A Rather Scathing Review of the BBC's Impartiality

[Coot]

A retired research scientist from Cambridge is refusing to pay his television licence fee in protest at the BBC's uncritical coverage of the European Union. "We are moving towards an oppressive super-state yet the BBC gives us very little real information about it," he says. "It reminds me of Soviet propaganda. It really does."

On the face of it, the comparison sounds a little excessive. But this particular licence refusenik, Vladimir Bukovsky, has actually spent 12 years of his life in Soviet psychiatric hospitals and prison camps. As a civil rights campaigner, he did more than anyone else to expose the persecution of dissidents during the Brezhnev era.

Earlier this month, Bukovsky stood outside the reception of Broadcasting House and took a pair of scissors to a giant facsimile of his licence. Needless to say, there were no BBC television cameras present to record the event but it will have acutely embarrassed the corporation at a time when the Eurosceptic campaign against BBC bias is gathering pace.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/12/27/nmed27.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/12/27/ixhome.html

[ShinyTop]

I have been surprised at how easily England has given up freedoms and beliefs to join the EU. The EU as an economic union made sense. When I began hearing about their stance on crime and other issues I became worried. Nothing liberal in this country goes as far as their regulations.

[ethics]

Figures it took a Sovie to get some attention on this manner. As Shiny pointed out, the biggest asset of joining is the economic reasons, for some countries and people it's also the movement within.

[Jedi Writer]

I lived and worked in England many years ago. At the time I was really impressed by and thoroughly enjoyed the BBC. They were the best of the best.

After I left I lost touch with them for many years. Than several years ago I started being a regular contributor to their online programing. Unfortunately, during my contact with them is became appalling obvious that they had become extremely biased and in many cases deliberately inaccurate in just reporting non-political facts.

I finally called some of the editors on it. Their response was a watered down version of who cares? Bugger off!

Eventually, I just stopped contributing.

Then when 911 happened, I like most other Americans was glued to the television. I watched MSNBC, CNN, Fox, CSPAN and the BBC. It was the American networks finest hours--without a doubt! I could only take one day of BBC. The pompous, ignorant, propaganda, irrelevant topics and lets bash American slant they took were appalling. They were terrible.

[yazdzik]

Dear Friends,
Lest we miss the deepest level of the problem, there was, and ought to remain an inherent rift between English common law countries and the Europeans.
Jus Romanum is not common law. It is based upon the right of the government to govern inherently, and the government morphosis exists as a natural phenomenon, independent of volitionality of contract. Common law, developed since the time of the magna carta, exists as a body of knowledge gained by exploring the relationships among individuals in a society governed by contracts freely entered into by those individuals.
There is no possibility of England both joining the EU, rather than what was the EEC, and remaining England. The legal systems are so wildly disparate that no one understanding the rights of an Englishman and Staatsgewalt could possibly suggest a melding of the cultures. The BBC, as many other left-wing British lunatic organisations, populated by pseudo-intellectuals whose smattering of superficial debating knowledge passes for education today, needs, in order to justify its own megalithic autonomy, a euro-socialist government. Since that is sui generis incompatible with common law, where property and contracts form the basis for ethical action, thus giving absolute freedom to the moral and spiritual side of the individual, the absorption of England into the continent serves the purpose of the builders of monoliths.
In short, the possession of the megalith, given the leaning toward egomania inherent in humans, will result, often, in the building of a monolith.
Today, facts are more widely dispersed than meanings well digested; the facts of law, its enumerations, so to speak, and its vitality, are not the same.
The BBC will, in all likelihood, create sufficient public support for economic wealth being more important than legal spirit, that England, as a real country, will cease to exist, leaving the US alone as the inheritor of the doctrine of rights of the individual.
To those who only fear, el qaeda is an imminent and terrifying danger; to those who think and feel, Europe is an eternal and insidious one. To argue that the BBC is not a terrorist organisation shows pitiful lack of imagination.

All good wishes,
Yazdzik

[halldor]

I think this is all something of an over-reaction, and I suppose it takes an ex-Soviet dissident to start drawing parallels with the Soviet Union.

Most people here are healthily sceptical of the EU, to the extent that any referendum on the euro would at present yield a strongly negative result. Also, in discussion programmes on BBC domestic Radio 4 and 5 I've heard both sides of the EU-euro argument - many, many times. I don't think Britain - not "England" in that irritating and ill-informed US parlance - is likely to give up its sovereignty - particularly with regard to matters concerning the economy and defence - any time soon, whatever the impression the BBC World Service may give to the outside world.

[jamming]

Well Britain yes, but England's the only one that ever counted, except for a few longbowmen and a couple of picts. ;)

[halldor]

Originally posted by jamming
Well Britain yes, but England's the only one that ever counted, except for a few longbowmen and a couple of picts. ;)

Ignorance - read the history of the British Empire some time.

[ShinyTop]

I am surprised the British are not more protective of their laws than their currency. And please don't take this as bashing. I am genuinely worried about an old friend losing their idenity. Hell, all we get is Euro appliances and I am tired of it.

[jamming]

Originally posted by halldor
Ignorance - read the history of the British Empire some time.

Spoken like a true Scotsman or Welshman, I was just picking on you halldor.:thumbsup:

[halldor]

Originally posted by ShinyTop
I am surprised the British are not more protective of their laws than their currency.

To take one recent example, what about the Archer case? Did you follow that, and all its implications for the protection of UK law? Have you read Archer's book, recently published over here? If that case is anything to go by, the British are so protective of their laws that some people are wondering if it might not all have gone too far.

[ShinyTop]

No, can you suggest site to read up on it?

[halldor]

Originally posted by jamming
Spoken like a true Scotsman or Welshman, I was just picking on you halldor.:thumbsup:

That's ok - I'm Scottish, as it turns out. :)

[halldor]

Originally posted by ShinyTop
No, can you suggest site to read up on it?

Well, you could read the latest instalment at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/2609079.stm

That page also gives links to the rest of the case.

[yazdzik]

Dear Hall and friends,

ST's point is nonetheless valid.

There have been, and will continue to be many cases at both Justiciary and Sessions where the results would be different than either QB or the European Court.

An in depth examination of Scots, European, and Common Law is a bit out of the scope of the forum, but, what is feared among the Americans, and English, and I remind all readers, I use English for English, and British for British, is the change from contract law and individual rights to community law.

I wrote, supra, about England, and I did, emphatically, not mean the UK. Substituting Britain for England would make the post nonsense. Either I write nonsense, or have learnt to use English well, ne'er ha'en pict scots, as well.

The development in common law in England between the early courts, and say, 1600 - 1700 is not, in fact, parallel to our courts at all. Indeed, the 1790's came and went, and many conservative advocates refused, as well was our right, to argue outside the jus romanum in both sheriff's courts and "crown" courts.

My grandmother, were she alive, would most assuredly consider herself by clan, country, and continent, England never entering the line.

That in the nineteenth century, the forced assimilation of the Scots Sheriffdoms created new and interesting law, and, that the most predominant jurists of that century as well as ours are scots, notwithstanding, the great judges since the eighteenth century at home, Monboddo foremost, were classicists of the first rank, considering the development of English Common Law a mere side event to the expansion and edification of the law of rome. It was, indeed, the use of the new, to us, concepts of the rights of Englishmen added to, and not replacing, the republican principles of tort and family that gives, to this day, our law its tang.

May I remind you, Halldor, that Monboddo was extolling the light of reason, even from the well, and Braxfeld, queer a figure as he may have been, and intemperate as his nature was, was elucidting law with blunt precision whilst Jeffries, the ingnorant tool, the Englishman, let blood for no reason other than his own lust for power.

If an honest man write English, he must be taken to mean English, and naught else, else the language have no meaning whatsoever.

To this day, I often quote Braxfeld's short, unflattering, yet absolutely truthful and clear, asides to a witness/defendant at the sedition trials, a man named Gerrald. The latter argued for reform, stating many great men to have been reformers, "including Our Saviour, himself." Braxfeld, though on the record, retorted, "Muckle he made o'that; he was hangit."

In spite of all that,I assure you all, it is not for the politics of Great Britain I care a foul shit, nor,deeply as I love it, the reasoned classicism of Scots law, but as I said, and meant, the dissolving of English Common Law, wherein the Crown itself derives its power from contract, and the rights of the individual supercede the rights of the land, which would be a stain upon mankind itself. For the Europeans, law proceeds from power; for the English, Mr Halldor, power is given from the law.

That has naught to do with Britain.

Yazdzik

[Basilio]

Frankly, I do like BBC, though some said it is pseudo-intellectual, there seems to more critical discourse, and I do not think it should be compared to Soviet-like propaganda newspapers like the pravda etc.... It is like comparing every violent group to the Nazis. Let us not go overboard. In America, I like C-Span. In Canada, I think CBC is pretty good. I do not really get BBC on my TV, briefly on my sattelite, but no one gets that on cable as far as I know.
As far as the EU, I cannot pass judgement yet as it is still not a mature organization, but I do expect that there will have to be compromising for the union to be successful, and the compromises are not one-sided. I won't pass judgement until I see how the expansion plays out, but I am worried that it is going too fast and create instability and wouldn't produce a very cohesive union.

[halldor]

Originally posted by yazdzik


May I remind you, Halldor, that Monboddo was extolling the light of reason, even from the well, and Braxfeld, queer a figure as he may have been, and intemperate as his nature was, was elucidting law with blunt precision whilst Jeffries, the ingnorant tool, the Englishman, let blood for no reason other than his own lust for power.

Um, er - come again?


If an honest man write English, he must be taken to mean English, and naught else, else the language have no meaning whatsoever.

I agree - but I can't follow your arguments at all. All I had in mind was that a) it's a little unreasonable to equate BBC World Service coverage of the news with the BBC's approach to current affairs issues in general, and that b) the Jeffrey Archer case does illustrate the importance attached in some quarters here in the U.K. to the supremacy of the rule of law.

That's all I was trying to say. I really can't follow the drift of what you are saying in your post, or see how it counts as a response to the points I raised.


h.

[jamming]

Originally posted by halldor
Um, er - come again?

Here some background -


Scottish Judges (http://www.electricscotland.com/history/scottish_life5.htm)

Burnett, James, Lord Monboddo (1714-99)

James Burnett was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, Edinburgh University and the University of Groningen. He studied, first, Greek philosophy and later law. He was admitted to the Scottish Bar in 1737. Thirty years later, he became a Lord of Session, taking this title from his father's estate, Monboddo, in Kincardineshire. He was a considerable scholar, though also a notable eccentric. His book The Origin and Progress of Language demonstrated how mankind had come to shed their primeval tails, and thus anticipated in conclusion, if not in argument, Darwin's evolutionary theories. Another aspect of Monboddo's learning was reflected in his philosophical conspectus, Antient Metaphysics. His second daughter, Elizabeth Burnett, was a celebrated Edinburgh beauty, whose death from consumption at the age of 25 drew an elegy from Burns.

Burns visited Monboddo's house on several occasions, no doubt enjoying the judge's whimsicalities. One of these relates to his coming out of Court and finding the rain on. He is reported to have put his wig into his sedan chair, and walked home himself in the rain.At his house in St John Street, Monboddo for many years held 'learned suppers'. These were convened at an early hour, and the cream of the intelligentsia were invited to partake of attic repasts. The table was strewn with roses, after the practice of Horace at his home in the Sabine hills and the wine flasks were garlanded, after the manner of Anacreon'' at the Court of Polycrates of Samos.

Lord Robert Macqueen Braxfield (1722-1799)

Lawyer and 'hanging judge'. Born near Lanark and educated in Edinburgh, Braxfield was called to the Bar in 1744. He was appointed a judge (1776), notorious for his harshness, and the Lord Justice Clerk (1788). Braxfield provided the model for Lord Weir in the unfinished novel Weir of Hermiston (1896) by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94).

English Judge

Jeffreys of Wem, George Jeffreys, 1st Baron

Jeffreys of Wem, George Jeffreys, 1st Baron, 1645?–1689, English judge under Charles II and James II. A notoriously cruel judge, he presided over many of the trials connected with the Popish Plot (see Oates, Titus) and was responsible for the judicial murder of Algernon Sidney and for the brutal trials of Richard Baxter and many others. He was created baron in 1685 and was soon sent to W England to punish those concerned in the rebellion of the duke of Monmouth. In the resulting Bloody Assizes he caused nearly 200 persons to be hanged, some 800 transported, and many more imprisoned or whipped. James II made him lord chancellor later that year. When James fled the country in 1688, Jeffreys was imprisoned and died in the Tower of London.

The Bloody Assizes were a series of court sessions held in the West of England after the crushing defeat of Monmouth's Rebellion. "Assizes" was a general term for the courts that met outside of London; but Chief Justice George Jeffreys guaranteed that these would be forever known as "Bloody." Most of the top leaders of the Rebellion were able to escape punishment through bribery and favoritism; but as many as 320 were executed. Most of those executed had pled guilty under a promise of mercy. The hangman, "Jack Ketch", still remains a haunting figure in the history of our language.

see Monmouth Rebellion (http://www.thedorsetpage.com/history/Monmouth_Rebellion/Monmouth_Rebellion.htm)



I think Yaz was saying that Monboddo saw reason as a tool of sentencing, Braxfield just applied the maximum allowed by the law, but the Jefferies just wanted to see death of his foes and enforce power over them. I hope this helps :thumbsup:

[yazdzik]

Dear Friends,
I responded to the posts, after my first one, perhaps relying too heavily upon people reading and re-reading the thread, to any number of points at once.
Shiny Top’s observation that Britain may be ready to give up some traditional rights of Englishman was subject to my note that, in fact, English common law and Roman law are inherently incompatible.
Rather than say, “Even though many of Britain’s greatest judges were Scots, and even though common law has been ignored in practice,” I wrote my elegiac six paragraphs referring to our colourful legal history.
Halldor said, “I don't think Britain - not "England" in that irritating and ill-informed US parlance -,”
to which, logically, I pointed out, that in my original post, substituting Britain for England would have destroyed any meaning, since there is no “British” common law.

The point needs to be made, furthermore, that, English common law is the basis of few countries’ legal systems. Leaving, since rhapsodic language is apparently out of style, the question of the unification of Scotland and England, the underlying difference between the US, England, and the rest of the world is not even the wealth and superficial political freedom. Rather, the basis on law of the supremacy of the individual over the state.
In practice, of course, America and England have moved closer to Euro-socialism, and European countries insure personal freedoms, but the difference is so deep that no one may overlook it. Germany, the country, the government grants its citizens constitutional freedoms in the Urgesetz , Englishmen contract with even their sovereign to rule. The queen rules at the pleasure of the people, the people of Europe change governments at the elections allowed by the state. Is there a practical difference? None, really.
If, however, England(not Britain, Halldor) were to join the EU part and parcel, the entire judicial system upon which EU law functions would replace common law. Would that make a difference? Immense, as any Southerner will tell you. Was it the Civil War, the War between the States, or the War of Northern Aggression?
Likewise, en famille, a Scotsman’s reference to Mr Blair as either the English Prime Minister, or the British, tells his intimates where he stands on the issue of the “United Kingdom.”
So I could have written:

<SMALL>In spite of my personal love of Scots law and judges, and in spite of the many aberrations of English common law in practice, the deep differences between England herself, not the United Kingdom, and Europe are so profound as to warrant as wide a political separation from the European Union as possible given the economic realities. The Labour government pursues economic well-being as the only imperative, forgetting that the rights of Englishman are ultimately worth, in my opinion, defending against the anathema of the state machine of Euro-socialism. This is the most telling difference between Anglo-American and Roman law, that European governments rule “as of right,” ours by contract of a people sovereign over their own government. A matter, in the real world, of pure semantics, perhaps, but at the level of the Law Lords, or United States Supreme Court, that which would ultimately determine the freedoms of the people, and the delicate balance between those freedoms and the security of both the people and state.
By the way, Halldor, many people do, in fact, differentiate between England and Britain. </SMALL>

Such a post is clearer, I suppose, but sounds like a BBC commentary, or a paper submitted to the sociology department at the Open University. The last line is so rude that even Haywire would blanche at its inclusion in a civilised forum. That it is the current style shocks me. A simple reminder to re-read my original post, making the substitution showing that the change would trash its meaning, suffices to clarify, whilst remaining witty, and not losing charm.

Of course, there are those who call a lawyer a lawyer, but, as the wife of the English Prime Minister so delightfully reminds us, there is a chasm between being admitted to the bar, and having digested the spirit of the law.

I am merely pointing out that, irrespective of any other issue, it is sovereignty of the individual that ultimately puts the United States, and one would hope, England, at odds with the rest of the world.

Thank you, Jim, for the references.

Halldor, there is no ill will meant, but it is necessary for the American audience to understand that a allowing as much interference from the European High Court as we already have is a danger not only to English rights, but, ultimately to the US, as our system of government is absolutely, without any question, totally contrary to that of most countries, whose political existence derives from nationality rather than legal contract. One need not think too hard to feel that the unification of England, under the Magna Carta, was itself not based upon nation or “race,” but upon contract among three or four widely disparate cultures. France is France by nature, England became England, a millennium ago, by reasoned treaty.

I still prefer my original post, scented, as it were, with the salty, smokey whisky of Islay.

Alas, my point is proven in that the sober style of modern news media is needed merely to communicate.

It appears that the ultimate demise of the concept of the individual as the centre of all things and more important than the state is assured.

At that point, arguing that the BBC lean toward European unity is gratuitous.

Yazdzik