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One news event that may have passed most people by last week was the election of Tim Farron as leader of the Liberal Democrats.The party, which was once Britain’s third largest, was decimated in May’s General Election, losing all but eight of its 57 seats, completing a brutal period of decline while it was in government alongside the Conservatives. The inquisition began the morning after Farron’s election when the BBC’s John Humphreys asked him if he would “seek advice from God when it came to making important policy decisions”. Farron accused Humphreys of focusing on “the shocking revelation that a...

Ukip leader will speak at CPAC summit where plastic fetuses are handed out by anti-abortion activists. Nigel Farage will speak alongside some of the most extreme conservatives in US politics Nigel Farage will speak alongside Sarah Palin and some of America's most extreme Right-wing conservatives at a conference in Washington next week. The Ukip leader will share a stage with a host of gun activists, Tea Party leaders and anti-abortion campaigners at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Visitors to the summit are sometimes handed plastic fetuses by Evangelical Christian activists as a symbol of their opposition to abortion,...

This is a trailer for a hit piece on UKIP and Nigel Farage.There is no text with the video.Judging from the trailer it's a nasty piece of work.

Channel 4 was last night accused of anti-democratic ´fear-mongering´ for airing a controversial drama about what life would be like with Nigel Farage as Prime Minister. UKIP: The First Hundreds Days painted a highly-critical vision of Britain under UKIP rule, including a country divided by race riots, mass unemployment and a crashing economy. Channel 4 said it ordered the drama - which lampooned UKIP, its leaders and its supporters - as a way of engaging people in politics in the run-up to the May General Election.

James Lavigne had been mayor of Pearl River, La. for 24 years. He lost the last election and called an emergency meeting Wednesday to say goodbye. ....“Facebook can kiss my ass, and you too and Channel 4 news,” Lavigne said as he got into his town-owned GMC Denali and drove away.

When we first meet Karen, star of a new Channel 4 documentary, she is driving a huge, silver Nissan people-carrier. The 54-year-old grandmother is smartly dressed in fashionable clothes, jewellery and sports an immaculate manicure. But neither her car nor her clothes are paid for by her wages. Instead, Karen is among the 20 million people claiming benefits in Britain. ... Now, a Channel 4 series, Benefits Britain 1949, explores exactly that question by challenging claimants — including Karen — to live on what they would have received when the welfare state was born.

(Reuters) - A British television station will broadcast the Muslim call to prayer every morning during Ramadan to give a voice to Britain's Muslim minority, which has faced a backlash since the murder of a soldier on a London street. Channel 4 on Tuesday announced it would be the first mainstream national broadcaster to air the call, issuing it at 3 a.m. daily from July 9 for the entire Muslim month of fasting. The publicly-owned broadcaster, set up to appeal to minority audiences, will also interrupt its programming four times on the first day of Ramadan with 20-second films to...

Channel 4 is to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer during Ramadan this year, it revealed yesterday. Starting next week, the broadcaster will transmit the morning call to prayer daily for the 30 days of Ramadan. It is believed to be the first time a mainstream British television channel has broadcast the Islamic call to prayer. Channel 4’s head of factual programming Ralph Lee said almost five per cent of the British population would ‘actively engage’ in Ramadan this month, adding: ‘Can we say the same of other national events that have received blanket coverage on television such as the...

Alex Thomson says crew was led to 'free-fire zone' as deaths would discredit Bashar al-Assad's regimeThe chief correspondent of Channel 4 News has claimed that Syrian rebels deliberately tried to get him and his crew killed by gunfire from government forces in a bid to discredit the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Alex Thomson alleged a small group from the Free Syrian Army deliberately guided the vehicle in which he and his Channel 4 News colleagues were travelling into what he described as a "free-fire zone" on a blocked road near the city of al-Qusayr, because "dead journos are bad for...

I don’t know whether this is mainly for your Last Acceptable Prejudice file or your Throwing a Nutty file … from CNA.  My emphases and comments: Catholics denounce slated ‘documentary’ on Pope by homosexual activist London, England, Jun 8, 2010 / 01:07 am (CNA).- A homosexual activist [deviant, and therefore in liberal eyes well-qualified…] and Vatican protestor in the U.K. is slated to make what he calls a “factual” documentary on the Holy Father, [It will be truly unbiased, I bet.] which is set to air just before the upcoming papal trip. One critic of the proposed film called it...

ALL too often, natural disasters and human atrocities make only a fleeting impression. We watch fascinated and horrified as TV anchors give us their impressions while images of death and disaster roll across our screens. But soon, one particular crisis is overtaken by another, and relentlessly, the news cycle moves on. It is not until one sees and hears the survivors that the magnitude of a disaster really sinks in. This is what I experienced while watching Channel 4’s programme on its Dispatches series. Called Terror in Mumbai, the documentary retraces the steps of the terrorists as they first landed...

Miller Dies In Hometown Of Augusta, Ga. NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Longtime WSMV-TV anchor Dan Miller died Wednesday night of a heart attack in his hometown of Augusta, Ga. at the age of 67. Miller was in Augusta to watch practice rounds of the Masters Golf Tournament with fellow friends and longtime co-workers Terry Bulger and Rudy Kalis. Miller had anchored evening newscasts for Channel 4 since the 1970s. For a short time, he worked in Los Angeles TV news and was Pat Sajak's sidekick for a short-lived late-night talk show Sajak did on CBS-TV. He returned to WSMV-TV in the...

Channel 4 was rebuked by the Government yesterday for its decision to broadcast an address by the President of Iran as the channel’s alternative Christmas message. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that providing a platform for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust “a myth”, would cause widespread offence, despite the conciliatory tone of his speech. A spokeswoman for the FCO said: “President Ahmadinejad has, during his time in office, made a series of appalling anti-Semitic statements. The British media are rightly free to make their own editorial choices, but this invitation will cause offence and bemusement not just...

Jewish groups were up in arms today when it was revealed that Channel 4's "alternative" Christmas Day broadcast is to be delivered by President Ahmadinejad of Iran. Mr Ahmadinejad's speech will go out at 7.15pm, four hours after the Queen's traditional Christmas Day message is broadcast on the main channels. His message is a spiritual one but includes some more nakedly political elements - including the implicit claim that if Jesus Christ were alive today, he would oppose US hegemony. “If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist...

It was described as an "exemplary piece of programme making" by an award winning film-maker which launched a week of television coverage of Islam. But a Channel 4 documentary on the Qur'an has angered a group of leading Shia Muslim scholars, who have criticised it for making "seriously inaccurate statements" about their branch of the faith. In a letter to Channel 4, they said that the depiction of Shia beliefs in The Qur'an, broadcast earlier this month, was "disappointing, misleading, even defamatory". The signatories to the letter were also angered by the apparent links made between Shiaism and violence, with...

-- snip -- Complaints about privacy and fairness from the government's former chief scientist, Sir David King, and the Nobel peace prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be upheld on almost all counts, the Guardian has learned. But it is understood that Channel 4 will still claim victory because the ultimate verdict on a separate complaint about accuracy, which contained 131 specific points and ran to 270 pages, will find that it did not breach the regulator's broadcasting code and did not materially mislead viewers...

Romantic, passionate, tempestuous, and prone to potentially scandalous liaisons - all words that haven't often been attached to Queen Victoria in the past. Or at least, not as often as words such as buttoned up, repressed, dour and imperious. But this challenging new docu-drama - mixing comments from experts with dramatisations of key moments in Victoria's life and entries from her own diaries - insists that the popular image of Queen Victoria as the epitome of prudishness is way off the mark. "She was a doer, she was a goer," says Oscar-winning screenwriter and former Monarch of the Glen star...

So as you all know, it's the 9/11 anniversary next Tuesday. On Monday night (10th september) Channel 4 in the UK (one of the 5 main terrestrial tv networks) has decided to show fahrenheit 9/11. Isn't that a complete disgrace? Am I making something out of nothing or is this just a complete insult and exploitation as I believe it is. http://www.uknetguide.co.uk/TV/ Look for monday the 10th 9pm. I only know this in advance because they've been advertising it for ages including in the middle of a 9/11 documentary they just showed. I'd imagine if ANY of the major US...

On BBC Radio Four’s Today programme this morning, the Environment Secretary David Miliband, asked whether there was anything in last week’s Channel Four documentary ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’, gave the following memorable reply : I didn’t see the programme — but I promise you I will do a blog demolishing its contents. This just about sums up the received wisdom on man-made global warming: conclusion first, evidence later. Miliband’s reply was of a piece with the general response by the global warmers to the C4 film’s evidence: it has either been ignored, or rubbished with some feeble arguments, or...

Channel 4 is to reignite controversy over the wearing of the veil - by featuring a Muslim woman in full niqab giving the broadcaster's alternative Christmas message. The woman, today named only as Khadija and said to be a lecturer in Islamic studies, will go head-to-head with the Queen when she gives her annual speech to the nation on 25 December. Producers are said to have "discovered" her after a month-long search for a suitable candidate. A spokesman for the channel added: "We felt it fitting that Channel 4's alternative Christmas message should be given by a Muslim woman in...