Tag Archives: bbc

Paul Walter

Must-see TV series: Inside Obama’s White House

By Paul Walter | Fri 1st April 2016 - 11:40 am

While I was on holiday, BBC 2 sneaked out the first episode of a fantastic series: Inside Obama’s White House. You can currently watch the first three episodes of the series here on BBC iPlayer.

This is a brilliant series produced by Brook Lapping for the BBC. They’ve got some truly sensational behind-the-scenes footage. So, as they tell the story of Obama’s presidency, they are able to show specific video of that event behind-the-scenes – advisers emerging from a crunch meeting or whatever. And they have a remarkable parade of players giving their retrospective view on events: from Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, to John Kerry, Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner and chief adviser David Axelrod.

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Caron Lindsay

Belinda Brooks-Gordon on Today talking about making sex work safer

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 3rd March 2016 - 12:57 pm

Belinda BG at BBCDr Belinda Brooks-Gordon, who led on the development of our policy on sex work, was on the Today programme this morning debating whether managed zones for sex workers are effective. She cited huge amounts of evidence which suggests that they are. The retired police officer was pretty aggressive in the way he made his points and was really patronising to Belinda who has done so much academic research in this field.

The police officer said that we should be looking to eliminate rather than enable sex work. Belinda cited how this makes life much more difficult and dangerous for sex workers with actual examples. The occupant of the blue Police Box would have given a much more sensible answer, I’m sure.

You can listen to the debate here at about 2:31 in.

Belinda referred to a paper she had given at the British Psychological Society about the effects of the then Government’s action to crack down on sex work. You can read that paper by clicking here

You can read a letter signed by Belinda and other academics,arguing against the so-called Nordic Model, which

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Paul Walter

Lib Dem peer takes part in World War Three

By Paul Walter | Mon 8th February 2016 - 3:50 pm

Kishwer Falkner has taken part in a gripping and chillingly realistic BBC Two TV programme.

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Paul Walter

Is there a chance that the new Top Gear will be very entertaining but not (borderline) offensive?

By Paul Walter | Mon 8th February 2016 - 2:20 pm

The list of past Top Gear controversies is long. There have been allegations of homophobia and criticism of the mockery of Argentines, Mexicans, Germans and Romanians.

I have great respect for Jeremy Clarkson as a motoring and general writer. But he presents a persona to the public which teeters on the brink of controversy and often falls over the edge.

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Caron Lindsay

Sal Brinton on Question Time tonight – will she confront Farage over UKIP’s awful broadcast?

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 4th February 2016 - 9:38 pm

So much for my early night tonight. I have to get up before the Cool Kids have gone to bed to get a flight to Cardiff to go to Welsh Liberal Democrat Conference. I can’t miss Sal Brinton on Question Time (BBC1, 10:45pm), though. Especially as there may be a bit of an awkward moment for Nigel Farage. He’s on the programme yet again on the day that Tim Farron and Meral Ece have complained to the BBC and Ofcom about UKIPs Party Political Broadcast last night. They say that it incited religious and racial hatred.

I don’t normally go out of my way to watch UKIP broadcasts. Life is just too short. However, I steeled myself to look at this one and, sure enough, my skin was soon crawling. It was basically a brash and ugly attempt to create division and distrust and gives a very false impression of Turkey and its people. It made me feel very uncomfortable. The premise was that Turkey was just about to join the European Union and this was a bad thing. It’s not as if that’s likely to happen any time soon, but they made it sound like it was going to take place next week.

UKIP are using exactly the same tactics as they did in 2013 over Romanians and Bulgarians. It’s truly horrible. I remember people in Eastleigh telling me on the phone that 40 million Romanians and Bulgarians were going to come to Britain – a massive proportion of the populations of those two countries – because UKIP leaflets were full of it. In fact, this time last year, there were 172,000. Those figures estimated that there were 1.9 people here from other European countries. There are 2 million British people elsewhere in the EU. Freedom of movement works both ways.

Tim explained why they had reported the ad to OFCOM:

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Jonathan Waddell

They ask tough questions and they’re supposed to

By Jonathan Waddell | Fri 8th January 2016 - 5:00 pm

laura kuenssberg

Following Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday and the on air resignation of Shadow Foreign Minister Stephen Doughty, renewed accusations are doing the rounds claiming BBC bias. One of the most shared blogs I’ve seen regarding this accusation uses a now deleted post by Andrew Alexander to illustrate how the Daily Politics was ‘not reporting news, it’s making it’. But this is once again people misunderstanding, and showing contempt for, the role political journalism has in a healthy democracy.

The role of political journalism has been developing and changing for years and it’s only a recent development that we have constant access and cover of government and parliament. What has never changed however is the political establishment’s contempt for the media’s access to their business and the reporting of it. As Nick Robinson described his role back in 2012:

This may sound as if, for me, political journalism is about catching out, tripping up or embarrassing a politician. It is not. It is, however, about exposing publicly what many know to exist privately: tension between colleagues, policy contradictions or a failure to have thought through a policy clearly. The job I did then and to a large extent still do now, is to identify these problems and seek to bring them to light.

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The Voice

Former BBC Director General: Liberal Democrats secured better settlement for BBC

By The Voice | Sun 27th December 2015 - 12:00 pm

Former BBC Director General Mark Thompson has told how the Liberal Democrats in coalition government secured a “different and better” settlement for the BBC. Now that the Conservatives are unmoderated, things are not so good for what many feel is the highest quality public service broadcaster in the world.

The Guardian reports:

Giving his his first interview about the BBC since he left in 2012, after eight years at the helm, Thompson said the broadcaster was having to pay for government policy. “It’s welfare … It’s totally inappropriate to use BBC to support social transfer in this country.”

When George Osborne tried to impose the same cost on the BBC during negotiations in 2010, Thompson started writing his resignation letter, along with several BBC Trustees. This July the current director general, Tony Hall, agreed to shoulder the burden in return for relief from other costs.

“In 2015 the political circumstances are very different and it is much tougher for the BBC. In 2010 it was the coalition government and the Liberal Democrats … played a very big part in securing a different and better settlement. That recourse has not been available to the BBC this year.”

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NewsHound

Unmissable: When Paddy met Fern

By NewsHound | Sun 13th December 2015 - 5:05 pm

Fern Britton’s guest today was Paddy Ashdown. It’s a thoroughly fascinating journey through his life. You see his baby photographs, you get a real insight into the early tragedies and influences which shaped him. He talks frankly about faith, life as a soldier and political leader.

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The Voice

The funniest moment of Conference so far…

By The Voice | Tue 22nd September 2015 - 4:55 pm

Or at least, the funniest that didn’t involve pig jokes..

The BBC’s Daily Politics team tried to get Alistair Carmichael to choose between David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn. Not a wise move…

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Jamie Shaw-Stewart

Opinion: Who will be paying if the government drops free over-75s TV licences: the BBC or the over-75s?

By Jamie Shaw-Stewart | Mon 6th July 2015 - 7:54 pm

 

Tuning in briefly on Sunday to the Andrew Marr Show, appropriately belatedly via the iPlayer, I was amused and appalled in equal measure by what lay ahead (I didn’t actually watch it all, partly out of fear of what I would see, but mainly out of fear of boredom).

I was greatly amused by the format of the program. I’ve got used to listening to the Today program’s political correspondent “cut through the crap” immediately after a political interview, which I like to hear. However, it is a little odd when that correspondent does this before the interview is complete, which seems to have become more common, particularly when the politician doesn’t seem to challenge the interpretations of their spin.

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The Voice

Tim Farron and Norman Lamb face a live audience on Victoria Derbyshire

By The Voice | Tue 23rd June 2015 - 8:15 pm

This morning leadership candidates Tim Farron and Norman Lamb appeared on the Victoria Derbyshire programme on BBC2. They were quizzed by Victoria and a live audience. See how they got on below:

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Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg’s BBC1 interview – Evan Davis disappoints with constant references to Clegg’s multi-national background

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 13th April 2015 - 11:23 pm

I’m normally a big fan of the BBC’s Evan Davis. He knows how to make people squirm and we knew that he would do a thorough job on Nick Clegg tonight. And he did. All the difficult questions were in there, on tuition fees. that broken promises broadcast, was the coalition worth it when we’ve lost so much support. In fact, the tone was set right from the word go with “How does it feel to have gone from hero to zero?” which Nick took with his customary good grace.

No complaints about those tough policy questions. There was something else, though, which disappointed me. Davis showed a clip of Clegg speaking Dutch during the 2012 elections. Then he started to ask a series of questions around his family background,  whether it was the fact that his mother was Dutch and his father from Russian heritage that made him look to other countries for different ways of doing things. He’d found a quote from pre 2010 where Nick had talked about how, as a child in the 70s, he felt that the Netherlands were doing things much better than we were. Surely everybody looks to other countries to see what we could learn from them? Just look at the most popular dishes on every menu in the country for evidence of that. I’ve always admired many Scandinavian ways of managing their public services and the way they’ve enforced the International Code on the Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes for a start.

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Caron Lindsay

Stephen Tall and I on the Westminster Hour

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 17th February 2015 - 12:46 pm

On Sunday night, Stephen Tall and I were on the Westminster Hour discussing the party’s prospects for the coming election and beyond. You can listen to the whole thing here. They also have a shorter clip of Stephen talking about the dilemma facing the party about portraying itself as a “split the difference” party. He rightly said that concern about it is something that unites activists on both sides of the party but on the other hand we aren’t going to win the election outright so we have to claim the centre ground between the other two.

In my contribution on this issue, I said that there was a place in our campaigning for showing what we’d stopped or would stop. We had done so very effectively in coalition with Labour in Scotland. However, we had to show our heart as a bold, radical liberal party.

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The Voice

Clegg picks Farron and Farron picks Clegg

By The Voice | Mon 16th June 2014 - 5:15 pm

We hear there’s some football tournament going on at the moment.

Yesterday’s Sunday Politics had a fairly puerile political sticker item yesterday. I really think there are better uses of Adam Fleming’s talents. Anyway, it was quite amusing to see how Nick Clegg and Tim Farron reacted to the stunt.

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Caron Lindsay

#NickvNigel: We have 2 dates – any more for the Tour?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 5th March 2014 - 10:50 am

So, not only is the BBC running a Nick vs Nigel televised debate on 2 April at 7pm on BBC2, but LBC have announced that they are running one the week before on their now national radio station. From their website:

On Wednesday 26th March at 7pm, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, will go head-to-head with UKIP leader Nigel Farage in a live hour-long programme.

The LBC Leaders’ Debate will be hosted by Nick Ferrari in front of a live studio audience in London.

The debate is taking place after the Deputy Prime Minister challenged the leader of

…

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The Voice

LDVideo: The ladder, the elephant and the bird that flies to the left

By The Voice | Sun 2nd March 2014 - 4:30 pm

Today’s Sunday Politics featured three parliamentarians putting forward new ideas for their party logos. We wonder if they actually tried to find an MP, or whether the BBC  just went to Matthew Oakeshott to give him the chance to do his traditional “Let’s get rid of Nick Clegg” pre-Conference spiel.

Anyway, here are the efforts they came up with. I actually think Halfon’s had the best rationale, although I expect a health and safety adviser would have had something to say about unsafe working practices.

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Caron Lindsay

LDVideo: Paddy Ashdown gets BBC’s Norman Smith’s name wrong

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 23rd January 2014 - 12:30 pm

On Tuesday, Paddy Ashdown was sent to do the rounds of the media outlets as a robust voice of reason. He was on a bit of a mission to tackle the idea that the Liberal Democrats were showing themselves up as not fit for government. Of course, those commentators in the media making that point didn’t balance it up with any credit for being 20% of the government but contributing so many decent policies. I mean, whatever you feel about the efficacy of raising the tax threshold as a means of tackling poverty, it’s a promise kept. As is the Pupil Premium, investing money to give disadvantaged kids the best chance in life. Then there’s the total sense on mental health. That’s an area that’s suffered from chronic underinvestment for a long time. Things won’t be sorted overnight, but it’s good to have a Deputy PM and a Health Minister who get it, who understand the effects of being dropped from all the support at the age of 18. When you live in a place like Scotland, where the Health Minister really doesn’t get it and vulnerable kids are having to wait a year to even see a psychiatrist, you really appreciate the changes happening south of the border.

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NewsHound

LDVideo: BBC’s report on the Liberal Democrats’ secret weapon, featuring Stephen Tall

By NewsHound | Wed 8th January 2014 - 12:30 pm

The BBC has been looking ahead to the Liberal Democrats’ prospects in next year’s General Election. Contributing to the report are retiring MP David Heath and our own Stephen Tall.

I should point out that our secret weapon is not Stephen’s famous pledge to run naked down Whitehall if the party is reduced to 24 seats next May.

You can watch the whole thing here.

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Newsmoggie

Jo Swinson launches size 16 mannequins

By Newsmoggie | Wed 6th November 2013 - 7:03 pm

Jo Swinson today went along to Debenhams to welcome their size 16 mannequins which have been brought in to reflect the average women. It has been intensely annoying to hear these discussed across various media, including the BBC and the Independent, as “plus size” mannequins. If your view of what a woman should look like comes from airbrushed magazines and porn rather than opening your eyes and looking at the real women around you, then, yes, you might think that size 16 was plus, but you would be wrong.

Women come in all shapes and sizes and girls should be …

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Caron Lindsay

LDVideo: Norman Lamb says he’s on a mission for better mental health care

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 16th October 2013 - 4:00 pm

Norman LambNorman Lamb has given an interview to the BBC about mental health provision after a joint BBC/Community Care magazine investigation found that 1700 mental health beds had been lost in recent years. To his credit, there was no spin from him, no excuses. He simply acknowledged that the current situation wasn’t good enough, explained what he’s already done in terms of better community care and changing the NHS Mandate to give mental health parity with physical health and finally said what he was hoping to achieve in the future.

He said:

I know that there are problems and I’m absolutely determined that we address them. We owe it to people who have mental health problems that we provide them with the best possible care that’s available to them. There are some great examples of care around the country but there are too many failures. It’s because there is institutional bias against mental health which has to end…

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Telegraph accused of Labour bias over Miliband’s dad – or was it the BBC? #LOL

By Andy Boddington | Sun 6th October 2013 - 9:36 am

Milk Bottle Politics 200I cannot help but be amused by the coverage of the affair of Ed Miliband’s dad in the Sunday Telegraph.

First up is an article declaring the “BBC accused of becoming Ed Miliband’s mouthpiece.” It seems that Andrew Bridgen, Tory MP for North West Leicestershire – a champion of a living wage for MPs – has reported Auntie to its governors for allowing Miliband to “milk” coverage for Labour’s advantage.

It’s a story on fairly thin ground, but I have long imagined that there is an old adage among right wing journalists. “If in doubt where a story is going next, bash the BBC.”

Of course party politics has had a role in the affair of Ed Miliband’s dad. But it has mostly been a debate about the nature of our press. Above it has been an examination of the character of the Mail’s journalism under Lord Rothmere and its daily weekday editor Paul Dacre. Nick Clegg was forthright on the matter: the Mail is “overflowing with bile about modern Britain”. As I said earlier, that’s just right.

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BBC bias? Yes, but not to the left researchers say

By Andy Boddington | Fri 23rd August 2013 - 12:03 pm

BBC not left biasedWriting at The Conversation, Cardiff University lecturer Mike Berry looks at whether the BBC is biased.

He concludes, despite the regular screams of left wing bias by the right wing press, that Tories get more airtime than Labour.

The BBC is not pro-EU, quite the reverse. But reportage “saw Europe almost exclusively through the prism of political infighting between Labour and the Conservatives so a rounded debate… was almost completely absent.” Voices arguing for the benefits of EU membership were, says Berry, very sparse.

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Caron Lindsay

Vince Cable: “Go home” poster vans “stupid and offensive”

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 28th July 2013 - 12:55 pm

Those of you who have not been willing to take the word of senior Liberal Democrat sources on those notorious poster vans, and have been waiting for a minister to say something will not be disappointed by Vince Cable’s comments on today’s Andrew Marr show:

It’s stupid, as Trevor Phillips said, the idea that illegal immigrants have got a sophisticated grasp of English, read at a distance and I think it is offensive. It is designed, apparently to create a sense of fear within the British population that we have a vast problem with illegal immigration. We have a problem, but

…

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NewsHound

Sarah Teather on landlord immigration checks: “I just foresee an enormous amount of misery”

By NewsHound | Tue 2nd July 2013 - 6:04 pm

Sarah TeatherSarah Teather was interviewed on The World at One about the Government’s plans to make landlords check an individual’s immigration status when they came to rent a property. She said that unless there were drastic changes to the plans, she couldn’t see herself voting for it and she said that Liberal Democrat MPs weren’t happy about it either.

She said she was worried that landlords would simply not bother to let their properties to people whose immigration status may be in doubt. She added that if the Government modelled this new …

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The Voice

No Liberal Democrat on Question Time again – who will speak up against the Snoopers’ Charter?

By The Voice | Thu 30th May 2013 - 10:48 am

Question TimeAnother week, another Question Time with no Liberal Democrat on the panel. Tonight’s episode, from London, will feature Conservative health minister Anna Soubry, former Labour  Home Secretary Alan Johnson, the New Statesman’s Mehdi Hassan, Downton Abbey author Julian Fellowes and UKIP’s Diane James.

This is the second week running that there hasn’t been a Liberal Democrat on the panel. The reason it’s serious is because ever since last week’s horrific murder in Woolwich, there has been a clamour of voices in the media, one of the loudest being Alan Johnson’s, saying …

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Caron Lindsay

Vince on dangers of immigration debate and encouraging women in business – he doesn’t seem to be in the mood for resignation

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 29th May 2013 - 9:17 pm

I thought it was supposed to be holiday season for MPs. Not for our Vince, it seems. He’s been everywhere the last couple of days. Today, the BBC reports, he has been making the point that all the hot air on immigration is going to stop the very people we need to boost our economy will be put off from coming here:

But he warned that the globalised world of university recruitment was in danger of being undermined in the UK by anxieties over immigration.

He said that the “politics of identity” which worried about immigration and the economic need for

…

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Andrew Tibbs

Opinion: Nationalists want to monitor the BBC!

By Andrew Tibbs | Tue 21st May 2013 - 12:58 pm

BBC - Some rights reserved by Tim LoudonA group of MSPs have declared that they’re going to start monitoring BBC Scotland because they don’t think they can deliver on their obligations! That should ring alarm bells!

The SNP controlled Scottish Parliament Education & Culture Committee has published a report, critical of cuts at BBC Scotland, with the implication that the Scottish arm of the Corporation would be unable to produce adequate coverage of the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the independence referendum.

The Committee forgets that BBC Scotland is one part of …

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David Howarth

Opinion: Have we changed our policy on an in-out referendum?

By David Howarth | Tue 21st May 2013 - 10:28 am

In Andrew Neil’s Sunday Politics interview with Danny Alexander, Neil asserted that we have changed our policy on an in-out referendum. Is he right?

Our position in 2008, when we walked out the Commons after being refused a debate on an in-out referendum, was that we wanted a referendum to decide whether the UK should stay in the EU in the light of the Lisbon Treaty. The Conservative position was that a referendum should decide the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty itself. The difference was perhaps subtle, but it was important. If the public voted no in the Conservative referendum, …

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Caron Lindsay

Fancy a Lib Dem numberplate?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 15th May 2013 - 1:33 pm

It’s never good when someone leaves the party, but I am sure some readers will be excited about a certain car numberplate coming back on the market.

L16 Dem was until recently on the car of former parliamentary candidate Andrew Duffield, who has been a regular commenter on this site. Now that he’s left the party and joined Labour, as the BBC reports, he understandably wants to sell it. He’s looking for £500 for it.

There were lots of oohs and aahs and shouts of “OMG, want” in the LDV office when we first saw this. Sadly, it’s way beyond my …

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David Thorpe

Opinion: We must dismantle BBC to reform it

By David Thorpe | Tue 20th November 2012 - 10:14 am

If the BBC has been feeling a little cursed of late it can at least feel blessed in having Rupert Murdoch as an enemy. For the truth is that the BBC and Murdoch need to each other to justify their own world view and block any threat to seriously reform either of their vast empires.

In much the same way as the Labour and Tory parties use each other’s existence to drown the genuinely radical voices out of British public life whilst they tinker at their edge of whichever of

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