Monthly Archives: January 2007

latest report from the USA, also featured in other BBC bulletins and repeatedly on BBC News Twenty-Bore.

The report was on a new US Army device – a Humvee mounted heat ray system to disperse hostile crowds or enemies in a non-lethal manner. An interesting topic, but oh so nauseatingly covered by Frei, his smug voice dripping sarcastic disdain throughout his ultra-sceptical report.

Here’s a transcript in case you can’t watch the Youtube clip above, complete with some added commentary in red italics:

Dermot Murnighan: The US military has given the first public display of what it says is a revolutionary heat ray weapon for use against hostile crowds or stopping battlefield enemies in their tracks, but it’s only in the prototype stage, as Matt Frei reports.

Cut to pictures of soldiers playing the part of a hostile crowd…

Matt Frei: No, it’s not a rebellion from American troops refusing to serve in Iraq (Oh very witty Matt – sarcasm and Iraq in one go!), it’s a bit of Pentagon role playing (yes indeed, it’s all a game to these yahoos). These soldiers are pretending to be rioters and these are not shooting back because this machine will do it for them.

Cut to pictures of Humvee mounted system…

Meet the latest addition to the Pentagon’s list of weapons and euphemisms (Great suggestive use of ‘euphemisms’ there Matt), the Active Denial System. It looks like a satellite dish, it works like a microwave oven, and what it actively denies you is the desire to stay in front of it. Watch them…

Cut to two soldiers reacting to the machine’s heat ray, followed by an old sci-fi still (really old) spinning annoyingly (very annoyingly) on to screen, complete with a silly sound effect (very silly).

It feels like a blast from an oven, it sounds like a blast from the past (kerching, never spotted that follow up coming!). Not science fiction (even though I’m trying to suggest otherwise), but science fact according to the military (does that sound sceptical enough about the military?). And this is how it works…

Cut to animated graphic titled ‘Feeling the heat’…

A beam of microwaves fired from a Humvee is aimed at a human (a human, a HUMAN, you got that? Not a tree, a f***ing human!). The rays gently heat the water under your skin to about 54 degrees and then supposedly, you run for it (I’m b*****ed if I’m going to try it out so that I can tell you what it actually feels like!). It’s called the ‘goodbye effect’.

John Pike, Globalsecurity.org: (Gee, this guy has a real hick-style drawl, just the job!) The ‘goodbye effect’ is that when people feel their skin burning they’re gonna run away, they’re going to stop in their tracks and run away, uh, the military basically wants that to be able to stop people at checkpoints or to disperse crowds. The theory is that when they feel their skin burning they’re going to say ‘goodbye’ and get out of there. (Great editing, make him repeat what Matt’s just said…)

Cut back to soldiers and Humvee…

Matt Frei: But what happens if you don’t feel like saying ‘goodbye’? (I don’t know Matt. Aren’t you going to tell us? You are a reporter aren’t you, and I’m sure they’d give you an opinion), and could it work in places where would be suicide bombers are already used to the desert heat (Well could it Matt? Did you ask them? or are you just spreading doubt as you go?), like Iraq for instance (Yeah, let’s get Iiiiraq in there one more time baby!)?

The Active Denial System, non-lethal (I don’t think so, am I sounding sceptical enough)?, or just non-starter (These Yankee-doodle cowboys and their fancy machines!)?

Matt Frei, BBC News, Washington.

Next up, a new Active Denial P45* System, for getting rid of nauseating, hackneyed, sinecured reporters. It’s called the ‘f*** off’ effect…

* A P45 is a UK government form issued when employment ceases.

, courtesy of Peter Mullen, Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, in the City of London, as published in the esteemed Northern Echo last year:

Aunties’s bias is showing

I sometimes worry for the sanity of the BBC. Let me say at the start, I’m a totally unreformed addict of Radio Four and I come over all sulky when we go abroad and I have to make do with satellite TV in the hotel bedroom.

The beauty is that you can have the radio with you wherever you go and you don’t have to stop everything you’re doing and gawp at it. There’s a regular ritual in our household. Sometime around seven o’clock, I get up and make the tea and carry a cup up to my wife. She has The Today Programme on while she’s dressing, and I listen to the one downstairs in the kitchen. We are both very much provoked into answering the programme back – not always in the most delicate phraseology. In fact, I would go so far as to say that many a morning it’s a toss up which one of us threatens to chuck the wireless into the street first.

It’s the inbuilt outlandish bias that gets through to us. I say “inbuilt” because I’m convinced they don’t know they’re doing it. The BBC bias is something learned by journalists as soon as they start to work for the Corporation. They are nice sincere, honest people and I believe they really do think they are merely presenting us with the balanced and objective truth. But this is not so. There is a BBC agenda which has a view on every aspect of public life and art, domestic and foreign affairs.
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Everything is divided neatly into good and bad, light and dark. Here is a sample of the good and approved things: the United Nations, the EU, socialism, the establishment view on global warming, foreign aid, ethnic minorities and non-Christian religions.

And here are some of the dark, bad things always disapproved: America, private education, elitism (that is the notion that we can actually distinguish between quality and rubbish), big business, foxhunting, smoking, Tories, the army, the police, stiff prison sentences, traditional Christianity.

There is one particular aspect of BBC bias which puzzles me – because I think it involves a contradiction and a confusion of thought. This is the anti-Americanism rife all over the network. For this bias is selective. The BBC hates what it always describes as “American imperialism” and indeed all American military operations. You wonder where these BBC producers and presenters learnt their history. Twice in the last century, in the First and Second World Wars, the timely military interventions of the US armed forces saved Europe from tyranny. America then fought to defeat the evil totalitarian expansionism of the Soviets. It was American military might which saved us from becoming part of the gulag. You would think the BBC types would be grateful. Far from it.

But here’s the anomaly: while despising America for all the good she has done, they worship her for the trash she creates. Those same BBC news and documentary departments that loathe wholesome American power, grovel before the worst and most trivial aspects of American culture. They send countless staff on freebies to the Oscars. They import trashy American sitcoms and even trashier children’s television shows. They even adopt the language and syntax of America – “kinda”; “math”; “elevator”; “sidewalk” and the barbarous “miss out on”.

It’s all very puzzling. I don’t mind bias. I’m biased myself about many things – but at least I know I am. With the BBC, there is only a blissful ignorance.

The Beeboids insist that the BBC is impartial and unbiased. Can all of the BBC’s many critics really be wrong?

, posts this update:

January 24th, 2007:

Hi All,

Spring time has hit Baghdad and the weather is fine.

Shit day yesterday: A girl I knew pretty well from the company we work for here was assasinated. She was Shia and lived with her mother in a real shitty Sunni area. The world is a sadder place without her. You can bet she was raped, pretty girl, and we heard that the militia were not even letting people get down that street to pick up the bodies. Scumbags were probably boobie trapping the bodies. (Sorry to be so morbid, but I did promise to tell it how it is).

Today was an angry day in town – predictably – Mr Bush gave his speech and the insurgency gave their answer – I heard a very good quote the other day – 90% of al-Qaeda’s war is fought in the media (and the BBC duly oblige!).

I come in off the streets and watch the crap being spewed about this place by BBC propagandistas and their panel of “experts” in amazement.

Thanks Tim. Keep us posted. (Click here for other updates from Tim).

I haven’t seen or heard any reply from Peter Barron, editor of Newsnight, to the questions I asked him the other day, even though many others have posed similar questions on his blog.

I’ve just posted a reminder for Peter on his blog:

Hello again Peter, I know you’re a busy chap, but from the questions and comments here it is plain that a lot of people are interested in answers to the questions that I posed above. They’re perfectly reasonable and straightforward questions – can you spare me, the ~1,600 daily readers of Biased BBC and the rest of the tellytaxpaying public a minute to give us some replies please? Thank you, Andrew (Biased BBC).

To save scrolling down, here’s my original comment:

Hello Peter. You say: “I don’t rule out the possibility that it was simply a misjudgement”, which rather implies that it wasn’t you who made that judgement. Was someone else editing Newsnight on Friday? If we accept that the running order was ‘simply a misjudgement’, it still doesn’t explain why Michael Crick et al made so much out of the ‘cripple’ email non-story (a story based on a private email sent four months ago from a private individual (not even a councillor) referring to someone else as a cripple – a non-story even without the Ruth Turner headlines). Also, can you explain how this email came to be leaked? It was a private email between two people, so unless either of them leaked it themselves (unlikely), how did it come to be leaked to the BBC? Left-wing council employees perhaps? If it was leaked in this way, do you really think that ‘public interest’ would justify such criminality? Looking forward to hearing from you further, Andrew (Biased BBC).

Perhaps one or other of the Beeboids that follow Biased BBC will be kind enough to give Peter a nudge for us. Thank you!

, according to Media Guardian’s Leigh Holmwood. Not surprisingly, just like this chap (Ned that is, not Justin), the Newsnight turkeys aren’t keen on the approach of Christmas:

All of the flagship BBC2 programme’s 15 correspondents, including political editor Martha Kearney and veteran journalist Michael Crick, wrote to Mr Barron last week as part of the campaign against the compulsory cuts.

The journalists, who are all faced with selection for compulsory redundancy, told Mr Barron they would not fill in draft CVs or meet with him as part of the process.

“We are writing to express our deep concern about your decision to press ahead with the compulsory redundancy process on Newsnight,” the letter said.

“We will not cooperate with it. We will not be filling out the draft CVs. Nor will any correspondent be meeting you or your team individually as part of the selection process.

Poor Mr. Barron. Perhaps a good place to start would be with whoever swallowed (or went along with) the NuLab spinners and their exclusive (oh yes!) ‘cripple’ email non-story. The Newsnight staffers whinge:

“We note that some £546,000 in bonuses was paid to senior management this year. In the context of this, losing two high-profile reporters to save a much smaller sum, with all the resultant stress, bad publicity and loss of goodwill seems to reflect perverse priorities within the BBC.

I have some sympathy with that argument, but a much better target for huge cost savings at the BBC is the £18m being paid to the tiresome Jonathan Woss over the next three years. It’s an obscene amount of money, especially for someone who does nothing that special. The BBC argue that Woss is at the ‘top of his game’ (presumably that game is exploiting the poor bloody tellytaxpayers) and that they need to be competitive (there’s a novel concept for the BBC).

Here’s a suggestion, pay Woss £1m per year – it’s still money that most people wouldn’t even dream of earning, and a lot more than he’s worth, and it’d save the BBC £15m over the next three years. Marvellous, and I won’t even charge you a consultancy fee for my advice.

“Ah, but” you say! Well, if Jonathan doesn’t think a million a year is worth it for all of his services to the BBC, simply start a new Saturday night reality show, here’s a name to conjure with, “How do you solve a pwoblem like Mawia?” – I’m sure that out of a population of 60 million people we’d be able to find plenty of new and talented people who’d be thrilled to work for a million a year. Another free idea, and a new Saturday night programme into the bargain!

After that you can do similar programmes to find and nurture new British talent in place of all the hugely expensive moronic has-beens that seem to populate the BBC just now. Even Gordon Brown might smile at the creation of new jobs and the uncovering of new talent.

I’ll concede though that we do need to retain the services of Terry Wogan for the purposes of the Eurovision song contest – a genuine national institution, gently exposing and mocking the dishonesty of sundry Johnny-foreigners as they incestuously vote for one another year after year irrespective of the music. Well worth it!

Turning back to Newsnight:

Presenters such as Jeremy Paxman and Kirsty Wark are not affected.

That’s a pity – Kirsty Nark should have been dispensed with long ago – the business with Jack McConnell was so blatant and embarrassing that I’m surprised even she has the brass neck to maintain her pretense of impartiality at Newsnight. She and her husband have done quite well filling their boots at tellytaxpayers expense, so she’d be quite comfortably off even without the Newsnight gig.

Mercifully for you Beeboids:

BBC News had proposed cutting 108 posts. However, the number of compulsory redundancies has been brought down to about 10.

So life’s not as tough at the BBC trough as it might have been, more’s the pity, for those of us keen to see more exposure to reality at BBC News.

, has sent us several updates recently:

January 9th, 2007:

Have been busy since the end of Eid, so little time for blogging.

I will get a decent post in later, so you can all hear the true perspective of what’s happening here in Baghdad. Not just the Beeb’s left wing propaganda.

Oh by the way, there may be a few new bloggers from here soon, as I’ve told all the expats here about this blogsite – BBC 24 is only really put on in this villa so we can all have a really good shout at the TV.

January 17th, 2007:

Very bloody day yesterday, dozens killed at Baghdad University by murdering Al-Qaeda bastards.

There is a girls school close to us here, and daily, well dressed, smiling and giggling school girls with loose headscarfs, smart uniforms and trendy footwear head there clutching their books, chatting like teenage girls anywhere in the world.

We stay well clear of the school area itself, as the same scumbags are targeting this place and sadly it’s only a matter of time before we might be clearing their body parts off our vehicles one morning.

Second point: A mortar round landed in close vicinity to our villas yesterday (not necessarily targetted at us). My friend an ex Brit SF mate, picked up a piece of the shrapnel – the mortar shrapnel was Iranian and still had (new) green paint on it.

Unlike other parts of the world where the BBC is quick to show locals holding what they say are US missile parts in front of the usual wedding that is being held in the local baby milk factory, the Beeb are not rushing to point out that a lot of the ordnance and technology doing all the killing over here is Iranian.

The BBC showing you only what we want to, it’s what we do…

January 19th, 2007:

I’ve been seeing some [cobblers] on the BBC, about how the US military are not arming the Iraqis to fight the insurgency.

Well, I can’t currently speak for other areas of Iraq, but I do drive around Baghdad (covertly) on a daily basis and the Iraqi Police and Army have all AKs and PKMs or Dushkas and are well armoured, Baghdad being where the worst insurgancy activity is taking place.

Also, schrapnel from the mortar that landed near to our villa the other day was Iranian and new (Still had it’s green paint on it – had not been weathered, or old war stock, very new).

Sorry not been on for a while, more soon from your myth busting reporter in Mesopatamia.

Thank you for your updates Tim – interesting and welcome as ever – and more relevant to the real world than the BBC’s reports, stuck in the Green Zone as they usually are.

The idea of you rufty-tufty types shouting at al-Beeb on your telly is most amusing – just like what goes on in my house, but without the guns. Probably just as well, otherwise my telly would have been blasted to kingdom come a long time ago!

Stay safe all of you who are out there, including the Beeboids.

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.

, reports Owen Gibson in today’s Media Guardian:

Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, used a rare public speech last night to accuse the BBC of “a kind of cultural Marxism” that is harming political debate and failing to represent the views of millions of licence fee payers. He said the BBC’s tendency towards institutionally biased left-leaning views, part of what he dubbed “the subsidariat” of newspapers and broadcasters that do not turn in a profit, was a factor in feeding political apathy.

Delivering the Hugh Cudlipp lecture, Dacre said the BBC was not only expansionist, but guilty of subscribing to a singular world view. “BBC journalism is reflected through a left-wing prism that affects everything – the choice of stories, the way they are angled, the choice of the interviews, the interviewees and, most pertinently, the way those interviewees are treated,” he said.

Dacre said while he approved of some of what the BBC did, he believed it was out of step with large swaths of public opinion.

Couldn’t agree more with that. Do read the rest.

Courtesy of Rottypup and the Grauniad, here’s the full speech. You can also listen to Dacre on Radio 4’s Toady programme this morning.

Hat tip to commenter SiN.

, the BBC’s long-running children’s programme Blue Peter showed graphic footage last Thursday of the Halal slaughter of a goat in Oman, to “show the celebrations that mark the Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Adha”.

Biased BBC commenter Chuffer writes:

Astonishing bit on Blue Peter this evening, about 17:05, 18JAN07 – a long feature on the joys and general loveliness of the Religion of Plumbers in Oman, especially for the youngsters. Bless. At the end of Ramadan, a goat is killed. And as two men hold it down, and one slashes its throat, the Blue Peter muppet turns to camera and says “At least it’s done humanely….”

It would have been bad enough to show the humane stunning and killing of animals in a UK abbatoir, let alone the Halal slaughter of an animal having its carotid arteries cut and then being hung up to slowly bleed to death.

Fun for children on today’s multi-culti Blue Peter

Whatever happened to the Blue Peter that we knew and loved when we were children? The worst I remember was the sensitive coverage of those being helped by each year’s Blue Peter Annual Appeal and the occasional vandalism of the blessed Blue Peter Garden – which presumably nowadays wouldn’t be greeted with shock, but rather as an opportunity to explore the needs of frustrated inner-city yobs.

According to The Sun:

BBC bosses were forced to apologise last night after Blue Peter screened footage of a goat being slaughtered for a Muslim sacrifice.

Young viewers of the kids’ favourite — famed for its pet cats and dogs — watched in horror as the animal was held down and its throat slit. The bloody footage then showed the goat hanging dead from a tree.

About 140 shocked viewers phoned the Beeb to complain about the programme, shown on Thursday afternoon. Furious parents accused the BBC of damaging the family-friendly reputation of Blue Peter, whose catchphrase “And Here’s One I Made Earlier” is known to generations.

Michael Alligham, 50, of Herts, who watched with his four-year-old daughter, said: “She sat there goggle-eyed. I tried to make light of it, but she knew. “One man was kneeling on the goat’s head, one holding its leg down, then they slit its throat.”

Blue Peter screened the footage, filmed in the Middle Eastern country of Oman, to show the celebrations that mark the Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Adha. Last night editor Richard Marson apologised to viewers.

But he insisted: “We felt it was important to show the link between the food people eat and where it actually comes from.”

Strangely though, having searched through BBC Views Online’s search engine, the Blue Peter Homepage and the BBC’s Press Office, I can find no references to this apology from the editor of Blue Peter – has it passed you by Beeboids? There’s still time to get an article up on BBC Views Online’s Entertainment page, the place where you normally need no excuse to toot the BBC’s horn!

Hat tip to commenters Chuffer and will.

, today’s Daily Mail reports
Minister’s fling with BBC girl who booked him for Newsnight, by Paul Revoir and Gordon Rayner. Some excerpts:

It has emerged tha the BBC has held an inquiry into the role of Newsnight producer Thea Rogers, who booked Mr Purnell to appear on the show – and who just happened to be in the middle of a fling with him at the time.

Mr Purnell, 36, also faces questions over whether he broke ministerial rules by using his chauffeur-driven government car to whisk his glamorous 25-year-old girlfriend off for a romantic meal immediately after the programme…

The ambitious Miss Rogers, who worked for Labour during the 2005 election campaign and is said to be on first name terms with Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, did not tell her Newsnight bosses that she was dating Mr Purnell at the time she was asked to book him as a guest on the show last October.

It is also understood that she may have helped brief Paxman on the line of questioning he should take in the interview. As a result, the BBC has held an internal inquiry into her role – which has cleared her of any wrongdoing.

Sources at Newsnight insisted last night that it was “absurd” to suggest that Miss Rogers’s relationship with the minister had any bearing on his treatment on the show…

“Because he’s worked in the BBC, where he was head of corporate planning before he became an MP, and because she has worked for the Labour Party, they have a lot in common”…

Then Miss Rogers, known during her Oxford days as “trout lips” because of her pronounced pout, was told by her bosses to book Mr Purnell for an interview on the show.

After Mr Purnell’s appearance – which, unusually, was pre-recorded – viewers immediately complained he had not been grilled hard enough.

Sue Bebbington complained to the programme’s website: “I was disappointed that the pensions minister got off so lightly in this evening’s programme”.

“It was a great pity that Mr Paxman did not use his skills to question this further, not just to make the minister’s appearance rather less of an easy ride, but also to highlight the insecurity of occupational pensions schemes”.

Daily Mail: Minister’s fling with BBC girl who booked him for Newsnight

A BBC spokesman told the Daily Mail that:

The BBC is satisfied that our employee has done absolutely nothing untoward and that Newsnight’s journalism has not been compromised in any way.

Well that’s alright then. I’m tempted to paraphrase Lord Hewart’s famous quotation, “that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done”, but I’m sure you get the idea.

Do read the whole thing. See also Talk about Newsnight, 25OCT2006 for other viewer complaints about Newsnight’s pensions coverage that day.

Hat tip to commenter SiN.