US president claims broadcaster has ‘defrauded the public’ and reiterates his threat of launching a $1bn legal action Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said the crisis at the BBC has provided an “opportunity” to “take away all the people who were political appointees”. According to the PA news agency, Cooper told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: We Liberal Democrats don’t think that there should be any political appointees and we would like to see legislation to bring back the independent appointments process for the BBC board. I do think that this crisis in the BBC provides an opportunity for us to clear up the BBC and to make sure we can safeguard its independence for future. When you look at independent editorial decisions that have been made on particular stories, there’s no doubt in my mind that the BBC has, on a number of occasions, been pretty sloppy, and it’s been very slow at correcting them. I think I have an obligation to do it, you can’t allow people to do that. I guess I have to. They defrauded the public and they’ve admitted it. This is within one of our great allies, supposedly our great ally [the UK]. We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell. Continue reading...