Tuesday 15 September 2009

Tragic Death of Soldier down played

Patrick Swayze died yesterday, as did Keith Floyd. Patrick was 57 (same age as me) and Keith 65. Both were celebrities, had full & interesting lives & died from natural causes, albeit prematurely. Their deaths were extensively reported on BBC TV & radio. Compare and contrast the BBC coverage of the latest soldier to die in Afghanistan yesterday. An announcement was made in the midday news, but without the name of the soldier. The afternoon “PM” programme on BBC radio 4 had dropped this news, the lead being once again Mandelson and his attempts to soften us up for big Government spending cuts.

Even before these spending cuts, British soldiers are still being sent to Afghanistan to fight an unwinnable war without the proper equipment to protect themselves or the helicopters to move around safely. The British Government is deliberately down playing the continuing daily death toll through their official propaganda machine, the BBC.

So the death of an aging American actor and a British cook from natural causes is headline news. But for the BBC, the murder of a young British soldier, his life tragically cut short by the misguided policies of this shameless, undemocratic British Labour Government is not. Go figure.

No comments: