A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
Because it becomes easy to excuse away bad behaviour. If it’s a fixed choice between Trump and the BBC it’s easy. And that’s the way many are trying to frame it. In some ways bizarrely as if the BBC is the injured party in all this and that mean mr Trump is trying to bully us.
That's exactly how I see it.
You guys on the right are being played. Although tbf some on the right are also doing the playing:
Sure the BBC allowed a fuck-up to be made and broadcast but having apologised, retracted, and seen DG and Head of News resign, that's enough.
There's no need to allow one of the brightest beacons of British soft power and balanced accurate news broadcasting in the world to be sunk.
Any true patriots should be defending the BBC against the wanna-be American dictator.
Ah yes. Because those attacking the BBC are bad (they are), we should ignore any issues. Because drawing attention to the problems undermines the organisation.
The police used to sing that song. Quite a lot.
The sane response is to
- Arkell v Pressdram to Trump - Do some reform within the BBC.
Fixing problems in an organisation makes it stronger. Not fixing them is to destroy it.
The NHS is *better* because the scandals came out. The police are *better* because the scandals came out and are addressed. The Post Office is *better* because the truth came out, in the end.
In all those cases, acting earlier would have saved vast amounts of pain and money.
I agree with this. But it's no thanks to Gibbs who is part of the problem, and I hope is now being exposed. Come on Lisa. Fire him. You should have acted earlier.
Which part of the editorial or production team was Gibbs on? Which part of the gender critical debate did he consort output from?
Here’s a problem. Here’s a solution. Sack someone who played no part in the problem.
Read up about what Gibb has been up to . Interfering beyond his remit .
He owned the Jewish Chronicle when the paper were found guilty of deliberately printing falsehoods. Just the kind of bloke the BBC needs on their 'ethics committee'
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
Because it becomes easy to excuse away bad behaviour. If it’s a fixed choice between Trump and the BBC it’s easy. And that’s the way many are trying to frame it. In some ways bizarrely as if the BBC is the injured party in all this and that mean mr Trump is trying to bully us.
That's exactly how I see it.
You guys on the right are being played. Although tbf some on the right are also doing the playing:
Sure the BBC allowed a fuck-up to be made and broadcast but having apologised, retracted, and seen DG and Head of News resign, that's enough.
There's no need to allow one of the brightest beacons of British soft power and balanced accurate news broadcasting in the world to be sunk.
Any true patriots should be defending the BBC against the wanna-be American dictator.
Ah yes. Because those attacking the BBC are bad (they are), we should ignore any issues. Because drawing attention to the problems undermines the organisation.
The police used to sing that song. Quite a lot.
The sane response is to
- Arkell v Pressdram to Trump - Do some reform within the BBC.
Fixing problems in an organisation makes it stronger. Not fixing them is to destroy it.
The NHS is *better* because the scandals came out. The police are *better* because the scandals came out and are addressed. The Post Office is *better* because the truth came out, in the end.
In all those cases, acting earlier would have saved vast amounts of pain and money.
I agree with this. But it's no thanks to Gibbs who is part of the problem, and I hope is now being exposed. Come on Lisa. Fire him. You should have acted earlier.
Which part of the editorial or production team was Gibbs on? Which part of the gender critical debate did he consort output from?
Here’s a problem. Here’s a solution. Sack someone who played no part in the problem.
Read up about what Gibb has been up to . Interfering beyond his remit .
He owned the Jewish Chronicle when the paper were found guilty of deliberately printing falsehoods. Just the kind of bloke the BBC needs on their 'ethics committee'
My perspective, having worked at the BBC (albeit 25 years ago), is that BBC bias is misunderstood.
It undoubtedly exists, but instead of thinking in terms of Left and Right, it is that the BBC has a strong inherent bias towards the BBC way of doing things. It is fundamentally and existentially pro-self.
What this means in reality is that self-selection and groupthink coupled with an almost religious belief in 'what is right' results in the corporation being unshakingly confident in its own correctness, even when the nature of said correctness has completely changed.
Little example: Back in the day, it was considered right and proper for practically all broadcasters, especially at a National level, to speak using RP. They had dedicated speech trainers to ensure this was the case. Regional or, God forbid, Continental/Colonial accents were a big no-no. One has to speak the BBC English, old boy, it's the way we do things...
Now the absolute opposite is true. The right, good and correct thing is that everyone gets to hear a huge range of regional and international accents. Apart from RP. RP is an anachronism. Not the way we do things...
But the thing is... despite these two editorial and presentational positions being complete polar opposites of one another, both were considered to be entirely correct at the time because they were the BBC way of doing things. The BBC conscience not only believes itself to be right, but that it always has been right and always will be right.
I'm not even sure they have internal debates when policy changes, even drastically. It just happens; the war with Eurasia is erased and the war with Eastasia has always been.
Same with the way things are edited. The edit makes something appear a certain way, so that's how it happened. Re-edit to make it different, and that's still how it happened; how it always happened. Narrative over facts. Narrative is facts.
This Trump editing kerfuffle is singularly unsurprising, because it's just a part of BBC life. The way highlights from a football match are selected and cut together can tell a variety of different stories, depending on what is included/excluded. That's just how broadcast media works.
Current BBC bias has a sort of soft-Left, Internationalist, Woke, environmentalist anti-Trump kind of hue about it, but none of these are as significant as its strong bias towards itself, whatever it happens to be at the time!
Yup. With two important caveats.
The really important one is that every organisation has a bias towards itself. That might be an argument against big organisations, but they are sometimes necessary.
The other is that in the grand scheme of things, Britain has a sort of soft-Left, Internationalist, woke, environmentalist anti-Trump kind of hue about it. Not everyone, everywhere, sure. But on average, yes. And those you yearn for something stronger are often badly triggered by that.
In the big cities, yes, but not so much in the Middle England Towns and Their Hinterlands.
Otherwise why did the Brexit referendum go the way it did?
London is a world city, but it is not the world, and nor is it Britain. If you ordered the constituencies in Britain by the population of their principal settlement, which would be the median seat?
That's a really interesting question. It would not be a small town or similar because we are 85% urbanised, and a majority live in settlements of 100k+ population. The number living in settlements smaller than an entire constituency is a substantial minority, but a minority.
Making an estimate, it would be part of a settlement which is larger than the Constituency. Say something like half of Dundee, York, Gloucester, Burnley, Telford, Blackburn, Basildon, Grimsby, which are urban areas in the 150k range.
The UK population is 68 million. And counting down the list, the cumulative sum gets to 34 million somewhere around line 55 - which is the size I identified above.
Reflecting, another way to get at this would be to take the middle 10 constituencies in a list ordered by area, and look at the size of their settlements.
Since the populations are close within narrow margins, that should give a decent approximate measure of size of settlement (or size of settlement of which the constituency is a part).
It gets complicated for various reasons, not least of which is where you draw the boundaries of a settlement, but also because some constituencies combine the edge of a city and a rural hinterland - take for example Exmouth and Exeter East. On the basis of the name you might say that the main settlement of the constituency is Exeter, with a population of 140,000, but the constituency only includes the City of Exeter council wards of Pinhoe, St Loyes and Topsham. And I wouldn't consider Topsham part of Exeter, except in an administrative sense. So perhaps the largest settlement in the constituency is Exmouth (population 35,000)?
My rough look would concur with you - it would be a settlement small enough to constitute a single seat, so smaller than places like Swindon, Derby or Reading (2 seats each). Nuneaton at 88,000 might be slightly on the small side, but I don't think it's far off.
Now sometimes places with quite a small population can have strongly metropolitan values - consider Cambridge, which has a population of ~150,000, and a much stronger metropolitan culture than similar-sized Blackpool - but on the whole I do not think that the median seat would have a "soft-Left, Internationalist, Woke, environmentalist hue*" about it. That's very much a feature of larger cities and university towns, which are in the minority.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
I love these US podcasts. If Trump has a case against the BBC these guys would be millionaires. Tucker Carlson seems to be everyone's football at the moment just after he's become civilised...... This one is par for the course. i think we can happily dismiss Trump even if he tries it on in the US. Analysis US style.....
When you say civilised, you mean an anti-Semite supporter of Russia?
He's certainly not anti semitic. Well nothing I've seen. I didn't know he was a supporter of Russia but there again you got the anti semitic thing wrong so maybe you got the Russia support wrong as well?
There is a major battle going on in the US about support for Israel. Tucker Carlson has changed sides and decided that the US should not be at the whim of Netanyahu and the extremely powerful Israeli lobby. I've since seen dozens of interviews with Carlson and haven't seen any anti semitism from him. He's talented and popular and his opinions have turned 180 degrees so it's easy to see why he scares his opponents.
I don't know much about him before his damascene conversion. This that I posted this morning is worth watching
Just because he is anti-Netanyahu, you’ve decided to ignore the other stuff.
For example, just last year he invited onto his show and *politely agreed* with Dugin. The Russian self declared Fascist who is the “philosopher” of Putin’s political party.
By Fascist, I don’t mean a bit right wing. Or a bit anti immigrant. He (Dugin) has expressed in clear and simple words that he see himself as a Russian Fascist and wants to be the intellectual base of that movement.
Carlson is an utterly putrid, ghastly person, who did an enormous amount to support and enable Trumpism.
Slightly unfair to judge him by his interviewees. His talent is in debunking his opponent. Here he is with Ted Cruz....it's funny
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
A few years back a journalist friend got interested in my recounting the story of the Soviet bio-weapons program.
Short version - the USSR massively breached the Biological Weapons Treaty, from the start. Manufactured metric tons of anthrax etc.
She took it to an editor at the paper as an idea. The hook into current affairs is that the non-reaction to the discovery of this, post Cold War, killed a lot of support for arms control in the US Senate and elsewhere.
The editor told her that since the piece couldn’t be balanced with equivalent breaches by the US or NATO allies, it wasn’t usable. This was pre Ukraine - the editor felt that it would be an attack on Russia….
My perspective, having worked at the BBC (albeit 25 years ago), is that BBC bias is misunderstood.
It undoubtedly exists, but instead of thinking in terms of Left and Right, it is that the BBC has a strong inherent bias towards the BBC way of doing things. It is fundamentally and existentially pro-self.
What this means in reality is that self-selection and groupthink coupled with an almost religious belief in 'what is right' results in the corporation being unshakingly confident in its own correctness, even when the nature of said correctness has completely changed.
Little example: Back in the day, it was considered right and proper for practically all broadcasters, especially at a National level, to speak using RP. They had dedicated speech trainers to ensure this was the case. Regional or, God forbid, Continental/Colonial accents were a big no-no. One has to speak the BBC English, old boy, it's the way we do things...
Now the absolute opposite is true. The right, good and correct thing is that everyone gets to hear a huge range of regional and international accents. Apart from RP. RP is an anachronism. Not the way we do things...
But the thing is... despite these two editorial and presentational positions being complete polar opposites of one another, both were considered to be entirely correct at the time because they were the BBC way of doing things. The BBC conscience not only believes itself to be right, but that it always has been right and always will be right.
I'm not even sure they have internal debates when policy changes, even drastically. It just happens; the war with Eurasia is erased and the war with Eastasia has always been.
Same with the way things are edited. The edit makes something appear a certain way, so that's how it happened. Re-edit to make it different, and that's still how it happened; how it always happened. Narrative over facts. Narrative is facts.
This Trump editing kerfuffle is singularly unsurprising, because it's just a part of BBC life. The way highlights from a football match are selected and cut together can tell a variety of different stories, depending on what is included/excluded. That's just how broadcast media works.
Current BBC bias has a sort of soft-Left, Internationalist, Woke, environmentalist anti-Trump kind of hue about it, but none of these are as significant as its strong bias towards itself, whatever it happens to be at the time!
Yup. With two important caveats.
The really important one is that every organisation has a bias towards itself. That might be an argument against big organisations, but they are sometimes necessary.
The other is that in the grand scheme of things, Britain has a sort of soft-Left, Internationalist, woke, environmentalist anti-Trump kind of hue about it. Not everyone, everywhere, sure. But on average, yes. And those you yearn for something stronger are often badly triggered by that.
In the big cities, yes, but not so much in the Middle England Towns and Their Hinterlands.
Otherwise why did the Brexit referendum go the way it did?
London is a world city, but it is not the world, and nor is it Britain. If you ordered the constituencies in Britain by the population of their principal settlement, which would be the median seat?
That's a really interesting question. It would not be a small town or similar because we are 85% urbanised, and a majority live in settlements of 100k+ population. The number living in settlements smaller than an entire constituency is a substantial minority, but a minority.
Making an estimate, it would be part of a settlement which is larger than the Constituency. Say something like half of Dundee, York, Gloucester, Burnley, Telford, Blackburn, Basildon, Grimsby, which are urban areas in the 150k range.
The UK population is 68 million. And counting down the list, the cumulative sum gets to 34 million somewhere around line 55 - which is the size I identified above.
Reflecting, another way to get at this would be to take the middle 10 constituencies in a list ordered by area, and look at the size of their settlements.
Since the populations are close within narrow margins, that should give a decent approximate measure of size of settlement (or size of settlement of which the constituency is a part).
It gets complicated for various reasons, not least of which is where you draw the boundaries of a settlement, but also because some constituencies combine the edge of a city and a rural hinterland - take for example Exmouth and Exeter East. On the basis of the name you might say that the main settlement of the constituency is Exeter, with a population of 140,000, but the constituency only includes the City of Exeter council wards of Pinhoe, St Loyes and Topsham. And I wouldn't consider Topsham part of Exeter, except in an administrative sense. So perhaps the largest settlement in the constituency is Exmouth (population 35,000)?
My rough look would concur with you - it would be a settlement small enough to constitute a single seat, so smaller than places like Swindon, Derby or Reading (2 seats each). Nuneaton at 88,000 might be slightly on the small side, but I don't think it's far off.
Now sometimes places with quite a small population can have strongly metropolitan values - consider Cambridge, which has a population of ~150,000, and a much stronger metropolitan culture than similar-sized Blackpool - but on the whole I do not think that the median seat would have a "soft-Left, Internationalist, Woke, environmentalist hue*" about it. That's very much a feature of larger cities and university towns, which are in the minority.
* Obvs. it would be anti-Trump.
I would suggest both Loughborough and Nuneaton. Both are Middle England literally and demographically. Both are bellwether seats usually being won by the party forming the government.
Rarely does that extend to over 50% of the votes, so even if they get won by Reform it may well be that they are majority centre left.
Epping’s Bell Hotel can house asylum seekers, a judge has ruled. The ruling follows anti-immigration protests and counter-demonstrations by thousands of people outside the The Bell hotel in Epping since July.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
A few years back a journalist friend got interested in my recounting the story of the Soviet bio-weapons program.
Short version - the USSR massively breached the Biological Weapons Treaty, from the start. Manufactured metric tons of anthrax etc.
She took it to an editor at the paper as an idea. The hook into current affairs is that the non-reaction to the discovery of this, post Cold War, killed a lot of support for arms control in the US Senate and elsewhere.
The editor told her that since the piece couldn’t be balanced with equivalent breaches by the US or NATO allies, it wasn’t usable. This was pre Ukraine - the editor felt that it would be an attack on Russia….
It's actually a difficult balance (which the Prescott memo fails).
Impartiality isn't quite the same thing as editorial balance - and while the latter doesn't mean giving equal weight to the plain wrong, or to our foreign adversaries, it does include giving them some voice, I think ?
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/nov/10/bbc-board-member-tory-links-led-charge-systemic-bias-claims ..In his response to Prescott’s memo, Shah pushed back against the broader allegations of bias. He said Prescott “does not present a full picture of the discussions, decisions and actions that were taken”. He also said that some of the problems raised by Prescott were not new or had been previously examined by the BBC.
“Some of the coverage of Mr Prescott’s memo has implied that he has ‘uncovered’ a list of stories and issues that the BBC have sought to ‘bury’. That interpretation is simply not true,” said Shah. “There is another view that has gained currency in the coverage that the BBC has done nothing to tackle these problems. That is also simply not true.
“During the three years Mr Prescott was an adviser to the committee, the BBC produced thousands of hours of outstanding journalism: on television, radio, online, nationally, regionally and internationally. This does not diminish the importance the BBC board places on addressing the issues that Mr Prescott has raised. But it is also important that a sense of perspective is maintained.”..
Epping’s Bell Hotel can house asylum seekers, a judge has ruled. The ruling follows anti-immigration protests and counter-demonstrations by thousands of people outside the The Bell hotel in Epping since July.
What’s interesting there is that large chunks of the legal view that block booking a hotel isn’t a change of use seems to have been upheld.
For those that don’t know - this is why hotels were used in the first place. The legal advice that that no change of use etc was required. A commercial transaction between the hotel owners and the government. So the usual 5-10 delay on doing anything could be avoided.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
Julian may be right but the politics of this seem crazy. If Reeves is going to break her manifesto promise & raise income tax she might as well just do that. This 2p on / 2p off NI business is just silly. It won't help her politically & it foregoes a lot of revenue.
Epping’s Bell Hotel can house asylum seekers, a judge has ruled. The ruling follows anti-immigration protests and counter-demonstrations by thousands of people outside the The Bell hotel in Epping since July.
What’s interesting there is that large chunks of the legal view that block booking a hotel isn’t a change of use seems to have been upheld.
For those that don’t know - this is why hotels were used in the first place. The legal advice that that no change of use etc was required. A commercial transaction between the hotel owners and the government. So the usual 5-10 delay on doing anything could be avoided.
That’s an interesting legal argument, one can well imagine that it looks and feels like a change of use to those who live close by.
I love these US podcasts. If Trump has a case against the BBC these guys would be millionaires. Tucker Carlson seems to be everyone's football at the moment just after he's become civilised...... This one is par for the course. i think we can happily dismiss Trump even if he tries it on in the US. Analysis US style.....
When you say civilised, you mean an anti-Semite supporter of Russia?
He's certainly not anti semitic. Well nothing I've seen. I didn't know he was a supporter of Russia but there again you got the anti semitic thing wrong so maybe you got the Russia support wrong as well?
There is a major battle going on in the US about support for Israel. Tucker Carlson has changed sides and decided that the US should not be at the whim of Netanyahu and the extremely powerful Israeli lobby. I've since seen dozens of interviews with Carlson and haven't seen any anti semitism from him. He's talented and popular and his opinions have turned 180 degrees so it's easy to see why he scares his opponents.
I don't know much about him before his damascene conversion. This that I posted this morning is worth watching
Just because he is anti-Netanyahu, you’ve decided to ignore the other stuff.
For example, just last year he invited onto his show and *politely agreed* with Dugin. The Russian self declared Fascist who is the “philosopher” of Putin’s political party.
By Fascist, I don’t mean a bit right wing. Or a bit anti immigrant. He (Dugin) has expressed in clear and simple words that he see himself as a Russian Fascist and wants to be the intellectual base of that movement.
Carlson is an utterly putrid, ghastly person, who did an enormous amount to support and enable Trumpism.
Slightly unfair to judge him by his interviewees. His talent is in debunking his opponent. Here he is with Ted Cruz....it's funny
He agreed with Dugin. He agreed with the literal Fascist. And that’s a single example. He agrees with and publicly lauds a range of vile hate groups and individuals.
He is worse than Farage - far more extreme.
He was a key figure in pushing the 2020 election theft bollocks.
Fox News had to pay out three-quarters of a billion dollars to the makers of voting machines - Fox had massively lied to claim the machine makers were colluding with the Democrats to steal elections.
Carlson was a prime mover in that and lost his job at Fox in consequence.
Based on ONS data on conurbations derived from the 2011 census summarized on Wikipedia I would reckon the median seat would be part of a town like Swindon, Crawley, Ipswich or Wigan with a population a little under 200k.
I don't think anwhere can be a truly representive median. None of these places feel like a microcosm of Britain (or even England) as a whole, or even just a 'typical place'.
Ipswich, where I lived for several years, is strangely isolated and insular. When I was there it was trying to make something of the 'tech corridor' between itself and Cambridge, which failed because there was pretty much nothing in between the two.
Crawley is a few miles down the road from where I am now and I have to go to meetings there sometimes. It lacks an identity and feels dominated by Gatwick and out-of-town aviation sector employment. A dull, characterless place where I can't imagine people feel much of a sense of belonging.
Wigan just feels too overtly 'Northern' to be representative. Rugby League. Old Mills. Old Labour.
Swindon is the best candidate of these. Sits on the frontier between South East and South West, and feels quite neutral. I suspect middling scores in various demographic metrics. Tends to be a bellwether at parliamentary level. Has a largely forgotten old town and lot of new stuff. I don't like the place very much.
Based on geography, population, and general averageness in many departments, I'd be tempted to suggest... Peterborough.
Swindon is too overtly Southern. And Wigan is coal.
Julian may be right but the politics of this seem crazy. If Reeves is going to break her manifesto promise & raise income tax she might as well just do that. This 2p on / 2p off NI business is just silly. It won't help her politically & it foregoes a lot of revenue.
Luckily this government doesn't have a track record of making choices on tax that don't play well politically and don't bring in much revenue either...
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
I've already given you an example of an occasion on which the BBC was rebuked for failing to challenge the unfounded opinions of a "climate sceptic". Can you point to a specific example of the "generalised unquantified alarmism" which you say the BBC is so good at?
The price of defending the BBC from right wing media.
'Fleet Street' is running hatchet jobs on me, so it seems. Fair dos. Every error I made at The Sun is piled in - I took responsibility years ago for my errors - but what about the decency I bought to the paper? Also: if they are going to call me an alcoholic, please also give me the credit for 20 years of continuous recovery both from my addiction and from the toxicity I escaped. Today is day 7,419. Thank God I got out. https://x.com/davidyelland/status/1987997758373196239
Based on ONS data on conurbations derived from the 2011 census summarized on Wikipedia I would reckon the median seat would be part of a town like Swindon, Crawley, Ipswich or Wigan with a population a little under 200k.
I don't think anwhere can be a truly representive median. None of these places feel like a microcosm of Britain (or even England) as a whole, or even just a 'typical place'.
Ipswich, where I lived for several years, is strangely isolated and insular. When I was there it was trying to make something of the 'tech corridor' between itself and Cambridge, which failed because there was pretty much nothing in between the two.
Crawley is a few miles down the road from where I am now and I have to go to meetings there sometimes. It lacks an identity and feels dominated by Gatwick and out-of-town aviation sector employment. A dull, characterless place where I can't imagine people feel much of a sense of belonging.
Wigan just feels too overtly 'Northern' to be representative. Rugby League. Old Mills. Old Labour.
Swindon is the best candidate of these. Sits on the frontier between South East and South West, and feels quite neutral. I suspect middling scores in various demographic metrics. Tends to be a bellwether at parliamentary level. Has a largely forgotten old town and lot of new stuff. I don't like the place very much.
Based on geography, population, and general averageness in many departments, I'd be tempted to suggest... Peterborough.
Swindon is too overtly Southern. And Wigan is coal.
I think some people are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. In the context of the overall urban-rural axis in culture that exists in Britain various places will fail to be a perfect representative median, but many places will be good enough to illustrate a point - that the metropolitan values of the BBC are not shared by the median Briton.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
Trump is only threatening a libel suit. Politely but firmly stand up to the blowhard and he would likely fold.
Based on ONS data on conurbations derived from the 2011 census summarized on Wikipedia I would reckon the median seat would be part of a town like Swindon, Crawley, Ipswich or Wigan with a population a little under 200k.
I don't think anwhere can be a truly representive median. None of these places feel like a microcosm of Britain (or even England) as a whole, or even just a 'typical place'.
Ipswich, where I lived for several years, is strangely isolated and insular. When I was there it was trying to make something of the 'tech corridor' between itself and Cambridge, which failed because there was pretty much nothing in between the two.
Crawley is a few miles down the road from where I am now and I have to go to meetings there sometimes. It lacks an identity and feels dominated by Gatwick and out-of-town aviation sector employment. A dull, characterless place where I can't imagine people feel much of a sense of belonging.
Wigan just feels too overtly 'Northern' to be representative. Rugby League. Old Mills. Old Labour.
Swindon is the best candidate of these. Sits on the frontier between South East and South West, and feels quite neutral. I suspect middling scores in various demographic metrics. Tends to be a bellwether at parliamentary level. Has a largely forgotten old town and lot of new stuff. I don't like the place very much.
Based on geography, population, and general averageness in many departments, I'd be tempted to suggest... Peterborough.
Swindon is too overtly Southern. And Wigan is coal.
For some unknown reason as Swindon Town fans we sing 'West Country La La La'. I don't really know where the west country starts, but I'm pretty sure it isn't Swindon. Back in the 1990's the Central Match Live showed a live Div 2 match every sunday and Swindon was on the list, so they regarded it as central...
Kate Nicholls, chair of UKHospitality: “Hospitality has borne the brunt of these [unemployment] changes, with more than half of all job losses coming from our sector."
Based on ONS data on conurbations derived from the 2011 census summarized on Wikipedia I would reckon the median seat would be part of a town like Swindon, Crawley, Ipswich or Wigan with a population a little under 200k.
I don't think anwhere can be a truly representive median. None of these places feel like a microcosm of Britain (or even England) as a whole, or even just a 'typical place'.
Ipswich, where I lived for several years, is strangely isolated and insular. When I was there it was trying to make something of the 'tech corridor' between itself and Cambridge, which failed because there was pretty much nothing in between the two.
Crawley is a few miles down the road from where I am now and I have to go to meetings there sometimes. It lacks an identity and feels dominated by Gatwick and out-of-town aviation sector employment. A dull, characterless place where I can't imagine people feel much of a sense of belonging.
Wigan just feels too overtly 'Northern' to be representative. Rugby League. Old Mills. Old Labour.
Swindon is the best candidate of these. Sits on the frontier between South East and South West, and feels quite neutral. I suspect middling scores in various demographic metrics. Tends to be a bellwether at parliamentary level. Has a largely forgotten old town and lot of new stuff. I don't like the place very much.
Based on geography, population, and general averageness in many departments, I'd be tempted to suggest... Peterborough.
Swindon is too overtly Southern. And Wigan is coal.
For some unknown reason as Swindon Town fans we sing 'West Country La La La'. I don't really know where the west country starts, but I'm pretty sure it isn't Swindon. Back in the 1990's the Central Match Live showed a live Div 2 match every sunday and Swindon was on the list, so they regarded it as central...
Wilts county *is* West Country. And Swindon was in Wilts the last time I passed through it.
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
Quite often BBC 'balance' consists of wheeling out caricatures and pantomime villains and claiming job done.
Farage, for example. You see it on Twitter all the time. 'BBC can't be left-leaning, because look how many times Nigel has been on Question Time!!11one11impart1al1'
Many of us who consider ourselves to be right-wing don't really think Farage is on our side or representative of our world view. And even if he was, he's primarily there to serve as a bogeyman figure for everyone else to rail against. It smacks of tokenism and not a lot of thought or effort.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
I've already given you an example of an occasion on which the BBC was rebuked for failing to challenge the unfounded opinions of a "climate sceptic". Can you point to a specific example of the "generalised unquantified alarmism" which you say the BBC is so good at?
No. You shall have to form your own view from the totality of output you experience, which is what I have done. I don't run a fully staffed media watch department, I just make up lies from my head at random.
I note that your one instance of rebuke comes from 2018.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
I've already given you an example of an occasion on which the BBC was rebuked for failing to challenge the unfounded opinions of a "climate sceptic". Can you point to a specific example of the "generalised unquantified alarmism" which you say the BBC is so good at?
I don't think its the BBC its the nexus of science reporters and University Press Officers. The Uni press office likes to push interesting stories that the press will pick up. Stories such as "Climate Change is Worse than we thought" will always get more traction than "Climate change is probably not a bad as we thought".
I also think that some people are so annoyed by deniers that they cannot see legitimate criticism of studies as anything other than denial. For instance Michael Mann has published some shoddy work that has been heavily criticised. His response is just to go on the attack and try to sue people rather than accept that sometimes critic have a point (e.g. a data set included in a temperature reconstruction was used upside down).
It's interesting that peak Chinese CO2 was around the expected peak of the Chinese population.
It also strikes me as a good example of why long-term optimism is warranted:
- Population growth dynamics globally are pointing towards a peaking global population later this century, sooner than previously expected. From a purely 'not ending up with more people than we can feed' perspective, that's a good thing.
- Solar power pricing trends are going to mean energy becomes abundant at historically cheap levels. It may not completely replace fossil fuels, but it acts as a ceiling to energy prices.
- Both of these things will create a natural 'market' downward pressure on carbon emissions, albeit I'm sceptical we'll ever see a true net zero position. But human carbon emissions will peak and then fall even without government intervention.
... There's a whole host of challenges underlying that for countries dealing with immigration, ageing populations and/or depopulation, but the big picture is not as bad as many make out.
Based on ONS data on conurbations derived from the 2011 census summarized on Wikipedia I would reckon the median seat would be part of a town like Swindon, Crawley, Ipswich or Wigan with a population a little under 200k.
I don't think anwhere can be a truly representive median. None of these places feel like a microcosm of Britain (or even England) as a whole, or even just a 'typical place'.
Ipswich, where I lived for several years, is strangely isolated and insular. When I was there it was trying to make something of the 'tech corridor' between itself and Cambridge, which failed because there was pretty much nothing in between the two.
Crawley is a few miles down the road from where I am now and I have to go to meetings there sometimes. It lacks an identity and feels dominated by Gatwick and out-of-town aviation sector employment. A dull, characterless place where I can't imagine people feel much of a sense of belonging.
Wigan just feels too overtly 'Northern' to be representative. Rugby League. Old Mills. Old Labour.
Swindon is the best candidate of these. Sits on the frontier between South East and South West, and feels quite neutral. I suspect middling scores in various demographic metrics. Tends to be a bellwether at parliamentary level. Has a largely forgotten old town and lot of new stuff. I don't like the place very much.
Based on geography, population, and general averageness in many departments, I'd be tempted to suggest... Peterborough.
Swindon is too overtly Southern. And Wigan is coal.
For some unknown reason as Swindon Town fans we sing 'West Country La La La'. I don't really know where the west country starts, but I'm pretty sure it isn't Swindon. Back in the 1990's the Central Match Live showed a live Div 2 match every sunday and Swindon was on the list, so they regarded it as central...
Wilts county *is* West Country. And Swindon was in Wilts the last time I passed through it.
But where does the west country start? Is it when you cross the Hampshire/Wiltshire border on the A303? Doesn't feel right to me.
Epping’s Bell Hotel can house asylum seekers, a judge has ruled. The ruling follows anti-immigration protests and counter-demonstrations by thousands of people outside the The Bell hotel in Epping since July.
Long term infrastructure investment pays off. Who knew?
N Korea ... ?
About 70 percent of ammunition currently used by Russia in its war against Ukraine has been made in North Korea, according to an analysis by Ukrainian authorities, which have created classified documents on Moscow's military supplies.
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
Quite often BBC 'balance' consists of wheeling out caricatures and pantomime villains and claiming job done.
Farage, for example. You see it on Twitter all the time. 'BBC can't be left-leaning, because look how many times Nigel has been on Question Time!!11one11impart1al1'
Many of us who consider ourselves to be right-wing don't really think Farage is on our side or representative of our world view. And even if he was, he's primarily there to serve as a bogeyman figure for everyone else to rail against. It smacks of tokenism and not a lot of thought or effort.
It's not the BBC's fault that the most important figure on the right happens to be Nigel Farage.
Tim Davie hasn’t been a bad Director-General, but he was always going to come up short. He came from a marketing and commercial background and never had real experience in news — yet the DG is, first and foremost, the BBC’s editor-in-chief. That role requires a deep understanding of the editorial and political pressures the Corporation faces.
To be fair, the media landscape has changed dramatically, and Davie’s PR and strategy experience did lend itself to some of those challenges. But if the BBC is to move on from this current crisis, it needs to appoint its next DG and Director of News quickly.
The next DG must, as with the best in the past, have solid news credentials and a clear awareness of how a behemoth like the BBC actually works. That points towards figures such as Jay Hunt (who edited the News at One and News at Six), James Harding, or even Kevin Bakhurst returning. You need someone strong in news who can carry that editorial burden, allowing the DG to focus on managing the wider Corporation.
After that, attention needs to turn to the BBC Board. Frankly, most of it needs replacing. I’d keep Muriel Gray — her experience as a broadcaster and her perspective on the arts and Scotland are valuable. But otherwise, a reset is needed. I wouldn’t be sorry to see the return of Lord Patten either; although he’s a Conservative, he’s largely apolitical and commands respect.
Tim Davie hasn’t been a bad Director-General, but he was always going to come up short. He came from a marketing and commercial background and never had real experience in news — yet the DG is, first and foremost, the BBC’s editor-in-chief. That role requires a deep understanding of the editorial and political pressures the Corporation faces.
To be fair, the media landscape has changed dramatically, and Davie’s PR and strategy experience did lend itself to some of those challenges. But if the BBC is to move on from this current crisis, it needs to appoint its next DG and Director of News quickly.
The next DG must, as with the best in the past, have solid news credentials and a clear awareness of how a behemoth like the BBC actually works. That points towards figures such as Jay Hunt (who edited the News at One and News at Six), James Harding, or even Kevin Bakhurst returning. You need someone strong in news who can carry that editorial burden, allowing the DG to focus on managing the wider Corporation.
After that, attention needs to turn to the BBC Board. Frankly, most of it needs replacing. I’d keep Muriel Gray — her experience as a broadcaster and her perspective on the arts and Scotland are valuable. But otherwise, a reset is needed. I wouldn’t be sorry to see the return of Lord Patten either; although he’s a Conservative, he’s largely apolitical and commands respect.
I'm devastated by the loss of Tim Davie. Who will John Robins riff about in his show introductions now? (If you know, you know)
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
I've already given you an example of an occasion on which the BBC was rebuked for failing to challenge the unfounded opinions of a "climate sceptic". Can you point to a specific example of the "generalised unquantified alarmism" which you say the BBC is so good at?
No. You shall have to form your own view from the totality of output you experience, which is what I have done. I don't run a fully staffed media watch department, I just make up lies from my head at random.
I note that your one instance of rebuke comes from 2018.
Based on ONS data on conurbations derived from the 2011 census summarized on Wikipedia I would reckon the median seat would be part of a town like Swindon, Crawley, Ipswich or Wigan with a population a little under 200k.
I don't think anwhere can be a truly representive median. None of these places feel like a microcosm of Britain (or even England) as a whole, or even just a 'typical place'.
Ipswich, where I lived for several years, is strangely isolated and insular. When I was there it was trying to make something of the 'tech corridor' between itself and Cambridge, which failed because there was pretty much nothing in between the two.
Crawley is a few miles down the road from where I am now and I have to go to meetings there sometimes. It lacks an identity and feels dominated by Gatwick and out-of-town aviation sector employment. A dull, characterless place where I can't imagine people feel much of a sense of belonging.
Wigan just feels too overtly 'Northern' to be representative. Rugby League. Old Mills. Old Labour.
Swindon is the best candidate of these. Sits on the frontier between South East and South West, and feels quite neutral. I suspect middling scores in various demographic metrics. Tends to be a bellwether at parliamentary level. Has a largely forgotten old town and lot of new stuff. I don't like the place very much.
Based on geography, population, and general averageness in many departments, I'd be tempted to suggest... Peterborough.
Swindon is too overtly Southern. And Wigan is coal.
For some unknown reason as Swindon Town fans we sing 'West Country La La La'. I don't really know where the west country starts, but I'm pretty sure it isn't Swindon. Back in the 1990's the Central Match Live showed a live Div 2 match every sunday and Swindon was on the list, so they regarded it as central...
Wilts county *is* West Country. And Swindon was in Wilts the last time I passed through it.
But where does the west country start? Is it when you cross the Hampshire/Wiltshire border on the A303? Doesn't feel right to me.
Mm, to me it's alwasy seemed westcountry - the high boundary county, summit levels of the GWR and Kennet and Avon, the high northern downs ... forther east it's all downhill to the London and its basin. Andover's definitely Londonwards, but then you really get into bustard country to the west, and the valley roads.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
Trump is only threatening a libel suit. Politely but firmly stand up to the blowhard and he would likely fold.
Would the following letter suffice?
Dear Mr President,
Please fuck off.
Thanks.
The BBC
Darling Fascist Bully Boy
Give me some more money you bastard.
May the seed of your loins be fruitful in the belly of your woman.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
Trump is only threatening a libel suit. Politely but firmly stand up to the blowhard and he would likely fold.
Would the following letter suffice?
Dear Mr President,
Please fuck off.
Thanks.
The BBC
Darling Fascist Bully Boy
Give me some more money you bastard.
May the seed of your loins be fruitful in the belly of your woman.
I'd be a bit surprised if they sent Trump that letter. What money has he sent them so far (apart from a TV licence for Turnberry)?
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
I've already given you an example of an occasion on which the BBC was rebuked for failing to challenge the unfounded opinions of a "climate sceptic". Can you point to a specific example of the "generalised unquantified alarmism" which you say the BBC is so good at?
I don't think its the BBC its the nexus of science reporters and University Press Officers. The Uni press office likes to push interesting stories that the press will pick up. Stories such as "Climate Change is Worse than we thought" will always get more traction than "Climate change is probably not a bad as we thought".
I also think that some people are so annoyed by deniers that they cannot see legitimate criticism of studies as anything other than denial. For instance Michael Mann has published some shoddy work that has been heavily criticised. His response is just to go on the attack and try to sue people rather than accept that sometimes critic have a point (e.g. a data set included in a temperature reconstruction was used upside down).
The thing is that climate change probably is worse than we thought. There is some evidence of self-censorship of the more extreme predictions from some models precisely because of the fear that such predictions might be seen as alarmism.
BTW, please could you give a link or reference to the shoddy work that you say Michael Mann has been heavily criticised for. It's not obvious to me on googling.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
I've already given you an example of an occasion on which the BBC was rebuked for failing to challenge the unfounded opinions of a "climate sceptic". Can you point to a specific example of the "generalised unquantified alarmism" which you say the BBC is so good at?
I don't think its the BBC its the nexus of science reporters and University Press Officers. The Uni press office likes to push interesting stories that the press will pick up. Stories such as "Climate Change is Worse than we thought" will always get more traction than "Climate change is probably not a bad as we thought".
I also think that some people are so annoyed by deniers that they cannot see legitimate criticism of studies as anything other than denial. For instance Michael Mann has published some shoddy work that has been heavily criticised. His response is just to go on the attack and try to sue people rather than accept that sometimes critic have a point (e.g. a data set included in a temperature reconstruction was used upside down).
The thing is that climate change probably is worse than we thought. There is some evidence of self-censorship of the more extreme predictions from some models precisely because of the fear that such predictions might be seen as alarmism.
And whenever there is discussion in the media about uncertainty in climate models, it's only ever in one direction.
Targeted raids on High Street premises such as mini-marts, vape shops, barbers and takeaways have seen more than 920 people arrested, in the largest action of its kind coordinated by the National Crime Agency (NCA).
More than 340 notices for illegal working and renting were issued by authorities, which could see businesses and landlords fined tens of thousands of pounds. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2l1253ndeo
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
I've already given you an example of an occasion on which the BBC was rebuked for failing to challenge the unfounded opinions of a "climate sceptic". Can you point to a specific example of the "generalised unquantified alarmism" which you say the BBC is so good at?
I don't think its the BBC its the nexus of science reporters and University Press Officers. The Uni press office likes to push interesting stories that the press will pick up. Stories such as "Climate Change is Worse than we thought" will always get more traction than "Climate change is probably not a bad as we thought".
I also think that some people are so annoyed by deniers that they cannot see legitimate criticism of studies as anything other than denial. For instance Michael Mann has published some shoddy work that has been heavily criticised. His response is just to go on the attack and try to sue people rather than accept that sometimes critic have a point (e.g. a data set included in a temperature reconstruction was used upside down).
The thing is that climate change probably is worse than we thought. There is some evidence of self-censorship of the more extreme predictions from some models precisely because of the fear that such predictions might be seen as alarmism.
I'm not sure that's true - the published ranges are pretty wide. What I think is true is the ratchet effect of reporting.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
Because it becomes easy to excuse away bad behaviour. If it’s a fixed choice between Trump and the BBC it’s easy. And that’s the way many are trying to frame it. In some ways bizarrely as if the BBC is the injured party in all this and that mean mr Trump is trying to bully us.
That's exactly how I see it.
You guys on the right are being played. Although tbf some on the right are also doing the playing:
Sure the BBC allowed a fuck-up to be made and broadcast but having apologised, retracted, and seen DG and Head of News resign, that's enough.
There's no need to allow one of the brightest beacons of British soft power and balanced accurate news broadcasting in the world to be sunk.
Any true patriots should be defending the BBC against the wanna-be American dictator.
Ah yes. Because those attacking the BBC are bad (they are), we should ignore any issues. Because drawing attention to the problems undermines the organisation.
The police used to sing that song. Quite a lot.
The sane response is to
- Arkell v Pressdram to Trump - Do some reform within the BBC.
Fixing problems in an organisation makes it stronger. Not fixing them is to destroy it.
The NHS is *better* because the scandals came out. The police are *better* because the scandals came out and are addressed. The Post Office is *better* because the truth came out, in the end.
In all those cases, acting earlier would have saved vast amounts of pain and money.
Where have I said the BBC should ignore issues when they get it wrong? Nowhere. For this particular mistake the have, and I repeat, apologised, retracted, and seen DG and Head of News resign. That's enough.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
Trump is only threatening a libel suit. Politely but firmly stand up to the blowhard and he would likely fold.
Would the following letter suffice?
Dear Mr President,
Please fuck off.
Thanks.
The BBC
Darling Fascist Bully Boy
Give me some more money you bastard.
May the seed of your loins be fruitful in the belly of your woman.
Dear Donald,
Just to let you know Panorama has a copy of the Epstein files.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
Trump is only threatening a libel suit. Politely but firmly stand up to the blowhard and he would likely fold.
Would the following letter suffice?
Dear Mr President,
Please fuck off.
Thanks.
The BBC
Darling Fascist Bully Boy
Give me some more money you bastard.
May the seed of your loins be fruitful in the belly of your woman.
Dear Donald,
Just to let you know Panorama has a copy of the Epstein files.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
I've already given you an example of an occasion on which the BBC was rebuked for failing to challenge the unfounded opinions of a "climate sceptic". Can you point to a specific example of the "generalised unquantified alarmism" which you say the BBC is so good at?
I don't think its the BBC its the nexus of science reporters and University Press Officers. The Uni press office likes to push interesting stories that the press will pick up. Stories such as "Climate Change is Worse than we thought" will always get more traction than "Climate change is probably not a bad as we thought".
I also think that some people are so annoyed by deniers that they cannot see legitimate criticism of studies as anything other than denial. For instance Michael Mann has published some shoddy work that has been heavily criticised. His response is just to go on the attack and try to sue people rather than accept that sometimes critic have a point (e.g. a data set included in a temperature reconstruction was used upside down).
The thing is that climate change probably is worse than we thought. There is some evidence of self-censorship of the more extreme predictions from some models precisely because of the fear that such predictions might be seen as alarmism.
I'm not sure that's true - the published ranges are pretty wide. What I think is true is the ratchet effect of reporting.
As per my edit, please could you give a link or reference to the shoddy work that you say Michael Mann has been heavily criticised for. It's not obvious to me on googling.
Trump v The Beeb would be like the Al Fayed v Neil Hamilton court case.
It’s a shame both sides cannot lose.
The Beeb nade a mistake. It was entitled to apologise, and has done so.
For all its many faults it remains the outstanding independent news source around the world with an unequalled reputation for accuracy and impartiality. In many parts of the world it is the only means people have to find out what is going on. People risk their lives just to listen to its broadcasts because they know that it the only source which can be relied upon to give news in a reasonably impartial and balanced way.
You want it to lose? You'd prefer something like Fox presumably.
You’re usually a most reasonable poster. That last dig is cheap and most unlike you.
I don’t like the BBC, it offers me little, I don’t like having to fund a license fee for a service I barely use.
My watching is predominantly YouTube, old TV and my strap on hard drives that hold my DVD collection.
Fund world service via the license fee and let the commercial side, the strictly and traitors side, compete for funding.
The BBC has a track record of getting news wrong and lessons will be learned. Yet here we are.
So basically you aren't making full use of a service you pay for - as I note that it's a service you barely use rather than don't use.
That's on you rather than the BBC - because you can opt out by disabling your aerial..
It is not on me, and I cannot opt out as I wish to receive live signals from other broadcasters.
I do not see why I should pay for a service I’d happily live without.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
I've already given you an example of an occasion on which the BBC was rebuked for failing to challenge the unfounded opinions of a "climate sceptic". Can you point to a specific example of the "generalised unquantified alarmism" which you say the BBC is so good at?
I don't think its the BBC its the nexus of science reporters and University Press Officers. The Uni press office likes to push interesting stories that the press will pick up. Stories such as "Climate Change is Worse than we thought" will always get more traction than "Climate change is probably not a bad as we thought".
I also think that some people are so annoyed by deniers that they cannot see legitimate criticism of studies as anything other than denial. For instance Michael Mann has published some shoddy work that has been heavily criticised. His response is just to go on the attack and try to sue people rather than accept that sometimes critic have a point (e.g. a data set included in a temperature reconstruction was used upside down).
The thing is that climate change probably is worse than we thought. There is some evidence of self-censorship of the more extreme predictions from some models precisely because of the fear that such predictions might be seen as alarmism.
There's also a factor in the way that the models are calibrated against a relatively short period of observations. Models with less variability and less responsiveness will be more likely to match observations, because they will be less responsive to inevitable inaccuracies in their formulation. So you have an anchoring effect to the present climate.
But so-called sceptics have a very one-way scepticism. so these sorts of risks and uncertainties don't interest them.
PB obsesses over the licence fee but it’s £15 a month. Two coffees and two cakes in Costa costs about the same. It’s small, small fry in the grand scheme of things when it comes to taxes.
Meanwhile I pay £350 a month in student loan repayments. PB would have a collective aneurysm if income tax was increased to give a £350 a month additional tax burden.
Worlds smallest violin time. It may be small fry but it’s money I’d rather spend elsewhere, or have the option.
The TV landscape is changing, the license fee is untenable.
The decision to keep open the Epping asylum hotel is a dark day for local democracy and a slap in the face to the people of Epping
A Labour government has once again used the courts to put the rights of illegal immigrants above the rights of British citizens
Their conduct is disgraceful. Children and women in Epping and many other towns will now continue to be at risk
The people of Epping have been silenced in their own town. Their council fought for them, but their voices were ignored. Labour’s lawyers fought tooth and nail to keep this hotel open, even after a migrant housed there was jailed for sexually assaulting a teenage girl
The only way to fix this is the Conservative plan to leave the ECHR and deport all illegal immigrahts within a week of arrival. No more bogus asylum or other protection claims. No more illegal crossings. No more asylum hotels
But Keir Starmer is too weak to do this and so Labour’s open borders crisis will continue 12:17 PM · Nov 11, 2025"
Based on ONS data on conurbations derived from the 2011 census summarized on Wikipedia I would reckon the median seat would be part of a town like Swindon, Crawley, Ipswich or Wigan with a population a little under 200k.
I don't think anwhere can be a truly representive median. None of these places feel like a microcosm of Britain (or even England) as a whole, or even just a 'typical place'.
Ipswich, where I lived for several years, is strangely isolated and insular. When I was there it was trying to make something of the 'tech corridor' between itself and Cambridge, which failed because there was pretty much nothing in between the two.
Crawley is a few miles down the road from where I am now and I have to go to meetings there sometimes. It lacks an identity and feels dominated by Gatwick and out-of-town aviation sector employment. A dull, characterless place where I can't imagine people feel much of a sense of belonging.
Wigan just feels too overtly 'Northern' to be representative. Rugby League. Old Mills. Old Labour.
Swindon is the best candidate of these. Sits on the frontier between South East and South West, and feels quite neutral. I suspect middling scores in various demographic metrics. Tends to be a bellwether at parliamentary level. Has a largely forgotten old town and lot of new stuff. I don't like the place very much.
Based on geography, population, and general averageness in many departments, I'd be tempted to suggest... Peterborough.
Swindon is too overtly Southern. And Wigan is coal.
For some unknown reason as Swindon Town fans we sing 'West Country La La La'. I don't really know where the west country starts, but I'm pretty sure it isn't Swindon. Back in the 1990's the Central Match Live showed a live Div 2 match every sunday and Swindon was on the list, so they regarded it as central...
Wilts county *is* West Country. And Swindon was in Wilts the last time I passed through it.
But where does the west country start? Is it when you cross the Hampshire/Wiltshire border on the A303? Doesn't feel right to me.
Based on ONS data on conurbations derived from the 2011 census summarized on Wikipedia I would reckon the median seat would be part of a town like Swindon, Crawley, Ipswich or Wigan with a population a little under 200k.
I don't think anwhere can be a truly representive median. None of these places feel like a microcosm of Britain (or even England) as a whole, or even just a 'typical place'.
Ipswich, where I lived for several years, is strangely isolated and insular. When I was there it was trying to make something of the 'tech corridor' between itself and Cambridge, which failed because there was pretty much nothing in between the two.
Crawley is a few miles down the road from where I am now and I have to go to meetings there sometimes. It lacks an identity and feels dominated by Gatwick and out-of-town aviation sector employment. A dull, characterless place where I can't imagine people feel much of a sense of belonging.
Wigan just feels too overtly 'Northern' to be representative. Rugby League. Old Mills. Old Labour.
Swindon is the best candidate of these. Sits on the frontier between South East and South West, and feels quite neutral. I suspect middling scores in various demographic metrics. Tends to be a bellwether at parliamentary level. Has a largely forgotten old town and lot of new stuff. I don't like the place very much.
Based on geography, population, and general averageness in many departments, I'd be tempted to suggest... Peterborough.
Swindon is too overtly Southern. And Wigan is coal.
For some unknown reason as Swindon Town fans we sing 'West Country La La La'. I don't really know where the west country starts, but I'm pretty sure it isn't Swindon. Back in the 1990's the Central Match Live showed a live Div 2 match every sunday and Swindon was on the list, so they regarded it as central...
Wilts county *is* West Country. And Swindon was in Wilts the last time I passed through it.
But where does the west country start? Is it when you cross the Hampshire/Wiltshire border on the A303? Doesn't feel right to me.
Mm, to me it's alwasy seemed westcountry - the high boundary county, summit levels of the GWR and Kennet and Avon, the high northern downs ... forther east it's all downhill to the London and its basin. Andover's definitely Londonwards, but then you really get into bustard country to the west, and the valley roads.
Surely the West Country begins at King Alfred's Monument in Pewsey in Wiltshre, that is what my Pewsey living cousins have always told me. They certainly have West Country accents in Pewsey.
Targeted raids on High Street premises such as mini-marts, vape shops, barbers and takeaways have seen more than 920 people arrested, in the largest action of its kind coordinated by the National Crime Agency (NCA).
More than 340 notices for illegal working and renting were issued by authorities, which could see businesses and landlords fined tens of thousands of pounds. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2l1253ndeo
Did NCA manage to organise that in 6 days since the BBC scoop or did the BBC almost scupper an existing NCA operation?
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
Quite often BBC 'balance' consists of wheeling out caricatures and pantomime villains and claiming job done.
Farage, for example. You see it on Twitter all the time. 'BBC can't be left-leaning, because look how many times Nigel has been on Question Time!!11one11impart1al1'
Many of us who consider ourselves to be right-wing don't really think Farage is on our side or representative of our world view. And even if he was, he's primarily there to serve as a bogeyman figure for everyone else to rail against. It smacks of tokenism and not a lot of thought or effort.
Yeah, someone having thousands of pounds of tools required to do their job being stolen isn’t important.
The police do as much as for phone theft.
Until quite recently, you could find tools for sale at a certain East End market, with company details stamped into the tool body.
That stopped when some companies/individuals started going round and simply taking them back.
We had a load of stuff nicked. Found it for sale on Facebook marketplace - the chap selling it apparently worked for the "Ashfield fencing company"!
Plod were totally disinterested, even when we knew where our stuff was and had serial numbers etc to prove it was ours.
You should have told Plod they'd misgendered you. They’d be around like a shot.
When I worked in Acocks Green in Brum I heard a few tales of people ‘reclaiming’ nicked property themselves as Plod couldn’t be arsed. Sometimes a little persuasion was needed
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
I've already given you an example of an occasion on which the BBC was rebuked for failing to challenge the unfounded opinions of a "climate sceptic". Can you point to a specific example of the "generalised unquantified alarmism" which you say the BBC is so good at?
I don't think its the BBC its the nexus of science reporters and University Press Officers. The Uni press office likes to push interesting stories that the press will pick up. Stories such as "Climate Change is Worse than we thought" will always get more traction than "Climate change is probably not a bad as we thought".
I also think that some people are so annoyed by deniers that they cannot see legitimate criticism of studies as anything other than denial. For instance Michael Mann has published some shoddy work that has been heavily criticised. His response is just to go on the attack and try to sue people rather than accept that sometimes critic have a point (e.g. a data set included in a temperature reconstruction was used upside down).
The thing is that climate change probably is worse than we thought. There is some evidence of self-censorship of the more extreme predictions from some models precisely because of the fear that such predictions might be seen as alarmism.
I'm not sure that's true - the published ranges are pretty wide. What I think is true is the ratchet effect of reporting.
As per my edit, please could you give a link or reference to the shoddy work that you say Michael Mann has been heavily criticised for. It's not obvious to me on googling.
I don't want to go into a lot of details and people will probably bridle because Steve Macintyre is someone who attracts abuse. But with Ross Mckitrick they analysed a lot of Mann's papers around the Hockey Stick and are heavily critical of the methods. For instance Mann and his colleagues screened data sets for how well they matched up to the instrumental record and then used those that fitted it to extrapolate backwards. This is essentially data mining for hockey sticks, as that is the temperature record. In at least one reconstruction a dataset was included upside down. As I say I don't want to go on too much about this because it will inflame passions, but there are bad actors on all sides of the debate. Reportedly Mann objected to sharing data with sceptics because "they will try to find something wrong with it". Well yes. Using tree rings to work out past temperatures is contentious. There are better ways to do it, but Mann work has been prominent in framing narratives.
If you are genuinely interested read 'The Hockey Stick Illusion" by Andrew Montford. You may not agree with all of it but it does expose some weakness in the science.
And for the record I am not a denier - I am saddened that out activities are having the effects that they are. I long for a world were we are not destroying ecosystems and using 100 % renewable energy and living sustainably.
Long term infrastructure investment pays off. Who knew?
N Korea ... ?
About 70 percent of ammunition currently used by Russia in its war against Ukraine has been made in North Korea, according to an analysis by Ukrainian authorities, which have created classified documents on Moscow's military supplies.
Based on ONS data on conurbations derived from the 2011 census summarized on Wikipedia I would reckon the median seat would be part of a town like Swindon, Crawley, Ipswich or Wigan with a population a little under 200k.
I don't think anwhere can be a truly representive median. None of these places feel like a microcosm of Britain (or even England) as a whole, or even just a 'typical place'.
Ipswich, where I lived for several years, is strangely isolated and insular. When I was there it was trying to make something of the 'tech corridor' between itself and Cambridge, which failed because there was pretty much nothing in between the two.
Crawley is a few miles down the road from where I am now and I have to go to meetings there sometimes. It lacks an identity and feels dominated by Gatwick and out-of-town aviation sector employment. A dull, characterless place where I can't imagine people feel much of a sense of belonging.
Wigan just feels too overtly 'Northern' to be representative. Rugby League. Old Mills. Old Labour.
Swindon is the best candidate of these. Sits on the frontier between South East and South West, and feels quite neutral. I suspect middling scores in various demographic metrics. Tends to be a bellwether at parliamentary level. Has a largely forgotten old town and lot of new stuff. I don't like the place very much.
Based on geography, population, and general averageness in many departments, I'd be tempted to suggest... Peterborough.
Swindon is too overtly Southern. And Wigan is coal.
For some unknown reason as Swindon Town fans we sing 'West Country La La La'. I don't really know where the west country starts, but I'm pretty sure it isn't Swindon. Back in the 1990's the Central Match Live showed a live Div 2 match every sunday and Swindon was on the list, so they regarded it as central...
Wilts county *is* West Country. And Swindon was in Wilts the last time I passed through it.
But where does the west country start? Is it when you cross the Hampshire/Wiltshire border on the A303? Doesn't feel right to me.
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is (just) west of Swindon, hence my feeling that Swindon is NOT west country (despite the number of times I have sung about it)
I would welcome a libel trial in Florida, and Trump being cross examined as to reputational damage. We could start with the long list of those convicted for their part in Jan 6th that he pardoned
John Banuelos fired a gun in the air while attacking the Capitol on Jan 6.
6 months later he stabbed a man to death.
Trump quickly pardoned him after returning to office.
Targeted raids on High Street premises such as mini-marts, vape shops, barbers and takeaways have seen more than 920 people arrested, in the largest action of its kind coordinated by the National Crime Agency (NCA).
More than 340 notices for illegal working and renting were issued by authorities, which could see businesses and landlords fined tens of thousands of pounds. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2l1253ndeo
Dunno if you saw but SKY News accompanied one of these raids.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
Because it becomes easy to excuse away bad behaviour. If it’s a fixed choice between Trump and the BBC it’s easy. And that’s the way many are trying to frame it. In some ways bizarrely as if the BBC is the injured party in all this and that mean mr Trump is trying to bully us.
That's exactly how I see it.
You guys on the right are being played. Although tbf some on the right are also doing the playing:
Sure the BBC allowed a fuck-up to be made and broadcast but having apologised, retracted, and seen DG and Head of News resign, that's enough.
There's no need to allow one of the brightest beacons of British soft power and balanced accurate news broadcasting in the world to be sunk.
Any true patriots should be defending the BBC against the wanna-be American dictator.
Ah yes. Because those attacking the BBC are bad (they are), we should ignore any issues. Because drawing attention to the problems undermines the organisation.
The police used to sing that song. Quite a lot.
The sane response is to
- Arkell v Pressdram to Trump - Do some reform within the BBC.
Fixing problems in an organisation makes it stronger. Not fixing them is to destroy it.
The NHS is *better* because the scandals came out. The police are *better* because the scandals came out and are addressed. The Post Office is *better* because the truth came out, in the end.
In all those cases, acting earlier would have saved vast amounts of pain and money.
Where have I said the BBC should ignore issues when they get it wrong? Nowhere. For this particular mistake the have, and I repeat, apologised, retracted, and seen DG and Head of News resign. That's enough.
The apology, retraction and resignations of a couple of NU10K’rs (who will be in better paid jobs before Monday lunchtime) is almost irrelevant.
What is needed, is some tightening up on *enforcement* of standards. So the actual problem doesn’t happen again.
Saying “we are the BBC, therefore we are awesome” is wrong. Needs to be “we are proven to be awesome. And we happen to be the BBC.”
I would welcome a libel trial in Florida, and Trump being cross examined as to reputational damage. We could start with the long list of those convicted for their part in Jan 6th that he pardoned
John Banuelos fired a gun in the air while attacking the Capitol on Jan 6.
6 months later he stabbed a man to death.
Trump quickly pardoned him after returning to office.
The decision to keep open the Epping asylum hotel is a dark day for local democracy and a slap in the face to the people of Epping
A Labour government has once again used the courts to put the rights of illegal immigrants above the rights of British citizens
Their conduct is disgraceful. Children and women in Epping and many other towns will now continue to be at risk
The people of Epping have been silenced in their own town. Their council fought for them, but their voices were ignored. Labour’s lawyers fought tooth and nail to keep this hotel open, even after a migrant housed there was jailed for sexually assaulting a teenage girl
The only way to fix this is the Conservative plan to leave the ECHR and deport all illegal immigrahts within a week of arrival. No more bogus asylum or other protection claims. No more illegal crossings. No more asylum hotels
But Keir Starmer is too weak to do this and so Labour’s open borders crisis will continue 12:17 PM · Nov 11, 2025"
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
I've already given you an example of an occasion on which the BBC was rebuked for failing to challenge the unfounded opinions of a "climate sceptic". Can you point to a specific example of the "generalised unquantified alarmism" which you say the BBC is so good at?
I don't think its the BBC its the nexus of science reporters and University Press Officers. The Uni press office likes to push interesting stories that the press will pick up. Stories such as "Climate Change is Worse than we thought" will always get more traction than "Climate change is probably not a bad as we thought".
I also think that some people are so annoyed by deniers that they cannot see legitimate criticism of studies as anything other than denial. For instance Michael Mann has published some shoddy work that has been heavily criticised. His response is just to go on the attack and try to sue people rather than accept that sometimes critic have a point (e.g. a data set included in a temperature reconstruction was used upside down).
The thing is that climate change probably is worse than we thought. There is some evidence of self-censorship of the more extreme predictions from some models precisely because of the fear that such predictions might be seen as alarmism.
I'm not sure that's true - the published ranges are pretty wide. What I think is true is the ratchet effect of reporting.
As per my edit, please could you give a link or reference to the shoddy work that you say Michael Mann has been heavily criticised for. It's not obvious to me on googling.
I don't want to go into a lot of details and people will probably bridle because Steve Macintyre is someone who attracts abuse. But with Ross Mckitrick they analysed a lot of Mann's papers around the Hockey Stick and are heavily critical of the methods. For instance Mann and his colleagues screened data sets for how well they matched up to the instrumental record and then used those that fitted it to extrapolate backwards. This is essentially data mining for hockey sticks, as that is the temperature record. In at least one reconstruction a dataset was included upside down. As I say I don't want to go on too much about this because it will inflame passions, but there are bad actors on all sides of the debate. Reportedly Mann objected to sharing data with sceptics because "they will try to find something wrong with it". Well yes. Using tree rings to work out past temperatures is contentious. There are better ways to do it, but Mann work has been prominent in framing narratives.
If you are genuinely interested read 'The Hockey Stick Illusion" by Andrew Montford. You may not agree with all of it but it does expose some weakness in the science.
And for the record I am not a denier - I am saddened that out activities are having the effects that they are. I long for a world were we are not destroying ecosystems and using 100 % renewable energy and living sustainably.
We were talking golden ageism yesterday. Surely the old hockey stick drama from about 20 years ago is another great example. The golden age of WUWT, the warming hiatus, UHIs explaining it all, Roy Spencer’s satellite non-trends and the old M&M feeling.
That was the height of my former climate online debate whack-a-mole years. Thankfully long past, though sadly the warming trend less so.
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
Quite often BBC 'balance' consists of wheeling out caricatures and pantomime villains and claiming job done.
Farage, for example. You see it on Twitter all the time. 'BBC can't be left-leaning, because look how many times Nigel has been on Question Time!!11one11impart1al1'
Many of us who consider ourselves to be right-wing don't really think Farage is on our side or representative of our world view. And even if he was, he's primarily there to serve as a bogeyman figure for everyone else to rail against. It smacks of tokenism and not a lot of thought or effort.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
I've already given you an example of an occasion on which the BBC was rebuked for failing to challenge the unfounded opinions of a "climate sceptic". Can you point to a specific example of the "generalised unquantified alarmism" which you say the BBC is so good at?
I don't think its the BBC its the nexus of science reporters and University Press Officers. The Uni press office likes to push interesting stories that the press will pick up. Stories such as "Climate Change is Worse than we thought" will always get more traction than "Climate change is probably not a bad as we thought".
I also think that some people are so annoyed by deniers that they cannot see legitimate criticism of studies as anything other than denial. For instance Michael Mann has published some shoddy work that has been heavily criticised. His response is just to go on the attack and try to sue people rather than accept that sometimes critic have a point (e.g. a data set included in a temperature reconstruction was used upside down).
The thing is that climate change probably is worse than we thought. There is some evidence of self-censorship of the more extreme predictions from some models precisely because of the fear that such predictions might be seen as alarmism.
I'm not sure that's true - the published ranges are pretty wide. What I think is true is the ratchet effect of reporting.
As per my edit, please could you give a link or reference to the shoddy work that you say Michael Mann has been heavily criticised for. It's not obvious to me on googling.
I don't want to go into a lot of details and people will probably bridle because Steve Macintyre is someone who attracts abuse. But with Ross Mckitrick they analysed a lot of Mann's papers around the Hockey Stick and are heavily critical of the methods. For instance Mann and his colleagues screened data sets for how well they matched up to the instrumental record and then used those that fitted it to extrapolate backwards. This is essentially data mining for hockey sticks, as that is the temperature record. In at least one reconstruction a dataset was included upside down. As I say I don't want to go on too much about this because it will inflame passions, but there are bad actors on all sides of the debate. Reportedly Mann objected to sharing data with sceptics because "they will try to find something wrong with it". Well yes. Using tree rings to work out past temperatures is contentious. There are better ways to do it, but Mann work has been prominent in framing narratives.
If you are genuinely interested read 'The Hockey Stick Illusion" by Andrew Montford. You may not agree with all of it but it does expose some weakness in the science.
And for the record I am not a denier - I am saddened that out activities are having the effects that they are. I long for a world were we are not destroying ecosystems and using 100 % renewable energy and living sustainably.
We were talking golden ageism yesterday. Surely the old hockey stick drama from about 20 years ago is another great example. The golden age of WUWT, the warming hiatus, UHIs explaining it all, Roy Spencer’s satellite non-trends and the old M&M feeling.
That was the height of my former climate online debate whack-a-mole years. Thankfully long past, though sadly the warming trend less so.
One of the biggest issues I had with Mann and his colleagues was a refusal to share data. In chemistry we are required to make data available when we publish. This should be standard but at the time there was a refusal to engage. Whatever the reasons, hiding from scrutiny was not a good look.
Its a really complex area. If it didn't matter so much (too ALL of us, because of the impacts) it would have been just another academic squabble among many. But because governments change policy and affect our lives because of climate science, it needs to be open and transparant. Mann fighting scrutiny did not help.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
I actually think the BBC board hiring a partisan hack as their bias consultant is a bigger problem than any of the issues he's identified.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
I've already given you an example of an occasion on which the BBC was rebuked for failing to challenge the unfounded opinions of a "climate sceptic". Can you point to a specific example of the "generalised unquantified alarmism" which you say the BBC is so good at?
I don't think its the BBC its the nexus of science reporters and University Press Officers. The Uni press office likes to push interesting stories that the press will pick up. Stories such as "Climate Change is Worse than we thought" will always get more traction than "Climate change is probably not a bad as we thought".
I also think that some people are so annoyed by deniers that they cannot see legitimate criticism of studies as anything other than denial. For instance Michael Mann has published some shoddy work that has been heavily criticised. His response is just to go on the attack and try to sue people rather than accept that sometimes critic have a point (e.g. a data set included in a temperature reconstruction was used upside down).
The thing is that climate change probably is worse than we thought. There is some evidence of self-censorship of the more extreme predictions from some models precisely because of the fear that such predictions might be seen as alarmism.
I'm not sure that's true - the published ranges are pretty wide. What I think is true is the ratchet effect of reporting.
As per my edit, please could you give a link or reference to the shoddy work that you say Michael Mann has been heavily criticised for. It's not obvious to me on googling.
I don't want to go into a lot of details and people will probably bridle because Steve Macintyre is someone who attracts abuse. But with Ross Mckitrick they analysed a lot of Mann's papers around the Hockey Stick and are heavily critical of the methods. For instance Mann and his colleagues screened data sets for how well they matched up to the instrumental record and then used those that fitted it to extrapolate backwards. This is essentially data mining for hockey sticks, as that is the temperature record. In at least one reconstruction a dataset was included upside down. As I say I don't want to go on too much about this because it will inflame passions, but there are bad actors on all sides of the debate. Reportedly Mann objected to sharing data with sceptics because "they will try to find something wrong with it". Well yes. Using tree rings to work out past temperatures is contentious. There are better ways to do it, but Mann work has been prominent in framing narratives.
If you are genuinely interested read 'The Hockey Stick Illusion" by Andrew Montford. You may not agree with all of it but it does expose some weakness in the science.
And for the record I am not a denier - I am saddened that out activities are having the effects that they are. I long for a world were we are not destroying ecosystems and using 100 % renewable energy and living sustainably.
Oh, sorry, I thought you were referring to scientific criticism from fellow scientists, not fossil industry fueled mudslinging from vested interests. Yes, Michael Mann's work has indeed been heavily "criticised" by such folk, for the obvious reasons. I'm sure Michael Mann has made mistakes; like all of us he is only human. But the level of abuse he has endured is ridiculous, and AFAIK the criticisms of his work haven't led to any paper retractions.
As regards book recommendations, in the same spirit perhaps you might want to read "Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines: The Truth Behind a Tragedy" by Andrew Wakefield (4.6. stars on Amazon). You may not agree with all of it but it does expose some weakness in the science
Targeted raids on High Street premises such as mini-marts, vape shops, barbers and takeaways have seen more than 920 people arrested, in the largest action of its kind coordinated by the National Crime Agency (NCA).
More than 340 notices for illegal working and renting were issued by authorities, which could see businesses and landlords fined tens of thousands of pounds. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2l1253ndeo
Well it's barely scratching the surface (I could point to one street alone in North Manchester with around 50 dodgy vape shops), but a step in the right direction - though it seems unlikely those fines will ever be paid.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
I've already given you an example of an occasion on which the BBC was rebuked for failing to challenge the unfounded opinions of a "climate sceptic". Can you point to a specific example of the "generalised unquantified alarmism" which you say the BBC is so good at?
I don't think its the BBC its the nexus of science reporters and University Press Officers. The Uni press office likes to push interesting stories that the press will pick up. Stories such as "Climate Change is Worse than we thought" will always get more traction than "Climate change is probably not a bad as we thought".
I also think that some people are so annoyed by deniers that they cannot see legitimate criticism of studies as anything other than denial. For instance Michael Mann has published some shoddy work that has been heavily criticised. His response is just to go on the attack and try to sue people rather than accept that sometimes critic have a point (e.g. a data set included in a temperature reconstruction was used upside down).
The thing is that climate change probably is worse than we thought. There is some evidence of self-censorship of the more extreme predictions from some models precisely because of the fear that such predictions might be seen as alarmism.
I'm not sure that's true - the published ranges are pretty wide. What I think is true is the ratchet effect of reporting.
As per my edit, please could you give a link or reference to the shoddy work that you say Michael Mann has been heavily criticised for. It's not obvious to me on googling.
I don't want to go into a lot of details and people will probably bridle because Steve Macintyre is someone who attracts abuse. But with Ross Mckitrick they analysed a lot of Mann's papers around the Hockey Stick and are heavily critical of the methods. For instance Mann and his colleagues screened data sets for how well they matched up to the instrumental record and then used those that fitted it to extrapolate backwards. This is essentially data mining for hockey sticks, as that is the temperature record. In at least one reconstruction a dataset was included upside down. As I say I don't want to go on too much about this because it will inflame passions, but there are bad actors on all sides of the debate. Reportedly Mann objected to sharing data with sceptics because "they will try to find something wrong with it". Well yes. Using tree rings to work out past temperatures is contentious. There are better ways to do it, but Mann work has been prominent in framing narratives.
If you are genuinely interested read 'The Hockey Stick Illusion" by Andrew Montford. You may not agree with all of it but it does expose some weakness in the science.
And for the record I am not a denier - I am saddened that out activities are having the effects that they are. I long for a world were we are not destroying ecosystems and using 100 % renewable energy and living sustainably.
Oh, sorry, I thought you were referring to scientific criticism from fellow scientists, not fossil industry fueled mudslinging from vested interests. Yes, Michael Mann's work has indeed been heavily "criticised" by such folk, for the obvious reasons. I'm sure Michael Mann has made mistakes; like all of us he is only human. But the level of abuse he has endured is ridiculous, and AFAIK the criticisms of his work haven't led to any paper retractions.
As regards book recommendations, in the same spirit perhaps you might want to read "Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines: The Truth Behind a Tragedy" by Andrew Wakefield (4.6. stars on Amazon). You may not agree with all of it but it does expose some weakness in the science
See - this is exactly why I didn't want to go into it. Have you seriously looked at Mckitrick and Macintyre's criticism? Because if you do you may be surprised.
Do you think data should be open to be studied? Do you think you should put up corrections if you have made mistakes in a publication? I do and have done just this.
Mackintyre and Mckitrick are statisticians looking at a climate scientist applying statistics in ways that were probably 'pushing it'. But fine, if you want to equate that to Andrew Wakefield then do so. People disagree on stuff a lot.
A few scenarios how they end 1) They obsequiously apologise, with some kind of grotesque new standard for "impartiality" imposed so that just like GBNews they send a presenter to salute Trump's motorcade. We still have BBC News, but now with a Reform puppet as overlord. 2) They pay Trumpler a settlement amount. Public money. Which means they have to then cancel a whole load of programmes that people actually watch as no money to pay for them. They stagger on but its a shadow of where it was 3) Someone at the BBC grows a pair and they go contest it in Florida. They'll lose because of course they will - Florida is MAGA and Trumpler controls the courts.
I am astonished at how this affair has become all about Trump. Its not. There are far wider areas of concern - notably bias in coverage of Gaza, trans issues and so on. The most perceptive coverage has drawn the distinction between much younger staff, more likely to be pro Palestine, pro Trans etc, and older editorial staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible.
You could change that to "Much older editorial staff who are anti Palestine and anti trans and younger staff who are struggling to keep as impartial as possible."
See. It isn't easy.
I don't agree with that. I don't think older editors are necessarily anti Palestine and anti trans. I think its more nuanced.
So editorial staff are nuanced but the interns and juniors are biased? If that were the case then, just like any organisation the senior managers views would win out.
Why not go and read the actual dossier?
I have just read it. It's a report about bias in the BBC that is massively biased itself, ironically. And therefore useless as a guide for improvement. Prescott's basic complaint is that the BBC isn't reporting stuff from his ideological perspective.
I did chuckle over one of his grumbles - that he was shocked Panorama didn't run an equivalent programme about Kamala Harris. How many insurrections against the US government did Harris lead?
Lol, yes. That's the school of balance that says if you do a doc on the moon landings you have to include somebody arguing they never happened.
Likewise climate change. Every interview with a climate scientist has to be balanced with the unchallenged nonsensical opinion of a scientifically illiterate "climate sceptic".
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
I've already given you an example of an occasion on which the BBC was rebuked for failing to challenge the unfounded opinions of a "climate sceptic". Can you point to a specific example of the "generalised unquantified alarmism" which you say the BBC is so good at?
I don't think its the BBC its the nexus of science reporters and University Press Officers. The Uni press office likes to push interesting stories that the press will pick up. Stories such as "Climate Change is Worse than we thought" will always get more traction than "Climate change is probably not a bad as we thought".
I also think that some people are so annoyed by deniers that they cannot see legitimate criticism of studies as anything other than denial. For instance Michael Mann has published some shoddy work that has been heavily criticised. His response is just to go on the attack and try to sue people rather than accept that sometimes critic have a point (e.g. a data set included in a temperature reconstruction was used upside down).
The thing is that climate change probably is worse than we thought. There is some evidence of self-censorship of the more extreme predictions from some models precisely because of the fear that such predictions might be seen as alarmism.
I'm not sure that's true - the published ranges are pretty wide. What I think is true is the ratchet effect of reporting.
As per my edit, please could you give a link or reference to the shoddy work that you say Michael Mann has been heavily criticised for. It's not obvious to me on googling.
I don't want to go into a lot of details and people will probably bridle because Steve Macintyre is someone who attracts abuse. But with Ross Mckitrick they analysed a lot of Mann's papers around the Hockey Stick and are heavily critical of the methods. For instance Mann and his colleagues screened data sets for how well they matched up to the instrumental record and then used those that fitted it to extrapolate backwards. This is essentially data mining for hockey sticks, as that is the temperature record. In at least one reconstruction a dataset was included upside down. As I say I don't want to go on too much about this because it will inflame passions, but there are bad actors on all sides of the debate. Reportedly Mann objected to sharing data with sceptics because "they will try to find something wrong with it". Well yes. Using tree rings to work out past temperatures is contentious. There are better ways to do it, but Mann work has been prominent in framing narratives.
If you are genuinely interested read 'The Hockey Stick Illusion" by Andrew Montford. You may not agree with all of it but it does expose some weakness in the science.
And for the record I am not a denier - I am saddened that out activities are having the effects that they are. I long for a world were we are not destroying ecosystems and using 100 % renewable energy and living sustainably.
Oh, sorry, I thought you were referring to scientific criticism from fellow scientists, not fossil industry fueled mudslinging from vested interests. Yes, Michael Mann's work has indeed been heavily "criticised" by such folk, for the obvious reasons. I'm sure Michael Mann has made mistakes; like all of us he is only human. But the level of abuse he has endured is ridiculous, and AFAIK the criticisms of his work haven't led to any paper retractions.
As regards book recommendations, in the same spirit perhaps you might want to read "Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines: The Truth Behind a Tragedy" by Andrew Wakefield (4.6. stars on Amazon). You may not agree with all of it but it does expose some weakness in the science
See - this is exactly why I didn't want to go into it. Have you seriously looked at Mckitrick and Macintyre's criticism? Because if you do you may be surprised.
Do you think data should be open to be studied? Do you think you should put up corrections if you have made mistakes in a publication? I do and have done just this.
Mackintyre and Mckitrick are statisticians looking at a climate scientist applying statistics in ways that were probably 'pushing it'. But fine, if you want to equate that to Andrew Wakefield then do so. People disagree on stuff a lot.
This is almost ancient history. Quoting from Wikipedia:
"A version of the MBH99 graph was featured prominently in the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), which also drew on Jones et al. 1998 and three other reconstructions to support the conclusion that, in the Northern Hemisphere, the 1990s was likely to have been the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year during the past 1,000 years.[8] The graph became a focus of dispute for those opposed to the strengthening scientific consensus that late 20th century warmth was exceptional.[9] In 2003, as lobbying over the 1997 Kyoto Protocol intensified, a paper claiming greater medieval warmth was quickly dismissed by scientists in the Soon and Baliunas controversy.[10] Later in 2003, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick published McIntyre & McKitrick 2003b disputing the data used in MBH98 paper. In 2004 Hans von Storch published criticism of the statistical techniques as tending to underplay variations in earlier parts of the graph, though this was disputed and he later accepted that the effect was very small.[11] In 2005 McIntyre and McKitrick published criticisms of the principal components analysis methodology as used in MBH98 and MBH99. Their analysis was subsequently disputed by published papers including Huybers 2005 and Wahl & Ammann 2007 which pointed to errors in the McIntyre and McKitrick methodology. Political disputes led to the formation of a panel of scientists convened by the United States National Research Council, their North Report in 2006 supported Mann's findings with some qualifications, including agreeing that there were some statistical failings but these had little effect on the result.[12]"
The decision to keep open the Epping asylum hotel is a dark day for local democracy and a slap in the face to the people of Epping
A Labour government has once again used the courts to put the rights of illegal immigrants above the rights of British citizens
Their conduct is disgraceful. Children and women in Epping and many other towns will now continue to be at risk
The people of Epping have been silenced in their own town. Their council fought for them, but their voices were ignored. Labour’s lawyers fought tooth and nail to keep this hotel open, even after a migrant housed there was jailed for sexually assaulting a teenage girl
The only way to fix this is the Conservative plan to leave the ECHR and deport all illegal immigrahts within a week of arrival. No more bogus asylum or other protection claims. No more illegal crossings. No more asylum hotels
But Keir Starmer is too weak to do this and so Labour’s open borders crisis will continue 12:17 PM · Nov 11, 2025"
Re tactical voting. I live in Gloucester. I am a Liberal Democrat but I think Reform would be a disaster for this country. I will therefore vote for the party most likely to beat Reform. At this time it is hard to identify. We have a Labour MP and Lib Dem run City and County Councils. I suspect I will look at the MRPs close to the election and will vote for the one closest in the poll to Reform (that assumes they have not imploded before the election). It might be the first time in my life I have voted Conservative but it is still three plus years away. I might move to a mile away from where I currently live to the Tewkesbury Constituency where I could happily vote for my preferred party knowing they are most likely to beat Reform.
The decision to keep open the Epping asylum hotel is a dark day for local democracy and a slap in the face to the people of Epping
A Labour government has once again used the courts to put the rights of illegal immigrants above the rights of British citizens
Their conduct is disgraceful. Children and women in Epping and many other towns will now continue to be at risk
The people of Epping have been silenced in their own town. Their council fought for them, but their voices were ignored. Labour’s lawyers fought tooth and nail to keep this hotel open, even after a migrant housed there was jailed for sexually assaulting a teenage girl
The only way to fix this is the Conservative plan to leave the ECHR and deport all illegal immigrahts within a week of arrival. No more bogus asylum or other protection claims. No more illegal crossings. No more asylum hotels
But Keir Starmer is too weak to do this and so Labour’s open borders crisis will continue 12:17 PM · Nov 11, 2025"
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
Quite often BBC 'balance' consists of wheeling out caricatures and pantomime villains and claiming job done.
Farage, for example. You see it on Twitter all the time. 'BBC can't be left-leaning, because look how many times Nigel has been on Question Time!!11one11impart1al1'
Many of us who consider ourselves to be right-wing don't really think Farage is on our side or representative of our world view. And even if he was, he's primarily there to serve as a bogeyman figure for everyone else to rail against. It smacks of tokenism and not a lot of thought or effort.
Yeah, someone having thousands of pounds of tools required to do their job being stolen isn’t important.
The police do as much as for phone theft.
Until quite recently, you could find tools for sale at a certain East End market, with company details stamped into the tool body.
That stopped when some companies/individuals started going round and simply taking them back.
We had a load of stuff nicked. Found it for sale on Facebook marketplace - the chap selling it apparently worked for the "Ashfield fencing company"!
Plod were totally disinterested, even when we knew where our stuff was and had serial numbers etc to prove it was ours.
You should have told Plod they'd misgendered you. They’d be around like a shot.
When I worked in Acocks Green in Brum I heard a few tales of people ‘reclaiming’ nicked property themselves as Plod couldn’t be arsed. Sometimes a little persuasion was needed
In this neck of the woods, there is the name of a local security company displayed prominently on most of the most burglable properties (homes, businesses, schools). I met an individual from the company once when our neighbours were burgled, and talked to him at some length. 'Interesting' character. Essentially displaying the security sign says not that the property will be any more difficult to burgle, but that if you burgle it, people with surprising connections who care more than the police about these things will try to find out who is responsible, and then bad things will happen to the perpetrator.
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
Quite often BBC 'balance' consists of wheeling out caricatures and pantomime villains and claiming job done.
Farage, for example. You see it on Twitter all the time. 'BBC can't be left-leaning, because look how many times Nigel has been on Question Time!!11one11impart1al1'
Many of us who consider ourselves to be right-wing don't really think Farage is on our side or representative of our world view. And even if he was, he's primarily there to serve as a bogeyman figure for everyone else to rail against. It smacks of tokenism and not a lot of thought or effort.
Yeah, someone having thousands of pounds of tools required to do their job being stolen isn’t important.
The police do as much as for phone theft.
Until quite recently, you could find tools for sale at a certain East End market, with company details stamped into the tool body.
That stopped when some companies/individuals started going round and simply taking them back.
We had a load of stuff nicked. Found it for sale on Facebook marketplace - the chap selling it apparently worked for the "Ashfield fencing company"!
Plod were totally disinterested, even when we knew where our stuff was and had serial numbers etc to prove it was ours.
You should have told Plod they'd misgendered you. They’d be around like a shot.
When I worked in Acocks Green in Brum I heard a few tales of people ‘reclaiming’ nicked property themselves as Plod couldn’t be arsed. Sometimes a little persuasion was needed
In this neck of the woods, there is the name of a local security company displayed prominently on most of the most burglable properties (homes, businesses, schools). I met an individual from the company once when our neighbours were burgled, and talked to him at some length. 'Interesting' character. Essentially displaying the security sign says not that the property will be any more difficult to burgle, but that if you burgle it, people with surprising connections who care more than the police about these things will try to find out who is responsible, and then bad things will happen to the perpetrator.
Ronnie and Reggie would be proud and that is exactly what happens when mainstream law and order doesn’t bother.
Before he was banned old @Pagan2 said this sort of thing happened round by him
Our window cleaner recently had the grill nicked off his van. He had the right hump about it. I pity them if he finds who did it.
This is untrue. Just as every BBC item referring to a physical object as being real does not include a balancing contribution from a Berkeleyan idealist who doesn't believe physical object exist.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
Quite often BBC 'balance' consists of wheeling out caricatures and pantomime villains and claiming job done.
Farage, for example. You see it on Twitter all the time. 'BBC can't be left-leaning, because look how many times Nigel has been on Question Time!!11one11impart1al1'
Many of us who consider ourselves to be right-wing don't really think Farage is on our side or representative of our world view. And even if he was, he's primarily there to serve as a bogeyman figure for everyone else to rail against. It smacks of tokenism and not a lot of thought or effort.
Yeah, someone having thousands of pounds of tools required to do their job being stolen isn’t important.
The police do as much as for phone theft.
Until quite recently, you could find tools for sale at a certain East End market, with company details stamped into the tool body.
That stopped when some companies/individuals started going round and simply taking them back.
We had a load of stuff nicked. Found it for sale on Facebook marketplace - the chap selling it apparently worked for the "Ashfield fencing company"!
Plod were totally disinterested, even when we knew where our stuff was and had serial numbers etc to prove it was ours.
You should have told Plod they'd misgendered you. They’d be around like a shot.
When I worked in Acocks Green in Brum I heard a few tales of people ‘reclaiming’ nicked property themselves as Plod couldn’t be arsed. Sometimes a little persuasion was needed
In this neck of the woods, there is the name of a local security company displayed prominently on most of the most burglable properties (homes, businesses, schools). I met an individual from the company once when our neighbours were burgled, and talked to him at some length. 'Interesting' character. Essentially displaying the security sign says not that the property will be any more difficult to burgle, but that if you burgle it, people with surprising connections who care more than the police about these things will try to find out who is responsible, and then bad things will happen to the perpetrator.
Ronnie and Reggie would be proud and that is exactly what happens when mainstream law and order doesn’t bother.
Before he was banned old @Pagan2 said this sort of thing happened round by him
Our window cleaner recently had the grill nicked off his van. He had the right hump about it. I pity them if he finds who did it.
A friend who dropped down in the world and ended up living in one of the brutalist concrete neighbourhoods in London, told me of how his local corner shop stopped shoplifting. The owner joined a local "social club" - at the suggestion of a customer.
Was also told not to actually go to the social club since he (the shop owner) was a "citizen".
Comments
The police do as much as for phone theft.
Until quite recently, you could find tools for sale at a certain East End market, with company details stamped into the tool body.
That stopped when some companies/individuals started going round and simply taking them back.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgnn153zg1o
Even Ed Davie wants him out!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bbc-robbie-gibb-ed-davey-tim-davie-b2862736.html
No, wait - https://whyy.org/articles/tucker-carlson-defamation-suit-messages/
"$787.5 million settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems"
Maybe that's where Trump got the idea to ask for $1Bn?
My rough look would concur with you - it would be a settlement small enough to constitute a single seat, so smaller than places like Swindon, Derby or Reading (2 seats each). Nuneaton at 88,000 might be slightly on the small side, but I don't think it's far off.
Now sometimes places with quite a small population can have strongly metropolitan values - consider Cambridge, which has a population of ~150,000, and a much stronger metropolitan culture than similar-sized Blackpool - but on the whole I do not think that the median seat would have a "soft-Left, Internationalist, Woke, environmentalist hue*" about it. That's very much a feature of larger cities and university towns, which are in the minority.
* Obvs. it would be anti-Trump.
BBC climate change interview breached broadcasting standards
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=promiinent+us+politician+interviewed+by+carlson#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:35570561,vid:smemFVe0l5E,st:0
Short version - the USSR massively breached the Biological Weapons Treaty, from the start. Manufactured metric tons of anthrax etc.
She took it to an editor at the paper as an idea. The hook into current affairs is that the non-reaction to the discovery of this, post Cold War, killed a lot of support for arms control in the US Senate and elsewhere.
The editor told her that since the piece couldn’t be balanced with equivalent breaches by the US or NATO allies, it wasn’t usable. This was pre Ukraine - the editor felt that it would be an attack on Russia….
Rarely does that extend to over 50% of the votes, so even if they get won by Reform it may well be that they are majority centre left.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8x1wz8jz0yo
Impartiality isn't quite the same thing as editorial balance - and while the latter doesn't mean giving equal weight to the plain wrong, or to our foreign adversaries, it does include giving them some voice, I think ?
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/nov/10/bbc-board-member-tory-links-led-charge-systemic-bias-claims
..In his response to Prescott’s memo, Shah pushed back against the broader allegations of bias. He said Prescott “does not present a full picture of the discussions, decisions and actions that were taken”. He also said that some of the problems raised by Prescott were not new or had been previously examined by the BBC.
“Some of the coverage of Mr Prescott’s memo has implied that he has ‘uncovered’ a list of stories and issues that the BBC have sought to ‘bury’. That interpretation is simply not true,” said Shah. “There is another view that has gained currency in the coverage that the BBC has done nothing to tackle these problems. That is also simply not true.
“During the three years Mr Prescott was an adviser to the committee, the BBC produced thousands of hours of outstanding journalism: on television, radio, online, nationally, regionally and internationally. This does not diminish the importance the BBC board places on addressing the issues that Mr Prescott has raised. But it is also important that a sense of perspective is maintained.”..
For those that don’t know - this is why hotels were used in the first place. The legal advice that that no change of use etc was required. A commercial transaction between the hotel owners and the government. So the usual 5-10 delay on doing anything could be avoided.
I have never once heard a 'climate sceptic' on 'The Life Scientific'. I cannot remember a scientist expert contributor to the Today prog, which I hear almost every day, being 'balanced' by the views of a non-expert illiterate.
The useful balance is different. There is a wide variety of expert views about how to deal with the probability of climate change; a wide variety of views about probable and possible consequences, and a wide variety of views about the details of the various elements which go to make up the broad and very general consensus that the world is heating up and will likely carry on doing so.
The BBC is less good at that; very good at generalised unquantified alarmism and over simplification.
Andrew Lilico
@andrew_lilico
Julian may be right but the politics of this seem crazy. If Reeves is going to break her manifesto promise & raise income tax she might as well just do that. This 2p on / 2p off NI business is just silly. It won't help her politically & it foregoes a lot of revenue.
https://x.com/andrew_lilico/status/1988184919047393682
You really are falling down the rabbit hole.
He agreed with Dugin. He agreed with the literal Fascist. And that’s a single example. He agrees with and publicly lauds a range of vile hate groups and individuals.
He is worse than Farage - far more extreme.
He was a key figure in pushing the 2020 election theft bollocks.
Fox News had to pay out three-quarters of a billion dollars to the makers of voting machines - Fox had massively lied to claim the machine makers were colluding with the Democrats to steal elections.
Carlson was a prime mover in that and lost his job at Fox in consequence.
And Wigan is coal.
Starmer can't survive this.
'Fleet Street' is running hatchet jobs on me, so it seems. Fair dos. Every error I made at The Sun is piled in - I took responsibility years ago for my errors - but what about the decency I bought to the paper? Also: if they are going to call me an alcoholic, please also give me the credit for 20 years of continuous recovery both from my addiction and from the toxicity I escaped. Today is day 7,419. Thank God I got out.
https://x.com/davidyelland/status/1987997758373196239
Dear Mr President,
Please fuck off.
Thanks.
The BBC
The Senate votes 53-47 to shoot down the Baldwin amendment to extend ACA funds for 1 year. A party-line vote with every Republican rejecting it.
https://x.com/sahilkapur/status/1988042761782882436
Guardian business blog
Plod were totally disinterested, even when we knew where our stuff was and had serial numbers etc to prove it was ours.
Quite often BBC 'balance' consists of wheeling out caricatures and pantomime villains and claiming job done.
Farage, for example. You see it on Twitter all the time. 'BBC can't be left-leaning, because look how many times Nigel has been on Question Time!!11one11impart1al1'
Many of us who consider ourselves to be right-wing don't really think Farage is on our side or representative of our world view. And even if he was, he's primarily there to serve as a bogeyman figure for everyone else to rail against. It smacks of tokenism and not a lot of thought or effort.
I note that your one instance of rebuke comes from 2018.
I also think that some people are so annoyed by deniers that they cannot see legitimate criticism of studies as anything other than denial. For instance Michael Mann has published some shoddy work that has been heavily criticised. His response is just to go on the attack and try to sue people rather than accept that sometimes critic have a point (e.g. a data set included in a temperature reconstruction was used upside down).
- Population growth dynamics globally are pointing towards a peaking global population later this century, sooner than previously expected. From a purely 'not ending up with more people than we can feed' perspective, that's a good thing.
- Solar power pricing trends are going to mean energy becomes abundant at historically cheap levels. It may not completely replace fossil fuels, but it acts as a ceiling to energy prices.
- Both of these things will create a natural 'market' downward pressure on carbon emissions, albeit I'm sceptical we'll ever see a true net zero position. But human carbon emissions will peak and then fall even without government intervention.
... There's a whole host of challenges underlying that for countries dealing with immigration, ageing populations and/or depopulation, but the big picture is not as bad as many make out.
Frothy coffee at the Telegraph.
Is anyone surprised by this?
About 70 percent of ammunition currently used by Russia in its war against Ukraine has been made in North Korea, according to an analysis by Ukrainian authorities, which have created classified documents on Moscow's military supplies.
Pyongyang has provided some 6.5 million shells to Russia since the start of the war.
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1988176822958170482
To be fair, the media landscape has changed dramatically, and Davie’s PR and strategy experience did lend itself to some of those challenges. But if the BBC is to move on from this current crisis, it needs to appoint its next DG and Director of News quickly.
The next DG must, as with the best in the past, have solid news credentials and a clear awareness of how a behemoth like the BBC actually works. That points towards figures such as Jay Hunt (who edited the News at One and News at Six), James Harding, or even Kevin Bakhurst returning. You need someone strong in news who can carry that editorial burden, allowing the DG to focus on managing the wider Corporation.
After that, attention needs to turn to the BBC Board. Frankly, most of it needs replacing. I’d keep Muriel Gray — her experience as a broadcaster and her perspective on the arts and Scotland are valuable. But otherwise, a reset is needed. I wouldn’t be sorry to see the return of Lord Patten either; although he’s a Conservative, he’s largely apolitical and commands respect.
Give me some more money you bastard.
May the seed of your loins be fruitful in the belly of your woman.
BTW, please could you give a link or reference to the shoddy work that you say Michael Mann has been heavily criticised for. It's not obvious to me on googling.
Targeted raids on High Street premises such as mini-marts, vape shops, barbers and takeaways have seen more than 920 people arrested, in the largest action of its kind coordinated by the National Crime Agency (NCA).
More than 340 notices for illegal working and renting were issued by authorities, which could see businesses and landlords fined tens of thousands of pounds.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2l1253ndeo
Dear Donald,
Just to let you know Panorama has a copy of the Epstein files.
Thanks for your attention,
The Beeb
I do not see why I should pay for a service I’d happily live without.
With Netflix I can opt in or out.
But so-called sceptics have a very one-way scepticism. so these sorts of risks and uncertainties don't interest them.
The TV landscape is changing, the license fee is untenable.
@CPhilpOfficial
The decision to keep open the Epping asylum hotel is a dark day for local democracy and a slap in the face to the people of Epping
A Labour government has once again used the courts to put the rights of illegal immigrants above the rights of British citizens
Their conduct is disgraceful. Children and women in Epping and many other towns will now continue to be at risk
The people of Epping have been silenced in their own town. Their council fought for them, but their voices were ignored. Labour’s lawyers fought tooth and nail to keep this hotel open, even after a migrant housed there was jailed for sexually assaulting a teenage girl
The only way to fix this is the Conservative plan to leave the ECHR and deport all illegal immigrahts within a week of arrival. No more bogus asylum or other protection claims. No more illegal crossings. No more asylum hotels
But Keir Starmer is too weak to do this and so Labour’s open borders crisis will continue
12:17 PM · Nov 11, 2025"
https://x.com/CPhilpOfficial/status/1988219602677997777
When I worked in Acocks Green in Brum I heard a few tales of people ‘reclaiming’ nicked property themselves as Plod couldn’t be arsed. Sometimes a little persuasion was needed
If you are genuinely interested read 'The Hockey Stick Illusion" by Andrew Montford. You may not agree with all of it but it does expose some weakness in the science.
And for the record I am not a denier - I am saddened that out activities are having the effects that they are. I long for a world were we are not destroying ecosystems and using 100 % renewable energy and living sustainably.
We could start with the long list of those convicted for their part in Jan 6th that he pardoned
John Banuelos fired a gun in the air while attacking the Capitol on Jan 6.
6 months later he stabbed a man to death.
Trump quickly pardoned him after returning to office.
Now he’s been arrested for kidnapping & sexual assault: beating, choking and trapping a woman in his home.
https://x.com/clearing_fog/status/1988022676188000725
What is needed, is some tightening up on *enforcement* of standards. So the actual problem doesn’t happen again.
Saying “we are the BBC, therefore we are awesome” is wrong. Needs to be “we are proven to be awesome. And we happen to be the BBC.”
Or have I got my memos mixed up again?
That was the height of my former climate online debate whack-a-mole years. Thankfully long past, though sadly the warming trend less so.
Its a really complex area. If it didn't matter so much (too ALL of us, because of the impacts) it would have been just another academic squabble among many. But because governments change policy and affect our lives because of climate science, it needs to be open and transparant. Mann fighting scrutiny did not help.
FL360aero
@fl360aero
More visuals of the disintegrated debris of Turkish Air Force Hercules C130 (68-01609) falling from the sky.
Wonder what's gone on there.
Not seen that since WWII film of aircraft being shot down
As regards book recommendations, in the same spirit perhaps you might want to read "Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines: The Truth Behind a Tragedy" by Andrew Wakefield (4.6. stars on Amazon). You may not agree with all of it but it does expose some weakness in the science
https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1987920614225510857
(I assume he was not displayed as an example of someone with no journalistic standards, which would have been OK.)
Apparently a *1968* C130E
Do you think data should be open to be studied? Do you think you should put up corrections if you have made mistakes in a publication? I do and have done just this.
Mackintyre and Mckitrick are statisticians looking at a climate scientist applying statistics in ways that were probably 'pushing it'. But fine, if you want to equate that to Andrew Wakefield then do so. People disagree on stuff a lot.
"A version of the MBH99 graph was featured prominently in the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), which also drew on Jones et al. 1998 and three other reconstructions to support the conclusion that, in the Northern Hemisphere, the 1990s was likely to have been the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year during the past 1,000 years.[8] The graph became a focus of dispute for those opposed to the strengthening scientific consensus that late 20th century warmth was exceptional.[9] In 2003, as lobbying over the 1997 Kyoto Protocol intensified, a paper claiming greater medieval warmth was quickly dismissed by scientists in the Soon and Baliunas controversy.[10] Later in 2003, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick published McIntyre & McKitrick 2003b disputing the data used in MBH98 paper. In 2004 Hans von Storch published criticism of the statistical techniques as tending to underplay variations in earlier parts of the graph, though this was disputed and he later accepted that the effect was very small.[11] In 2005 McIntyre and McKitrick published criticisms of the principal components analysis methodology as used in MBH98 and MBH99. Their analysis was subsequently disputed by published papers including Huybers 2005 and Wahl & Ammann 2007 which pointed to errors in the McIntyre and McKitrick methodology. Political disputes led to the formation of a panel of scientists convened by the United States National Research Council, their North Report in 2006 supported Mann's findings with some qualifications, including agreeing that there were some statistical failings but these had little effect on the result.[12]"
https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-airshow-collision-fighter-jets-b17-p63-2022-11
https://news.sky.com/story/did-robert-jenrick-really-boast-about-opening-hotels-for-asylum-seekers-13415335
https://x.com/skynews/status/1987992409800929463?s=61
Before he was banned old @Pagan2 said this sort of thing happened round by him
Our window cleaner recently had the grill nicked off his van. He had the right hump about it. I pity them if he finds who did it.
Was also told not to actually go to the social club since he (the shop owner) was a "citizen".