Our crap media...

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am fed up with the low-brow nature of much of the British media. Channel 4 news and Today are generally excepted here, but even they have been foxed somewhat by reporting the committee stage of the prevention of terrorism bill in the House of Lords in the past few days. Now, I know it is relatively complex stuff, but Mark Mardell's "report" (and I use the term in its loosest sense) on the BBC news at 10pm was vacuous drivel, to such an extent that one wasn't really sure what had happened in the upper house that day at all. I had to laugh though when he handed back to poor old Huw Edwards, who always looks like he's reading an autocue written in Aramaic from the furrow on his brow. Why can't they get back legal eagles like Joshua Rozenberg, who used to be able to summarise the complexities very succinctly? It's lucky that we have BBC parliament channel so that I could turn over and watch their Lordships debating. And the issue, it transpires, centres around the debate over derogating and non-derogating control orders, the former of which are to do with the deprivation of liberty. This, of course, has some quite serious consequences under Article 5 of the European Convention of Human Rights, i.e. the government would have to seek derogation from article 5 were such control orders (e.g. house arrest) to be passed. Where derogating orders end and non-derogating orders begin is unclear n the bill, though the government seems to have suggested that apart from house arrest, no other control orders would be in breach of the ECHR and the Human Rights Act 1998. With such fundamental issues as human rights at stake, this is the crux of the concerns raised in both houses. For example, one amendment that the Lords wanted to introduce under the Deprivation of Liberties in Clause 2 of the bill was the removal of 'on the balance of probabilities' to 'beyond reasonable doubt'. As the Earl of Onslow said:
"My name is also on the amendment. Before we came into the Chamber I was nobbled by a Whip who said to me, "You are not to talk for too long". When I saw my name on the amendment I just thought to myself that you should not have to talk for too long in order to say that it is completely wrong to take away the liberty of a subject and lock him up on the balance of probabilities. I shall now sit down."

But do we get this portrayal from the BBC? No. It's the usual namby-pamby, watered-down shite that they seem to think the average Red Top reader can cope with. Well, it stinks. Ok. Rant over.