thanksforallthefish
@thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe
- Comment on US threatens Britain over Falklands 6 days ago:
Oil
- Comment on A pattern of negative posts about the BBC 2 weeks ago:
Given there is literally no ad hominem in my post, some introspection about what you perceive to be an insult may be helpful about why you got the reactions you did.
FWIW my post is not at all different to the rest of the posters, so that difference is in your perception, not mine, and by the upvotes/downvotes, I’m fairly confident my read is in line with the rest of the group
- Comment on A pattern of negative posts about the BBC 2 weeks ago:
it’s been shifting further and further right for the last 15 years
Coincidentally that 15 year window perfectly aligns with the timing of the Cameron govt replacing board and then senior management with Tory cronies.
Coincidence ?
- Comment on A pattern of negative posts about the BBC 2 weeks ago:
I came back to provide you the longer list of academic studies I mentioned in the earlier reply (there’s about 3 or dozen without counting them), however having skimmed through this thread I don’t think there’s any point.
If you actually want to to understand (I’m fairly confident from your comments you actually were seeking validation not understanding) then you need to first read up on what the different biases are
- Partisan balance — are parties/campaigns given proportionate airtime and equivalent challenge?
- Source and ideological range — whose voices are treated as authoritative (think tanks, economists, business, unions)?
- Framing — what is treated as the natural or common-sense way to describe an issue (e.g. the deficit as a household budget)?
- Institutional political economy — how governance, charter renewal, funding and recruitment shape output over decades.
Then look up how those biases evidence themselves - others have referenced things like “Israelis are murdered but Palestinians are killed” (diminishes the impact of the same act) , a missile from Hamas is a “terrorist attack on settlers” but a missile from the IDF is “retaliation for attacks” (one is valid one is not) etc etc.
Or for economic takes person A on a panel will be introduced as “economist A Jones” (unmentioned they are employed think tank funded by billionaires to push their interests) and the other person will be “spokeperson for left wing think tank” (unmentioned that they’re an academic, with more academic prizes than they have letters in their name). Credibility deliberately watered down.
Or even just the most egregious blatant one - Reform on every BBC panel known to man despite 5 seats (and none before the 2024 election when he was even more ubiquitous) and the Lib Dems with 65 rarely getting a look in, let alone SNP who have more seats and the Greens who have similar. Yes there was a brief moment where tearing Starmer down meant Polanski got a few appearances (still not proportional to Reform), but have you noticed that’s disappeared as the Greens voters are currently warily positive about Burnham so it doesn’t undermine Labour to have him on.
Etc etc. It goes on constantly. It’s blatant, so blatant I have dozens of academic papers on it and yet you’re on here saying you only “engage with comments I deem worth engaging with” - cool but don’t bitch when everyone tells you your self perception of being reasonable and attempting to understand is utter self serving bullshit.
TL;DR you don’t perceive bias at the BBC because either a) their bias aligns with your world view so it is not noticeable and/or b) you don’t understand the sub
- Comment on A pattern of negative posts about the BBC 2 weeks ago:
Apologies for slow response, here’s a sample, I have a bigger list coming up on my search but I’ve not curated it and it’s 11pm and need to crash, the following are peer-reviewed:
Scottish Indy ref bias
Greig, A. (2016) ‘Sentiment Analysis of the BBC’s Digital Content during the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum Campaign’, Scottish Affairs, 25(4), pp. 419–435. DOI: 10.3366/scot.2016.0150
“evidence that suggests that the BBC’s coverage, on the whole, was more favourable to the No campaign.”
Lewis, J. and Cushion, S. (2019)** ‘Think Tanks, Television News and Impartiality: The Ideological Balance of Sources in BBC Programming’, Journalism Studies, 20(4), pp. 480–499. DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2017.1389295 Content analysis of think-tank sourcing across BBC output. Right-leaning and free-market think tanks are cited more often and are less often ideologically labelled than left-leaning ones. The single most direct peer-reviewed rebuttal of the “BBC is left-wing” claim
Wahl-Jorgensen, K., Berry, M., Garcia-Blanco, I., Bennett, L. and Cable, J. (2017)** ‘Rethinking Balance and Impartiality in Journalism? How the BBC Attempted and Failed to Change the Paradigm’, Journalism, 18(7), pp. 781–800. DOI: 10.1177/1464884916648094 Finds the BBC dominated by a narrow range of elite party-political voices, with business and City sources heavily over-represented relative to labour or civil-society voices. "the BBC presents “a Conservative, Eurosceptic, pro-business version of the world” "
Walsh, M. (2025)** ‘Constructing Impartiality in a Polarised News Environment: An Analysis of BBC Question Time Contributors 2014–2024’, Journalism. DOI: 10.1177/14648849251413467 Decade-long panel-composition analysis of the BBC’s flagship political debate programme
Berry, M. (2016)** ‘No Alternative to Austerity: How BBC Broadcast News Reported the Deficit Debate’, Media, Culture & Society, 38(6), pp. 844–863. BBC news coverage reproduced a narrow deficit-reduction consensus and marginalised alternative macroeconomic positions
Cushion, S., Lewis, J. and Groves, C. (2009)** ‘Reflecting the Four Nations? An Analysis of Reporting Devolution on UK Network News Media’, Journalism Studies, 10(5), pp. 655–671. DOI: 10.1080/14616700902797242 The peer-reviewed version of the devolution-blindness finding: UK network news systematically reported England-only policy as if it were UK-wide.
- Comment on A pattern of negative posts about the BBC 2 weeks ago:
I’m negative about the BBC because of persistent bias in their reporting caused as a result of the Tories replacing the majority of board and senior positions with their cronies.
Academic studies have shown they have a clear bias in their political reporting. They deflect the criticism by having left leaning comedians which is not exactly a counterweight.
It’s structurally rotten and I refuse to pay the TV licence while it is so.
- Comment on Asking prices for newly listed homes in UK’s richest borough fall by £100k in one month 2 weeks ago:
That is indeed a plausible reason for the oversupply and buyers market the article identifies.
Whether it is the root cause is an open question that the article doesn’t answer. There are many possible reasons for an oversupply
- Comment on The Telegraph killed Jason Arday 2 weeks ago:
For them to be ashamed would require morals and a conscience so that’s not going to happen
- Comment on Free speech 2 weeks ago:
Unfortunately true
- Comment on Benjamin Netanyahu describes UK as ‘first Islamic republic to get a nuclear weapon’ 3 weeks ago:
Sadly I doubt it will. The sycophants in the Labour party are bought and sold by the Israelis - they’ll roll over and show their tummy, they wouldnt want to stop those sweet sweet
bribesdonations - Comment on Benjamin Netanyahu describes UK as ‘first Islamic republic to get a nuclear weapon’ 3 weeks ago:
Lolwut ? I want the drugs he’s on…
Pakistani got the bomb in the 1990s and they genuinely are both a republic and a majority muslim (I’m not sure the exact definition of “Islamic Republic” he’s using.)
On the other hand a single digit percentage of the UK population are Muslim (6%), and dude, we’ve been a monarchy for all bar a couple of decades of the last 1500 years.
The Muslim thing is less a worry than trying to pretend one of the longest running monarchies around is a republic, I mean it’s just delusional.
In the last millenium England has only been a republic for the couple of decades in the 1600s when Cromwell took over and executed the king. Scotland has been a monarchy the entirety of the last millenium, Wales has been under the English monarchy since the Normans finished slaughtering them in the 1300s.
- Comment on BMW’s in-car Spider-Man ad is a warning sign: we were promised a transport revolution, instead we got cars tracking us and serving us ads 3 weeks ago:
LOL, someone in the BMW marketing dept just got wood reading that
- Comment on Millions in Great Britain could face emergency power cuts at short notice 3 weeks ago:
We have a lot of wind. Not enough yet in my opinion, but there have been days when renewables generated 100% of the consumption and many instances where wind has had to stop producing due to excess (yes that’s a design problem)
- Comment on No particular reason 4 weeks ago:
Well Douglas Adams thought it was the mice and the dolphins, but crows are very plausible
- Comment on Carenheit 5 weeks ago:
I know the Indians have their 2 digit 3 digit thing, who else does interesting groupings ?
- Comment on Carenheit 5 weeks ago:
it did go over 30° the last time i was there. but tbf also that’s the hottest it gets
40C in London in 2022, 37.7C last month (June 2026)
…gov.uk/…/june-2026-heatwave-a-recap-of-the-tempe…
Anything over 28C is currently classified as a heatwave, but I think they’re going to have to revisit that, or just say “all summer is a heatwave try not to die” given 32-35C has been consistently hit pretty much every summer this decade.
- Comment on Forgot your Google password? Now you can log in with a selfie. 1 month ago:
What could possibly go wrong ?
/s
- Comment on UK government drops plan to stop paying coastguard volunteers 1 month ago:
Occasionally it even gets it right after the U turn.
- Comment on Now we know how much tax King Charles pays, and it is very little 2 months ago:
The French had an effective solutionEffective means of social levelling
- Comment on A year after nationalisation, is South Western Railway delivering? 3 months ago:
American flag shagging is considered beyond funny and well into boorish here. So yeah it may be tame by yank standards, but sticking Union flags (or St George flags) on stuff is considered a bit crass.
Didn’t used to be, became considered tasteless due to the oiks that keep doing it.
- Comment on Insomnia 3 months ago:
That is exactly what the comic says but its not true, fossil records for ferns go back to the devonian several 100 million years before the Cretaceous
- Comment on UK Sees Lowest Viewing Figures for Eurovision Final Since 2010 3 months ago:
Not to mention the astro-turfed voting by Israel last year (and presumably this year but I didn’t watch)
- Comment on Students Are Learning Less and Getting Higher Grades Because of AI, Study Finds 3 months ago:
Colleges haven’t been training people how to read for centuries;
Yes but that is exactly the timeframe the person you replied to is discussing.
It has been quite a while since nobles were generally illiterate and needed clergy to read and write for them…centuries in fact
- Comment on Man hit by van in Birmingham after residents take down union flags put up by anti-migrant group 3 months ago:
I’m glad I’m not the only one there. I mean if you’re going to be a melt at least do it properly, these half mast flags are just half arsing it
- Comment on NHS to grant Palantir contractors ‘unlimited access’ to patient data 3 months ago:
Of course they are, that was the whole point of letting the Trojan Horse inside the stockade. Thanks Streeting, may you burn in hell.
- Comment on MoD has no system to detect civilian harm caused by military, study shows 3 months ago:
Because they don’t care ?
- Comment on On this day 100 years ago, Queen Elizabeth II was born. 4 months ago:
Missed being longest reigning monarch ever by about 18 months
- Comment on Why are homes left empty in the UK and how can we fill them up? 4 months ago:
That is a little unfair the final paragraph sums up the argument it made throughout the article which is:
“Our research shows that while governments across the UK have introduced a range of measures, too many local authorities lack the dedicated resources, funding and strategic framework needed to deliver meaningful change. Financial penalties alone will not solve the problem. What works is sustained local engagement, professional advice, and properly funded empty homes teams that can support owners through the process of bringing properties back into use.”
In other words, there are powers that exist that could partially address it, more funding and focus on it would have an impact, they also highlighted areas where more / new measures could be added.
- Comment on Peers vote to ban pornography depicting sex acts between stepfamily members 4 months ago:
Focussing on the important things I see. Jesus.
- Comment on I don't think they're alone on one 4 months ago:
Thats because it takes years of practice to get the motor skills for writing trained, remember how bad you were in kindergarten at writing ? If you practised with your left your writing would improve.
Out of curiousity (because I’ve not met another ambi in real life) do you also have things you do left handed and things right ? I play tennis left handed and write right handed for example.
