The Daily Mail has a Panorama-like story about pensions funds and unethical investments.
The 'unethical investor' in this case is the BBC.
The Mail's headline sums the story up neatly:
BBC has invested more than £150million in Chinese state-owned companies accused of links to appalling human rights violations.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith is outraged, saying:
Licence fee payers would be horrified to know that, in one way or another, money that they pay to the BBC through their television licence ends ups sustaining a brutal, dictatorial and violent regime that practices genocide. It simply should not happen.
He should 'doorstep' the BBC.
A BBC spokesman said: ''The scheme, which is operationally independent from the BBC, invests in a wide range of investments with a small proportion invested in Chinese companies. The Scheme has published a responsible investment policy and its fund managers are required to take environmental, social and governance factors into account when making investment decisions.''
The vaccines are really good at stopping hospitalisation and death, yet every night we report the infection rate – why?
Why does the BBC throw over every single bit of data, when Covid is about sixth on the death toll? Can we have the death toll for pneumonia while we're at it?
Cancer, heart disease, liver problems? Why are we continuing with the Covid stuff on the BBC and the main news channels? It frightens people.
Older people are still asking, 'Are we allowed to hug now?' Even when they have had all the jabs.
We have people who are now scared of normal life.
We certainly don't do it for flu, and we don't do it for cancer.
Either we go the whole hog and every night publish a list of how you're going to die, or not at all. Covid isn't the major reason for death.
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The same paper also reports Peter Hitchens's rare victory over the BBC Complaints department.
It concerned an episode from a Radio 4 series Mayday: The Canister on the Bed, broadcast on 20 November 2020. The BBC summarised the case like this:
The programme, part of a series on aspects of the conflict in Syria, dealt with the chemical weapons attack at Douma, which it described as “one of the most contested events in the war”, and included an account of the role subsequently played by a former inspector with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), known pseudonymously as Alex, who had expressed concerns about the OPCW’s conclusions on the matter. The journalist Peter Hitchens complained that the programme had been inaccurate in insinuating that Alex’s disclosures had been motivated by a reward of $100,000 offered by WikiLeaks, that he believed the attack had been staged, and that he had made his views known only through “a select few journalists who share the Russian and Syrian state views on the war”. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards of due accuracy.
And the BBC upheld Mr Hitchens's complaint, concluding that this episode in Chloe Hadjimatheou's Orwell Prize short-listed series [a] did indeed make an “insinuation” against Alex and that [b] the evidence for that insinuation wasn't strong enough to warrant the programme calling Alex's motives into question. It also found that [c] the programme's claim that Alex “believed the attack was staged” wasn't justified by strong enough evidence and [d] the programme mischaracterised Alex’s dealings with journalists, saying he had collaborated with journalists who held broadly the same views on the war as the Russian and Syrian governments, whereas he had in fact “also collaborated with journalists of whom that could not be said (Mr Hitchens among them)”.
The ECU found that, although they were limited to one aspect of a investigation into a complex and hotly contested subject, these points represented a failure to meet the standard of accuracy appropriate to a programme of this kind. The ECU noted that a posting about one point of the complaint had been made on the Corrections and Clarifications page of bbc.co.uk but, as it was not reflected in the extended version of the programme which continued to available on BBC Sounds and the website of the series, it did not suffice to resolve the issue in question.
And what Further Action has been taken? Well, “the finding was reported to the Board of BBC News and discussed with the programme-makers in question.”
People sometimes ask me if I’d like to have a job as a proper TV critic. No way. One of the reasons I don’t blog more frequently, or tackle a broader range of programmes is that I don’t watch all that much TV - apart from the News Channel and, say, a Scandi Noir or two on BBC Four.
After its shaky start I’m now enjoying The Night Manager, too. I never listen to radio 5 live, which BBC bias-watchers often cite as the source of much frustration.
On Sunday mornings, if I’m not doing lunch, I do like to binge on Andrew Marr, The Big Questions and Sunday Politics.
This was one time when interruptions would have been intrusive, and for whatever reason Andrew held back and allowed his victim to speak. It could have been purely because Marr was enjoying the spectacle of the tory “Ant and Dec” being slowly and agonizingly undermined, but let’s say the end justified the means, if that’s the appropriate saying.
It does seem that IDS had specific reasons for the untimeliness of his resignation, and it leaves us wondering what he proposes to do about moderating the chancellor’s soulless, purely mercenary policies now, from outside the government, rather than from inside lobbying for his particular, more humanitarian, cause. There’s an obvious analogy there. It’s the In / Out dilemma again.
Anyway I’m not in the business of analysing politicians or telling people what to think. I’m just saying what I think. I reserve the right to change my mind at any time.
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I admit my thoughts are often really shallow. When it comes to The Big Questions, my shallowness blossoms.
When the shot pans out to reveal the front row, my first instinct is spot the regulars. After that, spot the weirdos, the headscarves, the gurners and the fidgeters. Today I spotted a lad in the audience with a massive pale candy-floss afro. I wish he’d spoken so that we could have had a closer look. That’s how shallow I am.
I’m distracted by people waving their arms around, being expressive and animated all the time. People don’t do that in real life. I’m told they’re taught to do that in ‘presenter school’, but not everyone who does it on TV has gone to presenter school, whatever that is.
So, today the front row contained Owen Jones. He doesn’t wave his arms around, only his mouth, which he talks out of - one side at time. Sometimes he seems proper bright; next minute he’s on a forum with Hsiao-Hung Pai and someone called Ash with yellow comedy talons, and he seems as dopey as ever.
Also present was the other Owen Jones, the hippy vicar called “Peter” with the dog collar and the hair. He’s weird, isn’t he? Best of all, they had Piers Corbyn. It was mad.
Sorry for overlapping, but Craig’s post actually describes the content of the show, whereas mine’s purely facetious. As usual.
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One series I did watch with pleasure was Happy Valley. I came to the party late, but for me it was outstanding in that it had a proper ending. Dramas frequently start well and fizzle out towards the end as though the writer has run out of steam or has merely lost interest. This time the ending was just right. No car chase, no shoot-out. The only quibble was the poor audibility, which I’ve mentioned before. I must say James Norton is a versatile actor. At least, his appearance can change radically, along with the character. Most luvvies these days remain stubbornly ‘themselves’ playing this or that role. But James is the character. I liked him as a baddie.
Some James Nortons
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Another topic, a teeny bit on the shallow side perhaps, concerns Theresa May’s cleavage. What was she thinking? Cleavage on budget day? Bad judgment.
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Andrew Neil’s reviewers made a good job of discussing Iain Duncan Smith. I do like it when The Sunday Politics discusses The Andrew Marr Show. It’s incest, but not as we know it.
They speculated on the future of the Conservative party (in the event of either outcome of the EU referendum) and whether Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation would help the Brexit campaign (they thought it would) and whether it would irretrievably damage the PM’s and the Chancellor’s credibility. (They thought not) Those were the questions I wanted them to discuss, though who’s to say whether their answers were particularly definitive or authoritative. Heidi Allen was jolly, don’t you think?
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I’m sorry that so many of you loathe Jo Brand by the way. I’ve seen that opinion expressed often enough on Biased-BBC so it wasn't a surprise. I can definitely understand that someone’s politics can completely pollute everything about them. Turn them toxic, as Isabel Oakeshott might say.
I feel that way about Ken Loach, Vanessa Redgrave, Emma Thompson, Jeremy Hardy and Alexie Sayle, to name but a few. But Jo, no.
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Oh yes, and I do wish our anonymouses would include some identifying marker somewhere in their comments. I had hoped that we could eventually achieve a little community, with regular contributors establishing their own comment personalities.
But we’ve been here for ages, and that doesn’t seem to be happening.
The best blogs have lively comments sections, so what does that make this blog?
Does anyone else worry about the way people like Laura Kuenssberg or Norman Smith are called in on every occasion to interpret all political news? It’s as though they hold themselves superior to the lot of us, (the ignoramuses) speculating on the motives of the likes of Iain Duncan Smith, Boris Johnson or whoever. Do they know what’s inside the head of IDS? Does IDS even know?
As soon as something happens, along comes Laura to tell us what we should think, and it’s getting ridiculous. Analysis is one thing, but imperious interpretation is superfluous to requirements. It's overpowering, really.
Very nice, but what with Iain Duncan Smith, the BBC and arguably George Osborne and David Cameron helping to undermine their own government, if we vote ‘out’ because we want to regain sovereignty and we want to decide our own future, well, the thing that worries me most is - who will the ‘we’ actually be? The Conservative party’s loss might be the Labour party’s gain, and given the current leadership that bothers me greatly.
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My agenda was that I wanted to like Stewart Lee and dislike Jo Brand. It didn’t work out.
As soon as he started saying that his diarrhea-afflicted cat was called Jeremy Corbyn, dread descended and hung there like a blanket. A gross ending was imminent. I didn’t even foresee a protracted, interminable raspberry, which the Grimsby Telegraph seemed to find amusing, but the punchline involving the England flag, some shit, the national anthem and someone confusing the cat called Jeremy Corbyn for the ordinary Jeremy Corbyn, couldn’t come soon enough.
How did this script come about? He must have thought: edgy + Jeremy Corbyn + crap -- patriotism--> laborious monologue. He allowed the tail to wag the cat, so to speak; pity you can’t unhear things.
Was that Chris Morris dishing out advice? He should have advised against.
On the other hand Jo Brand’s walk thing was alright. I don’t dislike Jo Brand at all. Despite her political views, she can be funny, but that sitcom about the geriatric ward - Getting On, in which she played Nurse Kim Wilde with Vicky Pepperdine as Dr Pippa Moore - was fine.
Even though he had a small role in Blackadder I could never be persuaded tolike Jeremy Harding, if you get my drift, but I think Jo Brand is ok.
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Did you read this?As soon as I saw Rod Liddle’s article on the Spectator I realised I’d already heard this Taiwanese author on Start The Week with Andrew Marr. I thought she sounded odd then, but now I’ve connected her with a video, captured clandestinely on his mobile phone by ‘Tommy Robinson’ I know she’s not only odd, but dim.
She has written this dire book about what she sees as 'the far right', and what baffles me is that such an ill-conceived project ever got published, let alone plugged (yes it was) on the BBC.
Just as Hsiao-Hung Pai hasn’t read the Koran, I haven’t read "Angry White People", so at the risk of being berated for my own ignorance, I wonder why anyone would publish such sensationalised drivel in the first place? Judging from the attitude of the author, the answer’s in the question. It’s sensationalist and shallow. Perhaps it ticks the boxes of a publisher that also lists Ilan Pappé and Richard Falk amongst its authors.
