. Did anyone else hear the simpering publicity that Gordon Brown’s visit to the USA is being afforded by Al-Beeb? I was amused to hear the BBC parrot that Brown will invoke “memories of JFK” when he stands beside Edward Kennedy today and urges the US to embrace the global world. A few points here; 1/ Given the size of Teddy Kennedy, I’m surprised that there is the space to stand beside him! and 2/ How patronising is Brown’s “advice” to the current Presidency and those MILLIONS who voted for George Bush? The BBC is pulling out all the stops to pretend that Brown is making any impact in the States when it is obvious that it is the visit by the Pope (an elected leader, unlike Brown or Bush, natch) which is creating the real headlines.
It is a desperate attempt to build up Brown. He’s been their man since 1994 after all.
Brown, famously, does not have a driving licence – I hope he isn’t thinking of taking any lessons from Teddy Kennedy…
As I pointed out yesterday. Cameron made a speech that got 5.4 seconds on the BBC. McBean gets a good 10 minutes. During the run up to an election, the BBC should be more balanced.
Brown and the beeb will continue alienating us from the Anglosphere…much better to beg for scraps from the tables of the new third world elite….such a wonderful reversal of roles for a once Great Britain…makes the lefties all warm and fuzzy.I would imagine various politicians in America if aware of Gordo at all would know he is a dead man walking so not a person to make any attempt to cultivate.
The McBean JONAH effect strikes the USA resulting in an earthquake!
Quick America, eject the Jonah before his curse blights your nation!
Everywhere McBean goes something bad is bound to happen!
Martin – not only did they give Cameron 5 seconds on the Six (as those beeboids like to call it) – they also gave an equivalent slot to UKIP – as you pointed out. The message – the Tories are just a little fringe party on a level with UKIP. In fact judging from the BBC coverage of the Conservatives you’d never know they are a major political party who are leading in the polls. If a Conservative does happen to get a brief interview – they rush on a LibDem or a Green for an equal slot. That’s the BBCs idea of ‘balance’. I really don’t know why the Tories don’t complain. I know the pitfulls, but the BBC should not be allowed to get away with this.
Oscar: Yes, I know that McBean meeting the President etc has to be reportd in detail, but as we are only a couple of weeks away from a local election I though the broadcasters had to be more “balanced” in their output during this period?
For example, George Galloway has been removed from Talksport radio for the period leading up to the local elections.
But the BBC seem to be able to show their bias without any comeback.
McBean and the President has been a nauseating parade. I noticed that ITV did not succumb to the epic brown nosing of the BBC – nor did C4. It was not obligatory whatsoever. But – as you say – they get away with it. As people here have continually pointed out – the complaints system is a joke. Just as completely biased and deceitful as the rest of the Corporation.
Gordon “Edgar the Bug” Brown will have done himself more harm than good with his trip to America.It is the voters here that count.These same voters are seeing large scale job loses,negative equity,house repossessions,runaway inflation,decimated pensions,mass immigration,rising violent crime.
Sorry Gordon will be seen to be all coats and no knickers.
Nick Robinson’s extended piece on the Radio 4 Toady programme from around 08:13 was an almost undiluted hymn of praise to Gordon Brown including previewing his “letter to America”.
I feel almost physically sick at the way the BBC promote Gordon Brown, they are no better than the propaganda arm of this Labour government; scum is not too strong a word to describe the BBC.
I shall look forward to seeing that picture of the alabaster Great Orca and his lunch by his side.
The three British prime MInisters Americans have ever heard of…
1. Winston Churchill
2. Margaret Thatcher
3. Err, that’s it, unless you count Tony Blair (vaguely)
I also have had the honor of inducing KSFO Talk Radio (San Francisco) to play “Gordon is a Moron” by Jilted John, after a particularly dumb comment by our flabby PM that actually got some play in the States in 07.
“These same voters are seeing large scale job loses,negative equity,house repossessions,runaway inflation”
yeeees, which is why he’s in the US having talks on the global financial system – or is that unrelated to the above in your world. Sure he’s a hypocrite given the wholly unprudent approach to economic management of the last few years, but trying too late is better than not trying at all.
I’m confused. On ITV the other night they had a story about this bloke called Gordon Brown, and he was having all sorts of problems. He was embarrassed by being overshadowed by the Pope’s visit to the US, had lots of problems at home, including criticism by Labour politicians, and was presiding over unparalleled problems in the UK economy.
On the BBC however, there was some other bloke, also called Gordon Brown, but apparently an international statesman, cementing and strengthening relationships with the US, and all the presidential candidates were treated to a meeting with him. No mention of any problems at home at all, just lots of flattering video footage and soundbites.
These two Gordon Browns looked very similar, but they are obviously two entirely different people.
Fun fact: JFK’s policies are much closer to GWB’s policies than to Ted Kennedy’s. (I suppose there are people at the BBC who know that, but I am not sure anyone is allowed to say it on the air.)
And what about that smile?
I think it was Jeremy Hardy (who I normally can’t stand) who said that Gordon Brown’s smile makes him look like an extra from The Wicker Man.
On Sky News just now John Craig did an excellent piece pointing out that when McBean brought in the 22 down to 20p tax cut it was McLiebour MPs that cheered him and jered at the Tories.
Now the English MPs see that their party might get a kicking on May 1st (no elections in Scotland) they are kicking up a fuss.
No chance of McBBC reporting that I guess. In fact I’m surprised the BBC haven’t blamed the evil Tories. Or did I miss that?
I’m glad someone else has spotted THAT SMILE! I feel slightly ill when I see it.
(And is there any chance of banning the work ‘Natch’ from this blog?)
The BBC does not know what to broadcast, the Pope preaching to his flock in America of which 25 per cent are Roman Catholics (religious fundamentalists according to the BBC myth) standing next to Bush (only nine moths left in office according to the BBC) and so religion and Bush (two BBC arch enemies) appear on cordial terms.
Then there’s ZIM-HOWBOREDAREWE, the BBC wants to back Brown, (great statesman) while mocking our colonial past, only to find that MUGHARDAREWE has beaten them to it. Savour the moment.
Liberals in a quandary, always a delicious sight, especially BBC ones, when is Simpson going to pontificate on this impasse?.
“yeeees, which is why he’s in the US having talks on the global financial system – or is that unrelated to the above in your world.”
Pity Gordon “Edgar the Bug” Brown knows fuck all about the global financial system.
You claim to be in the magic monet circles,how safe is your world now Cockers?
Nice point by Con Coughlin in the Telegraph:
“To replace Mr Blair in the affections of both the White House and middle America was always going to be a tough call, but Mr Brown’s performance has not helped his cause.
He may have very good political reasons for wishing to keep his distance from Mr Bush, for whom most of the Labour Party entertain a visceral hatred, but that did not excuse his behaviour at Camp David last summer when, during his first official get together with the American president, he gave the clear impression that he would far rather be somewhere else.
Mr Brown was at it again during the recent Nato summit in Bucharest earlier this month, where his encounters with Mr Bush were formal but never matched the natural warmth of the President’s dealings with Mr Blair.
Mr Bush, who is not the kind of person to suffer any perceived slight to the dignity of his office, has got revenge on Mr Brown by conveniently arranging for him to make his second visit to the United States while the country is obsessed with the presence of Pope Benedict XVI. If Mr Brown feels awkward meeting the American president, then that’s fine by Mr Bush. He’ll be busy entertaining His Holiness the Pope.”
I thought President Bush was supposed to be stooooopid?
Phil: McBean is a frigging coward. He bottled the Lisbon treaty signing as well.
Everyone seems to have forgotten that before he became McBean was was in fact McCavity the cat, who when the going got tough, he ran away and hid.
Nothing has changed.
Take his 2p tax cut. He tried to hide the fact the 10% tax band had been abolished last year and the thicko McLiebour droids all fell for it.
The Tories pointed out that the lower paid would be worse off.
What annoyed me was how the Tories missed this one. You’d have thought they would have thought something up (like they did with inheritance tax) so as soon as McBean got found out the Tories could have say rasied the level at which the poorest pay tax or something. After all they had a year to prepare for it.
They really could have stuck the knife in and even the Beeboids wouldn’t have been able to save McBean. Remember how the BBC tried to make the Tories look bad when they announced their inheritance tax thing last year? It failed. People liked it.
Is Mr. Brown actually in the US? He must be using a Romulan cloaking device.
But can anyone explain why he is meeting with both Hillary and Obama? I know I’m supposed to swallow the crap story that Brown’s meeting with the various candidates now will help establish a good relationship with whoever becomes President. But couldn’t he have waited until we have the actual nominees set?
What sort of business is Mr. Brown up to? I know we’re all supposed to accept that this is the most important election in the history of mankind, but why isn’t anybody asking this question? Or, if this is just a chance for Brown to suck up to all three of them, with hopes of future favors or something, then can we expect certain talking heads to start calling Brown a poodle as well?
The Labour propaganda unit AKA the BBC is busy as ever polishing turds.
This morning on BBC World, not a word about Gordon is a moron in the US. Instead we had Justin Webb at Fort Leavenworth, the US Army Combined Arms Centre.
Webb was a great pains to explain to us simple viewers the the US Army is leaning some tough lessons in Iraq and that they are making plenty of mistakes. To ‘prove’ his point he trots in a Brit Army Major General whose over there to tell the Yanks how it should be done.
Well here’s the reality check the the BBC won’t tell you about.
Gordon Brown is grilled in America over Iraq
The Prime Minister faced questions over the decision for British troops not to get involved in the recent fighting in the city of Basra.
Critics warned that his mishandling of the troop withdrawal had damaged Anglo-American relations.
On US radio, Mr Brown was repeatedly asked about the lack of British help on the ground in Basra during the violence. The Prime Minister said that troops were there to help train the Iraqis and to assist local forces with air support.
The New York Times reported that the refusal of British ground troops to help Iraqi forces struggling to regain control of Basra was “deeply embarrassing for Britain”.
It said that Mr Brown’s decision to order soldiers out of the city and his announcement that troop numbers will be halved by the spring had “prompted barely muted disdain in some quarters of the Bush administration”
So Gordon the moron got a good kicking on air in the US and the BBC doesn’t see fir to report it. The article goes on:
Col Jorge Mendonca, who commanded the only battle group in Basra as the insurgency began in 2003, said: “History will judge, but I think that the lasting impression will be that the British did not pull their weight in Iraq in the way the Americans wanted them to.”
Col Richard Kemp, who commanded forces in Afghanistan, said Britain’s relationship with America had been “badly damaged” over mistakes in Iraq.
He added: “I think we left Basra with indecent haste. I think we also failed to face up to what was happening with the insurgency because we were terrified of taking casualties.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/18/wbrown118.xml
So there you have it. A BBC armchair warrior inventing a story to hide reality that two former British commanders are highlighting.
The turd polishing bit is here:
Brown urges US action on economy
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7353824.stm
Does he bollocks BBC
can anyone explain why he is meeting with both Hillary and Obama?
If he met McCain but neither of the Dems, he’s be accused of dissing the Dems and being a Republican poodle.
If he met McCain and only one of the Dems, the other Dem might bear a grudge.
If he met nobody at all, he’s look like a featherweight at home and internationally.
meeting all 3 is a no-brainer.
I notice Sky & BBC are covering McBeans speach and being introduced by the IRA supporting drunk coward who left a woman to drown.
Checking out Fox and CNN, Fox are covering the Pop and the recall of baby bottles and CNN are talking about the weather.
Says it all.
Anonymous | 18.04.08 – 5:47 pm |
meeting all 3 is a no-brainer.
Nonsense. He shouldn’t be meeting with any of them now. There’s really no point in meeting with any candidate or nominee, full stop. There is value only in meeting with the next President-elect. There is plenty of time between the election and the inauguration to meet with the next President.
Or will you now tell me that Mr. Brown won’t have a moment to spare between November and January to pop over for a personal meeting, or that the winner won’t be invited down to No. 10?
This is pointless sucking up right now. I don’t have my Suspicious Cynic hat on right now, or I’d be even more curious. What’s he going to do, wink at each one at tell them he hopes they win?
Brown has had positive (for him) coverage on the news every day now for at least 10 days. I think the BBC have given him an automatic nightly slot on their news programmes.
He just won’t go away.
The biggest joke is the BBC trying to compare McBean to JFK. JFK was a war hero, Mcbean is a fat one eyed coward.
Di you hear Fiona Bruce’s voice go up to make the story of McBean sound interesting when she introduced it? What a joke.
This picture with George Bush says it all
I can’t find them but there are three other pictures with the presidential hopefuls in the SUN today.The body language is priceless.
If the visit was about the global economy where was the chancellor of the Exchequer? If it was a diplomatic visit,where was the Foreign Secretary?
One clear indication of the visit clashing with that of the Pope ,is that Whitehall has cut Edgar the Bug Brown loose to make a fool of himself.
“The biggest joke is the BBC trying to compare McBean to JFK. JFK was a war hero, Mcbean is a fat one eyed coward.” Anon.
Ha ha…
And I suppose he holds court in the mythic Hamelot with his Shites of the Round Table.
Brown urges US action on economy
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7353824.stm
Does he bollocks BBC
TPO | 18.04.08 – 5:38 pm |
I can’t believe the BBC would take notice of me.
They’ve now stealth edited the headline to read: Brown urges new US-Europe links
There’s even an attached video link of the grinning ape.
From the link in TPO’s post: South Africa – an emerging nation? It’s regressing into a failed, criminal state. That goodness the World Cup is going there (sarcasm). When fans (and BBC reporters!!) are murdered and robbed in record numbers, at least the BBC won’t be able to omit it.
Who writes such drivel anyway?
Nick Robinson is the one BBC political journalist who attempts to report political news in a impartial manner, however, on his blog he seems to have morphed into Andrew Marr.
Robinson alluded to pressure being applied by Brown’s spin doctors – they insist the 10% tax rebellion is not a story.
Well the Beeb has caved in, but Sky and ITn are treating it as a huge story, with big problems facing Brown.
bodo: That is often the way, ITN and Sky are less in thrall to the Labour Party, whilst the BBC is to a great degree just a mouthpiece for Labour. Any criticism of Labour by the BBC is always tempered by the view that however bad Labour might be, the Conservatives would be far far worse.
Oh, can someone please wipe some snot over Brown B astard Communist’s back please?
Short of every BBC autocue reader prefacing each news bulletin with “Vote for Gordon Brown and the Labour Party” it’s difficult see how much further their partisanship can go.
Their undisguised bias is now so naked that even the BBC fan club who nip in and out of this blog to cherry pick an argument have no answer for it.
Note their absence.
Somehow it’s all strangely reminiscent of the disastrous Kinnock/Healey visit to Washington in 1987.
Mr Kinnock suffered a humiliating visit to Washington just before the poll when Mr Reagan met the Labour leader for only a short time, sending a powerful message that Mr Kinnock was irrelevant on the world stage. Mr Reagan also mistook Denis Healey, Labour’s then foreign affairs secretary, for the British ambassador in the US.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/aug/04/uk.freedomofinformation
Notice how the Broon Broadcasting Corporation keeps going on about how the US needs to re-engage with the EU?
Why is this news? All three US candidates are in favour of cross Atlantic cooperation and have said so many times.
Are we really supposed to believe the shite pumped out by the BBC that somehow McFatso will take credit for the US candidates saying so?
What horse shit from the BBC.
The anti-American sneering on the BBC World Service has to be heard to be believed: a big plug on ’40th anniversary of My Lai – America DEFEATED (in world opinion)’. And there’s me thinking it was the poor Vietnamese who were defeated, to judge by the millions who fled their ‘liberation’. Also a pseudo-news item about a self-appointed group called ‘Human Rights Watch’ attacking Israel over the death of a Reuters Palestinian cameraman in Gaza (who may actually have died filming Qassam attacks on Israel – see ‘Israellycool’ website – a bit of Pallywood fauxtography is suspected here).
The BBC keeps the Muslim angle well hidden till more than half way down in this story – as if bomb-making terrorists (shouldn’t that be militants?) was an everyday thing in Westbury-on-Trym:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/7354528.stm
Same with the follow-up story – one brief line slipped in about him being a Muslim, no analysis, no explanation.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7353903.stm
A very poor job of ‘news’ reporting. Is the BBC embarrassed by the fact that a 19 year British person has converted to Islam and was making bombs to kill people? Who was helping and encouraging him?
“Somehow it’s all strangely reminiscent of the disastrous Kinnock/Healey visit to Washington in 1987.”
In what way? like it or not, irrelevent or not, I haven’t seen any disrespect shown by Bush, or his potential successors.
“Checking out Fox and CNN, Fox are covering the Pop and the recall of baby bottles and CNN are talking about the weather.”
Who gives a toss? He’s not there to charm the US electorate, he’s there to (try to) benefit Britian by discussing global financial policy and schmoozing the next president, whoever that might be.
“Or will you now tell me that Mr. Brown won’t have a moment to spare between November and January to pop over for a personal meeting”
It takes time to build up personal relationships and, sad though it may be, international relations falter if premiers don’t get on. Look at France/Germany now Sarko and Merkel are less than pals – suddenly they all want to be mates with us. I’m sure Brown has a lot of things to do between November and Jan, being the PM and that, so he might as well meet these people while he’s over at the UN anyway.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the bloke’s an idiot but this thread is ridiculous
Cockney: Sorry but you are wrong here. Part of doing this visit is to make himself known to the American voters. Are you seriously suggesting that that is not important?
That the American people whould’nt know who the leader of the Government of their best ally is?
McBean is a sad drab little man, who has lost control of his party.
Having said that, I got my pay slip through this morning and all I can say is God bless Gordon Brown, I can’t believe how much better off he’s made me at the hands of the poor. Good lad.
“Who gives a toss? He’s not there to charm the US electorate, he’s there to (try to) benefit Britian by discussing global financial policy and schmoozing the next president, whoever that might be.”
Prime Ministers don’t do that,department officials handle that,where was the Chancellor of the Exchequer? Let’s face it,you don’t go when the Pope goes.
It might be a good idea to keep a distance until the president elect emerges.Brown cannot do personal.
No Brown went to the US to burnish his reputation,the man is in the Brown in Britain.Somebody though they better try him on the world stage.
The Pope is an elected leader in a sense that Bush is not? Some explanation, please?
“Somehow it’s all strangely reminiscent of the disastrous Kinnock/Healey visit to Washington in 1987.”
In what way?
Cockney | 19.04.08 – 9:53 am |
I always took you to be a serious commentator here.
James, the bash-America mob claim that Bush was ‘not elected’. This same mob will cowtow to any fascist ruler if it allows them somehow to slip in a snide remark about America. What sad people.
And talking about sad people: yes, it’s MacBean’s smile, but the whole creepy package has been making me physically ill for years whenever I wasn’t quick enough with the remote when he came on. Mind you, he’s nearly as bad in still photos.
Cockney, too late is NOT better than not at all when the sad loser doing the ‘too late’ is as useless an idiot as MacBean. Believe it or not, he’s quite capable of making things far worse still – and probably will.
PS. I mean to add in parentheses after ‘fascist ruler’: (incl. the pope).
“it’s MacBean’s smile, but the whole creepy package has been making me physically ill for years whenever I wasn’t quick enough with the remote when he came on”
I keep telling you watch Men in Black,Gordon is Edgar the Bug.