Ian Martin
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ianmartin.bsky.social
Ian Martin
@ianmartin.bsky.social
The Thick of It/The Hartlepool Spy/Veep/The Death of Stalin/Unhinged/Epic Space/Broken English
Can't the nation just take a breath and get this sorted by Christmas, as a present to ourselves?

#ANGELARAYNERFORBBCDGYOUCOWARDS
WHO SHOULD BE THE NEXT BBC D-G?
November 11, 2025 at 1:21 PM
That's why I've voted for yourself, Nigel.

#ANGELARAYNERFORBBCDGYOUCOWARDS
Farage has admitted - boasted - that he encouraged a foreign power to interfere in the media of his own country. Some patriot.
November 11, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Reposted by Ian Martin
He rose, shook himself, and thus disturbed in his musings, lamented: ‘Oh, God! How I hate women who write! How I hate them!’ in an agreeable voice.
November 11, 2025 at 1:02 PM
BOTTOM: FAITHFUL

TOP: TRAITOR
November 11, 2025 at 1:02 PM
November 11, 2025 at 12:51 PM
"And you can shut your fucking trap Gibb, you Royal nonce-alike. Right, I want some top-quality telly NOW, and you can tell Trump to fist himself, him with a face like one of my auntie's fucking tan boots. I'm talking Play For Today and The Traitors. Clever people. And put some fucking TUNES on!"
WHO SHOULD BE THE NEXT BBC D-G?
November 11, 2025 at 12:48 PM
WHO SHOULD BE THE NEXT BBC D-G?
November 11, 2025 at 12:32 PM
WHO SHOULD BE THE NEXT BBC D-G?

[delete 'cross']
November 11, 2025 at 12:27 PM
WHO SHOULD BE THE NEXT BBC D-G?
November 11, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by Ian Martin
Three Manchester dustmen found a set of bowler hats outside an office in Market Street and decided to wear them, October 1962 (Mirrorpix).
November 11, 2025 at 12:12 PM
Reposted by Ian Martin
Highpoint I, Highgate

1933-35

Berthold Lubetkin and Tecton

Image from RIBApix
November 11, 2025 at 10:50 AM
Reposted by Ian Martin
“So it was, on that misty morning, that Brenda set off for the capital. She knew not what she would find there, only that the time had come to move on - away from small-minded rural attitudes and people who called her ‘Oreo’ and ‘the wide panda’ - to seek a more fulfilling life.”
November 11, 2025 at 9:36 AM
Reposted by Ian Martin
Columbo in his first episode looks like a dog that's just come back from the groomer
October 14, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Reposted by Ian Martin
The "appropriate response" is to broadcast everything that Trump did and said on that appalling day for American democracy and then to tell this moron to sling his hook.
I might be wrong, but this stinks of Pharage involvement.
November 11, 2025 at 8:03 AM
Reposted by Ian Martin
I've always felt that Johnson and Farage put self-interest over the national interest - hence their dallying with Putin and his oligarchs. But directly colluding with a foreign government to take down the BBC feels like an act of supreme treachery
November 10, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Well done, everyone. You were right. Blue Lights is brilliant isn't it?
November 10, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Ian Martin
ACAB and Defund The Police -- the two most destructive messaging efforts from sloganeers who don't actually want to fix a fucking thing and will, at every opportunity, alienate the entire electorate from actual police reform for the sheer pleasure of their own self-regarding purities.

Eat a dick.
Okay but ACAB includes David Simon.
Hard, fast rule from a veteran police reporter: Excepting anyone engaged in infiltrating a criminal conspiracy in an undercover capacity, any law officer who hides his identity from the public is a shitheel is doing vile shit and is, in fact, actively destroying the credibility of law enforcement.
November 6, 2025 at 3:02 AM
Reposted by Ian Martin
SUPERB and angrily unvarnished response, by former BBC chairman, Lord Patten.

"I don't think that we should allow ourselves to be bullied into thinking that the BBC is only any good, if it reflects the prejudice of the last person who shouted at it." ~AA
November 10, 2025 at 6:40 PM
Reposted by Ian Martin
For reference. I might print this out and hang it in my house:
November 10, 2025 at 5:07 PM
Exactly. Get to fuck, Pudsey.
November 10, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Reposted by Ian Martin
One nice detail that can easily be lost in this graph - even right wingers trust the BBC more than the right wing tabloids
Here’s the same data, but with trust broken down by political views (circles are trust among people on the left, +s the right).

It’s not just that the BBC is widely consumed — it also has solid trust on both left & right, whereas trust in the biggest US media brands is hugely polarised.
November 10, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Reposted by Ian Martin
Maybe Keir should demand the heads of major US news networks any time they imply Britain is on the brink of civil war or that we live under sharia law. Or does it not work both ways?
November 10, 2025 at 11:29 AM
In the interest of 'balance' at the BBC, can't we have a counter-coup to turf out Tory embed Robbie Gibb?
November 10, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Reposted by Ian Martin
My one #politics post of the day.

Starmer's refusal to clear out Tory appointments to the BBC Board and other public bodies from day one was at best deeply naive.

Again we come back to the mystery of what Labour were doing pre-2024 election as it definitely wasn't preparing for power.
November 10, 2025 at 8:48 AM
Reposted by Ian Martin
‘If the BBC was able today to report what it thinks, it would say this: there has been a coup’

The Observer view: political interference at the BBC

https://bit.ly/4qW3MeA
The Observer view: political interference at the BBC | The Observer
bit.ly
November 10, 2025 at 6:00 AM