Read the rest here

Ok, personally I think Scientology is just clever a way of getting money of lonely rich people but regardless, pay attention to how the BBC play it down and point out all of the pressure their journalist was under. They don’t mention these things when criticising a celebrity making a fool of themselves.

The other thing to consider is the BBC have decided to cut new programmes by 10%. I wonder, when they say this do they actually mean they will cut the amount of programmes or will they simply make them 10% worst?

What interests me as that all these new sites are really badly made. For a start of they are all built with tables instead of CSS and they don’t even validate – they are technically bad and the code is sloppy. Even the BBC 1 homepage doesn’t validate, in fact it has 44 errors. Have a look for your self. The people and arts site has 90 errors, some serious which is terrible! LINK
The BBC with an infinite budget (paid for by us, the tax payer) should be doing better than this. Also I would like to see a reduction in the fee since they must be making a profit with all these foreign programs. Otherwise, why are they doing it? For the common good of man?

I mean today’s’ program was someone with Tourettes Syndrome who was quite good playing the piano. And to thicken the plot, he met, in order, an autistic boy (That played the piano), someone the likes writing a lot (Hypergraphica) and someone with Parkinson’s (who also happened to have a piano and was quite good at it)

Ok, so I sound negative about it all. But seriously, there was no real science. Do a seach on Youtube for this program and you will see.

Finally, they met some other bloke who also has Tourettes…Shit…

I have to admit, that before even watching this programme last night on BBC 2, I could tell it wasn’t going to be great. The title was “Horizon : My Pet Dinosaur”. Says it all really. The programmes’ aim was to explore what it would be like if the meteorite that supposedly hit the earth and caused mass extinction didn’t happen. And dinosaurs were living among us! For the most part, the programme ignores the probability that if dinosaurs were to survive up until now, due to the fact that cause and effect is unpredictable, it is unlikely that humans would have survived too.

The main flaw of this documentary, if you can call it that is that it seemed like it was produced for children. There was no real new science, but lots of cutesy clips of little dinosaurs. In fact what little science there was, was completely flawed. For example the film kept referring to the meteorite impact as if it was proven fact. In reality, although there is lots of evidence supporting this theory, it is still a theory. Just as the majority of scientists believe that evolution is the reason behind life forms as we know them, when discussing such a concept, evolution is referred to as theory as it has not yet been proved without doubt. That’s the basic principle of science.

The film builds up with a crescendo of repeated and re-repeated make believe scenarios and quirky little clips of dinosaurs walking down the street, or sitting in cafes until it finally shares its big revelation: Birds descended from dinosaurs! Err… Tell me something I didn’t know when I was 10 years old. They did the “reveal” by stating:

“For the first time on national television we can show you an autopsy of a real dinosaur”.

They then pull back the cloth covering a body in a morgue, and yes, it’s a turkey. It had even been roasted which seems a bit silly if you are going to do an autopsy.It did have great visuals and graphics although I suspect they were re-used clips from walking with dinosaurs. It especially annoyed me when even the serious scientists on the programme pretended to see superimposed dinosaurs half way thorough the interview. It just made the whole thing feel cheap and lacking of any real scientific value. The worst part was when they did a news 24 news flash “Dinosaurs are being a pest…” and then showing some actor trying to get dinosaurs away from her dustbins.

My partner who also watched this with me kept telling me to “shut up moaning about it”. I guess she has a more open mind about it, but at the end she told me “That’s crap!” Indeed. It was very patronising. The BBC must think we are all really stupid. I swear things are getting worst and these programmes are progressively being dumbed down.

By the way, the programme ends with the words “Who’s a clever boy then?” and a shot of a parrot. Are they taking the piss?

“Castaways marooned - 30 minutes from a latte” chortled the New Zealand Herald in January, when the location was announced.

You can read more about it here

The BBC pointed out that BBC magazines such as Top Gear and TV channels like a UK Living and BBC World already have advertising.

So much for an ad free BBC!