Tuesday 15 November 2011

Third class citizens

I must apologise profusely for the grievous error in my previous post. The Scots are actually third class citizens in the UK, not second class. What is the cause of this deflation? Well it seems that Brian Taylor and Douglas Fraser have stuck their fingers in their ears whilst simultaneously sticking two fingers up at the poor Scottish license fee payer (quite a feat, just try it...). Both of their "blogs" now bear the sombre message...

We are no longer enabling comments on this page as a general rule. We will continue, however, to enable comments from time to time on this page as we do across our online service to provide users with the opportunity to contribute on particular stories.

See for yourselves: Brian and Douglas.

Aha, I thought to myself, the Beeb is making swingeing cuts and the moderators have been given the chop! Erm, except that the following blogs still seem to be accepting comments from the great unwashed...

Nick Robinson - UK Politics
Mark D'Arcy - Parliament
Betsan Powys - Wales
Mark Devenport - NI
Gavin Hewitt - Europe
Mark Mardell - North America
Katty Kay - Washington DC
Damian Grammaticas - Beijing
Soutik Biswas - Delhi
Robert Peston - Business
Stephanie Flanders - Economics
Fergus Walsh - Medical
Jonathan Amos - Science
Richard Black - Environment
Rory Cellan-Jones - Technology
Will Gompertz - Arts

I suppose it's fair enough, it's not like anything much important is happening in Scottish politics at the minute, is it? Nor in Scottish business. Not as important as some exhibition on Da Vinci anyway. Well dear reader, I can only urge you to draw the same conclusion as me: if the BBC aren't interested in your opinions about Scotland then they surely can't be too interested in the license fee from Scotland.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I suppose it's fair enough, it's not like anything much important is happening in Scottish politics at the minute, is it?


They is the start of a Psyops against Scotland and the cyberwar is just one manifestation

forfar-loon said...

I don't like to don the tinfoil hat too often but it certainly seems that way Lupus. It bears all the hallmarks of Scotland being singled out. The question is where the decision was made. Was it a BBC Scotland decision? (I suspect so)

Anonymous said...

I expect they wouldn't like to have some of the other side of the argument anywhere on their website, just in case someone somewhere thought it might be an indication of their own point of view, which is undoubtedly that we are all English, just different kinds of English.

The frustrating thing is that we are all taxed at £146 for the BBC regardless if, like me, you only watch 10 minutes of their crap every 2 or 3 weeks.

I wonder, does anyone know if there are Welsh blogs and if they have been similarly downgraded?

Doug Daniel said...

Tris - have another look at the list. Not only does Betsan's Welsh blog still have comments enabled, but so too does Mark Davenport's NI one.

There really is no other way to look at this: the BBC is specifically preventing Scots from commenting on their site.

forfar-loon said...

Aye, gone are the halcyon days of unlimited length posts, 1500 comments over a weekend, brigadierjohn and bighullabaloo tearing strips off each other and oldnat and Brownedov educating the masses. They've really wrecked Brian's blog over the last year or so and it's final demise is sad but not unexpected.

Tris, you don't have to pay the license fee you know. To be clear, that's not an incitement to evasion you understand. Oh no.

Thanks Doug, the Loon leaves no stone unturned ;o)

Anonymous said...

Doug: Thanks. It does seem that we have been singled out for special treatment.I guess it's pretty obvious why. I wonder what the official reason is.

Loon.... I'll not mention your name when they come to take me away then.... :)