Crash Bang Wallace
Libertarian political blog from Mark Wallace; political opinion, breaking news and exclusivesLookalikes: an occasional series
Posted on October 21, 2011Every now and then a famous face you’ve been looking at for years (not continuously, obviously, that would be weird) suddenly emerges as a lookalike that you hadn’t previously noticed. So it was for me, watching the news last night.
I’d never clocked it before, but it turns out the BBC’s North America Editor Mark Mardell bears a remarkable likeness to Family Guy’s Peter Griffin:
Spooky, no?
BBC gives phone hacking 7 times more exposure than the Euro crisis
Posted on July 20, 2011The BBC are obviously smarting from the growing number of allegations that they have covered the phone hacking scandal so much that crucial issues like the increasingly likely collapse of the Euro have been neglected.
Of course many of those allegations are made by people who are themselves uncomfortable politically with the embarrassment being caused by the hacking issue, and of course the phone hacking scandal is absolutely rightly big news. However, if the Euro was to fall over next week with catastrophic economic consequences I suspect much of the public would be wondering how it all happened so suddenly, when in reality this crisis has been brewing for months and years.
The BBC’s Foreign Editor Jon Williams (who is, by the way, well worth following if you’re on Twitter) just said:
Surprised at claim #BBC covered #hacking to exclusion of other stories. Arab Spring, Italian Euro crisis & #eastafrica drought all prominent
It may be an exaggeration to say that other stories have been excluded entirely, but if you look at the evidence it’s pretty clear they’ve been eclipsed by the hacking coverage. Here are the results of searching the BBC News site for references to “hacking”, “euro” and “libya” over the last week:
Libya: 23 mentions
Euro: 32 mentions
Hacking: 246 mentions
As I say, hacking is a huge story and it does deserve large amounts of attention – but it’s hard to claim the BBC hasn’t taken its eye off other major issues while it’s been going on.
Unlike others I don’t necessarily think that’s solely because the BBC is threatened by Murdoch; it’s also because hacking is a media-village story taking place within the world most journalists inhabit. However the BBC in particular has a Charter responsibility to consider the public interest. That isn’t served by neglecting to cover the Euro crisis properly.
The Ed/David Media Mili-Mix-Up Part III
Posted on July 18, 2011Despite the big impact he’s generally recognised to have made on the hacking issue over the last fortnight, it seems Ed Miliband is still having some serious recognition issues even among the political media. After the Today Programme and the internet itself mixed him up with his brother David, and the Telegraph did the same, the effect is spreading.
Guido picked up on the Daily Mirror’s Mili-mixup:
Now the BBC website has managed to follow suit in their live coverage of PMQs:
This is quite funny, but it leaves Labour with a serious question: if even now, at the height of his performance, journalists mix up Ed Miliband with David Miliband what hope is there that the public know who he is?
EXCLUSIVE: Ed Miliband “told BBC he knew nothing about Tunisia”
Posted on March 08, 2011The question of whether British politicians have got a good enough handle on the uprisings in North Africa is increasingly occupying the minds of political commentators. Against that background, I was recently told a fascinating snippet from someone inside the BBC which casts further doubt on whether Westminster is up to speed.
It goes a little something like this…
When Ed Miliband appeared on the Andrew Marr Show back on 16th January, he arrived for makeup beforehand, plonked himself down in the chair and announced “By the way, what’s been happening in Tunisia? I know absolutely nothing about it.”
A slightly shocked silence ensued, with the BBC staff present dually wondering a) how on earth he hadn’t been briefed for a major interview on unrest that by then had been running for a month and had in the previous two days led to the Tunisian President fleeing into exile, and b) whether they should prep Marr to grill him on it as a weak point.
As it turned out, for whatever reason Marr didn’t ask about the topic at all – but it hardly inspires confidence that Ed didn’t know about the topic and, more worryingly for Labour, just merrily announced that he didn’t to the staff of the BBC’s major political chatshow.
I should say at this point that this is single-sourced (albeit from a person who was apparently there at the time) , so it’s further to the tittle-tattle end of the news scale than the hard-copy-leaked-document end, but interesting nonetheless.
Andrew Neil launches a cheese?
Posted on February 13, 2011We’ve all become accustomed to celebrities extending their personal brand into unexpected markets, but did anyone anticipate the Daily Politics’ Andrew Neil launching a cheese? When I stumbled across this in a shop I couldn’t be certain from the brand name that it was definitely one of his enterprises, but once it turned out to be “matured in wine” – well, that clinched it:
I gather Private Eye may have a photo demonstrating his personal involvement with the “jugs”, too…
The divine right of Devine
Posted on February 10, 2011The jury have just announced that Jim Devine is the latest politician to be found guilty of false accounting in his MPs’ expenses. Even before they had made up their minds about his criminal behaviour, though, it was clear that at bare minimum he was guilty of being a massive, massive hypocrite.
BBC Scotland’s Tim Reid, who has been livetweeting the trial, reported that Devine’s defence QC came out with this appeal to the jury yesterday:
Even by the often pompous standards of Westminster, that’s a laughable claim.
This Jim Devine who claimed yesterday he wanted “no special treatment” for having been an MP was the same Jim Devine who wasted public money and court time over the last year by first bringing a case and then an appeal to argue that he could not be prosecuted at all on the grounds of Parliamentary Privilege.
He was demanding special treatment for MPs to the absurd degree that they should be above the criminal law and untouchable even by the courts. That dodge didn’t work for Charles I when he pleaded the “divine right of kings”, and I’m delighted that it hasn’t worked for the divine right of Devine, either.
Sluggish Peers threaten the future of direct democracy
Posted on January 13, 2011The AV referendum is incredibly important for British democracy – not so much because of the actual question on the table but because the way it runs will heavily influence the future of direct democracy in this country.
I, like many others, want to see a lot more referenda in Britain. We deserve votes on the EU, on any constitutional changes and on local tax rises, to name but a few. Ideally citizens should be able to initiate a referendum on any issue of their choosing via a right of initiative.
The chance of that happening rests largely, though unofficially, on the AV referendum. If it becomes a farce with a tiny turnout, then there is a risk that it will discredit the idea of asking the people about anything – the defenders of the Westminster elite will crow at any and every opportunity that people just aren’t bothered.
But if the AV vote does turn out to be an absurd waste of time, it will not be because the people aren’t interested in being consulted on things.
For a start, AV is in itself a boring and obscure system which is a peculiar choice of referendum topic. That puts this referendum at a disadvantage in terms of turnout.
To counteract that, campaigners and politicians have a serious responsibility. The Yes and No camps must run active, interesting and exciting campaigns to ensure that people are exercised about the topic (difficult as that may be). I think they have both got off to a pretty good start on that front.
The real weak link in the chain at the minute is in Parliament. The BBC today reports that Labour Peers are blocking the Bill to such an extent that it may not go through in time to actually hold the referendum on the planned date of May 5th.
If they persist in their delaying tactics and the date does have to be moved, it would be a disgraceful disservice to democracy. Allowing campaigns to get up and running only to delay the vote will turn this referendum into a farce and further confuse and alienate the public.
I don’t like AV, so I don’t think it would be a missed opportunity on that front, but if this harms the prospect of future referenda on things that actually do matter, there should be hell to pay.