Gunpowder, Treason and Slop

 The BBC has branded Guy Fawkes an ‘astonishing activist’ in a Bitesize educational game for primary school children, ranking the would-be regicide alongside Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks and Emmeline Pankhurst. The resource, apparently created in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, invites children to play as Fawkes as he evades guards beneath Parliament. The Telegraph has the story:

The BBC has called Guy Fawkes an “astonishing activist” and likened him to Nelson Mandela.

In history resources for children, the plotter who tried to blow up Parliament and King James I is counted among civil rights activists “who wanted to change the world”.

The BBC Bitesize material for primary schools ranks Fawkes alongside Rosa Parks, the civil rights activist, Emmeline Pankhurst, the suffragette, and Mandela, the anti-apartheid leader.

The material takes the form of an educational game titled “Back in time with… Astonishing Activists”, which invites children into the world of the campaigners, including the would-be regicide.

The game appears to have been created in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, and the tagline of the resource on the BBC website states that children can “take a trip back in time and learn all about the people who fought racism, campaigned for women’s rights… and changed the world forever”.

The game explains Fawkes’s involvement in the failed 1605 plot to detonate gunpowder beneath Parliament during the state opening, potentially killing the king and several hundred courtiers.

The plot was intended to remove the new king, amid disappointment that concessions for Catholics did not materialise when he took the throne, and to bring about an armed rebellion that would install a sympathetic ruler.

Fawkes was caught, tortured and executed. His co-conspirators, including Robert Catesby, the plot leader, were hunted down and killed....<<<Read More>>>...

For the UK’s sake, the BBC must be defunded

 The BBC’s lack of impartiality has obliterated its global reputation. It is a mouthpiece for the West’s enemies, conspiring to erode rather than extend British influence around the world.

It has been vandalised from within, and it’s now in the process of vandalising the nation it’s obligated to represent and strengthen. Let’s put it out of its misery and defund it, Joe Baron writes.

The TV license burdens hard-pressed households – struggling to meet inflated energy, food and council tax bills – with a compulsory charge of £180 – a charge, especially in the current economic climate, that needs to be cogently justified and widely supported. In addition, the white paper outlining the terms of the Royal Charter’s renewal is due to be published this year, giving the need to justify the statutory levy even greater urgency.

Those who support the tax – usually but not always leftists – claim that the cash generated pays for impartial and trusted news coverage, cultural enrichment and the extension of British influence abroad – claims that are, of course, utter hogwash. Once more, the fact that some Conservative panjandrums make similar assertions – giving cover to an organisation saturated with far-left groupthink – reveals why the party did nothing remotely conservative during 14 -wasted-years in office.

Let’s begin with the BBC’s feted and entirely illusory impartiality. In a recent debate hosted by The Spectator magazine on whether we should abolish the license fee and defund the BBC, Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph columnist and official biographer of Margaret Thatcher, rightly argued that we should, stressing the loss of trust incurred by its partiality on a whole host of subjects as the primary reason. The license fee can only be justified if the BBC’s output is trusted, he made clear, and it can only be trusted if its output is impartial....<<<Read More>>>...

BBC doesn’t only have a global audience, it also heads the Trusted News Initiative, a global coalition of media to tackle “disinformation”

Some may wonder how the same narrative on certain topics, such as false narratives about US President Donald Trump’s speech on 6 January 2021, reverberates across the world – from Canada to Australia. It isn’t only because the BBC has a global audience. It is also because of the BBC-led global coalition called the Trusted News Initiative.

The Trusted News Initiative (“TNI”) is an international alliance of major news media, social media and technology companies founded by the BBC in 2019 to combat “disinformation.” The initiative was launched following the BBC’s Trusted News Summit in June 2019, in response to concerns about misinformation during the Indian general election.

Led by Jessica Cecil, a senior BBC executive, the TNI operates a real-time alert system allowing member organisations to rapidly share information about harmful disinformation that threatens public safety or democratic processes. Members include the Associated Press, Reuters, Meta (Facebook), Google/YouTube, Twitter, Microsoft and others.

“TNI also has an Asia-Pacific sister initiative that is partnered with media organisations including ABC Australia and NHK Japan,”...<<<Read More>>>...