139 Responses to Open Thread

  1. ap-w says:

    There was a revealing moment on the Today programme this morning when Evan Davis was having the obligatory discussion with Joan Bakewell about the Government’s revew of long-term elderly care. He let slip that in the studio’s written running order for the programme the producer had just referred to the segment as “Death Tax”. I thought that revealed the real agenda and purpose of discussing it; convey the impression that the Conservatives are about to do a U-turn on this.

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  2. prpw says:

    A real treat on BBC World a short while earlier for lovers of the Beeboid journalist-interviews-Beeboid-journalist format.

    A typically guided discussion, with herbert presenter in the studio feeding leading questions to Lyse Doucet in Islamabad (in local garments), prompting her to explain what the Wikileaks material reeeeeeally means for us all.

    And I’m thinking: just stick to factual reporting. If we already know what Wikileaks alleges, WTF do we need the subjective opinions of self-appointed interpreters of the news ?

    If they want to spout off about what they think the news means, they should be forced out into the marketplace to secure private funding for broadcasting their layers of interpretation, rather than drawing down larger-than-average salaries in a subsidised environment where they’re answerable to noone with any teeth or intention to hold them to reasonable account.

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    • Guest Who says:

      Well, if BeebonBeeb opinion is not going to cut it, there is always ‘source B’:

      BBC_WHYS   Claudia from WHYS here. If you’re from Pakistan or Afghanistan it would be very interesting to know what you think about wikileaks

      Amazing what bazillions in unique funding can result in for creating tonight’s headlines: a free twitter feed

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  3. Bupendra Bhakta says:

    BP: Beyond The Horizon on Radio Bour fronted by ‘humorist’ Paddy O’ Connell.

    I didn’t listen to it but no doubt it will have been a paean to the glories of capitalism, to the essentiality of oil to power the world, and to ‘Big Oil’ for retrieving said oil from some of the most challenging places on earth.

    Only a shame that it’s radio so they can’t have a programme-long film of oil spewing onto hitherto sandy beaches and swamping wading wildlife (cf any BBC News Channel 24 report on BBC). 

    Dear BBC – you know these taxis you’re all so fond of using – there’s still one or two that aren’t powered by chip-fat.

    PS I refudiate the charge that ‘essentiality’ is not a proper word.

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  4. David Preiser (USA) says:

    This c$%t James Reynolds hosting “Americana” just let race-oriented writer Richard Ford state that the Tea Party movement is a racist movement, without challenging him.  This is after a segment of the radical Leftoid Howell Raines expounding at length, as if a sage speaking to his followers, about how the Republican Party is a racist party, all white, blacks not allowed. 
     
    The BBC continues to insult me personally.  I will have my reubttal one day.

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  5. John Anderson says:

    JournOList again – still being officially ignored by the BBC.

    Here we can see how many on the list obsessed about Palin’s Down Syndrome child – including lots of speculation (filthy smears) about who was the real mother.  Led off by Kos, but plenty of JournOList people seem to go along with the smears rather than smacking them down.

    Now wasn’t Justin Webb one of those who appeared to give credence to the filth ?   Anyone who went along with that filth – even to the slightest extent – has a stained character. 

    http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/26/raw-journolist-emails-on-palins-downs-child/

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    • Martin says:

      Yes Webb got his ‘facts’ about Palin from the Daily Kos and Huffington Post, he never bothered to cross check his sources, something the BBC claim they always do.

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  6. John Anderson says:

    A black American journalist asks – why is everyong talking about racism,  when the real problem in most people’s minds is the state of the economy.

    I suppose this includes – why is Americana on BBC spreading false racism accusations rather than focussing on the dire outlook for the US economy under Obama’s spendthrift policies. 

    http://townhall.com/columnists/StarParker/2010/07/26/why_are_we_discussing_racism

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    • Craig says:

      All this ties in with David P.’s point about Americana dwelling on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird a couple of weeks ago. Another narrative is being generated.

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    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      It’s the only defense they have Left…er…left.

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  7. Umbongo says:

    I’m sure it’s been mentioned somewhere on B-BBC but I cannot find it, so I’ll amaze the reading millions by drawing attention to the smiley Gordon Brown “interviewed” by Zeinab Badawi in Uganda for the daily (or is it hourly) Labour party political broadcast.  There he is – the absentee MP, the psychopath-exPM – talking fondly about his walk along Downing Street with his children and “Sarah” and how all the world should get together (behind him?) to deal with the global turndown.  No awkward questions from Zeinab: was this  due to her support for Labour (natch!) or fear at what Gordon might do if she asked any awkward ones (like why doesn’t he show up in the Commons since that’s what he’s paid for)

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    • Martin says:

      I mentioned it, that she was basically arse licking the one eyed mad mong, a moron who brought our country to its knees.

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    • Will says:

      I missed most of this, unfortunately. But I did hear the deranged man urging an increase in the aid to Africa – he justified it on economic grounds, one of his specialties. Zena failed to ask him how he thought the government would fund this increased largesse.

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      • Craig says:

        Will, there’s so much she forgot to ask the jackass during that interview. She was too busy smiling at him.

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    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      Mr. Brown has been trousering the taxpayer’s money (his salary for being an MP) and staying home to write a book about how right he was about the economy.  The book will be out soon enough and the BBC will love it.   No doubt his biographer, BBC business editor Robert Peston, will have…a few…wooooooords to say about it.

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    • Millie Tant says:

      When I heard about Brown spouting about Africa this and Africa that, I couldn’t help wondering why Brown the altruist, teacher, philanthropist, do-gooder (according to himself anyway), is not out campaigning, rolling up his sleeves and getting stuck in to do something about the poverty,  deprivation and lack of prospects in parts of Glasgow, say.

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    • George R says:

      Of course, Islam Not BBC’s Zainab BADAWI (born in Sudan) is of a leading Muslim family there. Her hero seems to be Tariq Ramadan.

      http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brother-Tariq-Doublespeak-Ramadan/dp/1594032157#reader_1594032157

      She says:
      “I read a lot about Muslims and obviously I come from a Muslim family. My namesake, the late Zaki Badawi, the Egyptian cleric, who wasn’t a relative, believed in trying to emphasise the shared history of the three monotheistic religions and that is the way I would favour.”

      Of course, she favours speading the myth of the ‘shared history’ of those these religions. Just as one could talk about the ‘shared history’ of Nazi Germany and Britain!

      http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/zeinab-the-global-messenger-451561.html

       Of course, what neither Badawi nor Brown will put at the top of the political aganda as a key cause of poverty in northern Africa especially, is the negative impact of Islamic jihad and sharia law.
      Instead  people in the West are called upon to further subsidise corrupt African regimes under the phoney guise of ‘aid’ and ‘development’.

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  8. Bupendra Bhakta says:

    Richard ‘Boooooooooom’ Bacon interviewing Get Carter director, Mike Hodges, closed with what Booom asssumed to be a dolly dimple –  ‘The british (sic) Film Council set up by the last government is being scrapped under cuts by the present government, what are your feelings about that?’

    Boooooooom doesn’t know what day it is never mind that the UK Film Council is to go under the Bonfire of the Quangos programme, so he was obviously ‘put up to it’.

    Unfortunately (for Booom) Mike Hodges strayed away from the script and said that he never had much to do with the UKFC and didn’t really know a lot about it.  In short – he didn’t seem too bothered one way or another.

    So the already-written lead for the 6 o’ clock news – LEADING BRITISH DIRECTOR SLAMS SCRAPPING OF THE UK FILM COUNCIL had to be consigned to the bin.

    Anyway, nice try lads.

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    • Grant says:

      But surely the headline would be  ” Leading British Director Indifferent to Scrapping of UK Film Council ”  ?

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  9. Martin says:

    The BBC are NOT happy with the Government proposeals to have elected Police chiefs over seeing the useless plods.

    “Police Chiefs  will resign” spouts excited beeboids, well if something the government is planning is pissing off senior plods then I’m all for it.

    The BBC don’t seem to like elections when it’s highly likely that a wet liberal lefite won’t get elected.

    Then the BBC claim that the Government is politically interfering with the Police, would this dear BBC be the same thing Liebour got up to with Ian Blair supporting the Liebour party and having stickers on Police cars? Would this be the same Police who championed the Liebour Governments plan for 90 day detention?

    Funny that the BBC only sees political interference as coming from the right.

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    • Will says:

      Emily Maitliss, autocue reading on BBC News, demands that a politician admit that their is no great popular call for elected police commissioners. I’m sure that law & order would take on an aspect most unpleasant to the BBC should public demand ever be heeded by politicians.

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      • John Anderson says:

        If the acid test of whether a policy is good is its popularity – why isn’t the BBC recommending the abolition of the licence fee ?

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      • John Horne Tooke says:

        “..demands that a politician admit that their is no great popular call for elected police commissioners.”

        There was no great popular call for mass immigration or the so-called “Human Rights “Act or the Lisbon Treaty. Now which of these will affect our lives the most? A few top elected coppers? – I don’t think so.

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  10. David Preiser (USA) says:

    I’m late getting to this, but only because the BBC has kept silent on this issue after making their last biased report on it, and I was waiting for another biased report before I spoke out.  I am officially opposed to this mosque project intended to be built a couple blocks away from Ground Zero in NYC.

    I would support the building of a mosque in that neighborhood, in the interests of religious freedom.  But that’s not what this is, and the BBC failed to point that out.  This is going to be a big Islamic propaganda center, which definitely is an offense to the families of the victims (almost all the side streets in my neighborhood have extra street signs named after local residents who were killed that day), as well as an offense to the US and the civilized world.

    The BBC report I’ve linked to is very biased.  They lend support to the Islamic center project by “reporting” that the ad for it which was rejected by some US media has received a lot of attention on YouTube.  As if that’s a respectable cultural bulwark of some kind.  I bet we could find a jihadi video with more views, but the BBC wouldn’t use that as evidence of righteousness.  Also, by calling it a mosque and not an Islamic Cultural Center, the audience is led to believe its aspirations are far more humble than they really are.

    Worse, the only opposition voice the BBC allows in is qualified as Republican and conservative.  Boo!  And they tell a little white lie about Mayor Bloomberg, who supports it.  He’s only currently an Independent, but that’s only an official party affiliation (or lack thereof), and not at all indicative of his personal politics.  He’s actually a lifelong Democrat, who switched to the Republican Party to run for mayor New York so that he didn’t have to bribe the Brookly Dem machine.  He has governed as a Democrat the entire time he’s been in office.  Not one ounce of conservatism in evidence.

    The worst part of all this is what the BBC censored from both this report and their only other one on the issue:  the name of the project itself.

    Cordoba Initiative

    We all know what this means.  It was the capitol of the Muslim rule of the Iberian Peninsula.  And we all know that the Mohammedans are deeply connected to their religious history, and there’s no doubt this is deliberate.  The BBC doesn’t want you to know about it, so they censor the news to keep you uninformed, all the more to promote their Narrative.

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  11. Pounce says:

    How the bBC rewrites history for todays generation;

    Who Were the Guilty?

    …………So who can be blamed for the genocide? There were of course thousands of German men – soldiers, SS men, policemen – who took part in the killing in local communities throughout Europe, in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and so forth, as well as in Germany. (Here it should be remembered that at least half of the total victims of the Holocaust were not gassed but were shot outright in or near their own towns and villages.) These German men, however, were not perpetrating genocide in the sense that we use it today.

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  12. Martin says:

    I see human turd eater Mark Mardell is back off hols and STRAIGHT back in to defending Obama, regarding Wikileaks. “..Most of this happened under Bush…” spat fat boy, of course what Mardell forgets is that under Barry the number of drone attacks has INCREASED and we all know that week after week the only people killed are attending ‘wedding parties’, but hey when Marky boy has an Obama log in his mouth who cares about the facts? 
     
    Oh and the BBC also forgot to mention that many of the reported attacks involved British forces, so just WHO was in Government then BBC?

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  13. john says:

    This is the open thread, right ?
    OK, here goes.
    I have mentioned previously that I spare myself from their TV output but hope I can comment on R4. again.
    The BBC news output on the airwaves could be uplifting and insightful, but I doubt it. I prefer news gathering from reputable sources without a left-wing bias and I am pleased to say there are quite a few left who are prepared to give two sides to any given story.
    That being an anathema on R4.

    Yet you can’t even escape their hidden agenda through Afternoon Plays, Food programmes, etc, and of course the repeat offender that is the “comedy” show.
    But, and it’s a big one, the great god that is the NHS. (No criticism allowed).
    You would think the BBC invented it !
    The sooner we prefix the universe’s largest black hole with a B – the better. Then it could take its rightful place with these other success stories :
    B Leyland
    B Gas
    B Telecom
    B BC
    B Rail
    B Space programme
    B Airways
    and introducing :
    B NHS

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  14. John Horne Tooke says:

    This man does not believe the “Global Warming” hype.

    Freeman Dyson,

    “Scholar, Winchester College (1936-1941), B.A. Mathematics, Cambridge University (1945), Research Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge University (1946–1947), Commonwealth Fellow, Cornell University, (1947–1948), Commonwealth Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University (1948–1949), Research Fellow, University of Birmingham (1949–1951), Professor of Physics, Cornell University (1951-1953), Fellow, Royal Society (1952), Professor of Physics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University (1953-1994), Chairman, Federation of American Scientists (1962-1963), Member, National Academy of Sciences (1964), Danny Heineman Prize, American Physical Society (1965), Lorentz Medal, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1966), Visiting Professor, Yeshiva University (1967-1968), Hughes Medal, The Royal Society (1968), Max Planck Medal, German Physical Society (1969), J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize (1970), Visiting Professor, Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics (1974-1975), Corresponding Member, Bavarian Academy of Sciences (1975), Harvey Prize (1977), Wolf Prize in Physics (1981), Andrew Gemant Award, American Institute of Physics (1988), Enrico Fermi Award, United States Department of Energy (1993), Professor Emeritus of Physics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University (1994-Present), Member, London Mathematical Society (2000), Member, NASA Advisory Council (2001-2003), President, Space Studies Institute (2003-Present)”

    This man does:

    Roger Harrabin. BBC ” Environment Analyst” .

    ” He attended Stivichall Primary School and King Henry VIII School. He then studied English at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, where he was president of the Junior Common Room. He started a college newspaper.

    He began his career on the Coventry Evening Telegraph, where he gained a reputation for bringing fresh topics to the news agenda. He developed a specialism reporting on the city’s ethnic minority population, who were previously largely ignored in the media. He won a prize in the British Press Awards in 1980 for a series of features tracing the roots of Coventry Asians back to Pakistan and India.

    He joined the independent Thames TV News as a producer whilst also freelancing for several years as a Saturday sports sub-editor in Fleet Street on The News of the World and The Sunday Mirror. During a spell at BBC Radio London he revealed how the Metropolitan Police was training its riot control officers using Roman Army tactics.”

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    • Buggy says:

      Seriously, Harrabin puts his primary school on his resumé ?

      What goes into the qualifications section?

      “Mr Harrabin passed his cycling proficiency test aged 10, and in the same year gained his Hobbies badge with the cubs. He learned to walk aged eighteen months, and continues to walk to this day. He has been able to tie his own shoelaces since age seven-and-a-half.”

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      • John Anderson says:

        He remembers baby-feeding fondly,  and now sucks noisily at the teat of warmist propaganda

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  15. George R says:

    Islam Not BBC (INBBC) presented an uncritical propaganda exercise for Islam from 4:30 pm to 5 pm on Radio 4 today.

     Another ‘Britain as a foreign country’ INBBC exercise where only Muslims  are allowed to propagandise what Islam is, and non-Muslim majority are supposed to take it.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t3xw7#synopsis

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  16. John Anderson says:

    In the previous Open Thread there was a lot of discussion about the Journolist closed-chatroom scandal in the US -which the BBC has scrupulously avoided to report.

    Craig provided some excellent analyses of articles by the BBC’s Max Daveson during the US election – oodles of stuff in favour of Obama larded with quotes from members of the now-infamous Journolist claque of Dem supporters,  anything about the Republicans being anti-McCain and Palin.

    A classic example of TOTAL bias,  it sounds.   Maybe Max Deveson is worth his own thread.

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    • John Anderson says:

      Here is a TV clip showing exactly how the (often false) criticisms of Palin cooked up on JournOList were immediately spread by mainstream TV  – by presenters claiming to be “objective” but actually in the tank for Obama.  

      http://howobamagotelected.com/assets/videos/OReilly.html

      How much of that “thought transference”,  that osmosis of anti-Republican talking points also occurred at the BBC ?

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      • John Anderson says:

        and here is some more chapter and verse about media bias in the US election :

        There are links to most parts of John Ziegler’s documentary of 2009 – now fully vindicated by the JournOlist exposures – this one shows how Obama voters knew nothing about him or other senior Democrats,  but had clearly been fed all the poison on Sarah Palin.  Watch and weep :

        and the BBC were up to their necks in propagating the exact same bias.

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        • John Anderson says:

          one of the ignorant Obama voters actually says she gets her political news from the NYT – and the BBC !

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        • prpw says:

          Yes the BBC’s coverage of the last US presidential election was consistently dismal.

          The BBC often struggled even to grasp the correct names of several of the candidates in the primary stages, completely failed (deliberately?) to represent the correct agenda of some candidates, and throughout its coverage resembled little more than a regurgitation of the agenda helpfully set for our subsidised sap head Beeboids by their friends at the Huffington Post and the NYT 

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    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      Deveson does seem a more likely candidate than my usual stock villains.  Ezra Klein, founder and den mother of JournoList, said that he didn’t allow on-air reporters into the cabal, but rather wanted columnists and editors and think tankers.  He obviously felt that even the great unwashed whom he most detests would realize that collusion amongst reporters and newsreaders was bad, so he wisely kept it to the sideline and backstage operators.  All the better to shape the Narrative, I’d say.

      I’m thinking that if there are two (from what we know at the time of this writing) Guardianistas on the list, a Beeboid can’t be far behind.  It won’t be Frei Boy or Webb or Mardell or Katty Kay, but it could very well be a producer or someone whose main contributions appear online, with only the occasional on-air appearance doing “analysis”.  Adam Brookes, for example.

      So many Beeboids to keep an eye on, so little time!

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  17. Martin says:

    God I really can’t believe that twat Jeremy Hunt (nearly got that wrong) is talking about a PC tax now, the BBC have been looking to get that for effing years. What a total tosser Hunt is, the more I see him and how theTories are sucking up to the BBC the more they deserve every smear they get from the beeboids.

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    • John Horne Tooke says:

      Martin – I did warn you before the election that the “tories” will be no different to Labour when it came to taming the all powerful BBC – It needs people with backbone to tackle the massive socialist entity and the ConLibs just have not got what it takes.

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      • John Horne Tooke says:

        Actually I think it should be LibCons as we know which party rules and they certainly are not conservatives.

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      • Martin says:

        Well from now on I’m not going to attack the BBC for having a go at the Tories, they clearly deserve each other.

        The Tories remind me of one of those drongo women you see who keeps returning to her violent boyfriend, you keep asking yourself ‘why?’ and just shake your head.

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        • David Preiser (USA) says:

          That’s the problem with this whole Official State Broadcaster thing:  Hunt and Cameron can’t separate – in their own minds and hearts – the biased news department from Radio 3, all the history documentaries, costume dramas, and Dr. Who.   That’s why I’ve always maintained that the license fee isn’t the only obstacle to peace.

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  18. John Horne Tooke says:

    Plagiarism at the BBC

    “Last week, Brian Switek published a short piece on his Smithsonian Magazine blog about the discovery of fossil marks left by a dinosaur attempting to dig into a mammal’s burrow. Yesterday, Tom Feilden, a science correspondent for BBC Radio 4, published a short piece on his blog that repeats verbatim sentences from Switek’s post including an entire paragraph, which Fielden attributes to the discoverer of the fossils.”
    http://mammothtales.southernfriedscience.com/2010/07/22/plagiarism-at-the-bbc/

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  19. David Jones says:

    Richard Black’s latest blog is of course about climate change

    He quotes a survey – “Three out of four Americans believe that the Earth has been gradually warming as the result of human activity and want the government to institute regulations to stop it, according to a new survey by researchers at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.”

    “Three out of four” – that seems a bit high. A bit of research and ……… “A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 40% of Likely U.S. Voters now say global warming is caused primarily by human activity, while slightly more (44%) say long term planetary trends are to blame. Five percent (5%) blame some other reason, and 10% are not sure.”

    So it depends where you look for your figures. Where does Richard Black look? The Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford. Who until his recent death was a Senior Fellow at this Institute? Stephen Schneider – the man who said “… we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have”.

    Who would you trust?

       1 likes

    • John Horne Tooke says:

      Even if the statistics he quotes were not flawed – so what?

      Black must also believe in faries.

      “Even today, there are only 273,000 people occupying a land roughly the size of Maine and Massachusetts. And Icelanders still take spirit folk seriously: Public opinion polls and academic studies show more than half of all inhabitants think it possible or probable — 10 percent call it “certain” — they share their island with otherly beings, ranging from grumpy glacier-dwelling trolls to occasionally gregarious hidden people.”
      http://www.seattlepi.com/national/elvs25.shtml

      Since when does public opinion make a flawed theory true?
      Opinon polls just like the so-called “consensus” prove absolutley nothing. And if Black had had any scientific training he should know that.

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  20. David Jones says:

    Richard Black’s latest blog is of course about climate change

    He quotes a survey – “Three out of four Americans believe that the Earth has been gradually warming as the result of human activity and want the government to institute regulations to stop it, according to a new survey by researchers at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.”

    “Three out of four” – that seems a bit high. A bit of research and ……… “A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 40% of Likely U.S. Voters now say global warming is caused primarily by human activity, while slightly more (44%) say long term planetary trends are to blame. Five percent (5%) blame some other reason, and 10% are not sure.”

    So it depends where you look for your figures. Where does Richard Black look? The Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford. Who until his recent death was a Senior Fellow at this Institute? Stephen Schneider – the man who said “… we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have”.

    Who would you trust?

       1 likes

    • David Jones says:

      I swear I didn’t press that twice! Sorry.

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    • John Anderson says:

      It is typical of Black’s shilling for the warmists that he fails to state how committed the “Woods Institute” is to warmism. 

      And I believe the name “Woods Institute” being used for this opinion-shop is a rip-off of a long-respected Woods Institute elsewhere.  Which again Black would never report.

      I truly hope the warmists bubble is burst quickly by further scientific debate and by the actual pattern of temperature change continuing to revert.   The sooner this happens,  the clearer it will be that Black’s failure to report properly on climate issues and controversies has been a serious journalistic omission.

         1 likes

      • John Horne Tooke says:

        Just to add – The BBc love statistics they seem to use them to see how their propaganda is working. Asking people “do you beleive in global warming” is a pointless and stupid question on its own.  Do they also ask “..and what scientific evidence do you base your answer on?” “Why do you believe it?” “Is it because the BBC told you?”
        One question in this context is meaningless.  Would the BBC also ask “Do you suppot Labour” without asking “Why?”

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    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      Why does the BBC think you value the opinion of a bunch of people they keep telling you are racists and religious nutters?

         1 likes

  21. Martin says:

    Anyone see Channel 4 news? The reporter at the Wikileaks conference gave the Wikileaks spokesman a really hard time, but the BBC zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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  22. John Anderson says:

    Below is a link to a YouTube collage of statements about the Middle East conflict.

    I have played it twice,  cannot see a single false statement.

    But the BBC – led by Jeremy Bowen – has a narrative,  a persistent bias, that is completely against these real facts.

    I’d like to see every BBC staff member who deals with the Middle East watch this collage – and then ask them to point out anything that is untrue.

    And then ask them why they deliberately omit most of the history most of the time,  and instead seek to demonise Israel at every turn and present the aggressive Arabs as the “victims”.

    And ask them why is it that Israel had to accept 850,000 refugees from Arab lands in 1948 but soon had no “refugees” because they were all resettled – whereas in the same 60-year period the Palestinian “refugee” problem has got larger and larger with little real sign of economic progress and resettlement.   (That is – why one side prospers,  and the other side festers.)

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    • deegee says:

      B-BBCers must check out the Friends of Israel Initiative.

      I particulary like the statement of principles summarised on Five Minutes for Israel

      The Friends of Israel have joined together in a new international initiative on the basis of the following convictions:
      Israel is a Western country. Israel´s right to exist should not be questioned. Israel, as a sovereign country, has the right to self-defense. Israel is on our side. We believe in peace. We share the same threats and challenges.

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  23. Pounce says:

    The bBC, it’s hatred of anything British and BP.  
    BP boss Hayward to get immediate £600,000 pension  
    BP chief executive Tony Hayward will get an immediate annual pension worth about £600,000 ($930,000) when he leaves in October, the BBC has learned..  What is your reaction to news about Tony Hayward’s pension?  
     
    Yet again the bBC tries to invent a story by using emotive content instead of facts in which to express their hatred of anything that has ‘British’ in the name.  
     
    But the thing about this story is, when Greg Dyke resigned from the bBC they didn’t bitch about his payoff;  
    “Mr Dyke, who resigned in the aftermath of the Hutton report at the end of January, was given a payoff of £488,416 on top of £321,000 in salary and benefits, making a total of £809,416.  The BBC said the payoff was made “in line with his contractual entitlement” and included £384,000 “in lieu of notice”.  
     
     
    Although he resigned from the BBC’s executive committee on January 29, Mr Dyke remained a member of the BBC’s staff until the end of February.   
     
    So for 2 months work Dyke received almost 1 million quid. Yet they begrudge somebody who fell on his sword after 28 years service to BP. Greg Dyke was at the bBC for 4 years and had to be bloody pushed out of the door.

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  24. George R says:

    Pro-Labour BBC in daily political action:

    “Anger over BBC’s saturation coverage of Mandelson memoirs”

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1297873/BBC-saturation-coverage-Lord-Mandelson-memoirs-draws-criticism.html#ixzz0upf2BQBL

       1 likes

  25. Millie Tant says:

    I not  generally a fan of Clarkson’s or even of this type of laddish comment but I’m afraid I just had to laugh when I read this:
    http://dailynewspaper.co.uk/

    It’s probably because it is in such frivolous contrast to all the earnest debate about banning the fearsome black shrouds. Humour lies in the surprising and the unexpected.  

    Then there is a further contrast between the irreverence of Clarkson’s remark and the solemn pronouncements and warnings from the religious and the earnest equally. (He’s gone too far; it’s in bad taste; it’s an affront to the honour of Muslim women.)

    And it happened on the BBC! 😀  That’s rich, isn’t it?

    Will he be sacked, as Carol Thatcher was for an unapproved word and an unapproved apology?

       1 likes

  26. Anonymous says:

    Some praise for the BBC (only the second time from me on the comment boards):

    BBC:
    “The UK Film Council has invested more than £160m of Lottery money into over 900 films since it was created in 2000.”

    PA:
    “The UK Film Council was created in 2000, and has invested more than £160 million of Lottery funding into more than 900 films which has helped generate over £700 million at the worldwide box office.”

    The PA spin is preposterous – it tries to make the casual reader believe the UK Film Council ‘investment’ was highly profitable. Of the $700m “box office” half goes to the cinema chain, marketing costs usually amount to half the movies budget and finally it is unknown what percentage of the film was actually funded by the UK Film Council compared to other contributors (there’s usually a long list of financiers for smaller independent films).

    Congratulations to one beeboid who isn’t blindly c&ping every piece of nonsense from a newswire.

       1 likes

  27. Craig says:

    More warmism from the BBC:

    Warming ‘to draw Mexico migrants’
    Climate change may drive millions of Mexicans into the US as rising temperatures reduce crop yields, a study suggests.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10770674

    The lead researcher is Michael Oppenheimer.

    Mr Oppenheimer, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the findings called attention to “the need to grapple with greenhouse gases”.

    Michael Oppenheimer’s name crops up regularly on Watts up with that? as he is one of the recipients of a certain famous e-mail that Anthony is fond of printing!:

    From: Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>To: Michael Mann <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
    Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
    Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
    Cc: Stephen H Schneider <shs@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Myles Allen <allen@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, peter stott <peter.stott@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, “Philip D. Jones” <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Benjamin Santer <santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Thomas R Karl <Thomas.R.Karl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Gavin Schmidt <gschmidt@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, James Hansen <jhansen@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,
    Michael Oppenheimer omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

    Hi all
    Well I have my own article on
    where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.

       1 likes

  28. George R says:

    Does BBC still support Greenpeace?:

    ‘Telegraph’-

    “BP petrol stations shut down by Greenpeace”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7911747/BP-petrol-stations-shut-down-by-Greenpeace.html

       1 likes

    • Umbongo says:

      Not only does the BBC support Greenpeace but one of the criminals responsible for the attacks on the petrol stations was given a 30-second (unchallenged) spot on the 8:00 am flagship Radio 4 News to spout his bile and provide his “killer” justification for this criminality (that it will somehow prevent “global warming”).  This was not news: this was blatant propaganda.

         1 likes

      • Martin says:

        Of course the BBC mongs and the Greenpeace vermin forget that petrol stations are often franchised and the owner is the one who ends up out of pocket not BP.

        Where are the effing plods in all this? They should be dragging this scum off by the hair. When I was in the forces we took no shit from the ugly fat dykes and drugged up students that used to protest outside our camp in the 80’s, we used to give them a good kicking if they came onto military property.

        A mate of mine split his boot kicking some stinking student, really funny when he went down to stores to explain how it happened. Needless to say he got a pat on the back.

           1 likes

        • Grant says:

          Those were the days, Martin. Imagine if the same thing happened now.

          “Where are the plods ” ?  One of the mysteries of the universe !

             1 likes

  29. David Jones says:

    Remember the strange Sunday Times Amazongate retraction? Well Christopher Booker has a theory ….. http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/07/climategate-amazongate-bob-ward-and.html

       1 likes

  30. Craig says:

    Radio 4’s Americana is, as you know, a programme with a pronounced liberal (in the American sense) bias. Sunday’s edition (with James Reynolds) was a disgrace, with two liberals – Howell Raines and Richard Ford – slagging off Republicans and Tea Party folk as racists without challenge from the beeboid presenter. This edition is far from untypical.

    Here is the tally of the number of left/liberal/Democrat contributors to the programme since 21/2/2010:

    28

    Here is the tally of the number of right/conservative/Republican contributors to the programme since 21/2/2010:

    9

    Here is a list of the left/liberal/Republican contributors:

    Howell Raines
    Richard Ford
    Hal Crowther
    Peter Beinart
    Noah Feldman
    Clarence Page
    Joan Walsh
    Peter Carey
    Laurence Fishburne
    Luis Gutierrez
    John Cook
    Elizabeth Warren
    Robert Reich
    Jim Clyburn
    Melissa Harris-Lacewell
    Chuck Stone
    Richard A. Clarke
    Azi Paybarah
    Lynn Sweet
    David Remnick
    Brian Williams
    Robert Bobb
    Carl Bernstein
    Jonathan Raban
    Bill Wasik
    Donna Brazile
    Marc Ambinder
    Garry Wills

    Here is a (shorter) list of the right/conservative/Republican contributors:

    David Gergen
    Anh Cao
    Charles Murray
    Lamar Smith
    Newt Gingrich
    Joel Foster
    Jonah Goldberg
    ‘Teddy Choi’ (a phonetic stab at his name!!)
    SE Cupp

    So, the Left get 3 times the number of invites to appear on Americana than the Right. Who’d have thought it?

       1 likes

    • John Anderson says:

      Superb.

      Craig’s successive quantitative analyses have contradicted any BBC claim to impartiality.  BBC producers, researchers and presenters are as a class incorrigibly biased,  we need a new Director General to get a grip on the rampant liberal agenda that poses as “news”.

      This week’s Americana was a classic example of outright bias in action.

         1 likes

      • Martin says:

        Ah! but the BBC’s response is always the following

        “We aim to provide political balance across out network and therefore cannot be judged on the output of one programme”

        Of course the above is bollocks and a lie from the BBC as they don’t actually monitor political balance because if they did and it was as they claim ‘balanced’ they’d be telling us that.

        Also in many of the complaints I’ve put in to the BBC about bias and they’ve come back with the above quote (or similar) when I’ve challenged them to prove it, they ignore my request.

           1 likes

        • Craig says:

          Martin, I sent some unanswerable figures concerning interruptions to the BBC complaints department. They replied. I answered and demolished their reply. They replied again. I answered and demolished their reply again. They waited over two months then sent the briefest of e-mails ignoring virtually every point I’d made and saying simply (to paraphrase) “we don’t think that the number of interruptions in an interview is a valid measure of bias”. I’d counted the number of interruptions/the length of the interview for over a thousand interviews over nearly a year and proved that BBC interviewers interrupted right-of-centre politicians (on average) significantly more than they interrupted left-of-centre politicians on a wide range of major radio and TV programmes.  
           
          BBC Complaints are a very sick joke.  
           
          MPs, MEPs, journalists, bloggers – they are the people to inform (though always annoying the BBC with a complaint at the same time of course!!)

             1 likes

          • Martin says:

            They just send out generic answers half of the time, I swear they just copy and paste the last answer they gave me into the latest complaint.

            IF the BBC does what is claims where is the evidence? How does the BBC actually physically monitor balance? On Fox for example if they have a leftie on they will either have a right wing person at the same time or quite shortly after. The BBC?zzzzzzzzzzzz

               1 likes

            • Craig says:

              Exactly Martin. They need monitoring from outside.

              Tying in with what John says (below) about the BBC not telling us what we ought to know about left-wing interviewees, I sent in a complaint about James Naughtie and a piece he did on Labour’s regional development agencies in the run-up to the election.

              He went to the North East and interviewed two people. One was the head of the IPPR North, the other (though not described as such by Naughtie) was another left-winger who worked with the IPPR (and the Labour party). Both were in favour of Labour’s quangos. Three of Naughtie’s four questions were asked from a perspective supportive of the agencies too (I transcribed them in full in my complaint).

              The BBC reply (from Today output editor Dominic Groves)on the lack of information provided about the interviewees? “It isn’t usual practice for us to give an extended CV for every guest who appears on the programme.”

              As to the completely biased questions, the thrust of my argument was ignored but I did get a tiny concession: “With hindsight I think I would concede that Jim could have pressed the guests a bit harder on the merits of RDAs in principle but he did include the views of those who would like to see all RDAs scrapped.”

              That “inclusion” was, as I wrote in my complaint (so I thought I’d pre-empted them!), was worded by Naughtie in such a half-hearted fashion as to invite an attack (on the Tories) by the IPPR guy (which it got).

              Then, as you say, lots of copy-and-pasted stuff to finish.

              The BBC reply was, as ever, absolute tripe (to use a fine Lancashire phrase) from start to finish.

                 0 likes

              • Grant says:

                Craig,

                You simply have to face facts.  Your productivity is back to  bbcbiascraig levels and great thing too.  Get your blog up and running again  !!!

                   0 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      Next, Craig, yolu’ll have to provide us with the timings and interruption quotient, to show how the Beeboids gave the non-Left guests a much harder time.  Get to work!  😀

         0 likes

  31. John Anderson says:

    More on the JournOList claque of some 400 journalists and other lefties.

    What appears remarkable is how many of them are from the extreme left – the equivalents of Clare Fox on Moral Maze,  associated with Marxist ideas that the broad populace have long since rejected.   About 130 members have been named so far – and people are digging into their political associations.

    http://noisyroom.net/blog/2010/07/26/socialist-journolistas/

    and here is a display of 130 mugshots.  Creepy and dangerous perversion of the “profession” of journalism –

    http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=29858

    As has been stated before – the BBC has a penchant for using these creeps on air without mentioning the political side – or political extreme – they represent.

    It has long been argued that the schools of journalism in the US are hotbeds of lefties – and one of the worst of the JournOList members is now identified as a Journalism Professor at Columbia. 

    And it is highly significant that the BBC continues to avoid any coverage of the JournOList scandal – maybe because so many of its members have been BBC contributors.

    (Here in the UK,  the BBC also turns frequently to extreme-left academics.   I remember that in the early days of the Open University,  it appeared that virtually every humanities course – even arid stuff like “Public Administration” was a subset of the Marxist perspective.

    Trahison des clercs.)

       0 likes

    • Craig says:

      Being keen on chemistry I remember eagerly tuning in to watch a OU programme on BBC 2 about that subject. I should have known better. The series was written by Marxist, Israel-boycotter Steven Rose & was a succession of pieces about capitalist exploitation of Third World resources, plus a few ‘funny’ cartoons of molecules.

         0 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      Can we start a pool on which Beeboid we think was on JournoList?

         0 likes

  32. Craig says:

    That list above, incidentally, intentionally errs on the (if you pardon the pun) conservative side regarding the tally of left-liberal contributors. Perhaps “America’s leading gay author” (as Frei described him) Edmund White should also be on there, as he attacked “the right” on the programme for its “religious fervour” and “hatred towards gays”, though this was not primarily a ‘political interview’, and perhaps I should also have included the composer John Adams (occasionally interesting music, emphatically liberal politics) for his passing attack on “corporations”, though this interview was mostly about Adams the composer. The tally of right/conservative contributors is, however, unquestionably the sum total of all the right-wing commentators to appear on the programme.

    Listening back through all these edition of Americana threw up another easy-to-spot sign of political bias – ‘bias by labeling’ (again, the point John was making above). Despite the large number of liberal guests on the show, only one of the liberal guests was labeled as a ‘liberal’ by the presenter. In contrast, Charles Murray was introduced as a ‘libertarian’, Jonah Goldberg as a ‘conservative’ and SE Cupp as a ‘conservative commentator’. Party (Republican) labels were applied to all but one of the others.

    Also, Matt Frei’s interviewing style almost always changed when a conservative was in the chair. The style switched from informal to formal. Charles Murray was asked several questions for an oppositional standpoint and ambushed with a quote he made (two years ago) about Sarah Palin. David Gergen was ambushed with a silly-sounding attack ad on Nancy Pelosi. Newt Gingrich was on the end of questions like “Are you afraid that your party is moving too far to the loony Right?”

       0 likes

    • Craig says:

      Except that the Charles Murray interview was conducted by Paul Adams!

         0 likes

      • Craig says:

        And finally…

        Among the messages all these liberals were getting across thanks to the BBC – on top of those by Howell Raines and Richard Ford – were:

        Peter Beinart, author of ‘The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again’, appeared on the 4th July edition to discuss patriotism. He attacked Bush and, commenting on ethnic matters, said “Today with Barack Obama we can see that it is much easier, even for those groups that have a very, very bitter history in the United states, to be able, I think, to express a degree of patriotism”.

        Noah Feldman, law professor, also on the Independence Day edition, attacked the Founding Fathers for, among other things, “being comfortable with sexism”.

        Clarence Page of the ‘Chicago Tribune’ stuck up for Obama over Chicago’s dodgy political reputation.

        Joan Walsh, “our special guest”, editor in chief of Salon.com, discussed the political impact of the oil spill, attacked “corporative ignorance and arrogance”, defended Obama very strongly against all criticism but attacked him herself from the Left for not linking the spill to his environmental agenda. She also had a partisan pot-shot at politicians who take partisan pot-shots and attacked the “the oil industry administration of the Bush-Cheney folks”.

        Peter Carey, author, attacked the “era of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld” as “a criminal regime that was what the beginning of fascism felt like” & attacked American right-wingers in general.

        Robert Reich, a very party political Democrat, discussing the week’s politics, praised Obama for “making every effort” over the Gulf slick and accused the Bush administration of “essentially turning its back” on New Orleans after Katrina. Presenter David willis didn’t challenge him, preferring to have ago at BP. Like Joan Walsh, Reich did have a little go at Obama from the Left for “appeasing” the Republicans over his energy bill, which this time did bring in Willis – to defend the president!

           0 likes

        • Craig says:

          Melissa Harris-Lacewell, political scientist and columnist at ‘The Nation’, attacked the Arizona immigration law. In a long interview with Mark Mardell, she spoke about “the anxiety around the Arizona laws”, which “is that the enforcement of them will violate civil liberties”. She talked of “harrassing” and of the law being “discriminatory”. On the issue of the next supreme court judge, she said she wants a candidate with a “strong progressive record” for the Supreme Court, especially given the coming mid-term elections. (Mardell laughed with her at this and agreed it was “naive” for people to thing that a president wouldn’t, shouldn’t, think in that way).

          Richard A. Clarke, American counter-terrorism expert, attacked Bush. Frei then quoted a Bill Clinton attack on conservatives and invited Clarke to agree with it. He did, arguing that “Politicians that say that the government is the problem and have various code-phrases that suggest perhaps that one has to act against the government, they are creating an atmosphere, a political atmosphere in which some people on the far-Right would feel that it is legitimate to raise arms against the government and do things like blowing up federal buildings”. You mean Republicans?, asked Matt. “The Republican Party is going through this odd metamorphosis, this odd identity crisis, and in many states the local Republican party seems to be either catering to an extreme right-wing fringe movement or being taken over by it.” At which Frei asked “So would you say that, for instance, there is in fact an inherent security threat in something like the Tea Party movement?” “Oh absolutely,” Clarke answered. The “Tea-Baggers” are “very dangerous.” 
           
          Full-of-himself NBC anchorman Brian Williams, quoting “Mrs Roosevelt”, said his friends felt “uneasy about our country” in answer to a question from Frei on the passing of Obama’s health reform bill: “Some opponents of healthcare..their unyielding wrath over what they’ve described as a communist-style government takeover. A few others also resorted to distinctly nasty tactics – property vandalised, families threatened, racist slurs…. Brian Williams, what do you make of all this wrath and all this rage out there?” Mr Williams later said he never expressed an opinion then went on, throughout the remainder of the show, to utter all manner of liberal opinions.

          JournOLista Marc Ambinder guided David Willis round Obamaland and spun for Obama (like a good JournOLista).

          Historian Garry Wills, “one of the country’s leading historians” according to Kevin Connelly, attacked the Bush administration.

             0 likes

        • Grant says:

          If Peter Carey said that he must be mentally deranged. In any case who gives a damn what novelists or journalists think about
          anything ?

             0 likes

          • Craig says:

            Grant, unfortunately the BBC care – and I think it’s possible to guess why.

            That entire edition of Americana was based around Carey’s latest book about Alexis de Tocqueville. I suspect they did this so they could get him onto the programme and get him to spout off his opinions about American right-wingers. He has been particularly loud in his denunciations of the Tea Party movement, saying:

            “When a dominant provider of information — I mean Fox particularly — acts not as news but as propaganda for extremists, aberrations like the Tea Party thrive.” http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0722012720100509

            The crafty makers of Americana would have known this.

               0 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      “Listening back”?  You’re a better man than I.

         0 likes

    • prpw says:

      When Frei asks his dumbfvck questions like that I always wish the interviewee would ask him to define first in concrete terms what he means by The Right

         0 likes

  33. David Terron says:

    One Show tonight. Slavery – million people abducted and sold into slavery. NOT ONE MENTION of the fact that the vast majority were stolen by Muslim pirates. Instead they went into great detail about some Scottish bloke who kidnapped a pile of Jocks but got caught by the people of an irish town. Not even one use of the Muslim word in the whole report. BBC omission at its best/worst

       0 likes

  34. dave s says:

    Very little beyond a sparse report on the local news on the strange case of the EDL arrests on a alleged bomb plot charge in Dorset which included the shooting out of a van’s tyres by armed Dorset police. The arrested were later released without charge. I wonder if such uncharacteristic BBC silence would have happened if the arrested had been in a Moslem district and had not been EDL members.
    This is a very odd thing to happen in any county let alone Dorset and I presume the orders came from the top. The EDL, about which I know little, really seems to scare the powers that be. Is it because it is a real grass roots movement that just might gather support. How long before some more of us get the midnight knock on the door as this country slides into authoritarian state fascism?

       0 likes

    • 1327 says:

      I also get the feeling the EDL scares the political elite due to its very unusual nature. It appears to be very decentralised with no central leadership which makes it difficult to penetrate with informers. Secondly it doesn’t appear to be a legal entity so there is no one to sue or to prosecute for what ever is the PC crime of the week. 

      Currently the elites attitude is to ignore it and hope it goes away. If it doesn’t go away the British states next response will probably be to use far right informers to set up a “counter gang” i.e what appears to be a similar organisation to the EDL but which plots violence. Of course there will be so many informers they will be rounded up before they do anything but it will blacken the name of the EDL.

         0 likes

  35. David Preiser (USA) says:

    News the BBC doesn’t want you to know:

    BP Oil Spill: Clean-up Crews Can’t Find Crude in the Gulf

    For 86 days, oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s damaged well, dumping some 200 million gallons of crude into sensitive ecosystems. BP  and the federal government have amassed an army to clean the oil up, but there’s one problem — they’re having trouble finding it.

    Watch the whole video.  On one hand, the BBC will hate it if this turns out to be true, because it would put a huge dent in the environmentals’ bleating about eeeeevil oil and off-shore drilling.  Yet on the other hand they will love it, because it means that they will have successfully gotten away with censoring all news of the Obamessiah Administration’s series of failures in handling clean-up operations, and that The Obamessiah was a top recipient of BP cash.

    What’s a Beeboid to do?  How will they handle it?  They’ll watch and wait to see if it helps their beloved Obamessiah, of course, because these days Obamessiah worship trumps the religion of Warmism.

       0 likes

  36. David Preiser (USA) says:

    So Mark Mardell has crawled out from under his holiday rock and done a blog post about how the US media “have been making much of the fact that an American is in charge of BP for the first time.”

    Naturally my first instinct is to assume that Mardell is biased and wrong, so I had a look at the big boys in US media to see how much of a big deal they were making.

    The New York Times?  Nothing, but they do mention that mysterious lack of oil all over the place, which the BBC hasn’t mentioned.

    The Washington Post (always a good source for the BBC of what, how, and when to report on US issues):  nada.  But there is something about “oil degrading quickly”, which the BBC hasn’t mentioned.

    How about Justin Webb’s favorite go-to source, the HuffingtonPost?  Bupkis.  But there is something about how nobody cares about the growing JournoList scandal, which the BBC hasn’t mentioned.  Okay, so the BBC actually is taking its lead from the HuffPo on that one.  Oops.

    ABC, perhaps?  The network which hosted a White House propaganda broadcast about ObamaCare?  Nope.  I don’t even want to tell the Beeboids what they currently have as the top story.

    Okay, surely Fox News, that brainwashing outfit which controls the minds of us foolish United Statesians must have something.  Damn, missed again.  Although, there’s a whole bunch of stuff there that the BBC hasn’t told you about, like their darling Elton John criticizing the call to boycott Arizona over its immigration law, and that mysterious missing oil spill.

    The thing is, all of the above actually did cover the deal with BP, but there’s precious little evidence of “Thank God we have a good ol’ Uhmehricun in charge!”  It’s more like, “Oh, look, it’s an American now.”  But that’s not how North America editor Mark Mardell sees it.

    Don’t trust the BBC on….well, you know.

       0 likes

    • Craig says:

      The BBC website’s ‘See Also’ blog this morning features five comments on the resignation of Tony Hayward (and guess which media source they go to first!!):

      Robert Cavnar, Huffington Post
      Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business Review
      Times editorial
      Steve LeVine, NPR
      John Sauven, Guardian

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/seealso/2010/07/reaction_resignation_of_bps_to.html#jump_more

      Plenty to give BP a headache. No questioning of Obama’s handling of the crisis. Only Mr Levine comments on Mr Dudley’s appointment, but he also doesn’t “make much” of his being American.

      John Sauven is the head of Greenpeace UK and a little googling reveals that both Robert Cavnar and Rosabeth Moss Kanter are Democrat supporters. Mr Cavnar is also a Democrat donor (giving to the campaigns of, among others, Nancy Pelosi and John Edwards), as is Ms Kanter (John Kerry and Hillary Clinton). None of that is mentioned by the BBC. Not surprising then that they didn’t pose any questions for Obama to answer over his handling of the crisis.

         0 likes

      • NotaSheep says:

        And yet anyone form anything other the left is described as a ‘right-winger’, a member of a ‘right-wing’ thintank or similar.

           0 likes

    • John Horne Tooke says:

      But you see David – Mardell is not banking on people like you to show that the story is not “big news” – The BBC still live in the era where they think they can tell the biggest tales and get away with it. After all everyone trusts the BBC, don’t they?

         0 likes

  37. George R says:

    “BBC chief sending 1,500 staff up North won’t take his own family there”

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1298210/BBC-chief-sending-1-500-staff-North-wont-family-there.html#ixzz0uxh0vscw

       0 likes

    • John Horne Tooke says:

      We don’t want the bugger “up norf” – how about the Isle of Eigg,  he could squat there with Black and Harrabin.

         0 likes

  38. Biodegradable says:

    It’s always interesting to see which Mid-East stories the BBC keeps on the boil, and which ones disappear sometimes in a matter of hours. Here’s one guaranteed to be around for a while.

    Israel police raze ‘illegal’ Bedouin village in Negev

    <!– END – caption –> <!– end of the embedded player component –> <!– Player embedded –>
    Around 300 Bedouins living in Israel’s Negev desert have been made homeless after police raided their village and razed their homes.
    Israeli activists said 1,500 police arrived in Al-Arakib village at dawn.
    They destroyed 30 to 40 makeshift homes and uprooted hundreds of olive trees belonging to the villagers, they said.
    Police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said the homes had been “illegally built” and were destroyed in line with a court ruling issued 11 years ago.

    No mention of this story:

    IDF prepares to demolish yeshiva at West Bank settlement Yitzhar

    The military is preparing to demolish a Jewish seminary building at the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar after residents lost an appeal against its destruction, Army Radio reported Wednesday.
    Military sources said that army prosecutors had turned down an appeal against plans to raze the yeshiva, which the government has ruled illegal, in response to attacks by Yitzhar settlers on neighboring Palestinians and the extremist language used by the yeshiva’s rabbi, Itzik Shapira.

    The BBC and half the story!

       0 likes

  39. prpw says:

    Most Definitely Not For The BBC: Article by billionaire real estate investor and former Obama speechwriter Mort Zuckenberg in Tuesday’s FT warning Obama to reduce his attacks and pressure on business

       0 likes

  40. George R says:

    UK: Prison governor apologizes to Muslim inmates after serving non-halal meat

    ‘Jihadwatch’ counter-comment to Islam Not BBC (INBBC) report.

       0 likes

  41. Craig says:

    Countdown with Keith Olbermann, MSNBC 10/5/2010

    Host: Keith Olbermann
    “…gained gaining prominence for his pointed criticism of major politicians and public figures, directed particularly at the political right. He has feuded with rival commentator Bill O’Reilly and strongly criticized the George W. Bush administration and John McCain’s unsuccessful 2008 Presidential candidacy. Although many have described Olbermann as a liberal he has said on at least one occasion “I’m not a liberal; I’m an American.”

    Guest 1: Ezra Klein
    American blogger, Washington Post & Newsweek, liberal and leading JournoLista.

    Guest 2: David Wiegel
    Journalist, MSNBC, liberal and prominent JournoLista.

    Guest 3: John Dean
    “Dean is currently an author, columnist, and commentator on contemporary politics, strongly critical of conservatism and the Republican Party, and a registered Independent who supported the impeachment of President George W. Bush.”

    Guest 4: Matt Frei
    BBC journalist

    Guest 5: Jonathan Turley
    Left-wing lawyer and professor (a sort of American Michael Mansfield by the sounds of it), who “has called for criminal prosecution of Bush administration officials for alleged war crimes, namely torture.”

    I bet Matt felt right (or should that be ‘left’) at home!
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37081939

       0 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      So a trifecta of JournoListers, two victims of full-blown BDS, and Frei Boy.  And defenders of the indefensible think this site is a circle jerk!  Lay your eyes on the media and the BBC to see what it really looks like.

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  42. Craig says:

    Yet more very biased reporting from the BBC’s US-based wing:

    Arizona immigration law set to come in amid protests
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10791871

    The views of opponents are given priority throughout, and the whole thing is viewed through the eyes of liberal protestors. No arguments are presented in favour of the law. The only contrasting voice is that of a sheriff who says he’s going to enforce the law (which hardly counts as balance!).

    Anyone coming fresh to this story would assume that there is massive opposition to this law throughout the United States. They wouldn’t know, because the article chooses not to tell them, that opinion polls show massive support (over 75%) for the Arizona Law.
    http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/firm_support_for_arizona_immigration_law_in_us

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    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      Not to mention that 18 other states have now adopted similar laws to crack down on illegal immigration.  I guess the US is just full of racists.  I had no idea North Carolina had such a problem with Mexicans, though.  
       
      Current list of racist states who don’t celebrate immigration in the approved manner:  
       
      ARKANSAS, IDAHO, INDIANA, MARYLAND, MICHIGAN, MINNESOTA, MISSOURI, NEBRASKA, NEVADA, NEW JERSEY, NORTH CAROLINA, OHIO, OKLAHOMA, PENNSYLVANIA, RHODE ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA, TEXAS, UTAH  
       
      Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island all voted for a black man for President.  Are they all racists now?  
       
      In fact, Rhode Island has had their police enforcing immigration law since 2008, when the governor made an executive order to crack down in illegals.  It really started in 2006, when a Rhode Island police officer thought maybe he should check out the 12 Guatemalans in a van he pulled over.  Unless they were all wearing matching summer day camp t-shirts and carrying nothing else but box lunches, it ain’t racist to have a “reasonable suspicion”.  
       
      I’ll bet the BBC doesn’t even know any of this, because they are so sure of the righteousness of their cause that they haven’t done their homework and don’t pay attention to the details of non-Leftoid blogs.  
       
      Here’s one for you:  The name of the major Latino organization trying to sue Arizona over its immigration law is the National Council of “La Raza”.  It means “The Race”. Can’t remember them making a sound whenever the feds bust illegal Chinese workers in downtown restaurants or in sweatshops. So their cries now ring hollow.

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      • dave s says:

        To us, in BBC land,there is  no such person as an illegal immigrant. There are no longer any Western countries peopled by a generations old race. This is a delusion prevelant still amongst whites and they have got to realise that this belief in law, the constitution and their heritage is a particularly racist and very nasty trait which when eradicated will make the world such a nice happy place.
        At the BBC every effort must be made to put whitey in his place ( men in particular are the problem) and we pledge ourselves to ensure that every news report does exactly that. It will be really nice when the last white man goes . Eternal peace will follow- probably heaven on earth.

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  43. deegee says:

    Soon to appear on BBC Radio 4 The Mossad Tue 3 Aug 2010 20:00

    Does anyone know if this is part of a series on intelligence agencies?

    The preview doesn’t look promising:
    “They teach you how to steal and they teach you how to kill and they teach you to do things which normal people don’t do”
    “You follow people against their will, you open their mail against their will, you listen to them against their will”.

    Isn’t this what George Smiley would call ‘tradecraft’? MI5 and MI6 don’t do this? Has/could the BBC done a similar documentary on them? Howabout the security apparatus of an Arab state?

    They insist they follow a strict ethical code but others question whether their methods are in breach of international law.

    As I wrote, not promising.

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    • Grant says:

      The Beeb would never do a series on an Arab security service. It would put their own lives at risk !

         0 likes

  44. dave s says:

    Very little on the BBC about the suspected attack on the Japanese tanker in the Gulf. Maybe a bit difficult to blame the Israelis so better to keep it low profile. This could be very serious as Japan has changed it’s rules of warfare to permit it to take action anywhere it feels Japanese interests to be threatened. Japan has, I believe the 2nd most effective navy in the world- it makes ours look tiny-, and is still a coherent nation state that will not hesitate to protect itself. Certainly not your kowtowing Western country at all. Things could get very interesting . Anybody taking on Japan could be about to make a very big mistake indeed.

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  45. David Preiser (USA) says:

    Behold the racists of Bell, California, who are the latest bunch of lunatic, right-wingnuts to protest against crushing taxation and bloated government, simply because they hate the fact that a black man is President.

    Protest in Bell:  City Residents Say “Enough!”

    A little background:  The city manager is paid almost $800,000 a year, the Chief AO earns over $750K pa (with guaranteed annual 12% raises), city council members get 80 grand a year, the Chief of Police takes home over $450 grand (more than the Chief in LA) and the city keeps issuing bond after bond and taxing the piss out of the citizens.

    The average annual salary in Bell is $24,800, in a city of 38,000 people.  Even a Beeboid can work out just how much that sucks.  Yet, total silence on the BBC.

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  46. Buggy says:

    Watching the Euro athletics this evening, and we got a puff for the BBC’s Olympic countdown.

    “The BBC will be following a number of athletes from around the globe as they prepare over the next two years….”

    Now this is good I think, emphasising that it’s not just our athletes who have aspirations for 2012, sort of the “anti-Vancouverif you like.

    Five athletes plugged tonight.

    Three of these : a Palestinian, a ‘Kosovan’ (“Will her country be allowed to compete ?”) and an Iraqi rower (who apparently trains under fire, though there wasn’t much eveidence of that in the brief accompanying filmette.

    Really, is there some sort of internal competition at al-Beeb to see who can tick the most boxes in a single clip ? I hope we’re not paying for the prizes at any rate.

    I can’t be bothered with Newsnight, but Gavin Esler’s preview: “Was 1940 really “Our Finest Hour?”

    I’m guessing not.

       0 likes

    • Buggy says:

      I don’t know how I got that wink – supposed to be a closed bracket.

      Still, he’s a very jaunty little fellow isn’t he ?

         0 likes

  47. Pounce says:

    The bBC reporting from Gaza and half the story.  
     Hamas bans lingerie displays in Gaza Strip  
     Scantily-clad mannequins and pictures of underwear models are to disappear from clothes shops in the Gaza Strip after officials announced new rules.The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which controls Gaza, said that the new rules were to protect “public morality”….It has so far taken only limited steps to enforce modesty and prevent the sexes from mixing in public.“It is absolutely forbidden to place any photographic device inside the shop and it is forbidden to display revealing clothes in front of the shops,” a statement from Hamas said.    

    And here is what the bBC isn’t reporting:  

     

    Gaza police announced Wednesday restrictions on women’s lingerie and dress stores across the Strip. Among the prohibitions include displaying lingerie or pajamas in store windows, having fitting rooms or cubicles inside shops, and using tinted glass for store windows. Security cameras inside women’s stores will also be banned. Gaza police spokesman Brigadier Ayman Al-Batniji said the new restrictions will “protect morals and allow people to feel comfortable as they walk down the street.” The announcement follows a wave of new regulations aimed at women.  

     

    Oh reguards this confidence raising statement from the bBC:  

    Last year Hamas tried to prevent female lawyers from appearing in court without wearing a hijab scarf covering their heads, and banned men from working in women’s hairdressers. “  

    They forgot to mention these:  
     

    “Other bans include a prohibition on women from riding motorcycles and attending wedding parties extending over midnight.”    

       

    So much for this bBC statement from the above article then:  

    It has so far taken only limited steps to enforce modesty and prevent the sexes from mixing in public. 

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  48. David Preiser (USA) says:

    Somewhere, a Beeboid’s head just exploded:

    Deportation of illegal immigrants increases under Obama administration

    This is from the JournoList-infested home of several friends of Beeboids, the ubiquitous Washington Post.  If you don’t want to bother reading the article, you must click through to see the accompanying photo and think to yourself, “If this happened when Bush was in charge, etc.”

    In a bid to remake the enforcement of federal immigration laws, the Obama administration is deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants and auditing hundreds of businesses that blithely hire undocumented workers.

    Oh, dear.  No wonder the BBC is keeping shtum.  I haven’t heard anything of the sort in any of Franz Strasser’s “Into America” series, which is all about immigration.

    Meanwhile, the BBC is slobbering once more about that nasty Arizona law.  You know, the one that has been copied by 18 other states and was essentially already being enforced in Rhode Island since 2008.  You know, all that stuff the BBC has censored because it doesn’t support that “rapport” they want you to have with the US.

       0 likes

  49. George R says:

    BBC gives political propaganda page on Cameron in India to Soutik Biswas to base an article around a Biswas’s opinion:

    .”.most of the colonial experience was extremely unsavoury.”

    There is no counter British viewpoint provided by BBC, of course.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/soutikbiswas/2010/07/can_britain_charm_india_wonders.html

       0 likes

    • George R says:

      Islam Not BBC (INBBC) will not provide a negative assessment of the history of Islamic Imperialism in India.

       For such an account, see  writings of historian K.S. Lal’ e.g.  Chapter 8 of ‘The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India’

      http://voi.org/books/tlmr/ch8.htm

         0 likes

      • George R says:

        “Britain has no need to make an apolgy to India for Empire…”

        Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1298569/Britain-need-make-apology-India-Empire-.html#ixzz0v4KWHdCj

           0 likes

      • Craig says:

        George, the BBC tend to use William Dalrymple (anti-imperialist, left-wing, Islamophile) as their historian-of-choice for India (and surrounding countries). Someone recently gave me a book by him to read on the Indian Mutiny, The Last Mughal. If the BBC were to make a programme about the Indian Mutiny it would be just like that, full of wicked British Christians.

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        • Grant says:

          Craig,
          Well spotted about Dalrymple. I read one of his books years ago, can’t remember the name. The parts of it relating to the Ottoman Empire were tripe and riddled with factual errors. I have never bothered to read anything by him since.

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    • NotaSheep says:

      The many Indians (living in India) that I speak to are all very pro-British. The older ones who remember British rule and lived through partition and the troubles that followed openly say they would have preferred to have stayed British rather than independent. The younger ones are proud of what India has achieved but largely fed-up with the bureaucracy and inefficiency, they ask me how we do things in the UK and refuse to believe it’s as bad here.

      To a great extent, the British colonies were a nicer place to live for the natives than in a French or German colony.

         0 likes

      • Grant says:

        Nota,

        I have exactly the same experience in Gambia !
        “Why did you British ever leave ? “.

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    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      I don’t know if I can even imagine the bloodshed between Hindus and Muslims over the course of the last 100 years or so if there had been no Raj and no Partition.  Perhaps that’s unimportant.

         0 likes

  50. David Preiser (USA) says:

    To my surprise, I was just enjoying the BBC News Channel report on that new Metro Bank opening.  Here was a Beeboid talking about irresponsible lending to people who couldn’t afford the loans in the first place being a primary cause of the recent banking collapses, and engaging without disdain in a brief discussion about resopnsible, more limited banking.

    My enjoyment was crushed at the end, though, when the BBC reporter on the scene (Simon Jacksomething?) asked the bank rep (I tuned in too late to catch his name or position at the bank) what would happen when people can no longer afford to pay back loans.  “You’re going to be like all the other banks,” and come knocking at the door for your money, “aren’t you?” asked the Beeboid.

    As if somehow that would be wrong and mean.  As usual, the BBC can’t keep neo-Marxism out of it.

       0 likes

    • Craig says:

      David, it was Simon Jack interviewing Anthony Thompson, the chairman and co-founder of Metro Bank. He can ask some very silly questions.

         0 likes

    • Grant says:

      Craig,

      Thanks for the name Simon Jack.  I shall ask him if he can lend me some money in the knowledge that he won’t expect it to be repaid. Prat !

         0 likes