Orwell/Wells

"It's not quite War of the Worlds but some say there's something Orwellian about..."

Who says the BBC is dumbing down?

Clash of Crap

I have just watched the end of a BBC2 documentary called 'Clash of Worlds'; it is almost completely ahistorical. I say 'almost completely' because its narrative touches on real events, however the filmmakers have clearly decided that a contemporary spin must be put on history to, in the BBC parlance, 'sex it up.' So The Mahdi must become a modern version of Osama bin Laden - though, in the cause of relativism he must also be, confusingly, a great scholar, a merciful statesman and a canny general - and General 'Chinese' Gordon, along with Kitchener and pretty much every other notable Briton mentioned in the course of the programme, must be a religious extremist of comparable fanaticism. To suit this cultural relativism Gordon's support for the abolition of slavery becomes a mark of his zealotry, while Muhammad Ahmad's rule is simply a little harsh...

The historical, and historiographic, inaccuracies in this programme's account are too numerous to recount, but it is in the spuriously tacked-on contemporary bookends that the total bankruptcy of its thesis becomes clear. As tonight's episode drew to a close, the parallel between the Mahdi and bin Laden was laid out: bin Laden looks 'similar' to The Mahdi and he went to the Sudan. Sounds pretty watertight to me.

Stopping people won't help; we need to stop idiots.

Williams: "a deal that went wrong or something that didn't really go too right..."

Watching BBC News 24's coverage of Britain's recent spate of youth gun crime and Keith Jarrett's response to it reveals a new and revolutionary strategy in policing. Knacker of the Yard should long ago have hung up his truncheon and stepped aside in favour of Sipho Williams who offers up the stunning critique of Stop and Search that "it's not gonna help if you just stop more people; you need to stop people committing crime." Blimey, what a clever sod.

Live Earth is immensely popular

I note that the BBC, who are hosting extensive coverage of Al Gore's Live Earth gig, have had to rephrase their poll to get even 45% support for it. The original poll (found here) asked whether Live Earth can "make people more environmentally-aware", a simple yes or no question tackling the concerts' professed goal that scored a pretty damning 87.97% against the gig after 10769 votes cast; but now at "Sydney kicks off Live Earth gigs" the poll has changed to the totally meaningless "Live Earth: Can people make a difference?" with its equally waffly "yes/no/not sure" options. Now you don't need any great experience of quantitative research methods to work out that this isn't how you phrase a question that you actually want to know the answer to: is it asking if Live Earth can make a difference, or if people can make a difference? Well, neither: it just means that the BBC can point to a poll that says people are vaguely indifferent to the chances of Live Earth's success (as the confused 45%/45%/10% result can be read to demonstrate), rather than one that says it, just like their much-criticised propaganda for Live 8, is just another of their pet projects we couldn't give a toss about.

Al Gore invented the internet: he can have as many damn screens as he wants!

Haymarket Bomb witnessed by idiots

Idiots: "some kind of skirmish"

Watching BBC News 24's rolling coverage of the attempted car bombing in London's West End there have been interviews throughout introduced with the contention that people who were at Tiger Tiger last night have had to stay so they could get into the cloakroom for their coats. Now, am I insane or is twelve hours a rather long time to wait to get your coat? Wouldn't it have been better to go home at 2 in the morning and then come back when a major security alert is over? Why are the BBC lamenting the fact these people didn't have beds? They were out drinking, they're not homeless; how are the self-inflicted hardships of their sleep deprivation even remotely part of the story?

Now maybe some would disagree, but this is definitely the most important story to come out of this major terrorist attack on the nation's capital.