Bbc

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Ringfence-a-rama

Just watching Newsnight, and the show’s economics editor, Paul Mason, has said we can expect several budgets to be ringfenced from spending cuts in tomorrow’s PBR – hospitals, schools and perhaps even the social security budget.  If so, it’s another sign of how political the document is set to be.  Ringfenced budgets are the other side of the soak-the-rich coin: sending out the twin message that Labour will batter the “City fat cats,” while also “investing” in public services “for the many”.  Just a shame that it’s all insufficient to the scale of the debt crisis.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s licence fee cut – and how he’ll pay for it

All hail, Jeremy Hunt, the axe man. Cameron’s first tax cut will be a licence fee cut* – and Hunt is planning to axe some stations to pay for it.  Hunt is thinking of axing 1Extra, apparently, with BBC3 and BBC4 already under threat. Also under Hunt’s axe would be the National Lottery’s runnng costs. The Sunday Times apparently has the details tomorrow, but I give Hunt this warning: if he even tiptoes in the direction of Cbebbies then he will have a revolution on his hands. Parents depend on it now, utterly. Personally, I’d pay £100 a year just for it – just for its kid-sedating powers. But it

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

One in five would consider voting for the BNP

Here are the stand-out findings from today’s YouGov poll, conducted after this week’s Question Time, for the Telegraph: “The survey found that 22 per cent of voters would ‘seriously consider’ voting for the BNP in a future local, general or European election. This included four per cent who said they would ‘definitely’ consider voting for the party, three per cent who would ‘probably’ consider it, and 15 per cent who said they were ‘possible’ BNP voters.” This just reinforces my qualms about Thursday night’s show.  Yes, Griffin embarrassed himself in front of a hostile audience and panel, but that may not have mattered.  He had already reached out to any

Friday

Lloyd Evans

Tin pot Griffin fluffs his lines

Mobs of howling protestors outside the BBC. Police cordons being smashed by anti-fascists. News clips of upended students being dragged across the foyer of the TV Centre shouting, ‘Shame on you for defending fascism.’ It was chaotic, it was emotive, it was anarchic. But, ultimately, it was a marvellously British occasion. Thanks to the BNP, we were given proof tonight of the rag-bag unity of our society. No one is quite sure how Nazi bogeyman Nick Griffin was smuggled into the Shepherds Bush studios for the recording of Question Time. The best evidence is that he stowed away in a lorry driven by an unsuspecting dupe who failed to check

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

The laughter will have hurt Griffin

There’s only one question that counts now that Question Time has been shown: did it do Nick Griffin and the BNP any good? It’s a tough one to answer. To my eyes, at least, Griffin embarrassed himself in front of the cameras – he was given scant opportunity to gloss over his more unsavoury views; he looked terribly uncomfortable whenever the debate ran away from him; and the other panellists scored most of the major points. But we largely expected that anyway. Griffin was always going to come under heavy questioning, and he was never going to have many friends in the audience. Like Fraser, I fear that much of

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

EXCLUSIVE: What was said in Question Time

First question on the Second World War. Is it fair BNP hijacked Churchill? Straw says in the war Britain defeated a party based on race like the BNP. The BNP defines itself by race – that distinguishes it from every other party. All other parties have a moral compass. Nazism didn’t and neither does the BNP. We only won the First and Second World War because we were joined by millions of black and Asian people. Applause. Griffin then counters by saying Churchill would have been in BNP. He described Churchill as Islamaphobic by today’s standards. “The government is giving up on British freedom,” said Griffin. An audience member says

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Word from inside Question Time: Griffin “humiliated”

The first results from Question Time are landing. An audience member has just told me that Griffin  was “humiliated by the whole panel”. All of them “did well”, I am told. And  Jack straw accused him of being the Dr Strangelove of UK politics: a fantasing conspiracy theorist. More follows

Sunday

Rod Liddle

The BBC shoots itself in the foot

There was a very good piece by my colleague Martin Ivens in last week’s Sunday Times which asked how the BBC had come to estrange politicians of every party, along with most of the country. Ever willing to help, the BBC provided a partial explanation last week with two decisions of particular stupidity and crassness. First it let slip that it was advertising for a newsreader over the age of fifty – a cringeworthy piece of tokenism motivated by a barrage of complaints that the corporation has been guilty of ageism. Such an advert would, of course, be discriminatory itself and would not remotely address the issue of ageism. There

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Was Marr right to ask Brown that question?

Andrew Marr asking Gordon Brown if he was on anti-depressants was a real surprise. When I first heard that Marr had put this question to Brown, I thought there was a possibility that Labour aides had let it be known that the Prime Minister would like the chance to shoot down these rumours. But Brown’s reaction, suggests he wasn’t expecting the question. One can see why Marr asked the question: if Brown was on anti-depressants that could affect his judgement then the public has a right to know. It wasn’t in the public interest, as Andrew Marr seemed to acknowledge in his interview with George Osborne, that the BBC sat

Thursday

Alex Massie

BBC Asks for Increased Subsidy Shocker!

Unsurprisingly, the BBC wants the government to increase the number of sporting events that have to be shown on “free-to-air” [sic] television. But it’s hard to see why there needs to be any list of “protected” sport on terrestial television in the first place, let alone why that list should be expanded. Here’s the BBC’s argument: The BBC insists the protected list should be retained and its submission argues that “to limit access to those willing and able to subscribe to pay-TV would threaten the fabric of our sporting and cultural nation”. Dominic Coles, chief operating officer, BBC Journalism and director of sports rights said: “The BBC believes the list

Wednesday

Alex Massie

The BBC Tries to Catch-Up with its Audience

Apparently the BBC is finally going to show The Wire. Hurrah. Previously it’s only been available on FX in Britain. Well that’s all fine and dandy. But it’s not as though the series was a mystery. It debuted in 2002 and has received rave reviews form critics for at least the last three years. And yet no BBC (or Channel 4) executive thought to buy it before now? Strange. Rum too that the corporation should wait for much of its target audience to have already seen the show before deciding to screen it themselves. Just about anyone who has purchased the DVD box sets (all five series currently lie in

Monday

Alex Massie

Annals of Punditry

Lord knows, we all blunder from time to time. Still, this is pretty impressive: “Each year, in my last Economic View before Christmas, I try to shed some light on economic events of the previous 12 months by comparing what has actually happened with expectations published here in early January. This year, even more than usual, reading back through January’s predictions has been a shock. Almost all have turned out to be wrong”. Anatole Kaletsky, The Times, 18/12/06.“My last article of every year looks back on the predictions I made in early January to shed some light on the economic and financial events of the previous 12 months. This tends

Saturday

Alex Massie

Annals of Punditry | 7 June 2008

Euro 2008 starts today and happily we’re spared the agony of watching Scotland play. The BBC are doing their best to persuade us that even a tournament “without England” might be worth watching even though most sentient people appreciate that England’s failure to qualify actually enhances the tournament, especially for the TV viewer who might have an increased chance of intelligent, astute, imaginative, perceptive TV coverage. Not so fast my friends! Here’s the BBC’s Gary Lineker explaining why he thinks Spain can win the tournament: It is open, but I am going for those perennial underachievers in Spain…the feeling is that [the] team chokes, but they have done well in

Monday

Alex Massie

Good Day in Paris

The BBC: Paris protests mar Olympic relay This, naturally, is entirely incorrect. The problem would have been if there hadn’t been any protestors. Still, the BBC, which is sending more than 400 staff to Beijing, is heavily invested in the Olympics and keeps insisting that London 2012 is something to be jolly proud of whereas much of the population wished the IOC had handed the games to Paris instead.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Joke of the Day

This could be the most risible thing one’s seen yet from this risible government: The Labour Party has accused the BBC of bias towards the Tories. An official complaint has been lodged, claiming Radio 4’s Today programme has given David Cameron an easy ride in recent interviews. A senior party official accused the broadcaster of coming to a “special arrangement” with the Conservatives to avoid any “difficult questioning” of the Tory leader. But it’s also further evidence of something else: Brown’s goose is cooked. This is the sort of desperate floundering you associate with governments in their final, failing days. It’s not the action of a ministry bursting with important

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Athens to their Rome for sure…

Sure, Fox and CNN are almost unwatchable (I’m tempted to switch to Al-Jazeera English) but the good folk at The Economist remind one that the BBC is perhaps even worse: 9:10 : Katty Kay (yes, that’s really her name), a BBC anchor, pronounced Hillary Clinton the victor in Tennessee: this was especially notable, says Katty, because Al Gore lost the state in 2000, so it was a relief to see a Democrat finally win. You know, in a Democratic primary, that’s probably going to happen. Pretty much every time.