The BBC's official position is . . . "that never happened"

Paul Marks finds that the BBC is not above censoring opinions which it deems "unworthy":

[. . . the speaker] turned out to have some very standard statist opinions — for example he supported a total ban on smoking in bars and restaurants (almost needless to say, the audience was wildly in favour of a ban "by 98%" — most likely they would have supported any bit of statism that was put in front of them). However, I was surprised as the editor started a pro Bush story of how he had met the President some time ago and . . .

Then the BBC suddenly went off the air. The broadcast of the show started again when the story was over. At the end of the programme the BBC blamed "technical difficulties" for the break in transmission.

So I listened to the repeat of the show (today Saturday the 14th of January) in order to hear the editor's story of his meeting with President Bush. It was cut out of the programme — even the start of the story that had been broadcast on Friday night. It seems that the BBC will not tolerate any pro-Bush comment.

It does make one wonder how often they've been pulling tricks like that. I had to laugh at the closing part of this post, however:

President Bush may not be up to much, but as long as he serves as a symbol of all the BBC hates about the United States (i.e. all the good things in the United States) I find it hard to totally dislike him.