The Zionist Organization of America writes about Obama’s June speech in Cairo.

“President Obama made some positive comments about Israel, stating that the U.S.-Israel bond is ‘unbreakable’ and criticized those who threaten Israel’s destruction and repeat vile stereotypes about Jews – without, however, naming those who do so like Iran, Syria, and Abbas’ Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) (through the Fatah Constitution, PA-controlled publications, curricula, media, mosques, schools and youth camps).

“Overall, however, this was primarily a strongly biased speech, inimical to Israel, supportive of false Palestinian and Arab claims against Israel, blatantly factually inaccurate – inaccuracies that always benefited the anti-Israel Palestinian, Arab and Muslim cause.

“For example, Obama falsely claimed the Palestinian Arabs were ‘displaced’ by Israel in 1948; falsely claimed the Palestinian Arabs have been suffering trying to establish their state for 60 years (they could have had a state in 1937, 1948 or in 2000, but turned down each opportunity). Obama also bizarrely claimed that he longs for the day Jerusalem is secure for Jews, Muslims and Christians even though this has been precisely the case since Israel reunited the city under its control in 1967.

...

“Despite the fact that President Obama declared that he would be totally ‘honest’ in discussing Mideast issues, he said nothing about Palestinian Arab and Saudi Arabian persecution of Christians. (Even the Pope recently expressed dismay by the huge numbers of Christians who have left the Muslim countries.) And while speaking of the slaughter in Darfur, he didn’t even hint that Egypt and other Arab states have for years been blocking international action to end it. President Obama used the Palestinian apologetic term of ‘resistance’ to discuss Palestinian terrorism, implying a legitimate basis for violence. He also never asked the Arab countries or the PA to put Israel on their maps – something which none of them do.”

No, I don’t think Israel is altogether thrilled with our new President. Hey Israel, welcome to our club! Most of us aren’t exactly fainting with joy either. Maybe things would be better if he gave PM Netanyahu one of those iPods filled with rap tunes and all his campaign speeches. And a few DVDs from the WalMart bargain bin. That really impresses those foreign heads of state you know!

Posted by Drew458     on 07/22/2009 at 01:22 PM   
Filed Under: • Israel •  
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I Love Rich People

I love rich people. Because they can afford to hire me to do stuff for them.

I have yet to get a window cleaning job in the ghetto.

But to be fair and balanced, I will do the windows in a condo unit for as little as $50 if I don’t have to drive more than a couple blocks to do it.

But folks with money are my favorite kind of people. I just got back from giving an estimate on a lovely huge home. 100 windows, 20 large driveway lanterns, plus gutter cleaning. Cha Ching! And every window in the house is made by Marvin, which is the top of the line. And believe it or not, but quality glass cleans easier than the cheap stuff.  I gave them a very competitive price, I think, and made my pitch that I deliver a superior service. I hope I get the job. I’m confident; I did her friend’s place the other week, and she’s happy with that, even though that was not a full service cleaning.

I found out what people do with too much house. They turn the third floor into a giant playroom, with a pool table, foozball table, giant hi-def TV with audiophile surround sound with electrostatic speakers and full-on gaming consoles, card tables and a bar, plus an indoor shuffleboard court inlaid into the parquet floor. Sweet! That leaves the sun room free to be turned into a gym with more exercise machines than at Jack LaLane’s. And just for fun they put in a spiral staircase up to the finished attic so Mr. Rich Guy can have some extra closet space. Mrs. Rich Lady tells me they’ve had a 4 year long improvement project going, and it’s just about done. Got that right. Even the 200 yard long driveway is entirely done in flagstones, and the pool house has a two bedroom apartment in it, just in case they have extra guests over and the 6 regular bedrooms aren’t enough. Yowsa. Poverty sucks.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/22/2009 at 01:00 PM   
Filed Under: • work and the workplace •  
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Skunked Again

We got beaten with a stick at league last night. Lost it 5-2. We played that team of hard partying college girls again. They’re all very nice to look at, yum, but they can’t bowl for shiz or salsa. So we gave up something like 140 pins in handicap. And, of course, they had their best night ever, while we had one of our worst. That’s our luck! It’s something like the Curse of the Bambino. Whatever. I had one game a few points above average, and the other 2 games I stunk. My 3 teammates did pretty much the same thing. But I wore an arch support in my shoes so today my foot doesn’t hurt very much.

I’m off, have to drive across the state to give a window cleaning estimate to a cute rich lady in a great big house, plus the barn and outbuildings. Looks like great money and maybe a week’s work if I get the bid.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/22/2009 at 08:33 AM   
Filed Under: • Bowling Blogging •  
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Moon landings: That’s one small quotation for a man. . .

Christopher Howse writes about the world’s faiths, especially Christianity.
He also comments frequently and blogs on the uses and abuses of the English language.

Moon landings: That’s one small quotation for a man. . .
Following a claim that Neil Armstrong did not think up his famous phrase himself, Christopher Howse finds that no one said what you thought, and someone else said it first.

By Christopher Howse
Published: 6:12PM BST 21 Jul 2009

A retired engineer from Berkshire, Gary Peach, says that it was he who came up with the line, “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Neil Armstrong is on record as saying that he “thought about it after landing” on the Moon.

Shall we see the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations listing the remark under Mr Peach’s name in future? Even if we do, one can’t help thinking that it was the event that made the words famous, not their inherent brilliance. In any case, Mr Armstrong fluffed them.

Mr Peach says he wanted to avoid the lunarnauts going on about dust. If so, he was only partly successful. Shortly after his remark about stepping, Mr Armstrong observed: “It does adhere in fine layers, like powdered charcoal.” That has a poetic ring, as if it was by Hopkins or Eliot, and Mr Armstrong recalled it subliminally.

Sometimes, it seems as if nobody famous ever said quite what you thought they did, and even then someone else had said it first. “Let me remember some words of St Francis,” Margaret Thatcher said in Downing Street in 1979. “Where there is discord, may I bring harmony.” Many people now think she said, “Where there is hatred, let me sow love,” because that is the version of the prayer they know.

The words were put into Lady Thatcher’s mouth by Ronald Millar, her chief speechwriter. He probably thought the words had indeed first been uttered by St Francis of Assisi. In reality, they date back no earlier than 1912.

They appeared in a pious French magazine called La Clochette, published by a group founded in 1901 by Father Esther Bouquerel, who perhaps wrote them. They were fastened on St Francis after being printed on the back of a picture of him in 1920.

Famous names attract famous words as a sofa attracts cat hairs. “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” said Voltaire, as any writer of letters to newspapers knows. He did not say it, though.

The words were first published in 1907 in a book by S G Tallentyre, or so the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations says. But there was not even any such person as S G Tallentyre, for that was a mere pen-name used by a writer called Evelyn Beatrice Hall. No one ever writes: “In the words of Evelyn Beatrice Hall, ‘I disapprove of what you say...”

Perhaps the most electrostatic attractor of quotations is Churchill. Some of the things he really did say, though, had been said by others before. He coined the phrase Iron Curtain in a speech at Fulton, Missouri, in 1946. If Ethel Snowden had used it in 1920, no one cares. It was even used by Goebbels, for heaven’s sake, in 1945, in a thoughtful leader in the magazine Das Reich. But when we hear the words Iron Curtain, we do not, fortunately, think of Goebbels.

As a magnetic furball, Oscar Wilde does pretty well, too. Though James McNeill Whistler did answer his remark, “I wish I’d said that,” with the riposte, “You will, Oscar, you will,” the story, by an irony, appeared not in a biography of Whistler, but in one of Wilde, – by L C Ingleby, or so the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations says.

The biography came out in 1907, like the Voltaire book. Ingleby didn’t exist either, being a pen-name of Cyril Gull, a curate’s son better known as Guy Thorne. who made a habit of concealing bottles of whisky all over the countryside so that on a walk he was never more than a quarter of a mile from refreshment.

The moral is perhaps that famous people who do famous things should imitate stout Cortes when he stared at the Pacific, silent upon a peak in Darien. Except it wasn’t Darien. And it wasn’t Cortes.

TELEGRAPH

Posted by peiper     on 07/22/2009 at 06:16 AM   
Filed Under: • Education • Fun-Stuff • UK •  
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THE HIPPIES RUN THE SCHOOL SYSTEM, AND THE NANNY-STATERS ALL HAVE DEGREES

In a private e-mail to me yesterday, Drew wrote the following:

Now the hippies run the school system, and the nanny-staters all have degrees in journalism. They are ALL out to remold the world in their image, not to merely teach or report.

While the subject matter discussed was not England’s schools or its teachers, what he said with reference to things across the water has much relevance to this article which appeared today. 

Damn shame if it’s all true, because once upon a time this country took second place to nobody.  To be a Brit was to be proud, even if you were poor.  You belonged to a country that brooked no nonsense, and had a grasp of traditions and culture.  Not to say it was perfect.  But pretty damn close to a great place to be.  Brits didn’t leave their country because they were oppressed. Not at all. 
The Brits simply HATE their weather. Just ask em.  But they still loved their country, and there’s a generation lost to us now that would riot in the streets if they could see how things are today. 

So this doesn’t help matters much I wouldn’t think.

Teachers in England ‘poorly trained’

Teachers in England are among the least-qualified in the developed world, according to research.

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor
Published: 7:00AM BST 22 Jul 2009

Qualifications needed to work in schools are lower than other nations such as France, Germany and the United States, it was claimed.

The study also said more teachers quit the classroom in England after just a few years and pay fails to keep up with international standards.

Politeia, the think-tank, insisted the system of training in England was in “crisis” and called for urgent reform.

The findings were criticised by the Government which claimed teachers were now better trained than ever.

Separate figures published on Wednesday showed trainees graduating last year were more likely to have at least a lower-second class degree than when Labour came to power.

But Chris Woodhead, the former chief inspector of schools, said the Politeia report reflected growing anxiety over teaching standards.

Writing in the same study, he said teachers were now expected to be more focused on “the challenges of social diversity than the excitement of teaching an academic subject”.

“These days student teachers and aspirant headteachers are lobotomised into an unthinking acceptance of the Government’s plans,” he said. “Who would want to be a member of this non-profession?

“We remain committed to the comprehensive ideal and continue to believe that a teacher should want to teach and be able to teach children of all abilities. This is nonsense. Some teachers are gifted in the teaching of academic children; others are brilliant with, for example, the emotionally and behaviourally disturbed.”

In today’s study, Politeia compared teaching standards in England with those in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the US and New Zealand.

At the moment, students attempting to work in primary schools need at least a C grade GCSE in English and mathematics, on top of a degree, before being allowed onto postgraduate training courses.

But the report said other countries demanded “the full range of subjects” to the equivalent of A-level standard before students were given more intensive training places.

Politeia said the bar had to be raised “to attract into teaching the most academically and professionally able from each generation”.

Researchers also claimed that between 30 and 50 per cent of trainees in England quit the classroom within three years of training, the highest in the countries involved.

In a further development, the study said England had the “most controlled and centrally managed profession”.

“In no other country is a teacher’s day to day work circumscribed by government or bureaucrats”, it said.

It came as separate figures from the Government’s Training and Development Agency for Schools, which runs teacher training, found 95 per cent of primary school trainee teachers and 89 per cent of those training to work in secondaries had a 2:2 or better.

Graham Holley, chief executive, said: “The large volume and high quality of candidates with good degrees entering the teaching profession continues to grow every year, which can only be good for pupils.”

TEACHERS

Posted by peiper     on 07/22/2009 at 05:42 AM   
Filed Under: • Education • UK •  
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HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE.  HAPPY 1 9 8 4 … Should oooeld comraaads beeee forgot ……

You will recall that yesterday I posted something that I found very upsetting. Yeah I know. I find lots of things upsetting.
Anyway ... I posted this.

Police given powers to enter homes and tear down anti-Olympics posters during 2012 Games

I thought that was pretty damn bad and I still do. 

One day last week, or heck it could have been only a couple of daze ago (not trying to be cute. DAZE, as in daze is correct at the moment)
an article appeared in the paper saying that some city councils were placing chips in people’s trash bins, called wheelie bins here, (must be due to the wheels) to not only see if they were mixing recycle with unwanted stuff. Oh No.  They were also attempting to learn what sort of things were being thrown away to determine the possible wealth of the thrower.  I’ll bet they haven’t advanced that far in the USA. Yet. 

Well, when I opened the morning paper today I was greeted with this.  The paper date said 2009 but I think that was a typo. Should have read 1984.
Here ya go.  And I’m certain it will not surprise any of you.  This is what our brave new world has come to.

Councils use bugs to spy on public illegally
Councils and other official bodies are using hidden tracking devices to snoop on the public, a report by Sir Christopher Rose has disclosed.

By Christopher Hope Whitehall Editor
Published: 7:00AM BST 22 Jul 2009

THE TELEGRAPH

Officials have continued to use the gadgets, which allow them to follow covertly people, despite a warning that the practice is prohibited.

The scale of the secret operations was set out in a report published on Monday by Sir Christopher, the chief surveillance commissioner. He found that the number of official surveillance operations increased last year, despite a government pledge to reduce them for trivial offenses.

Sir Christopher also criticised the Home Office for trying to make it easier for the police to use legally covert surveillance.

“It should not be acceptable that the use of covert powers is made ‘easy’ for any public authority,” he said. It was important that “covert surveillance is necessary, proportionate and carried out in a way which is compliant with human rights”.

Sir Christopher’s report said that the tracking devices could only be used “for the prevention and detection of ‘serious crime”.

Documents released earlier this year showed how, in 2007, the Environment Agency attached one of the trackers to a vehicle in order to monitor suspected dumping of illegal waste. Sir Christopher’s office reprimanded the agency. The mistake was blamed on erroneous advice from the Home Office stating that “affixing a magnetic device to a vehicle on the public highway” was “not a criminal offense”.

I’m not posting the entire article.  You can read it if interested at the telegraph dot com. I’m simply using that story to lead into this one which is even more scary because it appears so much more a matter of the natural order of things, whereas here at least some will and are complaining.

Kremlin gives itself powers to spy on all Russian mail.
The Russian government has given itself sweeping powers to spy on its own citizens after a new decree gave intelligence services unlimited access to read all mail without a warrant.

By Miriam Elder in Moscow

+
The decree, reminiscent of Soviet-era domestic spying tactics, allows security services – including the FSB, Foreign Intelligence Service and police, as well as customs, drug and prison agencies – to obtain information on senders and addressees from the postal service.

It also foresees FSB agents - the successors to the Soviet-era KGB - setting up monitoring sites at all the country’s post offices.

Kremlin critics denounced the measure as a return to Stalinist tactics of surveillance.

“We are returning to a totalitarian regime,” said Lev Ponomaryov, a leading human rights activist. “It reminds one of Soviet times. And the worst thing is, the people don’t care.”

The communications ministry, which issued the decree, denied it violated the constitutional right to privacy.

“This document carries a technical character,” a ministry spokesman said, denying that security services would see their powers broadened with the decree. “It does not infringe the rights of postal recipients or human rights.”

The spokesman said officials would still need a court warrant to open mail, but there is no mention of that in the decree, published on the ministry’s website.

The decree, which came into force on Tuesday, is ostensibly designed to tackle crime.

It will have a wide reach. Russia is an overwhelmingly poor country outside Moscow and St Petersburg and people rely heavily on postal communications. Email use remains limited.

Freedoms have been severely curtailed under the rule of the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, a former spy who briefly headed the FSB. Foreign intelligence activity, as well as surveillance of Russians, have grown under his watch.

Dissent is not suffered and the government has steadily increased its surveillance of the internet as its use grows in the country.

In the latest case, FSB officers on Tuesday opened a criminal case against Igor Averkiyev, a writer based in the Urals city of Perm, for an online article critical of the Kremlin’s strategy in the republic of Chechnya.

Mr Averkiyev was accused of inciting extremism. He was already investigated early last year for an article comparing Mr Putin to Hitler.

SOURCE FOR THOSE NAUGHTY RUSSKIES

Posted by peiper     on 07/22/2009 at 05:03 AM   
Filed Under: • Commies • Scary Stuff • Tyrants and Dictators •  
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   Tuesday - July 21, 2009

Say What??

SEOUL, South Korea — The recent aborted voyage of a North Korean ship, photographs of massive tunnels and a top secret meeting have raised alarm bells that one of the world’s poorest nations may be aspiring to join the nuclear club — with help from its friends in Pyongyang. No one expects military-run Burma, renamed Myanmar, to obtain an atomic bomb anytime soon, but experts have the Southeast Asian nation on their radar screen.

“There’s suspicion that something is going on, and increasingly that cooperation with North Korea may have a nuclear undercurrent. We are very much looking into it,” says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington, D.C. think tank.

The issue is expected to be discussed, at least on the sidelines, at this week’s ASEAN Regional Forum, a major security conference hosted by Thailand. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, along with representatives from North Korea and Burma, will attend.

Alert signals sounded recently when a North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam I, headed toward Burma with undisclosed cargo. Shadowed by the U.S. Navy, it reversed course and returned home earlier this month.

It is still not clear what was aboard. U.S. and South Korean officials suspected artillery and other non-nuclear arms, but one South Korean intelligence expert, citing satellite imagery, says the ship’s mission appeared to be related to a Burma nuclear program and also carried Scud-type missiles.

This is the ship that the destroyer John McCain was shadowing, right? Brinksmanship on the high seas.



Hey Navy - how about a heavy duty torpedo that also carries broadband radio jamming gear? Use a sub to find your target, Fire One! Fire Two! and each torp releases a jamming buoy 10 seconds before impact. The buoys run for 3 hours, generating white noise with a 5 mile effective radius on all frequencies, then shut down and sink.  At a depth of 200 feet they self destruct. Annoying NorK freighter? What annoying NorK freighter? We don know nuttin bout dat.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/21/2009 at 12:43 PM   
Filed Under: • Tyrants and Dictators •  
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ENGLAND CAN NOW OFFICIALLY BEND OVER AND KISS IT’S COLLECTIVE ASS GOOD-BYE!

AND I’M NOT TRYING TO BE FUNNY.

This popped up only minutes ago. I do believe it is tomorrow’s headline.

If the Brits put up with this shit, if they don’t riot over this, then they will deserve EVERY GOD DAMN THING that this will bring about. This kind of thing is where it really begins, isn’t it?  And what the fuck next?

So help me if I were in that position and had a sign in my home or shop and some crack pot fucked up Olympics “official” tried to take anything away, I’d use a butcher knife on em and fix em so they’d not look like anything that once walked and talked.

This is some shit people.  Powers that be say the authority to use the new law will not be used. Oh yeah? Then why’s it there jerk? Maybe for some future event? Comrade.

You in the USA should understand.  There are BILLIONS being spent on the 2012 olympics. Not everyone is so happy about that.
I don’t believe those who are against it have any particular right to stop traffic or cause mayhem.
But I’ll be damned if I think they have no right to protest the boondoggle or that any official has a right to enter their house and confiscate protest signs. 

Police given powers to enter homes and tear down anti-Olympics posters during 2012 Games

By James Slack
Last updated at 5:59 PM on 21st July 2009

Olympic protests

Police will be given new powers to stop protesters during the London 2012 Olympics it has emerged

Police have been handed ‘Chinese-style’ powers to enter private homes and seize political posters during the London 2012 Olympics.

Little-noticed measures passed by the Government will allow officers and Olympics officials to enter homes and shops near official venues to confiscate any protest material.

Breaking the rules could land offenders with a fine of up to £20,000.

Civil liberties groups compared the powers to those used by the Communist Chinese government to stop political protest during the 2008 Beijing Games.

Anita Coles, of Liberty, said: ‘Powers of entry should be for fighting crime, not policing poster displays. Didn’t we learn last time that the Olympics should not be about stifling free expression?’

The powers were introduced by the Olympics Act of 2006, passed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, supposedly to preserve the monopoly of official advertisers on the London 2012 site.

They would allow advertising posters or hoardings placed in shop or home to be removed.

But the law has been drawn so widely that it also includes ‘non-commercial material’ - which could extend its reach to include legitimate campaign literature.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: ‘This is a Government who just doesn’t understand civil liberties. They may claim these powers won’t be used but the frank truth is no one will believe them.’

Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said: ‘This sort of police action runs the risk of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. ‘We should aim to show the Chinese that you can run a successful Olympics without cracking down on protestors and free speech.’

Scotland Yard denied it had any plans to use the powers.

Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison said: ‘We have no intention of using our powers to go in and take down demonstration posters.’

But critics said that - given the powers were now law - it was impossible to predict what would happen in three years time.

Campaigners said the existence of the powers was ‘dreadful’. Peter McNeil, who is against the holding of equestrian events in Greenwich Park said: ‘It’s bullying taken to another level. It’s quite appalling that this should happen in a democracy.’

The power emerged as the Home Office and police outlined the £600million security operation for the Games, which will cost more than £9billion in total.

They said hundreds of flights could have to be diverted every day, with planes prevented from passing over the main venue for the London games.

Olympic security chiefs said they expected to have to ‘manage’ the airspace over the Olympic Park in east London.

A senior Home Office official said: ‘We do expect there will have to be some management of the airspace. We do not expect that any airports will have to close.’

The officials said they had no evidence of a specific terror threat against the Games at the moment.

But current preparations assume the terror threat level will be at ‘severe’ during the event, despite it being reduced to ‘substantial’ for the UK earlier this week. It is the lowest threat level nationwide since before the July 7 attacks in 2005.

A DCMS spokesman said: ‘The advertising provisions in the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006 are there to prevent ambush marketing and the over-commercialisation of the Games, not to prevent or restrict lawful protests.

‘The measures will only apply to areas within a few hundred meters of the London 2012 venues. The Government is currently developing detailed regulations for advertising during the Games which will enable these powers to come into effect. The Government will be consulting on the regulations in 2010.’

OLYMPIC PROTEST SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 07/21/2009 at 12:03 PM   
Filed Under: • Government • Corruption and Greed • Jack Booted Thugs • Outrageous • UK •  
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BBC executive says corporation should foster ‘left-of-centre thinking.’ And Brits will pay as usual

A bit of a bru-ha this week.

First, folks (most I think) pay a license fee to the BBC which is govt. So this suggestion hasn’t gone down well with the right, what there is of it.

There are two articles of interest, one is two days old.  I didn’t think they had a great deal of interest for our American audience, or in fact anyone outside the UK.  At least not all on their own.  But there really is something to look at with the two.

A couple of days ago I read the following article.

Sarah Kennedy ‘spoken to’ by BBC for praising Enoch Powell during Radio 2 show

By Niall Firth
Last updated at 8:28 AM on 19th July 2009

Radio 2 presenter Sarah Kennedy has been chastised by the BBC for praising right-wing politician Enoch Powell during her show.

During her early-morning show on Wednesday, Kennedy, 59, described Powell as ‘the best prime minister this country never had’.

Enoch Powell was famously sacked from the shadow cabinet by Ted Heath in 1968 after his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech about the dangers of mass immigration.

A spokesman for the BBC said that the corporation had received 25 complaints by Friday and that the presenter had been ‘spoken to’ about the remark.

She said: ‘It was inappropriate for Sarah to offer an off-the-cuff political opinion and we have spoken to her and made that clear.’

DAILY MAIL

Ok, understood. Mustn’t be political and careful of off the cuff remarks. Even if they’re true. And most especially you bet, when the remark favors the right.
Mr. Powell has been gone for many years btw, and I really don’t think her remark should have brought 25 protests. Most likely from wimpy-weepy libtards and commies.

However, todays headline in the Telegraph has another story, not related directly to the one I’ve posted in the mail above.  But I find it telling anyway.
And think about this.  The TV license costs around $200 (in American terms) a year.
Oh wow. I can imagine the posts we’d get from people here at BMEWS were they made to pay for a TV license that leaned left.
Here, this is what I’m referring to.

BBC executive says corporation should foster ‘left-of-centre thinking’

A senior BBC executive has claimed that the corporation should foster “left-of-centre thinking”, leading to accusations of political bias from the Conservatives.

By Jon Swaine
Published: 7:00AM BST 21 Jul 2009

Ben Stephenson, the controller of BBC drama commissioning, said that the corporation should encourage “peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking.”

According to its own royal charter, the BBC must “be independent in all matters concerning the content of its output”.

Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, said: “What Ben Stephenson said was a clear breach of the BBC’s impartiality obligations.

“No journalist or editor should be following a political agenda, let alone someone as senior as a controller.”

Mr Hunt said that he had written to Mark Thompson, the BBC Director General, “asking for an immediate retraction and apology”.

Peter Whittle, the director of The New Culture Forum, a right-leaning think tank, said: “The political slant in the non-news output of the BBC is for many harder to detect but is actually far more insidious and damaging in the effect it has on our cultural drift.”

Mr Stephenson made the comments in a newspaper article in which he responded to criticism from Tony Garnett, a television producer, who accused the BBC’s drama department of changing “in ways which have coarsened both it and wider culture.”

He wrote: “If we didn’t all think differently, have different ideas of what works and what doesn’t, wouldn’t our lives, and more importantly, our TV screens be less interesting? We need to foster peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking.”

He later denied that he had meant the comment to have a political meaning.

“Like ‘left-field’, it is a phrase that I use with frequency when talking to the creative community to encourage them to develop and approach their ideas from a completely new perspective,” he said.

A BBC source said that executives believed that their casting of Boris Johnson, the Conservative Mayor of London, in an episode of EastEnders, proved that they did not have a left-wing bias.

Meanwhile, a report yesterday said that the licence fee should be shared with other broadcasters, because the BBC was failing to fulfill its public service remit.

The paper, by Frank Field MP and David Rees, argued that the licence fee should be put in the hands of a new independent commissioning body.

Broadcasters, including the BBC, would then pitch ideas for public service programmes to the body and be awarded funding accordingly.

BBC One, BBC Three, Radio 1 and Radio 2 should all be put up for sale, it added.

TELEGRAPH

Yeah. Left field.  But he didn’t say ‘left field.’ Did He?
BBC has no commercials and is supported by the license ppl pay.  If I ever watched TV, and honest, haven’t done that in five years and don’t miss it, I guess paying to avoid commercials isn’t a bad idea as ideas go.  But for us, there’s nothin on we want to see and so don’t watch. 

Posted by peiper     on 07/21/2009 at 08:22 AM   
Filed Under: • Television • UK •  
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THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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