In one of his rare TV appearances Lord Hall, the person in day-to-day charge of the BBC said it is "an organisation which increasingly people want to feel involved in, and they should feel involved in, and we should explain ourselves." (Lord Hall - Points of View on Sunday 24th November 2013) But when push comes to shove, neither Lord Hall himself nor other BBC employees seem very happy to do that.

My previous blog as well as my blog on 10th February 2014 illustrate how the BBC has tried to avoid discussion of human rights abuses.

In this interview with IOC president Thomas Bach, BBC Sports correspondent David Bond criticises David Cameron's decision not to attend the Sochi Games - hardly exactly an impartial position for a BBC journalist to take, especially given the circumstances of which we are all aware. But then, as I've noted before in this Blog, David Bond has never really shown any significant interest in the human rights of LGBT people. In this tweet he sneers at AT&T for being one of the few sponsor companies to show support. And a couple of weeks ago he suggested, in an interview with UK Government minister Maria Miller, that Britain helping gay rights organisations "could be seen as quite incendiary."

For those who don't know, BBC Director General, Lord Hall, is a member of the Organising Committee for UK/Russia Year of Culture 2014. Could that be the reason why the BBC's coverage of the Sochi Olympics has been presented in such a positive light? Tony Hall's empathy with Russia might partly explain the bias, but there's also the TV licence fee to consider. Having forked out for the Sochi Games coverage, the BBC wouldn't want viewers to question whether it was right to participate. The answer, therefore, was to show the event in a good light and minimise the issue of human rights abuse.

There are, of course, thousands of other questions that could be asked about BBC's coverage, but why bother? The pusillanimous athletes and Britain's national broadcaster gave Putin exactly the propaganda victory he'd hoped for from the start. Perhaps Channel 4 and the Paralympians will do better?

Martin Luther King Jr, once said "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

Well done to all the Olympic & Paralympic athletes and volunteers.

Shame the organisers and politicians don't deserve the same praise. Because they've done little to inspire a generation, and a lot to betray a generation. Never was that clearer than when Lord Coe spoke at the closing ceremony last night --

"Finally, there are some famous words you can find stamped on the bottom of a product. Words that, when you read them, you know mean high quality, mean skill, mean creativity. We stamped those words on the Olympic and Paralympic games of London 2012 - London2012 Made in Britain."

Sorry Seb, but all the products I've looked at are stamped Made in China. And presumably you and your fellow organisers were responsible for outsourcing the manufacture of the Wenlock, Mandeville and TeamGB mascots to another country because it made more profit that way. Shows how much you really think of Britain, doesn't it.

London 2012 products - NOT Made in Britain
One of the most memorable parts of the Olympics opening ceremony was the tribute to the NHS. How ironic and disappointing that the very NHS, of which Britain is so rightly proud, is now being dismantled bit by bit.

In fact Coe was amongst the parliamentarians who voted to facilitate this betrayal of a generation.

For a newspaper which regularly campaigns against the 'sexualisation of children' the Daily Mail shows a remarkable lack of concern about the content of its own online presence.

Mail Online is one of the most viewed news sites on the web.

And it intends to stay that way. Part of its strategy is to find popular gossip with lots of raunchy pictures. Never mind the danger of 'sexualising children' - after all that's only what other media outlets get up to.

But the Mail isn't just guilty of hypocrisy. It can't be trusted either.

Take a look at this story about the Olympics.

Amongst all the salacious details and imagery, you'll note the Mail is quite clear that Tom Daley and Tonia Couch are an item - they are 'dating' and they are 'a couple'

But if we now look back to an article in the Mail just days before, we find a rather different piece about Tom Daley. In this piece we learn that Tom and Tonia are nothing more than good friends, and they have been for several years.

The other interesting thing we discover is that Tonia - "a close confidant" of Tom's - was speculating on whether Mr Daley might be involved in a fledgling romance with an American diver called Kassidy Cook.

Clearly there's a lot of nonsense being written about Mr Daley. Could the reason be something to do with what we saw on the recent BBC One documentary - Tom Daley: Diving for Britain

Jamie Cunningham (Tom's agent): China is going to be a very important market for Tom over the next decade. Why? Well, because diving - its home really is in China. As we saw yesterday at the Worlds, they won all the gold medals. This is where, as a sport, it has the biggest impact on the planet. It's very important that we do the right media and commercial work here to help him over the next decade.

Tom at press conference webcast -

Tom Daley: Hi to all the QQ web users.

Questioner: OK, so who do you think is the most beautiful Chinese female athlete?

Tom thought Guo Jingjing was the most beautiful Chinese female athlete, but felt it right to add that she was "too old" for him.

Jamie Cunningham made no secret that he would like to manage Tom Daley's career over the next few years. So, who knows, we might soon be reading that Tom has found himself a girlfriend - and maybe even a Chinese girlfriend at that!

In other Daily Mail news, we see that Nick Grimshaw wasn't phased at all about being in the company of two topless women.