BBC Persian reports that the English-language propaganda wing of the Iranian government, Press TV, has been shut down in Jordan for violating “professional media standards”.
Good. It’s a propaganda operation with no interest in truth or journalistic integrity, happy to peddle holocaust denial and provide a platform for cranks. There’s also no need for liberal quibbling over the rights of the press here: Press TV exists to promote lies, and is an arm of a government that sees fit to shut down newspapers that contradict it. It is an outfit that undermines genuine journalism. We should shed no tears for a state broadcaster that falls foul of the very same press restrictions it seeks to promote.
Iain Dale and several others have also decided not to appear on it any more. If you want to watch one of Press TV’s patronising executives get Paxo’ed, see here.
Hat-Tip: Raye Man Koast? (Where is my Vote?)
The BBC’s style guide warns of bad copy:
Writing which is second-hand is second-rate, and offers no pleasure to the listener.
Maybe, but when was the last time you heard the written word?
Vanity Fair carries a massive assessment of Sarah Palin. In particular this passage stuck out:
In every job, she surrounded herself with an insular coterie of trusted friends, took disagreements personally, discarded people who were no longer useful, and swiftly dealt vengeance on enemies, real or perceived.
In the phoney war over spending cuts, perhaps we could do better to start small. Yes, education is in need of structural reform, and any effort by the government to loosen the grip of Whitehall on education ought to be welcomed by localists, but there is a limit to what structural reform can do. Politicians, with their eyes on sweeping narratives and grand alterations, might do better to actually follow the money, rather than assume that all spending is good spending and avoid looking beyond executive summaries. Large amounts of money can be lost through the cumulative effects of multiple low-cost decisions.
For example, take Brain Gym, a crank pseudoscience effort reported to cost the taxpayer around £130,000 in Scotland alone.
According to Ben Goldacre:
Brain Gym continues to produce more email than almost any other subject: usually it is from teachers, eager to defend the practice, but also from children, astonished at the sheer stupidity of what they are being taught.
As you will remember, Brain Gym is a set of perfectly good fun exercise break ideas for kids, which costs a packet and comes attached to a bizarre and entirely bogus pseudoscientific explanatory framework. They tell you to rub either side of your breast bone, in a special Brain Gym way called Brain Buttons: “This exercise stimulates the flow of oxygen-carrying blood through the carotid arteries to the brain to awaken it and increase concentration and relaxation. Brain buttons lie directly over and stimulate the carotid arteries.” Through your ribcage. Without using scissors.
They’re keen on drinking water. Fair enough. But why? “Processed foods,” says the Brain Gym manual, “do not contain water.” Is there water in soup? No. “All other liquids are processed in the body as food, and do not serve the body’s water needs.” This ridiculousness comes at very great cost, paid for by you, the taxpayer, in thousands of state schools. It is peddled directly to your children by their credulous and apparently moronic teachers.
If you like scandals, then this is one. The very same person who tells your child that blood is pumped around the lungs and then the body by the heart, is also telling them that when they do The Energizer exercise then “this back and forward movement of the head increases the circulation to the frontal lobe for greater comprehension and rational thinking”.
Sweeping percentage-point cuts filtering down from the top cannot provide the whole answer; outsiders need to challenge bad ideas lower down the system to make good savings.
Of course, to get that command of detail you’re going to have to decentralise power and turn the private citizen into a one-man, FOI-armed investigator.
Speaker Bercow has made a mistake in opting not to wear the traditional robes of his office.
It is not a matter of “modernisation”. Parliament needs reform of its practices, not its dress codes. It is also the worst of both worlds: evidently the speaker believes he needs distinctive clothing, yet is unwilling to accept those which he is granted.
The old outfit conveys a more important reform than the facile and superficial “modernisation” a lounge suit represents. The problem with Parliament has been its progressive weakening as an institution over the past decades. Reform is aimed at restoring it to its former position within the constitution. Wearing the traditional robes of office would have been an important symbolic act, stating Parliament’s intention to return to its original principles, rather than the continued denigration of the importance of the institution that allowed the expenses scandal to occur in the first place.
What a waste of an opportunity.
Via Ian Leslie, an insight into the psychological conduct of Obama’s presidency so far:
In the early 1970s a geneticist called John Maynard-Smith invented the Hawk-Dove game to try and shed light on why animals don’t fight each other to death at every chance they get, in an attempt to maximise their own personal gain. In his game – actually a mathematical model but we needn’t go into that – Hawk is always up for a fight. He easily beats Dove. But he gets badly wounded in a fight with another Hawk. Dove, which is programmed to cooperate, reaps benefits when it meets another Dove. But when it meets a Hawk it gets killed. In the short term, the Hawk strategy is the most rational – and evolutionarily successful – strategy. But when the game is played over and again, the Dove starts to do better. A third strategy, called Retaliator, proves best of all. Retaliator is a Dove – until it meets a Hawk, at which point it turns into a Hawk too.
H/T: The Daily Dish
Benedict Rogers defends John Bercow from the Right:
Ought not especially those who consider themselves Christians reflect on whether their blogs serve a higher purpose or are simply self-serving, vacuous, and unnecessarily unpleasant about their colleagues? Was it really appropriate and necessary to bring John’s wife’s political views into the debate about his candidacy for the Speakership? For those Conservatives who call themselves Christian, oughtn’t they to consider what kind of message they are giving out when they speak in such unnecessarily unforgiving, judgmental, hateful tones about a parliamentary colleague?
It isn’t particularly edifying to watch one’s own side wield the knife with such glee, particularly among junior Tory bloggers who should know better. Those who are plotting to oust him as Speaker should Parliament gain a Conservative majority should wind their necks in now. It will look, and be, utterly ridiculous.
It is galling that some are strutting round now trying to create an ideological litmus test, or proclaim that those who hold similar views have no place in the party. It’s almost as if they wished he’d defected to Labour. The Conservative Party is only fit for government when it is a broad church.
Basijis shooting Neda Agha Soltan to death. Perhaps after this they will stop being described as an “Islamic” militia. There is nothing holy about this thuggery.
Content certainly not suitable for work and rather disturbing, so I’m linking to the video rather than embedding it here.
I ended up backing John Bercow for the speakership.
Sir George Young was tempting, but too much of a backroom boy to front the changes Parliament urgently needs to make.
Bercow has strong reforming credentials, an independent mind, cross-party appeal, charisma and humour.
I don’t quite get the outrage of some of my friends on the right-wing blogs though. You complain about spineless MPs who don’t differ from their party line, and look for a Speaker who is loyal to the House rather than the government of the day, and get angry when that candidate happens to be of your “side”. If you support MPs having their own opinions, you have to support it in your own party as well.
Very well done to Mr. Bercow and let’s hope he fulfills his promises.
