BBC Views Online often seems to report unexplained phenomena – for instance, from the last few days, off the top of my head, we have:
- Inquiry as stolen car kills woman – I presume the car stole itself and ran the woman over, rather than a car thief (or suspected car thief even) being responsible;
- A 15-year-old boy is being prosecuted in connection with the case of a girl who fell pregnant at the age of 11 – did he trip her up then? Girls obviously need to be careful in case they fall over and get up pregnant;
- A woman was killed and several people were injured when a stolen bus went on a five-mile rampage through Dublin – naughty, naughty bus – don’t do that again.
I’m sure readers of Biased BBC can spot many more unexplained phenomena reported by the BBC. Let us know in the comments – and mind how you go – it’s a strange world out there!
Our freedoms are fast being snipped and hacked; we are more vulnerable to state invasions into privacy, debate, freedom of thought and legitimate opposition.”
‘Ms. Alibhai-Brown’s evidence for this is undeniably chilling:
“I have been told by good friends at the BBC not to expect to be invited on to key political programmes any more. Too much trouble, apparently.”
http://dailyablution.blogs.com/t…daily_ablution/’
Any chance Alibi’s ‘good friends’ can pass the same message to Toynbee.
As many will know Alibi-Brown was one of the Ugandan Asians kicked out by Idi Amin (that nice Muslim convert).
This country took them in, housing them, temporarily, in disused army camps. One was close to where my parents lived in Dorset. There was uproar when the local employment office advertised for cleaners and laundry people to work in the the camp because the refugees thought it beneath them to do it themselves.
How Alibi-Brown has gone from strength to strength since those times, constantly on BBC sofas and constantly criticising those of us who have lived here a little longer than her.
How gut wrenching for her to lose the additional income she makes from appearance fees.
‘Hey Tory fuckers! Get ready for another 10-years of no-one listening to your childish rants and propaganda. The tories are finished forever now please go FUCK YOURSELVES
Maxx | 15.05.06 – 4:54 pm | #
‘
One of yours jr?
Andrew
Can you see if Blue Max is using a BBC site. If he is I will make a formal complaint through their abuse site.
Mayor fined after election fraud
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/4773569.stm
“A former mayor has been fined £3,000 after an inquiry into postal voting fraud during the 2004 local elections.
Pat Tyrrell, who was Mayor of Halton in Cheshire, was arrested after asking relatives to illegally sign voting documents belonging to the electorate.
Knutsford Crown Court heard that Tyrell, 75, wanted to help people confused by the new procedures rather than trying to steal votes.
He admitted 10 counts of making false statements at an earlier hearing.
Hmmm – which party was the mayor a member of? Can you guess? The clue is that this info is deemed so insignificant by the BBC, that they wait until 5th paragraph to tell us.
Well? Conservative? LibDim? Labour?…..
TPO, no, he isn’t.
How nice of Max to share his views.
I am deeply hurt by Maxx’s cruel slur.
I am not a Tory and I have, to the best of my knowledge, never f***ed one.
🙂
..or been f***ed by one.
Ritter
You would like to think that peoples voting rights would be protected by a bigger fine than £3,000. A prison sentence would seem to have been more appropiate.
On the subject of electoral fraud. The Conservative party I hear currently need to get up to 10% more than Labour to get an overall magority. It is very very likely, that we could end up with a Labour government that has 3-4% less votes than the main opposition party. Which is a lot of votes.
Why has this not been properly debated by the BBC? As clearly the governing party would have no mandate from the people to rule.
A well run smart country would sort the potential problem out before it happens. So that the public dont lose confidence in their countries political process.
One reason why the BBC dont bother is, the BBC thinks the BBC and its friends in the nations institutions are running the show whatever happens. Letts all hope the BBC is wrong about this one as well.
dave t writes:
“You mean Reith is using the internet on the public’s time since he is being paid by our TV tax? Is this not a sackable offence in the real business world?”
I can’t believe anyone here didn’t think Reith works for the BBC. As someone pointed out, his ability to turn up isolated and obscure factoids in an attempt to defend his masters with cheap points is simply too convenient.
Then there’s his mastery of the BBC style (both consciously and unconsciously – his prose is copybook BBC).
As to whether he’s moonlighting – probably not would be my guess. He’s either been given the job by the Beeb in an attempt to rattle people, or is confident he can justify himself by claiming he was defending the Corporation against a bunch of raging fascists (or whatever BBC types are calling anyone to the Right of Chavez, these days).
Personally, I think it’s excellent news. It shows the BBC and its legions of the management undead are getting rattled.
As well they might.
TAol Reincarnated
Hopefully you never will. Male and female Tories are normaly a little fussy.
I’ve posted an update to the wrong Guy story, and have started a new open thread – so if you haven’t seen either yet it’s time to refresh your browser (try a shift-reload if an ordinary refresh doesn’t do the deed).
G Cooper
I agree with everything you say. It does however bother me big time that he is getting payed by the BBC to argue with his own customers. I have a right to argue with my customers because they dont have to buy from me now or in the future. However if they dont like my product or service and I dont give them their money back, I can be done by the law.
I do not consider myself or anyone else to be a second class citizen so why is John Reith so blissfully unaware that he does?
archduke
The glossy new shop I referred to is in Kingston, smack opposite the biggest shopping mall in town. It is at the top of the list that Ritter kindly provided :
http://www.bbcshop.com/page/shop
I passed the shop twice again today. Both times it was empty – as usual.
I would estimate it costs £30 to 50,000 a year to lease and run premises like that – heating, lighting, cleaning, insurance etc etc. Plus significant fitting-out costs. Plus staff costs and overheads – say another £100,000 a year.
A total of possibly £200,000 a year including all costs up the line.
To cover that level of cost, a bookshop would have to sell tens of thousands of books. Say 50,000 books a year ?
But the shop is always empty. I once went in to look at all the educational books – in case they had any that were above their normal level of mediocrity. I was there for an hour. Only one other person entered the shop the whole time. Neither of us bought anything. The shop assistants were doing nothing, there did not appear to be any stock to be renewed or rearranged.
reith
You mention 3 articles by Frank Gardner over the space of about 3 years.
Big deal.
The guy had NOT been, and is NOT waving warning flags to any real extent. If he had – how would the BBC have commissioned Power of Nightmares ? Yes, he may print some stuff hew gets fed. But where is any sign of real investigative journalism on his part, of real digging among the dangerous areas among communities here in Britain.
You are a busted flush. It is typical that you should make out you are an independent observer.
As we have been saying for weeks, you are a BBC shill. Trust the BBC to put up one of its own to defend the indefensible.
Gary wrote earlier about the BBC’s troll:
“You John Reith are a classic example of this class ridden self hatred, which should have stayed in the 19th century, where it came.”
John Reith, whoever he is doesn’t hate himself: he loves himself. He hates us. All these supposed middle-class self-haters don’t actually hate themselves because they would deny themselves nothing, but they do hate those who defend the way of life which makes their cotton-wooled lifestyles possible.
The above was from me.
“I can’t believe anyone here didn’t think Reith works for the BBC. As someone pointed out, his ability to turn up isolated and obscure factoids in an attempt to defend his masters with cheap points is simply too convenient.”
There’s an even simpler clue to the identity of ‘John Reith’ – he knows (and seems to care) about what awards the BBC has won – only a BBC staffer is sad enough for that.
Grimer | 15.05.06 – 2:02 pm
You say:
“I appreciate the website was set up before the advent of friendly webtools. However, if you want to get your message to the masses, you need to update the site.”
I don’t want to cross swords with you. Much of what you say might be true for a person in a hurry, but surfers with half an hour or so to spare will invariably end up at “The Concise True Story of the Cash for Questions Affair” in Section Two and the discussion of (some of the) evidence that backs it up in Section Three.
I appreciate that there are no links to scans of documentary evidence but http://www.Guardianlies.com is already costing me serious money and, as I have no income, posting high memory Jpegs of docs would result in bandwidth charges that would compel me to remove it.
Please bear with me. I take on board your comments and agree with them. I will get there in the end. And thanks for your interest and your implied support.
Meanwhile, look on the good side. The BBC’s illegal censorship of our investigation has certainly turned me into a fellow B-BBC died-in-the-wool refusenick, and thanks to “sharpsuit”‘s post at 2:14 pm I now see that my Accuracy in Media report on the BBC’s and The Guardian’s bias and their expansion in the U.S. has just been adopted for dissemination by yet another U.S. website, namely http://www.FrontpageMag.com, making I think four in all, not counting Marc at USS Neverdock.
Things are certainly hotting up out there… and I’m LOVIN’ it.
And I hope you noticed everybody that Cockney didn’t take up my offer to go through the evidence of The Guardian-Fayed conspiracy with me. No doubt we’ll all learn John Reith’s response to the same offer in two weeks’ time after he’s digested my website.
Gary Powell | 15.05.06 – 8:43 pm | #
——————————————————————————–
Re the Labour vote. 46 Scottish Labour MPs coming down to Westminster to vote on legislation that only affects England and not their own constituency is a bit hard to take, now that devloution has devolved many decisions (Health, Education etc) to the Scottish Parliament.
Even if the Conservatives win the share of the vote in England by a small margin (as in the last election), once you add the die hard Labour Scots and Welsh MPs, labour could end up governing due to a chunk of Scots & Welsh MPs whose constituency won’t be affected by their votes…..
“To cover that level of cost, a bookshop would have to sell tens of thousands of books. Say 50,000 books a year ?”
but the BBC is publishing its own stuff so the margins are way way higher – so they dont have to sell tens of thousands of books to make the shop viable.
Ritter: “…46 Scottish Labour MPs coming down to Westminster to vote on legislation that only affects England and not their own constituency is a bit hard to take…”
Whilst the situation you describe is unjust, if you’ll permit me to play devil’s advocate for a second, it has happened plenty of times in reverse of course – off the top of my head, for instance, the community charge/poll tax was introduced in Scotland a year before it was introduced in England – pushed through by English MPs rather than Scots MPs – and we know what a success that was – those self same English MPs promptly ditched it as soon as their own constituents revolted.
We do need to change the constitutional arrangements in the UK – but it pains me to hear all the prejudice expressed against the Scots and Welsh in general, when the real culprits are Tony Blair and co. who are exploiting a situation that they have engineered to their advantage.
Please try to remember that the unprincipled behaviour of Labour MPs and Labour leaders is not the fault of the Scots or the Welsh people as a whole!
Britain is a great country – it would be an enormous shame to see it break up into four smaller parts due to f***ing Tony Blair!
Andrew | 15.05.06 – 11:14 pm
“…the community charge/poll tax was introduced in Scotland a year before it was introduced in England – pushed through by English MPs rather than Scots MPs – and we know what a success that was – those self same English MPs promptly ditched it as soon as their own constituents revolted.”
This argument falls because it is pre-devolution. I see no problem with piloting a scheme before trying it out on the whole country. The tax was dropped when the pilot went wrong (to put it mildly).
I think it was a political error to pilot it in Scotland where resistance was likely to be overwhelming and anti-Thatcher. The poll tax was just a device seized upon by anti-Conservative elements.
I think the poll tax was a good idea and even the libdims are advocating it now.
Someone posted that the Conservatives need a greater %age of votes than Labour for the same number of seats.
There are several reasons for this but one of which I have direct experience is that the Local Government Commission for England (formerly the Boundaries Commission) is as leftie as the beeb.
I did the local government boudary reorganisation proposals on behalf of the Conservatives in my area. The top priority is to arrange the wards such that each councillor has the same number of electors, known as electoral equality. Other, secondary, priorities include having clear boundaries.
My proposals achieved statistically perfect electoral equality, reorganised the old boundaries back to the point where ward names and district names coincided and established strong boundaries along the major roads in the town.
Labour’s proposals showed a lot less electoral equality as well as not matching wards and districts and their submission contained 2 lies about their plan.
The LGCE adopted the Labour plan and ignored the Conservative plan despite its obvious superiority. No amount of arument was accepted and our only recoutse would have been juducial review, risking costs of £25,000.
gordon-bennet: “This argument falls because it is pre-devolution.”
The example remains valid though in that the Scottish law is different and separate from English law and yet this bill was imposed on Scotland by English MPs – whose constituents would not be affected by it.
Even if we accept that this example doesn’t count because it’s pre-devolution I’m sure there are plenty of examples of national policy imposed upon Scotland post-devolution that wouldn’t get through the Scottish parliament were those powers devolved.
Whatever.
The main point of my comment is that it sickens me to see twits running around with huge chips on their shoulders saying Scotland this, Wales that, when in reality the injustice in the current system is engineered by and abused by Tony Blair and co. for their own benefit. The responsibility for this abuse does not lie with the Scots and the Welsh people as a whole – who are just as British as you and I. It is Blair and Labour that the anger needs to be directed at.
Andrew | 16.05.06 – 1:52 am
We are talking about the West Lothian question. That’s why devolution is relevant.
Of course, the WL question will not be sorted by zanulab with their near monopoly of MPs in Scotland.
I have heard it said that Scotland and Wales are Conservative-free because anyone with a brain has emigrated to England or the US.
I wonder if the beeb would research this and, more important, make a programme about it if it’s true.
Well that’s tosh for a start GB – Scotland and Wales are far from Conservative free – there are plenty of Conservatives about – unfortunately they aren’t spread very well in terms of maximising seats under FPP. A few decades ago Scotland was strongly Unionist. Those days may come again, perhaps with the help of English immigrants – plenty of whom I met on my last sojourn north of the border – busy escaping English cities.
Andrew | 16.05.06 – 3:51 am
“Well that’s tosh for a start GB – Scotland and Wales are far from Conservative free”
In the context I would have thought it obvious that I was referring to S and W being Conservative MP free, apart from 1 in S.
GB: In the context I would have thought it obvious that I was referring to S and W being Conservative MP free, apart from 1 in S.
Really? You made no mention of MPs. In fact, in your comment you said:
GB: “I have heard it said that Scotland and Wales are Conservative-free because anyone with a brain has emigrated to England or the US.”
This clearly implies that every conservative (i.e. those with brains, using your definition) has emigrated from Scotland and Wales, thus leaving them conservative free, which is clearly not true.
I have deleted your subsequent insult. Remember that you are a guest here. Perhaps you will be kind enough to desist from this diversion for now, so that I can get on with bashing the Beeb. Thank you.
Andrew | 16.05.06 – 4:44 am
Well that’s tosh for a start, Andrew. Everyone knows that S and W are considered Conservative MP free.
Nobody thinks that all conservative voters have emigrated.
I see that whereas (once again) you can insult me and leave those comments on the blog you delete my comments if you detect the merest whiff of a possible insult.
I thought that that sort of editorial didtatorship was what we are fighting at the beeb.
The ‘Muslim Hardship’ article has been stealth edited. The figure has been revised down to 14% from the previous 50% quote.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4771233.stm
JBH
I’d be delighted to go through your evidence next time I visit Manchester. Bearing in mind obviously that you present one side of the case and in order to conclude my views on the issue I’ll also have to trawl through the opposing evidence at some point.
My point was and is that in 2006 I can’t see that any media outlet is ‘biased’ for not devoting resources to something that occured 9 years ago and in my opinion was a mildly diverting sideshow rather than an election losing issue even then.
Cockney | 16.05.06 – 8:11 am
A public newspaper invents a story about someone and and you consider it “a mildly diverting sideshow”. Ok it happened to a Conservative but still?
GB: “Well that’s tosh for a start, Andrew. Everyone knows that S and W are considered Conservative MP free”.
Not what you said – quite different from what you said, actually.
GB: “Nobody thinks that all conservative voters have emigrated”.
Funny, because that is the clear implication of what you did say.
GB: “I see that whereas (once again) you can insult me and leave those comments on the blog you delete my comments if you detect the merest whiff of a possible insult”
Calling your argument tosh is not attacking you personally – even if you, diddums, think it’s “aggressive” (I note that you have lowered yourself to using ‘tosh’ too now!). And it’s certainly not casting aspersions (about things that you cannot possibly know), as you have about me, twice now.
GB: “I thought that that sort of editorial didtatorship was what we are fighting at the beeb”
There’s a big difference – I do this for free, on my own time, in my own space – in which you are a guest, just a bit of a contrast from the BBC’s operation, don’t you think? I’d thank you to remember that. Free speech is generally tolerated around here, but if you want freedom to insult me personally then you’re going to have to go and do it in your own space, capiche. N.B. You are now hovering on my boredom threshold for upstart commenters.
On the substantive point I just Googled “tory free” and got 380 finds.
I looked at just the first 3 pages of results and about 95% of them used the expression in the same manner as I did, ie “tory free” means free of tory MPs.
QED
That really is not what you said. Enough.
JBH,
There are plenty of ways to host pictures without incurring charges. I use http://www.photobucket.com to host images.
You can then paste in the HTML tag and the picture will appear for readers as normal. Photobucket also has a thumbnail facility that will allow you display clickable thumbnails to get to higher resolution files.
The service is free, so long as the jpegs are under 500k in size.
If you have larger files, such as audio, pdf’s, etc, there are plenty of free hosting sites. You can place the files online and then link to them from your website.
Like I said before, I’m not critising the content (I haven’t had a chance to wade through it all). I think the general presentation of your website needs some work. I had a quick look on my lunch hour and found it quite daunting and tricky to navigate.
IMHO, it needs more hyperlinks to aid navigation. You have a large list of people at the start that have endorsed your work. It would be much easier for the reader to list them all as hyperlinks and allow the reader to click on either a thumbnail or name, to jump to your comments.
It’s your website and you can obviously run it anyway you like, but for the casual reader it is too ‘big’ and ‘intimidating’ (if you want to get anywhere with this campaign, you need to attract these people and raise your profile)
Grimer, thanks.
I will sort it out in time. Honest. I’m involved in another completely different project that’s got nothing to do with any of this and I just don’t have the time – except to say that my offers to go through the evidence with John Reith and Cockney still stand.
(Incidentally your post on the other thread about your contribution to HYS caused me to burst out laughing.)
archduke
Even allowing high margins, that BBC bookshop would still need to be selling tens of thousands of books a year – a lot of their books are priced down at £3 to £5.
They do not appear to be selling more than a few each day ! No normal bookshop could survive on their rate of sales. One way or another, WE are paying for it.
JBH,
I’ve read your article on the BBC/Grauniad invasion of America. If you’re looking for other examples of BBC bias, you might like to check out the BBC/UN love affair.
The Americans are famously sceptical about the UN. I once spotted a ridiculous interview with Kofi Annan. The video is still be available online. The transcript doesn’t really do it justice.
Video: “Kofi Annan Interview”
Lyse Doucet interviews the UN Secretary General
» 91% relevance | 09/09/2005
http://newssearch.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?tab=news_av&q=annan&scope=newsukfs_av&start=4
Transcript
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4217694.stm