Re~Stirred Forum

From a correspondent's [Peter Hunt] report on PM on Radio 4 today:"Self-described"? What a bizarre thought!! Has there ever been a chancellor who was not one of the most senior members of the government - and at least as a consequence of this - of their party?

From last week's Question Time:Alan Cumming either doesn't understand the concept of independence [which he is very prominently advocating], or he doesn't understand how the Union Jack was designed. Why do they put such idiots on programmes like Question Time?

it is why the independence campaign is in trouble. they want the trappings of it but it means a complete break from the UK in all way.

In other factors they refuse to accept they will have to take on their share of the national debt, they can not.

The Union Flag predates the Act of Union. If Scotland declared independence, it would still serve the purpose of representing the United Kingdom of the Monarch, even if Scotland was an independent country - that is unless either Scotland or the rest of Britain decided to become a republic.

Par for the course, but also worth letting off steam at Biased BBC.

This is true, however in the modern world, it seems unlikely that the same flag could be used by two completely independent countries. Nor, from a Scottish nationalist perspective, would it make any sense to do so; surely they are attempting to break free from the rest of the UK and the Scottish flag with St Andrew's cross is the symbol of that independence? It seems questionable why the UK would wish to retain St Andrews Cross on the Union Flag - rather it would be much more sensible to include some aspect of the Welsh flag on a re-designed Union Flag.

If the Union Jack were no longer the national flag of either Scotland or the remaining UK, I imagine its widespread use would quite quickly stop.

I cant see the UJ becoming a thing of the past...

Maybe keep the Union Jack for geographical reasons?
As for independence, it will be sad but us "English" and Welsh might then be able to have the same subsidies that Scotland has, for instance free prescriptions , and university fee savings.

the scots won;t vote for independence anyway and Salmond knows it.

[/quote]
Par for the course, but also worth letting off steam at Biased BBC.[/quote]

You're kidding right? The idea that the BBC is somehow a great left-wing conspiracy is one of the more delusional ideas doing the rounds amongst the foaming at the mouth right-wing blogosphere right now. Even the most cursory examination of the facts demonstrates that it is nonsense.

"Self-described"? What a bizarre thought!! Has there ever been a chancellor who was not one of the most senior members of the government - and at least as a consequence of this - of their party?

Yes there has as it happens. Historically the role of the Chancellor hasn't always been the significant one it is now and Alastair Darling is a great example of someone who was clearly a very junior partner to his PM.

I'm all for pointing out ludicrous statements in the media, but you have made a bizarrely insignificant choice of issues to focus on. How about widening your horizons and looking at the way that Syriza are being villified by much of the Euopean and British media, for example?

Some people manage to write books on the topic. They don't agree with you.

Dominic regards anything to the left of the Daily Mail as dangerously extreme left, mambo. I wonder who funds the 'New Culture Forum' and the 'Thomas More Institute'?

Anyone who thinks he, or his right-wing lobby group friends, are right should have watched yesterday's BBC News, which, on and off, I did. An entire day which headlined the Church of England's opposition to gay marriage, complete with spokespeople from various neo-evangelical right-wing fringe groups. They did finally find Colin Coward of Changing Attitudes sometime in the evening.

Everyone was a junior partner to Gordon Brown, but to imply that Alastair Darling wasn't a senior minister is absurd. He was one of the ministers who deputised as PM when Gordon Brown was on holiday.

Par for the course, but also worth letting off steam at Biased BBC.[/quote]

You're kidding right? The idea that the BBC is somehow a great left-wing conspiracy is one of the more delusional ideas doing the rounds amongst the foaming at the mouth right-wing blogosphere right now. Even the most cursory examination of the facts demonstrates that it is nonsense.[/quote]

If it was only the right saying this, fair enough - it would be easy to dismiss in the way that you describe.

Andrew Marr is quoted as saying the BBC is not politically biased, but culturally biased, inevitably, due to the demographic of its employees.
Rod Liddle, Labour Party member and former LP speech writer, claims a BBC Pro-Euro and Pro-Israeli bias.

Generally I think the BBC does try to be impartial, but like any organisation, you can only do things through people, and people are shaped by the institutions they work in; inevitably you are likely to get an institutional perspective on certain issues.
If there is bias, I don't think it is deliberate, just innate. I'm with Marr on this one.

Oh well that's it then. I stand corrected

Your choice of sources and reference points does you no favours I'm afraid.......

"If it was only the right saying this, fair enough - it would be easy to dismiss in the way that you describe.

Andrew Marr is quoted as saying the BBC is not politically biased, but culturally biased, inevitably, due to the demographic of its employees.
Rod Liddle, Labour Party member and former LP speech writer, claims a BBC Pro-Euro and Pro-Israeli bias.

Generally I think the BBC does try to be impartial, but like any organisation, you can only do things through people, and people are shaped by the institutions they work in; inevitably you are likely to get an institutional perspective on certain issues.
If there is bias, I don't think it is deliberate, just innate. I'm with Marr on this one."

Andrew Marr is Mr Establishment. Exhibit A: the gloriously sycophantic programme he did on the Royal Family, who have been given a free pass and endless positive coverage by the BBC in the last few months. So when he talks about bias I'd be inclined not to believe him.

Rod Liddle: The operative word in your comment is "former". He now writes for the Spectator and the Times and his views border on racist. Again, I would be disinclined to take seriously anything he says about anything, let alone bias at the BBC.

In the final analysis the BBC always sides with the establishment of the day. Usually that means the Conservatives, sometimes it means New Labour. The best current example has been the incredibly free ride the corporation has given this government's shameful mishandling of the economy. Accusations of innate left-wing or liberal bias are miles wide of the mark. Other examples are their news coverage in the run-up to the Iraq War and their deliberate manipulation of footage of battles between police and miners in the 1984-85 strike.

Oh and I almost forgot. Jeremy Clarkson……..

From the above link:

This seems to be confusing the issue of poor reporting with that of a left-liberal bias. Some viewers may be interested in how others (however eccentric) celebrate the jubilee. But even if we accept that much of the coverage was dire and in bad taste, it's stretching a point to suggest a deliberate ploy to ridicule the events.

I read a few gems in the Metro the other day, but unfortunately can't find them in their online edition. One article about drug-resistant gonorrhea seemed to suggest there is a total 32,000 gonorrhea infections worldwide each year. This is quite obviously wrong since gonorrhea is reasonably common in Britain so unless all the world's gonorrhea cases are concentrated in Britain, the real total must be far greater. And I'm not sure a disease affection just 32 thousand out of 7 billion would represent quite so much of a problem. The Daily Mail suggests slightly more likely figures of 17,000 cases in the UK annually. Wikipedia quotes a WHO estimate of 62 million cases worldwide annually...

Given that the media are my only source of information about Syriza, it is difficult for me evaluate the reliability of their reports. In any case, I try to avoid reading about them since Greek politics and European economics is all very boring for me. I will say though that I often misread Syriza as Syria, so perhaps they should re-brand their English name...