Daffy Dils

This sounds reasonable but is 100% wrong. Whether you or agree or disagree with a study is completely immaterial. What matters is whether the study was conducted properly and generates valid results. And it's impolitic to say but it's true: you have to have some level of expertise to judge that.

The letter the BBC could send back to Trump A proposal for a reply to his $1bn claim

NEW

The letter the BBC could send back to Trump

A proposal for a reply to his $1bn claim

By me. Enjoy.

emptycity.substack.com/p/the-letter...

Emissions scandal: factory farms fail to declare climate impacts Applications for giant UK livestock factory farms are ignoring climate emissions, despite a landmark Supreme Court ruling

Factory farms are skirting climate rules in dozens of applications.

One megafarm in Norfolk planned to raise nearly 900,000 animals – without assessing its climate emissions.

Councils refused permission after public pressure. Others haven’t.

The four-word message the BBC should send Trump about his $1bn lawsuit The corporation must show it will not be cowed, unlike American broadcast media, and call the president’s bluff

The BBC can retrieve something from this mess (and show US broadcasters what a spine is) by sending Donald Trump a four letter response: “See you in court!” www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/...

November 12, 2025 - Trump threatens a lawsuit against BBC, but won't win it Simon's live chat with James O'Brien on the UK's LBC.

Mine earlier today with @mrjamesob.bsky.social on the UK's @lbc.co.uk

🎧: audioboom.com/posts/880535...

One way of telling the political story of the last ten years is of three wasted overall majorities.

A substantive majority in the Commons for a full term is the greatest prize the UK constitution can bestow on a PM, and three times in a row, it has been wasted by those prize-winners.

Watching Wes Streeting on Sky News successfully skewer the overnight Downing Street briefings against him, you almost have to admire the ineptitude of those around Keir Starmer in turning his own leadership problems into a major story while boosting the very politician they sought to kneecap

That final point is absolutely crucial.

My post yesterday on the $Ibn Trump legal threat against the BBC has been picked up by newspapers around the world. It would appear few had gone through the letter and spotted that, well, it contained no evidence in support of its claims of damage.

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

"On another occasion, a BBC executive forbade me from writing for the New Statesman, imploring me to ask The Spectator instead, saying that would be perfectly fine."

goodallandgoodluck.substack.com/p/the-truth-...

How the government captured the BBC A right-wing cabal, largely unaccountable, is waging war on the principles that made our public broadcaster great. It must not succeed

Nearly two years ago, I wrote about the extraordinary influence of former Tory spin doctor Sir Robbie Gibb on the BBC. It's still a helpful backgrounder for what's going on now. New readers start here: www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/...

Israel has destroyed more than 1,500 buildings in Gaza since ceasefire Entire neighbourhoods controlled by Israel have been levelled in less than a month, satellite images show.

Confident in the work we have done to reach this conclusion www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Revealed: Thousands of elderly people evicted from care homes every year Thousands of elderly and vulnerable people have received eviction notices from their care homes in the last year, the Big Issue has found.

7,261 elderly/vulnerable people in care homes given ‘notice to quit’.

Major reason: "revenge evictions’. people “threatened with eviction as a result of raising a complaint"

Care homes are mostly in the private sector, owned by corporations and private equity, profit margins of up to 40%.

Why American-style polarisation is spreading across the west New research shows how incentives in the modern media ecosystem help explain rising division and negativity

A single shared source of truth is essential for a functioning democracy.

Without it you’re left with fragmentation, polarisation and a perpetual culture war where the discourse focuses on what divides us rather than what we have in common.

My column from last week: www.ft.com/content/5060...

Here’s the same data, but with trust broken down by political views (circles are trust among people on the left, +s the right).

It’s not just that the BBC is widely consumed — it also has solid trust on both left & right, whereas trust in the biggest US media brands is hugely polarised.

Reform Council To Double Tax On Second Homes Despite Nigel Farage Calling The Idea 'Madness' A Reform-led council is planning to double council tax on second homes six months after party leader Nigel Farage denounced such policies as “madne...

Another case of Reform saying one thing then doing the other:

A Reform-led council is planning to double council tax on second homes six months after party leader Nigel Farage denounced such policies as “madness” and “extortion”

By me, for Politics Home www.politicshome.com/news/article...

Three people who’d be expected to be Your Party bigwigs have largely walked away from Corbyn’s project: former NE mayor Jamie Driscoll, former Labour MP Beth Winter, and former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein.

I have some new intel on the fall-out, if you’re interested in that sort of thing… 🧵

The Populist Right could borrow from an old IRA statement:

"Today we were right, but remember we only have to be right once – you have to be right always."

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

“When I was [at the BBC], at the height of Boris Johnson’s strength, that fear was ubiquitous. Scripts were sometimes written with a view not solely to their impartiality or truth, but the management of perception of impartiality from one side of the spectrum.“ @lewisgoodall.com

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

Trump threatens $1bn legal action against BBC over 6 January speech edit The BBC chair earlier apologises for the

The idea of a $1 billion lawsuit from Donald Trump is utter nonsense

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cd...

In response to some of the comments:

If you agree with *all* the reporting of a news organisation that is both independent *and* non-partisan, then it's very unlikely to be independent and non-partisan.

This is true regardless of your politics.

Agreeing with all its reporting is the wrong test

⚡️ SCOTUS will NOT overturn marriage equality 🎉

Hunting for bias will ultimately be hunting the snark. We are all biased in some way or another. The news team need to insist on detail and rigour, not matching one empty but biased commentator with another equally empty and biased commentator from the other side.

Stephen really does have the best take on this. It’s not clear that the BBC Board or indeed the rest of the News team really understood the message of the previous reviews, which were about getting detail right. Instead they wanted to know what was ‘biased’ or not like they were blotting out stains.

Robbie Gibb once suggested that reporters should reflect if they were getting more retweets from one side than the other - a braindead analysis that ignores that fair and impartial reporting of education might get more Tory retweets than say, criminal justice.

I am once again saying that we saw what wall to wall, panic coverage of a crisis looked like after the Biden debate and there’s no reason Trump isn’t getting that kind of coverage except for class solidarity.

To back up their (incorrect) argument that COVID vaccines didn't affect transmission of the early variants, someone just sent me a paper showing that vaccines 'only' prevented infection...

The thing is, it's pretty hard to transmit COVID if you don't get infected in the first place.

Depressing that the BBC has so little inherent institutional strength, it is kicked about so easily.

This is not good sign for our polity.