BBC bias

[Fullerene]

3 hours ago, BTFD said:

I've never seen yon disabled laddie on the telly, and I need to know if my flight to Lanzarote will be cancelled!

You could argue the BBC knows us only too well.

I think I can clear this up.

The Hollywood strikes have had no impact on the film "My Flight to Lanzarote".  It is still in production.  It has not been cancelled but the release date has been set back to early in the new year.

HTH

[Leith Green]

Truly bizarre from BBC Scotland. They post a non story as if it's "something" then tell us it's actually nothing. They really are amateurs.

 

 

[BFTD]

30 minutes ago, Leith Green said:

Truly bizarre from BBC Scotland. They post a non story as if it's "something" then tell us it's actually nothing. They really are amateurs.

I figured the answer must have been "just f**k it off m8, none of us are bothering with any of this Covid shite, lol", but "politician responds to enquiries with pertinent advice and asks colleagues to follow up" is disappointingly...well, what an MP/MSP/Councillor's job is supposed to be, surely?

[Leith Green]

Another in the series of "nothing to see here" from BBC Scotland.

Last night, STV news collared Anas Sarwar about the 2 child limit  and Sarwar gave his (utterly ludicrous) response - which the reporter almost laughed at.

BBC R4 this morning referenced this issue, and that Sarwar was under pressure about it.

BBC Scotland? Nothing, there is no story on their website, not even on the Scotland Politics page.

They dont even hide their unionist bias now.

[StellarHibee]

2 hours ago, Leith Green said:

They dont even hide their unionist bias now.

They never did. People were just too thick to notice it 10+ years ago.

[Wee Bully]

11 hours ago, Leith Green said:

Another in the series of "nothing to see here" from BBC Scotland.

Last night, STV news collared Anas Sarwar about the 2 child limit  and Sarwar gave his (utterly ludicrous) response - which the reporter almost laughed at.

BBC R4 this morning referenced this issue, and that Sarwar was under pressure about it.

BBC Scotland? Nothing, there is no story on their website, not even on the Scotland Politics page.

They dont even hide their unionist bias now.

I’m afraid that’s not true - interviews with Stephen Flynn and Jackie Bailey on Radio Scotland this morning.  JB’s was a total car crash.  It is also on the website., both main page and the top story on Politics.

[sophia]

36 minutes ago, Wee Bully said:

I’m afraid that’s not true - interviews with Stephen Flynn and Jackie Bailey on Radio Scotland this morning.  JB’s was a total car crash.  It is also on the website., both main page and the top story on Politics.

Yes but Baillie's interview was a opportunity missed by Gary Robertson.

All he had to suggest is that the local structure of Labour is subservient to Starmer. He didn't and in a similar fashion to DRoss n Boris, the BBC allowed the narrative that there are two equal entities.

Those that remember our devolved administration pre Salmond will recall how it worked when the CEO is in London. If we allow that again, I despair.

 

[Leith Green]

2 hours ago, Wee Bully said:

It is also on the website., both main page and the top story on Politics.

Do you think I was making it up when I posted this morning that it was on neither of these?

The fact they have been forced by STV into addressing the story doesn't change the truth that BBC Scotland publish "SNP in crisis" stories more urgently than anything concerning the Tories or Labour.

[Guest]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66237377

BBC opinion which I think presents a narrative so simplified that it misleads. It focuses on meetings in 2001 between an adviser to Tony Blair and a Ukrainian delegation making the case for Ukraine's future EU accession. Blair is criticised for not being sufficiently enthusiastic about that prospect. Yet the article itself points out major reasons why that was: 

Quote

One of the biggest stumbling blocks was that Ukraine was beset with corruption and its businesses run by powerful oligarchs.

For all his Western leanings, Mr Kuchma's own government was tainted by the gruesome 2000 murder of a journalist, Georgiy Gongadze, who was one of the Ukrainian leader's biggest public critics.

There was also that Ukraine was still years away from becoming even a WTO member in 2001. Economically, it was a cowboy land being looted by the oligarchs. The EU would've had only mild interest in expanding into Ukraine at that time because corruption is bad for business. Profits can't be extracted back to western Europe if they're being siphoned off locally. 

We're then told this of the UK ambassador in Kyiv in 2001:

Quote

He asked why it differed from the plan for countries such as Bulgaria and Romania, which eventually joined the EU in 2007.

The difference between those two nations and then Ukraine was that a major chunk of Ukraine's economy was under the control of a non-EU member, Russia. This was not the case with Bulgaria and Romania. So subsuming those two into the EU wouldn't cause an economic rift where it would in Ukraine. 

The article then just skips straight to the 2014 overthrow of Yanukovych in Ukraine which the headline informs us was about trying to realise "Ukraine's EU dream". Except that EU dream was not a united Ukrainian dream. Polling from 2014 showed an overall majority preference for EU accession but the margin got progressively narrower the more eastwards you went until it reversed quite emphatically in Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk. Those eastern regions were economically entwined with Russia. Many workers there moved to Russia on temporary visas and they did that simply due to geography, Russia is right next to them, not for ethno-nationalist reasons popularly ascribed to them by western commentary. Donetsk in particular had the remnants of Soviet manufacturing present which was the livelihood of many people there. Company owners were in Moscow. Welfare was tied in to those jobs which is why older voters in the east were especially opposed to a break from Russia - their pensions were in the balance.

The idea Yanukovych was some hardcore anti-EU Kremlin stooge isn't accurate either. He rejected the EU accession deal in 2014 not out of some entrenched opposition to Ukraine joining the EU but because he was unhappy with the terms of that specific deal. Previous IMF loans had come with austerity conditions which the EU were demanding he began enforcing. Examples were increasing the retirement age, freezing wages and pensions. He also insisted the EU pay compensation for the trade Ukraine would lose from Russia but the EU refused to. Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-russia-deal-special-report/special-report-why-ukraine-spurned-the-eu-and-embraced-russia-idUSBRE9BI0DZ20131219

The implication of that article is Tony Blair contributed to the 2014 cleavage in Ukraine (which preceded the Russian aggression) by not giving enough support to Ukrainian EU overtures in 2001. An example of the popular new idea that "its our fault for not having just rammed Ukraine into EU or NATO". A nonsense counterfactual that overlooks the complexity and pluralism of Ukraine pre-2014. 

 

[Wee Bully]

13 hours ago, Leith Green said:

Do you think I was making it up when I posted this morning that it was on neither of these?

The fact they have been forced by STV into addressing the story doesn't change the truth that BBC Scotland publish "SNP in crisis" stories more urgently than anything concerning the Tories or Labour.

The BBC Scotland interviews were at 8.05 and 8.35, and were heavily trailed through the morning before that.  So, give you posted after 10am, yes, you were.

I also agree wholeheartedly on your “SNP Bad” line.  

[Leith Green]

1 hour ago, Wee Bully said:

The BBC Scotland interviews were at 8.05 and 8.35, and were heavily trailed through the morning before that.  So, give you posted after 10am, yes, you were.

I also agree wholeheartedly on your “SNP Bad” line.  

I didnt listen to R Scotland, and I was responding to your specific statement about the items being on the website - which they were not when I posted.

I may be many things - Hibby b*****d, annoying tit, grammer pedant.............but I am not a liar.

[Thane of Cawdor]

16 minutes ago, Leith Green said:

I didnt listen to R Scotland, and I was responding to your specific statement about the items being on the website - which they were not when I posted.

I may be many things - Hibby b*****d, annoying tit, grammer pedant.............but I am not a liar.

I don't think you're a pedant.

[Leith Green]

7 minutes ago, Thane of Cawdor said:

I don't think you're a pedant.

Maybe I should have raised a flag in demonstration of my - fairly poorly executed - jest........................... 

[Thane of Cawdor]

4 minutes ago, Leith Green said:

Maybe I should have raised a flag in demonstration of my - fairly poorly executed - jest........................... 

Any subtlety flummoxes me.

[Wee Bully]

40 minutes ago, Leith Green said:

I didnt listen to R Scotland, and I was responding to your specific statement about the items being on the website - which they were not when I posted.

I may be many things - Hibby b*****d, annoying tit, grammer pedant.............but I am not a liar.

I didn’t call you that - i pointed out the factual inaccuracy in your statement.  There is enough to blame the BBC about - i actually complained to the BBC for the first time ever this week over their reporting of the Martin Compston story, which basically repeated the Tories (red and blue) attack line for 3/4 of the article before a concluding paragraph saying “but there was nothing wrong with any of this”.  

Their coverage of a facebook page this week with 71 members calling for a return to masks in hospital settings was just as bad.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Wee Bully

[Suspect Device]

BBC really taking the pish tonight on the 10 o'clock news in the feature on the bye elections. 

Unless there's been an earthquake and we've lost half the north west.

 

[Salt n Vinegar]

29 minutes ago, Suspect Device said:

BBC really taking the pish tonight on the 10 o'clock news in the feature on the bye elections. 

Unless there's been an earthquake and we've lost half the north west.

 

It's too far north to be the Faslane base... WTF has happened?

[TheScarf]

9 hours ago, Suspect Device said:

BBC really taking the pish tonight on the 10 o'clock news in the feature on the bye elections. 

Unless there's been an earthquake and we've lost half the north west.

 

If you've ever been to some of the places missing from the map, you'll realise that's a good thing.

[Trogdor]

10 hours ago, Suspect Device said:

BBC really taking the pish tonight on the 10 o'clock news in the feature on the bye elections. 

Unless there's been an earthquake and we've lost half the north west.

 

Did the share the wrong info graphic?

That looks a bit like a rising sea level scenario to me. Odd that it only affects the North West right enough. 

Edited July 21, 2023 by Trogdor

[Suspect Device]

7 minutes ago, Trogdor said:

Did the share the wrong info graphic?

That looks a bit like a rising sea level scenario to me. Odd that only affects the North West right enough. 

The alarmist rising sea level graphic normally show that London is underwater.  I've no idea what that one last night is all about.

You can check it out on the iplayer. It's just weird.