Monthly Archives: January 2008

You’re a Justice Minister in one of the most violent countries in the developed world. The prisons are full AND the budgets are tight, so you need to start sending fewer people down. But your stupid voters, brainwashed by the punitive tabloids, won’t like it one little bit. Telling them they’re stupid is bad PR. How can you spin it to avoid “Thugs free to walk streets” headlines ?

You need to find a company who can market it to the stupid voters as “cutting reoffending rates”. But where can such a company be found ?

“There’s a firm at Pacific Quay in Glasgow who’ll do it for free!”

And so there was.

Interesting report carried by the BBC today on the news that Muslim police officers are being prevented from playing a role in fighting terrorism, according to a senior Muslim Officer. Supt Dal Babu was speaking at the first annual conference of the National Association of Muslim Police Officers. (Looking forward to the first conference of the National Association of Born again Christian Police Officers) Tony McNulty, the supernaturally inept Home Office Minister who attended this delightful exercise in victimhood naturally agreed with the views expressed by the Superintendent. Once again, the BBC delights in reporting how unfair our institutions are to followers of the Religion of Peace. But why is effective policing to be determined on a racial or religious head count? Shouldn’t it be a question of ensuring the most able officers be promoted to ensure that the Islamic Jihadists are tracked down before they can repeat what happened on 7/7? Are we really to believe that some sort of institutional bias is holding back all these intrepid Muslim officers? Why is is that this entire article pushes the one view – namely that Muslim police officers are being discriminated against? Isn’t this just more instance of the promotion of victimhood through the obliging BBC prism?

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may be moderated.

What could be more innocent than the BBC obtaining substantial low-interest loans from the European Unions’ “long-term financial institution”? I mean it’s not as if the fact that the BBC is now in hock to the tune of £141m to the European Investment Bank might in any way cloud its nominal neutrality on the topic of the EU, is it? You can read the gory details over on EU Referendum. I wonder at the mindset that prevails at the highest level in the BBC in that it fails to see how the pursuit of such a loan clearly jeopardises the perception of BBC impartiality on EU issues. The EIB, like it’s Euro-weenie masters, is committed to bringing about ever closer convergence of the Euro-superstate. Borrowing this large sum from it creates the impression that the BBC may itself share a similar agenda, as any follower of its “coverage” (Propaganda is a much more accurate term here, I feel) will know. It is said that he who pays the piper calls the tune. In this case, the BBC’s squeaks of protestations of innocence at this deal seem designed to stop us hearing the relentless pro-EU tune it plays.

The cliched definition of a news story is that “man bites dog!

I laughed at this BBC headline on it’s Breaking News “Man admits plot to behead soldier”. This relates to a vicious plot to kidnap and behead a British soldier. The BBC tells us that this “man” Parviz Khan (an unemployed charity worker, natch. Nice to see he had a caring sharing side) has pleaded guilty to wanting to enact his very own decapitation scene, using an unnamed Muslim British soldier as his victim. Yeah, well we already know just how barbaric the more enthusiastic adherents of the Religion of Peace can be, but what surprises me is why the BBC just cannot come out and state that Parviz himself is a devout Muslim. How about a head-line that states “Muslim admits plot to behead Muslim soldier”? Is this not pertinent to the fact that the Jihad section of the Religion of Peace is as much a threat to those many decent Muslims, some of whom serve in our armed forces, as they are to us infidels? But then again, might that spoil the BBC narrative that all of Islam is pitched against us, when in fact it is obvious that the Jihadi are a threat to every civilised person.

With Al- Beeb, it is always necesary to look out for the missing words in their allegedly fair and balanced reporting. Often these words are missing for a very good reason and I have a small example to share with you today. In this BBC report on the background of the four new “Victims Commissioners” created by the Northern Ireland devolved administration we read about Patricia McBride “whose brother was killed by the SAS.” The BBC chooses not to amplify on how this killing took place but instead leaves the impression that this was just one more death during the long decades of violence. How did he meet his end? Was he perhaps strolling down the street minding his own business when he was suddenly cut down by those bad SAS guys?

Not quite. You see Patricia McBride’s brother, Tony, was an IRA terrorist. He was on an active terror mission in 1982 when he was intercepted by the SAS and killed before he could bring about the murder of others. I would have thought this was more than a mere detail but it is left out of the account for very good reason. To have a neo-Orwellian Victims Commissioner who is there by virtue of the fact that her brother himself belonged to an organisation that created thousands of victims might be a hard sell if openly stated. So better to cloak it and then imply a form of moral relativism between terrorist and terrorised. Since the BBC itself has such trouble in defining a terrorist, this is perhaps understandable, after all moral relativists and moral bankrupts have so much in common.

When it comes to our political class, I think the best maxim to remember is that if you see their lips moving, you know that they are lying. Problem is that their contempt for us is sometimes hard to fully appreciate as is clear in the news that was reported the other day.

You will remember the favourable headlines such as “MP’s choose sub-inflation pay rise” which greeted the decision taken in Parliament following a call by Commons leader Harriet Harman for “discipline”. Our ever so modest MP’s voted themselves a mere 1.9% pay increase even though the..ahem..Independent Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) had recommended a 2.56% salary rise from £60,277 to £61,820. How more responsible could our elected representatives be?

Quite a lot as it happens. You see along with the 1.9% increase in salary, they also voted themselves another £12 million in a year to further gild their already gold-plated pension scheme and also insisted that expense claims WITHOUT receipts be accepted.
Funny old world, isn’t it? The pigs plunge their snouts in the trough and yet it is presented to us as modesty incarnate!

Hat-tip to Disinterring Bad News.