It is now an archive for my newspaper and magazine pieces. My blog can now be read at: www.spectator.co.uk/stephenpollard
Politics, economics and culture from the master. Unmissable.
Melanie Phillips home page
Melanie Phillips' peerless blog. Read, and learn.
Daniel Finkelstein's Times Comment Central
A daily must-read.
Tim Worstall
Lots of interesting nibbles - and a ruthless swatter of economic gibberish.
Harry's Place
Must-read left of centre blog from writers who understand the threat to the West.
Clive Davis
Always interesting selection of culture and politics, from an Anglo-American bent.
Samizdata
Libertarian blog, packed every day.
Norm's blog
The thoroughly sensible thoughts of renowned left-wing academic Norman Geras, Professor of Government at Manchester. And cricket, too.
Public Interest
Peter Briffa's inimitable take on The Yazzmonster and other assorted demons.
Reform
The public sector reform group; their website is an invaluable source of data and ideas.
Centre for the New Europe
The leading European public policy think tank.
Developed by:
| August | 24 |
| 2006 |
How Mark Steyn is missed in British newspapers. Here he is on The Axis of Evenhandedness:
There's a hoary old joke from a few years back in which the Secretary-General proposes that, in the interests of global peace and harmony, the world's soccer players should come together and form one United Nations global soccer team."Great idea," says his deputy. "Er, but who would we play?"
"Israel, of course."
I was listening to the radio the other day (not the BBC!) and heard some 'they're not terrorists, they're freedom fighters' academic moaning that the UN cease fire resolution was bad because it favoured Israel over Hezbollah. The statement was left hanging as if, self-evidently, such 'bias' would be wrong.
It didn't occur to the host to ask why there would be a problem - if it were true - if the UN favoured a sovereign state defending itself, over a terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of that state.
MessageSpace
The bias of the BBC in its reporting of the middle east is embarrassing to say the least. Is it deliberate? Who knows? My guess is that with 50% of its reporters it’s deliberate and with the other 50% it’s intentional.
But instead of moaning about it, we should take every opportunity to point out that blogs such as 'Biased BBC' exist to monitor the BBC’s output. And that the corporation itself has a ‘Newsnight’ blog and an ‘Editors’ blog where you can bring incidents of bias to their attention.
On their blogs they make an effort to allow a diversity of views and plenty of criticism. If only their reporters could do the same then I’m sure we wouldn’t resent paying the BBC poll tax as much as we do.
www.biased-bbc.blogspot.com
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/
