Ben Hazell

Clear out toys now!

Love being reminded to do this every year. It's a win/win all round

SUPERB and angrily unvarnished response, by former BBC chairman, Lord Patten.

"I don't think that we should allow ourselves to be bullied into thinking that the BBC is only any good, if it reflects the prejudice of the last person who shouted at it." ~AA

It’s already started - the BBC allows Newsmax boss to opine about bias, suggest some of the Jan 6 mob were merely innocent tourists visiting Congress, without pushback

The truth about impartiality at the BBC And the hysteria of the current "crisis"

The reaction to the Panorama edit has been nothing short of hysterical. Yes the BBC has some impartiality problems. But its biggest isn't the one you think.

New piece from me.

open.substack.com/pub/goodalla...

"Seizing Brexit opportunities to deregulate" was mostly unspecified magic fairy pixie bullshit then, and it's not going to get any more realistic in the hands of a bunch of Reform clowns who don't know how anything works, don't care to learn and disdain anyone that might.

We're now at "black people aren't British". Open sewer racism. Look forward to seeing him on QT again soon.

Nigel Farage's party now has a 20-point lead among voters who believe they're condemned to damnation

Tory policy would deport about 5% of the UK population.
"This scale of population movement is comparable to that which happened with the partition of India and Pakistan and the foundation of the state of Israel."

This is all horrifyingly cruel but condition 3 is staggeringly awful: “if P OR dependents of P have been in receipt of social protection”

So just if a *dependent* of someone with ILR gets any sort of welfare benefit whatsoever the original person can have their ILR revoked? This is insanely evil.

Definitely not specific to the author. I too would never wash a bread knife after cutting dry bread. It stays with the loaf ready for the next slice.

Pete Hegseth conducted a live fire exercise over I-5 as part of a made-for-Fox stunt for him and Vance which had a misfire that struck a Highway Patrol vehicle and could have killed people?

Who could have foreseen this?

Think we’ve crossed a pretty major threshold – and a very bad one – if a journalist working in the lobby for a major newspaper group can tweet like this without professional consequences.

There is no need for a moral panic about the UK's welfare system.

Far from perfect but recent discourse is nuts

Spending is controlled, not spiralling

Worklessness is near record lows

My column www.ft.com/content/ee67...

Pope Leo calls for news agencies to stand as bulwark against "post-truths," lies and manipulation Pope Leo XIV has encouraged international news agencies to stand firm as a bulwark against the "ancient art of lying" and manipulation.

Pope Leo quotes Hannah Arendt:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."

www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

This is an exact encapsulation of why I moved to Bluesky.

No amount of handwringing in the Atlantic about how I owe some eternal Promethean suffering to the discourse is going to make me stay on a site I hate, that stopped doing anything for me professionally years ago.

a man in a suit is holding a jacket and a cigarette . ALT: a man in a suit is holding a jacket and a cigarette .

Interesting how companies and the financial world is racing to spend mindboggling amounts of money to build the infrastructure to train computers. But we are leaving the infrastructure to train and educate humans crumbling. The question is who will train who?

Incidentally English graduates are in demand by tech companies who need to translate what they do into understandable language for their business customers in particular.

But why let facts get in the way of a stupid soundbite?

House of South Carolina Judge Criticized by Trump Administration Set Ablaze Authorities are investigating a fire at the home of a South Carolina judge who had reportedly received death threats in what could be the latest incident of political violence across the country.

Over the weekend, Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller repeatedly attacked judges, calling them part of an "organized terrorist attack" on the US government....

On Saturday, the home of a judge who ruled against Trump, went up in flames

time.com/7323442/sout...

Oh my god.

Have I Got News For You just referred to this completely false claim as a fact!!

The Mail says that they can run a false front-page headline by the smallprint attributing the false claim to Mr Farage

"some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily execute civilians" says today's New York Times, continuing their long tradition of whitewashing fascism

Absolute all-timer sentence in today's @nytimes.com

Article. I can read faster than any YouTuber can speak, even with the playback speed cranked up to comical levels.

THAT SAID, article writers these days need fucking EDITORS they spend whole paragraphs FAFFING ABOUT before they get to the point IT'S CALLED THE INVERTED FUCKING PYRAMID MY DUDES

Is there a reason I ask that the Times are using a picture of asylum seekers in a boat to describe rules for migrants who came on legal routes such as skilled worker visas for doctors?

Useful reminder from Peter Kellner on the problems we refuse to acknowledge are getting better, and the politics of hopelessness that this breeds

open.substack.com/pub/kellnerp...

Behind the doors of asylum hotels - what I found when I went inside A BBC reporter goes into four hotels and speaks to asylum seekers and staff about what daily life is like.

An important counter narrative to the recent headlines — actual journalism about the daily lives of asylum seekers in the UK
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I generally rate Chris Mason but it would make things easier for all if Robbie Gibb - Brexiter & Theresa May’s director of comms at Number 10 - were not still a non-executive director of the BBC. Everything he touches turns to shit. Including, at the moment, a lot of the Beeb’s political journalism.

There are so many weird things here, but the aesthetic is one of the weirdest. Unsigned, headerless single page note in a large unserifed font.

The writing… okay: my dad used to talk about a style in C19th reportage and official communication which avoided mention of the self.

Exactly this

Robert Redford on the phone, plus Dustin Hoffman. From All the President’s Men

When journalism was cool. And risked everything to challenge power.

UK public has paid £200bn to shareholders of key industries since privatisation Analysis reveals ‘privatisation premium’ of £250 per household per year paid to owners of water, rail, bus, energy and mail services since 2010

Shocked
/s

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...