The BBC Guardian Love-In (With Our Cash)
A nice little bit of investigation by B-BBC contributor Billy Blofeld, who has been busy with the FOI requests. The BBC have now provided him with up-to-date data broken down by how much they spend on recruitment advertisement with external organisations.
The BBC are the biggest fish in the media pond. Whatever they say, they are not subject to the vagaries of the market like a commercial company is. The BBC can influence and change markets, because the licence fee payers give them the financial whip hand. In short the BBC can choose to advertise wherever the hell they like and people wanting a job in television will follow.
Given nearly a third of the BBC total spend is with companies with political affiliations, it is a disgrace that nearly 80% of spend in this major category is with the left wing Guardian.
Dumb BBC (Again ...)
Jenni Murray on Woman Sour rewrites the Mayor of Casterbridge :
"The Mayor of Casterbridge, written in 1886, opens in the market square in the town of Dorchester, where a drunk Michael Henchard is offering his wife for sale"OK, who's ignorant - Jenni, the scriptwriter, or the researcher? As any Hardy reader kno, Henchard sold his wife at Weydon-Priors fair, miles from Dorchester - and the book opens with the Henchards trudging towards that village. The news of Henchard's wife-selling could hardly have come as a revelation to the citizens had he done the deed in the market-place.
The rewriting of history continues when presenter Fiona Clampin gets chatting to Sue Clarke and feminist English lecturer Dr Jane Thomas from the University of Hull.
"It's worth remembering that labouring people in rural districts didn't necessarily marry - they would ratify their engagement by having intercourse, and if the woman got pregnant than they would marry, and if she didn't get pregnant then if they didn't want to they wouldn't marry ... so I think that wife-selling was an early form of divorce in those days"
"Yes, I've heard that"
Three points here
a) labouring people DID marry, even in the distorted picture we're given here. The authors of "An Economic History of Bastardy in England and Wales"give a figure of 6% for illegitimate births at the start of the 19th century (as compared to over 40% now). In fact pregnancy generally led to marriage - and the birth of an illegitimate child was usually followed by marriage unless the man defected. As the ne'er-do-well father in Hardy's 'A Tragedy of Two Ambitions' describes it :
"She was my wife as lawful as the Constitution - a sight more lawful than your mother was until some time after you were born !"
b) AFAIK, the 'proving' of a relationship by pre-marital intercourse, with marriage the result of pregnancy, was ONLY a custom of the Isle of Portland, and notable because it was such an exception. In Hardy's 'The Well-Beloved', Avice Caro's "modern feelings" are quite against the tradition, which she feels Pierston's father may insist on.
"If the woman does not prove with child, after a competent time of courtship, they conclude they are not destined by Providence for each other ; they therefore separate ; and as it is an established maxim, which the Portland women observe with great strictness, never to admit a plurality of lovers at one time, their honour is in no way tarnished. She just as soon gets another suitor (after the affair is declared to be broken off) as if she had been left a widow, or that nothing had ever happened, but that she had remained an immaculate virgin"
Hutchins, "History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset," vol. ii., p. 820, 1868, quoted in Bloch.
"So faithfully was this "island custom" observed that, on the one hand, during a long period no single bastard was born on the "island," and, on the other, every marriage was fertile. But when, for the further development of the Portland stone trade, workmen from London, with the habits of the large town, came to reside in Portland, these men took advantage of the "island custom" and then refused to marry the girls with whom they had cohabited. Thus, in consequence of freer intercourse with the "civilized" world, the "Portland custom" has gradually fallen into desuetude." - (The sexual life of our time in its relations to modern civilization, Iwan Bloch, pub F.J. Rebman, London 1909)
c) the remark "so I think that wife-selling was an early form of divorce in those days" doesn't follow from what goes before - and in any event, it was never considered as anything but a disgraceful proceeding.
THE YEMENI PROBLEM
Did you catch this interview with the British Ambassador to Yemen? Listen to how the fragrant Sarah manages to get through the interview with ever once mentioning the real cause of the problems afflicting Yemen - ISLAM. Instead, the issue is presented as being one of poverty. The Ambassador, sadly, goes with this whole unemployment/poverty angle which only then further encourages the BBC in its mission to ignore the real cause of global Jihad.
STUPID PEOPLE
Interesting interview here with Man Booker Prize nominee Peter Carey in which the author gets to mock "stupid people like George W Bush and Sarah Palin" Even in their Arts section, the BBC meme is always being advanced.
SHEER IGNORANCE....
One of the elements of the BBC's bias is the deliberate, constant re-writing of history to fit its own narrative, and the drip-drip of its own propaganda messages. The impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil blow-out was far lessthan the panic-reporting by the BBC predicted, but the corporation hates anything to do with fossil-fuel as part of its greenie obsession, so that's not what it wants to believe. To them, according to this report this morning, Deepwater remains "one of the worst disasters in US history". What pig-ignorant cobblers. The reality is that 11 people died and a few miles of coastland has suffered from oil-related pollution. The rest of the damage was inflicted by government ineptitude, vindictiveness to BP (and British interests) and over-reaction. How can that be even remotely compared to 9/11, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 or the 1900 Galveston Hurricane?
What makes such vapid nonsense so damaging is that it diverts attention away from the main substance of the news piece, that the Obama administration had not got the faintest idea how to deal with events, other than to blame the Brits. Shameful reporting.
CASH PETERS UPDATE
>> WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 06, 2010
Rhod Sharp, regular host of Radio Five Live's Up All Night, returned from holiday this week and on Wednesday morning received an update about recent events from Cash Peters:
Cash Peters: About three weeks ago I got into a little trouble with the very first stand-in we had, I got into a little trouble. We were talking about this RightNetwork, which is a conservative network, and I was going on about how I didn't think it was very good - y'know it's sponsored by Kelsey Grammer and he's on it and I just didn't like it very much. Well, I shouldn't have said I didn't like it because apparently I'm terribly biased for saying so [*]. Well then we breezed by that, I got over that crisis, then this week Kelsey Grammer writes to me and says…"Kelsey Grammer writes to me and says..."
Rhod Sharp: Oh, you're kidding!
Cash Peters: Yeah - he's following me on Twitter! I've now got Kel… I call it intimidation frankly, who knows what I'll say about him next? But yes, Kelsey Grammer is following me on Twitter. It's very exciting. I keep wanting to say something about him but then think nyah, better not. I better not say anything , it'll only stoke the fire.
Rhod Sharp: That's wonderful. Terrific. Terrific.
Yeah, right. Try this - whoever runs Kelsey Grammer's account decided to follow Cash Peters (probably as a consequence of Biased BBC) and Peters got the automatic "xxxx is following you on Twitter" email that everybody gets when someone follows them (such as nearly 10,000 other people have received from @Kelsey_Grammer) For the benefit of the BBC this became an 'OMG Kelsey Grammer wrote to me personally!' moment. And Rhod Sharp lapped it up. I've asked Peters about it on Twitter (yes, Twitter - like Stan with Facebook I've tried to avoid being sucked in but can resist no longer). I've had one somewhat evasive reply from him so far.
[*] "and I just didn't like it very much. Well, I shouldn't have said I didn't like it because apparently I'm terribly biased for saying so"
Where might people have got that impression? This description of RightNetwork, perhaps?
"It's all 'Big business is more important than people, the rich shall not pay taxes, whatever makes a profit is far more important than people suffering.'"Yes, nothing "terribly biased" about that at all.
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