Monthly Archives: May 2008

A SMALL I.T. PROBLEM.

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I was reading the BBC’s report on the progress of the NHS IT programme this morning and to be honest all seems well. We are informed that this I.T. programme has already delivered £208 million in savings and by 2014 it is on course to deliver £1.4bn savings. This is truly pathetic stuff – the BBC is merely regurgitating NHS propaganda. The FACTS of the matter is that this NHS I.T. fiasco has spiralled in cost from an initial estimated £2.3 billion to £6 billion then to £9 billion and most recently it has been moved up to £12.4 billion. Even this figure is no longer secure and the date of implementation also keeps moving out. The NHS is one of the articles of faith held by the BBC and so any hint that things are calamitously wrong is neatly shielded from public consumption by the State broadcaster. It makes you sick, but not so sick that you would trust the NHS. Or the BBC.

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THE BEAR NECESSITIES.

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You know it wouldn’t be a normal day in Beeboid land without a smattering of AGW stories. This is the new religion of the Left and the BBC always lives up to low expectations on the topic. This morning it’s been running this story about the US Government “finally” recognising that the Polar Bear is a “threatened species”. It quotes the Environ-mentalists partially approving of this decision whilst still lashing the Bush administration for not going even further. The thing that I find odd in this report, and so true of much BBC reporting, is the missing statistic that the Polar bear population in Canada is actually INCREASING. This must be the first time in natural history that the increase in numbers of a species is indicative that it’s population is in danger. Then again, don’t those bears like so cute? Let us consider the cold facts concerning the Polar bear but that means showing all sides to the story – the BBC shows but one.

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END OF THE LINE?

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I listened to an outrageous item on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning around 7.20am concerning the forthcoming Crewe by-election. As you know, the portents suggest Labour may well lose this rock-solid seat held until her recent death by Gwyneth Dunwoody and it seems to me that the BBC is absolutely determined to bail out poor Gordon. The Great Leader is due on in about 15 minutes time to discuss his long term “vision” for Britain – myopic I would suggest and I can’t stomach listening to it but this earlier item has set it all up very nicely for Mr Brown. It took the form of interviewing people in Crewe and oddly enough – the majority of those the BBC found indicated they would, albeit reluctantly, be voting Labour! The BBC even managed to find Liz Dawn – Vera Duckworth of Coronation Street – urging voters in Crewe to vote Labour. Apparently voters are keen to get the “long-term” vision from Labour which nicely dovetails into what Brown will drone on about shortly. It’s my view that this item was constructed entirely to set up the later Brown interview in a way which accommodates the PM and it gave no sense of the mass dissatisfaction that every other opinion poll has found in Crewe. It’s a remarkable insight into how the BBC operates, biased in favour of it’s BBC pimp and shilling for a Labour victory even though WE know that a defeat is MUCH more likely. I can’t wait until the result of this election becomes known although the BBC also got in the pre-emptive strike that by-elections are by no means indicative of the result of a general election. I suggest that the BBC – like Labour – is in full-on denial mode – and it is a pleasure to watch.

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MOVE OVER DARLING

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. I’m sure that you won’t have missed the BBC eulogising Alistair Darlings’ multi-billion tax bribe yesterday which now solves Labour’s problem with the voters, allegedly. However the bit that I can’t seem to find on the BBC coverage and which MAY have some relevance to those on the lowest incomes is as follows. “Basic rate taxpayers benefit by £120 while low income earners on £7,455 remain £32.40 worse off. Leading business and financial adviser, Grant Thornton, says the Chancellor’s announcement to raise personal allowances to offset losses to low income earners by the abolition of the 10p rate will still leave some low income earners worse off, while benefiting all basic rate taxpayers under 65 to the tune of £120.” In other words, the government is heaping incompetency upon incompetency even as the BBC leads it news agenda for the day with the news that Mr Broon is moving on from the 1op tax fiasco with his outline of the “Queen’s speech” today. It must be a nightmare for the BBC seeing the end is nigh for their thieving socialist pals in NuLabour and I’m enjoying every moment of it. Can you imagine what the mood will be like at the BBC when Labour is routed at the next election?

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AIN’T LIFE GRAND?

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I wonder if you read this report about the freebies bonanza that afflicts those senior executives in the BBC? They have to endure being provided with the likes of Rugby Final tickets, Elton John concert tickets, even freebie cookery lessons with a Michelin-starred chef, poor dears. Naturally they take all these onerous tasks on the chin, such is their commitment to providing us with a public service without compare. Raise a glass of champagne to the pigs with their snouts in the trough of your financial largesse.

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A COMMERCIAL BREAK!

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I hope this short commercial break will not affect your enjoyment of B-BBC but I wanted to take a few moments of your time to tell you about my new book called “Unionism Decayed” and to explain why I think it has a direct relevance to this site. For over ten years, I have watched the role the State Broadcaster has played in the relentless and merciless perversion of democracy in Northern Ireland. I have seen the bias, the spin and the neo-Stalinist questioning of the character of those people like myself who oppose putting murderers into government! I watched the BBC’s chief political correspondent jump ship and become part of the very administration that he was supposed to impartially report upon. I watched BBC behaviour during a crunch referendum that was bias incarnate. Worst of all, I have seen how the BBC can help crush the spirit of freedom by acting as a compelling echo chamber for an immoral appeasing government. It’s all detailed in my book along with my own political journey over this period. If you are interested in reading about this, please email me here and I will provide you with pricing details. My final observation is that you can be sure that the views I express are verboten on Al Beeb – the terrorists friend – so perhaps that is the finest recommendation I can have?

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SOCIAL COHESION AND SAVING GORDON.

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Just ten minutes this morning into the “Today” programme on BC Radio 4 and I had to turn it off.

Just before the 7 a.m. news we had an item on “social cohesion”and the racial tensions that are evident in places like Dagenham. The spectre of the rise of the BNP was raised by the BBC interviewer and all agreed that this “far-right” abomination was undesirable. The solution to “divided communities” appeared to be “arts-based” social initiatives! Tell it to the Jihadists and those within the Muslim community who support them and who refuse to integrate within our communities. The BBC can’t even see the problem but instead fulminate against “the far right”.

Meanwhile, just a few minutes later and after a weekend which saw John Prescott, Cherie Blair and Lord Levy all expose Gordon Brown’s dysfunctional personality, the BBC then ran an item clearly designed to bolster Brown. The loathsome Denis McShane and Lance Price were allowed to explain why all this tittle-tattle meant nothing and said more about those who indulged in it than it did about the Great Leader. It seemed to escape them that all this invective against Brown was coming from within the Party, from senior figures. Operation Save Gordon seems in full swing and it should prove hugely entertaining to watch the BBC explain away what looks set to be a rout of Labour in Crewe in but a few weeks!

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General BBC-related comment thread

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! 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 also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely!

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If it doesn’t fit the agenda …

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. The BBC’s Burma coverage since the cyclone always speaks of ‘generals’ or ‘the military’ when discussing the regime. After more than a week with no clue to the ideology of the regime in any of the reports I caught, I had to go to reference works and Wikipedia to discover that (quoting the latter):

Democratic rule ended in 1962 when General Ne Win led a military coup d’état. He ruled for nearly 26 years and pursued policies under the rubric of the Burmese Way to Socialism. Between 1962 and 1974, Burma was ruled by a Revolutionary Council headed by the general, and almost all aspects of society (business, media, production) were nationalized or brought under government control (including the Boy Scouts) …. Between 1974 and 1988, Burma was effectively ruled by General Ne Win through the Burma Socialist Programme Party …

(For the whole wikipedia entry on the involved history of military rule in the country, go here.)

This socialist origin and orientation of military rule in Burma seems to have been airbrushed out of routine BBC coverage. The mention of ‘generals’ and ‘military’ with no hint of their ideology has an obvious tendency to suggest a right-wing regime rather than the left-wing regime it more appears to be. Is this actual deceptive intent, unconscious prejudice, mere carelessness, mere brevity of reporting, mere ignorance, …? Take your pick.

[Added a few hours later] To be fair, I can believe the Burmese junta does not shout about ‘socialism’ as loudly now as in the days before the collapse of the Soviet Union (when it was more fashionable), and with frequent coups of one general against another it may be hard to say just what their current ideology is – beyond holding onto power, of course. I conjecture a situation similar to China: an unrepudiated socialist past but with little ideological rigour today. My reason for posting is that I found myself wondering whether, if the regime had a similarly-explicit right-wing origin, I would have found it equally easy not to hear of it during a week of coverage.

[highlighting of text in wikipedia quote added by me]

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Spurious balance in the celebrity culture

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Isn’t it terrible how today we are exposed to so much idiocy, not least through the BBC, just because of the cult of celebrity?

The response to the post David made about “most disliked” BBC personalities just shows the flip-side to the pursuit of celebrity- which is that many people are sick of their inanity.

This blog is about bias, but there are some intersecting themes. Sometimes a comment is made and reported not because of newsworthiness per se but because of celebrity. How can a journalist be balanced starting from a statement like “Chefs should be fined if they haven’t got ingredients in season on their menu.”? Mussolini, Hitler, would have been proud of such high kitchen standards.

If your ten year old brother said it you’d tell him to shut up, but if Gordon Ramsay said it, and you were a BBC journalist, it’d be “news” (there again, who made G.R. except the BBC-led media establishment?).

Two lines of criticism have been picked up by the BBC, unworkability! and trade for poorer countries, but as Neil Reddin points out, the biggest of all is missing: the freedom argument.


“See what was missing? Of course, there was no mention of consumers making their own choices over where their food comes from. Individual freedom and all that. Hard to believe that the BBC, an organisation funded by a mechanism that gives its consumers no choice, could miss that one *cough*.”

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