The BBC has apologised to Reform U.K. after calling it “far-Right” in a news report. The Telegraph has more.
The broadcaster made the claim during a report about the Liberal Democrat spring conference in which it referred to Reform surging ahead of Sir Ed Davey’s party in the opinion polls.
Although Reform is to the Right of the Conservative Party on issues including legal and illegal immigration and the tax burden, it has previously said its political aims are not motivated by political ideology.
In a statement on Monday, the BBC said: “In an article about the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference, we wrongly described the political party Reform U.K. as far-Right when referring to polling.
“This sentence was subsequently removed from the article as it fell short of our usual editorial standards. While the original wording was based on news agency copy, we take full responsibility and apologise for the error.”
Richard Tice, the leader of Reform, told the Telegraph that while he was “pleased” the BBC had apologised, the error “shouldn’t have happened in the first place”.
“This is a tactic that certain news organisations are going to try, which is to smear and label not only the party but by direct implication myself and other senior figures,” he said. …
On Tuesday, the PA news agency ran an update to one of its stories from the Liberal Democrat conference, removing the reference to Reform as “far-Right”.
Worth reading in full.
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But, as we know, pro-lockdown “science” is science and anti-lockdown science is conspiracy theories. At east that’s what the Guardian told me.
“Readers are alerted that the conclusions of this article are subject to criticisms that are being considered by the Editors.”
All scientific papers are subject to criticisms. That’s sort of the point of science.
If you don’t agree with it, write a response paper.
yes, its a funny remark
‘the paper is going through a normal review process’
Boris Johnson and the British Government’s respond to covid-19 can be compared to imbeciles trying to micromanage a skip fire.
It’s one of those classic British disasters. The Somme. The Scott South Polar mission. The Comet. Thalidomide. Grenfell Tower.
Arrogance. Ignorance. The class system. And a wildly misplaced sense of intellectual superiority. All conspiring to inflict the maximum amount of misery and suffering on people too gullible and otherwise invested in British cultural bullshit to know when they are about to be murdered.
“Boris Johnson and the British Government’s respond to covid-19 can be compared to imbeciles trying to micromanage a skip fire.”
I like this!
but its hardly a British phenomenon in this case
Leave out the Comet – that was a case of the genuine unknown, not willful malpractice. And the Scott expedition was the risk balance going tits up, rather than the reverse.
I agree with much of what you say, but think that the term ‘class system’ needs to be re-defined.
For many, the class system appears to be some sort of pyramid with aristos etc. at the top and people such as me & the family I was born into at the bottom. That’s the way I saw it as a youth.
Thanks to the good fortune of going to a grammar school, various scholarships, perhaps decisions along the way but probably – mostly – luck, I have had a life that brought me into contact with much of that hierarchy both in this country & abroad. 50+ years after leaving school I still see a class system, but it has little to do with the one I thought I saw as a schoolboy.
The modern ‘upper class’ toffs are the self-serving political establishment. In my experience, psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists and the like are over represented there. They exist in governments and acadaemia at all levels – look at local council behaviour over the past year. Very few of them seem to come from the traditional idea of upper class (i.e. aristos, public schools etc.), but if you look at their behaviour you see the same psychological traits. Mostly, they seem to be concerned with protecting and extending their own privileged existence. Other countries don’t have the same historical connotations of ‘class’, but they are suffering from the same mis-governance as the UK. They do, however, have the same class system and are burdened with the same consequences.
In a nutshell, Herr Dr Gauss’ distribution describes it. There are a few saints at one end, a few sinners at the other & most of us are somewhere in between. At present, however, governments around the world (not just the Westminster Windbags, but the Whitehall Wormtongues – at all levels) are skewed strongly towards the sinner tail. How to fix that? History doesn’t help, but maybe Mao Tse Tung’s ‘cultural revolution’ had some merit.
Even if lockdowns reduced covid deaths they still wouldn’t be justified
But Imperial’s model shows lockdowns increase covid deaths
Plus lockdown deaths
Should have stuck to the normal pandemic response plan – after all it was designed for something like this
Good article by Will Jones, ‘new study confirms lockdowns don’t reduce covid deaths’
The studies continue to show lockdowns don’t work from a data analysis perspective.
And as Will explains there are many solid scientific reasons to explain why they don’t work and even could make things worse, although it’s clearly multi-factorial and hard to pin down the inter-related contributions of each factor.
And that’s before you consider all the indirect deaths caused by enforced lockdowns, and the damage caused by destroying freedoms and societies.
The sad thing is that if the government and the concensus opinion of the science industry (which I take to mean conflicted ‘scientists’ failing to apply the scientific method of testing hypotheses) tell us lockdowns do work, it seems that most people will just believe the government and science industry. And the mainstream media are set up to communicate this one sided narrative only. How much evidence there is is irrelevant, if it is simply ignored.
All we can do is to try and communicate the reality through whatever means we can find. But at the moment it’s simply not enough.
I would like to think most people don’t want to live this way and that’s the only real force that will get us out of this mess.
You’ve touched on what is the key central point : Lock-ups can only be justified if there is clear, indisputable evidence of a beneficial effect that outweighs the massive costs. We’re not talking about marginal effects that are hard to discern.
In fact, there is increasing evidence that the effects of lock-up are entirely on the debit side – and that obviously increases as time goes on.
So – the case against lock-ups is clear : they have no benefit whatsoever.
Looking at the study in Nature, it seems the age of the population is not taken into account. I doubt how you can make relevant comparisons then.