Rolled-up Trousers

DEC appeal farce: Comment of the day...

.. goes to Adrian Wells of Sky News. Announcing his channel's solidarity with the BBC, he said:

"We have to, as an international channel, focus on our primary role and that is to report the story and not become the story."

Mission accomplished?

You can tell how unpopular the decision is even within the BBC. The 10'oclock news and Newsnight both showed clips of the advert in their news items about the episode, with website and phone number clearly on display in the bottom-righthand corner.

BBC must air the DEC appeal

The BBC have royally messed up with the farcicial decision not to broadcast the Disaster Emergency Committee's appeal for Gaza.

Thirteen of the UK's leading charities have come together to do a joint iniatiative for the region which was already a humanitarian catastrophe, even before the three week bombing by Israel. 80% of the people there were dependent on UN food because of the twenty month Israeli siege, with the UN running out of food in December.

Since then, 1300 dead, many more thousands injured, even more homeless. These agencies want to tackle this. For the BBC to question whether aid can be distributed, and in effect accuse the country's leading charities of lying about their abilities, is extraordinary.

The main reason the BBC have cited though is the impact this would have on their impartiality. I'm afraid that's totally shot to pieces now, but I don't think anyone can ever feasibly argue again that it's in favour of the Palestinians. It's bad enough they have contributed through their (lack of) reporting to a climate where they clearly have no recognition of the situation in Gaza. To now not just ignore the suffering, but to stop urgent assistance from being collected, is disgusting.

Anyone that would have complained to the BBC because they broadcasted the DEC appeal, would have been an inhuman voice not worth listening to. Pandering to the worst elements of society is an abdication of backbone and principles. Surely the BBC has better guidelines than that.

Bush and the neocons have gone. Time for Al-Qaeda to depart stage-right too.

If you were to plan out Barack Obama’s first few moves for him, rolling back the excesses of the Bush years would be the obvious moves. The closure of Guantanamo and other torture sites is welcome, as his statement that the choice between safety and values that we’ve been presented with by Bush, Blair and others over the last few years is a false one.