today’s Daily Telegraph:

…a leaked memo revealed that phone-in presenters on a local radio station have been barred from allowing callers who sound old on air.

Mia Costello, managing editor of BBC Radio Solent, told her broadcasters: “I don’t want to hear really elderly voices.”

She instructed presenters to appeal to an imaginary couple she called “Dave and Sue”, who would typically be aged between 45 and 64. “Only do caller round-ups about people in this age range,” she said.

Her memo was leaked after she axed several of her older broadcasters, including the BBC’s disability affairs correspondent Peter White, who had a Saturday breakfast show on the station until last week.

Do read the rest of the article. An absolute disgrace, quite typical of today’s BBC, and something for which heads should roll, but they won’t, also quite typical of today’s BBC.

Remember, to paraphrase Rageh Omaar’s nauseating BBC adverts from a while back, “It’s not your BBC, it’s their BBC”, and, courtesy of Simon Walters in the Daily Mail a few weeks back (which I meant to blog about at the time), We are biased, admit the stars of BBC News, we have it from the horse’s mouth, well, Andrew Marr’s at least:

“The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias” – Andrew Marr

The leaked account of the summit recounted in the Mail also revealed that:

BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians

To which I feel compelled to respond in the vernacular: No shit, Sherlock!

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers. Come tour our beautiful sugar caves! (Work experience available.)

has said that the BBC is afraid to criticise Islam.

Discuss.

Andrew adds: The Telegraph article was based on an interview by Sarah Sands in the Daily Mail, Archbishop blames ‘chattering classes’ for collapse of Britain’s spiritual life, also well worth a read.

via DFH in the comments, Raymond Snoddy (‘until this week not one word on national TV bulletins‘) interviews Peter Horrocks (Realplayer video), head of TV news, on the Kriss Donald coverage. They’ve had 200 complaints about the lack thereof. But then ‘the British National Party has encouraged its members to write in‘, as Mr Horrocks points out.

He struggles gamely with a few straw men of his own devising (I paraphrase)- ‘we couldn’t cover the trial the way we’d like to under Scottish law – for instance we aren’t allowed to show photos of the accused, which obviously show that they were Asian and the victim was white …’

I see. If only those photos were available it would have been all over BBC Television news ! And was the particular ethnicity of the alleged murderers relevant ? Surely it was their alleged murderousness and their alleged racism that was relevant ?

We see the ‘only whites could be racists but it’s changing‘ meme a la Mark Easton.

‘I think there is something interesting about racial crime, that in the past it’s been seen as largely racial crime against blacks and Asians …‘

Been seen by whom exactly ? You’d think he was looking in from the outside, dispassionately describing some fascinating natural process outside man’s power to control.

Regrets, he’s had a few.

‘I do wish we’d covered the trial on its first day …‘

‘But you also didn’t cover the first trial’

‘Yes, and we should have done – and we should have done that …‘

We’ll add that to ‘in hindsight, it was a mistake not to report the case of Ross Parker more extensively’ and ‘I think, however, we should have mentioned the Whelan murder, however briefly‘, shall we ?

DFH also provided links to the Fran Unsworth interview after the Anthony Walker coverage. Ms Unsworth doesn’t know if the Kriss Donald murder was a racist crime, and she also knows that there are about 850 homicides a year in the UK (850 homicides is the England and Wales figure). Fran Unsworth is head of “BBC Newsgathering”.

“Their force is wonderful great and strong” wrote Admiral Howard of the Armada, “yet we pluck their feathers little by little“. Or as Hardy rightly said “continual dropping will wear away a Stone – ay, more – a Diamond.” Maybe one day we won’t have to do this. Chance would be a fine thing.