say what?

Switched on the radio today on my way home from work. Radio One Newsbeat it was, talking about a story I´d already heard that morning, about how only 2% of council houses were taken up by people born outside the UK and that it wasn´t true they got preference over indigenous families. (I´m not sure why they needed a survey to illustrate this, when firstly there is not a single council in the whole country for which "being foreign" gets you points for the housing list, and secondly it´s just completely obviously untrue. What, is the country supposed to be full of housing officers who hate white people or something?)

Well anyway, when this news item had finished missing the point that disminished resources inevitably lead to bitterness and resentment amongst affected communities, which fairly commonly is directed at people they perceive themselves to competing with (heaven forfend anyone mention that the real problem is that we have a massive shortage of affordable rentable housing in general, that could be solved by, you know, the state getting some for people), it moved onto a reaction interview from ... Nick Griffin!

Now, I know the BNP picked up a couple of MEPs recently and people threw a bit of hissy fit about it. But Jesus, when did this bloke get accepted by the BBC as THE representative of "indigenous Britain"? You couldn´t find a single other person, other than the head of the Nazi Party to interview about this? Not enough problems with our politicians doing everything in their power to racialise every issue, and set people against each other, the state-funded media station is giving the head of a far-right group a platform as national anti-immigration spokesmen on the drive time news! Someone please tell me this didn´t go on across the network, for god´s sake...

"natural" causes

I have three questions:

Firstly, if you physically crush a hundred or so people into a small space, forbid them to leave for hours on end, deny them access to food and water, in conditions that any reasonable person would think hazardous to health, how can any death in those circumstances be plausibly described as "natural"? A natural death is having a heart-attack waiting for the bus, or passing peacefully in your sleep. It´s not keeling over whilst being penned in by dozens of armoured, baton-wielding police.

Secondly, are the deaths of 30 year old males (who are apparently healthy enough to consider it sensible to attend potentially physically demanding protests) of "natural causes" unrelated to police brutality and particular police crushing tactics so common, and the deaths of people detained by the police so uncommon, that your first reaction to learning of such an event would be to automatically accept the explanation unquestioningly rather than to smell something fishy and speculate as much?

Thirdly, given the police force´s history of lying about similar incidents, including the Hillsborough disaster, for which one newspaper was forced to apologise for repeating police fabrications without question, and the De Menezes affair, in which the police were caught repeatedly and deliberately distorting the facts to justify the killing of an innocent man, when reporting such a story would you repeat their unlikely claims of protesters throwing bottles at paramedics rushing to help a hurt comrade, failing to provide the police as the source of the information, failing to quote any person at all, simply reporting it as fact or would you treat the accusation with caution; aware that it both sounds false and eminates from an organisation with a long history of lying to cover their mistakes and excesses?

If your answered these questions with (a) easily (b) accept unquestioningly or (c) report it as truth, so undeniable in fact that you needn´t even provide a quote or source; then congratulations, you must be a journalist for either the BBC, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Mail, The Sun or any other major national news outlet.