Currently I'm posting to BBC Newsnight. These are the ones that didn't make it through. Shame on the BBC!
The degree of spamming that goes on by egocentrics and obsessives in the Newsnight blog makes it essentially unfit for purpose. It's extraordinary that the moderators do not choose to control it.
The plain fact of the matter is that the Newsnight blog is not a nice place to be and I've stopped looking at it and with it Newsnight.
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1. On Friday 16 May 2008 here:
I haven't really watched tonight's edition yet but that's not going to stop me commenting because I've just had this really amazing idea.
Why doesn't the BBC get hold of a few teenagers and send them out to Zimbabwe to get hand-on experience of what's it's like to be routinely sodomised and tortured by the Mugabe regime?
It would surely be a welcome change for them from their endless self-destructive cycle of binge-drinking and compulsive shopping and it would be fantastically valid TV especially if the BBC could fix it so that viewers could actually watch them being abused as it happens!
I admit the whole concept is just a trifle derivative of an earlier idea I tried to post in these forums (which of course didn't make it past the so-called moderators - who do they think they are anyway?) where I suggested packing Stephanie Flanders off to the massage-parlours of Bangkok to get hands-on experience of the darker side of the credit crunch but that shouldn't really be an issue for the BBC. Just look at all those celebrity chef programmes for a starter.
As a matter of fact you could just as easily do it with celebrity chefs as well if that's what the television-viewing public at large really want though personally I would prefer teenagers.
When they get back (i.e. if they do) Jeremy could interview them on Newsnight to test how much of their experience they could actually articulate and whether it's changed their binge-drinking and compulsive shopping habits at all!
I do hope this suggestion at least does get posted. I don't want to denigrate my fellow-contributors in these forums in any way at all because we all share a common right to be heard but you have to admit (how to put this delicately?) that many of their contributions are a little bit vague and imprecise whereas mine are always absolutely up-front and practical.
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2. On Tuesday 20 May 2008 here:
Pace Peter's number 2 I would just like to say on the face of it I'm inclined to agree even though I haven't really seen it yet (computer acting up again which may or may not be a coincidence).
I think it was Marx who said history was dead and we should never forget that even if we still happen to believe in God.
But why oh why oh why did Newsnight once again miss an obvious opportunity to inject some much needed topicality in this (you have to admit) rather tedious debate about aesthetics or whatever it is in religion?
I mean to gather together a panel of so-called experts in the field like Mary Warnock, Richard Dawkins, the Archbishop of Canterbury and so on and get them actually to contribute a few embryos of their own and watch them being changed into stem cells and then used to treat celebrity chef conditions?
This would indeed be compelling television and at the end Jeremy could interview them all and see if any of them had changed their sexuality as a result.
Yet another opportunity lost!
I did manage however to catch the closing credits against the backdrop of sirens going all over China as they remembered their earthquake victims and thought that very moving indeed. Newsnight always does that kind of thing very well. Earlier in the year I remember we also had fireworks in Beijing celebrating the start of the Chinese New Year - how our hopes for the future have darkened over the intervening few months ...
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3. On Tuesday 20 May 2008 here:
I've now had a chance to look at tonight's edition.
I thought the piece about the Embryology Bill was informative and excellent. It's an area where I am relatively uninformed (I shy away simply because I find the idea of abortion so abhorrent) and I was grateful for the piece. Newsnight at its very best.
Regarding Peter's no 2 (he complained about the religious setting of the opening sequences) I certainly commend his spirited readiness to switch off but this was not television tosh and it was surely premature (sic) of him.
However, that granted, his remark comparing it as equivalent to reporting about Israel from Belsen was certainly unforunate and ill-considered, as effectively it compares those who oppose this kind of legislation for religious reasons with the butchers of the Nazi death camp and in the circumstances I feel was right to refer his remark to the moderators.
Peter might like to glance at this obituary notice at http://www.ssu.ssc.ed.ac.uk/davidedge.html of the late Dr. David Edge who founded the very influential Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh in the '70s and who came from the BBC and who was deeply religious (I took his course as a student); and of course there are legion other examples one could cite of scientists who hold deep religious convictions and are very far indeed from the kind of stereotypical religious rectionaries that Peter by implication paints in his post.
Finally it pains me to have to notice here once again that the moderators appear to have chosen not to allow yet another very significant post from me in this forum in which I suggested using stem cell technology simply to clone future celebrity chefs rather than carry on completely wasting license payers' money searching for new ones.
In the circumstances I feel I have no alternative but to seek other forums to promote my views.
William Boyd
www.GutClean.com
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3a. Beeb to GutClean Tuesday 20 May 2008:
Dear BBC Reader,
Further to your complaint about some of the content on a BBC blog
(reference number P20362565), we have decided that it does not
contravene the House Rules and are going to leave it on site.
Please note that this response refers to a complaint about one
specific piece of content. If you have alerted us about a member's
nickname or other ongoing issues relating to the blog then we may still
be taking action.
The complaint button should only be used to alert the moderators to content that may contravene the House Rules.
If you disagree with another poster's viewpoint, please add your own views to the blog.
General questions, comments and other feedback about the BBC cannot
be responded to or passed on via this blog content complaint tool.
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The BBC Blog Team
This e-mail, and any attachment, is confidential. If you have
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3b. GutClean to Beeb Tuesday 20 May 2008:
Thanks for this.
I gave my view of the comment in a post to your forum. Of course to
suggest that the religious setting (and indeed I sympathise with the
poster to this extent that it did seem overblown to me as well) of the
opening sequences is comparable to setting a report about Israel in
Belsen is tantamount to suggesting that persons with religious
conviction and / or religious objections to the Embryology Bill are
somehow to be compared with the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust and I
am very surprised indeed that the BBC don't agree.
Presently I am rather busy but I shall over the next few days prepare
a report about the issue and forward it to the office of the Archbishop
of Canterbury for their attention.
regards,
William Boyd
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4. On Monday 2 June 2008 here:
I didn't really see the point about most of the B&B piece and certainly didn't recognise any of this in it (quote):
More bad news for the banking industry. Bradford and Bingley shares fell sharply today after news that it made a loss and it's blaming problems with the buy-to-let market. Could other banks be in similar trouble? And is the announcement that it has sold more than 20 per cent of the bank to an American private equity group a sign that banks are at the bottom of the market - and now is the time to buy on the cheap?
Instead we had what looked like old stock on the US victims of their housing crash.
Your correspondent's (sorry - senior moment over name) introduction was fine but after that it lost direction.
'Could other banks be in similar trouble?' is indeed a pertinent question. I saw a Telegraph piece today 'Banks' credit crisis solutions have echoes of 1929 Depression' which focused on some bank's apparent solution of lending money to speculators so that they can buy up their bad debt and that's the kind of thing I would like to see Newsnight reporting on.
And if you must focus on the US problems isn't it time to start offering some perspectives? How about the irony of America's poor and underpriviliged bringing their financial system to its knees for example? Tomorrow we are to have the 'winners' in the credit crunch (hedge funds I expect). First the tears and now the smiles ... I shall watch with only mildly faint interest.
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5. On Tuesday 3 June 2008 here:
I posted a comment yesterday about your coverage of the Bradford & Bingley business which unaccountably once again did not make it past your moderators (I've copied it to my site at www.GutClean.com).
I suggested your piece (notwithstanding an excellent introduction by your economics editor) was essentially off-topic with its switch to the travails of a group of 'losers' in the US housing market downturn and certainly it didn't address any of the issues Newsnight itelf raised on its webpages.
I've now looked at today's press coverage and indeed there are significant issues, not least transparency, which one would have hoped would have been picked up by Newsnight's editorial team and aired for discussion.
I trust Newsnight will now return to these issues tonight at the expense if need be of deferring its piece on the 'winners' (apparently lipstick and cushion salepersons) in the American housing market downturn.
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6a. GutClean to Beeb on a comment by 'brossen99' Tuesday 3 June 2008 here:
The comment "Once again the Corporate Nazi eco-fascist / health-fascist minority trot out the go vegetarian to save the planet line" is unfortunate and ill-considered as it suggests that people who promote vegeterianism are fascist and Nazi and this in not acceptable as it both defames promoters of vegeterianism and trivialises the enormous political error of fascism and the crimes of Nazism.
It should be struck.
I have already complained about another comment a few weeks ago which suggested that people who opposed the Embryology Bill on religious ground were comparable in some way to the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust and was surprised that your panel did not agree.
I would point out that it is already accepted by newspapers editors that a term such as 'islamo-fascist' is not acceptable.
On this occasion I am copying this complaint directly to the editors of Newsnight and to my site www.GutClean.com.
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6b. Beeb to GutClean Wednesday 4 June 2008:
Dear BBC blog reader,
Further to your complaint about some of the content on a BBC blog (reference number P20569262), we have decided that it does indeed contravene the
House Rules and have removed the offending material.
Thank you for pointing this out to us.
Best wishes,
The BBC Blog Team
This e-mail, and any attachment, is confidential. If you have received
it in error, please delete it from your system, do not use or disclose
the information in any way, and notify me immediately. The contents of
this message may contain personal views which are not the views of the
BBC, unless specifically stated.
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6c. GutClean to Beeb Wednesday 4 June 2008:
Thanks.
sincerely,
William Boyd
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7. On Thursday 5 June 2008 here:
What a shitty little piece about John Howell. It insults our intelligence. What on earth can your diaryist be imagining they were about? A blog or something ...
Newsnight can be pretty dull (in the proper sense of the word) these days as well. Its coverage of the Bradford & Bingley bust, which has news oozing out all its greasy little pores, for example. All we got was an inconsequential little piece for the umpteenth time on the human cost of the US bust.
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8. On Thursday 5 June 2008 here:
Bradford & Bingley please.
If Newsnight doesn't have a nose for a news story as malodorous as this then its lost and so indeed are we because there's nowhere else to go.
The Tata Nano piece looks promising.
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9. On Friday 27 June 2008 here:
A little more Bradford & Bingley and a lot less Caroline Spelman is my suggestion.
I'd also quite like to see exciting fizzy old molotov Michael congratulating dreary old damp squib John Howell on his Henley win - that would be amusing.
Perhaps John could pass on some handy tips to Mike about how to make the transition from the Beeb to the Big One - that paradise of expense accounts we call Parliament. Presumably there's more to it than just wearing whiter than white suits like that other tedious beeb who made it in whose name unfortunately slips my mind right now (sorry).
Bookhimdano (3) also sound and I would especially like to see Newsnight taking an interest in the credit default swap market which seems to me to be next big financial catastrophe story.
Newsnight has been covering the Mugabe business well and I shall certainly be looking in tonight.
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11a GutClean to Beeb on a post by 'ecolizzy' 30 January 2009 here. The post complained of follows first:
I don't think anyone here has denied the holocaust happened, just that
the figures are inaccurate. I have no idea I wasn't there at the time.
If
you are talking about Holocaust Denial perhaps you ought to start with
the Pope re-instating a British bishop Richard Williamson. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7860701.stm
I
don't think any of it matters anymore, Europeans are outnumbered 5 to 1
in the world, and we'll all soon be mixed, and Europeans disappear
The comment "I don't think any of it matters anymore, Europeans are outnumbered 5 to 1 in the world, and we'll all soon be mixed, and Europeans disappear" is racist because it implies that racial mixing is something to be lamented and moreover the first thought implies that the Holocaust does not matter in a post that plainly seeks to minimise the Holocaust.
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11b Beeb to GutClean 31 January 2009:
Dear BBC Reader,
Further to your complaint about some of the content on a BBC blog (reference number P23397837), we have decided that it does not contravene the House Rules and are going to leave it on site.
Please note that this response refers to a complaint about one specific piece of content. If you have alerted us about a member's nickname or other ongoing issues relating to the blog then we may still be taking action.
The complaint button should only be used to alert the moderators to content that may contravene the House Rules.
If you disagree with another poster's viewpoint, please add your own views to the blog.
General questions, comments and other feedback about the BBC cannot be responded to or passed on via this blog content complaint tool.
Regards,
The BBC Blog Team
This e-mail, and any attachment, is confidential. If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system, do not use or disclose the information in any way, and notify us immediately. The contents of this message may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC, unless specifically stated.
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11c GutClean to Beeb 31 January 2009:
Thank you. I'm frankly astonished.
I mentioned I was archiving the complaint and will copy it to my
personal website.
William Boyd
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12a On Friday 30 January 2009 here:
The context was an increasingly sharp exchange beween me and the poster styled 'JadedJean' on Jan 7 2009 here when I complained about his obsessive spamming of his thoughts on eugenics in the forum. He finished this exchange with an extremely strange posting in which he linked this website. I noticed this only weeks later and complained in the forum. He (she?) responded by asserting that I had posted the link anyway and asked for the context. This was my original reply which was objected to. I eventually reposted with the changes mentioned in 12c.
JadedJean @ [46]
I did not provide you with a link to my website. Why should I have done?
The context was our exchange on Jan 7th 2009. Nowhere did I mention my website. Your closing post was as follows:
"rinpoche1 (#33) I'm honoured
Here is a heads-up for anyone thinking of purging, as this behaviour has been widely reinforced by some in recent decades.
Think 'The Apprentice'."
The word 'honoured' is linked to a page entitled 'Blogs that didn't make it' on my website and the last entry [10] was a failed Newsnight post on the Perseid meteor shower due then in a few days and which I had more than good reason to believe would probably usher in some sort of new world order heralded by a Shining Presence and which merely happened in passing to mention your versimilitude imho to a vulgar description of the female genitals organs - thus your 'honoured' I expect.
'Thumbs up' was linked to a YouTube video about the narcissistic personality for whatever reason and I didn't understand your reference to "The Apprentice" - something on TV I expect.
BTW what did you mean by 'purging' - that does sound menacing.
I didn't notice this post until I checked back today. I had signed off all I had wished to contribute at [33].
I'm not frankly terribly troubled that you link the site - the more the merrier - but I am slightly miffed that whereas I'm not allowed to link my own site by the moderators you apparently are allowed to do so (the entry [3] on the webpage I mention lists a Newsnight post [9] on 20 May 2008 with an ironic reference to the site but it was removed).
I'm not sure how you came by my site. A few people look at it, mainly gangsters in Russia, the odd Chancellor of the Exchequer or two perhaps and a very few mathematicians in my speciality use it to keep in touch and share, c'est tout.
Perhaps it was you who had the 20 May 2008 reference removed and kept a note?
At any rate note that I accurately forecast the current financial crisis, as I said I did, months ahead of the crisis unfolding (but not the banking collapse which no-one did although I did warn against the October 2008 market crash in timely fashion).
It was not in your gift to link my site without my permission and I'm naturally not a little perturbed (notwithstanding the extreme solicitude with which my general well-being is protected by certain persons I'm not really at liberty to divulge) as to what it might imply.
Finally young man (I assume both) we now surely really have nothing further to say to each other.
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12b Beeb to GutClean 30 January 2009
Dear BBC Blog contributor,
Thank you for contributing to a BBC Blog. Unfortunately we've had to remove your content below
Comments posted to BBC blogs will be removed if they are considered likely to provoke, attack or offend others; are racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit, abusive or otherwise objectionable; are considered to have been posted with an intention to disrupt; contain swear words (including abbreviations or alternative spellings) or other language likely to offend.
You can read the BBC Blog and messageboard House Rules in full here:
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If you can rewrite your contribution to remove the problem, we'd be happy for you to post it again.
Please note that anyone who seriously or repeatedly breaks the House Rules may have action taken against their account.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/messageboards/newguide/popup_breaking_rules.html
Regards,
The BBC Blog Team
URL of content (now removed):
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12c GutClean to Beeb 30 Jan 2009
Thank you for this.
This if you please was my reply to a poster who had linked my personal website containing my private address into a post as a parting shot in an exchange over an objection I had posted to his multiple postings on an obsessive theme - spamming.
I shall repost with the reference to 'female genital organs' removed as well as a remark regarding my personal well-being which I suppose could conceivably be regarded as threatening.
In general I am astonished that the moderators permit the degree of spam and multiple egocentric posting that goes in the 'Newsnight' forum. It makes the forum well-nigh useless for its purpose of commenting on Newsnight and given only a few more posters allowed the latitude of say 'JadedJean' and 'barriesingleton' would make it unfit even for their own abuse of it - they would never find their own droppings.
I am archiving this email and copying to my personal website www.GutClean.com.
Over the next month I shall extensively archive the spamming that goes on in your forum and asess its anti-social potential and report back to you.
sincerely,
William Boyd
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13a On Friday 30 Jan 2009 here:
JJ @ [19]
All I was saying that I liked Barrie's post today, that I was sick of spam and intend to do what I can to get rid of it here and that I do like his verse.
Not a purging offence I trust and BTW what did you mean by that @ [34] 7 January 2009 - still agog.
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13c GutClean to Beeb:
Thank you for this.
I have reposted clarifying the content.
sincerely,
William Boyd
The repost was as follows:
JJ @ [19]
My response at [20] was removed by the moderators and is copied to my personal website linked by you at [34] 7 January 2009.
I have the option of rewriting my response and I take the opportunity now.
Your [19] is quite misconceived because I do not seek, as I have made it abundantly clear, to control or police any poster's thought.
Rather I seek to stop their obsessively spamming their thought. It does not matter whether they are posting on eugenics, cosmology or Madonna, if they post multiple times every day then that's spamming and it's not acceptable and it's against House Rules.
My original response to your [19] was merely to reiterate that I liked Barrie's on-topic post today but that I had resolved not to tolerate his off-topic spamming and that I enjoy his verse I had noticed he writes from time.
In addition I remarked ironically that surely this was not a 'purging' offence, referring of course to your strange and vaguely threatening [34] 7 January 2009 where you use this word.
I suggest that the reason the post was complained of was because of the emabarrassment felt by you or on your behalf over the use of this word so ineluctably associated with Stalinism on which subject you so frequently post.
I can take the opportunity as well I think to remark that you have now advanced two different hypotheses as to how it came about that someone was able to track down my personal website containing my private address and to link it into a post.
However that someone was you and you should know how you tracked down my site.
I suggest it is exactly what I have surmised in another post I again had to resubmit after it was initially removed by the moderators on objection: that on May 20th last year I submitted a light-hearted post on the subject of celebrity-chef cloning and at the finish made an ironical reference to my website.
The post was removed, I suggest by you, and that you noted my website as future ammunition perhaps, whatever, (but at that time I had yet to notice you) and I invite the reader to form their conclusions.
I repeat that I do not seek to police your thought. I trust you agree I am not obliged to engage it.
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14a On Friday 30 Jan 2009 here:
The context was a post by 'RadiantPoachedEgg'. 'JadedJean' had seized somewhat inconsequentially and with some hostility on a post of RPE's and in his restrained reply RPE enquired as to whethe JJ was married and had children, fair enough that we get to know something of one who demands our continual attention posting so often.
In his reply JJ said that his personal details weren't sufficiently empirical to merit attention and ever incisive I attempted to contribute as follows:
JJ @ [42]
But go on tell us anyway, you know just for empathy's sake and so on.
Do you like w*nking by any chance in case you're not married?
I love it and find it works wonders clearing the mind of stuff.
Just trying to be helpful and hope you won't be offended because none is intended.
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14b Beeb to GutClean;
Dear BBC Blog contributor,
Thank you for contributing to a BBC Blog. Unfortunately we've had to remove your content below
Comments posted to BBC blogs will be removed if they are considered likely to provoke, attack or offend others; are racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit, abusive or otherwise objectionable; are considered to have been posted with an intention to disrupt; contain swear words (including abbreviations or alternative spellings) or other language likely to offend.
You can read the BBC Blog and messageboard House Rules in full here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/messageboards/newguide/popup_house_rules.html
If you can rewrite your contribution to remove the problem, we'd be happy for you to post it again.
Please note that anyone who seriously or repeatedly breaks the House Rules may have action taken against their account.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/messageboards/newguide/popup_breaking_rules.html
Regards,
The BBC Blog Team
URL of content (now removed):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/blog142/F12481561?Thread=6280819&post=75245228
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14c GutClean to Beeb:
Thank you for this.
On this occasion I shan't rewrite the post using the proper medical term because I feel that would introduce a degree of clinical detachment I should certainly wish to discourage in the particular poster addressed.
What I really had in mind was to find some common ground we could successfully empathise on together.
Eventually I had hoped to introduce the question of exactly when the poster liked to wank, i.e. before, during or after posting, and then move on to suggest he considered mostly wanking before posting to see if that helped any to control his impulse to post.
An opportunity wasted I think.
Incidentally I'm frankly surprised the BBC is so suddenly aunt sally on the subject of the noble vice. I thought it was de rigeur these days in its lower echelons such as Radio 2 to enquire of opposition leaders and the like the exact details and arrangements they make in the art.
Indeed I rather wish Newsnight would sometimes do the same. For example interviewing an obvious wanker like David Miliband, rather than posing the same old questions over and over again Jeremy could simply cut to the chase with something like "Well what about wanking then? You do wank I take it. Come on ... tell us." sort thing and which I feel would be much more productive especially if he could actually persuade David to demonstrate for us exactly how he does it which would be just so fantastically valid TV.
Only a suggestion.
sincerely,
William Boyd
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15 On Friday 30 Jan 2009 here:
My celebrated post tipped for a Nobel prize in Philosophy. I wasn't quite able to post it in the form I really wanted to because of the Newsnight computerised vetting program and when I did succeed in fact inadvertently posted an earlier draft. The following is how I would have wanted it to appear.
JJ @ [74]
Another very aggressive post from you and that if you please to a poster who remarks that she (so I assume) is venturing back into the forum after a period away because she felt bullied.
What can you be thinking of?
You label your post 'Empiricism' and thus what we are talking here is not science but the philosphy of science and judging from your [68] 29 January 2009 your thoughts on the subject matter are not likely to be edifying as noted by me at [70] ibid.
Indeed not. To characterise theory as 'summaries of known evidences' is absurdly simplistic - Aristotlean in its metaphysics and yet your apology [72] ibid is Platonic in spirit, although I think it quite likely you don't recognise the dissonance.
Of numerous counter-examples from the physical sciences that readily come to mind one can cite Einstein's General Theory of Relativity at publication, modern string theory and, citing something that many readers will recognise from their own reading of the popular press, the Higgs Boson which awaits experimental confirmation.
The text-book example incidentally is the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
The 'good place' you suggest we commence our study of empiricism turns out be faculty profile of Dr. J. Philippe Rushton of Ontario university, a noted and distinguished geneticist but not I fancy published in the philosophy of science.
I repeat wearily it is pointless to cock a snook at me as I don't attack your thought nor wish to comment on the nature-nurture debate and various other components I discern in your thought. I merely wish to attack your relentless obsessive off-topic spamming of it and I give you notice now that if you continue in this very ungracious, aggressive and in the case of your [34] 7 January 2009 actually threatening manner I will move to have your account closed.
Regarding the Dr. Rushton you cite I am amused to discover he is not without his own personal controversies detailed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Philippe_Rushton.
However I do, speaking strictly for myself, share his fascination with male penis sizes. I am on record in many places on the internet as lamenting my infeasibly large IQ (180 something last time I checked about 30 years ago) at the expense of my lamentably insignificant widdler (5 inches at most as I write and that's pressing in really hard with the ruler {*ouch ... nasty*}) and given my evolutionary chances all over again would have much preferred it if God had lobbed a couple of standard deviations off my IQ and stuck it on the end of my knob.
So on this occasion I do at least have to thank you for a small (sic) service and I am emailing Dr. Rushton directly :-)<-\8< .
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