After appearing on BBC World Service World Have Your Say to discuss the True Finns, I’ve now written a piece for Comment is Free about the same issue – you can read it here. The comments thread is full of bile, although there is one issue I would like to […]
Tag: BBC
Portugal’s emergency loan – why ‘bailout’ is the wrong word
I was on the BBC World Service programme “World Have Your Say” (programme site, blog) earlier to talk about the implications of the election success of Timo Soini’s True Finns party in yesterday’s parliamentary election. The discussion briefly examined the reasons for the support for this populist party, but the […]
Time for grown up football relations between England and Germany – let’s have Klinsmann in the BBC studio on Sunday
This weekend the World Cup starts to get exciting with the knock out round, and England are drawn against their old foes Germany at 1500 BST / 1600 CET on Sunday. When these countries have faced each other before the coverage in the UK press has been far from favourable, […]
Framing the debate: Future of the BBC
There’s something deeply wrong with the ‘debate’ currently going on about the future of the BBC, and I think it boils down to the essential question: what is the value of public service broadcasting? Two themes dominate the debate at the moment. The first is a kind of cost-benefit analysis, […]
BBC for Brits abroad
I vividly remember car journeys through France with my family in the 1990s. As we headed north from Languedoc, travelling home at the end of a holiday, the only solace for my mother was the return of BBC Radio 4, available in long wave anywhere northwards of Bourges or Orléans. […]
Universal service + local decisions + no accountability = postcode lottery
I’ve just found myself shouting at the television as I happened to have the misfortune to see part of a programme on BBC1 called Dom’s on the Case that looks at healthcare provision in the UK. There were 2 main parts to the programme that I found particularly twisted. First […]