If a gang of white men entered a school, grabbed and held down an Asian pupil, then beat his head with a hammer, what are the chances that:
a) the BBC would hide the report away in the local county news pages?
b) the report would studiously avoid mentioning that the attackers were white and the victim Asian?
Call me a cynic, but I think it would, not unreasonably, be a major story, on the national radio and TV news bulletins – as for example, the far less life-threatening reported attack on the Sikh schoolboy was.
Here’s the report from the £3bn taxpayer-funded BBC, and the Metro report – Metro being the freebie newspaper owned by Associated Newpapers.
According to the school’s head, there was a ‘similar type of incident’ previously. But the BBC report has a distinct air of “move on now … nothing to see here …”. You do have to wonder if the same bias that previously informed BBC news coverage of racist murder is operating here.
The BBC is sick, vile, putrid, stinking, rotting shite…….
We all know they do this….they are so bloody predictable…as such, I predict that the British will finaly tire of their Propaganda, and will refuse to pay the licence fee on masse’…..why should we. They have broken their own charter rules, and as such we are within our rights to withold funding until they get their act together, or are closed down…..
Come on Blair, get rid of these assholes before they create a race war…..
Two faced bastards that thy are.
Socialism really is Necrotizing!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=428234&in_page_id=1770
BBC caught lying again
http://media.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDg5NDJjNWJmYjM1ZDkzODllNDUyZjk0Nzk5YjlhNWM=
linked from the wonderful EURef
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/01/terror-warmers.html
Strange, is’nt it.
When A kid gets shot at school, in America or Canada, it is front page news for the BBC.
When one girl attacks another with a pair of Scissors, it is front page news at the BBC.
Yet, when 8 “Asian” Men burst into a school in Britain, and attack a child with a hammer…….it does not even make the main news pages or bulletins.
Yet more Obvious Bias, and covering up from the BBC. They must really be ashamed of something to hide like that.
Sky News is running with the story on Radio bulletins now……it is their second story…….after a bomb blast in Greece….
How about the BBC?……
Not a peep, nor a whisper…..
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=562&id=1912962006
The “reported” attack on the Sikh schoolboy was even less life-threatening than your linked article on it reports.
Two things disgust me about this story. One, that grown men, of whatever race or culture, would attack a young boy like this. Two, that the BBC would be so palpably uninterested in reporting the attack.
On second thoughts, ‘disgust’ is not a strong enough word…
This story has still not appeard on the BBCs front page…….
So…..this story is NOT as important as “Diaz and Timberlake Confirm Split”…which DOES get onto the BBCs front page….
The BBC is vile…utterly vile…….
Bring on the sackings…..
It took me a while to find it, even then it wasn’t clear from the headline, and was buried several levels below the main England page:
“Hospital transfer for hammer boy ”
Last Updated: Friday, 12 January 2007, 12:11 GMT
E-mail this to a friend Printable version
Hospital transfer for hammer boy
A schoolboy who suffered serious head injuries when he was battered with a hammer has been transferred to Frenchay Hospital in Bristol.
The 15-year-old was initially treated in Swindon following the attack at Ridgeway School in Wroughton.
A hospital spokesman said he was transferred to Frenchay – which has a specialist head injuries unit – because of the nature of his wounds.
Six men and two boys are being questioned by police about the attack.
The men – two aged 18, three who are 19, one 20 and two boys aged 14 and 15 – are local and are being held at Gablecross police station, a police spokeswoman said.
The school’s head teacher Steve Colledge called the incident on Thursday “shocking” and said security was being reviewed.
Frenchay hospital said the boy’s condition was stable.
Ridgeway School has about 1,450 pupils aged 11 to 18
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/6254761.stm
no one and i mean no one,even friends
and lovers of the bbc could say with
any sense of honesty,that if the victim of this attack had been black or asian it would not now be front page news on the bbc.
hiding the news, its what we do.
It was the main story on Sky for the 1:00pm bulletin, and by way of a comparison I watched the 2:00pm BBC bulletin – not a mention. Checked teletext page 102 – not a mention.
A black or Asian schoolboy victim of adult white attackers?
The BBC would have been shouting the news from the rooftops.
It really does take some finding.
-Nothing on the Main Page.
-Nothing on the World Page
-Nothing on the UK Page
-Hidden ‘below the fold’ on the England Page:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y179/grimerking/HammerAttack.jpg
If you look closely, a hammer attack on a schoolboy is ranked less important than ‘Teacher slaps 13-year-old pupil’.
Good to know they’ve got their priorities straight.
Newsnight’s preview e-mail says
“Racist” attack on Swindon schoolboy
=====================================
First it was Ipswich. Now it’s Swindon. A provincial town that rarely hits the headlines is suddenly subject to a nasty crime. In the case of Swindon today, an old railway engine-making town 100 miles west of London, an attack by a gang armed with a hammer against a young schoolboy. The boy was badly injured and is in hospital. There are suspicions of racial motivations. We’ve sent a team to report.
I guess the programme will have to mention to “races” involved
Sorry. Correction to my post above. I’m getting my e-mails mixed up.
The quote above is taken from the C4 News “snowmail”.
ITV and SKY had this as headline news. BBC just make themselves look silly by ignoring it, tho most broadcasters are ignoring the organised racism behind it;
“They said a group calling themselves the “Asian Invasion” had been
behind a campaign of bullying at the school.”
http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/swindonnewsheadlines/display.var.1120720.0.parents_stage_protest_after_hammer_attack.php
The hammer attack was discussed on Five Live Drive this evening.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/programmes/drive.shtml
Click on listen again Friday (1:07:40 – 1:13:50)
The fact that it may have been a racist attack is discussed but at no point does anybody dare mention that Asians attacked a white kid. It’s just a “racist attack”. Listen as the BBC reporter at the school does everything in his power to avoid discussing the details. Had this been a white gang attacking an Asian boy the BBC would have made that the core of their story – no doubt at all. The bias is quite staggering.
the bias is dreadfull AND on this occasion is proved by the fact that ITN Channel 4’s 7.00pm news chose to LEAD with the story:
http://www.channel4.com/player/v2/player.jsp?showId=4253
Its not just the oppion of people on this blog that the BBC is out of line, its the oppinion of the newsw editors at ITN
what the f is going on?
We are living in Chauchesku’s Romania.
What can I do about this? -except start looking at the BNP’s web site for my news?
Ah well, at least the Police are reported to be keeping an ‘open mind’, so move along please…nothing to see here.
i’ll bookmark the above comment and get it out next time the victim is of a hue that sits better with the BBC’s definition of “victim”.
btw
“move along please… nothing to see here”
how about if you find a new phrase – your astroturf is wearing thin.
Newsnight did actually mention the ethnicity of the victim and the attackers. Although, IMHO, the reporter did seem a little bit uncomfortable having to talk about such things.
Oh and by the way, the Head Master looks like a right tit. Meeting the media and spewing buzz words for the cameras – such as this school is high value added (whatever that means). He then refused to speak to parents concerned about their children’s safety. In his ‘defence’ though, the parents did seem very ‘lower class’, so I seriously doubt their worries are anything for somebody of his stature to worry about.
I heard the headmaster earlier talking about a “small” number of families who had removed thier children from the school due “alleged” racist bullying.
And how small was this “small” number of families? Just “twenty or so” !
From the BBC’s front page:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/6258393.stm
Could it be that the corporation was being (correctly) restrained in its reporting of this incident?
That maybe other news outlets went along too readily with possibly unreliable eyewitnesses?
Surely the news that one person has been charged and the others released suggests that reports of a marauding gang (whatever their ethnicity) were wide of the mark.
jb,
According to the report, the others were released on bail without charge. I’m not sure how that works. But the attack was witnessed by around 100 schoolchildren, and the accounts that I’ve read all indicate that there were a number of attackers. The headmaster didn’t contradict these accounts.
The only one wide of the mark here is, as usual, the BBC. It will do anything to protect followers of the ‘religion of peace’.
hmm… evidently you think that the police are fairly wide of the mark as well? surely with 100 eyewitnesses they could have charged the whole gang? either that, or the reports you’ve been reading were inaccurate? perhaps biased-bbc-blogoids need to treat non-bbc media with the same scepticism that they treat the bbc with?
Well, jb, there are a number of issues here. There is no doubt that the police have become steeped in PC (pun intended) idiocy as well as the BBC and related species of ‘journalists’.
From what I’ve read of the extraordinary overreaction by the police towards anyone who opposes the followers of the ‘religion of peace’, I’d say said followers have influence over the force way out of proportion to their numbers in the general population. Together with the paralysing PC, this ensures a quite incredible imbalance in the way the police go about their duties.
Having said that, I think you misinterpreted my remark about the release of the suspects. I just don’t understand how suspects can be released on bail without charge. Surely they are charged first and then released on bail? If they are not charged with any offence, wouldn’t they simply be released, without bail coming into it? (I don’t live in Britain.)
Hang around here awhile, jb, and you’ll notice that we don’t only oppose BBC bias on this site. The rot in journalism is very widespread indeed. But even the BBC has acknowledged that there was a gang involved here. Have you read any reports suggesting that there were less than four men involved?
Surely the news that one person has been charged and the others released suggests that reports of a marauding gang (whatever their ethnicity) were wide of the mark.
jb | 13.01.07 – 3:00 pm
No, there were too many witnesses who saw two car-loads of ‘men’ attack the boy and hold him down while one of them repeatedly hit him on the head with a hammer.
What it suggests to me is that the police don’t have (at the moment) enough firm evidence (positive ID?) to charge anybody else and/or they’re going to settle for charging just one perp.
Bryan has a good point; to the best of my knowledge bail is only applied once a person has been charged. This smells of more ‘sloppy reporting’, to say the least.
Bryan, Bio.
Its not necessary to charge before bailing. Quite often people will be bailed to return at such date when all enquiries are complete and then they are charged.(bail does not mean handing money over either)
jb:
hmm… evidently you think that the police are fairly wide of the mark as well?
As an ex-police officer I can categorically state they they are more often than not very wide of the mark in today’s climate of PC.
Further to the above, the police in this case have got it hopelessly wrong. Also a crime can be classed as racist if it is viewd by ANY person as being such, not just the victim and certainly not just by the police.
hi
bryan: apologies, the idea of bail is a pretty wide-ranging thing. essentially, police put almost everyone they ever question about anything on bail when they release them. it’s been standard practice for the past few years.
bio: you are wrong about bail, as pointed out by tpo and myself.
as for your assertion ‘there were too many witnesses who saw two car-loads of ‘men’ attack the boy and hold him down while one of them repeatedly hit him on the head with a hammer’.
well, as i say, you clearly put too much faith in the reportage of non-bbc media outlets. were you there? if not, who gave you that information? why do you trust it?
others: about this case, i realise that everyone is in agreement that a gang was involved. the extent to which each person was involved is an issue for the courts rather than ourselves.
also, there is an act of parliament called the Contempt of Court Act. once someone has been arrested, journalists cannot report anything apart from the most basic facts of the case. all of the reports we have been talking about break this law. yes, even those of the bbc.
TPO | 13.01.07 – 7:38 pm
Thanks for that. I stand corrected.
jb | 13.01.07 – 10:47 pm
Of course I wasn’t there. We’re discussing reports published in the Public Domain by “non-bbc media outlets” quoting people who (allege) they were there, I am certainly not presuming to be adding any fresh facts hitherto unknown to us.
I was responding to your assertion “that reports of a marauding gang (whatever their ethnicity) were wide of the mark”. Do you have proof of that? If so, who gave you that information? Why do you trust it?
Perhaps I should have said “… there were too many witnesses who say/allege they saw two car-loads of ‘men’ attack the boy…”
TPO,
Thanks for the bail info. I see that the word now has a much wider application than the generally accepted one.
Thanks for corroborating my impressions of the PC state of the British police.
jb,
No apologies necessary. Re police PC, there you have it from the horse’s mouth.
On the question of how many men attacked the boy, it’s well known that witnesses differ in their accounts of a crime. Some will obviously have a clearer perception of what happened than others. But the common denominator in all the accounts was that a gang, and not a single individual, was involved. Nowhere have I read any contradiction of these accounts, so I accept the fact of a gang.
Why have the police released all but one of the suspects so speedily? It could any number of reasons, but based on past police practice when it comes to ‘Asians’ it’s not unreasonable to assume that pressure from the ‘Asian’ community was the cause.
A BBC reporter at the school, either on Newsnight, responding to a question from the studio, stated that the police would have to determine whether this was a racist attack. This doesn’t ring true to me. Surely a judge at a preliminary hearing would have to accept or reject/modify the charge before the case went to court?
Bryan: the 17-year-old has been charged with causing GBH – there’s no need for anyone to establish whether it was racially motivated or not. it makes no difference to the charge.
i don’t have a particularly high opinion of the police myself, but to suggest that they would let off a gang of attackers in a case as shocking as this one seems to be, just because they’re asian – i think this is a little far-fetched. the ONLY reason they would have freed these people is that they don’t have enough evidence to charge them with anything.
it seems plain that a gang was involved – but the involvement of the other members of the gang may have been exaggerated by eyewitnesses, or misrepresented in the media’s reporting of eyewitness accounts. all it takes is one dodgy agency report, and a media bandwagon. it’s happened plenty of times before.
Bio: My evidence that “reports of a marauding gang (whatever their ethnicity) were wide of the mark” is that the police have charged only one person.
If your claim that “there were too many witnesses who saw two car-loads of ‘men’ attack the boy and hold him down while one of them repeatedly hit him on the head with a hammer” was true, i have enough faith in the police to believe they would have charged the others – or at least some of the others – with something.
Bryan
If you want another opinion on how dire the situation is within the 43 police forces of England & Wales have a look at this site and the comments.
http://coppersblog.blogspot.com/
Most of the people posting on the above site are serving police officers, most of whom are in despair at what is happening.
Bio: My evidence that “reports of a marauding gang (whatever their ethnicity) were wide of the mark” is that the police have charged only one person.
A large demonstration took place outside the Danish embassy protesting the publication of the Mohamed cartoons. A large number of people were filmed carrying placards calling for the death of infidels and the bombng of Denmark and the US. A large number of the protesters also made these threats verbally. All recorded by TV cameras.
Only one person has been charged, tried and found guilty.
You used the word ‘marauding’ not I. That more than one person (ie: a ‘gang’) was involved is beyond reasonable doubt. The fact that (so far) only one has been charged proves nothing.
Bio:
Admittedly, my proof is tenuous, but (at the risk of sounding incredibly childish) it’s better than the proof that supports your assertion.
fyi there are several other trials coming up resulting from that protest outside the Danish embassy. quite a few people have been charged.
From the BBC website: “Remanding him [Umran] in custody, Judge Brian Barker said he would not pass sentence until several other trials relating to the protest had concluded – expected to be in April.”
Admittedly, my proof is tenuous, but (at the risk of sounding incredibly childish) it’s better than the proof that supports your assertion.
You have no proof. I am merely taking at face value the several declarations made by bona fide on-the-scene witnesses. I see no reason to disbelieve them, you seem to want to.
fyi there are several other trials coming up resulting from that protest outside the Danish embassy. quite a few people have been charged.
Good. Remember that several people are on bail in the Swindon hammer attack case. As you and TPO have pointed out that may indicate a charge in the future.
I really can’t understand your insistence that only the one person so far charged is implicated. I think it best we both desist from any more nit-picking until the story develops further.
Well, JBH, again, 100 eye-witness reports – and possibly more – say that a gang assaulted him. I’ve been assaulted by a gang myself, and I’ve seen it happening to others too and I can tell you that the fact that only one person is actively assaulting the victim doesn’t change the fact that it’s the entire gang that’s carrying out the assault, because they act in concert to prevent the object of their assault from escaping. That’s the point of a gang. Strength in numbers might allow the less active individuals to absolve themselves of responsibility for what happens, but that doesn’t change the fact that the entire gang assaulted this kid. That only one person has been charged proves nothing beyond the fact that one person has been charged.
Now, in my case I was lucky enough to be “assaulted” by a bunch of idiots who were too shit-scared to actually do anything other than say nasty things and threaten me, but that doesn’t negate what they did either. They were very close to acting out their threats when they were interrupted. I wasn’t able to escape because they were surrounding me, so if one of them had got to the point of actually hitting me I would have been done for. That, I think, quite neatly demonstrates my argument; every member of a gang is guilty of assault by virtue of their passive assistance of the memer commiting the actual assault. UK law recognises this, which is why these people have been bailed rather than simply released. They are expected to return once the investigation is complete, and I expect several more will be charged with being accessories at that point.
For the record, my assaulting gang was mixed race, but mostly white. I shall leave it as an exercise to the reader to try and figure out whether that makes any difference.
I’m sorry, I typed JBH when I mean jb. Apologies to Mr Hunt. 🙂
Thanks for the coppersblog link, TPO. I’ll have a look at it.
jb,
…there’s no need for anyone to establish whether it was racially motivated or not…
There is, for two good reasons that I can think of:
Statistics, and so that people can be informed about the likely source of future racist attacks.
Conversely, I can think of no good reason for people to stick their heads in the sand over this incident.
jb | Homepage | 14.01.07 – 10:59 am
the 17-year-old has been charged with causing GBH – there’s no need for anyone to establish whether it was racially motivated or not. it makes no difference to the charge.
My emphasis added.
My understanding is that if I approach a fat, black man, say “I dont like black people” and beat him up then the sentence I receive would be up to about double that which I would get if I say “I dont like fat people” before similarly beating him up.
This is the differnece between GBH and racially aggravated GBH.
It’s immoral but it seems to be the law.
You’d be better off saying, “I don’t like you.”
In today’s PC climate, eagerly pushed and maintained by the BBC, to be guilty of plumpism/fatsoism/obesism would be a serious thing – though not nearly as serious as racism.
Funny thing about the BBC is that it seems to regard anyone who was a victim of racism at the hands of the British, e.g. blacks and Arabs, to be themselves incapable of racism – except, of course, for Jews.
Bryan/gordon-bennett: i understand what you’re saying. i was just pointing out that to make a gbh charge stick, there is no need to decide whether it was racist or not.
yes, there is a charge of racially aggravated gbh, but it doubles the burden of proof on the prosecution, so making an acquittal more likely, without significantly increasing the punishment. so the cps and police rarely bother with it.
back to the theories of pc police/lawyers i suppose.
bio: i agree totally, this nitpicking is getting tiresome.
Bio: My evidence that “reports of a marauding gang (whatever their ethnicity) were wide of the mark” is that the police have charged only one person.
If your claim that “there were too many witnesses who saw two car-loads of ‘men’ attack the boy and hold him down while one of them repeatedly hit him on the head with a hammer” was true, i have enough faith in the police to believe they would have charged the others – or at least some of the others – with something.
jb | 14.01.07 – 10:59 am
Would you like some HP sauce with those words?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/wiltshire/6282811.stm
Three boys, aged 14, 15 and 17, have been charged with grievous bodily harm.
A Wiltshire Police spokesman said: “Police anticipate further significant developments in this case and anticipate further arrests shortly.”
Two of the accused boys, aged 14 and 15, have appeared before magistrates and are due to appear in youth court on Monday.
A 17-year-old boy was remanded in custody at Swindon Youth Court on 15 January accused of grievous bodily harm.
He is due to appear again before the court on 22 January.
Six others have been released on bail, while an 18-year-old man has been released without charge.
How, actually, do we know that it was a racially motivated attack? We know it was a gang of Asians attacking a white teenager, but was it a gang of Asians attacking a white teenager or a gang of Asians attacking a white teenager?
There are plenty of reasons why a gang might want to beat a young man round the head with a hammer, not all of them racial. Who knows what the poor kid must have done/said/seen/been alleged to have done/said/seen to invoke their wrath? Unless the police have established the motives of the attackers, or have some clue about them like the use of racial abuse preceding the crime, it would be irresponsible for any news outlet to speculate, especially in such terms as “He was White. They were all Asian. Ergo the Asians killed the White for being White”. Methinks anti-Auntie’s bias is showing…