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11 votes
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Sinking the Blücher: How an outdated fort stopped the WWII Invasion of Norway
13 votes -
Driving over every London Thames bridge in a day
6 votes -
How Olympic curling stones are made | So Expensive
6 votes -
United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reportedly said 'just let people die', COVID inquiry hears
39 votes -
The Rolling Stones are hitting the road next year on a tour sponsored by AARP
17 votes -
Aardman Animation only has enough clay for one more movie
46 votes -
Journey to EPCOT Center: A symphonic history
13 votes -
Our strange plan to transform this industrial firth: oysters
7 votes -
Novo Nordisk suggested to senior UK government officials that they could “profile” benefit claimants – those who are most likely to return to the labour market
17 votes -
The history of Father Ted
8 votes -
Radiohead's harmonic vocabulary (an analysis of functional harmony)
10 votes -
Millions of UK households forced to unplug fridge or freezer amid rising bills
37 votes -
Ex-leader David Cameron makes shock return to UK government as foreign secretary
24 votes -
The Chemical Brothers - Let Forever Be (1999)
18 votes -
The Canterbury Tales Project collated the Canterbury Tales original manuscripts. It translates each line into modern English and reads it aloud into the way the text wold be read in its own time.
16 votes -
Private UK health data donated for medical research shared with insurance companies
30 votes -
Monica de Wichfeld awarded Blue plaque honour in Derrylin, Northern Ireland – was a leading member of the Danish resistance against Nazi occupation in World War II
10 votes -
JK Flesh - Sewer Bait (2022)
7 votes -
Nicholas’s story: ‘I’ve been locked up for ten years because I’m autistic. Is a chance at life too much to ask?’
32 votes -
Denmark topped a list of worst binge drinkers in a new health report from the OECD – Romania and the UK next worst offenders
9 votes -
Manchester United plumb new depths with UEFA Champions League meltdown in Copenhagen
5 votes -
She died without learning a secret: She'd played with The Beatles
7 votes -
The happiest man in the world
14 votes -
Logo rewind: Discovering the trademarks of medieval Norwich
4 votes -
Our search for Scotland's lost highland trees
8 votes -
State opening of parliament 2023 | Live video from 11:15 GMT
11 votes -
Klarna reports first quarterly profit in four years – swing to profit of £9.6m by Swedish firm improves its fortunes in run-up to possible £12bn flotation
9 votes -
The Beatles - Now and Then (2023)
37 votes -
Wikipedia’s king who doesn’t exist
9 votes -
Ren: Welsh rapper's album Sick Boi is surprise number one
10 votes -
Two men arrested in an investigation into a famous tree that was felled near Hadrian's Wall in England
26 votes -
Skateboard exhibition displays their elevated style
6 votes -
Erling Haaland has been awarded the prestigious Gerd Muller Trophy in recognition of his incredible debut season for Manchester City alongside his exploits for Norway
6 votes -
Martin Scorsese interviewed by Edgar Wright | BFI London Film Festival 2023 Screen Talk
6 votes -
How the Blitz enhanced London’s economy (2018)
6 votes -
I ran 365 marathons in 365 days
11 votes -
How laboratory glassware is blown in the UK
12 votes -
Forgotten to return your library book? Don’t worry about it [library fines are falling out of fashion].
23 votes -
Wreckage likely belonging to a British submarine that sank during World War II was found off the coast of Norway
13 votes -
The sweeper-keeper is redefining soccer’s sense of risk
7 votes -
Manchester United to vote on selling minority stake to Sir Jim Ratcliffe as Qataris "pull out"
14 votes -
The fallout from Mozambique’s debt scandal reaches a London court
4 votes -
Womb transplants are now a life-changing reality. Here’s how the extraordinary procedure works.
37 votes -
Netflix is testing a game streaming solution in Canada and the UK
19 votes -
"The Reckoning" - there are some problems
BBC has just put out a 4 part "factual drama" based on Jimmy Savile. It is available here. Steve Coogan plays Savile. Here is the IMDB page for it. For those who don't know, Jimmy Savile was a...
BBC has just put out a 4 part "factual drama" based on Jimmy Savile. It is available here. Steve Coogan plays Savile. Here is the IMDB page for it.
For those who don't know, Jimmy Savile was a live dj, a radio dj, and a tv presenter. He played local dance halls, and then moved to Radio Caroline in 1958 when he was 32, and he moved to BBC TV in 1964 when he was 38. There were allegations made against him right from the start of his dj career, and as time went on these became more and more known among the public, but organisations failed to deal with them and failed to hold him to account. When he died hundreds of people came forward. After extensive police investigations police concluded he was a prolific sex offender, and probably the UK's most prolific sex offender. Wikipedia article about savile, and wikipedia article about the abuse scandal.
Coogan is a great, he's clearly a talented actor and he does pretty well here. The show heavily features a dramatic representation of Savile's biographer, Dan Davies.
The show covers Savile's entire career. It shows changing public perceptions of him, it shows him testing boundaries and getting away with minor rule breaking, it shows the manipulations of power he used to get access to girls.
But there are problems here. There are many complicated reasons why people don't report sexual abuse, and this show fails to do anything but pay minor lip service to those. Biggest for me is the focus entirely on Savile, and not the systems that enabled his abuse. Clearly he is the only person responsible for the abuse, but how did he get away with it so long, why didn't anyone stop him, why did organisations let him continue? There's a mealy-mouthed attempt to explain this, but that's a few lines of dialogue at most. This is important! The question of "How do we stop abusers?" needs a robust, evidence based, approach that doesn't stop at a shrug of the shoulders and "we dunno, he was a master manipulator". He absolutely wasn't, he was just brutally uncaring and wealthy. You come away from this show thinking that organisations were well meaning but a bit clueless, but that wasn't the case. Society just did not care about abuse enough to prevent it from happening, and we need to examine why we allowed it to happen.
Each episode starts by interview survivors, and it's good that their voice is prominent.
The TV drama Three Girls about the Rochdale Grooming scandal is better - it focuses on victims and how they were let down by the system. Or you could watch The Red Riding Trilogy one, two, and three - this is fiction, but features investigations into the Yorkshire Ripper case.
5 votes -
Premier Rap Battles (UK): Shuffle T vs Harry Baker
8 votes -
GUNSHIP - Empress of the Damned (feat. Lights) (2023)
17 votes -
UK's nuclear fusion site (JET) ends experiments after forty years
18 votes -
Microsoft closes deal to buy Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard
53 votes