also provided this post. Pete_London writes:
We all know how the BBC likes to highlight those Tory misdemeanours yes? And the BBC is impartial and even handed, yes?
“JUDGE UPHOLDS VOTE-RIGGING CLAIMS” (no clue there to the culprits then)
It has been a repeated theme of this blog that headlines unfavourable to the political parties, British or foreign, that the BBC dislikes nearly always specify the party whereas headlines unfavourable to parties the BBC likes tend to leave the party name out. Pete_London continues:
“A judge investigating vote-rigging in Birmingham’s local elections has ruled there was “widespread fraud”, and has ordered new elections.”
“Election Commissioner Richard Mawrey QC upheld allegations of postal fraud relating to six seats won by Labour in the ballot of June 10 last year.”
Nope, they were won by labour but no clue as to the culprit. No mention in the piece either that this government has brought in and encouraged postal voting against the protests of those who predicted this very thing.
Further down we discover the names of the victorious Labour coucillors:
Shafaq Ahmed, Shah Jahan, Ayaz Khan, Mohammed Islam, Muhammed Afzal and Mohammed Kazi. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there seems to be a pattern in that list of names somewhere. For some reason I don’t think this story will be around for long!
At the end of the piece a spokesman for the The Electoral Reform Society is quoted:
“We do not believe that electoral fraud is confined to Birmingham, to the Labour Party or, most importantly, to particular communities.”
Well that’s ok then.
Well, I don’t believe that electoral fraud is thus confined either. (This excellent story from the Guardian has more about other cases being investigated.) But it is concentrated thus. One of the reasons for that is that people refrain from digging too deep out of political correctness. In some ways this has parallels with the long reluctance to admit that there was a specific black criminal subculture until the problem was out of control. Just as the people who have suffered most from that reluctance were the black victims of black criminals, in this case the people who will suffer most are the Asian / Muslim victims of Asian / Muslim vote stealers. Pete was correct to predict that that particular aspect of the story would not be around for long. The quote from the Electoral Reform Society that he gives, and which was also repeated by the Guardian in the article above, has been stealth edited out and replaced by the supremely bland “The Electoral Reform Society said urgent action was needed to protect and maintain confidence in the voting system.” It seems that even a denial that fraud was confined to Labour and ethnic minorities was too pointed for the BBC.
It’s always the natural assumption when reading US media that any scandalized politician without a party name afterwards must be a Democrat, because Republican party affiliation is always given.
It’s a long time since 1996/7 but I can stll remember the shrill tone of so much BBC reporting of “Tory sleaze”. The Today programme spending days dwelling on a story about a couple of hundred quid paid to a backbencher in a brown envelope for the terrible crime of asking a question in the commons, all designed to heighten to a fever pitch the hysteria amongst the general public which, after the election, translated into the post election “euphoria” that so many commentators described. It was a concerted campaign organised by New Labour with the willing support of the BBC. The same people are now protecting New Labour by failing to properly report a monumental scandal which undermines our very democracy.
There are ofiicially just under 7 million postal ballots arranged for the upcoming election. Labour are expected to take & win on about 1/3rd of the 70% of the electorate who turn out ie about 10 million votes.
The degree to which this story is being underplayed is frightening. It is quite obvious that this system, set up by Labour & currently deliberately run fraudulently only by the Labour organisation makes a credible election result literally impossible.
The only thing which may cause restraint is that exit polls, since they apply only to people actually exiting polling stations, should show the something like the real result.
On checking further, last time “The total electorate was 44,401,238 of whom 26,366,992 voted – a turnout of 59.38%” so even if Labour get 1/3rd of the vote it will only be about 9 million tops.
2 points:
first:”It was a concerted campaign organised by New Labour with the willing support of the BBC”
there’s quite a difference between:
1) a campaign against the BBC for existing/ relying on a non-voluntary levy
2) pointing out what is viewed as ‘institutional bias’ within an organisation
3) directly claiming collusion between a political party and the BBC.
second: “The same people are now protecting New Labour by failing to properly report a monumental scandal which undermines our very democracy”
Read your history. Britain’s history is knee-deep in electoral fraud – pocket ballots, rotten boroughs, Dame Porter in Westminster, and outright intimidation. Doesn’t diminish the seriousness of this offence, but really, calm down
Would the words “Asian” and “muslim” would have cropped up more often in the reports if these “gentlemen” had been successful at some noteworthy legal activity?
Do they have much electoral fraud in Pakistan and countries like that?
Maybe it’s a cultural thing, and therefore a cause for celebration and embracing something or other?
Another of the many benefits of diversity? Are there ever any downsides?
Oh whoopee!
Very O/T
Not just the BBC news staff that are prepared to share their ill informed opinions –
“The BBC admitted last night that it “falsely attributed” a statement to Christopher Eccleston in which he said he was leaving Dr Who after one series because of fears of burn-out and being typecast.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=N111IDTAD5TQBQFIQMGSM54AVCBQWJVC?xml=/news/2005/04/05/nwho05.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/04/05/ixportal.html
We should be grateful that we Brits live in a very, very watered down version of fascism and state control of the media compared to that experienced by our esteemed European fellows over the last 100 years. If this madness passes in the next 20 to 30 years, we will have escaped lightly.
The postal vote fraud issue does appear to have been underplayed by the BBC – Much less than its frank and fearless coverage of Shirley Porter, whose malfeasance was significantly less than that uncovered in Birmingham. Why has fat boy Prescott not been hawked round the studios? He’s the responsible minister. So too the rather muted coverage of the Lib Dem defection announced this morning on the Today Programme. Compare and contrast with the visceral reaction to the Flight affair and Caroline Wyatt and Eddie Mair’s aggressive and almost hysterical interviews with George Osborne and Theresa May a couple of weeks ago.
As usual the BBC’s prime political priority is to hold conservatives to account whether in government or opposition.
The obvious question in my mind was Why hasn’t the entire Birmingham Labour party been suspended by the national party, and senior executives sent in ?” (As happened eg with Militant). Blair as well as Prescott should be hammered on TV nd radio about this.
And another question the Today programme should be putting :”Why doesn’t the Government use the remaining days in Parliament to rush through legislation suspending postal voting except where there is a proper reason – reverting to the status quo ante ? Surely a three-line bill to achieve this would go through on the nod ?” Follow-up question – “So you are refusing to act ? Are you in denial about the massive risks of electoral fraud ?”
Rub their noses in it. This is far worse than the Tory sleaze – and even the many instances of Labour sleaze. But it won’t happen, because it involves criticism of the immigrant communities where this scandal is mainly occurring. The whole story is already being buried.
Via the Edge of England’s Sword – http://www.iainmurray.org/MT/ – we actually get the details (from the Indy!) of how the fraud was carried out. Details which the BBC deemed unfit to print.
It’ll only take a minute to read. What’s most disturbing is that it wasn’t a covert operation but carried out quite openly. A postman was even offered a bribe for the ballots in his bag and threatened with death if he refused. What a lovely multi-culti land we find ourselves in.
As Iain remarks on his blog, say what you like about Tory sleaze, but they certainly never did sink this low.
Pete_London,
But the BBC know that Labour are only breaking the law to help their community, whereas the Tories are just evil and selfish…
/sarcasm
As the Times says – the coming election could be STOLEN
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-1555212,00.html
This is a huge scandal. Now being implicitly covered up by the BBC. What chance a Panorama programme on it all ? Same chance as Prince Charles turning pleasant.
This is a terrifying turn of events. Electoral fraud threatens the safety of every one in this country and should carry the stiffest of penalties. I’m therefore amazed that from the reports it would appear that the penalty faced by the six councillors found guilty of electoral fraud is merely to be stripped of their office and have the election rerun without their being allowed to take part. I think a more suitable penalty would be 10 years in prison.
It would appear that the only effective penalty these six are facing is legal costs of £500,000. I think a statement should be issued by the Labour party at a senior level to the effect that it will not pay these costs on behalf of these offenders. IMHO any attempt by the Labour party to pay these costs or encourage third parties to pay these costs on behalf of these offenders would signify that these offences were carried out on behalf of the party rather than the individual councillors. As court costs appear to be the only deterrent to electoral fraud it would be timely if all party leaders made similar statements with respect to the up coming General Election.
John M,
I’m not so sure: unless the candidate is responsible (where he/she should be jailed), the party needs to feel the heat. i.e. if vote rigging is discovered, irrespective of who is responsible, the party that benefits should also receive a monster penalty.
In effect there should be two crimes:
1) rigging a ballot – individual to be punished (not rehabilitated or counselled – punished)
and 2) benefitting from a rigged ballot – party to be punished.
This has the added benefit that it should not be necessary to prove/convict an individual for crime 1 in order for penalties to be levied for crime 2. As long as you can show rigged ballots in favour of a party, it needs to be clobbered.
THAT would send a message….
How can it be a crime to benefit from something you weren’t involved in and have no idea has occured?
Interesting point, Cockney. Makes you wonder how it is that all those businesses get severely stung when one of their employees does something naughty. Something about corporate responsibility, or some such.
Or the lorry drivers fined for unwittingly bringing in illegal immigrants who creep aboard.
AIUI the Labour Party withdrew support from the 6 accused just before the case was due to be heard. Only a hardened cynic would suspect that this might have been to assist them in arguing for a postponement until after the election.
Did Blair really postpone the election announcement by one day because the Pope dies or did he do it so the BBC would have something with which to bury this story?
“Read your history. Britain’s history is knee-deep in electoral fraud – pocket ballots, rotten boroughs, Dame Porter in Westminster, and outright intimidation. Doesn’t diminish the seriousness of this offence, but really, calm down
steve jones ”
With the possible exception of the rotten boroughs, which goes back to 1832, this is clearly overwhelmingly the greatest danger to the electoral system since. We are talking about 7 million votes for which Prescott has issued an “invitation to fraud” when Labour may honestly get 9. Worse – assuming fraud will be concentrated in key marginals which seems likely Labour hardly need any ambulent voters at all. Postal voting is also subject to the legal fraud of getting people to register in marginals (the Tories did that with overseas voters years ago) & of “helping” those in Homes to fill in their forms – imagine even an honest social worker helping a gaga pensioner who wants to vote any party that wants to “send the darkies home”.
Natalie,
I`ve yet to hear any of the human rights brigade condemn that illiberal punishment on us lorry drivers.Perhaps lorry drivers to Labour are like miners to Tories.
One of the advantages of practising election fraud with people from ethnic minorities is that any acusation will be met with the cry of “Racism!” Thus you are much more likely to get away with it.
I am absolutely amazed at how little coverage this scandal has had on the Beeb, which has suddenly developed a keen interest in Christianity and the Pope (I agree that Blair’s “delay” may well have been a smokescreen a la “bury bad news”).
The reason that you go to a polling booth in person and vote is because it is the most effective way of ensuring transparency.
If postal voting were safe, it would have been implemented decades (even centuries) ago.
I do think the keen interest in the Pope is very, very odd coming from one of the biggest Christian-hating news outlets I’ve ever seen.
The wall-to-wall Beeb coverage (at least on their website)is far-and-above anything I’ve seen yet on an American (aka “JesusLand”) news channel.
Are they trying to mask the vote-stealing scandal as Zev suggests? Or are they just trying to push their “we are all One World” political agenda?
Also suspicious was their weird Prince Rainier death watch and “send us your tributes” thread on (D)HYS. I mean, c’mon, Prince Rainier — a world figure? His “country” was smaller than Central Park!
Additional thought: maybe the weird obsession with Prince Rainier has more to do with someone wanting a junket to Monte Carlo on a fat expense account?
Look, all this scandal about postal voting must be true because I read it in The Daily Mail
Well, hi, Susan and nice to see you!
Yes, last time I looked the dead Pope was still No 2 in the charts on the BBC website – and this is after several days of being dead. Dead people don’t make a lot of news, but the suddenly pious Beeb keeps coming up with new angles. Even after the Pope’s buried, they can keep on burying the news with webcam shots of 25m pilgrims shuffling past.
Haven’t seen anything about the election fraud and the live criminals who perpetrated it for several days, though. Nothing about sleazy immigrants importing their sleazy home-ways. If it were Tories, who have their faults, god knows, but they are not institutionally corrupt the Beeb would have it covered 24/7 with special reports from Ola, Fergall Keane and other lefty poetic whiners with irritating accents.
Funnily enough there are rather a lot of Catholics in Britain, never mind the general news value of 2m people including 200 world leaders descending on the Vatican City and the vast historical interest of the various processes involved. It’s hardly a minor event being bigged up to cover the Birmingham scandal. If there’s less coverage in the US I can only put that down to the strange lack of interest in the rest of the world and the more intense Protestant leanings (although surely the Hispanic market demands more?).
Prince Rainier was a major figure in the European (our continent remember?) heirachy and the principality itself, irrespective of it’s size, is important in European politics for tax issues amongst others. Personally I’m pleased that the BBC covers world events in detail – we had lots on Terri Schiavo because it was interesting despite it not having a lot of direct relevance for your average Brit.
Re: anti Christian, I don’t agree. The BBC covers Christian affairs in the way it should cover all faiths, i.e. without blind acceptance of all actions and taking into account secular rationality – we had an Enlightenment 300 years ago. They should be applying that to Islam not going the other way and giving Christianity the same gentle treatment.
” … more intense Protestant leanings …”
More intense than the UK? Our Protestant leanings happen to pre-date the the foundation of the US by a couple of hundred years. Our Head of State is the Head of the Church of England. Bishops have sat in the House of Lords for centuries. The CoE, as the Established Church, has had a deep and fundamental influence not just on our institutional culture but on Britain’s Christian culture generally.
“Prince Rainier was a major figure …”
In what? His own kitchen maybe. The only interest he ever generated came via the beautiful woman he married and the antics of his trashy offspring. Prince Rainier himself constituted zero relevence to anyone or anything else.
The point is yes, JP2 was a major figure and his death is big news, but it is not the biggest news in a week when a general election has been called and the governing party of this country has been found guilty, bang to rights guv, of implementing a programme of systematic electoral fraud. Blair, not content with reducing us to a Sicily or Naples in moral, ethical and financial corruption has now foisted Zimbabwe’s electoral practices. If I was Mugabe I’d offer to send some election moniters. Till the Pope died the major BBC story was Howard “man you’ve never heard of loses job, shock” Flight. But what else can we expect of the BBC, in practice the communcations wing of the Labour Party?
Yes Pete but a majority? of Americans are strongly religious regular Church attendees who are strongly attached to their particular denomination. Whilst a bit of Protestant work ethic wouldn’t go amiss around here that is very far from the case in the UK these days if you haven’t noticed. Anyway it’s not really our job to tell US news what to cover.
Speaking as somebody who has no particular religious leanings I still think that the events currently taking place in Rome are by far the biggest news story of the week. The election call has been well covered but personally I can’t see great news value in leaders flying around by helicopter uttering nothing particularly new (this didn’t stop the BBC interrupting the footy news yesterday lunchtime to show live pictures of Michael Howard walking through a door to sporadic applause from a smattering of elderly ladies????!!!!)
Re: Birmingham – as yet seems to be a local issue rather than systematic abuse. The implications for postal voting have been quite heavily covered. Re: Flight – more coverage than I might have liked but that’s largely due to Howard’s hysterical reaction and the resulting rumpus. Re: Rainier – you or I might not be particuarly interested in the European aristocracy but plenty of people are. Plenty of people aren’t interested in the minutae of US politics which you seem to want to see featured, particularly when it favours Bush. There was hardly saturation coverage in any case.
Who said anything about the amount? I thought the airtime given to the Presidential election was fair, but like many here it was very much biased in Kerry’s favour.
Call the Labour Party election abuse a local issue if you like but that suggests you aren’t completely familiar with the case. The Labour Party tried to block the investigation. When it failed in this it tried to have the investigation held after the general election. The governing party of the UK tried to rig an election and then cover it up. This is a huge story of national importance.
Rainier is far too inconsequential to comment upon. Readers of ‘Hello’ may be interested in his banisters but that’s about it.
Cockney
“Re: Birmingham – as yet seems to be a local issue rather than systematic abuse. ”
Not quite. There are several other investigations into postal ballot fraud going on spread across the Midlands and the North West. This is a major story whichever way you look at it.
It’s a story in that the government has clearly botched the introduction of postal voting in it’s rush to try and get turnout up. As with pretty much everything the clowns do the implementation has been abysmal. However, not even the Conservatives have suggested that Labour as an organisation have sytematically attempted to manipulate voting.
Cockney ” I can’t see great news value in leaders flying around by helicopter”
I can’t see the value (£TVTax£) in Michael Crick being allocated a helicopter for the duration, to bring 3 minute reports to “Newnight”, a programme with a minute audience.
Can’t disagree with that.
Rainier is far too inconsequential to comment upon. Readers of ‘Hello’ may be interested in his banisters but that’s about it.
And the Beeb is anti-royalist, yet here they are pumping up a huge wave of maudlin treacle over the death of Europe’s last remaining absolute monarch. Most suspicious.
Cockney
The government has not botched the introduction of postal voting at all. The very point of it is to allow vote fraud to happen. Tony Blair has never had any intention of allowing the electorate to boot him out of office or humiliate him over the EU constitution and Euro referenda. This hideous creature who proclaims himself to be a ‘pretty straight kinda guy’ is by a long way the most corrupt, dishonest and deceitful occupant of Downing Street since the 19th Century.
By the way, your little ‘local issue’ seems to have spread somewhat:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/4425519.stm
“A former Labour councillor has been jailed for three years and seven months for rigging postal votes during local elections in 2002.
Muhammed Hussain, 61, of Logwood Street, Blackburn, Lancashire, pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the returning officer.”
Muhammed Hussain … hmmmm … help me, I can’t quite figure out the pattern in these convictions …
If there’s less coverage in the US I can only put that down to the strange lack of interest in the rest of the world and the more intense Protestant leanings (although surely the Hispanic market demands more?).
Cockney, Roman Catholicism is the single largest religious denomination in the US. While the coverage here of the Pope is significant, I haven’t seen a lot of the weirdo type of manufactured Pope-oriented “stories” of the like coming out of the BBC,
such as an article about the papal embalming process.
WTF? The Beeb has time and resources to interview the hereditary papal embalmer? Are they going to interview Prince Rainier’s potential embalmer also?
Verity nice to see you again too 🙂
There’s no fewer than 5 stories about the Monaco royals on the front page of the Europe news section currently. And, in yet another shameless Pope-milking news- manufacturing episode, the Beeb is breathlessly happy to inform the world that a set of Polish triplets have been named after John Paul II.
The Beeb is nuts; just admit it Cockney, they are in their element producing articles about Princess Caroline’s husband’s pancreas and the pope’s embalmer — they should be working for the Daily Mirror, not claiming to be the world’s best news organization.
Pete_London is correct when he notes that Blair expanded postal voting as a deliberate incitement to fraud because he knows he is loathed and isn’t about to let democracy get in the way of continuing his career of flouncing around the world stage giving hissy, priggish, hectoring, emotive little speeches. Trembling lip optional. Sometimes it’s a bravely clenched jaw.
The BBC is running the Pope story and now the Rainier story not because they think more than a few people in Britain might be interested (and even their interest might flag after eight days of news about a dead person) and now Rainier, for the purpose of obfuscating the electoral fraud created by Blair’s new pet project, postal voting.
I would guess that fewer than 50% of Brits even knew the Pope’s name before he snuffed it. (Although sadly, and inexplicably, The Telegraph ran an item today entitled Blair’s Catholic England.) Blair ditched the heir to the throne in order to scamper off to Rome and be seen swanning around with important people. Yes, a measure of the man is that he thinks Bill Clinton is important.
Speaking of the Blairs in Rome, did anyone clock that photo of Cherieeee in a mantilla? Pure theatrical emetic.
Cockney, Rainier was insignificant and if you and the BBC really think he, in his little principality the size of Hyde Park was a world leader, I challenge you to put your finger on Monaco on an unmarked map of western Europe.
This sudden interest in the Pope (the BBC hates Christianity)and minor European princelings (the BBC hates royalty)is being whipped up in the name of obfuscation of the sleazy issue of voting fraud and the subversion of the postal ballots of Mrs Hussain, Mrs Hussain, Mrs Hussain and Mrs Hussain. Etc.
On BBC’s question time last Thurs 14th April a member of the audience mentioned the recent Birmingham Vote Case. He was incidentally an Asian gentleman for those who say this vote fraud is all because immigrants don’t live up to our high standards.
The response from Mr Dimbleby was to say “I don’t want to discuss this, we have a question about it later – but I don’t think we will have time to get round to it.”
A few years back I was in the audience for a question time (I didn’t get to speak) so I know how questions are arranged. We all get handed a list of things they want us to ask about & while we are all perfectly free to put questions the BBC haven’t chosen they are unlikely to, & in this case didn’t, choose them. Indeed it went a little further. There were 2 subjects on which nobody in the audience obliged. It was the week Jamie Bulger’s killers were released & the popular press were expressing their synthetic shock & horror – I think it quite impressive that the audience ignored this but Mr Dimbleby, very much in the manner of a schoolmaster complaining about late homework, allowed us another chance. The other one was about Charles’ having said that wanted to be “Defender of Faiths” & how would this affect his role as head of the Church of England – somebody must have finally twigged that this could not credibly be put forward as being of the remotest interest to us Glaswegians.
The point being that the BBC deliberately set the agenda here & so they must have quite deliberately decided to keep any discussion of the Birmingham Vote Fraud scandal & it’s role in the election, a matter which can hardly be underestimated by anybody that believes in democracy, out of the discussion.
Incidentally the Question Time programme came from Birmingham.