Brexit, for once some facts.

Zlatan

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And not just suggest, compel:

Between 1947 and 1963, a total of 395 National Servicemen were killed on active service.
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Still think Blair should have been prosecuted over his war...Country, individuals and Labour movement in general are still suffering consequences. Meanwhile he, s worried about his hairdo and still giving anybody with patience to listen his advice.
 

Zlatan

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I see Johnson is delighted with the Diana/BBC/Bashir issue. Much better to spout on that than the rise in R number and worrying Indian variant.
Bashir should join Blair... In prison. Both a disgrace.
BBC needs a complete overhaul. They hid Saville for years and covered for this lying idiot. Why should we pay a tax to support such a corrupt, bias, organisation. It stinks.
 

flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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Bashir should join Blair... In prison. Both a disgrace.
I don't join in with the rabble rousing. Prince William is talking nonsense in saying what Diana said was influenced by Bashir's methods. A year earlier Sir Max Hastings interviewed Diana and has confirmed she said no different to him then from what she said to Bashir about her "marriage of hell".

As for the BBC, they've been under constant political pressure and influence from at least 1948 to the present and the government have appointed their most senior people running the corporation throughout. As ever, those in government need to look in the mirror to see those ultimately responsible for the failings.
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Zlatan

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Bashir and another BBC employee had falsified Bank statements /records made. Irrelevant of anybody else's reaction or comments that single action by a BBS investigative reporter, promoted after this was known, says a great deal about the attitudes to sincere reporting within the organisation. Fact this went unpunished is actually unbelievable. It should be a police matter. I, m not defending Diana at all, merely pointing out the attitudes of those within BBC. Defend your own at any cost to the detriment of truth. Exactly the same with Saville. His behaviour was common knowledge amongst BBC staff(and some NHS) yet he was defended.
BBC is no longer bias free, probably never was, and as such does not deserve public support. Should be privatised and their monopoly (on truth?) broken.
And pointing out Bashir's behaviour re isolating Diana is not rabble rousing. It's doing what he should have been doing. Investigative journalism. He probably contributed to her death, yes indirectly, he certainly didn't help. And that was with help of our license fees paying his overblown wages.
Had he been employed by Guardian, Express, The Sun or any other cheap media outlet, well its the norm. But he wasn't. He was working for us. All of us.
He was working for an institution that tries to tell us its the epitome of unbias. It makes that attempt into a joke.
 
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flecc

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Exactly the same with Saville. His behaviour was common knowledge amongst BBC staff(and some NHS) yet he was defended.
Savile won an award from Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers' and Listeners' Association in 1977 for his "wholesome family entertainment", so it wasn't just the Beeb who had a strange idea of that.

Times change and so do standards, today's British public get hysterical over almost anything that doesn't fit their personal narrow perspective.
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mike killay

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Savile won an award from Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers' and Listeners' Association in 1977 for his "wholesome family entertainment", so it wasn't just the Beeb who had a strange idea of that.

Times change and so do standards, today's British public get hysterical over almost anything that doesn't fit their personal narrow perspective.
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But our view of Saville was what the BBC portrayed. He came over as a caring person, working as a porter at Stoke Mandeville, all those marathon runs.
The BBC covered the truth up very well and the public were fed a diet of untruths.
 

Zlatan

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Savile won an award from Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers' and Listeners' Association in 1977 for his "wholesome family entertainment", so it wasn't just the Beeb who had a strange idea of that.

Times change and so do standards, today's British public get hysterical over almost anything that doesn't fit their personal narrow perspective.
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So what Saville was doing was acceptable in 70s? Of course it wasn't. Folk have been rightly outraged at revelations about him and had it been fully known then they would have been just same then. His behaviour and the cover up by BBC was disgusting then and still is today.
Its taken 25 years for public to know Bashir was lying, BBC have known the entire time and covered it up by blaming chap who forged bank documents and not the bloke inventing their material or using them, ie Bashir.
Both incidents say more about the BBC than the individuals themselves.
Journalists making storeys up and people being secret paedophiles is nothing new, unfortunately both only too common, but state funded institutions covering up for them is utterly unacceptable. And, it says something about the ethos of the corporation. It has an illness. Its corrupt.
Bashir was doing what comes natural to journalists, exaggerating to point of lying to make a saleable product with little care of damage it does to people along the way. What was our public funded moralistic unbiased institution doing to stop him. Nothing, except selling the interview to highest bidders and promoting Bashir.
 
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jonathan.agnew

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But our view of Saville was what the BBC portrayed. He came over as a caring person, working as a porter at Stoke Mandeville, all those marathon runs.
The BBC covered the truth up very well and the public were fed a diet of untruths.
Wasn't the paedophile information exchange an officially recognised body until the early 70's? Were a curious duplicitous bunch of little islanders with worrying ways of lying to the world and ourselves about what we really are. The BBC and diana are probably the least worrying part of that.
 
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flecc

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So what Saville was doing was acceptable in 70s? Of course it wasn't. Folk have been rightly outraged at revelations about him and had it been fully known then they would have been just same then. His behaviour and the cover up by BBC was disgusting then and still is today.
Its taken 25 years for public to know Bashir was lying, BBC have known the entire time and covered it up by blaming chap who forged bank documents and not the bloke inventing their material or using them, ie Bashir.
Both incidents say more about the BBC than the individuals themselves.
Journalists making storeys up and people being secret paedophiles is nothing new, unfortunately both only too common, but state funded institutions covering up for them is utterly unacceptable. And, it says something about the ethos of the corporation. It has an illness. Its corrupt.
Bashir was doing what comes natural to journalists, exaggerating to point of lying to make a saleable product with little care of damage it does to people along the way. What was our public funded moralistic unbiased institution doing to stop him. Nothing, except selling the interview to highest bidders and promoting Bashir.
Standard Tory rant about the BBC.

They appoint the people in charge of it in the usual Old Boy network way but then don't take any reponsibility for the outcome.

Journalists making storeys up and people being secret paedophiles is nothing new, unfortunately both only too common, but state funded institutions covering up for them is utterly unacceptable.
The BBC is a part of our society and reflects it, both acted the same way in the 1970s and before, knowing all the misbehaviours but covering them up. Even the general public joined in with laughter at the innuendo jokes of comedians about scoutmasters and priests.

As I said, standards change, but some like you either forget or refuse to admit it. As Jonathan posted, paedophiles even had their own organisation which organised national meetings in London hotels until the blatancy caused a few of the public to finally kick up a fuss and force the police to act.
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Zlatan

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Wasn't the paedophile information exchange an officially recognised body until the early 70's? Were a curious duplicitous bunch of little islanders with worrying ways of lying to the world and ourselves about what we really are. The BBC and diana are probably the least worrying part of that.
I didn't realise BBC were involved in paedophile exchange but I, ll take your word for it.
The BBC is, or was, the last remaining bastion of decency in UK. It once stood for something. It once had standards... You being happy with the decline of those standards is simply part of the problem. We no longer expect good behaviour from MPs or good standards of reporting from BBC.
I do agree, on scale of things its minor. Royal Family come out looking worse, big deal. But the fact we all must contribute to BBC for right to receive the sh! te they transmit whether we listen or watch or not is the issue. It's a tax. If BBC wants poor standards, support such as Bashir, Saville and god knows how many more Liberal left elite idiots that's fine but don't expect folk to pay the license fee. Its total freedom or license fee. They want best of both worlds. State help to pump out propoganda, support the unsupportable and turn blind eyes to crime.
Had this scandal been initiated by some private media, no problem. But from BBC?? Come on, get a grip. What's happened to Valerie Singleton, John Noakes and Blue Peter. Making porn films??? Or imaginary interviews about falsified documents?
Fact we aren't upset by BBC's behaviour over quite a few issues simply points out how bad they have got and how low our expectations are.
BBC reporting on itself, when it had to. Not when they first knew about it.
Read that report, and defend the BBC. By their own admission, they could have stopped Hall commiting crimes, or put it another way. They could have stopped a 9 year old girl from being raped.
 
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jonathan.agnew

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I didn't realise BBC were involved in paedophile exchange but I, ll take your word for it.
The BBC is, or was, the last remaining bastion of decency in UK. It once stood for something. It once had standards... You being happy with the decline of those standards is simply part of the problem. We no longer expect good behaviour from MPs or good standards of reporting from BBC.
I do agree, on scale of things its minor. Royal Family come out looking worse, big deal. But the fact we all must contribute to BBC for right to receive the sh! te they transmit whether we listen or watch or not is the issue. It's a tax. If BBC wants poor standards, support such as Bashir, Saville and god knows how many more Liberal left elite idiots that's fine but don't expect folk to pay the license fee. Its total freedom or license fee. They want best of both worlds. State help to pump out propoganda, support the unsupportable and turn blind eyes to crime.
Had this scandal been initiated by some private media, no problem. But from BBC?? Come on, get a grip. What's happened to Valerie Singleton, John Noakes and Blue Peter. Making porn films??? Or imaginary interviews about falsified documents?
Fact we aren't upset by BBC's behaviour over quite a few issues simply points out how bad they have got and how low our expectations are.
BBC reporting on itself, when it had to. Not when they first knew about it.
I half agree with some of what you say (bbc last bastion of decency). But we live in a banal time of fake news, boris, runaway populism. So I'm inclined to consider the bbc as good as it gets.
 

Zlatan

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I half agree with some of what you say (bbc last bastion of decency). But we live in a banal time of fake news, boris, runaway populism. So I'm inclined to consider the bbc as good as it gets.
Thought you got BBC for free anyway??
RTE license fee, if folk I, ve spoken to about it can be believed, is even less popular than our BBC fee..???
 

oyster

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Nov 7, 2017
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But our view of Saville was what the BBC portrayed. He came over as a caring person, working as a porter at Stoke Mandeville, all those marathon runs.
The BBC covered the truth up very well and the public were fed a diet of untruths.
He came over as distasteful at the time.

He did a series of short films where he was travelling round in a some sort of vehicle with a mattress in the back. And regularly made lewd statements implying he was shafting girls everywhere he went.

I think we were supposed to be amused.
 

Danidl

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Thought you got BBC for free anyway??
RTE license fee, if folk I, ve spoken to about it can be believed, is even less popular than our BBC fee..???
Licence fees for state broadcasting channels is the norm for Europe. The UK seems cockamamie to me. Actually I remain confused whether it is mandatory or not. Websites and forums are contradictory.

The French model is simple. ..any property with at least one device capable of receiving a broadcast with image on 1st January must pay . If there's are multiple properties eg a second house, then one one fee is due. And they make no bones about it, it is a tax.
In Ireland each residence needs a separate licence.
The licence fee used to cover the existance of symphony orchestras as well as the other stuff. And in the case of the BBC and RTE a lot of valuable historical material .. social history, folklore, folk music now in their archives.
 
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Danidl

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He came over as distasteful at the time.

He did a series of short films where he was travelling round in a some sort of vehicle with a mattress in the back. And regularly made lewd statements implying he was shafting girls everywhere he went.

I think we were supposed to be amused.
I never warmed to him .. as my Mother would have put it .he was common.
 

Nev

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May 1, 2018
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But our view of Saville was what the BBC portrayed. He came over as a caring person, working as a porter at Stoke Mandeville, all those marathon runs.
The BBC covered the truth up very well and the public were fed a diet of untruths.
I don't know how wide spread it was through the NHS but I suspect it was fairly well known because I heard rumours about Saville up here in North Wales from people working for the NHS then I am sure those same rumours were circulating in places like Leeds where he did a lot of his voluntary work.

I am sure too that similar rumours would have been circulating in the BBC so we have to wonder why people were too scared to come forward, here is one possible solution.

I could be wrong with my exact figures but Saville attended Christmas lunch in Chequers and stayed there for a few days on as many as 11 separate occasions as the guest of Mrs Thatcher. He also had numerous private lunch meetings and phone calls with Mrs T. Is it even remotely likely that our security services were not aware of the rumours about Saville and that those rumours would not have been passed on to the Tory Government.

If we assume that the rumours were passed on why on earth would Thatcher want to be associated with such a man?
 
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flecc

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I could be wrong with my exact figures but Saville attended Christmas lunch in Chequers and stayed there for a few days on as many as 11 separate occasions as the guest of Mrs Thatcher. He also had numerous private lunch meetings and phone calls with Mrs T. Is it even remotely likely that our security services were not aware of the rumours about Saville and that those rumours would not have been passed on to the Tory Government.

If we assume that the rumours were passed on why on earth would Thatcher want to be associated with such a man?
Thatcher also covered up for one of her MPs over his known paedophilia. She was warned by MI5 but ignored it and they co-operated in that:

Information Link
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flecc

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The French model is simple. ..any property with at least one device capable of receiving a broadcast with image on 1st January must pay .
This part is the same in the UK, but TV's in second properties also have to have a licence.

The only exception is a full time student in residence away from home who can enjoy the cover of the licence in their family's home for their own TV.
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