Letters to the Canary: some home truths about the Daily Mail, the BBC, and what’s going on in Dudley?

The Canary is excited to share the latest edition of our letters page. This is where we publish people’s responses to the news and politics, or anything else they want to get off their chest. We’ve now opened the letters page up so anyone can submit a contribution. As always, if you’d like to subscribe to the Canary – starting from £5 a month – to support truly radical and independent media, then you can do that here:

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This week’s letters

This week we have people’s thoughts on the Daily Mail, the BBC, and some controversial political decisions happening in Dudley. 

Shame on the Daily Mail

An open letter to Jonathan Harmsworth, the Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail

Dear Lord Rothermere,

I am writing this after reading an article in today’s Daily Mail (9/3/24) titled ‘Inside London’s Little Palestine’. The article is a dishonest piece of work crafted to give the impression that supporters of Palestine are likely to be racists if not outright terrorist sympathisers.

In the 1930’s, when the Jewish people had little status and fascism was on the rise in Europe, the Daily Mail was a disgrace.

During the years of cruel apartheid in South Africa, when black people had little status, the Daily Mail was a disgrace.

In our times, when the Palestinian people are suffering and have little status, the Daily Mail is a disgrace.

Shame on you Lord Rothermere.

Brendan O’Brien, via email

What’s going on in Dudley?

A reader email to local councillors, republished with permission:

After 43 years of council officers and members all intent on bringing extremely expensive, climate worsening, Metro trams to Dudley town centre and to Merry Hill Shopping Centre, you have got the tram to the historic capital of the Black Country. WELL DONE. Now, do not take it to Merry Hill.

All you have to do is to instruct Kevin O’Keefe and persuade your fellow leaders at the West Midlands Combined Authority, of this:-

Dudley’s Metro tram either terminates at Flood Street or stays on the former mainline railway line to connect with the national railway network at Stourbridge Junction and does NOT come off the railway at Canal Street, Hart’s Hill to go into Merry Hill to boost that shopping centre at the expense of Dudley businesses. They must thrive and prosper and not Merry Hill that has free car parking and you now want to give them a grossly extravagant, prestigious, climate accelerating tram – FOR FREE!

Support Dudley Traders who don’t want the Dudley Tram taking their customers off to Merry Hill!

Tim, via email

BBC describing Israel’s genocide as a ‘military exercise’?

Dear Tim Davie,

The BBC has again brought great shame to itself and the UK, the country which continues to pay for you.

Yesterday, in your main news item, you referred to death and devastation of Gaza being the result of a military exercise against Hamas.

Israel continues to inflict a genocide upon the men, women and children of Gaza. Much of Gaza’s infrastructure, hospitals, schools and homes destroyed. Disease and starvation are rampant – the four horsemen of the apocalypse assiduously put in place.

And the BBC calls it a military exercise – a genocide carefully planned and wickedly continued, despite universal appeals for an end.

The BBC reports this genocide, on every newscast, as a war upon a terrorist group, ascribing those words to the UK government –– as you sanitise the disproportionate attack on two million people, 31,000 of them dead, 70,000 wounded.

In the interest of balanced reporting, why do you not describe Israel as an apartheid state, as revealed by Amnesty International.

Ted, via email

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