Tag Archives: howler

BBC geography fail puts Bristol and Birmingham in Wales. And if you think THAT’s bad…

What were they thinking: how embarrassing for Mishal Husein.

This is the funniest howler I’ve seen today.

A BBC news bulletin providing details of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout in England suffered what I can only describe as a massive geographical cock-up.

I don’t really need to describe the nature of the error because it’s right there on the image at the top of this article.

Further illumination is provided by the following tweets:

(These two actually go together very well.)

Of course, in recent years the BBC has become desperate to entertain all points of view – in politics, at least.

So the corporation has insisted on broadcasting statements that were not true, saying the intention was to provide a “balanced” story.

This leads me to ask:

Does the map in the image represent someone’s genuine belief about the locations of these places – and BBC News broadcast it in the name of balance?

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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New Tory chairman ‘owned’ over slavery howler

James Cleverly: Not the sharpest tool in the Tory box.

Is there anyone in the Conservative cabinet who hasn’t made themselves look foolish recently?

James Cleverly has – many times, as long-term readers of This Site will know.

But it is from Skwawkbox that we derive this example of imbecilic stupidity:

James Cleverly put out a tweet claiming that William Wilberforce, the MP responsible for the 1833 ‘Slavery Abolition Act’ was ‘a Tory MP from Yorkshire’ and an example of a Conservative having a positive impact on society:

In fact, Wilberforce was an independent MP who died just three days after hearing that the Act had been passed – and the Conservative party was only formed a year later. The ‘Tories’, the precursor to the Conservative party, did exist – but Wilberforce was not a member and Tories largely opposed the bill.

As you can see, the general public took umbrage, and responded in characteristic fashion.

For more examples of Cleverly takedowns, see: Cleverly ‘owned’ after trying to claim Tory credit for ending slavery | The SKWAWKBOX

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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Would the Tories rather look stupid than quote facts showing they’re wrong?

This is her “I’ve been caught out again” face [Image: Carl Court/Getty Images.]

Newsnight presenter Evan Davis put up an interesting tweet yesterday.

In it, he said his researcher was leaving for a proper job – and the first thing This Writer thought was, “Perhaps they’ve gone to be a researcher for Theresa May.”

That’s not because of the lamentable political collusion between the nation’s broadcaster and the Conservative Party (for a change).

It’s because I was thinking the Tories badly need to do their homework – on any current political issue.

Look at their recent history of goofs, gaffes and howlers.

Both Theresa May and Sajid Javid have claimed Tory policies have reduced homelessness – in fact, the Tories have made the problem worse.

The Tories claimed £45 million of new investment would improve child literacy – forgetting that they were responsible for worsening it, having cut funding by £2.7 billion.

Mrs May has refused to accept that the NHS is facing a crisis this winter, saying it was better prepared than ever. In fact, funding cuts have left patients waiting hours for ambulances – some dying during the wait, ambulances queuing at hospitals because A&E departments are overloaded – with nurses treating some people inside the vehicles, patients asked to lie on hospital floors (or sit in chairs, as one Tory minister suggested in moment of sociopathic arrogance) as hospitals suffer total bed occupancy.

In response to the issue of bed occupancy, Mrs May claimed the delayed discharges (that contribute hugely to the problem) were falling. In fact, they are on the rise.

Toby Young was appointed to the university regulator the Office for Students – sparking outrage over tens of thousands of misogynistic tweets and other outrageous behaviour.

Mrs May appointed to her Cabinet, or retained in it, MPs who are hugely inappropriate for their jobs, including Boris Johnson, Philip Hammond, Amber Rudd, Sajid Javid, David Lidington, James Cleverly, Ben Bradley, David Gauke, Alun Cairns, Maria Caulfield, Brandon Lewis and – worst of all – Esther McVey, who deserved an article all to herself on This Site because the list of her abominations is so long.

Mrs May broke the Ministerial Code, using government property for party political promotional purposes.

She even gave Jeremy Corbyn an easy win in Prime Minister’s Questions, when she passed comment on Angela Rayner’s absence, only to be told the shadow Education Secretary was away receiving medical treatment – a huge own-goal when healthcare is the subject of heated debate.

All of these blunders could have been avoided, if the Tories had bothered to do their homework (although it is possible she may have had a hard time with the Cabinet appointments, as it may be hard to find any Conservative MP who does not have at least one black mark against their name).

But then another thought occurred to me:

Perhaps it is easier for the Tories to say the wrong thing and be ridiculed after the event, than to have the facts at their fingertips and have to admit they are wrong in their facts or (worse) their policies.

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Judging on his record: Voters disbelieve Hunt over NHS funding

150105NHS1

Wasn’t it revealing when Jeremy Hunt told ITV’s The Agenda that voters did not believe the Tories had a plan to bridge the £8 billion NHS funding gap?

He blamed media reporting of the Conservative Party’s claims; it is more likely that he himself is to blame.

This very blog had cause to slap him down, as recently as January this year.

He had claimed – falsely – that the number of operations performed on behalf of the NHS had increased by a million.

He had claimed – falsely – that the Tories had brought in 13,000 more clinical staff (they would have started training under Labour).

He had claimed that the NHS was rated top in the world – but his information came from 2013, when the changes wrought by his forerunner Andrew Lansley’s infamous Health and Social Care Act 2012, which introduced privatisation and created the funding problem currently being experienced, were only just beginning to be felt.

Probably the biggest whopper – and certainly the most pertinent to the current issue – was his claim that the Tories had found £2 billion of additional funding for frontline services, “backed by a strong economy”.

This was a lie. None of the funding was new money, therefore it had nothing to do with the economy.

In fact, £1.3 billion came from “savings” in other government departments (in other words, cuts), and the remaining £700 million was already Department of Health money – it had simply been diverted to frontline services. None of it could have come from economic growth as Income Tax receipts had remained static at around their pre-crash level.

It should be no surprise to Mr… to Jeremy that nobody believes him in the wake of such a list of howlers – and these are from a short period in January this year!

Here’s a promise about the NHS that is far more likely to be true:

150105NHS2

It is also true that the ongoing A&E crisis could have been avoided, but the Coalition Government ignored the warning signs.

Jeremy isn’t good enough for the job. For the health of the nation, we need to give him the sack.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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