Mabel & colour telly
Sarah Connor reported unconcerned about cut-rate Dalek
Labels: BBC, Britain, Future Past, robot
I think I think, therefore, I think I think I am, I think.
Labels: BBC, Britain, Future Past, robot
The BBC looks at "the world's longest suicide note" and concludes that, "See, it isn't so insane after all" instead of, "My God, have we gone so insane that we actually ended up implementing most of this drivel and added on a couple more levels of daftness for good measure?!?"(S)omebody calling for the government not to renew the Trident missile system, might not be viewed as a left-wing idealist.True, "irresponsible, possibly pacifist, but more likely self-loathing Marxist nutcase who wants to work out his issues with his father by placing Britain at the mercy of her enemies" is more likely.
I’d like to overthrow the government.Their efforts included a story that was a thinly veiled call for Margaret Thatcher to be overthrown by a worker's revolt and an anti-nuclear speech delivered by the Doctor courtesy of CND.
Labels: BBC, Britain, Science Fiction, Television
They're coming so fast you can hardly keep up with them. Climategate, then Glaciergate, and even before I had a chance to comment on Africagate we have Pensiongate.Labels: Africa, BBC, Britain, Environmentalism
Why are Americans reacting to Obamaism like a Michelin Guide critic faced with a plate of Seven Eleven nachos? Is it because :Labels: BBC, Obama, United States
A revealing headline from the BBC:What does Massachusetts defeat mean for Obama?Defeat? Depends on your point of view, Auntie.
Labels: BBC, Election, United States
We’re desperate for anyone that isn’t white and male. It’s difficult in entertainment because the options are so limited. Diversity is a big issue and they’ve over-relied on men for a long time.When I read this sort of jaw-dropping bigotry, I think that the only way to handle the BBC is not with reform, but by frog marching everyone out of the building and starting from scratch.
Labels: BBC, Television
The irony of this situation is marvelous. Ever since the rise of the infamously unfunny "New Comedy" and left-wing agitprop like "The Monocled Mutineer" and "House of Cards" the BBC has been run by a censorious culture that is so restrictive that only Enemies of the Party are regarded as fair game for jokes or even criticism. Now that the backlash over the excesses of Sachsgate, vicious prank calls, rigged phone polls, staggering on-air crudity, et al have imperiled the Beebs sacred licence fee, the corporation is putting survival above loyalty and is taking its blue pencil to its ideological brethren. This is provoking trendies such as dramatist Stephen Poliakoff to howl about the "'Kafkaesque' rule-obsessed BBC" that is still imposing the same old Newspeak rules, only this time Mr Poliakoff and his colleagues are on the receiving end of the BBC's nasty, authoritarian mindset.Labels: BBC, Britain, Television
Classic Doctor Who meets Top Gear.Labels: BBC, Radio, Science Fiction
Excuse me, I've got a cinder in my eye.Labels: BBC, Motor Car, Television
Labels: BBC, Britain, Space, United States
Labels: BBC, Britain, New Labour
BBC headline:Great white sharks display ruthless hunting tacticsIn other news, bunnys are soft and cuddly.
Labels: BBC
A schoolgirl, who apparently has never had a proper job, decides to put Sinclair Lewis to shame and heads off to a tuna cannery in Indonesia where she discovers that it's, like, really hard work, man, and it's, you know, hot in there and it smells and everything and they even make you clip your nails. What's with that, yah?Labels: Arctic, BBC, Environmentalism
Labels: BBC, Radio, Science Fiction
Labels: BBC, Television
The Damien Green affair as filtered through the "satire" programme "Have I Got News For You", according to Samizdata:Ian Hislop: It is amazing, isn't it, that they were were able to get 20 or so policemen to raid Mr Green's offices and search his house. Where are all these guys when you need to catch a burglar or something?
Compere: Ah, yes, that sounds like the sort of drivel you read in the Daily Mail.
Hislop: So let me get this right - are you saying that is perfectly okay for a bunch of anti-terror policemen to arrest, search and hold an MP for asking annoying questions in the House of Commons?
Compere: I am in all in favour of putting Tory MPs in jail.
Good Lord.
Labels: BBC, Television
Labels: BBC, Science Fiction, Television
BBC headline:Four philosophical questions to make your brain hurtThe brain hurting doubtless comes from trying to figure out how Mr. Bain got a lectureship at the University of Glasgow when he cranks out such facile material loaded with buried assumptions and calls it philosophy.
Labels: BBC
Labels: BBC, Science Fiction, Television
Labels: BBC, Humour, Science, Television
The BBC's Lyse Doucet criticises news coverage of the Afghanistan campaign, saying that it overlooks "the humanity of the Taliban".Labels: Afghanistan, BBC, Jihad
Labels: BBC, Britain, Motor Car, Television
Labels: Afghanistan, BBC, Britain, British Army
Labels: BBC, Horror, Television
Bonekickers is a new BBC series that, judging from the previews, is the sort that as a writer I'd run down a side street to avoid. Maybe it has something to do with its self-consciously ethnic and gender balanced cast, painfully cliched "feisty" female lead and publicity stills that uses the dreaded Pose™ that says "We think we're tough and edgy with that indefinable rock-star vibe, though nobody over the age of 15 who doesn't live in their mother's cellar will agree." It looks predictably awful in that hideous trendy way that fills in for creativity these days and I'd probably put it with Torchwood, Robin Hood, and Hex in the Do Not Watch Unless Threatened By Lord Olivier With A Pair Of Dental Pliers file if it weren't for the fact that it is about a load of archaeologists.Labels: Archaeology, BBC, Dhimmitude, Television
Labels: BBC, Motor Car, Television
Labels: Arctic, BBC, Motor Car, Television
The BBC marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the NHS with a story that sets the benchmark for objectivity:Three generations grateful for NHSThis headline that would do credit to the North Korean news agency was balanced in the story itself by lines like this:
Anthony was born with blue asphyxia. Today he is convinced the NHS saved his life - and that of his mother.And from there It gets downright sycophantic. Overcrowded hospitals? Endless waiting lists? Mixed sex wards? Treatment rationing? A haemorrhaging budget with an army of bureaucrats to a squad of doctors? Sorry, no mention of that here.
Top Gear, the only car show in history that got me to watch a car show, is to be transmitted on NBC television in the States. Sorry, not the BBC original with Clarkson, Hammond and May, but an American version that somehow is going to catch lightning in a bottle twice running.Labels: BBC, Britain, NBC, Television, United States
Science has decreed that marrying first cousins in now hunky dory, but what about an actor dating his television daughter who is also the real-life daughter of another actor who played the first actor's television character previously.Labels: BBC, Britain, Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Television
The BBC asks the hard-hitting question:So is it possible to survive the day without spending any cash?Checks drinks cupboard.
Labels: BBC
Looking back at looking forward to the 1960s.Labels: BBC, Britain, Future Past
"A soap-opera with laser-gun fights"; the best description of the consistently disappointing new version of Doctor Who that I've seen.Labels: BBC, Doctor Who, Science Fiction
Justin Webb looks at the "paradox" of the United States as a nation with 200 million guns and yet has a certain "tranquility and civility".Labels: BBC, United States, Weapons
Labels: BBC, Britain, Motor Car, Technology
Ron Liddle over at The Spectator sums up BBC's "White Season":When those programmes were commissioned and the BBC executives sat around discussing the content, they undoubtedly caught the whiff of the zeitgeist — that, come on chaps, we really ought to do something about those dreadful people in the north who somehow feel estranged and alienated. But they were singularly incapable of commissioning anything which said, actually, they might have a legitimate grievance.
That would have been a step too far. Instead they commissioned a bunch of programmes that said: white working-class people, we feel your pain, but unfortunately, you’re wrong. In other words, they demonstrated precisely the same mindset which infects every single news bulletin, documentary and drama we have witnessed for the last 20 years on the BBC. Can you imagine them commissioning a film about a Muslim girl who converts to Christianity, converts her mum — and by the denouement is proven right to have done so? It will never happen.
I haven't had a chance to see White Girl, part of the BBC's "White Season", except in brief previews on the Web, but if the reviews in The Telegraph and Beaman's World are anything to go by, it is a drama that shows that in the eyes of the Beeb the white working class of Britain are a load of drunken, foul-mouthed, wife-beating, child-beating racists whose only salvation lies in embracing religion.I will do my best to learn the relevant lessons for next time.The relevant lesson being that there shouldn't be a next time.
E-Day organiser Dr Matt Prescott said the drop in temperature on the day may be behind the rise, with more people leaving lights and heating on as a result.Yes! A stunt to
Labels: BBC, Britain, Environmentalism
Labels: BBC, Britain, Environmentalism
Miss Nasreen Suleaman, producer of the infamous BBC programme "Don't Panic, I'm Islamic", gave testimony at the trial of one of the men linked to the 21 July 2005 bombing attempt. According to The Telegraph (emphasis added):Called as a defence witness, Miss Suleaman admitted that she had spoken to Hamid in the days following the July 21 attacks and found out he knew the wanted men.Such monumental arrogance is staggering. This woman had information about terrorists at large and she didn't tell the authorities because she felt "no obligation". If the Ministry of Justice (there's a chillingly Orwellian title) isn't drawing up warrants for withholding evidence, obstruction of justice, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war, then they are sadly neglecting their duty.
She said she thought he was scared the fugitives might try to call him but did not contact the police because she felt under "no obligation" to do so.
Labels: BBC, Dhimmitude, Jihad, Jihadists, Spain
From the Times:The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and failed to pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police, a court was told yesterday.
Mohammed Hamid, who is charged with overseeing a two-year radicalisation programme to prepare London-based Muslim youths for jihad, was described as a “cockney comic” by a BBC producer.
The BBC paid for Mr Hamid and fellow defendants Muhammad al-Figari and Mousa Brown to go on a paintballing trip at the Delta Force centre in Tonbridge, Kent, in February 2005. The men, accused of terrorism training, were filmed for a BBC programme called Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, screened in June 2005.
If this is how the BBC handles the war, I think I will panic, thank you very much.
Labels: BBC, Environmentalism
It's the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution and the BBC's James Rodgers looks at the hard time Russia's Communists have today:These were people who toiled all their lives to build a Communist utopia, only to find that their reward was a penance of a pension doled out in the harsh, new, capitalist Russia of the 1990s.
Labels: BBC, Doctor Who
Labels: BBC, Humour, Television
I was evacuated during the fires, and all I have to say is that the last few days have been awful.I can imagine. Though why he was being force-fed laxatives remains a mystery.
Labels: BBC, California, Disaster
Labels: BBC, Science Fiction, Television
The BBC, operating under the delusion that the sort of damp-handed, creeping Continentalism practised at Broadcasting House is the norm for the country, ponders at tedious length the "new etiquette" of people who are not close family members kissing and hugging.Labels: BBC, Quatermass, Science Fiction, Television
Labels: BBC, Quatermass, Science Fiction, Television
Labels: BBC, Quatermass, Science Fiction, Television
Labels: BBC, Quatermass, Science Fiction, Television
Labels: BBC, Quatermass, Science Fiction, Television
Labels: BBC, Quatermass, Science Fiction, Television
Labels: BBC, Science Fiction
The BBC was forced to cancel a Celebrities such as Ricky Gervais were said to be interested in presenting the show, which would have involved viewers in a mass "switch-off" to save energy.Aside from the fact that flipping a light switch "saves energy" about as effectively as closing a window blind "saves sunlight", perhaps the reality behind the cancellation was that it dawned on the BBC that putting the idea of "switching off" in the heads of viewers was too close to reminding them of the practical alternative to watching this sort of drivel.
Labels: BBC, Environmentalism, Global Warming