cloudsoup

“Politicians reacted in disbelief to the revelation that for over two hours yesterday, the BBC News website carried a request for people in Iraq to report on troop movements. The request was removed from the website after it sparked furious protests that the corporation was endangering the lives of British servicemen and women. But according to accounts last night, a story on a major operation by US and Iraqi troops against al-Qa’eda somewhere north of Baghdad contained an extraordinary request for information about the movement of troops. Last night the BBC confirmed the wording of the request was: “Are you in Iraq? Have you seen any troop movements? If you have any information you would like to share with the BBC, you can do so using the form below.” The BBC confirmed last night that this form of words had appeared on the website from “late morning” until early afternoon.”

Telegraph, BBC ‘risked safety of troops’

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said,

We would take this incredibly seriously if it’s true. We are checking this with our guys out in Iraq.

The BBC’s response is ridiculous:

However, yesterday we used the phrase “have you seen any troop movements” in this request for information. The Telegraph and some others wrongly interpreted this as an attempt on our part to seek out military detail.

The BBC, Bad Phrase

How could asking for details of troop movements – Are you in Iraq? Have you seen any troop movements? not be seeking out military detail?

Finally, I know what the BBC Radio 4 comedy shows are all about:

My guess is that it’s serving the same social function as used to be perfomed by parcelling out curacies and livings to the sons who wouldn’t inherit. It saves us from the unedifying spectacle of educated people starving in the gutter.

Pootergeek, The Decline And Fall Of Radio 4 Comedy: Part XXV

The lead story on BBC Radio 4 news this morning was the split between the inbred halfwit heir to the throne and his posh bird girlfriend. The same story is lead on the BBC UK website.

Could I stop paying for it please?

update: it’s been the lead story for the entire day on the BBC

The BBC has struck a content deal with YouTube, the web’s most popular video sharing website, owned by Google.

BBC strikes Google-YouTube deal

So far so good. BBC puts content – paid for by a mandatory licence fee, non-payment of which is an imprisonable offence in the UK – onto YouTube.

Guess what? If you live in the UK, you won’t be allowed to see it.

BBC News: The news channel, which will be launched later this year, will show about 30 news clips per day. It will be advertising funded and similar to deals with Yahoo USA and Real Networks.

Because of the advertising, these clips can be seen outside the UK only. Any UK users clicking on a link to one of the news clips on YouTube will get a message that they have no access to this clip.

Madness. The only people who directly fund the BBC through a legally-enforced, highy regressive tax are the only ones not permitted to watch.

I want my money back now.

The problem is that no one has yet worked out how to generate electricity by hand wringing

Jeremy Paxman on the BBC and global warming

I saw that Nick Robinson is leaving the BBC for ITV and told Helen, who said

He is a cheesy little shitster

She’s in a bad mood at the moment. I might ask her views on this news tomorrow to see if she sticks to the same line.

The BBC has reported that Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with thallium, which The Telegraph decided was a liquid; then the Beeb suggested the poison was radioactive thallium; then became very excited over unusual objects appearing on his X-rays, though how the BBC had seen his X-rays and why they were breaching the usual confidentiality rules, they didn’t say.

The mystery of the mysterious objects mysteriously vanished as the BBC changed its mind again and decided that Litvinenko had been poisoned with Polonium.

I really don’t think this has been sensible reporting. Now, the BBC News 24 channel is telling me not to panic. As Alpha particles are readily stopped by a sheet of paper and I live around 140 miles away from the sushi bar in Piccadilly Circus in which Litvinenko was poisoned, I wasn’t feeling terribly concerned for my own health in any case.

Tom Coates writes a damaging critique of the BBC’s New Media restructuring. Damaging, specific and – who knows – maybe libellous.

Coates points out the BBC’s all-mouth-no-trousers promises that fill conference schedules but which result, practically, in nothing. He says,

there’s nothing here that’s even vaguely persuasive compared to Yahoo!, Amazon or Google. Flickr – a company that I don’t think got into double figures of staff before acquisition – has more public APIs than the BBC, who have roughly five thousand times as many staff

and then he goes on to blame an individual, someone called Ashley Highfield. It might be true, though, that the promotion of Highfield and the lack of production of stuff from the BBC compared to the tremendous work done by Yahoo, Google, Flickr et al stems from the same sclerotic, publicly-funded nature of the BBC. No customers to answer to, in effect, and no proper measure of success or failure other than the way their schemes are talked about and written about in conferences, meetings, trade journals and tame newspapers.

Remember, the BBC is funded through the most regressive tax you could imagine, it’s mandatory, non-payment is punishable by imprisonment and the guy in charge of New Media apparently can’t rotate a photo.

Did you hear about the homeopathic doctor who forgot to take his pills? Died of an overdose.

Tim Worstall,Homeopathic Malaria Treatment

Saw Simon Singh on Newsnight last evening, reporting on an investigation into homeopaths merrily touting their magic water as a malaria prophylactic. This is no longer just fleecing the gullible, this is criminal. Time to ban ‘em, i say.

On a more positive note, after the Newsnight report the Beeb showed a concert from Dakar to promote the Roll Back Malaria campaign. Highlights were Angélique Kidjo beautifully singing Malaika and Tinariwen performing Tis Metten.

Which bit of the BBC’s remit do you think this is covered by:

The Lancashire Evening Post reported that only 20 hardy souls turned up at the BBC’s costly giant screen in the northwest English city on Thursday to watch the match, after just four people and a dog braved the miserable rain for the earlier Group E games.

The public service broadcaster was slammed by one member of parliament for wasting money on the 27-metre screens dotted across the country, which cost 500,000 pounds … each and 5,000 pounds a day to operate

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