Standards slipping

5/11/04: "Troops broke ban on hooding PoWs", reported the Daily Telegraph. Hooding was really, really bad.

19/05/08: "At no time during my captivity was I mistreated" reports British journalist who "was found in a house in Basra with his hands tied behind his back and a hood over his head, according to the Iraqi ministry of defence."
(report from BBC). And the Iraqis ought to know- after all, their soldiers rescued the civilian in question.

Frauds fingered

It is taking a while, but the internet is starting to expose some of the previously untouchable people who climbed into positions of influence pre-internet and post-decent traditional standards of competence. The BBC is more and more sensitive to criticism- the bubble of complacency has been disturbed. Their response to criticism is in the main an ever more obstinate denial- sticking to their established lines without examining their context.

That's not to say that under the surface it isn't having a real impact and influence, entailing the consideration of views that they previously considered next to impossible.

But it isn't only the BBC that is coming under pressure. I am sure the Smith Institute is much more careful than previously what titbits they offer the likes of Guido Fawkes, and MPs are considering rather more carefully than hitherto their handling of expenses after the experience of one Mr Hain.

And now several Canadian "human rights" commissions have wandered into a hornets nest by attacking my old fave, master of letters Mark Steyn, who notes:

""The wacky world of human rights commissions": I love the insouciance of that first sentence, the assumption that every reader will get it. Before this thing started in December, Canadian newspapers didn't use phrases like that about their "human rights" enforcers. There's a long way to go, but these frauds have had the worst four months' publicity in their history."

Amen to that.