The BBC

Blades Business Crew

Serious sheffield united hooligans

.....................strike me down..............

Ipswich Total Violence

(OK, I made that up and in fact when we supposedly had a "firm" they decided to call themselves The Spanners, why they did is anyone's guess)

BBC blamed for attacks on Poles

wtf @ that guy

Tories, eh?

Sub-Passantino at best

At 6 feet 8½ inches (204 cm), Kawczynski is believed to be the tallest MP ever to sit in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

But the average height of doors in Westminster is six feet eight and now he wants ministers to take account of an increasingly tall UK population.

"Being officially a giant myself... you want to raise things which pertain to yourself and people like you," he said.

ISSUES4U

Damn those liberal elites...

Britain is the country of choice for many 'feckless' Poles

'Polish Borat' claims groping women is normal in Eastern Europe

IMMIGRANTS TO BLAME FOR SURGE IN CRIME SAYS POLICE CHIEF

Also I'm sure he said all this a couple of months ago somewhere else. Why has it come up again now?

Oh, yes, in the Independent.

He'll be blaming the BBC for attacks on giants next

I'd guess he has a point if he's talking about Tory voters mouthing off on the mid-morning phone-ins on local stations like BBC Radio Shropshire etc.

Conservative Friends of Poland

Like Neville Chamberlain, he means?

Pretty sure it's mostly Channel 4 running the anti-Polish stuff. But it is tricky spotting the difference between Panorama and the Völkischer Beobachter most weeks.

EXCLUSIVE: Max Mosley confirmed as new Panorama presenter.

A step too far, this is causing as much kerfuffle as when the moved women's hour.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2009/06/change_to_international_pages.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/14/ben-bradshaw-bbc-management

the bbc does seem amazingly inept at covering its arse. it is kind of a symptom of a wider elite-class self-aggrandizement that the likes of byford and thompson think they deserve mad money, but it's still going to come back to bite them.

beeb has kind of an impossible job in dealing with its critics, since they simultaneously claim the licence fee isn't justified because the bbc isn't populist enough and that it isn't justified because it doesn't provide enough specialised content that the commercial sector won't touch. i can't see that sharing the licence fee does anything to help except spreading it thinner.

agree that bbc bosses don't help the cause though.

is it really going to be dismantled?
― D Aziz (esquire1983), Wednesday, 18 February 2004 00:03 (5 years ago)

Possibly, if - when - the Tories get in.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/19/wed-abolish-bbc-trust-hunt

Has to be a troll:

Pay per view BBC news would allow the lefties to view their own biased news reports while the rest of us could choose ITV news for more impartial reporting.

this business about "damaging commercial competitors" really pisses me off. we should be celebrating the fact that the BBC creates quality products and services for "free", not requiring it to dumb down its offerings so that something inferior and expensive can maintain market share.

Whenever that comment is made, it is usually voiced by someone with vested interests eg. Murdoch. In America, Murdoch goes after Obama but here he goes after impartial news media. This should be a good compass for anyone wishing to locate the centre of power in any given country. Who does Murdoch go after in, say, China?

yeah, you do wonder whether this is the quid for the quo of The Sun's support.

tories don't need any outside encouragement to go after the bbc, tbh.

So is the Mail anti-Beeb purely because of DMGT's regional newspapers? Or is there something else, aside from Jonathan Ross and the telly tax?

it's ideological - the bbc is full of lefties.

not only that, the whole concept of the BBC is lefty.

and yet they've employed Jeremy Clarkson, Carol Thatcher, Michael Burke, Patrick Moore (latter two mentioned just due to sexist comments made in past)...

Patrick Moore is very right-wing on immigration too, unfortunately.

and yet they've employed Jeremy Clarkson, Carol Thatcher, Michael Burke, Patrick Moore (latter two mentioned just due to sexist comments made in past)...

... and Andrew Neil and Michael Portillo and Nick Robinson and Quentin Letts ad nauseum

Michael Buerk is a Conservative?

Only when it comes to the BBC employing women, I think... women who get jobs he wants, that is

sexist, conservative, racist - all the same

Regardless of how many sexist conservative racist rightwingers are employed there, the very existence of the BBC as a huge part of the media landscape is a slap in the face to Tory free market ideals, so obviously they want to pare it back. I don't think it's all about Murdoch.

In my own experience, sexism is not limited to conservative men!

LOL, far from it!

what the fuck

that report was drawn up by an arch-Tory wrecker

turness gone as well

I gather that the issue was insufficient reverence for Israel?

this “report” was just predictable right wing culture war shit, very easy to shoot down, the whole thing is v bizarre, there’s clearly something i’m not getting

The headlines all throw in 'trans' with trump and Gaza, but none elaborate unlike on the other two topics

it’s the trifecta - trump, gaza and trans - fucking unbelievable how piss poor it is

i haven’t read the “report” but i assume it’s referencing the fact that sronewall provided guidance to the bbc on lgbtq+ stuff… several years ago, before the bbc crumpled in the face of relentless attacks from anti-trans bigots

stonewall obv

the more i think about this the angrier i get. yes he and turness should have gone for any number of other legitimate reasons but this departure NOW almost seems calculated to put the BBC in the worst possible position for the charter review. the BBC is headed into one of the most consequential reviews of its existence, time is already very tight. this government is obviously completely clueless and is desperate for grownups to tell it what to do. and now this resignation just fucks the process completely, puts the ball entirely in the government's court, which is a TERRIBLE idea with this govt and with nandy at the helm. all because tim davie, who weathered all sorts of scandals, doesn't have the stones to apologise for a misleading edit? has he really been done in by a critical memo from an ax-grinder and a trump tweet?? it defies belief.

rusbridger made a good point this morning on R4 that the "editorial guidance committee" or whatever it's called, which is a subset of the BBC board, contains davie, turness, and robbie gibb, former tory spin doctor. as well as two people with no editorial experience. presumably they all talked about this. what on earth was that conversation.

sorry, the "point" rusbridger made was that the board governance makes no sense, which seems pretty evident, particularly when they STILL haven't put out a statement beyond samir shah's contentless email to all staff

A few more unsourced details here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c07m2v1z4evo

Supporting the thesis of a coordinated right-wing ratfucking

The thing is, he must know, probably knows better than anyone, what a terrible position this puts the BBC in. He would have wanted almost any other result than this

luckily as we have a labour government in power, the replacement will be someone much more progressive than Davie

It’ll be the “safest” possible person, eg the worst possible person for this seismic moment in legacy media history

Rusbridger made another good point I thought, about governance, that you really want the editor in chief function separate from the CEO function. There’s no way one person can be responsible for all the editorial output and also, like, doing deals with Apple and approving medium wave transmission plans

Nothing good can happen until someone nukes Robbie Gibb.

Thinking on it some more, the only conclusion I can draw is that this coup was not done 1) For the "good" of the BBC nor even 2) to get rid of Tim Davie and/or Turness (they are as sympathetic to the right as you could hope for) - it's actually 3) to do the most damage to the BBC as possible at the worst possible moment

This summary has the ring of truth

https://observer.co.uk/opinion-and-ideas/leaders/article/the-observer-view-political-interference-at-the-bbc

Can't believe saying 'you can't come to work in the newsroom wearing a BLM T-shirt' just couldn't keep Davie in the job.

The number of times that happened: 0

Someone might've worn one under a sweater TH. You can't know. You can't.

Tim Davie: Not personally ripping sweaters off newsroom staff, had to go

https://media.tenor.com/2pXQnDFV-CAAAAAC/doctor-evil-austin-powers.gif

Evan Davis hears from both sides of the BBC debate by speaking to… checks notes… Nick Ferrari and… Helen fucking Lewis

really looking forward to them bringing both-sides-ism back to the climate crisis.

This is a banger of an episode. They go further than anything I’ve heard so far that this was a deliberate coup and Turness left because of Gibb et al’s insistence that the BBC not just apologise for the edit but that they have essentially a “woke bias”. She refused. It really does seems like they have succeeded in “blowing it up”. Lewis Goodall tells a story about Grossman compiling a weird dossier on him when he was at Newsnight, and taking it directly to the editorial complaints unit. Who were apparently gobsmacked to receive such an extensive complaint from a staff member!

https://www.thenewsagents.co.uk/article/inside-the-bbc-bias-allegations-5HjdGbz_2/

(the editorial complaints unit is set up to deal with complaints from the public)

Oh no the second half has Emily and Jon agreeing with anti-trans activists :(

Goodall conspicuously silent

But not on his blog where he goes in with both feet

https://goodallandgoodluck.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-impartiality-at-the

Do we seriously believe anyone inside New Broadcasting House fears the Green Party? Or Labour? Just ask yourself, would the BBC champion a presenter who was consistently asking robust questions about the effect of the recent Supreme Court judgment on trans rights? Or would they be more likely to champion someone who was clearly gender critical? Charles Moore made a comment on the Today programme this morning that only someone who had never worked for Corporation could make: that all its biases come from a liberal direction. No- rather the only complaints it fears are from a conservative one.

Yet also

But the biggest sin the BBC has in my experience, is that the BBC isn’t that political at all, that it doesn’t have enough truly political people of any type. It should more arch liberals, conservatives, socialists- so long as they can and are willing to think critically. Instead, it too often chooses not to think at all, because it’s easier, and safer- the intellectual crouch position. But that is precisely because it has been so terrified by the criticism it receives. The safe place for output is the stodgy and inoffensive, the twee and the banal. Is it institutionally biased? No. Is it institutionally unimaginative and insufficiently curious to all radical political ideas? Yes. Is it now institutionally risk averse? Yes. As a result it tends to a golden mean of boredom which is slowly guaranteeing its irrelevance. The BBC lessens itself because it is afraid, hoping to be both ubiquitous and unnoticed- an impossibility and trend which will only get worse after all of this.

We had 14 years of Tory governments, the top of the BBC is and has been absolutely stuffed with Tories. I saw one interviewed this morning - Baroness Stowell - and the first thing she mentioned as being problematic in terms of the BBC's coverage was trans rights - I mean what are these ghouls seeing that I'm not seeing?

All of these concepts might as well be elements in a D&D game to people like her - things others have told her that she now has a firm opinion on but which disappear as soon as she stops talking about them

Oh no the second half has Emily and Jon agreeing with anti-trans activists :(

Goodall conspicuously silent

Are you new to Emily Maitlis she’s been like this a LONG time

I was not aware of this side of her game

her political analysis has always been superficial centrist vibes-based bullshit as well. I saw a clip where she is saying Mamdani's success is nothing to do with his left-wing policy platform - it's his energy and his bravery... etc... etc.. I'm not saying the backdrop with Corbyn in a Russian hat was her editorial decision, but I'm damned sure she didn't disapprove!

It's hard to take rightoids talking garbage about BBC bias seriously because their definition of bias is just incoherent. The BBC just putting on the thinnest veneer of fake impartiality is enough to trigger them into a meltdown.

Remember when Twitter morons gifed her sideeying Barry Gardiner (who tbf is a clown) when we were back in the depths of Brexit standoff nonsense? Sassy Emily! Speaking truth to, uh, power! Vibes based bullshit is so accurate.

Lewis Goodall is a fucking disgrace as well, doing PR for the sinister Blair Institute/Larry Ellison digital ID project without disclosing his wife works for Blair. And dressing it up as concern for poor low income people who don't possess any viable ID. What a tosser!

what this reveals is that when diabolical centrists who are good friends of the permanent political classes and various billionaires leave the bbc to pursue their career on other platforms. Then nothing changes in their presentation style or the lousy bullshit they talk. They aren't any more or less impartial.

Goodall, Maitless and Sopel all deeply in bed with the Tony Blair Institute iirc.

Maitlis and Peter Mandelson are biiiiig mates.

so basically a very large group of people in the top echelon of the UK political classes are technically one degree from the most notorious paedo sex-trafficker in modern history. These people are unaccountable, unsackable, impervious to permanent reputational damage. It's a pretty fucked up country, lol!

This is why it's so absurd that the BBC is some organised mouthpiece for any specific political point of view. Mainstream journalists mostly don't believe anything, apart from whatever they can reasonably spin as being the beliefs of the public, since for many of them the job is about placing themselves at the centre of opinion and events, even as huge swathes of people stop watching, reading and listening in favour of the myriad other ways of consuming news and current affairs, good or bad, true or untrue.

They are v similar to politicians in this regard, I guess.

Weird ceasefire.

Israel has destroyed more than 1,500 buildings in Gaza since ceasefire https://t.co/Xllvm0V1Ip

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) November 12, 2025

https://bsky.app/profile/robinince.bsky.social/post/3m7tcbsr7522l

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:2w3eicjzblwvqo3nsxiivwgb/bafkreifxk4d6sxkxg4qilujbum7ktosl5kekfklbu72tfhbo5hx6pmgjgu@jpeg

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:2w3eicjzblwvqo3nsxiivwgb/bafkreicsh7end3oxzuc7grunfhzltyklfcoi7qmhqrdywamjkscvr6wzqa@jpeg

Robin does seem a very decent, likable person, unlike the tosser he works with. When the BBC is getting attacked from the right I find myself flashing back to all the dark propaganda they have been doing for the last decade and a half and rather than defending them I just think FUCK THESE PEOPLE, put them out of business, even if whatever takes up their space is going to be even worse (which would be difficult). It's mainly all on their politics and news dept, which has been so wretched that it sometimes it's hard to discern any difference between their output and GB news. But also the whole organisation seems rotten to the core, which of it course it would be when the core of it is the rotten UK establishment. And I guess this has always been the case, but it didn't used to be this rotten. Even in the commie hunting 70's/80's it wasn't this fucking rotten. Now only cunts are allowed to work for the BBC, great work lads - way to bring about your own extinction.

I always assumed he'd be somebody who I didn't vibe with but good on him for this

I remember him posting that all the stuffy old homophobes from the 80's were the Terfs of that era and Terfs need to wake up, especially the ones that pretend to be politically correct liberals. Not a remarkable comment amongst the shitposter left, at the time it stuck out that he seems a decent person.

these days just expressing a wish that anything other than white cis-het posh people are allowed to exist in the UK gets you put on the Mi5 Christmas Tree list as a radical. Insane times.

I think you was always on the list it's just they don't hide it any more

Brian Cox’s stupid wife is on the board of Sex Matters.

Not a word about how much he’ll miss working with Cox, I notice.

Lol yeah honesty in omission