HAPPY NEW YEAR...

>> Thursday, December 31, 2009

Just popping in to thank you ALL for your support during 2009! Yes, I know the redesign of the site caused concerns but most have stuck with us and I am delighted with the new team of writers who have made such an impact with some incisive posts in recent months. Most of all, I thank you, dear reader, for clicking the button and coming along here. I do hope you've enjoyed the journey in 2009. There has been a record number of posts this year and our aim is to provide you with fresh issues to discuss on the topic of the BBC's perennial bias. I have had email issues in recent days so if I have not responded to your mails, that's why! Hope you all have a great evening and see you in 2010!

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE: GREEN VICAR SHOCK

It's pretty darn unusual for the BBC website to cover the death of a local Church of England vicar; in fact, pretty much their only interest in Christianity and our established religion these days is in gay bishops. When I was in BBC local radio, it was only when a local bishop popped his clogs that we reached for our microphones.

Unless, that is, he's a revered green camapigner. Such, apparently, was the Reverend Hereward Cooke, a vicar in the Norwich area, who cycled the 150 miles to Copenhagen to attend the UN summit in December, and there, tragically, died in his sleep. I've nothing against Mr Cooke, I am sure he was a god-fearing chap, though it is a pity that he thought 'climate change' so important.

But to the BBC, of course, he's a saint. Any mention of 'green' and 'climate change' - no matter how inconsequential - is front page news.

End of Year Quiz

1.Who ends sentences on an upward inflection and is too cool to, you know, pronounce the ‘T’ at the ends of words?
A.) Some Teenagers; B.) Labour MPs; C.) Mark Thompson; D.) The terminally insecure; D.3. ) Puff Daddy.

2. Who repeatedly trots out the well known ‘inflated-salaries-of-BBC-management-defence’if we want the best we need to pay top whack” without explaining why the same argument doesn’t apply to the comparatively modest salaries of the creative staff?
(You Gets What You Pays For?) hmm.
A.) P. Diddy; B.) The management staff at the BBC; C.) Mark Thompson on Today R4.

3. Who sounds, you know, a tiny bit like, um um um, a stammering stuttering nincompoop?
A.) The Director general of the BBC; 3 down. ) Someone else?

Antony Jay

"But we were not just anti-Macmillan; we were anti-industry, anti-capitalism, anti-advertising, anti-selling, anti-profit, anti-patriotism, anti-monarchy, anti-Empire, anti-police, anti-armed forces, anti-bomb, anti-authority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place, you name it, we were anti it."
Antony Jay, Telegraph, July 2007

Andrew Marr

"..the final answer, frankly, is the vigorous use of state power to coerce and repress. It may be my Presbyterian background, but I firmly believe that repression can be a great, civilising instrument for good. Stamp hard on certain 'natural' beliefs for long enough and you can almost kill them off."
Andrew Marr, The Guardian Feb. 1999

Jeremy Paxman

"But the bigger question is whether the BBC itself has a future. Working for it has always been a bit like living in Stalin’s Russia, with one five-year-plan, one resoundingly empty slogan after another. One BBC, Making it Happen, Creative Futures, they all blur into one great vacuous blur. I can’t even recall what the current one is. Rather like Stalin’s Russia, they express a belief that the system will go on forever."
Jeremy Paxman, The James McTaggart Memorial, 24th August 2007

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