Age-related macular degeneration has also left actor, 91, unable to read or recognise faces any more
Judi Dench has said she can no longer perform on stage or in films because of her deteriorating eyesight, more than a decade after revealing she had been diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration.
“I can’t be on stage. I can’t do a play any more. I can’t do a film any more. I can’t read any more,” the 91-year-old actor told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday.
Fears over lack of scrutiny for key sectors as health editor position also to go in cuts aimed at saving £5.5m
The BBC will no longer have a dedicated education editor as part of a cost-cutting drive in which 100 jobs are to go across BBC News under a plan that school leaders described as “deeply regrettable”.
BBC staff have been told that the roles of education editor and social affairs editor are to be combined into a single position as part of a round of changes that will save £5.5m. However, prominent unions and campaigners are saying the reform will dilute scrutiny of two specialisms that are too important to go without a dedicated BBC role.
Television channels BBC Three and BBC Scotland are to close and the Radio 4 Extra radio station will be scrapped, as part of the corporation’s drive to cut £500m in costs.
Both TV channels are to move online as executives try to plug a funding crisis and adapt the broadcaster’s output for audiences that increasingly watch content on demand. All three outlets will close in the spring.
In the UK, the BBC has been taking in public employees from government departments, and letting them work on news content, specifically “fact-checking” and drafting material for BBC News and its “fact-checking” arm, BBC Verify.
The secondments came from the Government Statistical Service, and took place over the past eight years, with 39 civil servants spending three or six months at the BBC, while their salaries were still paid by their own departments.
The Government Statistical Service is now advertising more of these secondments for 2027.
This was first reported by The Telegraphon October 17.
Meanwhile, the BBC is the same public service broadcaster that the government wants to give more money by introducing a “YouTube tax” – a plan to extend the license fee to streaming services.
And the same BBC is the one the government wants to push up people’s feeds on YouTube and other platforms, by making those platforms give it prominence in their algorithms. A green paper, “Watch this space: a new strategic direction for UK media,” is proposing this.
In the past, Reclaim The Net has reported about this plan, and how the US government said that this would mean “mandating that platforms algorithmically amplify government-preferred media.”
So, to sum it up: the government wants people to fund the BBC, wants the algorithm to favor the BBC, and has its own staff inside the BBC writing the fact-checks.
The subjects they worked on were “small boat” crossings of migrants, Covid, crime, migration, and life expectancy. The work of these civil servants, whose salaries were still paid by their respective government departments, was published under the bylines “BBC News” and “BBC Verify.”
This is how some of the secondees described their work on the Government Statistical Service blog.
One from the Home Office said she worked as “BBC Verify’s consultant statistician, fact-checking claims in heated election debates, ‘filing copy’ on interesting stories, and advising journalists.”
She also worked on “small boat arrivals and visa applications” and did “quality assurance on copies and charts before they were published to the online live page.”
Another from the Department for Business and Trade said, “One of my first tasks was drafting ‘copy'” on annual population statistics, “This was because they related to migration, which was always a topic of interest.” And: “My lines were then quickly pulled into a full article on the main site.”
That post, however, “was taken down after The Telegraph contacted the BBC” – and the BBC “has since insisted that those on secondment do not write copy.”
But the civil servant had just said that he did.
This secondee also worked on “fact-checking claims about crime rates among different nationalities that were dominating news cycles.”
Another civil servant seconded to the BBC analyzed data on “small boat migration” to see if the weather in 2022 meant fewer crossings: “In probably my proudest moment, this made it into an article on the front page and a TV piece.”
The job advert says that “Your salary for this professional development opportunity will continue to be paid by your parent department.”
The person they are looking for should have “the ability to influence decision making, working with credibility and proactively with customers to share knowledge and information.” They will also “be representing their department and the Government Statistical Service.”
The BBC’s own rules, however, say that “Our audiences must be able to trust the BBC and be confident that our editorial decisions are not influenced by outside interests, political or commercial pressures, or any personal interests.”
And: “External activities of individuals working for the BBC must not undermine the public’s perception of the impartiality, integrity, independence and objectivity of the BBC.”
A spokesman for the BBC said that “All BBC journalism and editorial decisions are made by BBC journalists and editors, in line with the BBC’s editorial guidelines, so these statisticians never make editorial decisions.”
But the corporation has also said it will now amend the bylines of the articles written by the civil servants to show their true jobs – something it will do only now, after The Telegraph asked.
Opposition politicians and others have been scathing in their criticism of the scheme, with Mike Wood, shadow Cabinet Office minister, saying that the BBC “must never allow a political agenda to influence BBC coverage via the back door.”
Danny Kruger, of Reform UK, was even more direct: “This is scandalous and looks dangerously as though the BBC has breached its own rules on impartiality.”
Oxford professor Carl Heneghan said, “If you have people writing for you with competing interests, it won’t be impartial. It is the government organisation you will be partial to. You will want to toe the line.”
The arrangement is so absurd that people would probably laugh at it if they heard it was happening in North Korea.
But it’s happening in the UK, and it’s not funny. The “journalists” in question were never identified as government employees to the readers, and the change of heart in that regard comes only now, after a newspaper investigated and reported about it.
The BBC has suspended a placement scheme for civil servants amid an outcry over impartiality after it was revealed that Whitehall staff were tasked with fact-checking contentious issues such as immigration and Covid.
The BBC has been accused of using its Bitesize website to push open borders, Net Zero and woke ideology on children as young as 11, teaching them that more immigration is great and anyone who disagrees is likely a bigot.
President Trump’s primary legal fund is more than $1.9 million in debt, according to its latest filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Save America PAC, which Trump formed after he lost the 2020 presidential election, spent more than $5.4 million in the third quarter and had spent more than $14 million from the start…
The BBC is making a documentary series about the influence and legacy of J.K. Rowling without any input from the author which brands her a "polarising figure".
A emissora britânica vai continuar a informar em pashtun, dari e inglês através de ondas curtas, satélite e internet. Afirmam ainda que estão a trabalhar com as autoridades para lidar com a situação.
Further exclusive extracts from Chris Morrison's new book on the invented 'climate crisis' are published today on the Daily Sceptic. Read about the role of the BBC and Met Office in driving the hysteria.
The BBC pays white staff less on average than their ethnic minority colleagues in every pay band bar one, stoking concerns about the impact of the corporation's diversity drive.
Comedy clubs are begging for taxpayer bailouts, the BBC is censoring classic sketches and Muslim activists are trying to ban John Cleese. British comedy is becoming less funny by the day, says Steven Tucker.
The BBC has finally accepted that it should not have predetermined Nigel Farage's guilt by referring to his "failure" to declare donations. But, preposterously, it still claimed there was "no intent of bias".
When the establishment media deals with issues in which the West’s war industries are most heavily invested, it happily jettisons even the semblance of critical distance from the state
It’s easy to forget that the western media – the so-called “free press” – likes to distinguish itself from media in authoritarian regimes on the basis that, unlike them, it asks critical questions of the powerful, reports facts objectively, and formulates its analyses dispassionately.
They do propaganda, we do news – or so the western media argues.
The feverish coverage since five men were arrested in the early hours of Sunday morning close to RAF Fairford in the UK is blowing a very big hole in that claim.
Here are the known facts so far.
Three white vans, bearing the logo of a genuine fuel transit company, were spotted by a local farmer on the road outside her property as she returned from a party. Police arrived promptly and arrested the men, who were all British nationals in their twenties.
On Tuesday, it emerged that one of the arrested men actually called the police earlier – seemingly the reason officers were on the scene so quickly.
Although the men were initially arrested on explosives charges, no “viable” explosives were found. Although they were arrested on terrorism charges, which allow for 14 days of detention, they were released on bail under normal criminal laws in less than two days.
It has also emerged that the men had several empty “barrels” in their vans, plus one that contained what police described disturbingly as an “accelerant”.
Actually, that was simply a reference to petrol. The stuff that goes into vehicles to make them accelerate.
British prime minister Andy Burnham held a rare national emergency Cobra meeting over the incident.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration got involved because RAF Fairford, despite its name, is in reality a US air base from which American planes are waging an illegal war of aggression against Iran, with the UK’s blessing.
US Secretary of state Marco Rubio has said the incident “clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor”. When asked whether Iran was that actor, Trump replied: “It might be.” He added: “I know the answer… I can be very specific, but I’d rather not say.”
According to a report in the New York Times, “American and British intelligence services worked with Israel and Western countries to discover the threats against US bases, including ones in Germany.” [my emphasis]
Despite these sparse facts, the British media have uniformly rushed to a single conclusion: that this was almost certainly part of an Iranian terror plot to target the US airbase and its planes. The only room for debate allowed is whether the five men were witting or unwitting actors in that plot.
As the Guardian reported in its Wednesday edition, referring to this as a “complex investigation”: “An Iranian link to the bizarre events in the Gloucestershire countryside over the weekend is seen as increasingly likely.”
As context, let us note the following: that British and US officials have every interest in trying to hype this incident as an Iranian “terror plot”, whatever the actual evidence suggests.
Why? Because the US is waging an illegal war on Iran, and the UK is allowing it to do so from British soil. Under the rules of war, Iran has every right to attack RAF Fairford.
If the British state and billionaire-owned media were actually serving as a truly “free press”, they would be offering the context that RAF Fairford is a legitimate military target and that any attack on it by Iran would not constitute terrorism.
Of course, none have done so.
Instead, they have loyally regurgitated the British and US security services spin of a “terror plot” – based on no tangible evidence at all – that paints Britain and the US as the victims of a sinister and unwarranted act of Iranian aggression.
But context aside, an objective, sceptical media – a “free press” – would be reserving judgment on what had happened. It would be asking difficult questions. It would be offering plausible counter-narratives.
Again, none of this is happening. In the British media, there has been a lemming-like rush towards accepting uncritically the very conclusions that best serve British and US state interests.
The constant highlighting of a terrorism connection to the arrested men – for which there is no apparent evidence – is precisely the kind of coverage you would expect from state media in an authoritarian regime. This is about whipping up a public mood of fear, not about transparent fact-finding.
Notably, unlike the British media, the New York Times report does allow for another possibility, even if it instantly ignores it and then joins the British media in treating what evidence there is as proof of an Iranian terror plot.
The Times opens with a question: “The potential ambiguities – were the men Iranian operatives, petty gas thieves, or both? – added to the confusion surrounding the arrests that the authorities have yet to fully explain.”
“Petty gas thieves”! Men in vans with empty barrels close to a farm in the middle of the night. Is it possible they could simply be criminals?!
In fact, this conjecture has been all over social media since the first reports of the men being arrested surfaced. As new details have emerged, those suspicions have only grown.
And yet Britain’s “free press” has uniformly ignored this counter-theory in favour of the US and British security services’ narrative.
Doubtless, British journalists covering this incident would call the idea that this was simply a criminal group caught in the act unhelpful “speculation”.
But how is their no-more-plausible, and possibly less plausible, theory that this was an Iranian terror plot not equally speculation – if in their case, speculation that happens to be extremely helpful to the British and US security establishments?
There are other theories we could posit too, given the known facts. Israel, which originally pushed for the illegal and disastrous war on Iran, has been looking for a way to persuade the Trump administration to return to a full-scale bombing campaign.
An attack on RAF Fairford – or the appearance of one – would be an ideal way to pile on the pressure for renewed strikes on Iran. It’s not, after all, as if there are no examples of Israel carrying out false flags.
If the “foreign actor” of Iran can recruit a gang of petty criminals to unwittingly spark a major security incident outside RAF Fairford, why can the “foreign actor” of Israel not do exactly the same?
I don’t know what happened outside the airbase. I’m not claiming to. I am keeping an open, critical mind while what facts there are emerge. If only our “free press’“ were doing the same.
There may be those reading this who find the claim that the media in our “democratic” societies is not confrontational to, or at least distant from, the state hard to believe. Such an idea may be new to them.
That should not be surprising. After all, how did each of us form our foundational view of the world – of who are the good guys, and who the bad – if not from spending a lifetime reading and watching media owned by billionaire-led corporations and the state?
Since quitting the establishment media myself a quarter of a century ago (I worked for the Guardian), I have dedicated much of my time to identifying some of the most egregious examples of skewed journalism – reporting that consistently presents events in ways that serve not their audiences’ interests but those of the powerful: the corporations themselves; western security establishments; and Israel, the linchpin of the West’s war industries.
In such cases, the establishment media readily abandons even the pretence of neutral, fair or dispassionate reporting. It serves as little more than a propaganda factory. (You can read my detailed explanation of how the Propaganda Model works here.)
This has been all too visible in the coverage of Israel’s mass-slaughter in Gaza, a genocide that could not be named as such.
It was visible in the coverage of Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine that had, in fact, been provoked by Nato for decades, as it expanded across Europe with a clear intention: either to corner Moscow militarily or drive it into a retaliatory attack on Ukraine that would provide an opportunity for the West to bleed Russia on a proxy battlefield.
It was visible in the sustained media campaign of antisemitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn, that rarest, and most dangerous, of things: a leader of a major political party who promoted socialist policies for the benefit of the public, not billionaires, and was a vehement critic of Israel long before it showed its genocidal hand.
It was visible too in the media pile-on against Julian Assange, whose Wikileaks whistleblower platform exposed British and US war crimes while also threatening to destroy the media’s top-down model. Having ridiculed him for claiming asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy for fear Washington would seek to extradite him for exposing its crimes, the media then treated his seizure by British police and incarceration for years in a high-security London prison, while the US sought his extradition for exposing its crimes, as entirely unremarkable, as barely worth reporting.
I could go on and on. There is a consistent pattern when the establishment media deals with the most important issues, the very ones in which our national security states are most invested. Then the media jettisons even the semblance of critical distance from the state.
RAF Fairford is just the latest example of how, in such important moments, the media serves as nothing more than the security state’s loudspeaker.
“By the way, don’t touch the figs.” Actress Siân Phillips has remarked that when she traveled the world, even decades after the premiere of I, Claudius, someone would recognize her voice and ask her to deliver the phrase delivered by her character, the Machiavellian Livia Drusilla. That scene from the series competes in collective imagination with its opening sequence, in which at the start of its 13 episodes, a serpent slithered to threatening music over a tiled mosaic face of Emperor Claudius. There it was in a nutshell: the greatness and filth of a newborn empire already corroded by corruption, the moral sickness that dominated a family, the political intrigues, the personal betrayals, the devastating effects of exercising and coveting power. The influence of I, Claudius can be seen in much more recent television projects, fromGame of Thronesto Succession, but it also emerges in the current international political panorama, in the form of leaders like Donald Trump. This year, a half-century will have passed since its first broadcast, but anyone who watches an episode will confirm that it continues to be as relevant as it was back then.
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