, as noted by PeterN in comments on the post below:
The Red Service
Sir – Just listen with attention to the ideological nuances on Radio 4, BBC television, and the BBC World Service, and you will realise that communism is not a dying creed (Leader, Jul 30).
Oleg Gordievsky, London WC1
Gordievsky, for those unfamiliar with him, knows what he’s talking about. Born in Moscow in 1938, he joined the KGB in 1962 and was posted to Copenhagen and London, rising to the rank of Colonel. Disillusioned with the reality of communism and the Soviet system, he became a double-agent in 1974, working for MI6 until his dramatic escape and defection to the West in 1985. He appears in the media from time to time, and has written several books, including KGB – The Inside Story (with Christopher Andrew) and Next Stop Execution, his auto-biography.
While we’re on the subject of people with first hand experience of Soviet totalitarianism, Vladimir Bukovsky is a former Soviet dissident who also campaigns against BBC Bias. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph in 2002 he said:
“For a long time I felt it would be ungrateful of me to criticise anything about a country which offered me a home, but the BBC’s TV licence is such a medieval arrangement I simply must protest against it.
The British people are being forced to pay money to a corporation which suppresses free speech – publicising views they don’t necessarily agree with.
When I needed to persuade my fellow prisoners in Labour camps in the Soviet Union to go on hunger strike, I always said that if enough of us grouped together, we would not be punished, and we would achieve something.
If 5,000 people join us in refusing to pay their fees, there is no way the BBC cannot take notice and actually debate this issue.”
Bukovsky’s campaign website is www.bbcbias.org.
The last letter I ignored from the TVLA gestapo claimed they had prosecuted 35000 refuseniks last month alone!
I wonder if it would be possible to gather their names and addresses and ask them if they would like to help end the TV-tax?
I can’t even remember how much it costs now. So that’s Vladimir, Rob Read and me. Only another 4997 to go. Anyone else fancy joining in? Come on people, you’ll find that the BBC is all bark and no bite.
It’s about time this site made something happen. I’m not going to pay the BBC any more of my money. Simple as that.
Surely theres a National Campaign in this?
Wont any of the Newspapers organize it?
I’ve decided that I’m not paying. If they knock on my door, I’m going to tell them nothing. They’ll have to find out who I am, how long I’ve lived there, whether or not I have a TV, if the TV is mine (shared house), whether I watch TV, etc.
It hardly seems worth their while.
_________________
Off topic…
I actually found an article on the BBC titled:
10 things about British slavery
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4742049.stm
For once, it doesn’t feel the need to paint Britain as the most evil country in the world. I guess it was written by a new member of staff. I’m sure he’ll be “on message” within a couple of months.
Yeah, because newspapers are always keen to advıse their readers to break the law and gıve up space to pursue the vast popularity of lıbertariajısm.
İ have to say that if the ideology and activities of Soviet communısm were akin to the BBC, and İm sure the chaps quoted know better than the rest of us, then dear old Joe Stalın cant have been that bad. a hell of a lot closer to the vıews of brıts than George Bush and co at the very least.
we could take an idea from the 1976 film network with peter finch.
print election style sheets with the words :” bbc bias. i am mad as hell and i am not going to take it anymore.”
Has anyone noticed the bizarre contortions the BBC website is going to in order to keep us in the dark regarding the unrest in Khartoum? Orwellian references to ‘Northerners’ versus ‘Southerners’. Is there something they’re trying to keep from us by any chance?
You can buy today’s Sun (or The Darkness as that cleric they didnt like now calls it!) and add it to the ‘government to do now not after your holidays’ list. Im sure they in particular would be only too happy to see the BBC licence fee abolition on the ‘petition form’.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005350600,00.html
Interesting article in Times on government (and BBC tho’ no mention by name) need for ‘communities’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3284-1718696,00.html
Bob Coates
Perhaps they read too much 2000AD?
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/r/rogue.htm
BBC NewsWatch Response
Why radical views ‘must be heard’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_4740000/newsid_4742600/4742625.stm
Clip is here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4736969.stm#
The clip is informative, but downright dangerous.
The BBC continue to give support to terrorists glorifiers by giving them a platform to disseminate their views to a wider audience.
It’s not just offensive to the majority but it’s dangerous for the minority who would be influenced by these guys. It doesn’t matter if these nutcases are ‘challenged’ by the interviewer as ‘challenged’ only means being asked a question – to which they get to give their full answer.
It’s terrorist propaganda, made by the BBC. It should stop now.
‘Nobody intervened to help me’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4742729.stm
“Since 7 July she has had to endure people staring, pointing and making comments about Muslims and bombers, she says.”
I don’t think that daily reports of ‘finger pointing’ and ‘staring’ really helps matters either. Since when did ‘staring’ at someone or receiving a ‘funny look’ merit a top billed BBC News page???
Newswatch on overdrive just now.
As raised by earlier posters re different treatment of two murders. BBC tries to defend its biased value judgement on the ‘value’ of a murder:
When murder makes the news
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_4730000/newsid_4739300/4739389.stm
First it tries to defend the indefensible. Realises it can’t so says “I think, however, we should have mentioned the Whelan murder, however briefly.
The obvious line is “white on black killing scores high on the left wing self hating moonbats, black on white is ‘just another murder’, ‘all too common’.
warped.
Miam,
Actually there’s a bit of racism involved in the BBC’s explanation. A white man killing a black man after calling him names is news…
A black man killing a white man in London is more common and almost expected. Therefore, not news.
“however briefly”
God, who writes this smug, condescending abuse?
“It’s definitely not a newsworthy murder unless we say it’s a newsworthy murder, but we’ll throw the peasants a little crust of bread and admit that perhaps we should have mentioned something about it — briefly of course. Of course we really shouldn’t have to mention it at all, but such are the concessions we have to make to keep peace with the excitable, unenlightened peasants (who pay for our hefty salaries and perks).”
Ugh! How do you people stand it?
Gossip from Media Guardian:
http://media.guardian.co.uk/diary/story/0,7540,1471537,00.html
Can BBC nick Nick from Sky?
“The transfer of Roger Mosey to BBC Sport has resulted in a frantic race for the position of head of TV news at the corporation. The leading internal candidate is still seen as Ten O’Clock News editor Kevin Bakhurst, but conspiratorial whispers say ambitious current affairs boss Peter Horrocks is in the running, as well as genial former Newsnight editor George Entwistle. But the darkest mutterings surround the name of the bosses’ No 1 choice, which Monkey can reveal to be Nick Pollard, head of award-winning rival Sky News. Apparently there is some serious wooing going on – Monkey’s man with the microphone says BBC director general Mark Thompson still thinks News 24 “needs a rocket up its backside”. Pollard is seen as the man to fire it, but are his Sky share options just too valuable to give up?
Roger Mosey was the guy who had a tantrum cause FOX had the adacity to take Al-Beeb to task over the T-word
Bomb spree ‘tests BBC journalism’
No loss.
(D)HYS losing its don’t?
Responses to David Davis’s comments are almost all supportive of Davis. Either new leaf at the BBC or they are just overwhelmed by responses contrary to their position (Though they did manage to start the thread with support for multiculturism)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/4741753.stm
OT, but Re: the Beeb’s You Culpa on the Walker/Whelan murders, isn’t that just what’s so annoying about the Beeb ? The way it carries out thesse little exercises in potemkin accountability while evading serious questions and trying to close down the debate.
We’re told that ‘the two murders are very different’ except that it’s only the ‘racial element to the crime that makes it different’. But doesn’t that beg the question ? Sure there’s no shortage of people to claim that a ‘racial murder’ is a national outrage, while a ‘senseless murder’ is just one of dem fings. But there are a hell of a lot of people who don’t buy that. In aligning itself with the first group the BBC is taking an overtly political position and lining with the most extreme forms of identity politics.
Or to put it another way, the Beeb’s arguement is a entirely contradictory: we’re not biased, we just reported these cases differently because of the dictates of Leftie culture war.
Well, yep – that’s what we said.
Apparently there’s been ‘a wave’ of race attacks against muslims following the terrorist attacks:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4742869.stm
Dr Zaki Badawi is advocating that Islamic women remove their hijabs to avoid being singled out … presumably for a bout of being-stared-and-pointed-at, if another article posted here by Miam is anything to go by.
Badawai is described by the BBC as ,I.a progressive Muslim leader who has advocated integration between Muslims and British society for decades.
Others have their own idea of Badawi’s moderate-ness: DR ZAKI BADAWI, ISLAM’s STEALTH WAHHABIST
http://webpages.charter.net/maxflack/BADAWI.htm
It’s been said before and it needs saying again, there are no moderate muslims.
dan,
Didn’t they change the headline on the (D)HYS multicultural thread? I seem to remember it had something more along the lines of “Is multiculturalism working?” when I first clicked on the link a few hours ago. Now it’s a much more neutral “How multicultural is Britian?” (which totally makes no sense, given the context of Mr. Davis’s criticisms — which they themselves reference in their accompanying article.)
Was this stealth-edited when they saw the comments coming their way were not what they wanted?
From BBC 6 o’clock London news:
Dr Zaki Badawi is descibed by the presenter as a ‘moderate muslim’. The victim of the gruesome murder, Anthony Walker, is described as ‘black teenager’ (albeit his picture is shown) and the terrorist suspect that was charged today is described as ‘man’.
Don’t know if this qualifies as ‘BiasedBBC’ or ‘ThuggishBBC’:
“”Sohrab Kabuli”, Afghan blogger and winner of the Freedom Blog Award for his Farsi blog, Shared Pains, has been getting death threats. (You can read an interview with him about his blog and its impact here.)
Kabuli, who blogs in English as Afghan Lord under a pseudonym in order to protect himself, has received numerous threats posted to his blog from the same IP address which belongs – shockingly – to the BBC. One of them, which Kabuli emailed to Global Voices, asks: “Do you think I do not know you?” Then it continues on to threaten: “There were a number of people like you, who did not remain alive. They were all buried in graves. You have to be taken off from this land so that better human beings could take your place. For, you are dirty.”
Cheers,
furious
Readers here will probably be interested in this post’s comments thread. It appears that the BBC has been giving some antisemitic Islamists airtime while describing them as moderates.
Finally watched the Galloway video. What a treasonous 5h1t. How can this man be my MP? Why hasn’t he been thrown in jail for treason? How can a “Loyal member or Her Majesty’s Government” incite people to kill UK troops?
Lord Haw Haw was hung. Galloway gets elected. What is happening?
Rob posts above about slavery.
The villain of tonights slavery programme on BBC2 was a Henry Lascalles, the ancestor of the current Earl of Harewood & cousin of the Queen.
Final words by the programme’s hero to Lascalles –
“Your family will never be respectable”…(long pause before throwaway).. whilst someone like you is at its head”
That will have gone down a storm at Harewood House & possibly Windsor Castle.
How harmful is the BBC? The licence fee arrangement is an affront to liberty and free speech, but I’m not sure the propaganda it funds has much effect. The BBC’s audience is falling, and its news pogrammes are so dumbed down that only nobody remotely intelligent regards them as important. Its current affairs programmes have tiny audiences. The ‘liberal’ bias in its low-brow, high audience programmes is missed by most of the audience, and does little more than make the programme makers feel important. The viewers are waiting for the murder or the car chase, and miss the carefully crafted political ‘issues’. If the licence fee were to be abolished the politically motivated staff at the BBC would be freed to pursue other careers, posibly with more damage to the country than slipping in a few Guardian style preachy messages into an episode of Eastenders or Casualty. If the BBC makes its journalistic staff feel important and influential perhaps the licence fee is a small price to pay to keep them where we can see them and what they produce.
21:40 GMT
The (D)HYS thread “Is multiculturalism working?”, nee “How multicultural is Britian?”, has been removed from the page. Not relegated to the column of passing threads (below, left, “More From…”), simply erased from the Kremlin photos.
Crank,
I can still see it at the link that was posted. From where I am viewing, it’s the number one topic on the “Have Your Say” page. But they seem to be getting more multi-culti PC-type views since they changed the title.
Good piece on PBS.
http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/23/sum05/macguire.htm
Peter:
I think the BBC is far more destructive than you think. In the rest of the world outside the UK, for example, (via such arms as BBC World/BBC America and the World Service) it plays off its historic image as an impartial broadcaster, when in fact it’s horribly biased.
Peter
The BBC is very important. Like advertising, it’s the subliminal message that counts. A good case in point is Aunties policy re the US. Constant derogatory comments concerning Iraq, Bush etc by ‘news’ outlets is bad enough, but peripheral output by presenters in Sport, Lifestyle seem to have carte blanche for some gratuitous ‘Yank Bashing’ (Good examples Garry Linaker, Jeremy Clarkson – who otherwise I have time for – never misses ( and makes time for) a sideswipe, however irrelevant to the topic). Thus public perception is distorted to the level of urban myth. Try telling your mates that Bush’s grades were far superior to Kerry or Gore, or that he visited Scotland and Italy before being elected and see the response. Try portraying Kerry as a privileged upper class opportunist. And this is just the trivia forget the broad picture!
OT while on the subject of subliminal assumptions its ironic that the ‘inclusive’ left lobby when giving disproportionate air time to White on Black killings are in fact implying that Blacks are not really capable of civilised behavior therefore positive action on the issue shouldn’t be debated and that a double standard is ‘needed’. Similarly Arabs / Democracy, Africa / Poverty etc.
Just realised. Have you noticed that the ‘Corporation’ never seems to have online votes anymore? They used to have loads.
I wonder why….
PeterN
… its ironic that the ‘inclusive’ left lobby when giving disproportionate air time to White on Black killings are in fact implying that Blacks are not really capable of civilised behavior therefore positive action on the issue shouldn’t be debated and that a double standard is ‘needed’. Similarly Arabs / Democracy, Africa / Poverty etc.
Absolutely. It’s because we nasty, right wing fascists know that all humans are equally capable of high achievement that we feel it right to hold all to high standards.
In giving a free pass to Africans, muslims, whoever, for achieving nothing, the left betrays it’s own racism. We’ve long known that the left thinks that the Third World is congenitally uselss and that we must be dragged down to third world levels of achievement. They seem not to have looked at Asia, much of which was poorer than Africa a few decades ago. They’re still able to get away with calling the likes of the BNP as ‘right wing racists’. Somehow, a left wing party which is racist becomes right wing. They even managed to raise racism to utter respectibility (in some circles) via that Marxism known as political correctness and that social apartheid called multiculturism. I think the lesson is that it’s ok to be racist, as long as it’s the right kind of racism.
The BBC is run by types who would have run the Empire in its 1880 – 1930’s heyday. Upper class, well connected, public school and Oxbridge educated and confident of their place in the world. They feel themselves born to lead, and to instruct the lesser classes in how to think and behave. Any suggestion that they are not needed is met with blank incredulity.
Pete,
That is quite right, but the Left puts it differently. Whether one is a racist or not depends on the race of the racist.
The way the government and BBC have been behaving is somewhat akin to a soviet dictatorship, i am surprised that they have been allowed to get away with it for so long.
The propaganda aired by the beeb is so anti British, and at the same time pro European, pro Socialist/ Communist.
I fear that many of the BBC execs and journalists are or were members of the Communist party, just as were current members of the Labour Party, mentioning no names.
My hope is that the security services are keeping a close watch on those individuals.
Communism is raising its ugly head in Britain, and those people who said that the berlin wall coming down was the end, were wrong, it was just the beginning.
I dread the thought that we in Britain are being brainwashed by a pro-communist agenda in part funded by and promoted by a government intent on destroying what is left of this once great nation.