tomo,
The lens part was meant to describe not to excuse. I don't think it's possible to eliminate bias — there are more reports than time to broadcast them, and random sampling wouldn't please the audience — but elimination of media groupthink would help reduce it. Tricky problem since the whole pipeline to journalism demands groupthink. How exactly did journalism become a university thing? It's the bureaucratic blob again, isn't it?

Enjoyed the scare porn. Particularly liked the precisely-vague warning that such storms would be "50% more frequent". Sounds alarming, but what does it mean in reality? They say the status quo is one such storm every 100-300 years, so 50% more frequent means one and a half such every 100-300 years; or one every 66-200 years. Pretty big overlap with what it was before.

Perhaps a bit of work on the drains might help mitigate future floods. Probably more effective than pleading with the weather gods to ease back on the rain.

Haven't heard anything on the Starmer sleaze here. Somewhat related (I suspect), in Brendan O'Neill's interview with Liam Halligan, Halligan suggested that Labour still thought it was in opposition. Consistent with Starmer's nonchalance: "the spotlight's not on us, and we can always blame the Tories".

DaveS,
Yes, we did see the pro-Palestine demonstrations in London on the news last night. Was only a brief segment showing a bit of pushing and shoving. Got rather more on pushing and shoving where Netenyahu was arriving in New York.

It is all so predictable. They might as well serve up a half hour of bleating Four legs good, two legs bad, perhaps with a short interlude for two minutes of hate.

The UK MSM appears to be keeping silent on the demonstration near Downing Street yesterday, with (according to non-MSM sources) 6 arrests. Sounds like the usual collection of pro-Palestine and far left agitators. Perhaps reported in Australia?

Presumably if it had been six 'far right' demonstrators arrested it would have made the headlines. This comes after Lord Ali, funder of Starmer's wife's frocks and Rayner's New York trysts, has spoken about the need to control what the media reports. Coincidence?

Mailman,
I doubt the Hamas or Hezbollah leaders are anything more than superficial Muslims. The costumes, thumping the lectern, etc., are just a facade. It keeps the underlings fired up, and has allowed them to live very comfortable lives. They're in no hurry to sample the delights of umpteen virgins in the afterlife, which is why the exploding pagers rattled them so badly.

The picture is more complicated when it comes to journalists; it's a whole eco-system. The journalists themselves run from utter cynics to ones who appear to sincerely believe in the rightness of the anti-Israel cause. Then there are the people back home who decide which stories get a run, and which are downplayed or spiked. They make those decisions looking through their own lenses, generally with an eye to domestic politics, but ultimately to the social circles they mingle in.

Thing is, we all have our own lenses, so even if there were a way for unadulterated facts to reach our tellies, we'd still find people drawing completely different conclusions from them. It's like the quandaries of the 1950s: a scientist could tell you how much energy could be liberated from a kilogram of Uranium, but whether liberating it was a good thing wasn't a question for science.

.,
Not too many nurses wearing nappies in those TikTok videos either IIRC. Very reassuring to see Prof. Whitty has come down to the same hard fact as Australia's excess deaths enquiry:

Not a trivial amount worse, but really quite substantially worse

Quite enjoyed this item where an Irish publican responds to a virtue-signalling travel agency tut-tutting about his fireplace burning turf.

C4?

The BBC cherry-picks "The Covid Inquiry"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9py388z17o

No mention of how they managed to make so many TikTok dance videos

Fuck me, wasnt fast enough to turn C4 news off last night!! C8nts are talking up the war Hezbollah started by trying to kill Jews as evil Jews in anticipation of a ground offensive! These clowns are laying the ground work now for the HOOOOOOOOOOMAN civilian impact emotional blackmail stories that will come flooding out of the left as soon as the first Jew steps off the start line!

Funny thing is, I cannot remember a single instance of C4 or Al Beeb wanking on about Hamas and Hezbollah's attempts to kill Jews with indiscriminate rocket fire that necessitated 60k Jews being evacuated in the North from their homes since October last year?

Also guarantee you that none of those so called "journalists" know any of the names of the Jewish children murdered on October 7 by Hamas or the kids murdered by Hezbollah for the crime of being Jews playing football.

Robbo,

Re the pagers. Military genius right there! Boy, if someone could still make awesome, boys own, war movies then the Juices have been providing material to use for decades! Some of the audacious operations these guys have pulled off just beggars belief.

I think it will be a very long time before we know the full extent of just how successful this action was. This has probably crippled Hezbollah and adding on top their leadership cast still in Lebanon being systematically eradicated doesnt help as well.

Mind you, Nazrallah and all the other 1 percenters hiding in Qattar and Iran dont care do they. To them those losses are just collateral the they are only too happy to spend combating the evil satan that is the Jewish State.

In regards to the usual suspect calling this terrorism. Isnt it interesting how not one single person has called out Hebollahs campaign of terror in Northern Israel that has necessitated nearly 100k people being moved from their homes for safety?

Yet one child gets killed and its the end of the world to these intellectual pygmies. I guarantee you that those same people wailing about the deaths of innocent children dont know the names of any of the babies and children murdered on October 7 for the crime of being Jewish.

You want to know what REAL genocide looks like...look at what went on on the 7th of October.

Mailman,
Yes Utopia was on point, a derivative of Yes Minister, but with the amusing word-plays turned down and the satire turned up. As you say, makes it close to reality.

With the exploding pagers, etc., it has been amusing how quickly the usual apologists for terrorism lined up to condemn it as a "war crime". They didn't give much of their reasoning, but I guess it just wasn't cricket to go so precisely for the senior people. It's ok to take out a few foot soldiers and the occasional civilian, but fair's fair...

In a comment at Jo Nova's today was this video which does a very good job covering what's completely bonkers in the way Australia's been heading. An hour and twenty minutes, and the fellow speaks with speed and strine such that 1.75x speed was a bit tricky in places. Worth investing the time though.

There was much that I'd already concluded for myself, but quite a bit of new food for thought. I liked his take on our crazy real estate market. Renters have to compete with huge numbers of impoverished students willing to cram-in in third-world conditions. Buyers have to compete with international money-launderers. Our banks have become quite painful to deal with in the last few years with all the supposed anti-money-laundering processes; that's all just theatre, because there are no such strings in real estate (so he says). I can well believe it.

Anyhow, recommended. Might make you residents of Blighty feel less bad about your own woeful government.

Robbo,

Whats the point of an aussie version the Office when we already have Utopia?!? Possibly one of the best fly on the wall Government documentaries ever produced! ;)

Re the BBC...what irks me about shit like this is that its created and then passed off as news? The BBC is just a joke.

Mind you, spare a moment for their feelings after the last week of incredibly bad news out of Lebanon! The must be in tears at the moment!