bbc

Round to a friend's house - they are back in the UK and we check up on the place every now and then - I couldn't resist switching their telly on because they get British TV. The weakest link is still going and still the same but with Ann Robinson's face looking even tighter than it did last time I saw the tedious program three years ago.... but the news afterwards was different from how I remember it. It was more aggressively ideological and authoritarian - one news item stood out for its committment to keeping the racist levels up to spec. The story of a sixteen year old Dewsbury guy who'd downloaded some info about napalm and crank jihadists. He ended up getting two years. The news lapped it up, no context, no explanation, just some deliberately poorly staged interviews with some 'Asian' taxi drivers to give the piece a semblance of balance.

The rest was a celebration of the stockmarket bounce and an airing of 'emails' in response to a bbc program that looked into bullying in the army. New recruits are getting beaten up etc. "We should turn these young layabouts into steely eyed killers" ran one 'email' that the item flagged up on the screen. These little moments of propaganda and ideological conditioning......