3542 days ago
I have defended Jeremy Clarkson when he has been attacked unfairly – for instance when he made a series of factually accurate comments about the workshy semi feral population of the welfare safari that is the slum Liverpool. I cannot think that I have ever written a pleasant word about the politically correct nest of paedophile friendly vipers that is the BBC – I would privatise it at once. But for once I stand firm with the waste of taxpayers cash that is the Beeb.
Clarkson is alleged to have thrown a punch at an employee of top gear. In every single workplace in the country such conduct would see anyone – even a CEO – suspended pending an investigation and, if found guilty, fired. Simply being a celebrity does not buy you an exemption. O it should not buy you an exemption.
I see that Noel Edmonds is arguing that the BBC should accept that “stars” have to be treated differently. Rubbish. One of the facets of the sad decline of Britain is our lamentable worship of the cult of celebrity. Folks want to be famous just to be famous. And when you are famous somehow you get to live by different rules.
Maybe that is the way our nation is going. Maybe simply by being famous you can be allowed to hit your staff. What else are you allowed to do as a celeb which we plebs cannot do? Steal, cheat, murder? I don’t know but where exactly do the celeb-worshippers draw the line?
It was, arguably, this cult of celebrity that allowed Saville, Hall, Harris and the other monsters to get away with what they did.
Call me old fashioned
3791 days ago
Everyone on Fleet Street or anyone who can use google knows the answes so why won’t David Cameron allow a full public enquiry to ask the questions relating to paedophile activity and cover-ups at Westminster in the 1970s and 1980s?
In that vein I ask you to post suitable captions for the picture of former Home Secretary Leon Brittan in the comment section below. Deadline Friday close of play.
For what it is worth my entry is: “It’s just Jimmy Saville’s address book, Cyril Smith’s police record and a few sketches of young girls by Rolf Harris…can you file these documents for me in the usual place please?”
3922 days ago
Harriet Harman, her husband Jack Dromey given a safe Labour sat on an all women shortlist, and Patricia Hewitt are the sort of ghastly career politician, New Labour figures who one cannot help but despise. The six day campaign by the Daily Mail to link them to those campaigning for organised paedophilia has thus found many on the right salivating and scenting blood. I am not so sure I want to join in this vengefest. And I note that many of the allegations made were known a long time ago. Much of this is not newsbreaking but instead an organised campaign.
In the 1970s the three ghastly New Labourites worked for the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), the organisation now known as Liberty in senior roles. The NCCL had more than 1,000 affiliated groups who were clearly not vetted terribly carefully. Among them was the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) which wanted the law to be changed to allow adults to have sex with kids and many of whose leading lights have since been exposed and imprisoned as sickening nonces.
Harman clearly put her name to one or two documents from the NCCL pushing for changes in the law on, for instance, child pornography, which of one looks at them today are frankly disgusting.
Harman has after six days expressed “regrets” over certain matters but she has not issued an outright apology. She has in a very New Labour way bashed the Mail for stating things it did not actually say and thus claimed this is a “smear campaign.”
Hewitt has said nothing. The Daily Mail continues to push. The new media right
3960 days ago
Last week instead of a caption contest I asked you to name the odd one out and say why from the four gentlemen pictured below. It was so simple yet no correct winner emerged. The four men pictured below are of course: Jimmy Saville, Cyril Smith MP, Sci-fi writer Arthur C Clarke and former Tory Minister and European Commissioner Leon Brittan.
The correct answer is of course
3985 days ago
48 hours ago, the chairman of the BBC met the ghost of Christmas Past. If you missed that you can read it HERE
In the second part of the Chris Patten’s Christmas Carol last night, the chairman of the BBC met the ghost of Christmas Present. If you missed that you can read it HERE
The story continues…
After his twice interrupted night the good Lord Christopher Patten, chairman of the BBC, was awakened by a gentle kiss on one of his many chins. Then came another and another. “Lavender” he mumbled but awoke to find that the good Lady Patten was still snoring gently beside him.
Instead Chow Mein’s now near senile successor, named - for some reason - by his staff in Hong Kong as Dim Sum, had managed to clamber onto the four poster bed to wish his master a Merry Christmas. Lord Patten took the hint and, after putting on his ermine dressing gown wandered downstairs, eagerly awaiting the delights of Christmas Day, starting with breakfast. Quoting to himself the old Chinese motto “a man who has a solid breakfast is built to grow”, Patten rubbed his tummies and thought hard about the first meal of the day.
Breakfast would, as always, be prepared by his faithful eighty year old manservant Cawkwell. For the good Lord was a man of habit. For him merely a “healthy man sized” portion or two of freshly prepared kedgeree made with line-caught haddock and Tuscan organic eggs from the Toynbee estate, followed by locally produced bread lightly toasted ( as only Cawkwell knew how) covered with Honey flown in from Argentina with a healthy bowl of porridge to finish off.
But Cawkwell, or for that matter his breakfast, was nowhere to be seen and so feeling rather peckish the chairman of the BBC wandered into his study where he had a hidden stash of mince pies. These had been craftily concealed from both Dim Sum and Lady Lavender under a stash of printed emails marked “Saville –URGENT action needed now 2009” which he was planning to start reading after Christmas.
Lord Patten looked at the 14 foot tree, decorated last night by Cawkwell while the family watched carols from Kings but something was not right. Rummaging at the foot of the pine
3987 days ago
It was the night before Christmas and BBC Chairman Lord Christopher Patten lay in his grand four poster bed in his Country Estate, sleeping, but only fitfully.
Turning over to the left, he looked longingly at the bedside photo of his pet dog Chow Mein which disappeared mysteriously when he was in charge of Hong Kong.
Running Honkers, a European Commissioner and now in charge of the BBC, what a glorious career he had enjoyed, Patten thought to himself. Gosh I have done well.
But as he smiled with contentment Patten was startled so see a grey figure appear next to him at the bedside. The grey figure did not look particularly happy.
“I say” said Patten, “what are you doing here my good fellow? Are you one of those consultant Johnnies we employ at the Beeb. Look I know that you are on £1,000 an hour but is it not time to call it a day?”
The grey figure said nothing but beckoned to Patten to rise. Used to doing exactly what the consultant Johnnies told him to do Patten obeyed and did not object as he grey figure gripped him firmly by the hand.
Suddenly the two men were flying through the air.
4172 days ago
And so someone I respect told me yesterday that I was hated in the City. Not by everyone but in certain quarters. Tell me something I didn’t know. Apparently some folks feel that saying nasty things about companies, advisors, PR firms etc. is just despicable. “Other journalists don’t do it…why do you?” And it gets better.
Apparently this person was told by a well-respected City group not to be seen to work with me because I was being sued for libel by Sefton. To give them credit they did ask the City Group if they knew about the case and was told no. There was just the assumption that if listed company issues libel proceedings then the person it is suing must be a baddun.
Where do you start here? Without commenting on the specifics of this case I would point out that I have had legal proceedings threatened and commenced before. The companies who tried it on before have all disappeared or been censured (in the end) because they were liars or crooks or both. Any trade body/City group which in a blinkered fashion believes that companies always tell the truth and so without doing any research automatically sides with the company in such matters is frankly a joke organisation. Perhaps these folks have never heard of Robert Maxwell or Asil Nadir or Bernie Madoff? Some companies are bent…just accept it.
And so why write articles which point out that certain shares are overvalued, that certain companies are – if one analyses their published statements – running out of cash or that certain companies have issued RNS statements that are verifiably false or over optimistic? Let me think for about fifteen seconds:
