The very wonderful Jane Garvey is just too honest. Listen to her reminiscences (mp3) of May 2nd 1997, the morning after the Labour Party’s overwhelming election victory – from the Drive show of 10th May 2007.
Ah, well – I had been up for most of the night but I was doing this Five Live breakfast programme with our colleague at the time – it was a bloke called Peter Allen so – I had to get a bit of sleep, and I do remember I walked back into – we were broadcasting then from Broadcasting House in the centre of London – all very upmarket in those days – and the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles – I will always remember that (Allen laughs) – er – not that the BBC were celebrating in any way shape or form (Allen, laughing – ‘no, no, no, not at all’) – and actually – I think it’s fair to say that in the intervening years the BBC, if it was ever in love with Labour has probably fallen out of love with Labour, or learned to fall back in, or basically just learned to be in the middle somewhere which is how it should be – um – but there was always this suggestion that the BBC was full of pinkoes who couldn’t wait for Labour to get back into power – that may have been the case, who knows ? but as I say I think there’ve been a few problems along the way – wish I hadn’t started this now …
The mp3 gives you the full effect. Champagne socialists ? Hat-tips to Barnet Pete and al-dumbdown in the comments.
UPDATE – blogger (and B-BBC reader) Not A Sheep was first to pick up on Pete and dumbdowns good work.
outrageous.
What, if anything, are the Conservatives going to do about this sort of thing?
They just seem to lie back and let the BBC walk all over them.
BTW – where is Reith?
BTW – where is Reith?
Reith is here. At your service.
Frankly, I can’t see what the fuss is about.
There is nothing in the BBC’s Charter to forbid members of the BBC’s staff having voting preferences or political allegiances of their own.
What is expected of BBC staff is that they shouldn’t make those preferences plain on air by allowing their personal views to colour their reporting or presentation.
Let us imagine that by some happy stroke of chance the BBC’s staff’s voting preferences mirrored exactly those of the country at large.
And let us imagine that each Labour voter working at Broadcasting House purchased a celebratory bottle of champagne on results day.
That would mean there would have been somewhere around 1800 bottles in circulation – rather more I think than Jane G ever saw.
I’m sure you’re right John Reith, but you have to admit it does look like a bit of an own goal. The solution, presumably, is to dig up a few correspondents who recall the champagne bottle strewn corridors at the BBC the morning after the 1987 and 1992 general elections, and get ’em on the air reminiscing, sharpish. Or if that’s a bit long ago, perhaps someone could starting reminiscing about the morning after the 2000 and 2004 US presidential elections.
Reith – in the aftermath of the Conservative election victories in ’92, ’87 etc., how many empty champagne bottles were strewn around Broadcasting House?
John Reith:
Nice to see you haven’t lost your bent for disingenuousness.
The significance of “Garvey’s Gaffe” – that the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles after Labour’s 1997 victory – is utterly enormous when seen together with Robin Aitken’s disclosure that a cartoon of George W. Bush as Hitler was hung on the BBC’s main newsroom wall.
What do these two disclosures mean? They mean that the leftism within the BBC must be so utterly complete, its Labour-supporting Bush-mocking staff were confident that no news of their partisanship would leak out to the Tory press.
Bear in mind, the only reason we heard about the BBC’s admissions of its biases during its “impartiality seminar” is because they invited outsiders like John Lloyd, who subsequently spilled the beans in Prospect Magazine.
Imagine that, say, just 10 per cent of the BBC’s news and current affairs staff had exhibited signs that they might have harboured Conservative leanings. Would the remaining 90 per cent risk news leaking out to the Sunday Telegraph, Sun, or Mail, by putting up a cartoon of Hitler? I think not. Would they have been popping the corks after Labour’s landslide victory, demonstrating their unfettered political glee to the downtrodden 10 per cent Tory voters within the ranks? Of course not. The reason they had such unbridled fun is because there weren’t ANY Tories among them who might have “done a Garvey” on purpose to Peter Oborne, Simon Heffer, Richard Littlejohn etc.
It’s interesting that Robin Aitken also makes clear that he only started to reveal his objections to the BBC’s leftist ways towards the end of his time there, when he had nothing to lose – and when he did he was told to consider leaving the BBC, no doubt to make the good ship Beeb 100% Leftist again.
These two examples don’t just demonstrate the BBC’s partisanship – they demonstrate the BBC’s UTTER COMPLETE INSTITUTIONAL partisanship.
By the way Reith, do you like my new Homepage? If ever you want an article on BBC bias you now know where to find it.
John Reith:
Lee Moore:
For some idea of how the BBC reacts to a conservative election victory, we only have to read the Observer’s account of the BBC’s reporting of Bush’s election triumph of November 2004:
An almost funereal atmosphere descended over BBC news coverage of President Bush’s election win last week. Anchorman Hugh Thomas in America looked strained and tired, as if reporting the death of a senior royal; world affairs editor John Simpson also spoke in hushed tones about candidate Kerry’s defeat; and a correspondent in Boston began his piece with the words: I had been hoping to bring you news of John Kerry’s election as president…’ just after the Ohio result was called.
And this followed weeks of election trailers which painted Bush as a right-wing religious maniac who had invented the threat from Al Qaeda to distract the American people from the real issues, whatever they might be.
In case you didn’t know, The Observer is a BBC-supporting Leftwing newspaper.
“Champagne all round” versus “funereal atmosphere”. What do you say to that John?
JR
You fail to mention that Jane Garvey clearly realised her gaffe in showing BBCs love a Labour and the left and entered into a rambling attempt to dig herself out the hole she had dug. She clearly failed and knew it saying…… “I wish I hadn’t started this now”
Jonathan Boyd Hunt | Homepage | 15.05.07 – 10:51 am
The reason they had such unbridled fun is because there weren’t ANY Tories among them
JBH – while you were away there was quite a lot of discussion on various threads about Aitken’s book.
One of the issues dicussed was Aitken’s strange ‘Tory blindness’.
To illustrate this, I posted the following list of BBC staffers Aitken would have overlapped with, who were not only Conservative voters/supporters but who actually worked for the Conservative Party. Though not specific to the 97 election, the general picture holds good :
When Aitken was Business & Economics Correspondent in Scotland his oppo in the London office was Damian Green, now Conservative frontbench Home Affairs spokesman on immigration.
Aitken would also have come across Michael Simmonds who left the BBC political research unit for a job at Conservative Central Office.
Aitken worked for a while at On The Record • odd he didn’t notice Andrew Scadding who left that programme to become Head of Broadcasting for the Conservative Party.
And surely he couldn’t have missed Jo-Ann Nadler who was constantly in and out of the BBC between spells as a Central Office press officer, biographer of William Hague, campaign aide to IDS and writing ‘Too Nice to be a Tory’?
Or Robbie Gibb – yet another On the Record alumnus who went off to CCO before joining the Conservative think-tank, the Centre for Policy Studies as deputy-director.
Did he simply not notice the talented Today programme reporter Michael Gove – now Tory MP for Surrey Heath? Or that voluble young whippersnapper Nick Robinson who joined the corporation fresh from a sabbatical year as National Chairman of the Young Conservatives? Amazing.
But then • despite working in the room next door at Broadcasting House during his first stint on Today, he appears to have failed to connect with the unforgettable Rachel Johnson (sister of Boris), who was a reporter at that time on The World Tonight. And during his time in television he also seems to have missed Stephen Milligan, who resigned as BBC Europe Correspondent in 1990 to become Conservative MP for Eastleigh, and Shaun Woodward who left the BBC to become the Conservative Party’s Director of Communications.
If he’d needed friends in high places he might have popped into see Howell James, who after the BBC did a brief stint with former Tory Cabinet Minister Lord Young before becoming John Major’s Political Secretary at 10 Downing Street and masterminding (if that’s the right word) the Conservatives’ 1997 election campaign. Or the redoubtable Patricia Hodgson (former Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Islington) who throughout the 90s was the most powerful person in the BBC after John Birt • more or less running the place while Birt was buried in his management-theory handbooks.
And if Aitken really needed to pester the Governors, why wait for NuLab appointee Gavin Davies? Any time from 1996-2001 he would have found an ideological soulmate in the then Chairman, Sir Christopher Bland, a former chairman of the Bow Group and former Conservative member of the GLC and ILEA.
And there are probably loads more I haven’t thought of.
‘Only Tory in the village’ • tosh.
Garvey’s admission was revealing, but the preceding 20 minutes or so are well worth listening to as well.
Peter Allen was singing Blair’s praises, everything was great except Iraq. He thought Blairs speech was ‘very powerful and moving’ and seemed genuinely shocked when a listener mailed in to say that Blair’s speech made him want to vomit. About half an hour later they did a quick summary of listener’s responses — and reading between the lines of what they said it was clear that a lot of people were expressing their disgust at the naked pro Labour/Blair bias on show at the BBC.
John Reith,
Although you are right that Beeboids are allowed to have political views, I’m inclined to agree with JBH here. The presence of many empty bottles of champagne at the BBC points to rather more than a scattering of Labour supporters among the BBC staff whose personal politics was their own business; rather more an overwhelming majority who are overtly and passionately pro-Labour. And this is just the latest evidence of pro-Labour bias. Jim “When WE win the election” Naughtie, the Bush-Hitler poster another. Do you really expect us to believe that the BBC’s broadcasting is impartial despite this overtly politicised (largely in one direction too) working environment that they clearly operate in?
Correction above: pro-Labour bias should read “political bias”.
Heron writes:
“Correction above: pro-Labour bias should read “political bias”.”
It isn’t a pro-Labour bias so much as an anti-Conservative one. The Lib-Dems receive vastly disproportionate amounts of coverage considering their relative electoral unimportance.
Of course, as had been admitted, the BBC employs a disproportionately high number of Lib-Dems.
Needless to say, I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the Conservative Party.
Shortly after the 1997 election, a BBC editor was quoted as saying that in view of the scale of the Labour victory, the Corporation would not be criticizing the new government, but would simply “focus on the extent to which it was fulfilling its mandate.”
John Major won more overall votes in 1992 than Blair did in 1997. Needless to say, no BBC executive said anything comparable on that occasion.
The reason why the BBC is pro-Labour is because it is a public-sector organization, entirely dependent on state handouts for its parasitic existence. Only the Tories are ever likely to reform or abolish it.
“Only the Tories are ever likely to reform or abolish it.”
Correction – that should read ‘were’.
Crossbow writes:
“Shortly after the 1997 election, a BBC editor was quoted as saying that in view of the scale of the Labour victory, the Corporation would not be criticizing the new government, but would simply “focus on the extent to which it was fulfilling its mandate.””
That is an exceptionally interesting comment – do you have a reference for it?
I say that in the light of the BBC’s current obsession with Brown’s impending coronation and the minute details of the internal politics of his Labour cronies.
By that self-imposed standard, should not the party that has just been virtually wiped-out at the polls in England be subjected to the sort of detailed scrutiny usually employed by a forensic pathologist when poking around inside a rotting corpse?
John Reith:
I had just finished a long reply to your last post and then comments went down. I’m not doing it again so you’ve escaped.
By the way, you didn’t say whether you like my new Homepage and the new resource of 500+ BBC bias articles I’ve thrown together. I think you ought to counter with a collection of 500+ (Guardian) articles on how wonderful and such good value for money the BBC is.
Ah, I remember those halcyon days when the BBC’s huge Thatcherite constituency felt so free to broadcast their predelictions in the 1980s!
Apart from anything else, has anyone had a job that allowed drinking of alcohol on the premises?
Landlords excepted.
The Reith:
‘There is nothing in the BBC’s Charter to forbid members of the BBC’s staff having voting preferences or political allegiances of their own.’
But are they allowed to display those ‘voting preferences or political allegiances’ openly at work?
If you think anything will change at the BBC when/if the Tories ever get back in – think again. The most high profile Tory blogger, Iain Dale, a leading Cameronite and prospective parliamentary candidate, has defended both Garvey and Allen.
http://the-daily-pundit.blogspot.com/2007/05/iain-dale-bbc-puppet.html
We were paying these buggers while they were getting pissed at work.
Somebodys head should roll for this reason if no other.
JR would be the perfect chap to be chucking the cyanide down the air vents at Saxenhousen.
I dont know if the owners of this site can look back to when JR stated about 2years ago, in reply to one of my posts, that he was himself a Conservative voter.
Because this ‘man’ to me is an habitual lier that cant be trusted anymore then anyone else at the BBC.
THIS FACT MAY BE SAD BUT IT IS TRUE
Conservatives like Aitchen are profesionals that have managed to keep to the BBC charter, as I would expect them to do. Socialists are brain washed ideologes that believe any means justify their ends.
“Doing it for the oppressed poor of the world dont you know old chap, have a glass of tax payer paid shampers, 1966 vintage I think, very good year.”
The same reasons Pol-Pot Adolf Hitler Joe Stalin and Napoleon gave the prolls, to justify their wonderous anti-human dictatorial political theories.
The Tory party would be mad to try to reform the BBC because it can not be reformed. And trying to do so would be a political desaster, in or out of power. The BBC can only be privatised closed down or its funding radically reduced.
However a Conservative Government can use this power/threat to at least keep the BBC under some kind of controll.
Which when they were in power they had to do on an almost daily basis.
But when there is a Labour government………Nead I say more?
We all know now what the BBC is like then. We have had 10 years to see it for ourselves, and nothing JR says will change the evidence of a free thinking persons own eyes and ears.
garypowell
The time for a state broadcaster is past.
It should be put out to pasture.
The political persuasion of the government is no longer relevant, it should be ended whatever the government.
Options – privatisation or abolition, that’s it, you are spot on.
As for new call me dave, he is Conservative but not conservative.
I would not trust him in power to deal with the IBC on a day to day basis any more than I will brownstuff, in fact I would trust him rather less.
State broadcasting has had its time, it has to go.
Heron | 15.05.07 – 1:35 pm
You raise some interesting questions.
But you also make some false assumptions.
For starters:
an overwhelming majority who are overtly and passionately pro-Labour
The overwhelming majority are no such thing.
I do not know for certain the party preference of the majority of the people with whom I have worked in BBC News. That’s because they tend to keep their party allegiances to themselves – off air as well as on air.
I do know, however, the views of many of them on specific issues that come up either in editorial meetings or over a drink and can sometimes therefore make a pretty accurate guess about their politics. But sometimes, I just can’t.
Take Paxo. He’s no shrinking violet. But if I tried to arrange a pattern out of all the things he says are ‘bloody ridiculous’, ‘outrageous’, ‘pure drivel’ and so on – it would lead nowhere in terms of divining a voting intention.
I know some smartarse will pop up with some letter he’s supposed to have written at the age of 20 saying he’s a socialist, but few people have the same outlook at 50 as at 20.
I cannot easily imagine Paxo overtly or passionately voting for the party of Hazel Blears. But then look at the rough time he gave Charles Kennedy and Michael Howard.
Could you hold your hand on your heart and say you know for sure how John Simpson or Ed Stourton vote? Or how the late Nick Clarke (God rest his soul) voted? Or the political correspondent James Landale? Or Justin Webb? Or 5-Lives’s Brian Alexander? …..and so on ad infinitum…
The overwhelming majority of people in BBC News are white and middle-class. Does that inhibit their ability to remain impartial about poor brown people? No.
The whole point of the editorial oversight system and the editorial standards and guidelines is to prevent people’s personal backgrounds, prejudices or views getting between them and the camera or the microphone. 99.99% of the time it works.
Ralph | Homepage | 15.05.07 – 4:17 pm
are they allowed to display those ‘voting preferences or political allegiances’ openly at work?
It’s a free country.
But, as I say, most do not.
The Reith:
‘It’s a free country.
But, as I say, most do not.’
So BBC employees are allowed both to drink and to show signs of overt political allegiance at work?
For an ‘unbiased’ broadcaster to allow its employees to hold partisan celebrations and thus leave open the door to allegations of bias sounds remarkably unprofessional and evidence of very poor management if true.
Could you hold your hand on your heart and say you know for sure how John Simpson or Ed Stourton vote?
Nope, it could be Lib-Dim, Labour, RESPECT, Green, Socialist Worker or whatever Scargill’s mob were called. Or in the case of Simpson Fine Gael, Fine Fail or some other Irish party. That’s where he lived(lives?) – right, Reith?
But no way Tory or UKIP.
JR:
And there are probably loads more I haven’t thought of.
Why do I hear screech from scraping the bottom of the barrel. How many are these loads? Two percent? Five at a stretch. Balance means rough parity 50/50 innit?
MB | 15.05.07 – 5:59 pm
Aitken gave a list of people who had left the BBC to work in Downing St or for the Labour Party.
He used his list to imply the BBC was particularly leftist.
Aitken failed to mention any of those I named who had left the BBC to work for the Conservatives.
I can’t remember how many were on Aitken’s list. But not appreciably or significantly more than are on mine.
Balance means rough parity 50/50 innit?
Not in a three party system, no.
I can only think of one person who, in recent years, has left the BBC to work for the Lib Dems.
Here is an interesting suggestion
“Apart from privatisation (none of our UK politicians have the guts to propose it) I believe a publicly funded media concern should hold a public register which states the political affiliations of its journalists. This should include membership of political groups (e.g. from University onwards), gifts and favours received, personal interest in specific news items etc. This may seems very “Big Brother”, but after all UK politicians also have to state their interests in a special register. And the BBC is funded by the taxpayer, so it is only normal that the taxpayer knows where his or her money is going to.”
http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/025626.php
What about
Labour party donor Greg Dyke
and
“Sir Michael was knighted in January 2000 for Services to Local Government after serving as the Chief Executive of 3 major local authorities – Birmingham City Council (1994-2001); Nottinghamshire County Council (1990-1994) and Wolverhampton Borough Council (1985-1990). He spent a short period as an elected [Labour]councillor between 1980-83.”
http://www.inlogov.bham.ac.uk/staff/lyonsm.htm
Jon
Nice idear but you forget several things.
The BBC would murder the political future of any politician that even thought about it, they are the thought police after all. These people have investigative jounalists payed for by us. If they could not find some “goods” on a politician trying to sack at least half of them, they will just make them up.
The only possible way to change the BBC has to come from people like us getting off our fat butts and publicly protesting outside the BBC for a year or two. Untill not even the BBC could ignore us. Spend every night and day lobbying MPS and anyone in the media who will listen, untill we go quite literally insane, like they are.
This simply will not happen because Conservatives are to buzy working hard paying government taxes and the morgage, and are by definition not that type of people. A FACT that the BBC are very well aware of, mainly because they are that type.
“Further on he [Rod Liddle] stated the BBC’s attitude was “the result of institutionalised political correctness, every bit as corrupting as institutionalised racism”. It is the result of seminars and workshops (I remember them well) where journalists are instructed time and again that the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly are bloody important and don’t you dare suggest they aren’t”.
These seminars and workshops did not apparently contain any instructions for the BBC’s journalists to be impartial or to treat these subjects with due accuracy. The BBC clearly instructed its journalists to use the view the BBC wished to promote. In the case of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh National assembly the BBC view accorded with the EU’s policy of breaking the United Kingdom up into regions which could be more effectively controlled by Brussels. ”
http://www.bbccharterreview.org.uk/first_phase_responses/organisations/Stop_BBC_Bias_Campaign.rtf
The BBC is institutionaly leftist – regardless of the odd “conservative” who may or may not be employed by them. To get on in this kind of organisation you have to embrace the culture or you get nowhere. If you live in this kind of world long enough it is impossible to think for yourself – a bit like the cult Sweeny was hammering into.
I disagree with John Reith. Although I don’t think what Jane said was a breach of the BBC’s guidelines, nor should it be taken too seriously, I don’t think it was a wise thing to say. And I think Jane probably realised this as she was saying it.
I was working around BH at the time. I never got any champagne.
“Options – privatisation or abolition, that’s it, you are spot on.”
There is a 3rd option, which I favour.
It’s to make the BBC a mutual society owned by its subscribers.
I think that privitisation was a mistake (state ownership and nationalisation were bigger moral and financial mistakes) as it robbed the citizens. The shares should not have been sold, they should have been given to the people after all the government is there for the people, not the other way round.
John Reith is not quite correct when he says: “There is nothing in the BBC’s Charter to forbid members of the BBC’s staff having voting preferences or political allegiances of their own.”
The Charter does require the BBC to be impartial and the BBC does have conflict of interest guidelines which state the following:
“Political activity is not acceptable if it is likely to compromise the BBC’s impartiality or undermine public confidence in the BBC.”
For more see:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/advice/conflicts/4politicalactiv.shtml
I’m not sure what Reith means by “political allegiances”, but some political activity can be a problem.
> “Apart from anything else, has anyone had a job that allowed drinking of alcohol on the premises?”
Lucky Me! I worked in finance. We got to booze for free on quarterly results day.
Nice people, nice company, boring job 🙁
Baggie johnathan
Could not agree with you more.
However I am trying to be practical. Its one thing that being in your own business you learn to have to do, or you go bust, or just become terminally frustrated.
There is no practical mechanism available to any politicians for this to take place. The BBC under this government especially has just become too powerfull to be taken on by anyone not in possesion of a political death wish.
The BBC is running this country not its politicians. This has been to some extent true during and since the last WW. But now……….
I say again if we want something done WE have to do it ourselves. And there is very little that we can do, its as simple as that.
Logging BBC bias and moaning all day never got anything done anywhere, as we should all know after 4 years of this site.
The BBC is not getting better, and that is a massive massive understatement.
It is getting more confident, arragant, dictatorial, authoratarian, Anti-American, Anti-British, Anti-individual liberty, Anti- democratic, and many even more dangerous and iliberal things generally every single second of every single day.
You may not trust Cameron to be able to handle them and you may very well be right. But how can you be so sure?
That little cross with that little black pencile is all we the ordinary hardworking honest people of the UK have ever had to save us from dictatorship.
THE PARTY is currently going though a Stalinist anointment to absolute dictatorial power. And the BBC is more then contented about this quite incredible Orwellian nightmare of a FACT.
Voting for quite frankly anyone or anything but THE PARTY may not save us now but if you dont try it, how are you or me ever going to know for sure?
I think Ralph’s argument holds some weight. I work in an office and an occasional drink is allowed at special occasions i.e. Christmas; but only with permission from management. Would I get permission for champagne after a Labour election victory? Only if the boss also supports Labour. As for “corridors … strewn with empty champagne bottles”: this suggests implicit permission from the most senior level for a grand celebration. That no-one senior noticed this and put a stop to it is definite evidence of bias on an institutional level – unless similar parties were frequently ‘permitted’ for other occasions including victories for other political parties – or the account is wrong?
JR and B-BBCites seems to clash endlessly over the question of whether NuLab and LibDem types are in the majority in the BBC news rooms; however, I think this is the wrong angle.
I have met BBC news types of many political persuasions (although I have never met one that admitted to being a LibDem or far right)but the one thing they share is a youthful metropolitan outlook. Oddly Ed Stourton is not one I would include in this but this is from other friends not personal experience.
The metropolitan view seems to include an unreasonable cynicism about politicians, without reasonable scepticism, and a post-modern wish that a narrative defines a current truth rather than real experience. Not unsurprisingly Jeremy Paxman isn’t included in this description.
Thinking about the funding options, could the BBC digital signals be encoded? Buying a TV licence gets you a decoding card: good for one year. If you want to watch, you pay, others don’t.
The privitisation / abolition / mutual option would still be open for later.
John Reith:
John Simpson was and perhaps still is a long standing member of CND!!! A pro-Soviet shill organisation.
I don’t think there are too many unilateralists who vote Tory!!
Besides which, the bias is mainly orchestrated by the unseen editorial staff and managers within the news department, not the egotistical front men and women. The unseen people weald the real power and are completely unaccountable to anyone outside a very close knit BBC elite.
Of course the BBC employs a few people in it’s news department, who were/are Conservative. But the point is that the BBC is dominated by a left-wing COERCIVE culture, Therefore, anyone who does disagree with the consensus left-wing view, has to get into line with it or risk screwing their job and career. They also know the value of tokenism so that paid re-buttleists like you can write feeble excuses for the obvious bias they show.
There is also an often repeated story about members of the BBC news department crying after Kinnock fell on his arse again in’92. No Champagne that night was there Mr Reith??
Ian: that’s a very good point.
Technology is catching the license fee up. By 2012 the analogue signal will be switched off and every household will have a platform for receiving encrypted signals. A no pay, no view option would be relatively easy to implement. The government can then de-criminalise non-payment of the license fee and the BBC can turn off their viewing if they don’t pay instead of threatening leagl procedings and sending muppets around to peoples houses to threaten them.
I think we all know how James Naughtie votes!
To any one thinking for one second that I am overstateing my point.
Look to see for yourselves how many Labour MPs right now have got the balls or the political death wish. To take THE LEADER on even in a show election. So how much controll are they going to have on him once he is the Prime Minister?
Gordon Brown is Stalin in drag trying to pass himself off as a cross between Adam Smith and Winston Churchill, and is going to get away with it. With the full support of our beloved state socialist propagandists the BBC.
He has one by one destroyed the political prospects of every single Labour MP that could have ever opposed him. To the extent that even Tony Blair could hardly bring himself to endorse him even though he knows he simply has to.
He knows that if he trys to take on THE LEADER in any way his next port of call is likely to be The Scrubbs rather then the American lecture tour, him and his wife have set their money grabbing sites on for over ten years.
Gordon Brown is a life time Stalinist a fact that he used to be happy to admit.
It is clear to me at least, he has been studying his heros greatest moves since he was a school boy.
Stalin worked under Lenin untill his time was right for many years, removing any opposition from public life or life itself. It is now GBs turn and now you will all see what he has been really planning for this country all those lonely long frustrating nights.
I pray to god I am wrong which is pretty strange for an athiest but I honestly dont think I am.
Nick Reynolds said: “Although I don’t think what Jane said was a breach of the BBC’s guidelines, nor should it be taken too seriously, I don’t think it was a wise thing to say. And I think Jane probably realised this as she was saying it.”
I don’t agree that it should not be taken seriously – and yes I agree she should not have said it – but she did. The BBC is supposed to not only be impartial but surely has to be seen to be impartial. The next time she interviews anyone from the left or the right the audience will know which side she favours, impartiality goes out of the window.
The secret of an impartial interview is that the interviewers views should never be reveiled.
“I’m not sure what Reith means by “political allegiances”, but some political activity can be a problem.”
Nick – should that be “all political activity can be a problem”? Which political activity by a BBC employer is not a problem?
There is a simple way to get rid of the BBC. Starve it. If millions of people stop paying the license they will die of natural death. No licence payers, no BBC.
I don’t have a TV for the simple reason that I refuse to finance their lefty propaganda. Nor do I listen to their radio.
This is the kind of reporting the highlights the bias. How can anyone read this rubbish and say it is impartial?
“Jeremy Bowen diary: Beware Mr Blair ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6657329.stm
I loved this bit:
One of the drawbacks of travelling in the Middle East as a BBC reporter is that you quite often get mistaken for a semi official representative of the British government.
Now I wonder why that is!
“One of the drawbacks of travelling in the Middle East as a BBC reporter is that you quite often get mistaken for a semi official representative of the British government.”
I don’t think Jerramy of Arabia has this problem – his followers know who he is.
“Most of the guests were top Syrian businessmen.
One of the most successful, the owner of a company that is a big exporter to Europe ..”