In news items the release of the Israeli hostages, and the “breakdown” of the hostage deal, #BBCNews stories on @BBCRadio4 refers to “Palestinian” militants. ‘Militants’ – really?! Just ‘militants’. With none of the caveats that ‘governments have condemned Hamas as a terrorist organisation’ that John Simpson (@JohnSimpsonNews) argued for soon after October 7th, in defence of BBC neutrality and ‘due impartiality’. And @BBCNews doesn’t do its job – which Simpson describes as being ‘to present our audiences with the facts, and let them make up their own minds’ – by actually describing what Hamas is and does. Hence, listeners, viewers and readers would think Hamas are just a regular bunch of militants, fighting for “the wretched of the earth”, of the kind we would find on British streets and protests, who just happen to brandish modified AK-47s and strut around in balaclavas. There is a word for organisations which oppress and terrorise their own populations, suspend democracy, and start wars they know will destroy their lives. There is a word for people who engage in the mutilation of civilians, sexual violence against women, and the brutal murder of children and adults. There is a word for outfits which take hostages, treat them terribly, threaten to murder them, and parade those released like chattels. And that word and the description which fits is not ‘militants’. CEO Deborah Turness (@deborahturness), you have been very quiet since October 7th. What do you have to say about BBC News’ current editorial policy?

Heather: I am not disputing that computers are wonderful. I have built my career based on creatively using them. And I don’t think Birbalsingh is, either. She was making a point about how the best way for pupils to learn, not asserting this is the only way.

@rebeccafadila @dmperks1 That is encouraging to hear, Rebecca! @dmperks1 TBH, many of my (adult) colleagues have forgotten how to use full stops and capital letters – and other punctuation including wordspaces! @JustineBrian What is the @Civitas_UK course?

@jeffries_p46145 Interesting. We need more discussion of how we learn, build knowledge, and recall. The relationship of hand-writing and cognitive processes is clearly important, as it is in child development when we encourage pre-school kids to play with physical objects in space. cc @dperks

@Bonniepurple If pupils are dyspraxic, then taking hand-written notes won’t be easy, or possible. But that doesn’t qualify Birbalsingh’s general point. She was also referring to school students. Tho’ I think adult workers would benefit from developing more haptic skills, including sketching.

@Ed_Miliband If you’ve noticed increasingly ill-thought-out government legalisation in recent years – from mandatory vaccination to #NetZero, VAT on private schools to IHT on farms – wait till you see how the Tory/Labour Renters’ Rights Bill will worsen the situation for renters and tenants.

@daveclements_ Sadly, too many try to forge a moral equivalence between Hamas’ brutalisation, hostage-taking, sexual violence, starvation and torture, and Israel’s detention of Palestinians who try to maim and kill Jews – whatever the flaws and pressures on its judicial and detention system.

@lewis_goodall To be fair @JeremyClarkson, unlike well-to-do Rejoiners, does state that this ‘is a trivial problem’. How can UK to EU have more red tape than ‘Iraq to Turkey’, as Clarkson notes? Why doesn’t he – or you – demand less pointless red tape for Creative Industries going to the EU?

@bbcnickrobinson @BBC Having defended public funding of the BBC, via the licence fee, and @BBCMediaAction, against @ElonMusk and got 6.5K comments and 500+ Quote Tweets, senior BBC presenter Nick Robinson replies with only a few, rather supercilious, comments. No wonder citizens are angry at Auntie.

@MissLauraMarcus @bbcnickrobinson The @BBC used to engage with why licence fee payers were disengaging from it, and adapt its services to new ways of engaging with media, hence @BBCSounds and @BBCiPlayer But in the last decade there has been almost no innovation, or even improvement in them or other services.

@alanvibe If the @BBCNews believes it is authoritative, why do its leaders and senior #BBCNews figures never engage with the public, not least on @X but also in IRL, and discuss with us how they approach “due impartiality”, verifying their output, and misinformation – including their own?

@PippaP22 Yes, the hubris of the #BBCVerify play, to imagine that the Corporation can determine who is guilty of misinformation and disinformation, is breathtaking. “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” To whom are they accountable? Not us licence fee payers!

Correction: to maturely discuss such vital issues is lamentable.

Correction: @Ed_Miliband…

@steveb4u @joecrayston I am not reiterating your point. I noted UK MSM barely covers politics in EU states, whether ‘should ‘Left’. It doesn’t “give voice to the far Right”, other than occasional interviews, as it should. Oddly, most Rejoiners are uninterested in the politics of EU states, or the EU.