Chairman Of Bbc Resigns

I thought that this may show another POV (Point of View).

Or is this another President Bush's and/or Prime Minister Blair's ploy to deceive the people?

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?t...storyID=4230689

I posted a link to the report of the Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr. David Kelly in another topic.

The Government and Tony Blair have been cleared in the report.

BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies is still to step down after the results of the Inquiry were published. The BBC's director general Greg Dyke apologised on behalf of the corporation for the wrong statements in Andrew Gilligans report and promised changes in the general editorial procedure.

Former Media chief of Downing Street Alastair Campbell said this: "If the government had faced the level of criticisms which today Lord Hutton's report has directed at the BBC, there would have been resignations by now, several resignations at several levels."

I still wait on a reaction of the MoD but I haven't yet watched the news again.

I think that I have the World News Channel glued into place if you ask my Wife, but I alway try to keep up on the Current Events.

me too, but in the time between 7 and 10 on wednesdays I'm having the discovery channel running because at 7 it's time team (archeology series with Tony Robinson), Industrial Revelations, Castle (a very interesting series about how Castles involved) and later on Royal Deaths and Diseases, a show about how medicine evolved basically.

As the history buff I am wednesday is the day on discovery channel I almost never miss.

I have to admit that I too watch the Discovery Channel along with the History Channel and Fox News Channel, rarely the Outdoor Life Channel and that is only when Fly Fishing is on.

well, I can't fix myself on certain channels but I have certain programmes that I will always watch.. on sundays it's time team and the antiques roadshow and after it (if I'm not cooking) Inside Antiques and Restauration Secrets.

I'm often watching UKHistory over the day but they repeat their programmes too often for my taste and broadcast too many one sided documentations.

Another Series I watch is Hugh Fernley-Wittingstalls "River Cottage" programmes. It's the sort of life style I would like to take up one day, having a small holding somewhere.

Well, almost without exception the newspapers here this morning are calling the Hutton report a 'whitewash'.....

Gavyn Davies at least had the moral fibre to resign.... an amazing thing when one considers he was a 'Tony's Crony', in the first place. As for Alistair Campbell - for him to go on TV and crow about the vindication of the people involved in the hounding of Dr Kelly is almost unbelievable.....

Tony Bliar may have managed to come out of this with his hands (almost) clean - but the majority of the British public do not believe anything that he says. The man has been in charge of this country and led us into a war based on a false premise. I just hope that this will not be forgotten when he decides to call the next election.

The Labour party were voted in on a wave of optimism - his promises about so many things have been broken. His stance on Higher Education is in direct conflict with what was written in his party's manifesto - and on which the British public elected him - again......

I have absolutely no respect for him. His wife is a free loader with dubious friends and dubious business contacts. She uses No10 to host political meetings (she is not an elected member of government).... They (husband and wife) abuse the office of Prime Minister of my country.... an office held proudly by so many great people in the past few hundred years.

Catriona,

This to me sounds like it borders on Gossip. His Wife is not an Elected Offical and therefore should be left out of the discussion as far as I am concerned.

What your opinon of her is, is totally up to you, but I, personally, do not want to hear it.

Your opinion of Prime Minister Blair, on the other hand, is an Elected Official and you have every right to rant and rave about him.

Richard
This is NOT gossip, and I deeply resent your implication that it is. This was reported widely in newspapers in the UK. And the following is from the BBC News site. I'd be grateful if you would not take personal swipes at me - my views are mine and I have just as much right to express them here as do you. Neither do I take kindly to your comment that I 'rant and rave'.....

Courtesy costs nothing.
Catriona

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1970411.stm

Unfortunately that is the face of modern politics. Even though it is their spouses who are elected, they are subjected to the same scrutiny and criticism the elected official is. This is why so few honest people want to enter elected government service.

However.........

If they are using the perqs of their spouse's office to further their own political agendas, then I feel that it is open season on them as well, because they are trying to come in "under the radar." It sounds like Blair's wife might be trying to do the same thing that Hillary Clinton tried to do (with that whole socialized medicine debacle over here), and is getting nailed on it, and in my opinion, justly so. If it is actually happening that way, of which I am not sure, as I have enough trouble keeping up with OUR rascals, let alone everyone else's.

Just my tuppence.

Andy

Thank you, Andy! Please see my report from the BBC News site, shown above!
Cat

I did, but only after I had already posted!

But I thought that we all came here to "rant and rave." It is ever so good for the blood pressure!

Just my tuppence.

Andy

I do not know why you have the impression that I am taking any "swipes at you".

But you were the one who said that PM Blair's Wife was a "Free Loader". And if you recall I did say that you have the right to have your own opinion of her. All I said is that it sounded like Gossip and I did not want to hear it. So I in turn ask for your respect for it not to be dished out. In your own words "Courtesy costs nothing."

I am not making anymore attacks on you as I do anyone else here. So please consider that.

As far as Ranting and Raving, I do that just as well.

This is NOT gossip. You really should do a little research before you comment on things you appear to know little about.



A shameless scrounger

Zoe Williams
Tuesday August 5, 2003
The Guardian

Let's see in the silly season with a really silly question - how well do Tony Blair and Cliff Richard actually know each other? I mean, sure, they'll know quite a bit about each other. Easily as much as you and I know about them. But do they ever go for a pint? Call each other for chats? Do they do anything that might constitute a friendship? Anyone who reads tabloids will know the answer to this - nope, they do not. And if you stay in someone's villa for reasons unconnected to friendship, then your motivation is the following: one, it is sunny; two, it is posh; three, it is free.
The Blairs have fallen prey to a misconception. They think if they do something often enough, then it will cease to be news. While true in many cases, this is untrue of ligging. Each fresh scrounge, far from disappearing into the mulch of the time before, actually revivifies what I can only describe as the shame of the last six years. Sponging stinks; sponging on a public stage stinks more; and sponging by a couple on an income of £425k a year, who come September will be pretending to identify with the poor, stinks most of all.

The couple say rather than paying Cliff for his Sugar Hill Estate, they will instead give an equivalent amount to charity. They've tried this stunt before - following their opulent sojourn in Tuscany last year, Blair made a £3,000 donation to a children's hospital. This left a £17,000 shortfall of the amount the holiday would have cost, on the open market, the very kindest explanation for which is that it's so long since Blair put his hands in his own pockets that he can't work out how much things cost ("ah, pillow chocolates, every morning - I estimate tuppence ha'penny, for the family, minus a farthing because Leo didn't eat his..."). Egypt, of course, was handled much better. When Tony and Cherie accepted £5k's worth of hospitality at the kind gift of the Egyptian people (though, since they're not allowed a free vote, it's difficult to tell how much they mean it), a charitable donation was made but - wait for this - they chose not to disclose how much it was for, and who it went to! This crystallises rather well the havoc wreaked on human nature by a surfeit of power. The Blairs can just about remember the ethical grounds for our complaints, but they're buggered if they're going to give in to us. We can take their secret sum (well, someone secret can take it) and like it.

The real rottenness at the core of this isn't really summed up very well by Sir Cliff, but he'll do. In the act of taking a gift from someone, you are thereafter beholden to them. I'm not sure how Cliff would make use of this debt, but I cannot think of a single view of his that I'd like hot-lined to the seat of national power (apart from maybe his fondness for fine wine).

Blair cannot pretend obliviousness to this: when Geoffrey Robinson fell from grace, the ligging at his £3m Tuscan holiday home ceased immediately. And if you need to be respectable to have the privilege of giving free stuff to the prime minister, the implication can only be that your association with him will be a warm, close and mutually beneficial one. So, why the (notoriously not-respectable) government of Egypt? Why Prince Girolamo Strozzi (newspaper proprietor, lawyer)? Why Sir Cliff? These people on no level reflect the basic ideology whereby Tony came about the power to lig all this free stuff in the first place - they scooch into Blair-intimacy by being rich. This isn't the way for any PM to behave. Not even the most grasping, cravenly individualistic leader in our history (Thatcher, I'm talking about) broke bread only with the super-rich, in order to have her bed and board covered.

I wanted to move on to the fact of the Blairs getting their air fares paid for by tacking on some government business at the end of holidays. I was then going to consider the peculiar business of Cherie, with her supermarket sweep round an Australian store, emerging with more than £2,000 worth of free stuff. Did she pay the amount over £140 when she returned to England? And while we're on the subject, when she has Carole Caplin blag free designer dresses for her, are those gifts? In which case, again, does she pay the excess? Or do they fall into a magical new category, a Cherie-allowance?

There is, unfortunately, too much corruption and not enough space. These two go beyond straight meanness. Their behaviour is grabby and embarrassing, and contravenes etiquette. It is also immoral; and if someone had described this behaviour 10 years ago, we would have said, well, from a Tory, just about. From a Liberal, improbable - but from the Labour party leader, absolutely no way. This Sugar Hill holiday can join all the other events of the past eight months - things you'd never have credited until they unfolded before your eyes. It's a busman's holiday, in effect. A very posh one.

All I can say is that your defininiton and my defininition of Gossip is two different things. Then so be it. It still does not take away the fact the I do not like people talking about others like this.