Not Only ... But Also... MI5

Yesterday I was unfriended by Tony Hadoke on Facebook.  I questioned his narrative in an article he was quoted in for the Guardian or something that all the BBC's destruction of archive material was accidental.  I said we know that this is not entirely the case.  The evidence I presented comes from the late Harry Thompson's biography of Peter Cook (see here).  This recalls Peter Cook discovering the BBC was planning to destroy the master tapes of "Not Only... But Also" and writing to them pleading for them not to.  He even offered to replace the video tapes with blanks and store the originals at his own expense but the BBC bluntly refused stating this was against policy and destroyed them anyway.  Toby seemed to become very irate and advised me to "read a book" and when I responded that this was a story that I had read in a properly researched biography by a late acquaintance of mine who was a TV producer at the BBC decided to block unfriend me.  Reader, I am heartbroken.  

Of course, this is only one incident in one book and perhaps we shouldn't read too much into it but it shows a case where an author and performer who clearly shared the copyright with the BBC wrote to them and literally begged them not to destroy the only existing copies of his performance and the BBC callously ignored his pleas.  Why? Was it because Equity feared that repeats would destroy work for new actors?  Was it a policy?  Ironically I can't tell you the exact story because it's in a 500 page book that I sent to the Saint Christopher's Charity Shop at the end of last year because I didn't regard it as of enough cultural value to hang onto but copies are out there somewhere for some keen archivist to recover.  I did find the contemporaneous news article linked to above however where Harry mocks the BBC for having the cheek to call their VHS "The Best of ... What's left of" when it's pretty much the only extant material, most of which was illegally filmed live off his own TV by the Producer who feared his creations being wiped... As indeed they were.  "That's why the so-called classic scenes from the series are the only ones you ever see," said Mr Thompson, "It's the only ones they've got." That's all there is, there isn't any more... as Ethel Barrymore used to say.

Toby touts the view that all this destruction was accidental and no doubt much of it was.  Videotape was expensive and reusable so many tapes were simply reused.  However, there were still political decisions to be made about what was and was not important.  The Telegraph (which like a broken clock is sometimes right twice a day) claimed that recordings were ranked on a scale of A to E and the responsibility of deciding what to tape over was made by individual producers.  But someone still had to come up with the ranking system and categorise things.  That's a political decision.  

Now we do also know that despite it's much vaunted independence from the government that from the late 1930s until 1984, MI5 stationed an intelligence officer (latterly Ronnie Stonham) at the BBC to vet editorial applicants because this was revealed by a 1985 Observer investigation. The personnel records of anyone suspicious were stamped with a distinctively shaped green upward-facing arrow resembling a Christmas tree.  Barry Letts who had strong left leaning political credentials expressed some astonishment of having ever made it through such a vetting process.  Many journalists were blacklisted.  Now, it's a bit of a leap to say from this that the BBC had a deliberate policy of deleting potentially embarrassing material but it's not a conspiracy theory to suggest that MI5 was at the BBC to shape policy and that by extension the policy of what to select for deletion and preservation may have been shaped in some way by such an arrangement.  So...

I suggested there might be a political angle to these decisions.  By that I don't mean that some producer sat down and decided to record over Peter Cook's tapes out of malevolence or personal spite (although someone clearly personally tipped him off) but there might be an element of prejudice in what was selected for deletion which could contain political motivations.  After all, if you were a 70s producer and you had to select something to tape over because that was your job you'd probably select something you didn't like - if it was me there'd be no Test Match Specials or old episodes of Question Time or... That might seem a leap but here's an example from my own life (sorry, if it's not in a book yet - I'm too busy to write one)...

A few years back YouTube decided to delete my Pear Shaped in Iraq YouTube channel.  After a two year investigation by the Data Commissioner it was recovered and restored.  Google claimed that this was because the channel had been deleted in error and it has to delete material because of the sheer volume of material uploaded to YouTube.... and this may be true but I have another personal private channel the public can't even see that's never been deleted and you'd have to be the world's least skeptical person not to ever get an itchy chin given the political nature of the material.  

Data deletion and selection for deletion isn't a problem that's going away because of changes in technology.  Indeed, with more data being produced than ever before there will be more problems than ever before.  But I doubt these things will ever affect Toby personally because despite being far more widely read than me and spending centuries in the BBC Archives he's not exactly Woodward and Bernstein.  Then again, is this the same Toby Hadoke who was moaning only the other day about new restrictions on access to the BBC Written Archives?  Clearly just another technocratic commercial decision with no political dimensions... Chinny rub.  I mean, it just possible, isn't it? that whilst Toby's researches seldom throw up anything more controversial than which extra played  the 4th Zarbi in 1965 ... some researcher of more historically and culturally sensitive data...

I also questioned whether the BBC's claims that it's deletion of material was just "standard industry practice" holds up to scrutiny.  The level of material deletion in the 70s and 80s varied a lot partly because of the regional franchise model of ITV creating a lot of autonomous regional franchises but some people had a more careful attitude towards their archiving.  Much of the material Lew Grade of ATV produced still exists because he insisted on using film so they couldn't be taped over and even filmed in colour before Britain had colour TV so that he could maximise overseas sales.  Meanwhile the BBC at the beginning of the 70s was left with a lot of black and white footage that was hard to sell abroad because it was late to the colour market producing eventually big archive gaps at the end of the 60s as few film video transfers for overseas sales were made....  Still PAL produced a better and more stable picture than NSTC so swings and roundabouts...  

Anyway I must hurry on over to Draft 2 Digital now to turn this into a book so it becomes TRUE.

Garfield has gone... to BlueSky

I was wandering down the sewer of twitter/X the other day when I finally wondered why I never see Garfield there anymore despite following him.  It seems Garfield gave up posting in 2023.  Maybe he's got nothing to plug at the moment, or maybe Twitter is no longer a healthy environment for family entertainment or maybe there's no room for him with the 10 Stalinist style Elon puppet accounts that follow me every week... But he's still on BlueSky so I guess it's Elon he hates... and Mondays...

Ah Mr Farage...

 

Ah Mr Farage, with your two stamped addressed envelopes simply begging to be filled with anonymous hate mail you are really spoiling us!

X Canon Fodder

 

X/Twitter continues it's descent into the sewer as my timeline now appears full of Russian proxies wittering on about "Europe poking the bear".  It really is a sewer of the maddest people.  Fanatics who go on about God.  Atheists who go on about God.  Anti-vaxers offering sage advice on how your child will "just recover from measles".  Members of the GOP stating NATO should be abolished because the threats disappeared with the USSR (wasn't the only time Article 5 has been invoked after 9/11)?  Yeah wanted us then.  Piers Morgan giving a platform to some unpleasant incel who giggles that "Hitler was cool".  The newspapers are full of NATO leaders telling us to be ready for war.  A lot of hard work has been undertaken by a lot of people to bring all civilisation to the brink of WWIII. It's all depressing and there is no jollity.  Shoplifting is at a record high as the pigs are too busy locking up Palestine Action protesters to crack down on organised crime.  Was it always like this?  But peak creepy goes to this video from Russian Television of Cadets at the Kremlin looking forward to becoming canon fodder promoted by a homophobic nutter.  None of the cadets are women but every one has a woman.  Surely statistically someone should be on their tod?  Russia's current deaths are probably somewhere north of 450000... So about half way to WWI casualty rates ...so we all know that if Putin withdrew now his regime would undoubtedly collapse politically so Trump's peace plans are piffle...  A lot of people have worked very hard to plunge us into WWIII.  I hope they're very proud...

🇷🇺 Over 3 thousand young cadets at the Xth Jubilee Kremlin Charity Ball.

That’s cool, no LGBT crap and such.

pic.twitter.com/bCL7LcA3Fv

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) December 10, 2025

Whopper of the Day

 

Sitting Labour MP Tulip Siddiq recently told the BBC that no one had contacted her about her corruption conviction in Bangladesh.  She simply read about it in the newspapers and they should have written to her at the Palace of Westminster.

In fact the Bangladesh's Anti-Corruption Commission have been perusing the case since December 2024.  She resigned as a Minister in January 2025.  In April the ACC issued it's arrest warrant.  She was tried in-absentia alongside 26 others, on 11 August and found guilty this week.  Her Lawyers say the charges are "politically motivated" and that the ACC had not brought forward any evidence to support its arrest.

Yet she only just found out about it.

The Labour Party refuses to remove the whip.

Gaslighting of the day

Magna Carter : "NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right".

This section of Magna Carter remains active in British Law.  It has been watered down over the years by concepts such as Fixed Penalty Notices and non-indictable offences but it remains a major inconvenience to successive governments.

David Lammy : "Magna Carta was a protest against state failure. If its authors saw the delays in our courts today, they would not urge us to cling rigidly to tradition. They would demand action.*

Well, that's a whopper, innit.  Magna Carter was not a protest against state failure.  The Barons we'rent protesting that public services weren't as good as they used to be.  They were protesting against unchecked executive power.

The fact is the government's many political prosecutions often against protestors across the political spectrum fall apart time and time again because when it's cases get before a jury they're not having it.

The solution to the backlog in the justice system is not the abolition of the justice system in favour of Kangaroo Courts or Star Chambers, it is the reversal of decades of underfunding.

Bone idle

I'm not saying the Royal Family are lazy but Tom Baker finally wins an MBE at 92 and no actual Royal Family member can be arsed to turn up.  The Lieutenant of Kent, Lady Colgrain is sent along instead.  There are 800 MBEs each year and about 7 "full time working" Royals?  If they divvied them up that's about 100 or so each? Okay, they're recently down a Prince or two but come on... Bone idle!

They don't make things like they used to

Proof they don't make things like they used to.  This phone charger is held together entirely by friction... As I discovered when it electrocuted me.

Hell hath no fury like Marjorie Taylor Green

 

Once upon a time Up the Creek used to have a Sunday night gig with the open spots sandwiched in the middle.  There would be an opening 20 from a pro act, and then the open spots, another interval , another 20 set and another interval and then the closer.  Malcolm Harder used to kind of set up the open spots for failure and part of the entertainment was watching the new acts get booed off.  I didn't get booed off but knowing Malcolm's modus operandi, I kind of sat at the back antisocially until it was time to go on.  So without any ammunition from casual conversation, Malcolm introduced me as "some bloke at the back who I know nothing about, probably a peadophile".  I went on, there were a few heckles.  I went over them.  It was okay.  However, Malcolm's over the top defamatory introduction stayed with me and I found it amusing so I put it on my CV for a while until someone said "Take that off.  Some people won't take it as a joke and peado stuff is something no one ever forgives anyone for." Sage advice.  I did.  But it made me wonder if Trump has finally done something the public will never forgive him for - I'm not saying he actually did anything but it's interesting that the Epstein files are a subject that Republican Congressmen and Senators finally seems willing to break ranks for.  Of course MTG has been breaking ranks for a long time over Israel (I did not have her on my anti-Zionist bingo card) and other issues... But it's a bit of a shock that such a close Trump acolyte is prepared to go this far.  After all, it wouldn't be the first time Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct... Meanwhile, I read that in Georgia the state level RICO prosecution for January 6th crimes is still ongoing with a new prosecutor being brought in to replace F Willis... Perhaps he hasn't evaded justice (and a constitutional crisis) after all...

Fake Admiral Arrested

A 64-year-old man has been charged following an investigation into a suspected fake admiral at a Remembrance Sunday event.  "Captain Birdseye", from the Feltum area of Gwynedd, is accused of wearing uniform bearing the mark of His Majesty's Forces without permission.  Images widely circulated in the press, television and on social media showed a man wearing the uniform and medals of a high-ranking navy officer whilst surrounded by children in Llandudno on 9 November.  He will appear at Caernarfon Magistrates' Court on Thursday, 11 December.

Chief Inspector Trystan Bevan said: "We understand that this incident has caused significant public concern, particularly given his assertion that only the best is good enough for the Captain's table.  We cannot have civilians dressing up in uniforms they have not earned.  Who do these people think they are? The Royal Family?  In response to the reports made to North Wales Police, officers have responded swiftly to make an arrest and proceed with charges.  We urge members of the public to avoid online speculation and to refrain from sharing any content that could compromise future court proceedings such as fish fingers, frozen scampi or other frozen food products.

Whopper of the Day with Grok

 

Grok 4 there - with some classic whoppers, cherry picking, pretending that there are numerical reports produced by Ofcom, pretending Ofcom reports say one thing when they say the reverse. pretending a one man band called News-Watch which ran out of funding is a genuine academic analysis, pretending the BBC has always been regulated by Ofcom and not knowing Martin Scorsese from Quinten Tarrentino but saying it all with enormous confidence.

What's really scarey is that this nonsense is only applied to politics at the moment.  

What when the LLMs get implanted in cars and androids?

Chutzpah

 

The chutzpah of the man who incited the January 6th riots complaining that he was misrepresented after pardoning all his rioters is off the scale.  Does anyone really understand why Tim Davie seemingly resigned over one edit in a 2 hour speech - is Panoarma supposed to be 2 and a half hours now?  Why does an edit in a speech that happened over 5 years ago and was broadcast over a year ago really matter to anyone?  Doubtless he was going to stand down soon anyway and thinks that this will pacify critics of the BBC but that's not how fascists work.  As can be seen on the left, Mr Trump is a bully with no grace who gloats at the elimination of his enemies like a James Bond supervillan.  All this disctraction in the same week that Donald Trump pardoned Rudy Giuliani over attempt to overturn 2020 election.  He pardoned all the rioters on his first day in office too, just in case anyone had any doubts over how sticky his fingers were over attempts to steal that election.

Michael Prescott who wrote the 8000 word "note" ...in effect a shopping list of complaints was an "External Advisor" to the BBC for which we the Licence Fee payers shelled out £15,000 a year.  He was contracted by the "Serota Review, the BBC Board has decided that the Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee would benefit from additional editorial advice from editorial experts with significant experience outside the BBC".  Clearly he spent all his time coming up with specious complaints which everyone got bored listening to.  The Serota Review (named after a bloke who used to work at the Tate who conducted it) was brought about in part by Martin Bashir's 1995 interview with Princess Diana in which he told her a series of absolute whoppers in order to get Diana to admit there was adultery with Camilla in her marriage.  We're now conveniently for the establishment not allowed to watch this documentary again despite the fact that the essence of what was said (that Charlie and Camilla were lovers) remains true and Diana is pushing up the daisies in the center of the Oval Lake at Althorp Park and cannot possibly be hurt by its content anymore.

Prescott identifies terrible innacuracies in BBC reporting such as "Despite growing concerns that this new methodology was unreliable, the UN and media outlets, including the BBC, reported that 70 per cent of all those killed in Gaza were women and children. Eventually the UN reviewed and revised down the figure to 52 per cent"

Quite right.  We wouldn't want to get wrong the proportion of women and children that Bibi has genocided in plain sight.

Other specious complaints include "Mass graves.  In April, 2024, and again in June, the BBC covered two stories relating to the discovery of mass graves in Gaza. The first was discovered at Al Nasser hospital and the second at Al Shifa.  The strong implication in the coverage was that Israeli forces had buried hundreds of bodies at both sites prior to withdrawing from the area. The source for both stories was the Hamas controlled Gaza Civil Defence Agency. This was not reflected in the coverage. The internal report to the EGSC flagged: “There was no independent corroboration of allegations of war crimes, including alleged evidence of summary executions, torture and bodies found with their hands tied together”.One online story incorrectly implied a UN official had corroborated the reports of hands being tied." <- Unfortunately they did (“Among the deceased were allegedly older people, women and wounded, while others were found tied with their hands…tied and stripped of their clothes,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.). 

But there is no point in correcting these errors.  Mr Prescott and his fellow travellors are simply trying to batter the BBC into submission by sheer quantity of output.

All of Trump's attempts to subvert the January 6th election are recorded in detail on Jack Smith's report (his prosecutions had to be aborted when Trump's re-election gave him immunity again:

E. Mr. Trump's Supporters Attack the United States Capitol

Mr. Trump's efforts to remain in power converged and culminated on January 6, the day that Mr. Biden was to be certified President. That day, Mr. Trump was scheduled to speak at the Ellipse to the crowd of supporters he had summoned to Washington with false claims of election fraud. 94 At around 1 :00 a.m. on the morning of January 6, Mr. Trump tweeted: "If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency. Many States want to decertify the mistake they made in certifying incorrect & even fraudulent numbers in a process NOT approved by their State Legislatures (which it must be). Mike can send it back!"  Just before he left the White House to give his speech at the Ellipse, Mr. Trump phoned Mr. Pence one last time;  when Mr. Pence told Mr. Trump that he planned to issue a public statement making clear that he lacked the authority to do what Mr. Trump wanted, Mr. Trump expressed anger at him.  He then directed staffers to re-insert into his planned Ellipse speech some language that he had drafted earlier targeting Mr. Pence.  During his speech at the Ellipse,  Mr. Trump made one more attempt to retain power. In his remarks, Mr. Trump repeated many of the same lies he had been telling for monthsregarding dead voters, non-citizen voters, and vote dumps-and he told newer ones: lies that targeted states wanted to change their electors and that Mr. Pence had the authority, and might be persuaded, to change the election results.  The lie regarding Mr. Pence was particularly deceptive because Mr. Trump knew what his supporters in the crowd did not: that Mr. Pence had just told him in no uncertain terms that he would not do what Mr. Trump was demanding.  Mr. Trump told the crowd-a crowd of his supporters that he had remarked to advisors the night before was "angry" -that the election had been stolen and the country would no longer exist if this purported crime were not stopped; and that the discovery of "fraud" licensed them to "go by very different rules."  Although Mr. Trump at one point also told his supporters to "peacefully and patriotically make [their] voices heard," he used the word "fight" more than ten times in the speech before concluding by directing his supporters to march to the Capitol to give allied Members of Congress "the kind of pride and boldness they need to take back our country."  He also told the angry crowd that "if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."  Throughout the speech, Mr. Trump gave his supporters false hope that through such action, they could cause Mr. Pence to overturn the election results, even improvising new lines directed at Mr. Pence as the speech went on. 

At Mr. Trump's urging, thousands of his supporters marched from the Ellipse to the Capitol building.  There, Mr. Pence began the certification at around 1 :00 p.m.  Outside the building, the crowd swelled and broke through barriers cordoning off the grounds.  The crowd that attacked the Capitol was filled with Mr. Trump's supporters, as made clear by their Trump shirts, signs, and flags.  As described in detail below, the crowd violently attacked the law enforcement officers attempting to secure the building.  

After his speech, Mr. Trump returned to the White House and, at around 1 :30 p.m., settled in the dining room off of the Oval Office.  There, he watched television news coverage of events at the Capitol and reviewed Twitter on his phone.  When the angry crowd advanced on the Capitol building and breached it at around 2: 13 p.m., forcing the Senate to recess,  several of Mr. Trump's advisors rushed to the dining room and told him that a riot had started at the Capitol and that rioters were in the building.  Over the course of the afternoon, they forcefully urged Mr. Trump to issue calming messages to his supporters.  Mr. Trump resisted, repeatedly remarking that the people at the Capitol were angry because the election had been stolen. 

Just before 2:24 p.m., the news channel playing on the television in the dining room where Mr. Trump was sitting aired an interview with an individual marching from the Ellipse to the Capitol, who expressed his anger at Mr. Pence and stated, "But I still believe President Trump has something else left."  Then, at 2:24 p.m., sitting alone, Mr. Trump issued a Tweet attacking Mr. Pence and fueling the riot: "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previouslycertify. USA demands the truth!"  One minute later, the United States Secret Service was forced to evacuate Mr. Pence to a secure location at the Capitol. 126 When an advisor at the White House learned this, he rushed to the dining room and informed Mr. Trump, who replied

"So what?" 

The rioters at the Capitol had been motivated and directed by Mr. Trump, and he continued to resist advisors' requests to direct them to leave. Throughout the afternoon, crowds at the Capitol hunted for Mr. Pence and other lawmakers, with some chanting, "Hang Mike Pence!"  At 2:38 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., Mr. Trump issued two Tweets falsely suggesting that events at the Capitol were "peaceful" and asking individuals there (whom he termed "WE") to remain that way: "Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on theside of our Country. Stay Peaceful!" and, "I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order-respect the Law 

and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!"  At 4: 17 p.m., he tweeted a video

message in which he for the first time asked his supporters to leave the Capitol-while at the

same time falsely claiming that "[w]e had an election that was stolen from us ... a landslide

election," and embracing the people who had attacked the Capitol, telling them "we love you,

you're very special."  And at 6:01 p.m., he tweeted, "These are the things and events that

happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped

away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love

& in peace. Remember this day forever!" At around the same time as he issued his 6:01 p.m. Tweet, Mr. Trump tried to reach two United States Senators, and he also directed Co-Conspirator 1 to call Members of Congress and attempt to enlist them to further delay the certification.  When Mr. Trump's White House Counsel called him at around 7:00 p.m. and asked him to withdraw any objections to the

certification, Mr. Trump refused.  Nonetheless, the certification resumed late in the evening of January 6 and, at 3:41 a.m. on January 7, Mr. Pence announced the certified results of the 2020

presidential election in favor of Mr. Biden. As he did in his 4:17 p.m. and 6:01 p.m. Tweets on January 6, Mr. Trump has providedadditional evidence of his intent by continuing to support and ally himself with the people whoattacked the Capitol. He has called them "patriots"  and "hostaoes " reminisced about January 6 as a "beautiful day,"  and championed the "January 6 Choir," a group of January 6

defendants who, because of their dangerousness, are detained at the District of Columbia jail. 

Remember Remember

 When Guy Fawkes was caught trying to blow up Parliament we got a cultural festival out of it.  

But in the boring 21st century MI5 have foiled 43 terrorist plots since 2017 and we haven't got one fucking poem out of it.  It's time to fix this so...

Remember, remember!

The 22nd of December,

Richard Reid tried to ignite his trainer

I know of no reason

Why shoes with semtex in 

Should not be in a poem!

Reid and the Taliban 

Did the scheme contrive,

To blow Boeing passengers

All up alive.

Two hollowed out shoes he had set to blow

but his sweaty feet made the fuse too damp so

by Allah's providence, him they did catch,

after the passengers beat him up when he lit a match!

Misleading Statistic of the Day

It's hard to keep up with all the whoppers in the world today but I particularly enjoyed this one from Liz Truss.  Here Mr Sentance is showing the rate of change of GDP per decade not GDP per decade to decieve the reader that this is actual GDP and to make it even more opaque the statistics for each year are first annualised and then added together and averaged over a ten year period rather than just being cumulitatively averaged.  

A GDP graph that hadn't been differentiated to show the rate of change of GDP rather than GDP would look like this... 

Dog whistle of the week

 

Stones of Blood

The Seeds of Rhinoplasty

Due to them wearing out and my VHS player being increasingly hard to service (it's a beautiful piece of engineering inside), I invested a great deal of £s in updating my Doctor Who VHS collection to DVD.  That's it I thought.  A good investment.  After all VHS had only half the picture quality of DVD which can faithfully reproduce all 625 lines on an old cathode ray tube but slightly flatter. But blow-me-down-with-an-industrial-wind-machine if the BBC didn't find a way to milk their old content further by releasing it on Blu-ray.  Well, I can't afford that at £50 a go, no matter how many extras they put on.  No disrespect to Toby Hadoke & Co but I don't want to pay their pension.  Particularly since at the same time the BBC made almost all old Dr Who free on iPlayer.  

Free FOI Use Of Public

So imagine my schadenfreude when I discovered there were problems with the Blu-rays & the BBC in an attempt to drain more money from fans had applied dodgy AI upscaling filters that give Sarah Jane a cleft palette, straighten Tom Baker's crooked teeth like they're selling unnecessary dental work, make old people look like they've had the world's worst facelifts or are filtered TikTok influencers who've had plastic surgery to make them look like their own filters ...and dyslexicly (is that a word?) rewrite the words on the TARDIS door in dodgy fonts...  

Terror of the
Zygoma reduction plasty

All because some people bought massive 92 inch TVs on which you can see the CRT lines.  Not that anyone's really crying out for AI "upscaling", it's just people inventing themselves work.  I do have the Spearhead from Space Bluray as this was entirely made on film so there is extra quality to be mined but that's it ... How much more blood can they get out of these stones...?

So three cheers for my not-so-old DVDs where everyone doesn't look like they've been replaced by an Auton.  The past is another country ... and eventually they're going to reach a point where there's no one to bring back to do DVD extras anymore because everyone will have passed on.  Which is a shame because the thing that makes "classic" Doctor Who DVDs so much fun is everyone on the commentaries etc is now retired and can be brutally honest about what they actually thought of their colleagues at the time without the fear of losing work.  

The Artificial Intelligence Invasion 

I look forward to the fully immersive holographic 2040 Whateveritisthen editions of "New Who" which faithfully recreate an old Cathode Ray Tube TV with glass and broadcast signal distortions being released with Christopher Eccleston telling us what he really thinks of RTD and Captain Jack's naked body eventually...

Not that anyone's really bitchy on the commentaries but you can tell the diplomacy filter is switched off in most of the contributors.  It being new content they're selling no one's going to let the side down say "Well, that was a bit pants" on a New Who commentary.  The occasionally brutal honesty is the fun really...

In other Doctor Who news the BBC are still trying to prise old film prints off miserly film collectors but are stuck in probate processes.  I upset someone on X by refering to these collectors as misers.  I do apologise.  Its very generous of them not to just be buried with their film collections like a modern day Tutankhamun.  Let's not get into the ethics of whether these prints should have been returned to BBC Enterprises to be destroyed.  We know for a fact that when Peter Cook contemporaneously offered to store the old copies of "Not Only... but Also" to save them from landfill, the BBC refused on policy grounds and destroyed them anyway.  They're all out there somewhere, dumpster divers!  According to the unreliable narrator that is Ian Levine when he walked into BBC Enterprises on behalf of JNT all 7 positives and all 7 negatives of "The Daleks" were sitting on a table marked "to be junked" because they didn't understand that the main archive had been purged as ruthlessly as one of Stalin's Politburos...

But anyway... the BBC have generously promised to broadcast a new episode in December 2026 after the Disney deal finally fell apart ... and before Christmas they'll be releasing the War Between Land And Sea spin-off that nobody asked for but ... Let's keep an open mind...  Apparently post production takes almost a year these days... With the result that everyone thought "The Interstellar Song Contest" was a comment on the War in Gaza despite the script being written before it started.  Maybe there's something to be said for leaving a few bloopers in and doing it stupidly quickly on a shoestring...

Dukes of Hazzard...

... is the Palace's new descriptor for Andrew and Harry.  Well, no one made Harry write a tell-all autobiography.  But similarly, no one made Andrew, Fergie, Beatrice or Eugenie go round Epstein's house after he had been convicted.  They were all grown arse responsible adults visiting a known sex trafficer, probably because Andrew & Fergie owed him money.  

I don't think there's a spin doctor in Christendom that can polish a turd that large.  No wonder that Prince Charles is praying with Pope Leo.  They need God's help ...because only a miracle will get them out of this hole.  And probably not even one of those ... which I doubt our Father in heaven is in a hurry to perform...

The BBC's struggle to "both sides" an illegal war of aggression against Iran

Reference CAS-8130880-D8Y3R8

 

Dear Mr Miller,

Many thanks for following up your comments about Panorama: Trump, Israel and the War on Iran. 

We're sorry you had to come back to us and can appreciate why. We always aim to address the specific points raised by our audience and regret any cases where we’ve failed to do this. The previous reply didn’t tackle the precise points you raised, and we’d like to offer you a new response here. The following should now be considered your first reply. 

You make the point about the legality of the Israel-Iran war. However, it’s not for the BBC to make a judgement about whether a war is or is not illegal. That is a decision for the courts. Our role is to give the audience the relevant information to make up their own minds. The programme reflected contrasting views on the validity of the war - we heard from representatives of Iran and Israel - so viewers could make this decision for themselves. 

We understand you were unhappy with the way the interviews with Ohad Tal and Tzipura Hotovely were conducted. Mr Tal and Ms Hotovely were allowed to speak uninterrupted; this wasn’t because we wanted to promote either of these perspectives, but simply the style of interview which we thought was most appropriate to the programme. It was also consistent with others who were interviewed for it, such as Seyed Ali Mousavi, who was putting forward the Iranian perspective. The programme aimed to give a balanced overview and presented opposing views so the audience could draw their own conclusions. We understand you disagree with the way the information was presented, but we’re happy these were appropriate and duly impartial interviews. 

We also understand you are concerned that conflict between Syria and Israel was not explored in the programme. The programme was focused on the war between Iran and Israel. Time constraints in a thirty-minute programme mean it’s not possible to include all the background information about relations between Israel and all its neighbours. Decisions about what to cover are a matter of editorial discretion for programme makers, and we’re happy the decision here was appropriate, and would not have misled the audience as to the nature of the Israel-Iran war. 

You also expressed concerns that there is no section on the BBC’s website covering Israel-Syria relations. While we’ve reflected the ongoing tensions between the two countries in our coverage, and have explored their relationship, we don’t think it’s necessary at this point to have a specific section on our website addressing this. We will of course keep this under review and pass on your comments to the relevant senior managers who look after the BBC website. 

For the reasons we’ve set out in this response, we’re happy this programme was duly impartial and accurate. We’re grateful for your feedback on it, which has been passed to the Panorama editorial team – we hope this response helps explain our position.

If you’d like to understand how your complaint is handled at the BBC, you might find it helpful to watch  the short film on the BBC Complaints website about how the BBC responds to your feedback.  It explains the BBC’s process for responding to complaints, what to do if you aren’t happy with your response and how we share the feedback we receive.

Thanks again for getting in touch.

Kind regards,

BBC Complaints Team 

www.bbc.co.uk/complaints 

 

Please note: this email is sent from an unmonitored address so please don’t reply. If necessary please contact us through our webform (please include your case reference number).

Welcome to Britain and Destitution

 

Last night I watched Panorama on Asylum Hotels.  Perhaps one of the reasons people feel so strongly about this issue is they feel the hotels provide a safety net which isn't there for the rest of society as since asylum seekers were banned from seeking work (by Tony Blair under the 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act) the government has a responsibility to house them as they can't possibly fend for themselves.  In 2005 Tony tightened the rules again so that only after waiting 12 months for a decision could an asylum seeker apply for permission to work. And thus the "asylum hotel" was born... In 2010, an additional caveat was added restricting this to undertaking work specified on the government’s shortage occupation list. The list specifies particular professional roles that asylum seekers may apply to work in, such as radioactive waste management, sonograp, visual effects animation, or skilled classical ballet dancers who meet international standards.  That should keep them on their toes.  Unable to work because politicians decided it caused too much resentment and unable to not work because their hotels are picketed by Farage's friends, these people would probably be better off taking their chances in Iraq or Syria...? but it's too late now ...

Unfortunately, most of the asylum seekers in the documentary were not skilled classical ballet dancers who meet international standards, had remedial or non-existent English and after successfully navigating the channel in a dingy and Home Office beaurocracy to claim their precious indefinite leave to remain discovered that, of course, their local authorities had no automatic responsibility to find them Council accomodation and couldn't find them private rental accomodation either and, of course , under new rules they can't bring their family over either which was one reason many had chosen Britain over, say, Germany which still absorbs the majority... With the result that in 56 days they were turfed out their hotels onto pavements to sleep rough making it even harder to find a job and locking them into the homelessness trap.  You really have to wonder why on earth people come here. A minor civil servant described helping people through the cycle of grief this caused: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance of a cardboard box to sleep in.  Imagine imagining there's a safety net.  Still, welcome to Britain ... You're now one of us with an inalienable right to destitution.  Surely not even the workhouse was as cruel as this system?

I watched a bit of the Dennis Neilson documentary too which seemed to follow similar themes somehow ...with it's stories of young unskilled men who came to London to discover that the Councils had no real responsibility to house them and their future was sleeping in cardboard city, becoming rent boys or being picked up and murdered by the man behind the counter in the local Job Centre.  Only 6 or 7 of Neilson's victims were ever identified.... The rest... Apart from the Bullring cardboard city being turned into an IMAX cinema, we really seem to have gone nowhere as a society.

Dot Cotton Corner - Zionism & God's promises to Abraham

A lot of Zionists on Twitter have been telling me recently that if I don't believe God gave Israel to the Jews for all time then I do not believe in God's promises and cannot call myself a Christian.  Actually I don't call myself a Christian but it's worth considering what the New Testament actually says on this issue and an explanation for what happens to God's promise after the birth of Christ is given explicitly by the Apostle Paul.  "The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture [Genesis 22:18] does not say "and to seeds," meaning many people, but "and to your seed," meaning one person, who is Christ... There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" Galatians 3:16

Christianity officially split from Judeism at the Council of Jerusalem when Paul junked circumcision and the dietary laws as bad box office.  This meeting is recalled in Chapter 15 of the Acts of the Apostles.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.