Mrs Roops

It appears you're having another minnow moment...and people accuse me of pedantry...

Oh, OK...

You've rather proved my point, haven't you? Crippled by a shoulder injury which has put your career as an airport baggage handler on hold you channel your bigotry against anyone who has lost the use of one arm. Having to ponce off your wife probably doesn't help either. I suspect mental health issues are at play. I wanna help, I really do - so let me go full-on Willoughby, don a façade of winsomeness and ask, are you OK? Betchya feeling better already...

...he said without the slight trace of irony I'm not sure I want to add to LCS's comments as he's made sure you sorta resemble the Titan submersible rotting on some Newfoundland quayside. That said, whilst some "celebrities" may hide behind bogus mental health issues I'm not sure its the "go-to modus operandi" for the purposes and extent that you suggest though it seams to be pulled up by every defence brief as a plea for mitigation for every crime between shoplifting at a local convivence store to serial killers. My superior nature is minded to think that celebrities discussing mental illness helps to destigmatize a taboo subject that otherwise is kept hidden resulting in prolonged misery for sufferers and their friends and family alike. On the whole people can't handle interacting with those with mental illness or, as it happens, physical deformity. Witness the pile of vitriol on a sweet, charming one-armed meteorologist who's only crime was having the temerity of doing her job of weather forecaster.

Gosh, having received both barrels in the face from LCS your response is as expected - histrionics, insults and conflation. Firstly you need to separate Schofield and Edwards as the dynamics of both cases are entirely different. With Schofield, his relationship with another ITV employee was meant to be that of professional mentor to a young man wanting to get into broadcast production. As we know that relationship may have had ulterior motives and therefore constituted an abuse of power so that was a problem for ITV management, the second problem was that Schofield when asked about the disturbing rumours categorically denied that anything untoward was taking place. The first problem was that Schofield's carefully constructed elder brother/silver fox persona to Willoughby's ingenue (which was past its sell-by date in any case) was dead in the water so he had to leave 'This Morning'. The denials sealed his fate with regards to his relationship with ITV. Secondly, stop obsessing about Edwards' salary. He was paid the market rate and not for just reading an autocue. I agree that the BBC needs to sort itself out but that will not happen with Culture Secretaries lasting only few months at a time. FWIW I believe following Reithian principles is as relevant now as it was in the 1920's. To this end a greatly slimmed BBC down should be split into two entities; the existing licence fee funded Corporation restricting itself to existing radio, World Service output and TV content to news gathering and dissemination, current affairs and documentaries, the rest being sold off on a franchise basis. "Aunty Beeb" when done properly was a national treasure looked on with envy by the rest of the world. America's PBS, set up with good intentions, is a poor substitute.

...so after making a bogus claim about the BBC's mental health "stance" you're now carrying on in the same vein whilst keeping this "really simple". Firstly, you've made the claim that I continuously defend the BBC with the strong inference that I'm a BBC/Guardian type lefty. Actually, I'm on record on having a jaundiced view of the BBC but I always endeavour to be objective in my assessment of the Corporation's news reporting. There are many more posts where I have criticised the BBC's top-heavy management structure and the resultant lazy journalism that occurs by replacing specialists with generalist reporters which has resulted in merging the World Service, news reporting and the current affairs divisions mainly at the expense of the once superb local and regional news hubs. FTR I have stated that my personal political philosophy is towards the right of the political spectrum (with soft libertarian values), have zero tolerance for third wave feminism and my position on gender politics is similar to J K Rowling's. You then go on to make the risible claim that the possibility of chequebook journalism is "irrelevant". Of course its relevant as it calls into question the motivation of the young man's family, more so when calling in the police was the last port of call. As for the young man, very little is known - he could be a lost soul driven to desperation to obtain funds to feed an out of control habit yet he seems quite adept in monetising his body parts which begs the question has he had prior experience in dealing with weak men, in which case who was exercising "power"? All we know is that no criminality took place so not our business. Let the the two families, one of which is clearly dysfunctional, sort themselves out - hopefully with health professionals.

The Savile case does have a dimension that falls into the scope "of public interest" as a number of his victims were procured on BBC premises. The BBC knew or at least were aware of his behaviour and owed a duty of care to the young people who featured in televised shows involving him.

There is a difference between what is of interest to the public and what is in the public interest. That said, I don't know why you've name-dropped me as my comments thus far on the recent press furore have concentrated on protecting The Corner from receiving letters from Messrs Sue, Grabbit & Runne. Hold on a minute as I change hats... --o0o-- Your post is at best misplaced and reeks of the bar room. Firstly, the Sun, whose Sunday edition, formerly known as the News of The World before the title was quickly dropped for outrageous and criminal behaviour, is no stranger to bashing its' competitors, sometimes for the most spurious and hypocritical of reasons. You've made the point that Edwards' salary is taxpayer-funded. My reaction to that is so what? Are we now given to understand that every taxpayer-funded employee (17% of the UK workforce) should now be subject to scrutiny by the morality police? What Edwards or any other public employee chooses to spend their salary on (criminality not withstanding) is none of our business. I think the whole Edwards/BBC charade of investigation by social media, pearl-clutchers and hysterical press are asking the wrong questions. Why did the young man's family first approach Edwards' employer and then the Sun newspaper? Surely, if criminality was involved the first port of call would be the police? I would also be asking if the Sun opened it's chequebook to secure the story. You've mentioned Tim Westwood and the "BBC mental health stance"; granted I spent only a couple of seconds looking for this "stance" and came up with nothing. The only reference to mental health I could find was an Independent enquiry commissioned by the BBC offering mental health support to witnesses who were affected by reliving their encounter with Westwood. Really, people should pipe down and let the Edwards family deal with their laundry in private.

A pretty accurate summation IMHO, just sayin'

I've just spent a few minutes moderating comments from the usual smart arses who no doubt thought they were being clever. That said, it was good to see two punters putting forward reasoned arguments; On the 4th November 2012 Sally Bercow (wife of the then HoC Speaker) tweeted "Why is Lord McAlpine trending? *innocent face*" - all very innocuous. Unfortunately the defence of plausible deniability cut no ice with the courts as Ms Bercow's five words and emoji cost her £15,000 as well as a shedload of legal costs. After McAlpine relieved the BBC & ITV some £310,000 (plus costs) for unfounded paedo allegations he then went after the Twitterati with the intention of suing anyone who directly accused or inferred that he was a paedophile. In the end McAlpine, realising that the optics of unleashing legal Armageddon on thousands of twitter uses did not look too good, went after the Twitter users who were public faces or had more than 500 followers. Those who had less than 500 followers nevertheless had to post a grovelling apology and donate £25 to a selected number of charities. More recently, Sir Cliff Richard took South Yorkshire Police and the BBC to the cleaners for publicising the police's search of his home, in fact some of the content was livestreamed from a helicopter. SWP caved in immediately as they had the sense to realise their actions were contrary to standard police procedures. The BBC dug their heels in and fought the case on the basis of "free speech" and "the public's right to know". At this point I would say that I was as surprised as much as m'learned colleagues were when the courts ruled in favour of Sir Cliff. Broadly speaking the courts ruled that the the BBC were fully entitled to broadcast that the police were searching a home as part of operation Yewtree but had no right to infringe on Sir Cliff's right to privacy (up to this point Sir Cliff wasn't even aware that he was being investigated). In short as per my previous comments on this matter no names unless they have been outed through the normal channels. Now, some of you keyboard warriors may blather on about the right to free speech but its very easy to protest this behind the cloak of anonymity especially as someone else, i.e the site's owners, have to pick up the tab.

Honest onions about the memory thang - I've had most travel shots going and then some.

Well, I guess we'll have to take your word about you and your gf's vaccinations in view of your predilection for telling porkies. Be that as it may, you've merely demonstrated that you still don't have a sodding clue what vaccines do and don't do. All five of the listed vaccines will neither prevent infection nor transmission. Like the mRNA vaccines they simply prepare the body should you become infected. The difference between the vaccines you say you've taken is that all five introduce an inactive pathogen into your body (though if memory serves, the yellow fever shot is very much "active") whereas the mRNA shot introduces a protein incorporating a set of instructions for the body to make it's own antibodies. One mo' thing; eventually the majority of vaccines, including the ones on your list will be made this way for the simple reason that mRNA shots have been proven to be safer and the rate of rejection is miniscule compared to the "traditional" vaccines. Before you kick off, mRNA vaccines have been rolled out for more than a decade...

I realise that this is a big ask but some of you need to calm down. Please stop pulling random celebrity names. By all means discuss the unfurling story and the BBC's reaction who, by the way, are legally hamstrung by case law after broadcaster's cock up in reporting the police investigation into Cliff Richard.

So desperate to cram as much anti-vax rhetoric as possible that you've contradicted yourself. Good to see that you've also repeated baseless claims that previously resulted you falling flat on your face.

After getting everything wrong for the past few years I suppose all you have left is to project an imaginary power, nevertheless - its probably best you keep me out of your fantasy wank-bank.

Hey, not my fault you were short-changed when allocated a measure of grey matter. Seek your apology elsewhere.

Yeah, doubling down on the bluster gives you away.

No worries, KB - we'll mark that down as "unable to explain". Stay warm.

Hardly a compelling argument, is it? G'wan, do the convicted grifter-in-chief and sexual abuser proud and explain how he won the election.

You seem to effortlessly straddle the roles of Remainer snide-in-chief and being deliberately obtuse, nevertheless I think you have sufficient nous to work it out.

You know there is. I was addressing you surreptitiously slipping in yet another post-brexit anecdote.

Ah, that's the thing about farmers, irrespective of nationality - they always take a parochial viewpoint. In fact the Aussie farmers benefited from a similar FTA whilst the UK was part of the EU yet they never produced the allocation of produce afforded to them under the EU-Aus agreement so its difficult to see as to how they will take advantage of an UK-Aus FTA which provides tariff-free agricultural produce which is seven times the size of the previous agreement. The truth is that the British are very much into consuming home-grown produce so the reality is Australia will fill the gap that British farmers can't supply provided that Australia can transport the product half-way around the world. One benefit to the UK is that part of the deal, Australia will provide the necessary nod-through for the UK to join the far more lucrative CPTPP (Trans-Pacific). Here's an interesting aside - The UK-Aus agreement provides for about £14 billion p.a. of agricultural trade (imports and exports). The recent UK-USA-Aus submarine deal where Australia will purchase British designed and built (with some American tech) nuclear powered submarines is worth £350 billion.

Yeah, such prophesising tend to bite people on the bum...

You've been reading too many Jackie Collins novels.

Excellent, let's hope you have at last found a pair of big-boy pants 'cos so far all we've had from you is insecurity, petulance, cry-baby antics and twisted narratives (including quote above). "keep up" indeed...