The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
All the complaints raised by Prescott are against left/liberal values and views; that speaks volumes. He has an agenda, as does Robbie Giibbs. An independent adviser he is not.
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
I am afraid you're calling this one completely wrong @Cyclefree. You are being played.
NEW: Starmer faces Labour fury over top aide, briefings and budget...
...With just two weeks to go, Rachel Reeves has been unable to make final decisions on what policies to announce in part because of ongoing arguments about what to do, according to people familiar with the matter.
What a mess. Why did they seek office? Try to win power? For what purpose?
Anyone have a scoopy?
The adults… etc.
Say what you like about Blair-Brown era but we didn't have this wailing, wet knicker, 'oh, oh, woe is me, I don't know why we got elected? What are we to do??' crap.
NEW: Starmer faces Labour fury over top aide, briefings and budget...
...With just two weeks to go, Rachel Reeves has been unable to make final decisions on what policies to announce in part because of ongoing arguments about what to do, according to people familiar with the matter.
NEW: Starmer faces Labour fury over top aide, briefings and budget...
...With just two weeks to go, Rachel Reeves has been unable to make final decisions on what policies to announce in part because of ongoing arguments about what to do, according to people familiar with the matter.
NEW: Starmer faces Labour fury over top aide, briefings and budget...
...With just two weeks to go, Rachel Reeves has been unable to make final decisions on what policies to announce in part because of ongoing arguments about what to do, according to people familiar with the matter.
This is a problem in one respect for Sir Keir, but a bonus in another; it explains why he contradicts himself all the time - he has to appeal to two wildly different set of voters - but the bonus is, as has flip flopped on everything since he became an MP anyway, it comes naturally
Half of voters who backed Labour at the last general election have deserted the party, according to internal polling being shared with Labour MPs, reports @harriet_symonds
This is not great, speaking as a Tory centrist who voted Labour and as of today would do so again through gritted teeth. The 34-35% of voters who voted Labour in 2024 included a large number of those who voted Labour as a last resort, there being nowhere else to go. (My formula is fairly simple: you vote for a party that can come first or second in your seat, which in the olden days in England meant Lab, Con or LD, and within that constraint you vote for the best possible choice.)
In 2024 in my seat that was Labour and the unvoteable for Tory party (and candidate). Next time it will even less jolly, with Reform well in play. Tories remain impossible Reformlite. Reform are Reform. So Labour it is. Though without dancing in the street.
NEW: Starmer faces Labour fury over top aide, briefings and budget...
...With just two weeks to go, Rachel Reeves has been unable to make final decisions on what policies to announce in part because of ongoing arguments about what to do, according to people familiar with the matter.
NEW: Starmer faces Labour fury over top aide, briefings and budget...
...With just two weeks to go, Rachel Reeves has been unable to make final decisions on what policies to announce in part because of ongoing arguments about what to do, according to people familiar with the matter.
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
I am afraid you're calling this one completely wrong @Cyclefree. You are being played.
The key thing is that at least some of Prescott's criticisms are patent tosh to anyone not down a right-wing rabbit hole. "But KAMALA" being the trivial example.
Now it turns out that his editing complaint was... erm... edited.
Whether it's fair or not, that weakens the impact of his other criticisms. A rapier is always more potent than spray-painted sewage.
What's interesting is that the Telegraph seems not to have checked this, and a lot of yesterday's hoohhah was about things that weren't what they seemed on first glance.
Maybe we should just have one news bulletin a week, on Sunday after evensong. And no event is reported until enough time has passed for its veracity and importance to become clear.
"Last with the news", rather than "never wrong for long".
That looks like a massive earthquake/landslide that took out the whole of the mao-ntainside...
I’m aware that I’m guilty of taking the view which is most comforting to hold, but I’m deeply sceptical of the genius of China. They’ve built a metric shit-tonne of stuff over the past 20 years; it will be interesting to see how much of it is still standing in another 20. I would be unsurprised to find a large proportion of their flats live no longer than 40 years and have to be knocked down before they collapse. Which will at least solve their problems of massive oversupply of housing (how many empty units are there in China? Conservative estimates are that there is more empty housing in China than there is housing in the UK; more radical estimates are that there is enough empty housing in China to house the entire world). And similarly their transport projects are impressive, but impressive exercises in expensively shuttling empty air around. China’s economy doesn’t work like ours. They decide in advance what growth will be, then do as much *stuff* - whether needed or not – so that their GDP matches up to that. That way a reckoning lies.
But of course other view are available and I'd invite @Leon to present a counterpoint.
I am using an Oppo Find N phone.
It is the same size as an iPhone Max. But it folds. It has incredible battery life. It is by far the best folding phone out there. It could well be the best smartphone on the market. (For those who aren't wedded to the Apple ecosystem.)
When Japan started doing electronics, companies in the West (like RCA and Philips and Grundig) laughed and said they were just doing cheap low end stuff. Then Sony and Pioneer became the dominant names.
Korea then came along, and suddenly Samsung was eating the Japanese companies lunches.
And now it is the Chinese eating the Koreans lunches.
In time, someone else - someone younger, hungrier and poorer - will end up surpassing the Chinese. But right now, they are the ones in the ascendent.
Do you think they made a mistake in becoming even more authoritarian than they were before when Xi took over in 2012? I think yes.
That looks like a massive earthquake/landslide that took out the whole of the mao-ntainside...
I’m aware that I’m guilty of taking the view which is most comforting to hold, but I’m deeply sceptical of the genius of China. They’ve built a metric shit-tonne of stuff over the past 20 years; it will be interesting to see how much of it is still standing in another 20. I would be unsurprised to find a large proportion of their flats live no longer than 40 years and have to be knocked down before they collapse. Which will at least solve their problems of massive oversupply of housing (how many empty units are there in China? Conservative estimates are that there is more empty housing in China than there is housing in the UK; more radical estimates are that there is enough empty housing in China to house the entire world). And similarly their transport projects are impressive, but impressive exercises in expensively shuttling empty air around. China’s economy doesn’t work like ours. They decide in advance what growth will be, then do as much *stuff* - whether needed or not – so that their GDP matches up to that. That way a reckoning lies.
But of course other view are available and I'd invite @Leon to present a counterpoint.
I am using an Oppo Find N phone.
It is the same size as an iPhone Max. But it folds. It has incredible battery life. It is by far the best folding phone out there. It could well be the best smartphone on the market. (For those who aren't wedded to the Apple ecosystem.)
When Japan started doing electronics, companies in the West (like RCA and Philips and Grundig) laughed and said they were just doing cheap low end stuff. Then Sony and Pioneer became the dominant names.
Korea then came along, and suddenly Samsung was eating the Japanese companies lunches.
And now it is the Chinese eating the Koreans lunches.
In time, someone else - someone younger, hungrier and poorer - will end up surpassing the Chinese. But right now, they are the ones in the ascendent.
Do you think they made a mistake in becoming even more authoritarian than they were before when Xi took over in 2012? I think yes.
It does though rather undermine those who claim that a state controlled economy can never beat a free-market economy.
(i'd like to believe the Chinese miracle won't last but who knows?)
NEW: Starmer faces Labour fury over top aide, briefings and budget...
...With just two weeks to go, Rachel Reeves has been unable to make final decisions on what policies to announce in part because of ongoing arguments about what to do, according to people familiar with the matter.
What a mess. Why did they seek office? Try to win power? For what purpose?
Anyone have a scoopy?
The adults… etc.
Say what you like about Blair-Brown era but we didn't have this wailing, wet knicker, 'oh, oh, woe is me, I don't know why we got elected? What are we to do??' crap.
Nor did we have it in any of the incarnations of the Conservative governments of 2010-2024.
They all had ideas, plans, strategies.
Perhaps the wrong ones, perhaps badly implemented, perhaps derailed by events.
But the only underlying theme of this Labour government is a belief in the righteousness of government welfare handouts.
There's not even a pretence that this is to improve public services or invest in infrastructure.
Starmer's failings are not so much down to his personal lack of political communication skills, but more a manifestation of the collective failure in government of the factional background team around him and Reeves.
That factional team, led by McSweeney, excelled in backstabbing in internal party battles but has proved totally lacking in basic political nous when it comes to understanding the concerns of the voting public. It was they who chose Starmer as the figure best placed to depose Corbyn oblivious to his wider lack of political skills. Since the lousy election campaign (10% vote share lost in 6 weeks) they have continued to lose political capital by totally misreading the public mood time after time. A pattern has emerged - announce a policy, double down and ignore the chorus of disapproval from Labour MPs who can see through its failings, only to reverse course when political capital has been irretrievably lost, too late arriving at a policy which might have been reasonably acceptable had it been adopted at the outset. The winter fuel allowance saga is the classic example but only one case study amongst many. How on earth was that allowed to see the light of day by No 10 and No 11 when a half competent Downing St operation would have buried it? The fact that Starmer and Reeves are so poor at political communication skills should not obscure the fact that you can't turn the sows they come up with into silk purses.
Re the BBC fiasco, about which I have nothing much to say except that the BBC have a reputation to lose and Trump hasn't.
But one further point. It seems to me that a huge shift has occurred in the last decades as to how people see 'impartiality'. In particular, in past decades (I have listened a lot to the BBC since the late 1960s but watched very little) you could more or less think that when it came to impartiality and reliability, and indeed proper news priority, it was fairly easy to do, because you just assumed that the standard was set by the BBC, not that the BBC was trying to follow a standard set by others. If you go back long enough the same could be said for The Times. (Do other PB readers remember when if there was a new government in the Sudan, The Times would print a complete list of ministers?)
Now I am 60 years on from the 1960s it is obvious that 'impartiality' like 'the view from nowhere' is not to be had, unless it is to be had in that sort of cultural assumption. It's there with justice and fairness as a good target but unattainable.
I am reminded of Alasdair Macintyre's (sadly he died this year) masterpiece 'Whose justice? Which rationality?' Perhaps a lot of older people are nostalgic for a society in which, like 'Whose Impartiality', it didn't seem necessary to ask the question.
What’s the point of having a pious boring Berk in No10 if he’s also incompetent and keeps breaking the rules?
BREAKING: Keir Starmer admits he DID sign off the appointment of David Kogan as chairman of the football regulator - despite taking donations from him.
PM has written to the No10 ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus saying: "This was an unfortunate error for which I express my sincere regret."
Magnus replies that this was "regrettable" and welcomes his promise to launch an internal review on appointments.
What’s the point of having a pious boring Berk in No10 if he’s also incompetent and keeps breaking the rules?
BREAKING: Keir Starmer admits he DID sign off the appointment of David Kogan as chairman of the football regulator - despite taking donations from him.
PM has written to the No10 ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus saying: "This was an unfortunate error for which I express my sincere regret."
Magnus replies that this was "regrettable" and welcomes his promise to launch an internal review on appointments.
That looks like a massive earthquake/landslide that took out the whole of the mao-ntainside...
I’m aware that I’m guilty of taking the view which is most comforting to hold, but I’m deeply sceptical of the genius of China. They’ve built a metric shit-tonne of stuff over the past 20 years; it will be interesting to see how much of it is still standing in another 20. I would be unsurprised to find a large proportion of their flats live no longer than 40 years and have to be knocked down before they collapse. Which will at least solve their problems of massive oversupply of housing (how many empty units are there in China? Conservative estimates are that there is more empty housing in China than there is housing in the UK; more radical estimates are that there is enough empty housing in China to house the entire world). And similarly their transport projects are impressive, but impressive exercises in expensively shuttling empty air around. China’s economy doesn’t work like ours. They decide in advance what growth will be, then do as much *stuff* - whether needed or not – so that their GDP matches up to that. That way a reckoning lies.
But of course other view are available and I'd invite @Leon to present a counterpoint.
I am using an Oppo Find N phone.
It is the same size as an iPhone Max. But it folds. It has incredible battery life. It is by far the best folding phone out there. It could well be the best smartphone on the market. (For those who aren't wedded to the Apple ecosystem.)
When Japan started doing electronics, companies in the West (like RCA and Philips and Grundig) laughed and said they were just doing cheap low end stuff. Then Sony and Pioneer became the dominant names.
Korea then came along, and suddenly Samsung was eating the Japanese companies lunches.
And now it is the Chinese eating the Koreans lunches.
In time, someone else - someone younger, hungrier and poorer - will end up surpassing the Chinese. But right now, they are the ones in the ascendent.
Do you think they made a mistake in becoming even more authoritarian than they were before when Xi took over in 2012? I think yes.
It does though rather undermine those who claim that a state controlled economy can never beat a free-market economy.
(i'd like to believe the Chinese miracle won't last but who knows?)
It's not state controlled in the way we think of it though. There is cut-throat competition between different Chinese companies.
NEW: Starmer faces Labour fury over top aide, briefings and budget...
...With just two weeks to go, Rachel Reeves has been unable to make final decisions on what policies to announce in part because of ongoing arguments about what to do, according to people familiar with the matter.
What a mess. Why did they seek office? Try to win power? For what purpose?
Anyone have a scoopy?
The adults… etc.
Say what you like about Blair-Brown era but we didn't have this wailing, wet knicker, 'oh, oh, woe is me, I don't know why we got elected? What are we to do??' crap.
Nor did we have it in any of the incarnations of the Conservative governments of 2010-2024.
They all had ideas, plans, strategies.
Perhaps the wrong ones, perhaps badly implemented, perhaps derailed by events.
But the only underlying theme of this Labour government is a belief in the righteousness of government welfare handouts.
There's not even a pretence that this is to improve public services or invest in infrastructure.
When the other side are shite that's bad; when your own side are also shite, that's really really depressing.
Nearly 30 degrees in French Pyrénées today apparently.
Wild for November.
Back in UK we have cold weather coming next week it seems. Single figures in day time.
If it stops raining, I don't mind.
Drove home from Chester to Dundee yesterday. It was seriously damp, quite dangerous amounts of surface water in places. By the time I got home unbending my fingers from the steering wheel was a challenge.
That looks like a massive earthquake/landslide that took out the whole of the mao-ntainside...
I’m aware that I’m guilty of taking the view which is most comforting to hold, but I’m deeply sceptical of the genius of China. They’ve built a metric shit-tonne of stuff over the past 20 years; it will be interesting to see how much of it is still standing in another 20. I would be unsurprised to find a large proportion of their flats live no longer than 40 years and have to be knocked down before they collapse. Which will at least solve their problems of massive oversupply of housing (how many empty units are there in China? Conservative estimates are that there is more empty housing in China than there is housing in the UK; more radical estimates are that there is enough empty housing in China to house the entire world). And similarly their transport projects are impressive, but impressive exercises in expensively shuttling empty air around. China’s economy doesn’t work like ours. They decide in advance what growth will be, then do as much *stuff* - whether needed or not – so that their GDP matches up to that. That way a reckoning lies.
But of course other view are available and I'd invite @Leon to present a counterpoint.
I am using an Oppo Find N phone.
It is the same size as an iPhone Max. But it folds. It has incredible battery life. It is by far the best folding phone out there. It could well be the best smartphone on the market. (For those who aren't wedded to the Apple ecosystem.)
When Japan started doing electronics, companies in the West (like RCA and Philips and Grundig) laughed and said they were just doing cheap low end stuff. Then Sony and Pioneer became the dominant names.
Korea then came along, and suddenly Samsung was eating the Japanese companies lunches.
And now it is the Chinese eating the Koreans lunches.
In time, someone else - someone younger, hungrier and poorer - will end up surpassing the Chinese. But right now, they are the ones in the ascendent.
Do you think they made a mistake in becoming even more authoritarian than they were before when Xi took over in 2012? I think yes.
It does though rather undermine those who claim that a state controlled economy can never beat a free-market economy.
(i'd like to believe the Chinese miracle won't last but who knows?)
It's not state controlled in the way we think of it though. There is cut-throat competition between different Chinese companies.
I get that it's not a Soviet-style 5-year plan but it's hardly free enterprise either.
That looks like a massive earthquake/landslide that took out the whole of the mao-ntainside...
I’m aware that I’m guilty of taking the view which is most comforting to hold, but I’m deeply sceptical of the genius of China. They’ve built a metric shit-tonne of stuff over the past 20 years; it will be interesting to see how much of it is still standing in another 20. I would be unsurprised to find a large proportion of their flats live no longer than 40 years and have to be knocked down before they collapse. Which will at least solve their problems of massive oversupply of housing (how many empty units are there in China? Conservative estimates are that there is more empty housing in China than there is housing in the UK; more radical estimates are that there is enough empty housing in China to house the entire world). And similarly their transport projects are impressive, but impressive exercises in expensively shuttling empty air around. China’s economy doesn’t work like ours. They decide in advance what growth will be, then do as much *stuff* - whether needed or not – so that their GDP matches up to that. That way a reckoning lies.
But of course other view are available and I'd invite @Leon to present a counterpoint.
I am using an Oppo Find N phone.
It is the same size as an iPhone Max. But it folds. It has incredible battery life. It is by far the best folding phone out there. It could well be the best smartphone on the market. (For those who aren't wedded to the Apple ecosystem.)
When Japan started doing electronics, companies in the West (like RCA and Philips and Grundig) laughed and said they were just doing cheap low end stuff. Then Sony and Pioneer became the dominant names.
Korea then came along, and suddenly Samsung was eating the Japanese companies lunches.
And now it is the Chinese eating the Koreans lunches.
In time, someone else - someone younger, hungrier and poorer - will end up surpassing the Chinese. But right now, they are the ones in the ascendent.
Do you think they made a mistake in becoming even more authoritarian than they were before when Xi took over in 2012? I think yes.
It does though rather undermine those who claim that a state controlled economy can never beat a free-market economy.
(i'd like to believe the Chinese miracle won't last but who knows?)
It's not state controlled in the way we think of it though. There is cut-throat competition between different Chinese companies.
The way they do it is they decide on something they want to get really good at. They provide loads of support and subsidies so they don't have to worry about price to begin with. Then they drop the hammer and its survival of the fittest.
You only have to look at EV cars. Its like the hunger games now in the Chinese home market...
The South Korean did something similar, but restricted to a small number of families, but they were told you, you and you, are making ships. Off you go. Now you have got good, its competition time.
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
I agree with your critique @Cyclefree and I certainly agree on the substance. But I can also see how people are asking questions about Prescott and his report. Impartial, objective, independent, none of the above.
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
You do know your stuff. No question. Far more than most. But here you are trying to shoehorn a square peg into the round hole that you have expertise in. This is not a whistleblowing exposure of malpractice, it's an agenda driven attack on the BBC. I'm surprised you don't see it.
What’s the point of having a pious boring Berk in No10 if he’s also incompetent and keeps breaking the rules?
BREAKING: Keir Starmer admits he DID sign off the appointment of David Kogan as chairman of the football regulator - despite taking donations from him.
PM has written to the No10 ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus saying: "This was an unfortunate error for which I express my sincere regret."
Magnus replies that this was "regrettable" and welcomes his promise to launch an internal review on appointments.
That looks like a massive earthquake/landslide that took out the whole of the mao-ntainside...
I’m aware that I’m guilty of taking the view which is most comforting to hold, but I’m deeply sceptical of the genius of China. They’ve built a metric shit-tonne of stuff over the past 20 years; it will be interesting to see how much of it is still standing in another 20. I would be unsurprised to find a large proportion of their flats live no longer than 40 years and have to be knocked down before they collapse. Which will at least solve their problems of massive oversupply of housing (how many empty units are there in China? Conservative estimates are that there is more empty housing in China than there is housing in the UK; more radical estimates are that there is enough empty housing in China to house the entire world). And similarly their transport projects are impressive, but impressive exercises in expensively shuttling empty air around. China’s economy doesn’t work like ours. They decide in advance what growth will be, then do as much *stuff* - whether needed or not – so that their GDP matches up to that. That way a reckoning lies.
But of course other view are available and I'd invite @Leon to present a counterpoint.
I am using an Oppo Find N phone.
It is the same size as an iPhone Max. But it folds. It has incredible battery life. It is by far the best folding phone out there. It could well be the best smartphone on the market. (For those who aren't wedded to the Apple ecosystem.)
When Japan started doing electronics, companies in the West (like RCA and Philips and Grundig) laughed and said they were just doing cheap low end stuff. Then Sony and Pioneer became the dominant names.
Korea then came along, and suddenly Samsung was eating the Japanese companies lunches.
And now it is the Chinese eating the Koreans lunches.
In time, someone else - someone younger, hungrier and poorer - will end up surpassing the Chinese. But right now, they are the ones in the ascendent.
Do you think they made a mistake in becoming even more authoritarian than they were before when Xi took over in 2012? I think yes.
It does though rather undermine those who claim that a state controlled economy can never beat a free-market economy.
(i'd like to believe the Chinese miracle won't last but who knows?)
It's not state controlled in the way we think of it though. There is cut-throat competition between different Chinese companies.
I get that it's not a Soviet-style 5-year plan but it's hardly free enterprise either.
Where it gets murky is when a company that has already carved a perfectly good niche is then told by the state you must now do x. The background to recent Dutch chip maker story is a good example.
A Chinese company is a perfectly good contract manufactuerer of smart phones and smart phone bits and bobs, then suddenly they decide to buy a Dutch company that makes chips for cars. There is no obvious reason to be doing this, until you realise that the state have a big stake in the Chinese company and they want to get much better control over worldwide production of low cost chips for the automative sector.
What’s the point of having a pious boring Berk in No10 if he’s also incompetent and keeps breaking the rules?
BREAKING: Keir Starmer admits he DID sign off the appointment of David Kogan as chairman of the football regulator - despite taking donations from him.
PM has written to the No10 ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus saying: "This was an unfortunate error for which I express my sincere regret."
Magnus replies that this was "regrettable" and welcomes his promise to launch an internal review on appointments.
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
It seems reasonable to me for the BBC to write a response to the report. Just as they ought to if anyone else complained about bias.
Clearly though the 'independent' element of this system doesn't seem to have worked. It's been captured by partisans.
Nearly 30 degrees in French Pyrénées today apparently.
Wild for November.
Back in UK we have cold weather coming next week it seems. Single figures in day time.
If it stops raining, I don't mind.
Drove home from Chester to Dundee yesterday. It was seriously damp, quite dangerous amounts of surface water in places. By the time I got home unbending my fingers from the steering wheel was a challenge.
Roll-on driverless cars, eh. At least your fingers would be clamped to themselves rather than the steering wheel.
This is a problem in one respect for Sir Keir, but a bonus in another; it explains why he contradicts himself all the time - he has to appeal to two wildly different set of voters - but the bonus is, as has flip flopped on everything since he became an MP anyway, it comes naturally
Half of voters who backed Labour at the last general election have deserted the party, according to internal polling being shared with Labour MPs, reports @harriet_symonds
This is not great, speaking as a Tory centrist who voted Labour and as of today would do so again through gritted teeth. The 34-35% of voters who voted Labour in 2024 included a large number of those who voted Labour as a last resort, there being nowhere else to go. (My formula is fairly simple: you vote for a party that can come first or second in your seat, which in the olden days in England meant Lab, Con or LD, and within that constraint you vote for the best possible choice.)
In 2024 in my seat that was Labour and the unvoteable for Tory party (and candidate). Next time it will even less jolly, with Reform well in play. Tories remain impossible Reformlite. Reform are Reform. So Labour it is. Though without dancing in the street.
Fair analysis and we are in uncharted waters here with five parties polling in the range 14-26% (according to YouGov) currently.
In my part of the world, the "choice" will likely be Labour, perhaps Green and a candidate from the Newham Independents who are basically a pro-Muslim pro-Palestine organisation who might be running the Council from next May (perhaps).
I would have to consider a tactical vote for Labour to keep out the Newham Independent and/or the Greens - the local Greens are not as ideological as Polanski and have dug in around the newer parts of Stratford.
The positioning of the Conservatives will be fascinating - if they are seen as being too close to Reform, they will miss out on anti-Reform tactical voting but if they end up saying they won't support Reform before the election and end up supporting a Reform minority Government (even via C&S) they will be politically finished.
NEW: Starmer faces Labour fury over top aide, briefings and budget...
...With just two weeks to go, Rachel Reeves has been unable to make final decisions on what policies to announce in part because of ongoing arguments about what to do, according to people familiar with the matter.
The election is still potentially (indeed probably) at least 3.5 years off.
Whilst I enjoy all this speculation about what might happen, the simple and accurate answer is: Anything.
Anything could happen. Labour could get wiped off the map, Reform could implode... or romp home, the Tories could recover, Labour could recover.
History may not be a guide in this instance but history suggests the last of these is most likely.
I disagree. They came into power because people wanted shot of the last government. History suggests the same will happen to this lot.
If people feel a bit better off in 2028/9, Starmer's successor will be forgiven a lot. And whether or not that happens is very largely out of the hands of the government.
The election is still potentially (indeed probably) at least 3.5 years off.
Whilst I enjoy all this speculation about what might happen, the simple and accurate answer is: Anything.
Anything could happen. Labour could get wiped off the map, Reform could implode... or romp home, the Tories could recover, Labour could recover.
History may not be a guide in this instance but history suggests the last of these is most likely.
I disagree. They came into power because people wanted shot of the last government. History suggests the same will happen to this lot.
You may well be right about what will happen next time but history suggests most governments get more than one term. History may be bunkum in this instance.
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
I don't disagree - but it's also the case that this isn't true any more:
.."It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report...
The criticism of the US coverage is quite clearly not sound. Did the NBC make editorial mistakes - absolutely. But the allegation that its overall coverage was skewed is simply untrue, as far as I can see. And contains within it intentional inaccuracy.
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
I agree with your critique @Cyclefree and I certainly agree on the substance. But I can also see how people are asking questions about Prescott and his report. Impartial, objective, independent, none of the above.
Indeed. And for the umpteenth time I have said that I find some of his allegations overblown but that I do not know whether they are true or not. And neither do those attacking me. But they have not allowed this ignorance to stop them coming to a conclusion. Which is precisely the fucking problem in all these scandals - people forming opinions first and ignoring the evidence.
Unlike them I have said that there ought to be an investigation which would obviously include looking at whether Prescott's dossier is accurate.
Anyway I have a new novel to read which looks more interesting than beating my head against a brick wall. I did a lot of that at work but at least there I got paid for it.
So I will leave you all to your conspiracy theories. Have fun.
Question for @Foxy if you have time and inclination to answer..
Please could you tell me, how high is a C-Reactive Protein level of 279 mg/dL?
It is very high and generally a marker of severe inflammation.
No investigation should be interpreted in isolation, but rather in the context of history, examination, vital statistics like blood pressure, oxygen saturation and other investigations.
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
I agree with your critique @Cyclefree and I certainly agree on the substance. But I can also see how people are asking questions about Prescott and his report. Impartial, objective, independent, none of the above.
Indeed. And for the umpteenth time I have said that I find some of his allegations overblown but that I do not know whether they are true or not. And neither do those attacking me. But they have not allowed this ignorance to stop them coming to a conclusion. Which is precisely the fucking problem in all these scandals - people forming opinions first and ignoring the evidence.
Unlike them I have said that there ought to be an investigation which would obviously include looking at whether Prescott's dossier is accurate.
Anyway I have a new novel to read which looks more interesting than beating my head against a brick wall. I did a lot of that at work but at least there I got paid for it.
So I will leave you all to your conspiracy theories. Have fun.
Is anybody attacking you? For my part, I'm disagreeing with you, which I believe is allowed.
Is the book The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne (you quoted from it earlier)? I found it really powerful.
The race of the left to defend 'our BBC' (a lot of unintentional truth in that designation) is a bit like those undead dragon things in Lord of the Rings fleeing back to help Suaron when they drop the ring in the volcano.
It's pretty much exactly what would happen if the BBC were deeply biased toward the left and a hyperpartisan left wing crowd were afraid of losing that finger on the scales.
These people deserve their current panic, because most of them are bad faith debators who think that throwing up some chaff about 'Farage on Question Time again' is enough to make it appear that there's an argument about bias on both sides. There isn't, and there never has been.
Lab will get one chance to change the person at the top and that person will have to come out of the gates swinging at a large number of issues. Lab also need to identify an electorate they want to support them and go all out to win them. At the moment they are trying to appeal to everyone and pleasing absolutely no-one.
However, I say again, anyone who thinks Lab and the Cons will just sleep-walk through the next three-plus years without making serious changes hasn't been paying attention. We can dispute whether it will work but I seriously doubt it will leave either in a worse position than currently.
The race of the left to defend 'our BBC' (a lot of unintentional truth in that designation) is a bit like those undead dragon things in Lord of the Rings fleeing back to help Suaron when they drop the ring in the volcano.
It's pretty much exactly what would happen if the BBC were deeply biased toward the left and a hyperpartisan left wing crowd were afraid of losing that finger on the scales.
These people deserve their current panic, because most of them are bad faith debators who think that throwing up some chaff about 'Farage on Question Time again' is enough to make it appear that there's an argument about bias on both sides. There isn't, and there never has been.
The election is still potentially (indeed probably) at least 3.5 years off.
Whilst I enjoy all this speculation about what might happen, the simple and accurate answer is: Anything.
Anything could happen. Labour could get wiped off the map, Reform could implode... or romp home, the Tories could recover, Labour could recover.
History may not be a guide in this instance but history suggests the last of these is most likely.
I disagree. They came into power because people wanted shot of the last government. History suggests the same will happen to this lot.
If people feel a bit better off in 2028/9, Starmer's successor will be forgiven a lot. And whether or not that happens is very largely out of the hands of the government.
I would say that being seen to try to improve things would at least be a start. At the moment it is very hard to see what the point of the current Government is. Even in terms of managed decline it has been an almighty balls up. You think noone could do worse and then you see who is leading in the polls and you start to wonder. Maybe there is someone...
Lab will get one chance to change the person at the top and that person will have to come out of the gates swinging at a large number of issues. Lab also need to identify an electorate they want to support them and go all out to win them. At the moment they are trying to appeal to everyone and pleasing absolutely no-one.
However, I say again, anyone who thinks Lab and the Cons will just sleep-walk through the next three-plus years without making serious changes hasn't been paying attention. We can dispute whether it will work but I seriously doubt it will leave either in a worse position than currently.
I don't think Labour has the luxury of waiting, though. Unless Starmer radically improves (which seems pretty unlikely) another year of this drift will surely be fatal for them ? There's plenty of time before the next election to change perceptions, but not if they just keep buggering on.
This is a problem in one respect for Sir Keir, but a bonus in another; it explains why he contradicts himself all the time - he has to appeal to two wildly different set of voters - but the bonus is, as has flip flopped on everything since he became an MP anyway, it comes naturally
Half of voters who backed Labour at the last general election have deserted the party, according to internal polling being shared with Labour MPs, reports @harriet_symonds
This is not great, speaking as a Tory centrist who voted Labour and as of today would do so again through gritted teeth. The 34-35% of voters who voted Labour in 2024 included a large number of those who voted Labour as a last resort, there being nowhere else to go. (My formula is fairly simple: you vote for a party that can come first or second in your seat, which in the olden days in England meant Lab, Con or LD, and within that constraint you vote for the best possible choice.)
In 2024 in my seat that was Labour and the unvoteable for Tory party (and candidate). Next time it will even less jolly, with Reform well in play. Tories remain impossible Reformlite. Reform are Reform. So Labour it is. Though without dancing in the street.
Fair analysis and we are in uncharted waters here with five parties polling in the range 14-26% (according to YouGov) currently.
In my part of the world, the "choice" will likely be Labour, perhaps Green and a candidate from the Newham Independents who are basically a pro-Muslim pro-Palestine organisation who might be running the Council from next May (perhaps).
I would have to consider a tactical vote for Labour to keep out the Newham Independent and/or the Greens - the local Greens are not as ideological as Polanski and have dug in around the newer parts of Stratford.
The positioning of the Conservatives will be fascinating - if they are seen as being too close to Reform, they will miss out on anti-Reform tactical voting but if they end up saying they won't support Reform before the election and end up supporting a Reform minority Government (even via C&S) they will be politically finished.
I don't follow the logic of your last statement at all. The Tories should do pretty well out of a coalition with Reform. They are the more experienced politically. The Tory Party in Canada that was effectively taken over by 'Reform' actually ended up taking 'Reform' over again.
Don't forget that the Lib Dems had a totemic policy that was torpedoed when they entered the coalition. The Tories don't really have any popular policies that Reform might want to jettison. Reform might cut welfare less than the Tories (though there might not be a choice) but I don't see anything likely to cause generational resentment.
I would say that being seen to try to improve things would at least be a start. At the moment it is very hard to see what the point of the current Government is.
Apparently, Starmer thinks that of all the priority left-wing things he should be doing, the most priority-est and left-wingy-est he can do is...ID cards
(stares slack-jawed in amazement, starts rocking back and forth)
@LostPassword That's a very interesting header, thank you. Rather leaves me wondering why SKS got into politics at all. He'd had a fairly successful career in law, I gather.
Have to admit to surprise at how useless Starmer has been as PM. Uniquely amongst recent leaders he came into the job with a track record of successfully running a complex organisation, unlike say Johnson or Truss who were obviously unsuited for the role.
What went wrong?
People say that they want politicians who have experience of running things, but being a political leader is not like that. It requires other skills - persuasion, inspiration, simplifying complicated things for a large audience, (counting).
In principle local and regional politics should train politicians in these skills, but for a variety of reasons that isn't happening.
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
You do know your stuff. No question. Far more than most. But here you are trying to shoehorn a square peg into the round hole that you have expertise in. This is not a whistleblowing exposure of malpractice, it's an agenda driven attack on the BBC. I'm surprised you don't see it.
I will see it if and when there is an investigation showing that and that there is no substance to any of the allegations.
It is you who have formed an opinion without the evidence to support it. Not me.
This - if it were sent to a senior person at any of the places I have worked at - would be treated as a whistleblowing. Rightly so. It is how it should be treated by the BBC. It should be investigated and by a proper investigation team.
And I will let you into another professional secret. All investigations - whether into complaints, whistleblowings, matters raised by internal audit or the business or however they come in and whatever they are called, are and should be investigated to the same high standard and with the same rigour. That is what should happen here.
You don't want that to happen because you are worried at what such an investigation might show. I want it to happen because I would like to find out the answer. And because I think that process will help improve matters at the BBC. Not least because it would - I would hope - answer the question of why an external consultant was brought in by the D-G to do this job after the Bashir scandal rather than having a proper investigation team.
Question for @Foxy if you have time and inclination to answer..
Please could you tell me, how high is a C-Reactive Protein level of 279 mg/dL?
High enough that you should be seeing someone not posting on here
Without wishing to worry anyone - if I was seeing that number, it would go straight to hospital. Right now.
Where are you getting it from?
That was what my reading was when I was in hospital just over three weeks ago. They gave me loads of antibiotics and I feel better, but I don't know if I'm well
When I went to hospital, it was because I had excruciating pain in my chest; I didn't think I felt otherwise unwell. The follow up from the hospital was to tell me to get a chest x-ray in eight weeks, but nothing about a follow-up blood test, which my Dad thought was insane
After many long phone calls, I finally managed today to get my doctors surgery to get my GP to look at the details and get me booked in for a blood test. They offered me their earliest appointment for a blood test - in nine days time; I'm hoping to go back to work a week today
After some slightly terse discussion about the practicalities of their earliest appointment, they've booked me in for 7:30am tomorrow
CRP generally comes down quickly after treatment, often being back to normal in days.
The election is still potentially (indeed probably) at least 3.5 years off.
Whilst I enjoy all this speculation about what might happen, the simple and accurate answer is: Anything.
Anything could happen. Labour could get wiped off the map, Reform could implode... or romp home, the Tories could recover, Labour could recover.
History may not be a guide in this instance but history suggests the last of these is most likely.
I disagree. They came into power because people wanted shot of the last government. History suggests the same will happen to this lot.
If people feel a bit better off in 2028/9, Starmer's successor will be forgiven a lot. And whether or not that happens is very largely out of the hands of the government.
I really cannot see that happening (people feeling better off). We are consuming too much, our government is borrowing too much, taxes and therefore costs are rising, unemployment is rising, and I fear the increase in real wages will prove short lived.
We are, as a country, going to be squeezed either in ways of our own choosing (if the government starts to face reality) or not (if the markets lose patience and do it for us). It's a tough time to be in government. It needs some clear eyed cold calculation and we have a political class that focuses on irrelevances and avoids hard choices.
* Cabinet ministers say Sir Keir Starmer should sack his chief of staff. 'There isn't an obvious solution that doesn't involve firing him,' says one. 'If the PM didn't approve it, he needs to get rid of Morgan,' says another. McSweeney has categorically denied being behind the briefings
* Streeting allies say that they believe Starmer was aware of the briefings & say Number 10 is 'not in touch with reality'. This is denied by Starmer
* 'As if he doesn't know, of course he knows. This is Morgan's doing, everybody knows that. Ultimately, Keir is responsible. No 10 has completely miscalculated. Wes has come out much stronger. What they've done is tried to kill him but inadvertently ended up making him a credible alternative'
* Starmer had lunch with Labour MPs in the members' dining room after PMQs. He dismissed the furore as 'nonsense'. This did not go down well with everyone at the table. One MP said that the PLP is 'livid'
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
But you might expect an internal investigation to be truthful, objective, accurate and carried out in good faith, when this report is clearly none of these things. Why would we hold the investigation to a completely ethical standard from the journalism?
Meanwhile, in "so this is how the world ends" news,
Exclusive: Adolf Hitler’s DNA has been sequenced by scientists
It has: - shown he had a disorder which impacted his sexual development - debunked rumours about his ancestry - shown a high likelihood that he had a neurodivergent condition and/or bipolar disorder
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
I agree with your critique @Cyclefree and I certainly agree on the substance. But I can also see how people are asking questions about Prescott and his report. Impartial, objective, independent, none of the above.
Indeed. And for the umpteenth time I have said that I find some of his allegations overblown but that I do not know whether they are true or not. And neither do those attacking me. But they have not allowed this ignorance to stop them coming to a conclusion. Which is precisely the fucking problem in all these scandals - people forming opinions first and ignoring the evidence.
Unlike them I have said that there ought to be an investigation which would obviously include looking at whether Prescott's dossier is accurate.
Anyway I have a new novel to read which looks more interesting than beating my head against a brick wall. I did a lot of that at work but at least there I got paid for it.
So I will leave you all to your conspiracy theories. Have fun.
It's not a conspiracy theory that Prescott has done precisely the same thing he criticises the BBC for doing. That is evident in his own report.
And there's no real way to dismiss that as accidental.
I've not commented on the rest of his critique (and I don't disagree that the BBC should answer it - AFAIK, neither does the BBC), but it's entirely fair to question his motives an reliability.
One final point - the Trump allegations are existential for the BBC, and leading all media discussion. It's not just our choice to focus on them.
* Cabinet ministers say Sir Keir Starmer should sack his chief of staff. 'There isn't an obvious solution that doesn't involve firing him,' says one. 'If the PM didn't approve it, he needs to get rid of Morgan,' says another. McSweeney has categorically denied being behind the briefings
* Streeting allies say that they believe Starmer was aware of the briefings & say Number 10 is 'not in touch with reality'. This is denied by Starmer
* 'As if he doesn't know, of course he knows. This is Morgan's doing, everybody knows that. Ultimately, Keir is responsible. No 10 has completely miscalculated. Wes has come out much stronger. What they've done is tried to kill him but inadvertently ended up making him a credible alternative'
* Starmer had lunch with Labour MPs in the members' dining room after PMQs. He dismissed the furore as 'nonsense'. This did not go down well with everyone at the table. One MP said that the PLP is 'livid'
The race of the left to defend 'our BBC' (a lot of unintentional truth in that designation) is a bit like those undead dragon things in Lord of the Rings fleeing back to help Suaron when they drop the ring in the volcano.
It's pretty much exactly what would happen if the BBC were deeply biased toward the left and a hyperpartisan left wing crowd were afraid of losing that finger on the scales.
These people deserve their current panic, because most of them are bad faith debators who think that throwing up some chaff about 'Farage on Question Time again' is enough to make it appear that there's an argument about bias on both sides. There isn't, and there never has been.
Back to GB News for you then, I guess.
I haven't watched broadcast news for a long time, but I do pay the licence fee, and I don't especially see why I should pay for an organisation to pump out a world view that I think is actively unhelpful at best.
* Cabinet ministers say Sir Keir Starmer should sack his chief of staff. 'There isn't an obvious solution that doesn't involve firing him,' says one. 'If the PM didn't approve it, he needs to get rid of Morgan,' says another. McSweeney has categorically denied being behind the briefings
* Streeting allies say that they believe Starmer was aware of the briefings & say Number 10 is 'not in touch with reality'. This is denied by Starmer
* 'As if he doesn't know, of course he knows. This is Morgan's doing, everybody knows that. Ultimately, Keir is responsible. No 10 has completely miscalculated. Wes has come out much stronger. What they've done is tried to kill him but inadvertently ended up making him a credible alternative'
* Starmer had lunch with Labour MPs in the members' dining room after PMQs. He dismissed the furore as 'nonsense'. This did not go down well with everyone at the table. One MP said that the PLP is 'livid'
The election is still potentially (indeed probably) at least 3.5 years off.
Whilst I enjoy all this speculation about what might happen, the simple and accurate answer is: Anything.
Anything could happen. Labour could get wiped off the map, Reform could implode... or romp home, the Tories could recover, Labour could recover.
History may not be a guide in this instance but history suggests the last of these is most likely.
I disagree. They came into power because people wanted shot of the last government. History suggests the same will happen to this lot.
You may well be right about what will happen next time but history suggests most governments get more than one term. History may be bunkum in this instance.
Most opposition parties win elections rather than the government losing.
Question for @Foxy if you have time and inclination to answer..
Please could you tell me, how high is a C-Reactive Protein level of 279 mg/dL?
High enough that you should be seeing someone not posting on here
Without wishing to worry anyone - if I was seeing that number, it would go straight to hospital. Right now.
Where are you getting it from?
That was what my reading was when I was in hospital just over three weeks ago. They gave me loads of antibiotics and I feel better, but I don't know if I'm well
When I went to hospital, it was because I had excruciating pain in my chest; I didn't think I felt otherwise unwell. The follow up from the hospital was to tell me to get a chest x-ray in eight weeks, but nothing about a follow-up blood test, which my Dad thought was insane
After many long phone calls, I finally managed today to get my doctors surgery to get my GP to look at the details and get me booked in for a blood test. They offered me their earliest appointment for a blood test - in nine days time; I'm hoping to go back to work a week today
After some slightly terse discussion about the practicalities of their earliest appointment, they've booked me in for 7:30am tomorrow
CRP generally comes down quickly after treatment, often being back to normal in days.
* Cabinet ministers say Sir Keir Starmer should sack his chief of staff. 'There isn't an obvious solution that doesn't involve firing him,' says one. 'If the PM didn't approve it, he needs to get rid of Morgan,' says another. McSweeney has categorically denied being behind the briefings
* Streeting allies say that they believe Starmer was aware of the briefings & say Number 10 is 'not in touch with reality'. This is denied by Starmer
* 'As if he doesn't know, of course he knows. This is Morgan's doing, everybody knows that. Ultimately, Keir is responsible. No 10 has completely miscalculated. Wes has come out much stronger. What they've done is tried to kill him but inadvertently ended up making him a credible alternative'
* Starmer had lunch with Labour MPs in the members' dining room after PMQs. He dismissed the furore as 'nonsense'. This did not go down well with everyone at the table. One MP said that the PLP is 'livid'
That must have been a big table.
There is a conspiracy theory that says that this has all been done to help Streeting. He's very much in the Blairite, Starmerite mould, so as I said this morning, not first in line when Starmer bites it. Now he looks like a brave, bold, unfairly maligned rebel.
The person it doesn't work for is Starmer. It it is a conspiracy, clearly he's so determined to secure his successor, that he's prepared to trash his own reputation to do it. Either that or the conspiracy is completely without his knowledge or consent.
Meanwhile, in "so this is how the world ends" news,
Exclusive: Adolf Hitler’s DNA has been sequenced by scientists
It has: - shown he had a disorder which impacted his sexual development - debunked rumours about his ancestry - shown a high likelihood that he had a neurodivergent condition and/or bipolar disorder
The Times article is much better than the [whatver you call posts on bluesky]. It correctly labels the polygenic risk score analysis as inconclusive - he may have been in the top 10% on PRS, but that doesn't tend to imply high likelihood - it doesn't seem to specify, but it's common for top 10% PRS to indicate a well under evens chance of a condition.
(ETA: the freaky thing about PRS is that some US genetics companies will do it for you on embryo selection in IVF, where the similarity of the genetics will likely mean that any apparent differences are really marginal and uncertain)
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
But you might expect an internal investigation to be truthful, objective, accurate and carried out in good faith, when this report is clearly none of these things. Why would we hold the investigation to a completely ethical standard from the journalism?
See my last comment. What Prescott has done is not an internal investigation. (If anyone in my team had presented that as a report, I'd have .... well, never mind, they wouldn't have dared.) He has written about a load of issues - some of which are opinion, some of which appear to be facts but who knows - which he thinks show a load of problems. The report raises a load of questions. It does not really provide answers though it does have a lot of opinionated conclusions.
It needs a proper team going through everything he says to see whether what he is saying is accurate or not and if not how and why. This is called an investigation and it should be done because it is the best possible answer to the criticisms being made.
This is not hard to understand.
When people and organisations are so resistant to doing something which is likely to help them, the next obvious question is why?
The race of the left to defend 'our BBC' (a lot of unintentional truth in that designation) is a bit like those undead dragon things in Lord of the Rings fleeing back to help Suaron when they drop the ring in the volcano.
It's pretty much exactly what would happen if the BBC were deeply biased toward the left and a hyperpartisan left wing crowd were afraid of losing that finger on the scales.
These people deserve their current panic, because most of them are bad faith debators who think that throwing up some chaff about 'Farage on Question Time again' is enough to make it appear that there's an argument about bias on both sides. There isn't, and there never has been.
Back to GB News for you then, I guess.
I haven't watched broadcast news for a long time, but I do pay the licence fee, and I don't especially see why I should pay for an organisation to pump out a world view that I think is actively unhelpful at best.
It's tricky Lucky. If the BBC pumped out your world view, I'd similarly object. It's never going to satisfy everyone, it often annoys me, but it does remain one of, if not the, most trusted news broadcasters in the world.
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
But you might expect an internal investigation to be truthful, objective, accurate and carried out in good faith, when this report is clearly none of these things. Why would we hold the investigation to a completely ethical standard from the journalism?
I'm sure that Cyclefree would. I think on this you're talking at cross purposes.
The race of the left to defend 'our BBC' (a lot of unintentional truth in that designation) is a bit like those undead dragon things in Lord of the Rings fleeing back to help Suaron when they drop the ring in the volcano.
It's pretty much exactly what would happen if the BBC were deeply biased toward the left and a hyperpartisan left wing crowd were afraid of losing that finger on the scales.
These people deserve their current panic, because most of them are bad faith debators who think that throwing up some chaff about 'Farage on Question Time again' is enough to make it appear that there's an argument about bias on both sides. There isn't, and there never has been.
Back to GB News for you then, I guess.
I haven't watched broadcast news for a long time, but I do pay the licence fee, and I don't especially see why I should pay for an organisation to pump out a world view that I think is actively unhelpful at best.
Wait, what? Lucky Guy, are you seriously saying that an organisation that has Robbie Gibb on its board 'has no argument about bias on both sides'?
* Cabinet ministers say Sir Keir Starmer should sack his chief of staff. 'There isn't an obvious solution that doesn't involve firing him,' says one. 'If the PM didn't approve it, he needs to get rid of Morgan,' says another. McSweeney has categorically denied being behind the briefings
* Streeting allies say that they believe Starmer was aware of the briefings & say Number 10 is 'not in touch with reality'. This is denied by Starmer
* 'As if he doesn't know, of course he knows. This is Morgan's doing, everybody knows that. Ultimately, Keir is responsible. No 10 has completely miscalculated. Wes has come out much stronger. What they've done is tried to kill him but inadvertently ended up making him a credible alternative'
* Starmer had lunch with Labour MPs in the members' dining room after PMQs. He dismissed the furore as 'nonsense'. This did not go down well with everyone at the table. One MP said that the PLP is 'livid'
That must have been a big table.
Fire sale at the Kremlin to support the Russian war effort?
Question for @Foxy if you have time and inclination to answer..
Please could you tell me, how high is a C-Reactive Protein level of 279 mg/dL?
It is very high and generally a marker of severe inflammation.
No investigation should be interpreted in isolation, but rather in the context of history, examination, vital statistics like blood pressure, oxygen saturation and other investigations.
I've been sent to A&E direct from a GP twice over the years (ie "get there in the next 2 hours"). The first was for an immediate operation on a foot ulcer (diabetic + foot ulcer = serious), which was caused by a shoe rubbing. The second was for some unusual cysts in several places resulting from leukemia weakening infection resistance so "skin surface" bugs had gone through the weakened resistance and got "inside".
I think @BlancheLivermore has done the right thing, and in the circs so soon after major trauma feeling at risk my suggestions would be:
1 - Refer yourself back to or consult the contact you were left with when you came out, who is likely to be a specialist nurse - who usually know more about practicalities and continuing management than a Doctor. 2 - Go through NHS 111, who in my experience are good at identifying a need for a referral, and may book it or arrange a paramedic visit. 3 - Emergency or next day GP appointment. My practice keeps some free every day. 4 - A&E if it is needed, but the other routes may be more comfortable.
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
I agree with your critique @Cyclefree and I certainly agree on the substance. But I can also see how people are asking questions about Prescott and his report. Impartial, objective, independent, none of the above.
I see parallels with a certain Tommy Robinson (also known as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) and his campaign around grooming gangs. Now his motives may have been impure (a hatred of Islam/muslims) but the bad facts he was bringing up were true. There was (and probably still is) an issue. But because of who he is, people ignored it.
People on here are attacking Prescott for attacking the BBC and because he is of the right they are dismissing his complaints. I think that’s very dangerous. On some of the issues he is right. BBC Arabic broadcasting a very skewed output on Gaza, for instance. A dangerous adoption and pushing of non scientific nonsense on trans.
Just because you don’t like a messenger, or think their motives not pure, it doesn’t mean you should ignore their words.
The race of the left to defend 'our BBC' (a lot of unintentional truth in that designation) is a bit like those undead dragon things in Lord of the Rings fleeing back to help Suaron when they drop the ring in the volcano.
It's pretty much exactly what would happen if the BBC were deeply biased toward the left and a hyperpartisan left wing crowd were afraid of losing that finger on the scales.
These people deserve their current panic, because most of them are bad faith debators who think that throwing up some chaff about 'Farage on Question Time again' is enough to make it appear that there's an argument about bias on both sides. There isn't, and there never has been.
Back to GB News for you then, I guess.
I haven't watched broadcast news for a long time, but I do pay the licence fee, and I don't especially see why I should pay for an organisation to pump out a world view that I think is actively unhelpful at best.
Question for @Foxy if you have time and inclination to answer..
Please could you tell me, how high is a C-Reactive Protein level of 279 mg/dL?
High enough that you should be seeing someone not posting on here
Without wishing to worry anyone - if I was seeing that number, it would go straight to hospital. Right now.
Where are you getting it from?
That was what my reading was when I was in hospital just over three weeks ago. They gave me loads of antibiotics and I feel better, but I don't know if I'm well
When I went to hospital, it was because I had excruciating pain in my chest; I didn't think I felt otherwise unwell. The follow up from the hospital was to tell me to get a chest x-ray in eight weeks, but nothing about a follow-up blood test, which my Dad thought was insane
After many long phone calls, I finally managed today to get my doctors surgery to get my GP to look at the details and get me booked in for a blood test. They offered me their earliest appointment for a blood test - in nine days time; I'm hoping to go back to work a week today
After some slightly terse discussion about the practicalities of their earliest appointment, they've booked me in for 7:30am tomorrow
CRP generally comes down quickly after treatment, often being back to normal in days.
You wouldn't bother with another CRP test?
I would normally do one after a few days of treatment as a measure of how well the treatment was working.
It is reasonable to check to confirm that its back to normal as part of a wider assessment.
Meaning that a pretty remarkable pressure campaign -- including phone call from the president and a personal meeting in the Situation Room with the AG, Deputy AG and FBI director -- could not sway a Republican House member.
The election is still potentially (indeed probably) at least 3.5 years off.
Whilst I enjoy all this speculation about what might happen, the simple and accurate answer is: Anything.
Anything could happen. Labour could get wiped off the map, Reform could implode... or romp home, the Tories could recover, Labour could recover.
History may not be a guide in this instance but history suggests the last of these is most likely.
I disagree. They came into power because people wanted shot of the last government. History suggests the same will happen to this lot.
If people feel a bit better off in 2028/9, Starmer's successor will be forgiven a lot. And whether or not that happens is very largely out of the hands of the government.
I really cannot see that happening (people feeling better off). We are consuming too much, our government is borrowing too much, taxes and therefore costs are rising, unemployment is rising, and I fear the increase in real wages will prove short lived.
We are, as a country, going to be squeezed either in ways of our own choosing (if the government starts to face reality) or not (if the markets lose patience and do it for us). It's a tough time to be in government. It needs some clear eyed cold calculation and we have a political class that focuses on irrelevances and avoids hard choices.
The simplest way is that global geopolitics settles down, the global cost of hydrocarbons comes down, people don't feel so stretched. Or the flip from 0% to 4% base rates finally works through the system, and we stop having cohorts of people having nasty shocks.
Yes, we still have the gap between the taxes we feel content about paying and the spending we expect "in return", but there will be some slack to cope with that.
Global energy prices killed Heath, had a lot to do with the Trusstershambles, and kept Rishi on the back foot. They probably won't save Starmer, they might (but might not) help his successor.
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
But you might expect an internal investigation to be truthful, objective, accurate and carried out in good faith, when this report is clearly none of these things. Why would we hold the investigation to a completely ethical standard from the journalism?
See my last comment. What Prescott has done is not an internal investigation. (If anyone in my team had presented that as a report, I'd have .... well, never mind, they wouldn't have dared.) He has written about a load of issues - some of which are opinion, some of which appear to be facts but who knows - which he thinks show a load of problems. The report raises a load of questions. It does not really provide answers though it does have a lot of opinionated conclusions.
It needs a proper team going through everything he says to see whether what he is saying is accurate or not and if not how and why. This is called an investigation and it should be done because it is the best possible answer to the criticisms being made.
This is not hard to understand.
When people and organisations are so resistant to doing something which is likely to help them, the next obvious question is why?
I'm not entirely clear that it's fair to label the BBC as resistant to investigation at this point ?
I think it would be fairer to say they are in a state of some confusion, given the events of the last few days, and in any event have no real idea of how to go about the kind of thing you suggest.
(And as we discussed yesterday, how such an investigation might be structured isn't as clearcut as the other ones you've previously discussed.)
Was just trying to cancel my license fee (not especially related to current events - just haven't watched any BBC content for 2+ years, so...)
"To continue with your cancellation, please call a member of our team on 0300 790 6098*.
We're open 08:30 - 18:30 Monday to Friday.
*Calls to our 0300 numbers cost no more than a national rate call to an 01 or 02 number, whether from a mobile or landline."
... Wut?
You know you need a TV licence to watch or record any live broadcast or live on-demand programme (e.g. live sport) in the UK, not just the BBC? (Also for any iPlayer content).
The BBC's "anti-bias" dossier that called out Panorama for splicing together disconnected quotes itself spliced together disconnected quotes.
According to Michael Prescott Trump actually said the following, which indicated there was no incitement to riot:
We are gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What Trump actually, actually said it appears was the following, with the bit that Prescott cut out in italics and a clear incitement to riot;
We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Did Mr Prescott not use ellipses - [...] most explicitly?
Mind it doesn't always work. Slab once put out a press release bitterly attacking the SNP for misquoting someone or other by leaving stuff out full stop. Slab hadn't realised what the funny characters meant.
He did not. No indication that these were disconnected quotes. He based his assertion that there was no incitement and that Panorama was misleading the viewer on his misquotation when the full quotation would have made clear there was incitement.
Arguably worse than what Panorama did.
Thanks. How utterly extraordinary.
Not really, it was a politically motivated hatchet job. The Newsagent podcast on this is the most revealing about what has been going on inside BBC news. Clearly they're not impartial, but their accounts have not been rebutted (just ignored).
The News Agents podcast is an excellent rebuttal of @Cyclefree's BBC critique from yesterday.
The irony is we are criticising the BBC for a poor edit, the biased dossier which raised this does itself have a similarly poor edit; and the subject of complaint is the most egregious liar in democratic political history.
The tail is not so much wagging the dog, it is throttling it.
The dossier is not simply about the Trump documentary. This is a point that you and others repeatedly ignore. It certainly suits the BBC and those defending it to pretend that it is. But it is a mistake.
I said yesterday in the header this -
"It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report.
And this BTL -
"As for having an agenda: all whistleblowers and complainants have an agenda. But an investigator who allows that agenda to stop them investigating properly is a very bad one indeed. An organisation who does that is an organisation in denial. That is their agenda and it is a harmful one.
I cannot assess the validity of the Prescott criticisms. Some seem a little overblown; others much more serious. The Trump Panorama one seems to my mind less serious than some of the others."
And again this -
"As to your second point, I am not convinced by all the accusations Prescott makes. But there are statements of fact he makes from which he draws conclusions of bias etc. So were I being asked what to do, I would investigate those statements of fact, interview the relevant people etc. review the applicable policies, guidance and so on and establish exactly what happened and why and what he (Prescott) may have left out and whether this shows no issue or a breach of guidelines / policies or laws, or, potentially, a problem with internal policies/scrutiny/governance/training etc. This is standard investigative stuff. There will also be mitigating factors, which he does not consider."
So all they are doing is pointing out that Prescott has an agenda and may well have got his facts and allegations wrong, both of which I pointed out yesterday. That is the case in pretty much the majority of whistleblowing investigations and I have done far more of them than Lewis Goodall or Emily Maitlis or Jon Sopel or all 3 of them combined. Allegations are simply that - allegations. Some are untrue, some are made up, some are misunderstandings, some have answers, some are true and a problem and some are true but not a problem because ..... It is the investigation that gives you that information not evidence that the allegations come from someone with an agenda.
What those journalists have not done is investigated the entirety of the claims made and proved that they are - each and every one of them - wholly untrue. Instead they are doing a version of no 3 in yesterday's list. Prescott may well be a dubious or partisan source but that is neither a complete nor a sufficient answer to all the claims made in what he writes.
Oh and @kinabalu is someone who does not understand what a whistleblowing is. Like most people.
But I understand what it isn't.
I am afraid you don't. On this topic I really really know my stuff and you do not.
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
I agree with your critique @Cyclefree and I certainly agree on the substance. But I can also see how people are asking questions about Prescott and his report. Impartial, objective, independent, none of the above.
I see parallels with a certain Tommy Robinson (also known as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) and his campaign around grooming gangs. Now his motives may have been impure (a hatred of Islam/muslims) but the bad facts he was bringing up were true. There was (and probably still is) an issue. But because of who he is, people ignored it.
People on here are attacking Prescott for attacking the BBC and because he is of the right they are dismissing his complaints. I think that’s very dangerous. On some of the issues he is right. BBC Arabic broadcasting a very skewed output on Gaza, for instance. A dangerous adoption and pushing of non scientific nonsense on trans.
Just because you don’t like a messenger, or think their motives not pure, it doesn’t mean you should ignore their words.
Even when Andrew Norfolk wrote his articles in the Times, he was initially smeared as racist / Islamophobe / dodgy motives....part of the Murdoch media empire, etc.
Comments
The BBC would be and do so much better if it actually answered its critics with substance. Instead of this wailing about how unfair and horrid it all is.
In 2024 in my seat that was Labour and the unvoteable for Tory party (and candidate). Next time it will even less jolly, with Reform well in play. Tories remain impossible Reformlite. Reform are Reform. So Labour it is. Though without dancing in the street.
I am afraid you're calling this one completely wrong @Cyclefree. You are being played.
Who to believe Cyclefree or a deluded idiot?? Sooooo hard!
Now it turns out that his editing complaint was... erm... edited.
Whether it's fair or not, that weakens the impact of his other criticisms. A rapier is always more potent than spray-painted sewage.
What's interesting is that the Telegraph seems not to have checked this, and a lot of yesterday's hoohhah was about things that weren't what they seemed on first glance.
Maybe we should just have one news bulletin a week, on Sunday after evensong. And no event is reported until enough time has passed for its veracity and importance to become clear.
"Last with the news", rather than "never wrong for long".
Edited to correct blockquote
More news than ever, but that makes it easier to ignore what's important.
(i'd like to believe the Chinese miracle won't last but who knows?)
Wild for November.
Back in UK we have cold weather coming next week it seems. Single figures in day time.
They all had ideas, plans, strategies.
Perhaps the wrong ones, perhaps badly implemented, perhaps derailed by events.
But the only underlying theme of this Labour government is a belief in the righteousness of government welfare handouts.
There's not even a pretence that this is to improve public services or invest in infrastructure.
Starmer's failings are not so much down to his personal lack of political communication skills, but more a manifestation of the collective failure in government of the factional background team around him and Reeves.
That factional team, led by McSweeney, excelled in backstabbing in internal party battles but has proved totally lacking in basic political nous when it comes to understanding the concerns of the voting public. It was they who chose Starmer as the figure best placed to depose Corbyn oblivious to his wider lack of political skills. Since the lousy election campaign (10% vote share lost in 6 weeks) they have continued to lose political capital by totally misreading the public mood time after time. A pattern has emerged - announce a policy, double down and ignore the chorus of disapproval from Labour MPs who can see through its failings, only to reverse course when political capital has been irretrievably lost, too late arriving at a policy which might have been reasonably acceptable had it been adopted at the outset. The winter fuel allowance saga is the classic example but only one case study amongst many. How on earth was that allowed to see the light of day by No 10 and No 11 when a half competent Downing St operation would have buried it? The fact that Starmer and Reeves are so poor at political communication skills should not obscure the fact that you can't turn the sows they come up with into silk purses.
But one further point. It seems to me that a huge shift has occurred in the last decades as to how people see 'impartiality'. In particular, in past decades (I have listened a lot to the BBC since the late 1960s but watched very little) you could more or less think that when it came to impartiality and reliability, and indeed proper news priority, it was fairly easy to do, because you just assumed that the standard was set by the BBC, not that the BBC was trying to follow a standard set by others. If you go back long enough the same could be said for The Times. (Do other PB readers remember when if there was a new government in the Sudan, The Times would print a complete list of ministers?)
Now I am 60 years on from the 1960s it is obvious that 'impartiality' like 'the view from nowhere' is not to be had, unless it is to be had in that sort of cultural assumption. It's there with justice and fairness as a good target but unattainable.
I am reminded of Alasdair Macintyre's (sadly he died this year) masterpiece 'Whose justice? Which rationality?' Perhaps a lot of older people are nostalgic for a society in which, like 'Whose Impartiality', it didn't seem necessary to ask the question.
To him regulation is the god to be obeyed and the public irrelevant.
Applies to us all, I think.
You only have to look at EV cars. Its like the hunger games now in the Chinese home market...
The South Korean did something similar, but restricted to a small number of families, but they were told you, you and you, are making ships. Off you go. Now you have got good, its competition time.
Perhaps not so much out of concern about the well being of the public but rather because he enjoyed basking in their adulation.
A Chinese company is a perfectly good contract manufactuerer of smart phones and smart phone bits and bobs, then suddenly they decide to buy a Dutch company that makes chips for cars. There is no obvious reason to be doing this, until you realise that the state have a big stake in the Chinese company and they want to get much better control over worldwide production of low cost chips for the automative sector.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5ydz05854eo
I was quite surprised to see in the polling that half of Green voters were on board with mass deportations of illegals.
Nought as strange as folk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partygate
Clearly though the 'independent' element of this system doesn't seem to have worked. It's been captured by partisans.
Twice.
But he's not mad...
In my part of the world, the "choice" will likely be Labour, perhaps Green and a candidate from the Newham Independents who are basically a pro-Muslim pro-Palestine organisation who might be running the Council from next May (perhaps).
I would have to consider a tactical vote for Labour to keep out the Newham Independent and/or the Greens - the local Greens are not as ideological as Polanski and have dug in around the newer parts of Stratford.
The positioning of the Conservatives will be fascinating - if they are seen as being too close to Reform, they will miss out on anti-Reform tactical voting but if they end up saying they won't support Reform before the election and end up supporting a Reform minority Government (even via C&S) they will be politically finished.
Whilst I enjoy all this speculation about what might happen, the simple and accurate answer is: Anything.
Anything could happen. Labour could get wiped off the map, Reform could implode... or romp home, the Tories could recover, Labour could recover.
History may not be a guide in this instance but history suggests the last of these is most likely.
.."It is not possible to say whether all or any of the criticisms made are justified or not." about the report...
The criticism of the US coverage is quite clearly not sound.
Did the NBC make editorial mistakes - absolutely. But the allegation that its overall coverage was skewed is simply untrue, as far as I can see.
And contains within it intentional inaccuracy.
Unlike them I have said that there ought to be an investigation which would obviously include looking at whether Prescott's dossier is accurate.
Anyway I have a new novel to read which looks more interesting than beating my head against a brick wall. I did a lot of that at work but at least there I got paid for it.
So I will leave you all to your conspiracy theories. Have fun.
No investigation should be interpreted in isolation, but rather in the context of history, examination, vital statistics like blood pressure, oxygen saturation and other investigations.
Is the book The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne (you quoted from it earlier)? I found it really powerful.
It's pretty much exactly what would happen if the BBC were deeply biased toward the left and a hyperpartisan left wing crowd were afraid of losing that finger on the scales.
These people deserve their current panic, because most of them are bad faith debators who think that throwing up some chaff about 'Farage on Question Time again' is enough to make it appear that there's an argument about bias on both sides. There isn't, and there never has been.
However, I say again, anyone who thinks Lab and the Cons will just sleep-walk through the next three-plus years without making serious changes hasn't been paying attention. We can dispute whether it will work but I seriously doubt it will leave either in a worse position than currently.
Unless Starmer radically improves (which seems pretty unlikely) another year of this drift will surely be fatal for them ?
There's plenty of time before the next election to change perceptions, but not if they just keep buggering on.
Don't forget that the Lib Dems had a totemic policy that was torpedoed when they entered the coalition. The Tories don't really have any popular policies that Reform might want to jettison. Reform might cut welfare less than the Tories (though there might not be a choice) but I don't see anything likely to cause generational resentment.
(stares slack-jawed in amazement, starts rocking back and forth)
In principle local and regional politics should train politicians in these skills, but for a variety of reasons that isn't happening.
It is you who have formed an opinion without the evidence to support it. Not me.
This - if it were sent to a senior person at any of the places I have worked at - would be treated as a whistleblowing. Rightly so. It is how it should be treated by the BBC. It should be investigated and by a proper investigation team.
And I will let you into another professional secret. All investigations - whether into complaints, whistleblowings, matters raised by internal audit or the business or however they come in and whatever they are called, are and should be investigated to the same high standard and with the same rigour. That is what should happen here.
You don't want that to happen because you are worried at what such an investigation might show. I want it to happen because I would like to find out the answer. And because I think that process will help improve matters at the BBC. Not least because it would - I would hope - answer the question of why an external consultant was brought in by the D-G to do this job after the Bashir scandal rather than having a proper investigation team.
We are, as a country, going to be squeezed either in ways of our own choosing (if the government starts to face reality) or not (if the markets lose patience and do it for us). It's a tough time to be in government. It needs some clear eyed cold calculation and we have a political class that focuses on irrelevances and avoids hard choices.
EXCLUSIVE from @patrickkmaguire and I
* Cabinet ministers say Sir Keir Starmer should sack his chief of staff. 'There isn't an obvious solution that doesn't involve firing him,' says one. 'If the PM didn't approve it, he needs to get rid of Morgan,' says another. McSweeney has categorically denied being behind the briefings
* Streeting allies say that they believe Starmer was aware of the briefings & say Number 10 is 'not in touch with reality'. This is denied by Starmer
* 'As if he doesn't know, of course he knows. This is Morgan's doing, everybody knows that. Ultimately, Keir is responsible. No 10 has completely miscalculated. Wes has come out much stronger. What they've done is tried to kill him but inadvertently ended up making him a credible alternative'
* Starmer had lunch with Labour MPs in the members' dining room after PMQs. He dismissed the furore as 'nonsense'. This did not go down well with everyone at the table. One MP said that the PLP is 'livid'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL-m5Nocb-g
That is evident in his own report.
And there's no real way to dismiss that as accidental.
I've not commented on the rest of his critique (and I don't disagree that the BBC should answer it - AFAIK, neither does the BBC), but it's entirely fair to question his motives an reliability.
One final point - the Trump allegations are existential for the BBC, and leading all media discussion.
It's not just our choice to focus on them.
Shouldn't he resign to avoid cementing his reputation as an unforgivably irredeemable hypocrite?
Maybe McSweeney has done a deal?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/whoweare/bbcboard/edstandards
They are largely uninformative, giving only the attendees and the items they discussed.
No detail at all.
The person it doesn't work for is Starmer. It it is a conspiracy, clearly he's so determined to secure his successor, that he's prepared to trash his own reputation to do it. Either that or the conspiracy is completely without his knowledge or consent.
(ETA: the freaky thing about PRS is that some US genetics companies will do it for you on embryo selection in IVF, where the similarity of the genetics will likely mean that any apparent differences are really marginal and uncertain)
It needs a proper team going through everything he says to see whether what he is saying is accurate or not and if not how and why. This is called an investigation and it should be done because it is the best possible answer to the criticisms being made.
This is not hard to understand.
When people and organisations are so resistant to doing something which is likely to help them, the next obvious question is why?
I think on this you're talking at cross purposes.
But I do think she's wrong in defending Prescott.
That's inane.
"To continue with your cancellation, please call a member of our team on 0300 790 6098*.
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... Wut?
I think @BlancheLivermore has done the right thing, and in the circs so soon after major trauma feeling at risk my suggestions would be:
1 - Refer yourself back to or consult the contact you were left with when you came out, who is likely to be a specialist nurse - who usually know more about practicalities and continuing management than a Doctor.
2 - Go through NHS 111, who in my experience are good at identifying a need for a referral, and may book it or arrange a paramedic visit.
3 - Emergency or next day GP appointment. My practice keeps some free every day.
4 - A&E if it is needed, but the other routes may be more comfortable.
I hope it works out positively.
People on here are attacking Prescott for attacking the BBC and because he is of the right they are dismissing his complaints. I think that’s very dangerous. On some of the issues he is right. BBC Arabic broadcasting a very skewed output on Gaza, for instance. A dangerous adoption and pushing of non scientific nonsense on trans.
Just because you don’t like a messenger, or think their motives not pure, it doesn’t mean you should ignore their words.
It is reasonable to check to confirm that its back to normal as part of a wider assessment.
🚨ADELITA GRIJALVA has signed the Epstein discharge petition. It has now reached 218.
@kaitlancollins
Meaning that a pretty remarkable pressure campaign -- including phone call from the president and a personal meeting in the Situation Room with the AG, Deputy AG and FBI director -- could not sway a Republican House member.
Yes, we still have the gap between the taxes we feel content about paying and the spending we expect "in return", but there will be some slack to cope with that.
Global energy prices killed Heath, had a lot to do with the Trusstershambles, and kept Rishi on the back foot. They probably won't save Starmer, they might (but might not) help his successor.
I think it would be fairer to say they are in a state of some confusion, given the events of the last few days, and in any event have no real idea of how to go about the kind of thing you suggest.
(And as we discussed yesterday, how such an investigation might be structured isn't as clearcut as the other ones you've previously discussed.)
Yikes.