Wednesday 26 July 2017

Open Thread


35 comments:

  1. If only you were controller of content for BBC TV*, Craig...your choice of amusing animal videos would make for a pleasant change from the dumbed down soaps, PC anti-American drama series, dodgy docs, multicultural bake-offs and Trumpophobic, pro-Sharia, pro-migration, pro-dependency fake news. :)

    [* If you were your title would probably be Manager for Species Equality Content - not to be confused with the Manager for Species Equality Content (Scotland)]

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  2. My comment didn't appear though it said it was published...was suggesting Craig you be appointed by BBC to rejig their TV schedules slotting in plenty of these amusing animal videos...and your title would be "Manager for Species Equality Content" which sounds suitably BBC-ish to me. :)

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    1. It's back!!

      I'm just watching a huge spider that's sitting about a foot away from me, chillaxing. Because of the play of shadow and limbs where it's sitting at the moment, it looks as if it's got 16 legs. I've got my mobile phone fully charged and primed ready to video it the moment it does anything funny.....No, nothing yet.

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    2. Probably a BBC staff spider - won't get out of web for less than £100,000.

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  3. Ellie Fant-Indaroom23 July 2017 at 20:37

    BBC News should be renamed BBC Narratives. How do you explain an article like this:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40332646

    An illegal immigrant to the USA gets removed from the USA. Why is this so important to the BBC that it devotes hundreds and hundreds of words, loads of website space to the story? They don't explain why it's so important. They certainly don't devote similar amounts of space to the removal of illegal migrants from Australia, Canada, Nigeria or China. And despite claiming to be a news organisation committed to being "balanced and impartial" you won't find a single word about the negatives of illegal immigration. Nope...you will just find a lot of special pleading as to why people who knowingly entered the USA illegally should be allowed to stay.

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  4. And just like that, all discussion of BBC bias is gone, pushed aside by the pay scale noise. Once again, the BBC has people rallying to its side, and once again the BBC get to claim moral superiority because they are so transparent and only the BBC will publicly examine its flaws like this. Everyone still loves the National Treasure, serious bias charges forgotten.

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    1. Yep, they have the Fake News "pay parity" row at the top of the news tonight. Most licence fee payers will be outraged that female presenters already earning £200k or more for reading autocues or questions prepared for them by researchers want to be paid another £100k or more.

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    2. I demand that the BBC immediately applies a fair pay policy by cutting the pay of overpaid male "talent" to that of their overpaid female "talent", then reduce it all to a sensible level.

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    3. The BBC gets about £3.5 billion guaranteed income pa. What that means is they should be able to fund lots of talent coaching schemes that will deliver all the staff that they need locked into 10 year contracts.

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    4. It's not just the BBC keeping it at the top of the news cycle. They are all at it. That was the plan, of course.

      The best we can hope for is some other idiot using the Proms as a political platform. Unless it's a person of color expressing an approved thought, in which case criticism is racist.

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    5. Anonymous, in the BBC's defense (sort of), it's a lot like the gender pay gap mythology in the US. The numbers deliberately do not take into account the number of hours worked or the face that women take time off (understandably) for child birth, or to spend a few years raising children before returning, fewer hours in general, and other factors, regardless of how Mother Nature is sexist and oppressive. The point is that the usual numbers do not compare like with like, i.e. comparing women with men in the exact same jobs and numbers of hours worked.

      So too with the BBC. Look at the highest paid men, and there really are no other equivalent jobs that could be fulfilled by women. As much as a dislike Jeremy Vine, he has a highly rated (as in audience figures) Radio 2 show, plus presents Eggheads, plus presents whatever that viewer opinion show is called, plus gets to play around in some CGI environment during BBC election night broadcasts, of which there have been more than average over the last couple years. Of course, the BBC could replace him with someone more correctly chromosomed, but I bet the union would have something to say if they tried. They could simply raise Claire Balding's salary to match Gary Linecker's, but is she really on air as much as he is, and drawing the same audience and social media 'engagement' (something which is figured into grading BBC talent and programming)? Ratings = quality public service broadcasting is basically written into the BBC Charter, so their hands are tied.

      Having said that, Andrew Marr had a point that he is still going with a very high profile and well-paid job, as are other grizzled male veterans, and there are zero female counterparts. The BBC would have to either reduce the workload and paycheck of a few men (legal hilarity will ensue, I'm sure), or create more shows specifically to give women some highly-paid jobs. Nasty Tory Cuts have tied their hands this time, I'm afraid. Or that will be the first line of defense, anyway.

      Clearly the first step towards redemption should be Lord Hall stepping down and the Trust appointing a woman in his place at twice the salary.

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    6. Sadly, Clare Balding is never off our screens - in fact it appears there isn't a cure for Balding one might say....Lineker gets his huge dosh for ten minutes work, as he needs the rest of his time to do his crisp commercials and virtue signal on Twitter (all while poor single mothers are sent to prison for lack of a TV licence in order to part fund his lavish lifestyle).

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    7. If its possible, I'm getting even more cynical about the BBC. The focus on the gender pay gap is parroted and promoted by Mrs May. So it seems we really do have a plump over funded state broadcaster that is closely intertwined with the governing class. Nothing will be done to reform this . cosy comfortable featherbed. Don't mention austerity.

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    8. Of course nothing will be done. If the noise doesn't die down quickly, Hall will be forced to announce he's going to set up some internal review on how to remedy the situation. Recommendations will be made, etc. That's usually all the BBC has to do to make these issues go away.

      The only good thing about this pay gap nonsense is that it's the one time defenders of the indefensible can't dismiss it as being an attack on the BBC by enemies on the Right who want to destroy the National Treasure.

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  5. How would you change the BBC?

    They are making a pig's ear of it. I would get rid of their random channelling and bring in dedicated channels:

    BBC News, BBC Nature & Docs (maybe call it BBC Horizon or some such), BBC Drama, BBC Sport, BBC Archive (best of their programming since year dot), BBC Entertainment (music, comedy and so on)and BBC Select (like BBC 1, taking a selection from all the programming).

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    1. Objectives:
      1. Make it accountable to its audience. Voluntary subscription plus minimum level of tax money for national news service.
      2. Make it smaller. Achieved by 1.

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  6. I was surprised to hear on BBC Radio News this morning for the first time ever a positive view on Brexit in response to some economic news - just slotted in the main news feature.It was from some sort of financial analyst.

    I wonder - could this possibly be related to Liam Fox's intervention about BBC anti-Brexit bias? Whatever better way for the BBC to spike that story than to insert a lot of pro-Brexit stuff into today's news bulletins?

    But to my way of thinking it shows a much tougher approach by Ministers could pay dividends. Fox should be joined by May, Davis and Johnson also pointing out bias and hypocrisy on the BBC.

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    1. Yes, Boris might start by pointing out that the one decent speech of the Tory election campaign (his own, which was a real, barnstorming humdinger) was buried by the BBC - although Sky showed it in full.

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  7. BBC Fake News Alert:

    The BBC have repeatedly claimed in their news bulletins that the ICC Women's Cricket World CUp Final at Lords on 23rd July was "sold out".

    This is all part of their attempt to elevate women's cricket to the status of men's which in turn is part of the plan to equalise sports between the two genders (for some reason the Trans BBC is very keen on genderising sport). This is in turn is part of the wider extreme feminist agenda of the BBC, to enforce strict "equality" between the genders (a project so ridled with inconsistencies, not least their own pay structure, that it is a joke).

    However when I googled on this, I found a PDF document inviting schools to apply for FREE tickets, it being made clear this would apply to the Final as well as the other matches.

    So the "sold out" is a fake news claim that is (I expect) being knowingly touted to fool the public into thinking that Women's Cricket has suddenly become wildly popular.

    I hasten to add I have nothing against the government funding free tickets for schools to attend such events. Sounds like a good idea to me. But it is the BBC Potemkin Village project I object to. They could easily have made clear in their reports that a large proportion of government-funded free tickets had been distributed.

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  8. I think the Women's Sport thing makes for a good case study of how the BBC operates. Further to my previous post...

    Having built up the media hype about the Cricket World Cup (based on the Fake News story that the ground was "sold out" as opposed to being simply full with a lot of people who had been given free tickets thanks to government subsidies)...the BBC then, as always build a superstructure of speculation and virtue signalling on top of the Fake News they have put about....Both the evening news and Newsnight had substantial time given over to pushing the "women's sport to be on an equal footing with male sport" ideological point.

    This involved a lot of assumptions:

    1. That people in the UK had become wildly enthusiastic about women's cricket.

    2. That other sports would or should follow.

    3. That women's sport sponsorship, funding and remuneration should be on an equal footing with that of male equivalents.

    The BBC has a number of key targets as part of its overall extreme feminism campaign. Equalising sport has a lot of symbolic value in overcoming traditional female identity (the fact that the vast majority of women remain stubbornly uninterested in sport as a team participant or spectator, as opposed to personal exercise) is something to be overcome, not acknowledged. Likewise with equal female participation in the armed forces.

    Other targets are equality of pay outcome (ironic eh?, but don't expect consistency from ideologues), equality in membership of company boards, equal participation of women in top paying professions (but not manual work - why? never explained) and equal economic activity in the economy (women working as much as men).

    There is nothing intriniscally wrong (as opposed to wrongheaded) about adopting these things as targets in a democratic society but the BBC does not say these are issues up for discussion and it does not recognise the depth of female resistance to realisation of these targets.

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    1. The Open Golf Championship is fresh in our minds. The BBC have abandoned their coverage thus denying a wide cross-section of the public (who do not have Sky) enjoyment of one of the most important sporting events in the world.

      Instead, the BBC hype up women's events in the expectation that the viewing public will say: 'Never mind about the world class golf - let's all be satisfied with these women's events that have a very short history, and which appear contrived'.

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    2. Yes, I wouldn't deny the BBC also see a commercial opportunity in boosting hitherto unpopular women's sports (just as the BBC's interest in doing down cycling is a commcercial thing - wanting to do down Sky and ITV). But I think the hyper-feminist agenda is probably the prime motive here.

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  9. BBC completely in denial about this? Did it even happen?
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/india-muslim-woman-honour-killing-raped-murder-arab-man-relationship-london-celine-dookhran-kingston-a7858381.html

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  10. Yes, I heard this murder reported on the BBC R4 news but with so many details removed, it became a meaningless item. You learn to recognize these censored items on the BBC and can usually add in the detail yourself from past experience, or go to other sources to get confirmation of the full story.

    It really is a MinTruth approach from the "worlds most trusted" etc..

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  11. Ellie Fant-Indaroom25 July 2017 at 15:46

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXV9uIUTfjg

    Very interesting interview with the Didsbury Mosque leafelt guy from that QT session. He is so articulate - a natural performer...why aren't the BBC paying him £200K pa?

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  12. I don't like James O'Brien, but the subject of this video seems pretty relevant.
    This is just the sort of subject the BBC (inform, educate, entertain)should be covering.
    Where are you BBC ? Hello ?
    Are you there ? Inform you pussy footers.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn8w9m66B5s

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    1. Rod Liddle was fired from being Today editor for writing an anti-hunting rant in the Guardian (with a touch of his typical, but increasingly rare, class war bile thrown in), and saying something about how fighting against the posh idiots who hunted should remind everyone why they vote Labour.

      Yet here is a regular Newsnight (flagship news programme, highly respected, etc.) presenter allowed to express his personal ideology day in and day out on LBC, but no problem, he surely leaves his opinions at the door before he goes through the metal detectors at New Broadcasting House.

      Even if one agrees with him, it's a double standard, and a lie. All at your expense, under penalty of law.

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    2. I remain of the opinion that the BBC would be much more representative and interesting if the presenters just wore their socio-political
      colours more prominently, rather than indulging in the tedious pretence of impartiality.

      The pretence, as we know, leads to unsatisfactory journalism and huge chunks of fact omitted.

      Facts are their own impartiality. Anything else is by definition bias.

      So stop pretending to be impartial BBC, and bring in some proper presenter foils, then the real conversations can start.

      The 'chlorine washed chicken' thing is the perfect metaphor for the simplistic way news is delivered. The real story is the U.S / U.K
      sneaking TTIP in by the back door and the potentially disastrous secretive legal structure that has been designed at enormous cost over
      the last 6 or so years. But because the BBC never really covered TTIP when it was being structured, they hone in on the chicken bit.

      It is obvious what O'Brien's opinions are - he is a modern day liberal convinced that his own opinions on social justice are correct. There
      is nothing wrong with that as long as he is prepared not to sneer at the interviewees led into his den, or dismiss that which he personally
      doesn't find acceptable. Some of his snide asides, if transferred to the context of a pub conversation, would result in a broken jaw.

      I've seen interviews with him and Emily Maitliss where the (usually foreign) interviewee was obviously told beforehand "it's okay, it's
      the BBC, they're impartial" only to find out that they are stuffed and spiked and sneered at during the interview itself.
      They become confused and defensive, and the BBC thinks it's got a gotcha moment.
      That's not journalism, it's pathetic and informs the watcher of nothing.

      That's why Scaramouch's interview with Maitliss on Newsnight last night was so fascinating. He's about as media savvy as it gets and dominated the interview, dominated the space in a badda bing kind of way.
      "Hey, I don't trust you, you don't trust me, let's get this done."

      He felt he has nothing to defend. The perfect foil to what the BBC sees as journalism - the constant interruptions, the demand for
      'moral' accountability for accountability's sake, the smirk that suggests
      "it's okay, we'll get you later".

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    3. BBC News Channel have been playing this Emily Maitlis Anthony Scaramucci interview again today. Maitliss's body language spoke for itself - arms folded, no smiles, constant interruptions, harping on about chicken exports.

      She was there to confront not to interview. No wonder she didn't get any closer to the White House than a service road. Scaramucci seemed perfectly content with a future trade deal with the UK - but Maitlis didn't want to hear that, she seemed intent upon throwing a spanner in the works. Apparently she enjoys playing devil's advocate, which is easily mistaken as working against the interests of the UK.

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    4. Anonymous, it's the interviewer's job to sometimes play devil's advocate. The question is whether or not she was actively taking sides or just asking obligatory questions from the other side to challenge the guest's answers.

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    5. Fair point. But the body language suggested something different. The interview could have been conducted by Maitlis in a style that was more positive towards the news that a trade deal between the US and UK should be forthcoming. That's good news - right?

      She appears to have left any positivity towards President Trump's Office behind.

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  13. Has anyone had the misfortune to see The Mash Report on BBC? A third "comedy news" programme where wealthy lefty comedians get to say rude things about Tories and wealthy non-comedians.

    It's not really comedy. More whoopedy - where the audience whoops at a tedious succession of virtue signalling statements. An example? There was a whole segment given over to simply stating with no wit or humour that Boris Johnson had lost his charm and the public, despite being really stupid, had now realised this. It was wish fulfilment as comedy, Fake News as comedy and soggy leftism as comedy. The lead presenter managed to get some race hustling in claiming it was highly unusual for an Asian to host a show like The Mash Report (doubt he's ever asked how many people of English descent host comedy shows in India). Chinese, Japanese or Filipino need not apply of course.

    I gave up after a few minutes but when I went back Ann Widdicombe seemed to have unwisely agreed to be interviewed and was being mocked relentlessly for her Christian faith - with the interviewer trying to show that Jesus was just like Trump or some such. Next week Baroness Warsi being mocked for his Muslim faith? Er - yeah I think you know the answer.



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  14. Odd - doesn't seem to be any referenced to this important news story on the BBC website. Once again the "world class" news service with its full round up of regional news slips up...wonder why?

    http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/muslim-gang-rampaged-through-liverpool-13392480.amp

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    1. I see the same has been noticed over at Biased BBC.

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  15. I found this interesting:

    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-google-bbc-can-fix-gender-pay-molly-moseley?trk=eml-email_feed_ecosystem_digest_01-recommended_articles-6-Unknown&midToken=AQFfU5a4gFySdA&fromEmail=fromEmail&ut=19hLq3RmafO7Q1

    Much of the jargon including the concept of 'Stars', being either entertainers or presenters (with no distinction about qualification to do a job), echoes here having been imported from the US.

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