Best Of

The BBC is finished:

A few scenarios how they end
1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord.
2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was
3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.

I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.

You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."

See. It isn't easy.

I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.

So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased?
If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.

Why not go and read the actual dossier?

I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.

I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?

Errr, hello

The crooked Democrats rigged the 2020 election. Why didn't Panorama do a program on that???

Warren Buffett's last letter to shareholders.

Warren Buffet says goodbye in his final annual letter today (full copy in the comments below).

As he signed off, the following were final words of advice:

"One perhaps self-serving observation. I’m happy to say I feel better about the second half of my life than the first. My advice: Don’t beat yourself up over past mistakes – learn at least a little from them and move on. It is never too late to improve. Get the right heroes and copy them. You can start with Tom Murphy; he was the best.

Remember Alfred Nobel, later of Nobel Prize fame, who – reportedly – read his own obituary that was mistakenly printed when his brother died and a newspaper got mixed up. He was horrified at what he read and realized he should change his behavior.

Don’t count on a newsroom mix-up: Decide what you would like your obituary to say and live the life to deserve it.

Greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts of publicity or great power in government. When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world. Kindness is costless but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it’s hard to beat The Golden Rule as a guide to behavior.

I write this as one who has been thoughtless countless times and made many mistakes but also became very lucky in learning from some wonderful friends how to behave better (still a long way from perfect, however). Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman."
https://x.com/SMB_Attorney/status/1987959365681504419

The BBC is finished:

A few scenarios how they end
1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord.
2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was
3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.

I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.

Because it becomes easy to excuse away bad behaviour. If it’s a fixed choice between Trump and the BBC it’s easy. And that’s the way many are trying to frame it. In some ways bizarrely as if the BBC is the injured party in all this and that mean mr Trump is trying to bully us.

That's exactly how I see it.

You guys on the right are being played. Although tbf some on the right are also doing the playing:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/nov/10/bbc-board-member-tory-links-led-charge-systemic-bias-claims

Sure the BBC allowed a fuck-up to be made and broadcast but having apologised, retracted, and seen DG and Head of News resign, that's enough.

There's no need to allow one of the brightest beacons of British soft power and balanced accurate news broadcasting in the world to be sunk.

Any true patriots should be defending the BBC against the wanna-be American dictator.

My perspective, having worked at the BBC (albeit 25 years ago), is that BBC bias is misunderstood.

It undoubtedly exists, but instead of thinking in terms of Left and Right, it is that the BBC has a strong inherent bias towards the BBC way of doing things. It is fundamentally and existentially pro-self.

What this means in reality is that self-selection and groupthink coupled with an almost religious belief in 'what is right' results in the corporation being unshakingly confident in its own correctness, even when the nature of said correctness has completely changed.

Little example: Back in the day, it was considered right and proper for practically all broadcasters, especially at a National level, to speak using RP. They had dedicated speech trainers to ensure this was the case. Regional or, God forbid, Continental/Colonial accents were a big no-no. One has to speak the BBC English, old boy, it's the way we do things...

Now the absolute opposite is true. The right, good and correct thing is that everyone gets to hear a huge range of regional and international accents. Apart from RP. RP is an anachronism. Not the way we do things...

But the thing is... despite these two editorial and presentational positions being complete polar opposites of one another, both were considered to be entirely correct at the time because they were the BBC way of doing things. The BBC conscience not only believes itself to be right, but that it always has been right and always will be right.

I'm not even sure they have internal debates when policy changes, even drastically. It just happens; the war with Eurasia is erased and the war with Eastasia has always been.

Same with the way things are edited. The edit makes something appear a certain way, so that's how it happened. Re-edit to make it different, and that's still how it happened; how it always happened. Narrative over facts. Narrative is facts.

This Trump editing kerfuffle is singularly unsurprising, because it's just a part of BBC life. The way highlights from a football match are selected and cut together can tell a variety of different stories, depending on what is included/excluded. That's just how broadcast media works.

Current BBC bias has a sort of soft-Left, Internationalist, Woke, environmentalist anti-Trump kind of hue about it, but none of these are as significant as its strong bias towards itself, whatever it happens to be at the time!

Majority of the public want to keep the 2 child cap

https://x.com/YouGov/status/1987901680243937438?s=19

Hardly a surprise - self-interest on show. How many people have more than two children? And how many want to pay more tax for those that do?

On this, actually, my views have changed.

I'd support a mildly pro-natal policy.

It means more taxpayers in future, and a lower immigration demand, and therefore a more socially and fiscally stable society.

There's also a variant of the "should the guilty go free or the innocent be imprisoned" argument.

The political argument for the two child limit is that it discourages irresponsible breeders from having children they can't support. The catch is that it also discourages Norman and Norma Normal from having as many children as they might wish (and society might benefit from) because they fear what happens if something goes wrong. And the birthrate stats since 2010 or so are pretty unambiguous.

It's probably going to be unpopular, but sod it. It's the right thing to do.

There's a few decent examples of pro-natal policy not really making much difference.

Likelihood of having children, and number of them if you do, is becoming a societal issue more than a political one.

Doesn't necessarily mean we shouldn't try such policies, but they are probably not the smoking gun.

I'm just trying to work out how much you'd have to pay me to have a third kid...

Hmm.

Be prepared to buy a bigger house and bigger car. We had to upgrade to a 7 seater SUV because you can't fit 3 car seats into a standard 5 seater car.

We're also having to think about moving into a bigger house because our 4 bed isn't big enough now with all the shit we've accumulated with now three kids.

Also I'd recommend asking for a £30k payrise because I've found having a third kid is actually the most expensive of the lot.

I honestly don't blame anyone for refusing to walk this path, I genuinely love all three of them but it's not easy. The state has made it impossible to have three kids and it's nothing to do with benefits, it's all the other costs around having a third child.

Being able to afford a large house with a decently sized garden, a large 7 seater car, three car seats, the becoming a single income household for extended periods of time, childcare costs for two kids at the same time for about 3 years. It all adds up and I think modern expectations on parents and what the state expects parents to spend is leading to smaller families.

People may disagree but I think dumping a lot of the car safety regulations around kids would help with having 3 kids, I think normalising kids sharing rooms until their teenage years would help too. My uncle and aunt had 3 kids and they lived in a 3 bedroom house until my cousins were between 12 and 16 iirc because the two girls shared a room. Today that just doesn't happen, the expectation is for parents to provide a room per child.

This is without getting into the cost of education, we're looking at schools now and private education up where we're thinking of moving is going to be £14k per child per year and that number will only rise.

Three kids is a huge lifestyle change, I don't regret it at all but I will say there are moments where I've found it tough and my wife is still 6 months away from going back to work and getting a full salary.