Here again I find myself in a situation with a few subjects I want to touch on but not really wanting to devote entire posts to each of them at this time. So this time the three subjects are BBC2's White season, your DNA and how little you need to do to give the police reason to put it on a database, and a rather sickening situation of trying to send an Iranian kid back to Iran where he is almost certain to be executed.

Paying for BBC programming twice. It's an interesting subject, and I've commented on another blog that this issue rises because of an ambiguity of what is actually being sold by the BBC, in this case through iTunes. With DVDs and videos before them you were buying the material to own because you loved the series or the show and wanted to own it with all the special features and comedy offcuts. The iTunes plan blurs the world between iPlayer where people are supposed to be able to watch again for free and that same ownership. I can watch something for 7 days but on the 8th I have to buy it to catch up. It's essentially that segment of the population that might hear about something too late to catch it on iPlayer but doesn't plan on waiting for the DVD to see if it's any good and worth watching as it runs on the TV.

I personally think the BBC is perfectly within its rights to sell its content as it always has done, and as long as it's clear about the permanency of such sales, as if they were DVDs for example, then people have little to complain about that practice.

While I am on the theme already tonight of BBC shoddy reporting (seems to occur like buses) I also would like to highlight this article about birth rates in the UK and the contribution of immigrants to this. The BBC reports there has been a 77% increase in the birthrate of children to foreign born mothers. It is a shame that amongst all of this reporting, however, has been on the level of impact this increase has rather than why the impact is so much of a problem.

I have to ask though what the big deal is. Higher birth rate has to in turn convey some benefits to long term economy. It has long been said that younger populations help maintain a growth economy and higher birthrates are the only way to achieve this, in fact without migrants having babies we would be falling in to a predicted slump economically as our population grows older.

It was only three days ago that I discussed the recent news about electoral reform, the BBC's woefully inaccurate reporting of a document, and Michael Wills' statement to the effect of saying "we are happy to stay as we are". Now curiously there has been a separate news story surfacing today on the BBC website that pretty much breaks the same news again, but changes the way it is presented. Where has this come from?

My feelings on this remain the same, Michael Wills is a minister that doesn't bother to vote on parliamentary transparency yet has too loud a voice on this particular issue of the public/parliament relationship, and the whole statement is geared towards not implementing or properly discussing the necessary systems until after the next election. This is democracy at it's worst because the people are being denied a referendum on the issues on the basis of the current situation with the House of Lords, despite a referendum on the public's wishes not needing to be a promise to change straight away. What does the government have to lose by simply asking the people of Britain what they want, once and for all, to fully inform this debate they're supposedly so happy to have?

I am sitting here feeling pretty incensed after reading the news on the BBC news website about Labour , linked initially from Paul Linford's blog. Firstly because it is typical cowardly Labour who admit one thing in their government initiated report yet make some startling admissions about the "value" that they put on certain criteria in their practice, and secondly because it has spawned an absolutely piss-poor article from the BBC.

In the end the facts are simple. Labour hold between 48 and 96 seats more than they should based on public opinion, and despite there being working examples in our own union of PR systems working, not being too complicated, not reducing turn out, and making government more representative of the people this government is going to do whatever it can to keep hold of FPTP until it gets over the hurdle of what will be a messy general election between 2009 and 2010. It's despicable, it's an example of everything that's wrong with modern "democracy" and it is authoritarian bullshit that has to end as soon as possible.

I personally think that the BBC is spot on for saying that they want to do more to promote politics and trust in the political system of the UK in the future, but also that in turn it make themselves look stupid for having not done more in the past on the subject. There have also been comments around saying that the move was a bribe, effectively, and this is an interesting if not slightly irrelevant angle.

From this has arisen some discussion about why the BBC need to do this, questioning just why people are disengaged with politics. Some say that it's because there is no mystery any more, and that it's too open, too ugly. Other's say that the media's closeness just shows up how clandestine politics can still be. Personally I have to say let's face it, it's not the openness or mystery of politics that stops people from engaging. I doubt the people sitting around post war were going and voting still because of the allure of the mystery behind Westminster, and I severely doubt people aren't getting involved now because things are seemingly more transparent.

It was a night where Obama should have had a "crushing" victory, but in the end Clinton won by a comfortable yet still close 3 points. The media is now playing it's fickle game and the weakest of the journalistic tendencies this side of the pond is showing through with vast exaggerations over the life of the Obama campaign. One woman last night reported quite heavily on the "feeling" that Obama is now just fighting a lost cause, the night before she would have no doubt have been talking about the feeling of Obama being in the White House this time next year. The polls were read all wrong, too many people jumped on the large lead Obama had on Clinton without really ever letting the public know that almost a third of the voters were as yet undecided. The hype machine had built up and, as invariably happens, mistakes in interpretation were made that potentially damaged a candidates campaign through building him up too high.

But what can we learn from a little more of a factual stage of the process? There are now two polls based on the people that actually voted in each of the two states that have held Democratic events, and the rest of this post is going to go someway in to seeing if we can see if there are any emerging trends in the voting mindset of the public of America, what area's each of the main two need to make more of an impact on in South Carolina and Nevada, and what is hurting them most.

So the BBC strikes again, probably along with a load of other knee jerk media that I don't care to read...but again, the point is that the BBC should have a bit more integrity when it comes to its reporting.

Yesterday I had a double take as I heard news on BBC News 24, right after the Lib Dem leadership result, go on about a rape being reported. "What is this about?" I wondered, "are the BBC trying to highlight the nature of frequency of rape in this country, perhaps taking a stand that no other broadcaster has yet dared on issues such as these?" Of course not, soon after I started listening it appeared the only reason this woman being violated even made the news is because she did so within the immediate vicinity of the Manchester United teams Christmas party.

Over at "Question That" Ian has written an article discussing and questioning the standards of the BBC when it comes to religion, specifically in one of the hot topics du jour: "The BBC loves to bash Christianity but won't touch Islam with a barge poll" (post-publication edit: initiating article can be found here)

Now this might sound a bit rich coming from me given I have a distinct issue myself with BBC's impartiality, at least when it comes to news broadcasting, and where their ability to be thorough with the facts rarely shows light of day (R.I.P Panorama). However this is one issue which I have to wonder if there is really an issue present at all.

Lets get started with my response to this article...starting with a quote that originally came from the Mail on Sunday, stating that the BBC...

...deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians

I don't want this place to become a haven for lambasting the BBC's poor quality of news reporting, but sometimes I'm just in one of those moods. In fact I'm not sure if the quality is necessarily that bad all told but my yearly head-cold is making me distinctly grouchy

First up in this potential repeat series is local news for me about Bristol's waste problem. Apparently it is getting worse, though no studies have been cited whatsoever as of course with the BBC biased sources of information are perfectly acceptable. What gets me though is that there is no reporting whatsoever into Bristol City Council's inability to deal with the waste problem. On the nights I go out I usually end up sharing a pizza from Pizza Palace, a pizza takeaway holding up the end of a row of about 4 or 5 takeaways, across the road from at least three officially council licensed fast food vendors that seemingly have no obligation to bring waste management solutions along with their trailers. The council is happy to pick up their rent but not the responsibility for picking up the rubbish they haven't made provisions for it seems.