“The reality is people are bored with it.  Even at Channel 4 the vibe among staff is that if you like Big Brother you're not cool.”

Big Brother “to be scrapped”

Whilst some inaccuracies in films are understandable, for example there were two bridges at Arnhem but just a road bridge in A Bridge Too Far and others are pure Robin Hood style fiction from start to finish (such as Braveheart, The Patriot and Gallipoli) it is always disturbing when falsehoods are unnecessary to the plot, such as Lord Burghley’s (formerly Sir William Cecil) political demise in Shekhar Kapur's 1998 film Elizabeth.  Why do cinema and TV film script writers do it?  What purpose does it serve?

Hollywood’s distortion of the truth

Under the headline,

“Almost 400 dentists earn more than £300,000 a year, NHS figures reveal”,

explains The Times,

“Almost 400 dentists working in England and Wales earn more than £300,000 a year, according to the latest pay and expenses figures.

 

Data released by the NHS Information Centre showed that 6 per cent of the 19,000 dentists earned a taxable income of more than £200,000 last year. Of these 1,172 dentists, 392 were in the top bracket of at least £300,000.”

The Times report continues,

“In England average salaries were calculated at £126,527, once average expenses of £218,843 for building hire, staff and other running costs were deducted. Dentists without a contract with the local primary care trust or health board earned £66,259 on average.”

 According to the NHS Information Centre in its report Dental Earnings and Expenses, England and Wales, 2007/08 published on 4^th August 2009 and referred to by The Times,

“As is to be expected, [the tables] show that average gross earnings, expenses and taxable income increased [as dentists] increased the average time per week they devoted to dentistry.”

and

“For all self-employed primary care dentists, taxable income for those dentists who worked an average of more than 45 hours per week was £147,283, compared to £69,330 for those who worked an average of less than 35 hours.”

The really useful information disclosed by this NHS report shows that depending upon the number of hours worked, the average dentist’s taxable income varied between £69,330 and £147,283.  These figures are not excessive given the professional qualifications that have to be secured by an individual in order to practise as a dentist and the number of hours worked by those earning the highest income.

Undoubtedly some people will be outraged that a very small percentage of dentists earn so much money, but the NHS report is hardly evidence of an overpaid profession.

Much has been made of the BBC practising ageism by dispatching older females from its programmes, only to replace them with “younger models”.  Notwithstanding the glaring clues, the point overlooked is that the BBC’s core objective is to ditch its audience.  In the main, particularly on a Saturday night, the BBC’s light entertainment audience is largely middle aged or older, with conservative tastes.

As reports  The Daily Mail,

 “BBC insiders have revealed that Strictly Come Dancing is undergoing an overhaul before the next series, to give it a ‘sexier’ feel and attract a younger audience” (my italics).

What more needs to be said?

“A publicly funded exhibition is encouraging people to deface the Bible in the name of art — and visitors have responded with abuse and obscenity”

reported The Times on 23rd July 2009.

 The exhibition, Made in God’s Image, at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, is part of the Sh(out) project, which we are told, aims to celebrate and raise awareness of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.  The work Untitled 2009, by the Rev Jane Clarke of the Metropolitan Community Church, a Church that celebrates “racial, cultural, linguistic, sexual, gender and theological diversity”, urged the public to “write themselves in” to the Bible if they felt excluded.  Perhaps predictably considering the target audience of the exhibition, some of the comments written into the Bible were not entirely thought provoking or uplifting.

Rev Clarke made it plain that she regretted the insults that had appeared.  This has not prevented Mark O’Neill, the Director of Art and Museums at Culture and Sport Glasgow, lambasting critics of the Bible exhibit as being motivated by an opposition to homosexuality and “[trying] to divert attention from the issue that the artwork aims to highlight: how religion marginalises homosexuals.”  Adds Mr O’Neill,

“If they want to condemn homosexuals, that’s up to them but using the Gallery of Modern Art as a vehicle for that condemnation, I don’t think is legitimate.”

Or perhaps Christians just don’t like their holy book being so deliberately and provocatively defaced no matter who is the perpetrator, Mr O’Neill.

 The Sunday Times

Notwithstanding Daniel Hannan’s ruthlessly effective debunking of the “progressive” media’s recent attempts to smear Michal Kaminski, the Polish head of the new Eurosceptic Conservative and Reformist (ECR) bloc in the current European Parliament, The Daily Telegraph is seeking to breath life into the proverbial flogged dead horse.

Given that the Conservatives have contributed to the formation of an effective Eurosceptic bloc in the European Parliament, one might have thought that the rabidly Europhobic Telegraph would have been ecstatic but patently not, given sympathetic reports it has published concerning the European Union appreciative, former Conservative MEP, Mr McMillan-Scott’s criticism of the much maligned Mr Kaminski.

The Telegraph's thin veneer of columnists and commentators of moderate conservative persuasion  is insufficient to hide the fact that it has long since given up any pretence of being a newspaper which broadly supports the Conservative Party. For too long, too often the slant of reporting is indistinguishable from that of the BBC or The Guardian.  I have never subscribed to the Telegraph, ironically because in the past I had considered it to be “too Tory”.  Thus I am now denied the considerable delight of cancelling any subscription.