BBC studio in Belfast forced into ‘lockdown' after pro-Palestine activists gained access to building
The building, which is home to NI's largest purpose-built TV hub known as Studio A, was quickly shut down as demonstrators chanted "Free Palestine".
BBC News has reported that the PSNI was called to the scene where they removed protesters.
Police and BBC NI has been contacted for comment..
More to follow.
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North Wales Live
an hour ago
- North Wales Live
'Free Palestine' protesters graffiti attack on former Prime Minister's statue
A statue of former prime minister David Lloyd George was covered in red paint and had slogans daubed on it in an incident linked to "Free Palestine" protests. The graffiti attack happened overnight on Monday at the site on Y Maes in the centre of Caernarfon and in the shadow of the town's castle. As well as covering the statue in paint there were messages like "Zionist", "Free Palestine" and "Lloyd George is scum". It has since been removed with Cyngor Gwynedd and North Wales Police investigating the incident. Lloyd George, from Llanystumdwy, near Criccieth, is the only UK prime minister from Wales - holding the role from 1916-1922. He was PM in 1917 when the Balfour Declaration statement was made by the British government, expressing support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. This was a pivotal moment in the creation of the state of Israel in 1947 after centuries of persecution for Jewish people around the world. Sign up for the North Wales Live newsletter sent twice daily to your inbox This has been followed by decades of conflict in the region and the most recent violence erupted when Palestinian militants attacked Israel, killing 1,143 people and taking around 250 hostages - triggering the Gaza war. More than 56,500 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's health ministry. It has sparked worldwide condemnation and protests over Israel's actions in the ongoing conflict amid "genocide" accusations. Caernarfon councillor Olaf Cai Larsen said: "It's unfortunate that Lloyd George's statue was painted with slogans overnight. "Most of the slogans were about what is happening in Gaza at the moment - and anyone who reads this Facebook page often will know that I am very worried about all the killing that is happening there. "But there are far better ways to express concern than defacing statues. For example a vigil is held at 6:30 every Sunday night on the Maes - a stone's throw from the Lloyd George statue. And there was a very powerful ceremony on Pool Street last Tuesday. "So - if you feel strongly about this important issue - how about Sunday evening?" On social media one person said: "Why do people do this? It's an historical figure. We cannot change history but we can learn from it. Times change, peoples mindsets change, it's just the way life is."
The National
8 hours ago
- The National
In a dangerous era journalism needs to show some backbone again
Having spent almost my entire working life in journalism, it's almost a given then that at some point during a break, I reflect on the nature of the job and profession that has engaged me for the best part of 40 years. Two things added to that sense of questioning journalism's meaning during my brief time off. The first was my choice of holiday reading, a memoir of Graydon Carter the one-time editor of Vanity Fair magazine aptly titled When The Going Was Good, and the other was the death earlier this week of the great foreign correspondent, author and ITN news presenter Sandy Gall, with whom a certain generation of readers will no doubt be familiar. READ MORE: The 26 MPs who voted against proscribing Palestine Action It was Gall himself who in great part inspired my own initial reporting sorties in Afghanistan back in the early 80s when I first met him and before the country and its travails became a near obsession for the both of us. Both Carter and Gall were journalists of what some might call the 'golden age' of reporting in the 60s, 70s and 80s. It was a time when budgets were high, as were the expectations of readers and viewers of the journalists they depended on to cover and explain the great stories of the time. Journalism back then seemed to have a clear sense of purpose in holding power to account with a laser-like probing power. No story was too far away. No person was exempt from scrutiny should they cross the line of acceptable political behaviour. Be it Watergate or war reporting, the journalists' beat knew few limits. It was a time too before 'fake news', a time also before journalists became targets – literally – for doing their job, or so it seems when looking back. The reality of course is slightly different, for such threats have in fact always posed a challenge to the media going about their work, just perhaps not to the extent they do now. Which brings me to the dire state of so much of today's journalism, for what a contrast there is between those times when Carter and Gall were in their heyday compared to the media landscape of today. For barring a few brave and notable exceptions, so much of our media landscape now seems inhabited by quislings and cowards. With hand on heart, I can say I've never at one and the same time been so ashamed and also so proud of some of my media colleagues. No story epitomises this right now more than events in Gaza and the Middle East. On the one side we have journalists seemingly paralysed by fear of asking the questions that need to be asked of our politicians and on the other, the resounding bravery of our Palestinian colleagues who pursue their reporting with a courage the like of which has rarely been matched by the global media in modern times. In such a climate, the likes of the BBC hides behind words like 'the perception of partiality,' in justifying its decision not to air the documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, leaving it to Channel 4 to pick up. But leaving Gaza aside, there is a much deeper malaise in journalism right now. Some of it is a result of the media's own making. Lack of investment, a dearth of imagination whereby the easy option rather than the 'difficult-to-tell-story' is the order of the day. Then there are the shortcomings too when it comes to maximising the potential use of new formats and platforms. Producing quality and in some cases great journalism, as the days of Carter, Gall and their generation showed, was never cheap, and the age-old maxim that you pay for what you get is something the industry singularly fails to recognise today. But putting these internal inadequacies aside for a moment, there is another far more potent force undermining today's journalism. I'm speaking of course about the way prominent politicians the world over are directly attacking 'troublesome' journalists with threats, lawsuits, or worse. As Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, a senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, pointed out last year, many of these politicians are pressuring media companies to remove their work. 'They belittle and vilify individual reporters when it suits them, often singling out women and minorities. They encourage their supporters to distrust the news and sometimes incite them to attack journalists,' Nielsen rightly observed. Across the world – everywhere you look right now – a growing number of governments and political authorities are not fulfilling their role as guarantors of the best possible environment for journalism. Intimidation and censorship are today almost at unprecedented levels. Any thinking person too will recognise that at their worst, political threats to journalism are often part of wider, systematic, sustained efforts to weaken, undermine, or even dismantle the formal and informal institutions of democracy. As outright political hostility to journalism grows, so the media needs allies and support from other quarters. As Professor Nielsen says, this effectively means the public that the media aim and claim to serve. 'At its best journalism has much to offer the public,' Nielen attests, and he's right. That much was evident back 'when the going was good', in those days that Graydon Carter refers to and when journalism served the public. For that to happen again today two things especially are needed amongst others. The first is that public support must again be won over to deter political attacks and at least help build resilience to resist attempts to undermine independent news media. The second is that journalism today has to find and show some spine again. In a dangerous era for the media, it must stop playing the role of political quisling. Instead, it should again aspire to be brave, dogged, resolute, and not shirk from calling out those deserving of it.
Spectator
13 hours ago
- Spectator
The political climate at Glastonbury was not especially febrile
Everyone who wasn't at Glastonbury this year knows exactly what it was like: a seething mass of hatred and rabid leftiness, characterised by an angry punk duo named Bob Vylan calling for the death of the IDF. But that's just the tabloid hysteria talking – betraying also maybe a hint of envy towards those lucky enough to have bagged one of the £400 tickets. The truth is, the political climate was not especially febrile. Sure, the jaunty red, white, green and black of the Palestinian flag was very en vogue, but a few years back it was the blue and yellow of Ukraine and the EU. A few decades before that it was free Tibet. Flags of various communist regimes with questionable human rights records, meanwhile, dip in and out. Glastonbury is after all stuck in a time loop (they'll still be cursing Thatcher in 2050), and any chants and slogans are said more in provocation and out of a sense of mischief than bloodthirstiness. Scratch beneath the agitprop and all you'll find is a few Deloitte ESG consultants worried they might have misplaced their bag of MDMA on the day that Michael Bibi plays in Arcadia. The upper middle class yearn for a cause to salve that year's guilt about their lack of real-life anxieties. Remember that on Sunday Rod Stewart played to a huge crowd the day after endorsing Nigel Farage; tune-seeking minds are fickle. Admittedly, the explicit on-stage rejection of politics from the 1975 singer Matty Healy provoked a curled lip from some fans: everyone who's used a dating app knows 'non-political' is code for secretly rightwing. Half their songs sound much the same, lapped up by teenage girls. But on the sadder ones – such as the internal rhyme-heavy 'Part of the Band' – Healy comes into his own, asking: 'Am I ironically woke? The butt of my joke?/ Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke/ Calling his ego imagination?' At the end of the set, we're left just as he wants us: uncertain whether his feline sexiness belies a wise tomcat impersonating a lapcat, or the other way around. Playing a main stage at Glastonbury comes with pitfalls. Like gladiators in the Colosseum, it's not just about surviving, but getting a mass thumbs-up from the implacable mob. Some fall at the we-know-better hurdle (Guns N' Roses notably played lengthy deep cuts in 2023 that even diehard fans didn't know). Others never engage with the crowd besides the obligatory 'hello Glaston-berry'. Lorde's secret set was a bit of both, announcing to the crowd she would play the entirety of her new album (released that day) to the politest of polite whoops. With no one knowing the lyrics, the set fell flat until the final two songs, when we were rewarded for having eaten our broccoli. To those who do the opposite, large dividends are paid. Pulp's (worst-kept) secret set saw their triumphant welcome back after years of rumours with a slew of hits and Jarvis Cocker squirming his way around the audience's hearts. British people like tea and dad dancing so why not throw teabags at them while writhing about? Charli XCX meanwhile managed to hoover up most of Saturday's punters. Turns out Brits also like party drugs and sex and songs about party drugs and sex. As she tore through Brat at breakneck speed, Charli's only crime was leaving those yearning for a special guest unsatisfied. Yet the festival's most joyous set came from Nile Rodgers and Chic (I say this as someone who recoils from the word 'disco'). Imagine witnessing the best covers set you've ever seen ('We Are Family', 'Like A Virgin', 'Get Lucky', 'Let's Dance'), then realising they're not covers, and that seemingly every hit you know is written by the supremely cool man playing in front of you. The crowd was filled with those who knew how good they were having seen them before, and those who couldn't help but hear about it. If they were to play the same set every year, no one would complain. Glastonbury is always derided for becoming too commercial, but where else would you be able to see members of former headlining legends such as the Chemical Brothers and Orbital play sets in the small hours so intimate I could stand right in front of them? (For the record, Phil Hartnoll sweats gallons). In the end the festival's most special moments and its fabled spirit come from an abundance of people working for the love of the game. 'Twas ever thus.
