Dumbed down BBC News!

I findthat the news on radio 4 much better and much more analytical.

I don't think that idiomatic English e.g. 'on thin ice' can be understood by showing a picture of a skater! English idioms don't have literal meaning.

So there are two separate issues..a dumbing down of the news and accompanying pictures and the BBC proving news in different languages/dialects?

Because it annoys me, sodapop.

When one of our top scientists clearly spells out the huge risks to UK science from Brexit, it is concerning to see the BBC obscuring this reality with misinformed arguments straight out of the mouths of the Brexiters.

Anyone who listened to the interview with Paul Nurse on Saturday’s BBC Today programme will have got a clear picture of the damage that will be done to the UK’s research capacity if we were to leave the EU without a deal. Unfortunately, presenter Justin Webb chose to counter Nurse’s points by parroting a well-worn and highly inaccurate line from the Brexiter textbook.

Nurse is as distinguished a scientist as there is working in the UK, a Nobel laureate and director of the Francis Crick Institute. He explained (listen from 35 mins) the major loss in resources for research here if EU funding were cut off, given that the EU budget spends much more in the UK on research and innovation than we contribute to those programmes. In addition he spelled out the increased impediments and bureaucracy which would face EU academics, researchers and students wishing to come to the UK and why this would be seriously harmful.

Webb responded to this well-reasoned case by claiming: “If we’re not paying £39 billion to be part of the [EU] club and we need to spend an extra billion, we can do it.” This argument – a favourite of ultra-Brexiters – is dangerous rubbish.

infacts.org/bbc-reads-from-brexiter-textbook-on-threat-to-uk-science/

The BBC website has a special section for ESOL, which has proven very useful for many of my students. I wonder if this is just an expansion of that service, for people unfamiliar with English idioms?

However, when you've been out of the UK a while and come back to visit, you realise everything has been dumbed down.

English-based Pidgin, is one of the most widely spoken languages across West Africa, even though it is not officially recognised.

It strikes me as a very sensible thing to do. It is getting BBC broadcasting to many millions of people across a wide swathe of countries who may not otherwise have access to the media that they could otherwise understand.

If the BBC can broadcast in Welsh, Arabic, French and Spanish, none of them the 'Queen's English', why not Pidgin?

The narration for any BBC documentary or new item these days has to be accompanied by many groan-inducing puns.

news item - sorry!!

Welsh is an official language of the U.K.

The simplest thing to do is just not bother to watch tv, unless there is a particular program you wish to see.

Stick to radio, all the illustrations and pictures are your own.

But don't listen to Radio 4 at breakfast time with John Humphries , Justin Webb and Nick Robinson. They epitomise the bias of the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation.