Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

I am opposed to lap dancing and as a borough councillor I object to it if permitted to do so. I have no concerns about pole dancing. The reason is that the former is personal - a contract is created between dancer and viewer - but the latter is impersonal with the dancer performing for an audience rather than an individual.

Lap dancing is seedy and degrades all participants, whereas pole dancing is harmless fun, if not quite as rewarding as MOTD.

If there is one thing that is really annoying me it's the constant update on the American politics.
We are not another American state, and hopefully never will be.
The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ never give the coverage to any other country, not even Canada, which is still a part of the Commonwealth.

The world does not begin and end with America, even if those misguided Americans think it does.

It would appear that the Chinese stock market is in dire straights having lost half its value since last October. The government has stepped and restricted the sale of some stocks ( unspecified ) but has not taken the western route of " injecting liquidity ". Perhaps we could have avoided bailing out the banks with unsecured loans.

It would appear that as I expected Brown has increased the aid budget by 30 million quid, perhaps to bail out the hedge funds who speculated in food over the past year. If governments had any real clout they could set the price independently of the corporate multinational cartel ( CMC )

The recent scandal about council tendering by construction firms springs to mind, there is no such thing as a free market whilst the CMC continues to operate.

Hi -

Chris has got to get a grip more work less talk, i have 490 mile bike ride to do in less than 5 weeks. But i also have a stitched up left arm and wrist to heal and only get the training by cycling 15 miles to work every day. Life is about grinning even when all you feel is pain there will be some gain.

One life so love it, embrace it, have fun every day and love everyone who comes into it - oh and drink beer and wine it helps put a different purspective on things!

Have a look at this tourdebutlins.blogspot.com
www.justgiving.com/jasonhorn

plus who says it is right to get little kids to jump into a ring and fit - who the hell is enjoying that? not the kids eh!?

I agree with #2 Brijo72. Today, UKIP got it's first MP . That's a pretty historic day in British politics, don't you think? Well not on the "British" Broadcasting Corporation. They think that American domestic politics is more important. The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ thinks that American lives are more important than British ones. That's what we pay our licence fee for, so the "British" Broadcasting corporation can impose American cultural imperialism on us and play down changes in British politics.

It's bad enough that the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ is London centric and now it's getting even more American centric. Great news if your a rich American living in London, I suppose; not so great if you're not.

In your smear against Barak Obama which I predicted in my comment that you dare not post you have yet to mention Nadhmi Auchi. You must try harder.

Your attack on behalf of your corporate owners weas of course expected.

Listening to Tessa Jowell evade and waffle her way through the interview about the Olympics made me cringe. I wish this corrupt and incompetent government would go.

Since when did the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ and Newsnight become the mouth piece of the GOP/Fox? You did just as Fox did and took Pastor Wright's comments out of context. If you'd been honest you would have stated that in the first clip you showed Pastor Wright was quoting a Republican Ambassador appointed by Reagan who was on Fox News. As for your coverage of Obama's bitter remarks even Fox News were honest enough to show Pennsylvanians agreeing with Obama's comments about bitterness. And it is a well known political philosophy as espoused by Thomas Frank in What's the Matter with Kansas? It's unbelievably hypocritical for two Senators worth over $100m dollars to call Obama an elitist.

That has to be the worst report on Obama I've ever seen on British TV - from the first picture on, right through every single bit of 'sleaze-by-distant-association' that the Clintons ever spun out of nothing.

What exactly does your correspondent have against the man?

And why show this totally one-sided bile now, when Americans are still voting?

Frankly, newsnight, Paxman and all should lose their lisence over this.

That guy Majad Nawaz comes across as soo dodgy. Is the Quilliam foundation the new MPAC? The gov had no joy with them so this is their lastest project. He seems argumentative and arrogant and appears to be insulting many mainstream muslims with his 'western form of Islam'.

Superb Jeremy with Tessa Jowell tonight on the spiralling costs of the olympics - top form :-)
My favourite interview of the night was on the lap dancing clubs.Why should it be harder to open up a lap dancing club? It's an entertainment establishment! I see nothing wrong with them at all, and at the end of the day, it's just dancing, nothing else. The girls are not forced into it and neither are the clients.

CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE (AND RARE)

Well done Newsnight - a live link. Here's to many more.

There is something Pythonesque about a Tory turning UKIP because of moves to deselect him. Now they have good reason!
I have no time for parties, nor for claims that our politics are democratic, but for an MP to move from one to another without permission from his constituents is surely not cricket?

The Quilliam Foundation:

Islam, like Christianity has its different branches and the discussion that unfolded reminded me that nothing changes regarding religion, the only difference between christianity and Islam is...... Christianity today is a benign force.

I am sure there are many admirable and well meaning men (probably not a woman in sight) who will champion this cause with genuine motives to change the young and not so young minds within their communities. Those that have had their brains pumpled with religious mantras and hate filled mullah sermons via their laptops or through the many Mosques that litter this land....but after watching this 'chat' between these two followers of Islam,; they that adhere to a religion that is alien and oftentimes appears caustic to the rest of us, found themselves in disagreement on many points and for the viewer i hazard a guess would come to the same conclusion about this new organization that i came to...don't bother with it, but give it ago in Saudi or Iran if you feel the need, deal with it at its roots.

Not one tax penny must ever be thrown at this.....not one penny!


On a lighter note i was dragged, literally dragged by a buddy of mine to a "gentlemens club" for some light entertainment a few years back. I did not realise it was a lap dance bar initially and when a young scantilly clad woman asked me if i wanted a dance; i told her if the DJ plays a tune i want to boogie to, i will give her the nod for a jig on the dance floor...DUH ..i soon woke up to my surroundings when i payed for the first round of drinks (never forgotton that Β£23+tip for two brandies and coke). Was i entertained? er yes, ...Many months later i suggested to my wife would she like to go to this "den of iniquity" and not to my surprise she jumped at the chance (for the experience i think)... she had a hoot of a time....whilst i did'nt. It does not seem to work with your wife in tow in these places; she getting slightly merry and mimicking the lap dancers rather badly.. never again..!

Maybe i should not have told you all that. but what the hell...as hell is where i will end up in. Well thats what my old school priest used to tell me; oh and i must learn to fear God if i am ever to be saved. Yeah, thanks for that Father..thanks!

Firstly, the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ did cover the UKIP MP thing or there wouldn't be a web page to be linked to.

Secondly, it's still not news. If a UKIP MP candidate had won an election campaigning as a UKIP candidate that would be news. He defected to UKIP after finding out that he isn't where the current Tory leadership is, or his local party according to his own opinion.

Nobody takes MP's who defect seriously because there is a basic dishonesty to switching party during their term. If they had real integrity they would step down as an MP and seek re-election under their new flag. This MP made a concious choice to stand as a Conservative candidate, and received the benfits of this. He can claim all he wants that he was elected for himself, but he stood as a Conservative and not an Independant (or UKIP). He got voted in because we live in a political system where people primarily vote for parties and not Candidates, and he had to know that going in to this.

UKIP are no doubt feeling good about themselves right now, and they are fooling themselves if they think this is of any significance, and no doubt will try to sell this to the public, but if this guy gets re-elected as a UKIP candidate then you can tell me it's news.

Peter Marshall's recent report on the US Democratic election campaign, was really - if anything - entirely partial. His sources were hardly evenly balanced either: he interviewed a reporter from the famously Whigish Chicago Tribune and republican politician Brian Docherty who claimed that Obama's personality could be described as "almost elitist"! What? Excuse me, this coming from a neo-conservative right-wing hawk! And how dare he talk of Obama's arrogance, when the current administration has plunged us into a conflict that is all but illegal by UN standards - surely this is the absolute height of arrogance, given that millions of people protested and still protest against it. But then, at least Marshall reports on Obama's involvement in the Altgeld Housing Project which, if anything, proves that he not an elitist, but rather a compassionate human being. Yet, just when we think we might be seeing the other side of the argument, Marshall uses an interview with John McCain on Obama's friendship with former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers. Is this independent reporting? Sounds rather corporatist to me!

One last thing: Brian Docherty claims that in "politics everything is fair game." Does this include smearing Bill Clinton as a murder and as a whiley dealer in the White Water supposed scandal! Ha, double-standards are clearly in operation here.

And again, not one report on the currrent situation in Iraq. A report by the John Hopkins School of Public Health recently concluded that up to 1 million people have been killed since the Iraq war started. This statistic has been peer-reviewed and the survery itself was carried out with the help of Iraqis. Why isn't any of this reported!

Peter Marshall's report on Obama was far from balanced. 3 out of 4 of the sources he used were pro-Republican: the Chicago Tribune, a Republican politician by the name of Brian Docherty and the Republican nominee, Senator John McCaine. Is this what the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ calls balanced reporting?

Superb interview Jeremy and the cheek by Jowell spinmeister

Who ever said the Olympics would cost us no more than a walnut whip !!
It's stories like that which makes bacon expensive these days
Flying pigs are a rarity Tessa but Jeremy sussed you out !

I agree wholeheartedly with comment no. 2 from brijo72.
We hear more about the US primaries than about our own elections and most of it consists not of news but predictions of what might happen in the future and what your reporter thinks it might mean when what he thinks might happen happens. It could conceivably be mildly interesting if we ever heard about the candidates' policies rather than that one is black, one is a woman and one is old.

It seems Quilliam supported the concept of Khilafah, promoted jihad, held the concept of unity of muslims, and called upon Muslims not to fight on behalf of the British Empire against Fellow Muslims....an unlikely name for a neo-con think tank!!!

We didn't see the lapdancing item up here in Scotland though Earth Kitt on Jools was I suspect much more to the taste of Scots. Watching the report on playback, however, I noticed reference being made to 'research in 2004 in Scotland and in London' by one of the main complainants. This was presumably a reference to a report that was carried out for Glasgow District Council in 2004 by Julie Bindel from London Metropolitan University: [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator] This got some discussion in the Scottish press in 2004 - with a variety of views coming from different local authorities. Glasgow has a reputation for being on 'the prudish end of the scale' over this compared with Edinburgh, for example. As a social scientist, however, the first thing you look for in research studies such as this is perhaps 'sample size'? In this instance para 2.6 of the report notes that only six establishments are sampled (4 in Glasgow; 2 in London) - and over the six clubs only 20 dancers and 15 customers were interviewed. Perhaps further research is required?!

this is the 'broken link' to the report for the Glasgow District Council referred to above:
'Profitable Exploits: Lap Dancing in the UK'
by Julie Bindel of London Metropolitan Uni.

[it can also be accessed through Wikipedia
- by going to their entry for 'Lap dance' ]