AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

For those of you who, for whatever reason, would like their better half to look like Newsnight's Victoria Derbyshire, I can tell you she does most of her clothes shopping at a boutique off Kensington High Street called Matron's Day Off.

[Mick Harper]

YouTube

They say YouTube is now Britain's second-most watched media source after the BBC and I'm not surprised. Every week I discover some new treasure. Yesterday it was a channel devoted to regular updates on the railways consisting of two middle-aged buffs discussing topics like the advisability of running both the five-car Type 400 and the nine-car Type 402 through Westbury station.

The point is it is only half an hour before Soap Opera Syndrome (SOS) starts taking effect. You get involved in trivia for its own sake. We've been promised a special guest next week, the bloke responsible for the 2026 timetable changes on the East Coast Mainline. I'll be there, chaps.

It's big stuff, and if you don't believe me, here's a teaser. At the moment there are eight trains a day between Retford and Newark at about nine pounds a throw. With the new timetables, you have to first go north from Retford to Doncaster, then south on the Newark service which goes through but doesn't stop at Retford, and they'll charge you double for your trouble. The Pilgrimage of Grace started with less than that.

[Mick Harper]

Channel 4 News ran a piece about large numbers of Kent and Sussex homes having dry taps because Southern Water was having more than its ordinary troubles. "The cold snap has caused a lot of burst pipes," a spokesperson for the company told us. What many people call 'winter'.

We then cut to a Tunbridge Wells householder who was sounding off. 'Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' we all irresistibly thought. "Why is it always us?" he asked plaintively. 'The clue is in the name of your town,' I said to an empty room.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

One of the problems of Middle Eastern discourse is that TV talking heads just won't shut up. They go on and on, and with such fluency it is impossible for interlocutors to get a word in edgeways. Al-Jazeera, of course, is well used to this and has its little ways. Yesterday, however, they met their match.

They had a real scoop on their hands. The official Kurdish spokesman had agreed to explain why, apparently, the SDF (the Syrian Kurdish Armed forces) had bitten the bullet, agreed to a ceasefire and withdrawn to Kurdish territory.

The first problem was that the Kurd could not--or maybe refused to--speak English. This is very, very rare among official spokespersons. Never mind, said Al-Jazeera, we'll provide an interpreter.

At first all went well. His answers were long but observed term limits. Then the dude went into infinite-talk mode. The Al-Jazeera interviewer kept trying to butt in but the interpreter was so busy translating his volumetric opinions, she couldn't break off to translate the butt-ins, so the bloke just droned on.

Al-Jazeera couldn't take the nuclear option and just pull the plug, the dude was just too important for that indignity. Fortunately he managed to finish his remarks before the end of the bulletin.

[Mick Harper]

Tech Now (BBC)

I've been catching up on my backlog of this obscure half-hour weekly round-up of what's going on in the world of hi-tec, according to the UK's official mouthpiece. Half an hour, once a week, in the wee hours might tell you something. But it's the style that really tells you our general attitude. Let's list the familiar tropes:

* Magazine format: three unrelated items
* Relentlessly upbeat and optimistic
* Compulsive tone of 'Isn't technology fun?'
* Young, attractive female presenters
* Who are always allowed to 'have a go'
* Seemingly pitched at bright eleven-year-olds

In other words, it's low-to-middlebrow entertainment. Never mind the audience must be numbered in the thousands rather than the millions, the idea that it should be straight, informative and geeky would never occur to BBC mandarins.

[Hatty]

This week's Dispatches programme, Channel 4's equivalent of Panorama, was entitled Palestine Action - The Truth Behind the Ban wasn't shown with no explanation.

One can only assume it's because the activists have been denounced by the government as 'terrorists', but the evidence for banning them, if it exists, hasn't been revealed and, it seems, never will be as long as Starmer is in situ.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Declassified UK has written about this.

https://www.declassifieduk.org/revealed-how-palestine-action-was-banned/


I had previously believed that the ban was the result of the incident/attack at RAF Brize Norton, when Palestine Action activists sprayed paint into Voyager aircraft, but apparently, this might not have been the case, it could have actually been approved earlier, and the government was simply waiting for an opportune moment to take this measure forward. There are some indications that it might have been done to appease Donald Trump, as the Palestine Action activists/terrorsits had vandalised the Trump-owned Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, painting the words “Gaza is not 4 sale” on the grass. This happened in March 25, the Brize Norton incident occurred in June.......

We just don't know the real reasons, as you say, the programme was cancelled. It is pretty clear that there were real concerns about whether Palestinian Action were a terrorist group.

[Mick Harper]

Whichever way you look at it, Palestine Action are not 'terrorists' in the accepted sense of the word. They are not using terror to achieve their aims. They are using nuisance.

If the government wants to make a special category of 'protest groups using direct action (or whatever)' they are free to do so. They would no doubt have the support of the long suffering public if they did.

However, they might have difficulty distinguishing in law between such political protesters and trade unionists (or other groups seeking personal gain) using flying pickets, trucks travelling in slow convoys along motorways and suchlike nuisances. So they won't.

As for Dispatches it is, as usual, the careful ignoral aspect that is most significant.

[Mick Harper]

Isn't Martin Lewis fabulous?

[Mick Harper]

CNN reported that Tulsi Gabbard, the US Director of National Intelligence, was controversially present in Fulton County, Georgia last night when the FBI removed several hundred thousand ballots from the 2020 presidential election (the one Donald Trump claimed was stolen from him).

[Mick Harper]

My constitutional cousin, Hiram C Cocklecarrot III, tells me that if it is discovered Donald Trump was legitimately re-elected for the period 2021-5, he will have to resign the presidency with immediate effect because the two-term limit will have been exceeded.

Asked for a comment, Ms Gabbard said, "Why d'ya think I'm here, bub?"

[Mick Harper]

Newsnight is (at any rate) unearthing some rare diamonds in the rough in terms of presenters, studio couch potatoes and talking heads.

Last night and the night before we were reminded that daytime radio talkshow hosts are a whole lot better than Newsnight stalwarts like the po-faced Victoria Derbyshire. Plus, tonight, Ross Greer, co-Leader of the Scottish Greens (I'd vote for him but not his co-twat) and Tim Stanley, a Telegraph columnist (he's wasted there).

It was nice going down memory lane with Olly Grender, not so nice listening to the latest teenage Labour apologist and positively horrible being given a snow job by the statutory Epstein victim.

[Mick Harper]

More of Less (BBC Radio 4)

[Mick Harper]

British news values continue to go there merry way. To perdition. On a pulsating day in British political life, Newsnight decides to spend a third of its running time on the pulsations, another third on Melissa Gates moaning about Bill and the final third highlighting American ex-teenyboppers experiences with Jeffrey Epstein.

How often do I have to say that all the sex stuff is irrelevant. It's a means to an end.