BBC Newsnight - 11th February 2004

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Aired Wednesday 11th February 2004 am on BBC2 (UK)
1 hr 0 mins 59 secs
15,633 Kb

Peter Mandelson came out in defence of the Government. Things must be serious if Rothschild placeman Mandy has to come out to bat for Blair. He was criticising those people from `the right' who are dwelling on issues of intelligence with Iraq and calling into question "the Prime Minister's honesty and his integrity." It seems that the mere suggestion that the Prime Minister is crooked is a ThoughtCrime. According to Mandelson, it's all about `persuasion' - of the rank and file members of the Labour Party, and of the rest of us so that they can get away with their dastardly schemes.

Then Newsnight did a segment about Jeremiah Duggan's apparent suicide after attending a Schiller Institute conference, run by Lyndon LaRouche's wife. What was surprising about their coverage was their giving airtime to the suggestion that the Queen was the head of a drug-dealing organisation. (Segment begins 14mins 07sec)

I wasn't expecting Newsnight to then cross to Tom Carver in Washington DC so that he and Paxman could discuss George W Bush's lack of complete military service and the White House's ridiculous response to the questions. Anyone out there trying to get the news organisations in the US can use this footage to illustrate that the BBC can actually shoot straight on this issue. It also provides a lasting record of Scott McLellan's comments to journalists about the questioning of Bush's military record. (Segment begins 30 mins 20 sec).

Finally it ran a story about how Equitable Life investors are going to be dropped right in the muck when the Penrose report comes out. What's holding it up officially is the inability of the Treasury to decide what they'll do to respond to the report. However I'm inclined to believe that it's being sat on so that those with investments in Equitable who have comfortable positions have sufficient opportunity to extricate themselves from the oncoming mess. Once all the bigwigs have removed their investments largely intact, the news that Equitable is in terrible shape will be released. The sudden rush by the masses to get their money back will ensure that the majority of Equitable Life's investors will be very unhappy. (Segment begins 35mins 36sec)

In it's news round-up it mentioned that the Disney company had received a take-over offer from Comcast and that Michael Eisner has not commented on the offer. What Newsnight didn't mention was that Roy Disney is at war with Michael Eisner, having resigned from the company. Comcast's offer comes amid growing troubles at the publicly cheery Disney company. 

This was such an interesting episode of Newsnight, despite my problems with Paxman's amnesia, that I'm going to do the BBC a favour. The Beeb normally makes Newsnight available online for 24 hours before it is updated with the next edition. But for this edition, I somehow feel that people are going to want to refer back to it. So an archived copy is available.