85 Responses to One down. Fifty thousand to go.

  1. Anonymous says:

    By playing his “world” music, using stuff from bands from Mali or wherever, the “menacing and provocative” Kershaw helped to promote the multi-cultural hellhole that modern Britain is becoming.
    But does Kershaw walk the walk? Does he live in multi-culti Peckham, Alum Rockistan, or Bradford?
    Nope, it’s the nice and white, mono-cultural Isle of Man for him.

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  2. backwoodsman says:

    Peter,
    thats actually very unkind ! Kershaw was a beeboid rarety, a guy with a really good grasp of his subject and excellent and varied musical tastes.

    Much more typical was todays Toady presenter, refering to brown’s ringing endorsement of hain as ‘incompetent’, “of course, we know mr. hain hasn’t done anything illegal.”
    Um, no John, all the evidence , such as the dodgy think tank etc, points to the fact that mr. hain has indeed broken a number of laws. Its just a shame the bbc is so idealogically committed to nulab that it too will pervert the truth in its attempts to deflect criticism from its political masters. Therin will lie the seeds of the bbc’s destruction.

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  3. blankfrank says:

    Anonymous:
    By playing his “world” music, using stuff from bands from Mali or wherever, the “menacing and provocative” Kershaw helped to promote the multi-cultural hellhole that modern Britain is becoming.

    ——————————————

    Tccch! “Promoted a multi-cultural hellhole” eh? And here’s me thinking that all he did was play interesting (often) non-Western stuff you normally wouldn’t get on R1’s hidebound “poptastic mate, not ‘arf…” rotation-obsessed daytime shows. How obviousely wrong I was.

    Coming up next: Mark & Lard. Were they Marxist subvesives destoying the minds of our pop kids?

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  4. Cockney says:

    “By playing his “world” music, using stuff from bands from Mali or wherever, the “menacing and provocative” Kershaw helped to promote the multi-cultural hellhole that modern Britain is becoming.”

    BBC TV may have degenerated into moronicism but Radio 1 over the last few years has been the last defence of British musical taste against Cowell inspired apocalypse, resulting in the recent renaissance of the British music industry. And if you don’t have a TV you don’t even have to pay for it!

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  5. Anonymous says:

    BBC TV may have degenerated into moronicism but Radio 1 over the last few years has been the last defence of British musical taste against Cowell inspired apocalypse, resulting in the recent renaissance of the British music industry. And if you don’t have a TV you don’t even have to pay for it!

    You don’t need to pay for any number of African-originating podcasts that play the guff that Kershaw broadcasted either.

    It’s the 21st century – why do we need the BBC?

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  6. The Fat Contractor says:

    blankfrank | 16.01.08 – 10:35 am |
    Coming up next: Mark & Lard. Were they Marxist subvesives destoying the minds of our pop kids?

    There is an argument that could be made against ‘liberal’ standards and the parlous effect this has had on some sections of the country’s yoot. The BBC has been at the forefront of pushing such standards.

    Otherwise your statement is correct. Kershaw played music that would otherwisee not be heard on mainstream radio. Well, a few years ago that was true now it seems to be everywhere. But thats’s no bad thing, one can always turn off the radio and listen to something else, Wagner for instance …

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  7. Sam Duncan says:

    I’m with backwoodsman. This post is really uncalled-for. You do your case – which I agree with 100% – no favours by attacking a man who clearly has some serious problems.

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  8. Cockney says:

    “You don’t need to pay for any number of African-originating podcasts that play the guff that Kershaw broadcasted either.”

    well yeah, i can live without the world music was thinking more of the resurgent British music scene after the horrors of the early 2000s. And to be honest (and I know most will disagree) the fact that the early 00s were so unfeasibly sh*t and that the improvement followed a change in Radio 1 policy to feature more new and breaking stuff suggests to me that this was a market failure needing intervention to fix – exactly what the Beeb should be doing. Discuss.

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  9. Andy says:

    Hear hear Anonymous. All sorts of eclectic music is readily available only a mouse click away now, making the BBC totally, as opposed to semi, redundant.

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  10. Zebulon says:

    I think what everyone overlooks is that Kershaw is in fact an extremely good broadcaster – I don’t mean the _contents_ of his programmes, but how he _delivers_.

    He is one of the very few people on any channel who actually knows how to modulate and pitch his voice properly, and emphasise the correct words to make what he’s saying intelligible (the only two who come close are Gerry Anderson, and the R4 announcer Peter Jefferson). Compare and contrast with someone like Mark Lawson (Front Row, R4) who has no idea how to do any of this, and comes across as illiterate a lot of the time.

    Some may, for example, remember Kershaw’s excellent reporting from Rwanda during the genocidal massacres.

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  11. Chopper says:

    “One down. Fifty thousand to go.”

    What an incredibly awful, mean thing to say. You’d like 50,000 BBC employees sent to jail.. for what, exactly?

    This sort of kneejerk, childish carping (along with the incessant use of the term ‘Beeboid’ – lower than even Private Eye would stoop at its most sniggeringest) is a wonderful example of the now-complete ghettoisation and irrelevance of this site – once-useful source of a degree of juxtaposition.

    No-one is going to take either the posts or the commenting seriously here with tripe like this.

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  12. jones says:

    I have just been checking my google advertising campaign. Noticed that my advert was lower than an advert for the bbc iplayer.

    Why the hell am I paying a license fee for them to use it advertising a free service to non-license payers ?

    I want my money back!!

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  13. Hannah M says:

    Chopper: “BBC employees sent to jail.. for what, exactly”

    Well yes you may have a case that it is not a necessary comment and should not be made.

    So can I safely assume you vehemently oppose the jailing of those that don’t pay their licence fee, and you are particularly appalled that non payment of the licence is the number ONE cause of criminal records for single mothers.

    This licence fee enforcement system is at the heart of the BBC and all of its employees must condone it or they would not in good conscience draw their salary.

    Or is this all just the foul stench of hypocrisy?

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  14. Ben says:

    By playing his “world” music, using stuff from bands from Mali or wherever, the “menacing and provocative” Kershaw helped to promote the multi-cultural hellhole that modern Britain is becoming.
    Anonymous | 16.01.08 – 9:19 am | #

    ROFL. Thanks for that!

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  15. Peter says:

    Radio?????

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  16. WoAD (UK) says:

    “What an incredibly awful, mean thing to say. You’d like 50,000 BBC employees sent to jail.. for what, exactly?”

    For making a living out of stolen telly tax money. All Beeboids are criminals, the places where Beeboids spend their money are criminal for taking their money, passives payers of the telly jizya ought to go to prison for failing to form paramilitaries to combat the BBC.

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  17. The Fat Contractor says:

    Hannah M | 16.01.08 – 2:12 pm |
    So can I safely assume you vehemently oppose the jailing of those that don’t pay their licence fee, and you are particularly appalled that non payment of the licence is the number ONE cause of criminal records for single mothers.

    Michael Moore made the same point some years ago – he was wrong too. No-one, ever, has been sent to gaol for not paying their licence fee. Many have been gaoled for the non-payment of fines, fines accrued from not paying their licence fee. It’s the failure to pay the fine that attracts the gaol sentence.

    How are courts supposed to deal with the non-payment of fines? More fines?

    Scrap the licence fee – it’s the only solution.

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  18. Chopper says:

    Hannah M: “This licence fee enforcement system is at the heart of the BBC and all of its employees must condone it or they would not in good conscience draw their salary.”

    I’m not sure how you leapt from there to here, but I’ll take the bait; the vast majority of BBC employees – staff or contract – are just professionals trying to get on with the job and getting paid in return for it. I doubt the mechanism for funding their salaries ever crosses their minds, or it occurs to them to dig deep in their concience to justify doing so. And why should it? Wouldn’t the right-leaning, libertarian agenda prevalent here dictate that we are all free to work who we bloody well choose for and it’s no-one else’s business?

    Should employees of News International be at all bothered about their bosses’ implicit support of various governmental agendas to suit their shareholder’s needs (bias, in other words)?

    Under this model, can anyone with half a brain in their heads justify working for Nestle, or paying for Sky TV? It’s an interesting point you’ve raised. Sadly, it’s also nonsense.

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  19. Chopper says:

    WoAD (UK): You are a troll, inciting nonsense. It’s almost endearing, yet completely laughable and is what renders whatever this site’s purpose is completely impotent. Indeed, this was the thrust of my original post, so you’ve just proved me right.

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  20. backwoodsman says:

    FFS,
    We don’t need a discusion on the merits or demerits of world music !
    The point I was making was that Kershaw was one of the better exponents of what he did.

    Wth respect to the beeboids, they could easily be substituted for lawyers in the old joke. ‘What do you call a dozen of them on the seabed ? A good start !’

    Interesting to see how selective the J R collective are in responding to criticism. Its probably worth some public spirited group ,bunging in a FOI to find out how many beeboids are employed specificaly on blogging and the cost to the tax payer.

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  21. In Transit says:

    “But does Kershaw walk the walk? Does he live in multi-culti Peckham, Alum Rockistan, or Bradford? ”

    He used to,live in Crouch End home to actors, TV presenters and more hairdressers & restaurants per head of population than anywhere else in London.

    “hats actually very unkind ! Kershaw was a beeboid rarety, a guy with a really good grasp of his subject and excellent and varied musical tastes”

    But also the sort of guy you feel an overwhelming urge to punch very hard in the head when you have to listen to it at 4 0’clock in the morning.

    Sorry, I really shouldn’t continue my neighbour disputes on here. I’ll get me coat….

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  22. Chopper says:

    Commenters calling for the jailing and/or killing of employees are – aside from being contemptible and contradictory – the best example yet of how utterly removed from the premise of real debate this site is.

    Carping, name-calling, jeering – all very playground, very lowest-common-denominator as practiced on ever other web forum going.. and impossible to take seriously.

    Keep going!

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  23. Peter says:

    “Carping, name-calling, jeering – all very playground, very lowest-common-denominator as practiced on ever other web forum going.. and impossible to take seriously.”

    You have spent a good deal of space responding to it Chopper,why?

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  24. Mr Anon says:

    “One down. Fifty thousand to go.”

    dont be daft. For every one Beeboid that falls, its simply replaced by 2 Guardian readers types

    but stand steady, we’ll beat the Totalitarianism of Al Beeb in time

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  25. Julian The Wonderhorse says:

    Did anyone see the piece on the news last night about the cage beds in Czech Republic for menatlly disabled children? Apparently this is because Czech republic is a conservative country, nothing to do with a throwback to the communist era at all, according to the Beeb.

    Suffer the little children is all i can say, or is that a bit too religious for the Beeb?

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  26. Andy says:

    Chopper

    “Carping, name-calling, jeering – all very playground, very lowest-common-denominator as practiced on ever other web forum going.. and impossible to take seriously.”

    I’m a little puzzled by your blathering. Check out the bloggers on this post coming on and DEFENDING Kershaw and/or his music in some way:

    Backwoodsman, blankfrank, Cockney, Fat Contractor, Sam Duncan, Zebulon, …

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  27. Hannah M says:

    The world according to Chopper:

    “Commnetators calling for the jailing of (BBC) employees.”

    The world in Reality:

    BBC through licence fee and its non payment fines ACTAULLY taking people through the courts and jailing people who are almost exclusively the poorest and most vulnerable in society.

    Chopper, And as you regard this blog with such distaste and consider it so worthless we must wonder why you spend so much time posting here, perhaps you consider yourself worthless.
    I suspect you are just one of the WUMMERS like hillhunt that used to frequent these pages until much stricter moderation was brought in.

       0 likes

  28. Alan says:

    Chopper,

    BBC has ignored all calls to change.
    Indeed, it is doubtful if it can.

    Now, in Canada, I simply cancelled my subscription to BBC drivel.
    I’m only watching a rare BBC show that is good enough to be bought by other networks.
    BBC still has a rather good output with nature documentaries, etc.
    Until recently, it used to have good output with science documentaries as well. Although that is deteriorating as well, due to creep in of hard-Left ideologies.

    I’m a liberal. I detest creationism. I think Bush handling of post 9/11 events was bad. I am against Israel’s occupation of West Bank.
    I am for clean energy and reducing the dependence on oil that funds radical Islamists and unsavory regimes in the Middle East.

    Yet, BBC is so far out that it has lost all connection with reality and I would never voluntarily give it a dime!
    Now, “1 down 50,000 to go”, comes from the frustration that Britons cannot just cancel their subscription!

    To put the amount of money BBC receives from mandatory license fee into perspective, let me present you some comparison:
    Intel, Corp produces 70% of processors in all of world’s PCs (Macs included these days).
    To maintain that market share, it absolutely has to put a new processor on the market, 2 times faster than the previous generation, every 1.5 years.

    It employs roughly 90,000 employees worldwide. It’s revenue is $11 billion.
    So, 50,000 of its employees produce roughly $6 billion.

    BBC’s revenue from license fees alone is 3 billion British pounds or $5.8 billion.

    You my BBC friend are getting a free lunch, and you must learn to show some respect for people that feed you!

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  29. WoAD (UK) says:

    Yeeeaahhhh Chopper. You’re not welcome here. Must we remind you that the BBC actually aids terrorists? Ask Ms Suleaman.

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  30. Alan says:

    Julian The Wonderhorse,

    Did anyone see the piece on the news last night about the cage beds in Czech Republic for menatlly disabled children?

    I saw that one, too. BBC says:
    “But it is also a deeply conservative land with firm traditions.”

    Being conservative and traditional has nothing to do with sub-human conditions that people got used to live in during over 40 years of Communism.

    BBC has this urge to back-project its ideologies even on simplest things.
    I think they are right to bring this up, children should not be held in cages!
    But, this backhand swipe against their enemies is a real turn off.

    It is also disgusting for a bunch of snobbish spoiled brats at the BBC, to defame an entire nation like that. I have been to the Czech Republic 3 times. Although I am not fluent, I more or less understand the language.
    If ever there was a liberal, free-love cherishing society it is the Czechs. Quite the opposite of conservative and firmly traditional.

    Yet I know what is ticking off the radical Leftists at the BBC.
    Czechs know too well what disaster hard-Left is, and they are not buying into Che Guevara, Fidel and Chavez being folk-heroes.
    Not accepting the party line, of course immediately makes Czechs “conservative” and “firmly traditional”.
    They lived under the Party for 40 odd years, they can teach the brats at the BBC a thing or two about where they are headed.

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  31. WoAD (UK) says:

    They equate “Conservatism” with Borat levels of cruelty.

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  32. Gordon_Broon_Eats_Hez_Bawgies says:

    Chopper,

    Wouldn’t the right-leaning, libertarian agenda prevalent here dictate that we are all free to work who we bloody well choose for and it’s no-one else’s business?

    Well, as George Orwell might have said, I don’t think agendas can dictate things, but I think I get your point.

    The libertarian view would be that we’re all forced to work for the BBC in that we pay them £135 a year for something we may never use. This is the specific iniquity against liberty that the BBC’s existence represents.

    If it had to stand on its feet economically like everyone else, I’d have no problem with the BBC. I don’t want to hear extreme left-wing views dressed up as impartial – or, worse, pseudo-centrist – reporting, so I’d withhold my money and buy my news elsewhere. But I cannot.

    Claims about what great value the BBC supposedly usually reduce to an assertion that one individual finds it’s great value, and therefore so should we all.

    The point is that it’s only great value to that one individual because on average two others who don’t use it are still forced, under threat of imprisonment, to fund two-thirds of the cost of his choices.

    I quite like building Airfix kits now and then. I don’t need to, and they’re trivial, but I enjoy them and I can do them at home with the family rather than being out all day on a golf course or whatever. So why is there no BAKC providing me with Airfix kits at a third of cost and forcibly funded by you? They’d be great value to you, you know!

    The wider issue here is that the livelihoods of huge number of dopey left wingers “working” in quasi-commercial enterprises are actually funded by forcible expropriation from people of opposed political opinions, who see no flow of cash back the other way.

    Whether it’s al-BBC, the Grauniad’s being subsidised by government job ads without which it would fold, the huge bungs poured every year into the economy of our occupiers, Scotland, or Livingstone’s payments to clients and pressure groups, this is both economically and morally corrupt and needs to be stopped.

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  33. Ali P says:

    “One down. Fifty thousand to go.” What a nasty, silly, spiteful headline. And what it’s got to do with BBC bias is beyond me.

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  34. WoAD (UK) says:

    Nicely put Gordon. Might I remind you that the last person who seriously stood up to left-wing ideology and the civil service/centrist statism was the venerable and courageous Senator Joseph McCarthy. And we all know what happened to him.

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  35. Robin says:

    An appalling headline (Fifty thousand to go). I’m another who will not be returning while ever such vitriol and garbage is peddled about what is clearly a very disturbed man.

    And what utter nonsense that anyone should advocate that BBC employees are individually responsible for licence fee enforcement methodology.

    All credibility of this site is shot by such remarks, even as part of robust debate. A shame because no-one else is responsibly analysing the shortocmings of the BBC in programming and journalism terms.

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  36. WoAD (UK) says:

    Yeah but, the BBC actively aids terrorists. Plus they are in regular mobile phone contact with their Taliban battle brothers in Afghanistan.

    To Biased BBC: Do not give in to trolls remorse, be like Charles Johnson: keep trolling no matter how much recidivist Beebiods squeek.

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  37. Alan says:

    Robin,

    “And what utter nonsense that anyone should advocate that BBC employees are individually responsible for license fee enforcement methodology.”

    “1 down, 50,000 to go” is an expression of frustration, on an, according to many BBC employees, an insignificant blog.

    Yet, what do you call the following characterization of the entire Czech nation:
    “But it is also a deeply conservative land with firm traditions.”

    Surely, not every Czech is deeply conservative with firm tradition, which in Beeb-speak, means retarded.

    In fact most Czech’s are quite the opposite and so are most Americans.

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  38. Raggamuffin says:

    Chopper:
    Commenters…….
    going.. and impossible to take seriously.

    Well f**k off then and don’t visit it.

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  39. Sproggett says:

    Chaps, this is bang out of order and not relevant to the subject of BBC bias. You are doing your blog no favours by posting pieces like this.

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  40. Gordon_Broon_Eats_Hez_Bawgies says:

    @ Robin:

    And what utter nonsense that anyone should advocate that BBC employees are individually responsible for licence fee enforcement methodology.

    The thing is, Robin, there’s nobody else who is placed to object to it effectively.

    Most commercial organisations can be influenced by the withdrawal of customers’ patronage; political ones, by voting against them.

    The BBC is only quasi-commercial, and is only covertly a political organisation, so neither of these remedies is available. You are threatened with jail if you refuse to be their “customer” (“serf”, or in Usenet parlance “bitch” probably describes the relationship more accurately), and you don’t get to vote against them.

    This means that the only influence that can reasonably be brought to bear is by actual and putative employees. If nobody would work for them because of their shameful approach to collecting their poll tax, they’d have to change it.

    When I was at university, there was a lot of leftist propaganda against Barclays Bank and a number of other commercial enterprises active in South Africa. Students were encouraged by leftist factions not to bank with them, because it supposedly amounted to supporting apartheid.

    The leftist tapeworm were quite entitled to use this line of argument, because if enough customers agreed with it, it would damage the bank enough to force a rethink (it actually made me open an account with Barclays in solidarity, because although I didn’t support apartheid, I didn’t think companies should be bullied into taking a political position on it).

    Obviously this can’t be done to the BBC, so it is a sensible strategy instead to highlight the moral incompetence of those who take its extorted shilling, and perhaps make its employees ashamed of working for it.

    Tolerating the BBC’s methods of funding itself simply because it pays your salary is akin to working for a company that makes leg irons, manacles, and torture equipment for third world thugocracies. It’s not illegal to work for such companies, but it’s unquestionably disgusting.

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  41. James says:

    This post is depressing and is symptomatic of the decline of the site over the last couple of months. There is no shortage of posters or issues but the editorial guidance of the site has faltered.

    Comments are reaching the 500 level before a new comment box is started and the frequency of the main stories has dropped alarmingly. The quality of the stories has too.

    More worryingly the tone has subtly changed too. There is more name calling and slightly hysterical accusations.

    Don’t get me wrong. Never has this site been more needed and I think some progress is being made in getting the BBC’s bias up the agenda. But the last couple of months have been very poor.

    I realise that this means some poor sod has to do a lot of work and as I am not volunteering, that makes me somewhat hypocritical.

    Please don’t post stories like this again. Stick to the plentiful evidence of BBC bias and keep the name-calling and hysterical tone on a tight leash.

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  42. Gordon_Broon_Eats_Hez_Bawgies says:

    I tend to agree, it’s not a particularly edifying line to take and distracts from the main aim of reducing the BBC’s undeserved credibility.

    As with the story of the CBeebies presenter whose girlfriend died in his bath, there isn’t really a good point to be made about bias here.

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  43. Joel says:

    Unpleasant, but entirley inkeeping with the tone of the site.

    Keep it up, I say.

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  44. Peter says:

    Whilst the Kershaw story is tasteless,it doesn’t do any harm to realise how far standards of acceptable behaviour have fallen since Lord Reith’s day.Further any whiff of impropriety and the miscreant would be gone.There would be no jumping to the defence of said miscreant.
    Unfortunately the BBC, like the banks, is living on the probity of times gone by.

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  45. gharqad says:

    James | 16.01.08 – 10:53 pm | #

    I agree 100%.

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  46. WoAD (UK) says:

    You’re right Joel, apologising for mass murder is very unpleasant.

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  47. matthew says:

    this post is pathetic. It brings shame on your site.

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  48. Anonymous says:

    Surely during his BBC stint Kershaw must have received some gender issues awareness training, along with attendance at a carbon footprint-reduction symposium, alternative lifestyle/trans-gender workshops, non-Christian faith awareness-raising seminars? If so, he should know full well that abusing/stalking a woman is a no-no?

    Still, for someone who repeatedly goes on holiday to North Korea, prison should be a picnic.

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  49. Jack Hughes says:

    I don’t like the tone of this posting.

    Please, guys, think of ordinary people who need a bit of a nudge to spot the biased stuff that pours out of the BBC day-in day-out.

    Posts like this make us anti-BBC campaigners look like the tinfoil-hat brigade.

    How about some more thoughtful posts – maybe a timeline of the BBC’s infatuation with islam – for example. Together with some of its recent examples, such as the “fly-fishing for muslim women” oddity on Radio4. PLenty more examples – just look for anything by Frances Harrison.

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  50. Cockney says:

    “highlight the moral incompetence of those who take its extorted shilling, and perhaps make its employees ashamed of working for it.”

    dear god… that is the most ridiculous thing i’ve ever heard. unless you work for the ss or something a job is a job not a moral challenge. for all the bias rightly identified on here and its dubious financing system the beeb does more good than harm around the world. if i wanted to get in a froth then my job is morally far more dubious than a beeboids but i don’t, i earn more than the average beeb employee and benefit retailers everywhere by spending it so tough.

    care to reveal your job so we can all have a pop?

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