Simon Denyer

Sir Anthony Hopkins got some very exciting news this week. It’s something the team has been working on for months. ❤️

Dolly brought her parents on TV to sing with her and America got a chance to celebrate Appalachian heritage, music, and people.

the greatest performance from Later With Jools Holland 👏👏👏 Terry Hall - Sense (Live in '94) ▶️

Gabon celebrates inaugural Environmental Journalism Awards. wildaidafrica.org/posts/gabo…

I have rarely, if ever, heard anything as powerful and painfully, devestatedly truthful as this speech by @roisinmurphy. What a terrible toll, but a beautiful fightback: freedominthearts.com/

To see this in @guardian brings me close to tears of relief. Huge thanks to @tjaldred, who will get plenty of flak, but should get heartfelt thanks from everyone interested in serious journalism and fairness in sport. Every word. theguardian.com/commentisfre…

Officially open!  Very honoured to be asked to cut the ribbon to unveil the new Haematology and Oncology ward at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham.  Thank you to every fan who bought a ticket for the guitar raffle, it really means a lot.  Tony 🖤 Credit: @bbcmtd

Often lost in the argument about the future of the Chagos Islands are the Chagossians themselves. I personally believe that they have been treated despicably. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has heavily criticised the UK-Mauritius Agreement on human rights grounds.   The UN Committee called for a suspension of the treaty ratification because the Treaty fails to guarantee a right of return by the Chagossians.  I personally agree with the UN Committee. On human rights grounds alone we should be listening to the Chagossians – ensuring their right to return to their ancestral lands, insisting on the principle of self-determination. I recently chaired a session of Parliament’s @HumanRightsCtte at which we heard evidence - and differing views - on the long standing violations of the human rights of Chagossians. Read here: committees.parliament.uk/ora… The evidence speaks for itself and, like our Committee, we are all free to come to our own conclusions. But I for one believe that we Chagossians deserve to be listened to.

Cocteau Twins live on UK t.v. 1983 performing Tim Buckley’s ‘Song to The Siren’ (as This Mortal Coil)

"As a former BBC journalist who now teaches journalism at university, I can tell you that, no, the BBC’s journalism is not impartial, and yes, the corporation is institutionally biased." -- @MajinGraham for @Quillette quillette.com/2025/11/14/a-j…

This on the BBC: "This" writes the sensible @matthewsyed "is why I’d argue (perhaps optimistically) that this week offers a window of opportunity for the BBC. The courageous move would be to acknowledge Prescott’s findings, perhaps even to admit what is, I think, undeniable: that the corporation suffers from institutional bias. I mean, it is not as if it is alone in this. A survey last month by Electoral Calculus showed that 75 per cent of what it called “the establishment” voted for left-of-centre parties at the general election. The think tank More in Common found that many institutions are dominated by “progressive activists” who constitute just 13 per cent of the population. And it is worth briefly noting how we got here. Perhaps the original sin was the progressive march through our universities: since the 1960s the ratio of left-wing to right-wing academics has shifted from 3:1 to 8:1. This has not just tilted young, often impressionable minds in a decisively more liberal direction but had further consequences too. It is striking, for example, that graduates today migrate in huge numbers to metropolitan areas (nearly 40 per cent of Russell Group graduates with firsts and 2:1s are living in London within six months of leaving uni), where they join narrow friendship networks connected to the institutions at which they work, creating a double whammy of social convergence. This is why ensuring true diversity of views at an elite institution like the BBC is about far more than diversity of colour, class or gender. It is about appointing senior editors who (wait for it) are sympathetic to Reform UK; hiring many more who are super-bright but didn’t go to university; constantly encouraging new recruits to express their opinions rather than converge on the predominant ones; perhaps above all, recognising that impartiality is not a destination but an orientation requiring a disciplined awareness of one’s limitations and an insistence on transparency, method and the humility to constantly test assumptions against alternative ones. The BBC will instinctively feel defensive this week and may be tempted to argue that it has all the necessary policies in place. I’d humbly retort (as a friend) that this would be a terrible strategic error. The role of the BBC has never been more important and it is not too late to preserve it from those who wish to bring it down. But all executives should remember that while a liberal world-view predominates within the walls of the organisation, a majority of licence fee payers believe in the following heresies (ie, common sense): national borders matter; love of nation is admirable; biological males shouldn’t compete in women’s sport; people should be judged on merit, not colour; western history is broadly admirable, not shaming. Indeed, how about reading out the previous paragraph at the outset of every editorial meeting? It might help mitigate the otherwise irresistible tendency towards elite groupthink." thetimes.com/comment/columni…

Finally, some hope for endangered pangolins. The price of pangolin scales has tumbled in Cameroon as Chinese demand wanes. wildaidafrica.org/posts/pric…