Author: Alison Banville

Pampered Pooches, What Would Voltaire Think?

Pampered Pooches – Man’s Best Friend in the Age of Celebritry by Alison Banville Channel 4’s flagship investigation show, Dispatches recently reported on the rise in demand for designer dogs and how this has led to an illegal trade in imported puppies. This demand, as the programme highlighted, is driven in no small way by the desperate need some people […]

Why Vivisection Doesn’t Work

Vivisection – A Compilation of Evidence by Alison Banville (BSNews Editor) The email below was posted to an activist list in the UK in response to my assertion that vivisection is useless. My reply follows his email. ‘How can certain surgical procedures be tested via computer modeling or tissue cell-cultures, for instance? Organ transplants were first tested on animals, heart […]

What’s Wrong With Channel 4 News? Part One: ‘As Good As It Gets’?

Yes, ‘as good as it gets’ is highly ironic because it is precisely the ‘better’ end of the corporate news spectrum that is the biggest problem. It’s easy to spot the Fox News brigade, but when a programme pontificates about, and poses as, ‘objective’, cultivating an image of fierce independence holding the powers that be to account, then practices nothing of the sort but offers only a parody of what they purport to represent, then that adds immeasurably to the suffering in the world.

Newsflash

Alastair Stewart’s Tongue Stuck up the Duchess of Camdridge’s Arse!   Whence think’st thou kings and parasites arose? Whence that unnatural line of drones. who heap Toil and unvanquishable penury On those who build their palaces, and bring Their daily bread? – From vice, black loathsome vice From rapine, madness, treachery and wrong From all that ‘genders misery, and makes […]

Philip the Pigeon: An Apostle of Pity and Tenderness

by Alison Banville The word ‘vermin’ is defined in the dictionary thus:  ‘Various small animals or insects that are destructive, annoying, or injurious to health. Animals that prey on game, such as foxes or weasels. A person considered loathsome or highly offensive.’ Perhaps you noticed something behind the stark words of that definition? Something which, if you were looking, would […]

John Ray and Mark Austin

Give Those Guys Their Own Show by Alison Banville News at Ten on Tuesday 8th November broadcast a report on Iran’s nuclear ‘threat’. Middle East correspondent John Ray breathlessly rounded up by warning us that ‘time to stop the Iranian bomb is running out!’. Does John supplement his income by doing voiceovers for movie trailers? He could. He’s perfected the […]

‘The Price of Coal’

A Welshman stood at the Golden Gate his head bowed low

He meekly asked the man of fate the way he should go

‘What have you done?’ St. Peter said ‘to gain admission here?’

‘I merely mined for coal’ he said ‘for many a year’

St. Peter opened wide the gate and softly tolled the bell

‘Come and choose your harp’ he said ‘you’ve had your share of hell.’