The RESPECT candidate Salma Yaqoob has just been interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight about the revelation that the London Transport “bombers” were British-born Muslims. She didn’t talk complete cobblers. I am going to lie down now.
12Jul05 — 9
From this yank…
Is it really that difficult for Brits to remove the annual licence fee charged of every TV and radio owner that funds the BBC?
Shouldn’t be that difficult to do, considering the constant complaints about the fees from British citizens.
Damian, I thought many of her comments were spot-on and that she was a great improvement on Galloway. I felt strangely encouraged.
It was a fairly sensible interview – I had to go and get a strong drink.
I didnt hear that interview but I did watch an interview with Tariq Ramadan (the person the Sun has been harking on about being allowed into Britain and supposedly an extremest) on Channel 4 news last night and he spoke more sense than ive heard from any Muslim person for a long time. No mention of the Iraq War or Palestine or supposed dispossion (despite a university education of most of the bombers) – a breath of fresh air!
Why is John J. Coupal responding to this post with a comment about the licence fee? I assume that he is bandwagon jumping (in the same way that many of the more rabid blogs have been since the bombs) in order to advance an anti-BBC agenda. God help us if we only had Fox to (mis)inform us. The various appalling on-air statements by Fox presenters since the bombing include statements about Arabs as ‘non-regular’ people; the thought that it might be a good time to buy shares; an assertion that the Guardian reads as if it is edited by Bin Laden; and a real gem in which Fox News host, John Gibson, suggested that the Olympic committee “missed a golden opportunity” by not awarding the 2012 games to France: “If they had picked France instead of London to hold the Olympics, it would have been the one time we could look forward to where we didn’t worry about terrorism. They’d blow up Paris, and who cares?”
One of the most disturbing aspects of the bombing’s aftermath has been the eagerness with which this slaughter has been rapidly seized as grist to various political mills.
Foucault etc.
My comments about the licence fee concerned the apparent displeasure of Britons to biased news coverage by the BBC. With their displeasure of BBC bias, comes the public’s forced payment to continue such BBC bias.
After watching BBC coverage, You may need a drink, or go lie down, or that it’s not quite as bad as you had expected it to be.
That’s like saying: I like to hit my head with a hammer, because it feels so good when I stop.
You don’t watch the same BBC I do. The idea that it is biased (I’m assuming you mean biased to the left?) doesn’t match reality. The fuss that a few intemperate bloggers and right-wing columnists kick up is not, I would venture, an accurate reflection of most people’s views. Perhaps you could be more specific about what you mean rather than simply making unsupported assertions.
OK, the BBC was biased on the subject of the Iraq War and the bias was perfectly clear to me EVEN THOUGH I was against the war too. Right, so stop mewling and bloody grow up. The BBC criticises only from the left: that’s bias.
I fear that the likes of dearieme would have us condemned to watch Fox and its ilk. I assume that s/he has either been so brainwashed by market fundamentalism that s/he is unable to distinguish fact from fiction, or, more likely that the attack on the BBC is simply part of a wider political agenda to advance that same US-style market fundamentalism – in which the voice of the left is rarely heard in mainstream media.
On Iraq: now that I’ve stopped laughing, I can only say that, like John J. Coupal, dearieme must have been watching a different channel to me. I seem to recall endless bulletins from the BBC ’embeds’ in which a (literally) one-sided view of the conflict was advanced.