Off Topic The Politics Thread
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They should take the flags down and put up the Christmas lightsA village in Kent has been told by the Reform-led council that, due to safety concerns, they can't put up Christmas lights until they take down all of the unauthorised flags.
Why do they hate this country?
Then after Christmas put the flags back up while they are taking the lights down
Other than a bit of time it shouldn't add too much cost
BBC Director-General and BBC News CEO both resign over the doctored Trump video. A new low for an organisation that acts like a law unto itself...
Was it not that Trump says enough stupid things already that the Beeb needed to doctor other quotes
Rather than acknowledge the massive issues they have, those still at the BBC seem intent on circling the wagons. It’s arrogant. It’s not the most important issue of the day but when everyone is obliged to contribute towards such a bloated and wasteful entity that spends an awful lot of money on ****e it doesn’t need then it’s right people are pissed off about it. It’s a bit silly this is what has done it rather than any of their other failings but I’m glad it’s happened.
The license fee is objectively stupid.
The license fee is objectively stupid.
The man is an open goal yet they convert it to an own goal, you have to be seriously up yourself to manage that...
Trump's lawyers all over this now demanding a retraction, apology and damages by Friday or they will launch a billion dollar lawsuit against the corporation. TV licence might not cover that...
A good piece by Lewis Goodall on the BBC fiasco....
The truth about impartiality at the BBC - by Lewis Goodall
The truth about impartiality at the BBC - by Lewis Goodall
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Just what you'd expect from a former employee, the groupthink that pervades the corporation will never change regardless of who is the next DG. So many have said it was a mistake/mishap rather than the reality it was a carefully edited piece distorting what was really said. There was so much media and clips they could have used rather than something that has severely damaged their reputation.
The list of scandals and headlines over the past few years should be the catalyst for a total shake up but I can't see it happening with a Labour government. The fact the only Tory on their board is being lined up for the chop is a definite pointer to just more of the same, I'll bet this time next year we'll still be moaning about the next scandal and then the next...
Put Andrew in charge of the BBC. Not like the old nonce has anything else going on and there’ll be multiple witnesses at all times.
'The only Tory on the Board'? There shouldn't be any political Board members. You don't seem to have read Goodall's full piece, so here's a part which deals with the percieved left-wing bias that Gibb, director of communications for Teresa May and co-founder of GB News, was appointed by Johnson to eradicate....
For what it’s worth, I don’t think they are part of a right wing plot, as such. I genuinely think they think they are saving the BBC from itself. But that is because they suffer from the same affliction as much of the ailing, older British media class, ubiquitous across the lofty, windy diatribes in the pages of the Sunday Times and Telegraph, former BBC anchors and the like: a total lack of self-awareness. They believe their own politics to be neutral, impartial- and other people’s politics to be the aberration, or doctrinaire, a belief egged on by the fact that most of the media agrees with them. Orthodoxies are for other people. Many of these people lecture younger BBC staff as to being too rigid, or subject to groupthink, or unwilling to step outside themselves: it is these people, inside and outside of the BBC who are in my experience most rigid of all, because they are so convinced their politics isn’t really politics, but just some default setting shared with much of the country- when it is not. Worse, they usually claim to do what they do in the name of ordinary working class people about whom they usually know nothing. I’ve written before about impartiality, and that of course, as an individual I wasn’t impartial at the BBC. I had views which I can now more freely express. I had biases- but I actively worked against them in my work, as I was required to do. How many of these people, self appointed guardians of impartiality, actually do the same? They often can’t- in my view because they don’t recognise their inherent partiality in the first place.
In other words, it wasn't that the BBC was too biased towards the Left, it was that it was considered insufficiently biased towards the Right.
The editing of Trump on Panorama was a serious misjudgement, but it was broadcast a year ago. Why should it come to light now?
From 1937....
Tory MP Captain Archibald Maule Ramsey was an actual pro-Nazi, interned by the Churchill coalition government for plotting a Fascist coup.
If he was around today he'd probably just join Reform.
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Tory MP Captain Archibald Maule Ramsey was an actual pro-Nazi, interned by the Churchill coalition government for plotting a Fascist coup.
If he was around today he'd probably just join Reform.
On the eve of the presidential election.
In this country, as it has passed a year since the broadcast, Trump cannot sue.
He can in America., however it was not shown in America and they cannot get iplayer there. Therefore he cannot claim it had an effect on the outcome.
And in fact it appears that the edit was not known of/ not bought to the attention of the general public until the leaked document last week.
Don't get me wrong ..Panorama were completely wrong in making that particular edit...
But something smells fishy
Starmer could be gone by Christmas. This is beginning to resemble the Tories at their worst, both governments had massive majorities but lurch from one crisis to another. The alternatives lining up to replace him look just as unpalatable, as I said when the Tories were in meltdown, what have we done to deserve this?...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y0z2q2g2ro
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y0z2q2g2ro
I wonder if there is a legal argument that the 12 month clock ought to start from the moment the alleged misrepresentation is brought to light, rather than the incident itself??
Trump will be looking for as full and humiliating apology as possible, not 10 seconds on 'Point's of View'.
Apparently it was available on BBC Worldwide which is available in the US and Trump's legal team have already referred any filing in the State of Florida, so yes he could sue
That’s an interesting paragraph. I take a different message from it to you though* - that true impartiality is impossible in the current world, and that the old school grandees who ran/run the BBC (both as the directors and the ‘talent’) are from the old days, when impartiality was in fact just a reflection of the prevailing liberal middle class paternalistic orthodoxy. Which was maintained because there were very few platforms on which it could be challenged and information was shared and presented by the orthodox. That orthodoxy is now shattered, we live in a fragmented society where anybody can have an opinion about anything, untethered to facts, and all have the ability to share it. The BBC is equally fragmented, having some old schoolers who genuinely believe they are impartial and others who explicitly or implicitly take sides - on Gaza/Israel, Trump, Trans issues, Reform etc etc.
If impartiality is impossible does it make the first two elements of the BBC ‘mission’ - inform and educate - redundant? Leaving us with entertain.
Ten, or possibly only five, years ago I would have been very upset to see the demise of the BBC, but now I really wouldn’t mind. It’s news and sports apps are the only things I use regularly (and it seems to me that the Sky versions are virtually identical) its news programmes whether on TV or radio, have declined alarmingly - not just ‘impartiality’ but focus on the personality of presenters, poor interviewing techniques and frequent ignorance of facts, plus use of news bulletins to trail and promote other BBC content.
* Goodall probably wasn’t thinking along my lines either.
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There have certainly been impartiality lapses on Gaza/Israel and Trump but I don't for a minute believe that these represent inherent attitudes within the BBC. Quite the opposite, in fact. It seems to me that both Netanyahu and Trump have been given substantially easier rides by the BBC than they deserve. I recommend you listen to or read LBC's US correspondent Simon Marks on the USA's headlong descent into authoritarianism under Trump. I don't have a clue about Trans issues, but Reform gets way more exposure on the BBC than its representation in Parliament warrants and it seems always to be of a benign nature. Farage never seems to get seriously challenged.
The organisation has been cowed by Gibb into dumbing down its news and current affairs output for fear of appearing to challenge right wing orthodoxy. It has made mistakes and these have been mercilessly exposed, but to quote Robert Shrimsley, 'The fact that the BBC has made serious culpable errors does not negate the point that there is a real and concerted right-wing media campaign to destroy it. Both points can be true at the same time and the campaign would not end even if the errors did'.
I still believe that the BBC, despite its failings, is vitally important for the nation and possibly even for the World.