One of the areas of BBC activity that causes me most concern is its active role in sanitising terrorism. Take this charming photocall of IRA terrorist godfather Martin McGuinness sitting between Potto and Hilda. Who are Potto and Hilda? Well, they aren’t members of Sinn Fein (Then again..) but they the stars of the new BBC children’s programme, Sesame Tree, This local version of Sesame Street was launched in Belfast yesterday. The new series swaps the original New York street setting for the titular tree, and aims to showcase ..ugh…”diversity and promote respect and understanding”through the characters’ adventures with local schoolchildren. The programme is linked to the revised Northern Ireland statutory curriculum, and will encourage children to explore and appreciate the world around them.
Chuckle Brother McGuinness recently explained how he had wished to kill every British soldier in Londonderry back in 1972, and remains vague as to how many the IRA unit under his command actually DID kill. The way in which the BBC uses something as innocuous as a Sesame Street spin-off to help improve the image of a self-confessed IRA terrorist McGuinness is an absolute disgrace and it is a role that the local BBC here in Northern Ireland have turned into an art form. Our license-fee is funding aPR make-over for monsters such as McGuinnness.
Did McGuiness not bring about the end of NI’s successful grammar school system? Even when he’s not causing murder, he’s still ruining the country. Not that the BBC sees anything wrong with that.
They celebrate the imminent demise of our grammar schools – after all, we need to stop academic excellence if we are to move into a bright future…
Hillary Clinton: “I helped bring peace to Northern Ireland”.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,336588,00.html
BBC’s Washington correspondent Justin Webb: David Trimble “has no reason to diminish her role.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/justinwebb/2008/03/must_spitzer_go.html#commentsanchor
David Trimble: “Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a “wee bit silly” for exaggerating the part she played, according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/08/wuspols108.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox
Priceless.
Marc,
I was also involved at that time with the “peace process” and assure you that whilst I may have my disagreements with Trimble, on this one he is 100% right. Justin Webb knows better, of course, since he knows nothing.
David,
The PIRA and its political arm won the war, even though by the early 90s the security forces had them licked! With a little more courage the British government could have destroyed the PIRA root and branch BUT they didnt. The political establishment turned victory into defeat!
The PIRA turncoats were talking of unconditional surrender within months but rather than capitilise on the fantastic work of the security services like the FRU and SAS and NI SB etc the government gave in and gave the beaten PIRA everthing they wanted and more! They left the loyalists swinging in the wind!
Old proverb,
Its far better to be an enemy of the English!
If you are a friend they will try to sell you and if are an enemy they will try to buy you!
The PIRA high command must have pissed themselves laughing at the stupidity of the British negotiators.
Its far better to be an enemy of the English.
If you are a friend they will sell you, and if you are an enemy they will try to buy you.
Cassandra
Absolute rubbish, its got nothing to do with the English. They are a people. Ordinary people do not EVER do those types of things. The English are among the nicest most loyal people on earth.
HOWEVER
If you substitute English with BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT then your quote is one of the best and most well documented historical truisms ever made.
The mouthpiece of which being THE BB bloody C.
All part of the new overtly political BBC charter, ‘sustaining Britain’s communities’.
Expect a LOT more of this stuff.
Cassandra
Also consider this.
I have spoken to several members of the Provisional IRA since the conflict apparently ended. Some of the things they have told me I could not possible publish anywhere never mind on this site.
In fact I found it hard to believe myself at the time. However events since have confirmed to me that they were indeed telling me the truth, certainly as they saw things.
It is one of the main reasons why I distrust to say the least, the BBC with a passion that can not be overstated.
The pink one is potto, the fluffy big eared one is Hilda, and the one in the middle is known locally as ‘shifty’.
“Cassandra | 11.03.08 – 8:36 pm |”
odd you should say that, considering that the IRA managed to detonate its largest ever bomb , in manchester – in 1996…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Manchester_bombing
now that takes some serious logistics and planning.
yes , maybe the british government did cave in. but i remember the mood of the average briton at the time – there wasnt anger at the irish. it was more anger at the british establishment for letting this festering sore go on for so long. most britons couldnt give a damn if northern ireland was british or not.
mr vance – getting back to the content of your blogpost…
if you look at that mcguiness photo, it can equally piss off republicans.
what’s he doing going native and promoting a BRITISH broadcasting corporation? nice cushy job comes above principles i guess.
Mr Orange:
Yes, odd that anyone might invite the Deputy First Minister of the Province to an official celebration. We can only presume that neither Dr Paisley nor, of course, yourself were free to do the honours.
We all appreciate your efforts to demand that the BBC ignore the wishes of the Northern Irish electorate, expressed as long ago as….ooooh, last year, wasn’t it?
And what percentage of the Ulster electorate were willing to endorse your McGuinness-free vision?
Ah, yes: 1.5 per cent.
Biased BBC: Mister One-Point-Five-Per-Cent
Archduke
So why did the British establishment let this festering sore go on for so long? GOOD QUESTION that requires an answer.
The British especially the English people did not and still do not give a flying fuck whether NI is part of the UK or not, as you rightly say.
The BBC colluded with the PIRA to promote the republican cause, while it was murdering innocent TV tax payers ie its own customers, so I am told.
The BBC is part of the British and world establishment. Controlled and monitored by the said establishments secret service industries.
The BBC has repeatedly shown us that it can and does continually lie to the entire worlds population.
Just 3 examples off the top of my head.
It can keep silly secrets like, the leader of the Lib/Dems being a hopeless drunk, from the public.
It can if it is instructed to, keep slightly more important things secret. Like Prince Hewitt playing boy solders in the middle east from the world for months.
It can methodically and systematically keep other far far far more important secrets like CO2=MMGW being a massive long planned, New World Order scam of incredibly massive proportions. That if acted on WILL without any logical doubt, result in more death disease poverty and chaos then global warming ever could. From the public for many years, if not decades.
So Archduke you are an Irish republican. What do you think the people that control The BBC have been up to since 1974 at least with respects to the NI issue?
I propose that it has in reality been doing the exact bidding of its masters. It would of cause be very stupid if it did not.
Which is the deliberate calculated promotion of disorder murder and chaos within the British Isles for the express purpose of repressing the entire people of these Islands, for their own short and long term ends.
I would be very interested to know your considered opinion. Because you should know better then most, that the vast majority of ordinary Catholic and Protestant Irish people would generally not harm a fly unless it landed in their beer.
the bbc was very much part of the stirring up proccess. and it indirectly extended the war for another 30 years more than necessary.
i dont know the reasons. but i do know that it was part of the wider US v USSR conflict , considering how many marxists infiltrated the bbc and the civil service. it was in their interest to keep that war going.
and for that , i fucking hate the bbc. with a vengeance.
for the record – my background (but not me , as i was too young) is official IRA.
we declared a ceasefire in 1973.
the provo nutters decided to go on. encouraged by the nutters in the left in britain.
ever wonder why the bbc is held in such utter contempt in ireland? and it is .. just ask people.. there’s your answer…
by the way – i grew up in an environment where my neighbours were taken out and shot. in southern ireland. there was a dirty war going on back then.
and i sure as fuck dont want to go back to that. mcguiness doing sesame street is a price worth paying to stop that.
sorry. but thats reality. and i’m glad its over.
Good can never come from evil. Facilitating murderers in government is wrong and the BBC are to their scrawny necks in such facilitation.
God forbid that efforts should be made to suggest to NI kids that Catholics/Prods are human beings rather than evil satanist filth. What the place really needs is some Palestinian style indoctrination to ensure that the place remains a hate filled economic basket case (propped up by the rest of us) for eternity.
The Republicans clearly didn’t share your analysis • in March 2001 they exploded a bomb bang outside the BBC News Centre.
Mr Orange:
Good can never come from evil. Facilitating murderers in government is wrong and the BBC are to their scrawny necks in such facilitation.
Mr O: Denial is a bad place to be.
Breathe deeply. Now try to say these words:
1. There was an election. A very recent election.
2. The electorate knew all about the backgrounds of the candidates and the parties.
3. They chose Sinn Fein above all others, except the DUP.
4. DUP & Sinn Fein are the democratic choices of the Northern Irish people.
5. Only 1.5% of Ulster was prepared to back me.
6. I know this hurts, and they are wrong, but I can hardly blame the BBC for treating McGuinness as what he is – the second most senior Northern Irish politician.
7. If I carry on like this, even my close friends will doubt the advisability of letting me campaign against BBC Bias.
Biased BBC: 98.5% of the population is wrong.
Cockney – is there really no problem with the BBC acting as an arm of government policy?
Incidentally, the story is awful. The press release is actually a more sober account.
http://www.sesameworkshop.org/aboutus/inside_press.php?contentId=19063113
I agree with everything said except “Like Prince Hewitt playing boy solders in the middle east” – Prince Harry is clearly the love child of Nicholas Witchell.
Oh and look! The BBC did the same for Nelson Mandela that they do for McGuiness:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/19914.stm
Hugh, the whole point of having a public broadcaster is that it provides programming of benefit to the public good that isn’t otherwise provided by the market. My opinion is that only a f**king idiot would suggest that British citizens not killing each other isn’t of benefit to the public good – it goes beyond a ‘government policy’. I’m not sure if Sesame Street will help future generations of NI youth rub along better than the last couple but frankly anything is worth a try.
Fair enough. I still don’t like the idea of the BBC deciding which areas of government policy are so uncontentious that there’s no problem for them to play an active role, though.
Hugh | 12.03.08 – 1:03 pm
On your wider point – isn’ there a distinction to be made between ‘Government policy’ in the sense of policy advocated by the Labour Party as proposals for the future and ‘Government policy’ in the sense of something debated in/voted upon/ already decided by Parliament?
Isn’t the latter often better thought of as ‘the law of the land’. And even when it isn’t literally so (i.e. when it’s not so much a statute as a policy direction) doesn’t it still have an authority that ‘party policy’ lacks?
What’s wrong with the BBC co-operating with initiatives that Parliament has endorsed?
You wouldn’t (I’m guessing….) insist the BBC stood aloof from the Open University, for instance?
The BBC needs protection from editorial interference from Government and kept separate from parliament.
Likewise the BBC should refrain from poking it’s nose into business that does not concern it, otherwise it will come under threat of reform from future governments.
Archduke
Good answer and exactly what I expected you to say.
However give it a bit more serious thought, and I am sure you will feel compelled to understand it all had very little to do with the Cold War.
A war that not only never happened, but cost many trillions of our hard earned cash. It never was going to either. This fact if it is was not so obvious at the time. Should be by now, if you think about it enough.
If any of you commenters out there would like BBC bias towards nu Labour directly at your finger tips;
Well here we go….
http://www.labour-watch.com/bbcbias.htm
Oh look, JR is here! Why has he not popped in for a visit to the thread on the dreadful White Girl?
The NuLab/BBC links are set out in Lance Price’s book on being a Number 10 spin doctor. Treats the Beeb as a wholly-owned subsidiary of NuLab. Which is what it is, apart from the Trots/Gramscians.
hillhunt,
Still going for the percentage argument with the less than 0.001% that ever read or comment on your blog I see.
Some would call you brave, perhaps less than 0.001% would.
The rest would just call you foolish, that’s over 99.999%.
I hope you have seen this:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=4&x_outlet=12&x_article=1464
On Friday, March 7, 2008, the BBC’s World News with Jonathan Charles (seen in the U.S. on PBS stations as part of BBC America) aired footage purporting to show the demolition and burning of a house that belongs to the family of Ala Abu Dheim, the terrorist who murdered eight students and wounded nine others in the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva (Rabbinical Seminary) .
Against footage of a bulldozer destroying a burning home, BBC reporter Nick Miles was heard in voiceover proclaiming:
In the hours after the attack, Israeli bulldozers destroyed his [the terrorist’s] family home. Later, his mourners set up Hamas and Islamic Jihad banners nearby.
But, in fact, the BBC allegation is patently false. The film clip could not possibly have been of the terrorist’s family home, as it is still standing (as of March 12) and, together with the nearby public mourning tent erected by the family, serves as a shrine dedicated to the “martyred” terrorist.
After being ordered by Israeli police, Palestinians take down flags used by the Islamic group Hamas in front of the home of Alaa Abu Dheim, who family members say shot and killed eight Israelis at a rabbinical seminary Thursday, in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber, Friday March 7, 2008. (AP Photo/Atta Awisat)
That such a shrine is still allowed to remain in place has, in fact, prompted public outrage among Israelis and members of Knesset across the political spectrum. On Monday, March 10 • three days after the report aired • Knesset speaker Dalia Itzik (Labor) petitioned the Attorney General to order the demolition of the public tent and the terrorist’s family home.
(Update, March 12: Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter has asked police to take the appropriate legal steps to allow them to demolish the home, and the Defense Ministry has been asked to clarify what legal steps must be taken. Dichter said, “the demolition of any home, particularly in Jerusalem, requires several legal examinations. I hope that eventually the justice system will allow such a move, but without its authorization we cannot carry it out.” Yediot Aharonot)
John Reith: Welcome back.
I see what you’re saying but I think that’s a fairly dodgy distinction to draw, particularly given the massive majorities Labour have had in recent years. “Debated in/voted upon/ already decided by Parliament?” would include the Iraq war it’s worth mentioning, and that leads to another point: I don’t think you can have it both ways – scrupulously non partisan when it comes to something like the attitude to Hamas, where we mustn’t take sides, despite settled Government policy here, and then fully supportive on other areas. As for Open University the question is if it were starting now would you design in an ambiguous role for the BBC given the concerns over independence.
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=4&x_outlet=12&x_article=1464
Since there wasn’t a general thread for the day, I thought that I would post this here as it looks like that the BBC has been caught red handed as the Palistinian propagandists that they are.
Fabricating a video story from wholecloth to demonize the Israelis, how depraved are these people?
For the hundreth time, a Palistinian thug attacks an Israeli school, mall or bus and the BBC looks for a way to use it to gain sympathy for them and demonize Israel.
Nobody scrolls up anymore?
I mean it’s only two above.
OT. The Museum of Curiosity.
A show i listened to tonight, radio4 6.30, absolutely staggering, unbelievable unbalanced. The complete and utter contempt for anything British is incredible. Its like some montage of BBC cliches.
Something related:
New research:
“Are Iraqi Insurgents Emboldened by Antiwar Reporting?”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20080312/ts_usnews/areiraqiinsurgentsemboldenedbyantiwarreporting
I’m flabbergasted by the ridiculous nature of this blog topic. It’s not about BBC bias, it’s David Vance being outraged that the BBC is not reflecting his own viewpoint.
That’s either incredibly arrogant, or monumentally stupid. Quite possibly both.
Matt:
I’m flabbergasted by the ridiculous nature of this blog topic. It’s not about BBC bias, it’s David Vance being outraged that the BBC is not reflecting his own viewpoint.
It might, nevertheless, help the BBC’s cause if it did try to soft-soap such an eminent campaigner for, um, balance.
Could I suggest a few series the Boibeeds could launch which might keep him sweet?
1. Vancey’s Kitchen Nightmares: In which our Davey loses his rag trying to persuade various restaurateurs to market his signature dishes – Duck a l’Orange; Orange Sorbet; Bittermint Mousse and Orange Pekoe Tea.
2. Vancey’s Christian Nightmares: In which he points out all the many ways that the Boibeeds are persecuting Christians, most of them imaginary. (Only the right sort of Christians need apply.)
3. Vancey’s Nightmare Christians: A flattering profile of homophobic bigots prepared to stick it to the BBC and justify another silly rant from Dave.
.
Matt
Glad to hear that. Whenever I see a preening murderer presented as a charming man by the BBC, I get irate. Got it? Maybe if YOU had suffered from IRA terrorism you too might feel this. Just a pity Goebbels died too young- I can just imagine him guesting on C-BBC.
Matt
As leader of the IRA in Londonderry McGuinness would have sanctioned, overseen, assisted in many a murder, maiming, or destruction of peoples property and livliehoods. It is a fair bet he did not get into the post without getting his hands dirty. Some of the IRA atrocities included shooting a nineteen year old single mother for doing a part time job collecting census forms and a human bomb forced to drive a van bomb while his family were held with a gun at there heads.
How do you think the victims and survivors feel seeing this slime paraded on a children’s TV show?
nrg:
How do you think the victims and survivors feel seeing this slime paraded on a children’s TV show?
Fair point. But appearing on a TV show is hardly the point.
It was the Ulster population which voted McGuinness into power, having already endorsed the peace process which allowed this to happen.
He is now the province’s second most senior public official. He was until recently the Minister of Education. Are you saying the BBC should not recognise his position or report on his official duties?
That is not what I said, but I will say that your whine seems to have come from some liberal / terror propaganda manual or other. Maybe it is not your fault, you might not have been shown the other side of the story. (not on the BBC anyway!)
I am saying that the BBC seek out and promote and provide propaganda for anti-British terror merchants like this. That is in part why people vote for them.
nrg;
I am saying that the BBC seek out and promote and provide propaganda for anti-British terror merchants like this. That is in part why people vote for them.
Even is this is so – and frankly it ain’t – it does not get us round the essential question I asked above:
He is now the province’s second most senior public official. He was until recently the Minister of Education. Are you saying the BBC should not recognise his position or report on his official duties?
Appearing on a BBC is exactly the point. Sanitising murder is the name of the game. Spot on NRG.
Mr Orange:
Y-e-e-e-s.
But just to stick to the point for a second:
Are you saying the BBC should not recognise his position or report on his official duties?
I take it from the Mr. Orange crack that you are a Mr. Green (with blood red hands?)
Anyway, I’ll write this slowly, recognising his official position is one thing, providing propaganda and promotion is another.
If you think the endless PR the BBc has provided for SF / IRA over the years has not contributed to voting, then you
a. don’t watch BBC in Northern Ireland
b. support BBC / IRA colusion (can we have a public enquiry into that one pelase)
c. don’t watch TV at all (in which case this is not your board at all)
d. are a wee bit dim
nrg:
My green credentials are suspect, though I do try to re-cycle my glass and plastic bottles.
I’m very fond of Reservoir Dogs. Is that so wrong?
Good point on the BBC’s love of terrorism, though. The BBC must be in love with the IRA. Why else would the boyos have tried to blow up BBC headquarters?
.
Good question, the answers are simple
1. to get publicity. placing the bomb close to the BBC makes it easy for the Beeboids to get the story and it gives them a bit of a thrill and the excuse to run it with promience and lots of apologists to come on talk.
2. It was hardly of the scale of Canary Wharf, Manchester, Le Mon, Enniskillen, or Banbridge. It was an attention getter.
3. I think that bomb was a Real IRA, a break away fraction (Splitters!). That was the lot that slaughtered 28 innocent shoppers in Omagh so we know they could have built a bigger bomb if real (excuse pun) harm was meant to the Beeboids.
ps – with you on the bottles (much to David’s constanation), but prefer Pulp Fiction.