Did Tories Threaten BBC Over Coverage?

According to The Telegraph, in Britain, senior Conservatives made “repeated threats” of reform to the BBC to try and alter its election coverage, a senior Labour Party adviser claimed.

The BBC is a government-funded media outlet, at least partly paid for by a monthly license fee for all TV owners.

A former Times journalist, Tom Baldwin, said BBC executives were threatened with consequences if it did not “fall into line” with more sympathetic coverage for the Tories.

The news of the threats comes after the appointment of John Whittingdale to Culture Secretary after the Conservatives (Tories) won a majority in the House of Commons.  The Culture Secretary is in charge of the BBC.  Whittingdale has previously called the BBC licence fee “worse than the poll tax.”

The move has triggered speculation that the BBC Trust could now be abolished and the license fee drastically reformed or even scrapped.

Mr Baldwin, one of Labour Party Leader Ed Miliband’s most senior advisers, hit out at the pressure the BBC was put under by Labour’s opponents in his first public comments since the election defeat.  He claimed that BBC journalists and executives told him that they were threatened by Conservative Leaders about “what would happen” if they didn’t fall into line over the election coverage.

(Updated article)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11601847/Senior-Tories-repeatedly-threatened-BBC-during-election-says-Ed-Milibands-top-spin-doctor.html

British Election 2015: Is The SNP A ‘Dark Horse’ That Could Change The Election?

Sources state that the Scottish National Party (SNP) could change the outcome of the election in the U.K., depending on whether a coalition is formed between the SNP and one of the larger parties, like The Labour Party or The Conservative Party.

Piers Morgan, writing for The Daily Mail:

“…(N)either of the two main parties has a hope in hell of winning an overall majority at the general election.”

So one of the bigger parties will need to form a “coalition” with a smaller party to form a working majority to rule the country.  The SNP is supposedly the most powerful small party.

The problem is that the SNP wants independence for Scotland.  So a party that forms a coalition with the SNP will be working with a party that wants to break away from the U.K.

“So they will have to take a begging bowl to one of the smaller parties to do a deal that allows them to form a ‘coalition’ government. The biggest ‘smaller’ party will almost certainly be the SNP, who should end up with 40-50 seats in Parliament, having pretty much wiped out the socialist Labour party in that country, which used to be considered its heartland,” writes Piers Morgan.

The Labour Party’s leader, Ed Miliband, has accused David Cameron (Conservative) of “demeaning his office” and putting the UK’s future at risk as a fight over the SNP’s future role intensifies, according to the BBC.

Miliband said Mr. Cameron, who has warned of the dangers of a Labour-SNP coalition, should be “taking on the nationalists” not “talking them up,” states the BBC.  He suggested other Conservatives were “ashamed” of their election strategy.

However, Labour has said the Conservatives were “talking up” the threat of the SNP for their own political interests.

But former Prime Minister Sir John Major said the SNP could “blackmail” a future Labour government.

The Conservatives have continued their warnings about the SNP’s likely influence on a minority Labour government in the event of a hung Parliament, with the former Conservative leader claiming it would be a “recipe for mayhem”.

The SNP has said it does not want to form a coalition with the Conservatives, but is interested in one with Labour.

Conservative David Cameron has stated that a Conservative government would honor Scottish devolution (granting Scotland more autonomy), but he wants to “ensure the rest of the UK will not ‘lose out.'”

Below is a BBC interview with the head of the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon.

BBC News

(Updated post)

More:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3047165/PIERS-MORGAN-Meet-dangerous-wee-woman-world-ve-never-heard-of.html#ixzz3Xyk6AHIL

Some Iraqis Feel They Are Winning The War

Baghdad recently lifted its night-time curfew.  BBC’ John Simpson reported that Iraq’s capital city has changed and has a new-found optimism.

A captured Islamic State suicide bomber told the BBC that the group actively recruits teenagers as young as 14 to carry out attacks in Iraq.

The bomber was caught in Baghdad, where security is improving as Islamic State (IS) is pushed back from areas around the city.  During an interview with the BBC, the young man cried and said he was “so sorry.”

More here.

BBC Debunks Fox News Correspondent

TYT Network

According to ThinkProgress, citizens in the United Kingdom — including Prime Minister David Cameron — are expressing frustration with Saturday’s episode of the Fox News show Justice with Judge Jeanine. One of the show’s guests made wildly inaccurate claims about Islam and the city of Birmingham, U.K.

The Fox News “expert,” Steven Emerson, was interviewed and debunked by the BBC.

More:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-30783682

BBC News Reporter Inhales Burning Narcotics, Can’t Finish Report

He has braved gunfire to report from some of the world’s most treacherous regions.

Now, the BBC’s Middle East Correspondent Quentin Sommerville has revealed how he fell victim to an unexpected hazard: a pile of burning opium, heroin, and hashish.

According to The Telegraph, the video was posted online on December 22nd, and entitled “Don’t Inhale.”

In it, Sommerville appears to be getting high on the burning drugs as he tries to deliver his lines to a camera before laughing.

Mr Sommerville posted the footage online to his 24,000 Twitter follows with the message: “Dear tweeps, it’s been a year of bullets & bloodshed. You’ve earned a xmas laugh, at my expense.”

He later deleted the footage before copies of it emerged elsewhere online.

A spokesman for the BBC said: “The video of Quentin corpsing, which has now been deleted, was posted in the spirit of a blooper.

Good News Review 2014

Many of the stories reported on in 2014 involved violence and destruction. But last 2014 was also full of good news. Here is a BBC Good News video.

Clinical Trials For Ebola Medicine To Start In Africa Next Month; Death Toll At 5,160

According to the BBC, clinical trials to try to find an effective treatment for Ebola patients are to start in West Africa next month.

Meanwhile, the number of people killed by the worst outbreak of Ebola has risen to 5,160, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

The medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), which has been helping lead the fight against the virus, says three of its treatment centres will host three separate research projects.

Meanwhile, Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has lifted the state of emergency imposed in the country.  She warned “this is not because the fight against Ebola is over”.

It marks the progress being made in the country, where the weekly number of new infections is falling.  In Guinea, the frequency of new cases no longer appears to be increasing, but remains high in Sierra Leone.

In a radio address she told the nation that night curfews would be reduced, weekly markets could take place and preparations were being made for the re-opening of schools.

Mussolini’s Bunker Open To The Public

Mussolini’s bunker just opened for the public.

According to the AP:  “Mussolini had the bunker made by encapsulating the 19th-century villa’s underground kitchen area in reinforced concrete. Before that, the Mussolini family would have had to dash across the villa’s sprawling lawn and gardens to reach the wine-cellar shelter in a separate structure if air raid sirens sounded.

“Work began in 1942 to expand and fortify the bunker. Archaeologist Giuseppe Granata said Mussolini had lamented in writing that the updated bunker was running behind schedule and over cost. It is not known if the dictator ever used the bunker. By the time Allied bombings hit Rome, the dictator had been deposed and, under Nazi protection, was leading a puppet state in northern Italy. In 1945, partisans captured and executed him.”

According to the BBC:  “A World War Two bunker used by the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini is being opened to the public for the first time.”

It used to be a wine cellar under the grounds of what was his private villa in Rome.  However, states the BBC, by the time Allied bombings hit the Italian capital, Mussolini had been deposed as dictator.

The Times of Israel states that a noble family had previously lived in the villa before Mussolini moved in, and the shelter was constructed in 1940.  The bunker also has anti-gas, double steel doors.

The Times of Israel:  “Visitors at a preview Saturday saw a rusting contraption to purify air in case of a gas attack. A label on the apparatus was dated November 1940 in Roman numerals, in keeping with Mussolini’s style of evoking the ancient Roman empire’s glory days as inspiration for his own rule.”

According to The Times, the tours will run on weekends starting Oct. 31, and they will also show visitors a separate underground bunker that was built for Mussolini directly under the villa.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/mussolinis-bomb-shelter-opens-to-public/#ixzz3HMDue1P8