Now we’re fact-checking opinions
The Gurdian journalist Owen Jones shared a message he received from a member of the public in an election news report. And his image has been shared multiple times on social media. This incident is yet another being used to decry ‘fake news’. I don’t know the source of the original clip; I don’t know […]
Cinema Advertising? I’m offended!
I’m not a major cinema-goer these days. But I still go around three or four times a year. It wasn’t always that way. I used to go weekly to a cinema in Bloxwich, north Walsall, for the Saturday Morning Kids Club. Whether this was a proper cinema or a film club in a community hall, […]
The General Election televised Leaders Debates fiasco
Late last night, the Prime Minister’s director of communications, Craig Oliver, delivered what appears to be a devastating blow to the broadcasters’ plans for a series of leaders debates I’m the run up to the General Election. In his letter, the PM’s spin doctor says that David Cameron is prepared to appear in just one […]
Big Centre TV – Television as it should be
Last night, local commercial television returned to the Midlands. Big Centre TV is the new local channel for Birmingham, the Black Country and Solihull; and is available on Freeview channel 8 (you may need to retune your sets). London Live, the local TV service for London has hit a problem and has twice asked Ofcom to […]
The Grammys: Gospel and contemporary Christian music winners
Way way back, many centuries ago (okay, the early 1990s, actually), I cut my journalistic teeth on the UK’s contemporary Christian music magazine Cross Rhythms. In recent years I’ve been privately lamenting the loss of Britain’s Christian music scene. There just doesn’t seem to be the same market, scene or buzz around Christian music. There […]
Je ne suis pas Charlie; Je suis Gavin
Like just about everybody, I was shocked last week as news emerged of the terrorist attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and the cold bloodied murder of the magazine’s journalists and cartoonists, visitors the office, police officers and, later, customers of a kosher supermarket. And, while I would have liked the terrorists responsible for the attack […]
A journalist with a police caution for domestic violence describes Ched Evans opponents as “morons”
Writing in the week’s Spectator (cover date 10 January 2015, but online now), the columnist Rod Liddle describes opponents of Ched Evans as “morons”. He starts his column with an attack on pseudonymous campaigner Jean Hatchet, saying that her name is “almost certainly too good to be true for a perpetually infuriated radical feminist.” He then […]
Elvis Presley produces new material despite being dead for 37 years
The King of Rock’n’Roll, Elvis Presley, died on 16 August 1977 – some 37 years ago – at the age of 42. As we approach what would have been his 80th birthday, on 8 January 2015, Channel Five is having an Elvis Night tomorrow. They are showing NBC’s 1968 Comeback Special and the 2005 television […]
Argie-Bargie: FOI Act request discloses truth behind Top Gear’s H982 FKL car
Ever since Jeremy Clarkson and his Top Gear buddies were forced to flee Argentina in a row over the number plate on a Porsche 928 GT they were using to film a special edition of the programme; there have been claims and counter-claims that the Top Gear programme – never known to be deliberately uncontroversial […]
A puppy and a bikini brings global fame to singer
Kendra Moriah is a singer. I can’t tell you whether or not she’s a good singer because I’ve not heard any of her songs. She’s probably fantastic and this post is not intended to denigrate her in any way. The only negative thing that I can say about Kendra – and this isn’t really a negative […]