Tag Archives: BBC

A Princess

Some news you may have missed

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The press is busy promoting our beloved Prime Minister’s attempts to deflect attention from his complete lack of ideas over negotiations about the UK’s membership of the EU (apparently he will be publishing his “list of demands” next month which is a bit like his answer to the leader of HM Opposition at PMQ’s which in a nutshell was “we have no idea so you will have to wait and see what Gideon comes up with”).

But if you can be bothered to read the article there’s an interesting paragraph right down at the bottom where you will see that Michael Froman, a US Trade Representative, stated that, “We have no FTA with the UK so they would be subject to the same tariffs – and other trade-related measures – as China, or Brazil or India” if the UK left the EU. Now I may be a little bit cynical here but surely that should be a headline item? Would it have been a headline if it were directed at Scotland outside the UK? I’m sure that it would have made the front page of every newspaper and it would have been the headline on every TV and radio news show. But I’m just a blogger, I should leave these things to the people who know. Mind you, RT saw it as a big enough story to headline it which probably means that it’s propaganda or something.

In some other news, the majority of the European Parliament voted to drop all charges against the American whistleblower Edward Snowden. It was a slim majority mind you (285 for and 281 against) but that’s democracy for you. The MEP’s urged member states to, “drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistle-blower and international human rights defender,” in a press release.

The press release goes on to say, “Parliament is concerned about “recent laws in some member states that extend surveillance capabilities of intelligence bodies”, including in France, the UK and the Netherlands. It is also worried by revelations of mass surveillance of telecommunications and internet traffic inside the EU by the German foreign intelligence agency BND in cooperation with the US National Security Agency (NSA).” So it would appear that the EU is not too bad an outfit after all. Oddly there is not much coverage of this in our media, but oh, look there’s a princess. There’s absolutely no mention of this story on our beloved, unbiased, BBC. Maybe someone missed it?

A Princess

A Princess

And finally, 343 UK university professors say they will “halt all cooperation with Israeli schools in an effort to draw attention to Israel’s violations of international law.” The action is part of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign which aims to” boycott Israel as part of  non-violent resistance to defend the Palestinian cause.” Surely such a move would be bound to feature in the organs of the UK state? Well they don’t appear on the BBC, although BDS appeared back in July. Look there’s Harry! Is that a potential princess he’s with? Phwoar.

 

 

The balanced BBC

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I feel that the BBC must be applauded for showing some balance in its reporting of Scottish politics for a change. After all it is enshrined in the BBC’s charter and if they didn’t comply with that then we would all complain to the BBC Trust who would sort them out. Here is what I’m talking about:

BBC News Website 08/03/2015

BBC News Website 08/03/2015

As you can see there are two videos over on the right there, one of Jim Murphy and the other of Alex Salmond. Both have equal prominence, all above-board I’m sure you would agree. But wait, what’s this? If I hover ma wee moose ower the videos it shows me how long they are, like this:

Alex Salmond video length

Alex Salmond video length

So Wee Eck has got himself a 44 second slot on the government’s main propaganda website, not too shabby. So how has Jim Murphy fared? More or less? Let’s hae a wee peek:

Jim Murphy video length

Jim Murphy video length

More than half an hour! Presumably Alex Salmond will be getting another slot which is 29:55 soon, because I know how balanced and fair the BBC really are, aren’t they?

David Cameron Doh

New poll is huge blow to Tories/UKIP

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A recent IpsosMORI poll shows that 56% of Britons wish to remain within the EU, the highest proportion since 1999. The poll is a clear warning to the Tories and UKIP that their Euroscepticism is falling on deaf ears throughout the land, with even Tory support for continued membership above 50%.

Among the other parties 73% of Labour supporters and 82% of Lib Dem supporters favour continued membership. Unsurprisingly only 11% of UKIP supporters are in favour of remaining within the EU.

The new poll is a big blow for David Cameron, who is pushing for an in/out referendum on the issue in 2017 if the Tories are re-elected. He is responding to the threat of UKIP which has seen 2 Tory MPs defect to it in recent times. But it is clear that his message is not getting through to the majority of the population. Membership of the EU has always been one of the major fault lines of the Tory party.

The poll also shows that UKIP are not reaching the majority of the population with their xenophobic message.

Labour are marginally in the lead ahead of the next general election in 2015 but they are not immune from the threat of UKIP either which has lead to a further lurch to the right for the party with David Miliband announcing new controls on immigration if Labour are elected in 2015. But Labour supporters have traditionally been more in favour of immigration than the other parties.

Among Scottish people 60% were in favour of remaining within the EU. Unfortunately there were no breakdowns of political party affiliations within this segment of the poll.

There was no mention of this poll on the BBC, is this censorship by omission?

Peter Horrocks

BBC website ‘censored’

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In what has become a worldwide joke, the BBC website has been ‘censored’ in China. There is no official reason from the Chinese authorities about the alleged censorship but there may be a clue here, I guess that the Chinese authorities are getting a bit miffed with the BBCs’ coverage of the protests in Hong Kong.

Peter Horrocks, the BBC Global News director said, “The BBC provides impartial, trusted news to millions of people around the world, and attempts to censor our news services show just how important it is to get our accurate information to them.” Anybody who was alive and not in a coma during the recent Scottish Independence referendum may not agree with him. Indeed they may think that he is speaking a load of Horrocks. I wonder how “accurate” their news output was? My feeling is that it was probably completely biased and full of lies. As for trusting them, hahahaha. That’s a good one.

In other news the BBC has been accused by the Iranian authorities of plotting to steal artistic, historical and cultural documents from the country’s archive centres, Tasnim news agency reported. Are the BBC licence payers paying for the theft of other countries’ treasures? We would like to know.