Mailwatch(ed) Forum

The great thing about dead people is that they can't contradict you.

BBC Scotland posts a very weaselly headline.

Boy arrested at Muslim centre under Terrorism Act

What will people think when they read this?
How many will absorb the headline, but not open the link, or read to paragraph three.

The BBC understands that police are investigating whether the alleged offences were connected to right wing extremism.

Italics are mine.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr7e9r51m1xo

Look at that Batman, always hanging around with criminals. Meanwhile, me, the Penguin, always accompanied by our brave boys in blue!

Jonathan Portes
‪@jdportes.bsky.social‬
Was just disinvited by
@bbc5live.bsky.social
to a discussion of Brexit 5 years on- on the entirely reasonable/correct grounds that I know what I am talking about and would give an expert, objective view.

What they actually wanted was a "hard Remainer" (to balance a know-nothing Brexiteer).

FFS.
January 30, 2025 at 6:34 PM

FFS indeed.

I came across a Hard Remainer yesterday on Bluesky. Said the EU protected countries against leaders like Starmer, who is presumably worse in his eyes than Victor Orban. Instant block from me.

That headline is a disgrace.

The BBC do have to say it because otherwise they get accused of bias. Of course they're wasting their time because they're being accused of bias by both sides anyway.

Edited to insert omitted word.

Nobody says “gaunt” anyway. Except tabloid and tabloid-adjacent journalists

When ‘s the last time you heard this sort of thing :

“And how was Auntie Agatha?”

“Well, she was a bit, you know, gaunt. “

Never, that’s when.

Umm...

Me.

Yep, I also say gaunt.

Yup, it is also my go-to, especially when "proper fucked" seems inappropriate.

Same.

Exactly how Mrs Whale described me during my last IBD flare-up.

“Peaky” was what my mother used to say.

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/rats- ... 0Y3Fbfav1A

The media’s peculiar silence over Alexander Armstrong

“When Gary Lineker made a series of public interventions on asylum seekers’ treatment by the last Tory government, right wing newspapers were outraged that a man who took £1.35m a year from the BBC should be allowed to express his political views. The fall-out resulted in a new set of rules for flagship presenters of BBC shows, and Lineker has since lost his job presenting Match of the Day.
Last week, the Pointless host (in every sense) Alexander Armstrong gave an interview to the Telegraph in which he attacked Keir Starmer’s decision to put VAT on public school fees. “I’m feeling really, really angry about that, and extremely poor,” he said. “There was something really vituperative about [Starmer] bringing it in in the middle of the school year… It felt really unpleasant and nasty.””
Since Pointless is not made by the BBC, Armstrong’s payment for it does not have to be disclosed by the corporation, Yet an estimate by the Telegraph last year put him on a possible £20,000 per episode, which would work out at £1.1million per year. Have the Telegraph, Mail, and Sun raged against this political comment by someone whose wages are paid by all of us via the licence fee? Oddly, they have not.

You say whining luvvie, I say respected star of stage and screen. You say nepo baby, I say they were born in the business. Etc.

Only leftish opinions are political. Everything else is just an opinion.

Richard Osman has got away with voicing lefty opinions without a hoo ha.