Mosey is scathing about the Telegraph campaign; he calls it mean-spirited. But he respects the assertion that the BBC must be alert to liberal assumptions among its journalists.The importance of the asylum issue was brought home to him when Newsnight recently broadcast a programme from Newcastle, during which the Prime Minister was subjected to questions from the public. “The first 10, 12 minutes were ordinary voters in the North-east putting their fears about asylum direct to the Prime Minister. If we have underplayed things in the past, we will learn from that and try to make sure we get it right.”Has the allegation of instinctive liberal prejudice been discussed by news executives? “We talk all the time about lessons you learn about particular perspectives.” In the 1980s, he remembers: “There was probably a general view around most newspaper columnists and most metropolitan dinner-tables that Reagan and Thatcher were wrong in not supporting d?nte or going for an arms build-up that might potentially bankrupt the Soviet Union. That includes challenging the liberal-left consensus.”Mosey is responding to the persistent allegation that the corporation has an inherent left-wing bias. The charge is made most vocally in The Daily Telegraph’s Beebwatch column, which was instigated by the paper’s former editor Charles Moore six weeks after his proprietor, Conrad Black, wrote that a “virulent culture of bias” within the corporation had transformed it into “the greatest menace facing the country”. Two years ago, when it started being raised ahead of the general election, we did not realise the level of popular unease about the issue.” At the time, he explains, there was “a sort of easy, knee-jerk tendency, a kind of metropolitan ease, of saying, ‘Oh, it’s all got up by the Daily Mail or got up by the BNP or whatever.’ I don’t think that is true.”
Mosey says that assumptions within the BBC are “something we need to be alert about all the time”, and he insists that he and all of his colleagues “recognise the need to make sure that our journalism tests all viewpoints.

“I think,” says Roger Mosey, the BBC’s head of television news, “we were very slow on the asylum story. Smoking is known, for instance, to interfere generally with the immune system. Or if could be the direct toxic effects of nicotine,” he said.In addition to heart disease and lung cancer, smoking has already been linked with other diseases that are caused by a defective immune system, such as rheumatoid arthritis.Mike O’Donovan, chief executive of the MS Society, said the findings needed to be verified with further research. “We must remember that more than one factor is almost certainly involved in whether MS occurs,” he said..

Smoking is known to weaken the important tissue barrier between the blood and the brain, perhaps increasing the risk of viruses affecting the central nervous system. “There are several plausible mechanisms that could explain why smokers are at significantly higher risk than non-smokers. Patients can suffer stiffness, spasticity, pain and general fatigue. The causes of the disease are thought to be a combination of genetic and environmental factors, such as viral infections that damage the central nervous system.Professor Riise said the link with cigarettes might be because smokers are more prone to viral infections of the throat. Professor Trond Riise, of the University of Bergen, said: “This is the first time that smoking has been established as a risk factor …

Hopefully, these results will help us to learn more about what causes MS by looking at how smoking affects the onset of disease.”Multiple sclerosis is an auto-immune disease brought about when the body’s immune defences attack the fatty sheath of material that insulates and protects the nerve cells of the brain and spinal cord. Smokers are at greater risk of developing multiple sclerosis, according to a study that has established the first clear link between smoking and the nerve disease. The company said the disposal was to satisfy institutional demand for the stock.. Treating deafness in the elderly may soon be possible after scientists in America succeeded in growing the cells in the ear involved in detecting sound.