I’ll just make it explicitly clear at the outset: you don’t have to be Muslim to want to protest; you don’t have to be Muslim to be the sort of jerk who inflicts violence on others who you disagree with. It’s just that the main focus of the news has been of the Islamic side of things, so that’s where I’m going to look at mostly. Please take this paragraph as read throughout the rest of this post, as I have no intention of qualifying every statement with the additional statements like “…and there’s plenty of non-Muslims who disagree with the war”, or “…but you get nutters in every walk of life” or “…it’s only a tiny minority, most are perfectly happy to live and let live”.

Cartoon Violence

Remember that chap who produced the Danish cartoon which depicted the prophet Muhammad as a terrorist? That was a jolly impolite thing, I think most of us were in agreement about. But the reaction to it by some Muslims was not something which should be tolerated even less.

And recently there was the guy who tried to kill the cartoonist, when he was at home with his five year old grand-daughter. This is wrong on so many levels, as it suggests that you are not prepared to countenance any point of view which is different to your own, and the appropriate way to silence that dissent is through murder. I thought we’d all moved on from that, but it seems some haven’t.

But it’s the lack of self-awareness which makes it really stupid. Look at the steps:

1. Person is offended by cartoon describing major figure in their religion as murderous terrorist
2. Person decides most appropriate way to rebut this is by becoming a murderous terrorist, just to show how wrong the cartoonist was

What a fucking idiot. How exactly does that defend Islam against the charge of being murderous?

My God Is Bigger Than Your God

The beliefs of another person ought to be something that we are, generally, tolerant of. Whether someone believes in a God, in multiple Gods, or actively disbelieves in any of ‘em, ought to be something which is their business, not yours. But that is not to say that religions should be exempt from criticism. Particularly religions which react badly when you do criticise them.

I’ve been critical of the Catholic Church, in their attitude towards the use of condoms, which has led to more HIV infections and people dying. I’m critical of religions — and there’s more than one — which are intolerant of homosexuality. And I have a right to voice my opinions, and my beliefs, whether or not they are directly associated with a named religion or not.

When people are critical of the beliefs of others and speak about those beliefs in a critical way, implying someone must be stupid for believing that sort of thing (and/or assuming that because some adherents to a religion think X, that all adherents do), that annoys me. I find that a bit rude and unpleasant to be honest. I tend to feel that irrespective of whether or not that person is right, they are a fairly intolerant human being. attitude intolerant and offensive.

But when someone says that you are not allowed to be critical of beliefs or to speak about them in a critical way, at the risk of being attacked or prosecuted, then that annoys me for precisely the same reason. It’s intolerant and offensive. Plus it makes it seem as though people are worried that the religion won’t stand up to proper scrutiny and frankly, if there is a God, I rather suspect He is big enough to cope with a bit of disbelief. After all, he’ll get his chance to point out the error of their ways in his own manner…

And that’s why, I think this new Irish blasphemy law is a bit shit. If I were to say something in Ireland which you felt outraged or offended your religion, I could be fined €25,000 fine unless I could justify it. Not surprisingly, many people are critical of this (rightly in my opinion) as damaging to freedom of expression.

The Blasphemy Ireland website (set up, I presume, specifically to challenge this), sums it up perfectly:

In a civilised society, people have a right to to express and to hear ideas about religion even if other people find those ideas to be outrageous.Blasphemy.ie

And, to point of the stupidity of the whole thing — every religion will have, somewhere, something contained within it that adherents to another may find objectionable — they have a list of quotations from a variety of figures, but three of the main venerated types are represented — Jesus Christ, Muhammad and Richard Dawkins.

Wootton Bassett

And then there’s Anjem Choudary. He suggested that his group — which I’m not going to name because I think they’ve gone about this primarily for the publicity, and I’m not going to contribute to that — should march through Wootton Bassett, where British servicemen killed in action are returned, in protest against the Muslims being killed by British forces in Afghanistan (and/or Iraq? — not sure on this one).

If he’d wanted a peaceful march through the streets of anywhere else, no one would have given a toss. But he picked Wootton Bassett primarily because it would spark in the national consciousness, and infuriate people who felt that dead servicemen who weren’t responsible for the war in the first place and surely who had already sacrificed quite enough thank you very much should be used as pawns for his political ends.

And yet the media helped serve his political ends by this suddenly becoming a national media item; with everyone debating whether or not his potential march (which, so far as I know, he never actually asked permission for in the first place) should be banned — and he’s suddenly seen as the face of Islam in the UK. Do the papers speak to the vast majority of British Muslims to find out their views? Certainly not at first. Not until after they’ve painted Anjem Choudary as the face of Islam in the UK.

The vast majority of atheists, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Pagans and God/Deity Of Choice knows what else are quite capable of doing this. So why do we spend so much of our time pandering to the intolerant?

So how do I feel about this. Should it be banned? Should it be allowed to go ahead? Well, there’s a You Tube video which expresses my thoughts probably better than I can here…

Dan Bull, thank you.

I am, now and again, accused of writing too much. This is primarily because I don’t structure these blog posts to take up a specific amount of time to read, or words to fill. I start because there’s something I want to say, I talk about it, and then when I’m finished, I stop.

I understand that from time to time, one of my readers, if themselves pushed for time, may choose not to read the entire article, or may indeed skip it entirely. This is absolutely their prerogative and I have no objection to anyone choosing to do this.

But there is one thing that I then object to. This was summed up perfectly by a comment on a BBC piece about automated telephone systems by Clive James. And this is what the comment said:

This article suffers from a syndrome oft contemplated in the wider online community. TLDR. Too long, didn’t read. This is nothing more than a montage of the self-certainty that is your sense of observational humour, and the clarity of your modern social perspective.Marek, from Glasgow

In other words, this commenter is saying: my time is valuable, and I don’t have time to read the dross you’ve written, but I expect everyone else to read the important bits I have written, despite my public acknowledgement that I didn’t actually read the article.

And this is the height of hubris. If you don’t want to read to the end of an article, fine. Perfectly okay with me; it’s your time, do with it as you will. But don’t expect me — or anyone else — to consider that your opinion on something you haven’t actually read is worth them spending their time bothering over.

For me, the people who take this attitude have got the acronym all wrong. If you’re Too Lazy? Don’t Respond!

Firstly, here’s the Observer online:

Championship

---

Barnsley 1 Colace 53
Scunthorpe 1 Hayes 58

---

David Hopps at Oakwell
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 12 December 2009 20.09 GMT

---

The other membersof the Championship’s top three, West Brom and Cardiff, had already come a cropper at Barnsley this season, and Newcastle will be relieved they did not join them. It all looked straightforward: a goal up at half-time, Newcastle’s superiority unquestioned, and a routine 45 minutes away from what would have been their eighth successive win. It proved to be nothing of the sort as Barnsley summoned a zestful second-half performance.

Championship: Barnsley 2-2 Newcastle (Observer)

I hate to be picky about it, but as the text makes quite clear, it was Newcastle who were playing at Oakwell, and whoever has put this page together — presumably using a previous Barnsley game (possibly this one against Scunthorpe, methinks) as a template — has done David Hopps somewhat of a disservice by giving the impression that he can’t remember which team was playing Barnsley for more than five minutes.

Still, at least while they got the goalscorers wrong, the actual score of both teams wrong, and the away team wrong, they were correct in that Barnsley drew at home.

Having said that, the BBC’s report into Brian Laws leaving his job at Sheffield Wednesday seems to make Brian out to be something of an egomaniac self-publicist with a tendency to speak about himself in the third person… or they’ve got the author of the quote wrong:

Sheffield Wednesday manager Brian Laws has left the struggling Championship club by mutual consent. The Owls lost 3-0 at Leicester on Saturday to slip into the bottom three and have not won since 17 October.

Laws, 48, left Scunthorpe to take charge at Hillsborough in November 2006 and academy boss Sean McAuley takes temporary charge following his exit. “We believe a change at this time can deliver fresh energy and direction,” said chairman Lee Strafford. [...]

“Brian Laws has done a very good job at Sheffield Wednesday in the light of the low level of resources at his disposal in the first two years of his time with the club,” added Laws.

BBC Sport: Laws Leaves post as Sheffield Wednesday manager

…I also spotted online someone seeming to suggest Liverpool were a “team packed with quality”, where it would seem to me that the words “not exactly” have been accidentally omitted between the words “team” and “packed”, but it is always possible that this one was intended as satire…

I saw a headline on the BBC the other day which seemed to suggest that the police were cracking down rather heavily on something which up until then, I had not actually realised was an offence.

Guilty of handling … goods? I had been previously under the impression that handling goods was not in itself a criminal offence, and that the goods needed to be of a very specific type (either stolen, or some form of controlled substance) before handling them was likely to be deemed illegal.

If this is a tightening up of the way in which the law is to be interpreted, then I might get in touch with Crimestoppers to see if I can pick up some kind of reward — I can certainly point the police in the direction of others who have also handled goods. Oh, and if anyone asks, I produced this blog post telepathically, okay?

And if that’s not weird enough, Disneyworld has been twinned with Swindon.

Well, there’s just one problem. There seems to be an assumption that the Taxpayers Alliance represents all taxpayers, judging by the fact that they are quoted by the BBC and other media sources pretty much whenever anyone spends any money. Only their mission statement makes it clear that they will not always represent my views:

The TaxPayers’ Alliance is Britain’s independent grassroots campaign for lower taxes. After years of being ignored by politicians of all parties, the TPA is committed to forcing politicians to listen to ordinary taxpayers.TaxPayers’ Alliance

I’m all up for politicians to be forced to listen to taxpayers. I’m 100% behind that. No problem there. But I’m not always going to be in support of lower taxes, if it comes at a social cost. I’m in favour of reducing waste, and inefficiency, I’m in favour of the public sector being expected to be open about what it is spending its money on, but I’m not in favour of draconian knee-jerk reactions to try and save twenty quid at the expense of decent working conditions, or helping people.

Take a look at the Portsmouth Council / Facebook thing. A freedom of information request revealed that Portsmouth Council staff, in total, were spending an average of 413 hours per month on Facebook. Portsmouth Council were unable to determine whether this time was during workers’ breaks, when they were allowed to do personal surfing, or when they were supposed to be working, when obviously they shouldn’t.

Yet while the TaxPayers’ Alliance admitted this equated to only six minutes per staff member per month, they seemed to fail to notice that there was no evidence that this was being done in clocked-in office hours:

Even if everybody does just spend a small amount of time on the site it is still being paid for by the taxpayer. It is a huge amount of work time, and therefore money being wasted.’Mark Wallace from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, quoted in Portsmouth Today

And so, Portsmouth Council banned their workers accessing Facebook, despite the fact that — assuming 22 working days in a month — workers were averaging around only 15 seconds per day on Facebook, and there wasn’t any evidence that this was being done in work time. This sort of kneejerk reaction is typical of what happens when the TaxPayers’ Alliance goes wading in, despite the fact that when you look at the statistics, that sort of reaction is entirely unreasonable.

The council probably loses more money in terms of people wiping their arse more times than is strictly necessary (as hey, that wastes toilet paper as well).

There’s also another reason why I don’t feel the TaxPayers’ Alliance represents me. They aren’t all taxpayers…

The Taxpayers’ Alliance, a campaign group that calls for tax and spending cuts and claims to represent the interests of taxpayers, has admitted one of its directors does not pay British tax. The Guardian has learned that Alexander Heath, a director of the increasingly influential free market, rightwing lobby group, lives in a farmhouse in the Loire and has not paid British tax for years.The Guardian

So I therefore feel it is necessary to set up a different group, offering a different voice to the TaxPayers’ Alliance, to represent those tax payers who the TaxPayers’ Alliance does not represent (particularly because their name implies they represent all taxpayers when they plainly do not). I therefore propose setting up the TaxPayers’ Rebel Alliance, so named for three reasons.

Firstly, because it’s a link to Star Wars and I think it has a certain nerdy cool to it. Secondly, it represents that we may take a different view to the standard TaxPayers’ Alliance. And thirdly, it frames the TaxPayers’ Alliance as representing the Evil Empire with Darth Vader and stuff, which, while not strictly accurate, is at least amusing.

The TaxPayers’ Rebel Alliance therefore has three key points:

• We believe that the public sector should remember that they should be responsible and open about how they spend their money, remembering that it comes from the ordinary taxpayer
• We believe that sometimes it is beneficial to the country when the public sector spends money, and they should not automatically be criticised for doing so — only where it waste can be demonstrated.
• We believe that every time the national media give a voice to the TaxPayers’ Alliance, they should give our contrary opinion an equal voice

And, in a nutshell, that’s it. Who’s with me?

Does anyone else find http://interneteyes.co.uk/ ‘s offer of £1K a month reward money for spying disturbing? (via @Placepot)@JamesCousins

What’s this? Being paid £1000 per month to spy on people? So I decided to take a look in a little more detail…

Internet eyes is uniquely designed to be proactive in detecting crime as it happens… The general public can watch CCTV camera’s anywhere, and instantly alert the camera owner when a crime is committed.Internet Eyes

Of course, when you look at the actual details, you don’t get paid £1000 per month for watching CCTV cameras, you get the possibility of being entered into a prize draw, in which you could win up to £1000, if you’ve actually spotted any dodgy activity. It’s all very vague: there’s no guaranteed payout for anything, so far as I can tell.

There’s one obvious flaw in this. If you’re only likely to get paid if you spot dubious activity, what is to stop someone from being a little ‘trigger-happy’ in relation to reporting, thus wasting the time of security guards and possibly the police, all in exchange for them getting a slightly increased chance of a win? I do hope that Internet Eyes would be prepared to reimburse the security companies and/or the police for any wasted time which, on review, wasn’t worth bothering them about…

But slightly more worrying is the fact that the general public are going to be able to view CCTV cameras. I certainly don’t feel comfortable with this, particularly given that people aren’t going to be paid to do this, so the only people who will be keen on doing this are those who have a particular interest in snooping on others in the first place. And these are precisely the sort of people who shouldn’t be given access to CCTV streams…

I think the spoof news website NewsArse put it best:

Peeping toms could earn cash by watching people on commercial CCTV cameras from their own home, in a scheme planned to begin next month. The Internet Eyes website will offer up to £1,000 if subscribing perverts can stop masturbating long enough to report shoplifting, or other crimes whilst they are in progress.NewsArse: Peeping toms to earn money while they masturbate

Also, the few I have actually read tend to be crap, and I’ve been publicly scathing about them from time to time (although generally polite to the people they have originated from). It’s always possible that this is just down to me being a bad-tempered so-and-so as well. But while I find it easy to ignore the ones which don’t interest me (I might read the bad jokes, I will skip ‘inspirational messages’), I find it impossible to ignore the ones which are told as truth but are actually full of racist bullshit.

The Infidel Papers

There was a diatribe called ‘The Uncomfortable Definition of an Infidel’ which describes how a prison officer attended his annual training session for maintaining his security clearance as a prison officer, where he had to sit and attend a presentation by preachers from the Protestant, Muslim and Roman Catholic faiths, and basically it turned out that according the the Muslim preacher, every good Muslim should kill anyone who wasn’t a Muslim.

The message was from a John Harrison MBE, and contained the tag line ‘this happened in London’, and closed by saying:

Everyone in the U.K. should be required to read this, but with the current political paralysis, tolerant justice system, liberal media and p.c. madness, there is no way this will be widely publicised.

Anyone reading that message, and accepting everything at face value, would presume feel a little more uncomfortable about Islam, see it as an intolerant religion incapable of coexisting peacefully with other religions. Maybe we should be asking the question “why hasn’t this been widely publicised”? Isn’t it something everyone should know about?

Well, no. Because it’s all bollocks. A big fat racist lie.

Firstly, while I’m quite happy to believe that members of the prison service may be required to attend diversity seminars, I fail to understand how a diversity seminar is necessary for them to maintain their security clearance, nor why a diversity seminar would include two Christian preachers, one Muslim preacher, and no representatives of Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism or Atheism.

Secondly, there’s the matter of John Harrison MBE. Wondering how and why a prison officer got an MBE, I looked him up, to discover that he’s not actually a prison officer at all, it would appear that he’s a photographer. And, more than that, he’s actually gone to the trouble to explain on his site that the whole thing has nothing to do with him:

There’s a link on his site which says ‘click here if you have received an email from John Harrison ref. religion’, which then goes on to say:

An e-mail purporting to be from John Harrison MBE is currently circulating following the release of the New Years Honours list, this e-mail is in no way associated with John Harrison MBE of Harrison Photography.

But he’s just the John Harrison MBE that it is most easy to find, he wasn’t actually the John Harrison MBE MIDSc referenced by the article. This one is:

John Harrison, MBE. MIDSc. 2006 saw John’s 50th year in the health service having worked in military and civilian hospitals around the world. He has been heavily involved with training and became
a member of the Institute of Training and Development as well as continuing as a full time sterile services manager, currently at The North Hampshire Hospitals NHS Trust.November 07 issue of ‘Medical Device Decontamination’

Only it didn’t have anything to do with him either.

Right. So if the details about the seminar are incorrect, and the details about the author are also incorrect, should we not then begin to treat the rest of the message with a little less respect — and maybe a bit more contempt?

If anyone actually bothered to try and corroborate the details in any way shape or form, then as well as discovering that the details and the author or incorrect, they would find that this has been circulating around the internet for about four years and is an editorial written by someone from a Christian ministry, purportedly about his experience at a prison in Missouri (so look, the location was a load of bollocks as well). Only it would appear that he wasn’t telling the truth exactly:

the event described was a training program for prison volunteers, for which ministers from several faiths were invited to give presentations in order to acquaint prison volunteers with the varied religious beliefs of the inmate population. The man who gave the presentation about Islam was not a Muslim minister; he was an inmate pressed into service [...] Mr. Kniest, the prison’s Volunteer Coordinator said that “The inmate did a good job,” adding, “He was asked a few questions that were beyond his ability to answer. But he was not asked anything like that question [in the editorial]“snopes.com

And as snopes.com points out, if you cherry-pick your points from the Bible, you can find references suggesting that anyone who works on a Saturday should be put to death (Exodus 35:2). But of course the minister would ignore the bits from his Holy Book which suggests Christianity may be intolerant, and instead invent stories relating to another religion suggesting instead that they are intolerant.

That’s hardly what I call Christian behaviour. But then again, I’m not a bigot.

And what worries me is that people see this as plausible, as if the majority of muslims worldwide are somehow hiding the secret that really, all of them want to kill all of the rest of us. Fortunately, when I pointed this out to the person who had sent it to me, they quickly realised that they had been taken in and that it was indeed a load of bollocks (and took the time to assure me that they were not indeed a racist — which I already knew, although some degree of piss-taking for having fallen for such obvious racist crap without any checking may indeed be in order).

But that is really the thing that worries me: not that there are racist bigots out of there, pumping these sorts of stories out by email, but the fact that ordinary people are doing their work by believing them and then forwarding this poisonous crap on to everyone else. Whether I’m going a bit far by describing this as everyday racism I don’t know, but I think there’s certainly at least some element of this in the matter — would people have been so quick to believe a similar sort of nonsense relating to baby-eating Catholics?

Not only do we, as members of society, have a responsibility to correct this sort of garbage when we hear it (it isn’t really that hard to check, if you’ve got an internet connection and understand how a search engine works) but the media also need to take their share of the blame for promoting negative attitudes towards Islam.

And the media seem happy to promote the idea that Islam is something we should be worried about:

Counting the Mohammeds

Just look at the Telegraph from yesterday (HT to @antonvowl for bringing this article to my attention):

The ONS was criticised for treating the various spellings of Mohammed as different names. It only published the top 100 names for each sex which meant figures were only released for three variations of Mohammed. Mohammed was placed 16th with 3,423, Muhammad 37th with 2,068 and Mohammad 65th with 1,100.

Figures for five other alternative spellings – Muhammed (496), Mohamed (428), Mohamad (40), Muhamed (11) and Mohammod (10) – were later released to the Daily Telegraph. That made a total of 7,576 and put Mohammed and its alternative spellings ahead of the official second place name, Oliver, of whom there were 7,413. There were 8,007 Jacks.

Telegraph: Jack pips Mohammed to be most popular boys name

The Office of National Statistics is accused of being disingenuous by not lumping all the ‘Mohammed’ names together. Presumably therefore the Telegraph would expect ‘Jack’ and ‘John’ to be added together? And certainly all Bills, Williams, Wills and Liams would need to be added together, would they not? After all, they are just variations of the same name also, aren’t they?

And if you add Billy, William and Liam together, you get 8,824, making William (and variants) the most popular boys name, more than 800 ahead of Jack (or only about 10 ahead if you count ‘John’ in with Jack), and a comfortable 1250 or so ahead of the entire combination of Mohammed variants (and don’t take my word for it: check the stats yourself (xls)). But for some reason the Telegraph don’t seem to mention this…

Or is it just that the Telegraph wants to add the Islamic names together to generate a little bit of scaremongering about Islam? After all, what is there for the ONS to be disingenuous about? It’s not as though there would be a problem if the most popular boys’ name was Mohammed, would there be?

Or is it just that we are being conditioned to believe that there’s some sort of problem with Islam? Who wants us to think this — and why? Is it just to sell papers? Frankly, I’d expect better from the broadsheets, but maybe I’m just a romantic.

And if you’re going to go on about traditional “British” names, please take note: unless you’re prepared to change your name to (or name your children) Egbert, Æthelwulf, Oswald or Cœnwulf, then you’re just using the usurping Christian names yourself and you’re not exactly following the British “tradition” either.

Bloody Normans. They come over here with their Domesday Books and their fucking tapestries…

…a “dominant” BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK. [...]

“The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision,” he told the Edinburgh Television Festival. The scope of the BBC’s activities and ambitions was “chilling”, he added. Organisations like the BBC, funded by the licence fee, as well as Channel 4 and Ofcom, made it harder for other broadcasters to survive, he argued.

BBC News: Murdoch attack on ‘dominant’ BBC

And this sums up precisely why we shouldn’t listen to James Murdoch. Let’s look at the scenario: he is publicly critical of the BBC, and the BBC report it. Not only that, but when the BBC report it, they give more space to reporting James Murdoch’s anti-BBC views than they give to the BBC’s Greg Dyke giving an alternative viewpoint. Compare this to News Corporation. I can’t think of an example (I’m not saying there isn’t one, merely that I can’t think of one) where News Corporation has given such prominence to criticism of companies it owns within these companies.

Indeed, it’s so famous for promoting the Sky TV channels through its newspapers that Private Eye used to (possibly still do?) feature obviously promotional mentions of Sky TV within these other channels.

Nor does James Murdoch seem to see that, while he is critical for the BBC’s perceived dominance on TV and on the web, that News Corporation could be reasonably well considered to be dominant in on TV and in print media. I didn’t see James calling for News Corporation to dispose of all of their shareholdings in print media.

Of course, the main problem with the BBC as far as News Corporation is concerned is simple:

Mr Murdoch said free news on the web provided by the BBC made it “incredibly difficult” for private news organisations to ask people to pay for their news.BBC News: Murdoch attack on ‘dominant’ BBC

…and obviously as News Corporation want to charge people for looking at their news on the web, they are going to have a hard time selling this if you can get high quality news content online for free elsewhere.

For me, the worst part though was James Murdoch’s suggestion that the only way you get a truly independent media is through media driven by profit. I disagree. I think a profit-driven media gives you profit-driven news, which isn’t necessarily the same as public interest news. If you are driven by profit, there is an incentive to run puff-pieces (or spike critical stories) of major shareholders or sponsors. You also will run the sort of news — the celebrity gossip stuff — which attracts the most interest, which while it may be want the public wants, isn’t the same as the news the public ought to know.

And the public gets what the public wants
But I want nothing this society’s got…The Jam: Going Underground

Because of the unique way the BBC is funded by the taxpayer, the BBC is able to some extent to focus their news on what is important rather than simply what would be the most populist news. I’m not going to claim the BBC is perfect in this regard — the BBC’s coverage of events outside London is pathetic (it’s national news if there are floods in the south-east, anywhere else it will only make the local news), but let’s look at the way it works.

The BBC is paid by the taxpayer. The BBC therefore has an ethos where they are responsible to the nation, not the shareholder, and certainly not the owner or the government of the day. They see themselves as answering to the nation. Of course, like any organisation, they also have a degree of loyalty to the organisation itself, but you’re not going to get a situation where the BBC’s political reportage is slanted in favour of one particular party because the director general wants to see them elected.

The BBC does not have any axe to grind in this manner. They can — and will — tear down anyone from any political party if they have the relevant information about them.

[As an aside, I note that many people -- particularly those from a right-wing background -- see the BBC as tending towards left-wing. I don't necessarily agree (I fail to see how any organisation that pays and promotes Jeremy Clarkson can be seen as right-on liberals), but I do acknowledge that some people do believe this. Perhaps an external independent body (independent of parliament also) ought to run alongside the BBC to monitor for bias -- OffBeeb perhaps...]

…but for me the key points are trustworthiness and quality. I trust the BBC. I presume they will get it wrong from time to time, but I trust that their intention is to lay out the facts in a plain and clear manner, and not present things with a bias that suits their own political agenda. Compare this to Fox News which has been accused of bias. I don’t want to hear the news that News Corporation wants me to hear.

I want to hear the news that News Corporation doesn’t want me to hear. I want to hear the news that the BBC doesn’t want me to hear. And the only news source I would trust to tell me both of these is the BBC. Over the Ross/Brand/Sachs furore, over allegations of phone-in competitions being mis-run, you get to hear a lot of people being critical of the BBC on the BBC.

And, having watched Sky News quite a bit whilst on holiday, I have to say that it is also my personal belief that the quality of the BBC news is better, but as they are presenting slightly different news styles, this might simply boil down to a matter of personal preference.

For me, the BBC, and in particular BBC news is a well-respected national institution. The British public were up in arms when the US right were critical of our NHS recently to promote an American-right political agenda, and I feel exactly the same about the BBC. Any political party who dares to fuck with the independence, the quality, the institution of the BBC, is fucking with a national institution that is extremely highly valued by the British public. Leave our NHS alone, leave our BBC alone, and take your profit-driven news idea somewhere else.

If the BBC licence fee could be trebled and everything currently within the Murdoch stable within the UK could be brought under the BBC umbrella in the UK, then this would be a good thing, and a price well worth paying. The BBC are rightly and generally seen as the most trusted news provider in the UK, and while I would rather they employed a few more cameramen and standard reporters than paid celebrities huge salaries, I trust them to get the balance right (after all, I’m quite a fan of that Jonathan Ross chap, after all). And it’s not just news; the quality of the BBC programming is generally very high (and they allow for experimental stuff on BBC3/4 which might not be so good, but if it does work will generally be transferred to the more mainstream channels later).

Oh, and that’s before I’ve even mentioned Doctor Who, the quality of local radio, the fact that their website is bloody brilliant (whether you want sports, news, programme information), or even Doctor Who. And did I mention Doctor Who?

In short, the BBC is brilliant and I love it. It’s not perfect, but it is far, far, far better than any of the alternatives.

And, as I intimated a few days ago on twitter, if you’re upsetting the Murdoch empire, then in my book you’ve got to be doing something right…

More reasons to like the #BBC no 17: the Murdoch empire isn’t keen on them.@ThePickards

Paula Murray was the journalist behind this story; Derek Lambie the editor of the title. While I have no desire to see trial-by-blogger become a twenty-first century replacement for trial by ordeal, I do find it somewhat apt that the Scottish Sunday Express, which had attempted a trial by media (or possibly more of a ‘public crucifixion by media’) of the Dunblane survivors found themselves rather being hoist by a somewhat similar petard.

The ruling of the PCC has now been published:

They were not public figures in any meaningful sense, and the newsworthy event that they had been involved in as young children had happened 13 years previously.

[...] the images appeared to have been taken out of context and presented in a way that was designed to humiliate or embarrass them [...] the way they were used – when there was no particular reason for the boys to be in the news – represented a fundamental failure to respect their private lives. Publication represented a serious error of judgement on the part of the newspaper.

Although the editor had taken steps to resolve the complaint, and rightly published an apology, the breach of the Code was so serious that no apology could remedy it.

Press Complaints Commission: Report 79

It really is somewhat scathing; critical of the way the images were taken out of context; critical of the decision to make the 18 year olds the focus of a story for no decent reason; critical of the lack of respect to privacy; critical of the newspaper’s judgement. And then to top it off by saying that “the breach of the Code was so serious that no apology could remedy it”.

Of course, the next question is, so what are the PCC doing to remedy it? Have they issued a massive fine? Have they called for a change in editorial policy? Well, so far as I can tell, the Scottish Sunday Express have been forced to publish the PCC’s ruling… and … er … well, then it’s business as usual. There’s certainly no mention made of a fine or anything else…

If the PCC won’t act with teeth when “the breach of the Code was so serious that no apology could remedy it” then maybe it’s time that the press complaints commission was actually made independent of the press…

(Other takes on this can also be found at Bloggerheads and Tory Troll)

Paula the Cow was a man (or possibly woman) dressed up in a cow suit, along with some bloke dressed up as Farmer Peter, with thick round glasses and a pipe. This was a branding exercise to go with the launch of a new Dr. Oetker product for some sort of mousse type of thing with vanilla and chocolate flavours…

Paula is a cow who does more than just moo
she makes a tasty treat that has cool splodges tooPaula’s Theme Song

Paula already has a website, which relies very much on Flash — there doesn’t seem to be an HTML version so far as I can see — but the interesting thing for me was trying to determine how the whole thing came about.

I spoke to one of Paula’s farmyard assistants about the branding exercise and it was quite interesting to see how Paula the Cow had come about. The whole ‘Paula the cow’, the associated tour, the theme song and so on was part of a pitch that the brand agency had made to Dr. Oetker. Unfortunately, the person I was speaking to then actually had to go and do some proper work, because I was left with one unanswered question…

If the whole Paula the Cow thing was a branding pitch, then how did the Paula ‘splodge’ dessert come about? The splodge pattern looks vaguely like cow markings, so what I was wondering is whether Dr. Oetker already had the ‘splodginess’ in the original desserts and this inspired the appropriate branding pitch, or whether Dr. Oetker were simply looking to market chocolate and vanilla desserts, and the ‘splodges’ and the like was part of the original pitch?

Obviously, the things which are interesting to me aren’t just the initial branding, but how they have used the internet and social media to launch Paula (I already had an interest of course, but now with the launch of TPis I’m looking into these sorts of things in more detail!). There are already a frightening number of facebook groups set up which relate to Paula the Cow — from the Paula the Cow appreciation society, filed under “Religion and Spirituality”, no less, through to I hate Dr. Oetker and that shitty Paula the Cow advert.

However, what’s surprising is that I can’t find any which are official: all the ones I’ve seen seem to have been set up by people either for or against the product, none of whom have given what I have seen as the contact email for Paula from her site. In today’s internet led world, it seems a surprise that Paula’s not yet got an official Facebook presence nor a twitter account, which is surely necessary to get the viral success that Alexandr Orlov, the erm… meerkat behind the “Compare the Meerkat” campaign had: after all, he’s not just got the website, he’s got the official Facebook thingy and even a twitter account.

Another reason for Paula wanting a Facebook presence of course is that without one — and if it wasn’t for people like me blogging about this kind of thing — Dr. Oetker might end up completely unaware of the negative publicity being generated by the anti-Paula Facebook groups out there. You simply cannot afford to ignore social networks…

So come on Paula, pull your … hoof … out, let’s get to grips with this social media thing, eh?

However, to give appropriate credit to Paula and Dr. Oetker, my kids tried one of the free desserts and they seemed to like them (the ‘vanilla one with chocolate splodges’ being preferred to the one the other way round), so they’ve succeeded in one of the key points at least — because if the dessert was unpleasant, all the social media hype in the world wouldn’t get you repeat business.