Oh sure, they overpaid which isn't the film's fault. Mind you, I didn't actually think the film was very good either but that's not relevant here.

That's true, it's never going to be a blockbuster. But nevertheless, it's probably worth noting because it does have a big star in the lead and - the bit that maybe justifies its inclusion here - Mubi seemed to have paid $24m for it. Which is quite a lot.

I thought this cap is actually popular, no? Obviously it should be scrapped, but the fact that it's going under the radar is presumably a good thing for labour if, as the polls suggest, it would be more popular to keep it.

God that countdown clock was one of the creepiest things ever, even at the time it was disgusting. I bet the editors of some of the papers that reported that are on the airwaves as we speak, decrying the bbc....

Thanks for your good wishes. Always nice to be patronised for pointing out the facts. Of course, you may be right - along with most of the lobby it seems - but I still think it's misleading to give your own speculation, however widely it's shared in westminster, the same status as historical fact.

Hold up. They still have this majority. Starmer is still PM. 'It has been wasted' to me seems premature indeed.

Finally, a bit of a reality check from our 2024 election book (out soon!) for everyone hyperventilating about collapsing public trust in the BBC - free to air TV (mostly the BBC) is still the most widely consumed and widely trusted source of news - blows print, online & social media out of the water

Yes but this just begs the question - if you did that to 'suggest a meaning that isn't there' then there's no issue, you'd be a bad historian. But what if you thought the meaning was there? Then someone comes along and says 'no it's not', would you then hold your hand up to 'malpractice'?

Yeah, and they were almost certainly getting a lot of shit for giving away for 'free' stuff paid for by the license fee. So thanks for pointing out that the BBC will get shit from both sides on pretty much every binary decision there is.

If you saw all of Trump's speeh and interpreted it as 'he's inciting the crowd to attack the Capitol.' And you wrote a piece about it, wouldn't good practice be to quote from the speech to illustrate? Short of reproducing the speech in full, wouldn't any such process be open the same criticism?

Thank you for replying. To me, it's clearly a mistake (in the sense that even if you were very anti-trump, such an edit is not a good thing to do) but whether it was intended to be deliberately misleading is unclear. I mean, we see 'edits' of every political speeches every day.

How can you be sure 'they loathed trump' and that was the reason for the edit? Seems like you're guessing at the motivations of an unidentified person. And when is a mistake malpractice? This is a genuine question, as I'm not sure - but you seem sure, so can you tell me?

You make a lot of good points, but to totally ignore the motivations of the complaintant is not good policy either. And I really wish people wouldn't use 'the BBC' to stand in for 'BBC News' - it's a shorthand that risks damaging so much.

One thing that always annoys me about newspaper coverage of the BBC is that they invariably use 'the BBC' to refer to BBC News. It's understandable, but ultimately will need to a lot of unneccessary damage.

You'll run this story every month for four years, I reckon. A stopped clock and all that.

Well yes. And also, he seems to deliberate ignore the fact that - shock horror - non-people might be retweeting and liking tweet in order to influence opinion.....

So, I comment critically on what you wrote, and you choose to attack and defame me personally without definding your own patent nonsense. It doesn't say much for your argument that your first resort is ad hominum attack.