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In interesting question on the Newnight blog following the debate on the Sir Ian Blair situation:
Surely if an elected public official can’t work with an unelected public official the unelected has to go so…. why the fuss? ‘
I suppose if you look at who has a vested interest in making one, and being the ones to transmit it, there is some logic.
Especially as I watch BBC Breakfast News this morning.
To be fair, it is a big story.
So I actually stayed up to watch the programme ‘live’ last night. No much change since then, mind.
For a start, I was pleasantly surprised that we were not given the usual Newsnight ‘twofer’.
One from each main party affiliation and, er, now there’s a surprise, Mr. Livingstone. I guess he was, once, relevant, and might be allowed a place at the table. At least we didn’t get just him!
However, to this viewer it all went predictably, and depressingly true to form.
All so desperate to be PC about a PC PC.
Four men who each only wanted to get some pet notion across and who, remarkably all managed to only disagree with each other.
I thought Mr. Livingstone made a key point, if mainly about his mindset, that the most important thing was that the Mayor should have been on every media outlet ‘explaining’ (did he not hold a news conference? Such as myself and others seem to have understood the key aspects. And the BBC HYS page is fairly clear that most grasped the concept), and especially on this show to answer to the ex-mayor.
I could wonder if this logic might extend to another senior political leader often named for an absent cat?
Mr. McNulty was full of bluster mainly about why others should shut up and swallow the abilities of a person who… at the very least… has a dirty great, long cloud hanging over their abilities and actions.
I think a lot of what is wrong with this country is the total lack of accountability, at senior level, in the civil service profession. No matter how inept, no matter how unable to attract a following, no matter how screwed up the function would be if the team they are part of is/will be unable to work together, the public is expected to just live with them. I have never worked in any organisation where incompatible leaders have been effective.
Then we have Mr. Paddick, who showed why he polled as he did, but also tried to play up the fact this was ‘political’. Well, D’uh. It was hugely political before, and will be again. Did Mayor Johnson not get voted in on a ticket that included a stated lack of confidence in the Commissioner?
Maybe crime has ‘gone down’, but one swallow does not a summer make. Sir Ian Blair was not, I imagine, the only person policing the streets. Is it possible that crime might have gone down even further with another in command? There may have been one less violent death on the books.
And finally the Mayor’s office representative. Rather telling of the political climate that he didn’t seem to give a stuff. So he justified their position poorly for me at least, and for any pol to say that he wasn’t there to explain anything was not the best way to get this democratic system advocate onside.
And he should have been pulled up on this a lot more than just the off-camera harrumphs from the others.
However, the attempt to portray this as political manipulation setting a dire precedent was silly. If you have a public servant doing a good job, over a long period, with the support of their subordinates, and the faith of the people they serve, and then, on whim, a new political appointee decides to ditch them just because of their personal beliefs, I’m up there with you on the barricades. But if you are looking at action as a result of protracted controversy, lack of support at every quarter, a history of ‘problems’ and some policy preferences at odds with the elected superior, then… get real.
This seems to me no more a ‘plot’ than a process, and the ‘row’ is only being stirred within a very, very small community.
But I don’t imagine that will stop some in certain quarters.
Boris Johnson had made it clear in the election that if he got elected, Blair would be gone. That’s one reason people voted for him. That was no secret.
Seems they need to appoint a commissioner who is prepared to do the job instead of pandering to every god damn ethnic minority!
Wonder if the new guy will open an investigation in to some of the allegations around the muslim pc who got knifed last year about her involvement in prostition and organised crime?
Mailman
Peter Mandelson is coming back into the Labour Government!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hope the BBC reminds us of just how many times he was sacked again.
Derek Draper on Sky about Mandselson. sickening.
Just what laws did Mandelson break about his mortgage again?
Perhaps they might put Mandelson in charge of NorthenRock and the Bradford and Bingley?
At least he can give himself a free mortgage then.
For those that don’t remember the scandal around Mandelson (first time he was sacked) here’s quite a good summary.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19990702/ai_n14256276
Mandelson returning to the cabinet? Ye Gods.
Is Gordon Brown trying to find someone more unpopular than himself?
Martin 10:10
I seem to remember that Mandy failed to disclose an existing loan, when applying for a mortgage, which is a criminal offence.
Needless to say his collar remained unfelt.
If it had been you or me , of course…. !
I can guess how the BBC would be reacting if a twice sacked Tory minister was invited back to the front bench.
Just note the difference between the way that the BBC treated Caroline Spelmana dn the grubby Mandelson.
Not just twice sacked, emil. Twice disgraced.
I should add, twice disgraced, then made EU Commissioner. Says it all really.
“twice disgraced, then made EU Commissioner.”
Sounds like ideal qualifications.
Has anyone read the BBC news page on Mandelson’s return?
Check it out.
Try finding ANY mention of Mandelson ever being sacked!!!!
“…Mr Mandelson, who held two cabinet posts under Tony Blair, was reported to have fallen out with Mr Brown in 1994….”
Classic!!!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7650013.stm
Martin
Interesting to note that the only highlighted quote in the story you link to is a favourable one, from Derek Draper.
If it were the Conservatives bringing back someone of Mandelson’s “calibre” does anyone seriously think a Conservative quote would be highlighted?
Although the story has now been extended to cover his “resignations”.
But the BBC report does not tell the truth. He told lies to his Building Society over where the monewy came from. I thought that was a criminal offence?
BBC report:
“Mandelson to return to government”
OR-
‘Labour scrapes barrel: not concerned with popularity; so Beckett back too’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7650013.stm
“Does Gordon Brown remember the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog?” (James Forsyth)
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2193976/does-gordon-brown-remember-the-fable-of-the-scorpion-and-the-frog.thtml
An alternative to BBC’s pro-Labour, and bland version:
‘The Sun’:
“Mandelson back in the Cabinet”
[Extract]:
“Gordon Brown stunned politics this morning by bringing his oldest enemy Peter Mandelson back to the Cabinet.
But because Mr Mandelson is not an MP he will have to be ennobled first • to become a Lord.
“The PM took the biggest gamble of his career by reappointing his most bitter foe Mandy to government.
“Mr Mandelson will immediately give up his job as Britain’s EU Trade Commissioner to become Business Secretary.
“The pair came to blows in 1994 when Mandy • who had been Mr Brown’s closest political ally • jumped ship to back Tony Blair for the Labour leadership on the death of John Smith.
“Mr Brown never forgave him for the act of treachery and the pair have been poisonous enemies ever since.
“Yet in a sign of desperation the PM this morning brought the arch plotter back into government in the most extraordinary reshuffle seen in years. ” (‘The Sun’).
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1764695.ece
It seems that people around the world are rumbling the BBC’s poisonous politicking.
Only a couple of days ago I posted a link to an article in the Asian Tribune arguing that the BBC was promoting terrorism in Sri Lanka. Appropriately enough, it was entitled BBC – Promoting terrorism in Sri Lanka!
That same day I posted an item from the U.S. blog True Conservative, which observed the BBC’s anti-Americanism, and that the BBC was “the world’s premier left-wing News organisation”.
So ten out of ten to him then. And, today, I came across this report in the Cairo-based Middle East Times, questioning the findings of the recent BBC poll which had found that most Egyptians preferred murderous Al Qaeda to our kindly American cousins. Or something like that.
Egyptians Challenge BBC Al-Qaida Poll Result
CAIRO:
… A recent study conducted for the BBC revealed a stark truth about the Middle East: al- Qaida’s popularity appears to be growing.
These latest facts have a number of Western analysts asking how such a phenomenon could have occurred, especially in the wake of the horrific attacks of Sept. 11 2001 that saw the vast majority of the world come out in support of the United States. But seven years on, the situation has changed dramatically.
Many in the Arab world have stopped connecting 9/11 to al-Qaida. In fact, according to the BBC poll some 60 percent of Egyptians reported having “favorable” or “mixed views” on the global terror network.
…The BBC polled approximately 24,000 adults across 23 countries between July 8 and Sept. 12. Despite this evidence, Egyptians simply are not buying it. Many here argue that these surveys often skew actual evidence to the contrary.
“Egyptians do not understand what al-Qaida truly is,” began a freelance journalist who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject matter, “so when someone asks people here how they view the organization many will indeed say they support or view them favorably.”
If they are waking up to the BBC’s skewered effects on societies as far away as far away as Egypt, Sri Lanka, and the States, then when will the Conservatives wake up to the fact that the ills of our own utterly BBC-smothered society just might have something to do with the BBC’s output and power?
Quote by Robert Harris, friend of Peter Mandelson, being interviewed on ‘World at One’ (about 1:13 pm UK time):
“Brown and Madelson are unlikely bedfellows”.
Oh, I don’t know.
Even the Republican-hating Independent is now acknowledging the Democrats’ culpability for America’s financial troubles.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-democrat-fingerprints-are-all-over-the-financial-crisis-949653.html
And what have we heard on this from the BBC?
Not a thing.
Justin Webb?
Still too busy hating Palin.
Nice one George R – LOL!
Heron: Take a look on Fox News at Bill O’Reilly going mental at Democrat tosspot Barney Frank. Finally someone hangs some of the blame of the leftists.
http://www.foxnews.com/oreilly/index.html
George R: Now now. It was only a rumour you know 🙂
The Mandy debacle makes a superb counterpoint to the Blair debacle. Boris sacks corrupt and utterly discredited Met Commissioner – while Gordon Brown brings disgraced minister back into the Cabinet. Now which one would you think is brave and which one lacks character and judgement? I know how most people would see it. But on planet BBC bringing back Mandy shows that Brown can be brave and decisive, while Boris is a dangerous fool playing politics with the police. What strange inverted universe are they living on?
Simon Mayo has Chris Patten on. Wow a Tory. But hang on a left wing Tory, one who licks the arse of the EU.
Patten talking bollocks “The EU is there to stop Germany anf France fighting each other”
Bollocks. It’s NATO that has kept the peace in Europe for the last 60 years.
Where was the EU when the slaughter in Europe took place in the Balkans?
The EU sat back and did fuck all, leaving it to the yanks and Brits to sort out.
Fuck the EU. A talking shop for fat corrupt politicians.
Oscar: The BBC are on drugs. They have left planet Earth behind.
The BBC are fucked. They’ve openly hung their hat on the Liebour hat stand.
If the Tories don’t do something about the BBC when they win the next election, they don’t deserve to win at all.
Martin 2.44
The next US president will be decided by how effectively this matter is spread/hidden by the media.
Snigger snigger: Kevin Spacey on 5 live taking the piss out of Sarah Palin with lots of sniggering from Mark Kamode and Simon Mayo.
Now. Can anyone think of Kevin Spacey was up to “walking his dog at 4am again?” when he got “mugged” by a young man?
“When the doggie’s gotta go, he’s gotta go!”
This isn’t about BBC bias, but here is a lesson in integrity that the BBC needs to relearn:
Radio reporter fired over Obama T-shirt
Longtime Metro Detroit radio reporter Karen Dinkins has been fired after wearing a pro-Barack Obama T-shirt while covering a rally for the presidential candidate Sunday at the Detroit Public Library.
Good God, Mandy back as Business Secretary! He was in that post before at the DTI for a short while either prior to or between sackings.
The BBC remains firmly and irrevocably in la-la land when it comes to green issues. Take this headline from the website about the cabinet reshuffle:
Greens welcome new climate dept
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7650669.stm
The essence is that Brown has appointed Miliband’s poisonous brother to spearhead a new department whose job will be to wreck even further our energy security, and will be in charge of frittering away billions of our hard-earned cash on wasteful and useless ‘renewables’.
It’s a chilling sign, yet again, that the mad Brown has his priorities totally and uttterly wrong.
For the BBC, of course, it’s a move of unrestrained and uncritical joy.
Their only concern is whether he will be extreme enough to meet the ludicrous demands of the Greens.
This really nails the extent to which the BBC has become a campaigning organisation (the Climate Change Corporation), and how, in consequence, their ‘reporting’ of political events cannot be trusted. At all.
It is all too sickening to hear the BBC desperately trying to rehabilitate Mandelson. They keep saying he left office ‘under a cloud’ and other such euphemisms. Yet when the Tories gave a lowly unpaid role on a think tank to Jonathan Aitken they went beserk with attacks on the Conservatives letting a dangerous criminal back in their ranks.
We tend to kindly describe the BBC as being run by liberals and leftists as if they had principles. The truth is they have no principles at all. They are utterly cyncial and addicted to power and would say or do anything.
The usual left-wing political bias to the BBC’s panel for ‘Any Questions tonight:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/anyquestions.shtml
There ‘s one of each of Labour, Conservatives, and Lib Dems, BUT the the fourth panellist is the the left-wing playwright David Edgar, a regular Guardian polemicist, who is
anti-Conservative Party, anti-Bush and pro-‘multiculturalism’, (and thereby in line with the predominant BBC political position).
E.g. “If Britain is a broken society, it’s the Tories what broke it”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/26/conservatives.britishidentity
The BBC’s political bias in ‘Any Questions’ routinely extends from its devious choice of panel, through to its detailed vetting to ensure a pro-Labour audience.
Why does the BBC keep playing “Things Can Only Get Better”, an uplifting piece of music, in association with Labour images? They never do any such thing for the Tories or Lib Dems, and this sort of thing can have an enormous psychological effect…
Evening Standard’s ‘Londoners’s Diary’ picks up on story referred to here earlier about BBC ‘Question Time’s political correctness absurdity and unfairness:
http://londonersdiary.standard.co.uk/2008/10/ukipper-smoked.html
Jeremy Vine today on Blair.
‘So why he’s going then, it’s not a competence issue, crime’s down’?
Can’t remember the exact words but that was the import.
Repeating the Nuliar mantra ad nauseam which is ‘If we can produce a statistic, however dubious, and between two dates of our choosing that show a fall in something we (emphasis ‘we’) can describe as crime then Nulabour policy on crime is a success.
What these lame-brains cannot/will not get in their thick heads is that some of us do not care whether crime is falling, rising, or doing the hokey-cokey it is STILL TOO HIGH and thus Nuliar are FAILING.
I did email ‘the show’ suggesting Vine visits various parts of South London after dark and see whether he broadcasts His next show from an ICU but they didn’t read it out.
I think my mistake was not opening the email with ‘LUV THE SHOW, JEREMY!!!!!!’
PS I once heard a v. tedious interview with Vine and someone who had written a book called ‘God is Dead’ or some-such. Vine kept on and on with ‘But you said ‘God is Dead’ and the author was clearly getting very ticked off at not being able to get beyond the title of the book.
I emailed vine@bbc.co.uk with a one-liner saying ‘Jeremy you’re boring the country, let it drop’ or some-such, and credit to the fellow he emailed me back, agreeing with me and apologising.
Robin,
The renewables scam is nothing more than a cash syphon mk2, just like the PFI scam, billions of pounds is going to dissapear into the offshore accounts of the parasite class! Its known even in government that windmills dont work, the power surges and spikes will overload the system on a regualr basis and they need conventional power back up to the point that the expensive windmills wont be providing ANY net power let alone pay back the initial investment, the cost of new gearboxes/clutches and blades alone will be prohibitive and the life span of one windmill will treble when these costs are added to the lifecycle costings(no wonder they are hidden away)!
All the talk of ‘smart grid’ technology(supposed to direct the highly unstable electricity is just an expensive pipe dream.
The new French nuclear plants planned will not come on stream before 2020 and they are inferior to the new American designs, the French designs have lots of design problems that have yet to be ironed out so you can bet the ‘on stream’ date will be pushed back, in effect we are paying the price of a merc C class and getting a Lada!
Here lies the lie, so to speak, The mug consumer is paying for French firms to iron out the bugs in their new plants while the French experiment and refine on our dime, there is something fishy, very fishy about the whole French deal, you can bet some slimy polititians got handsome payoffs for buying into inferior and more expensive plant designs and here is the sick joke in all this, the Indians will have better nuclear plants than us, cheaper and safer and earlier!
The UK is heading for blackouts and shortages just when cyclical cooling bites hard, our position will mean that millions will suffer while the few elite will benefit from loaded offshore accounts.
The sheer breathtaking selfish treachery by the political class of the UK population will go down in history as the death blow to the nation that gave birth to the modern industrial world.
Only in five or so years will all the insane and short sighted NuLabour plans bear their poisoned fruit and by then the UK will be a conflict ridden third world copy of the Balkans.
Martin | 03.10.08 – 2:45 pm
George R: Now now. It was only a rumour you know
Open:
http://cryptome.org/mi6-sd36.htm
and go to near the bottom (to coin a phrase).
The Security and Intelligence services keep on file indiscretions, however politically sensitive, of crown servants, MP’s etc – An example of that would be the sexual encounter that occurred between Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson (interrupted accidentally by a member of Michael Meacher’s staff) in Gordon Brown’s office at the House of Commons while in opposition and is still only known to a very select number of Commons and Whitehall hierarchy.
What is the provenance of that doc in the link?
BBC news website article about the US vote by Stephen Schifferes in which he says a Republican majority voted against it 91 – 108. That doesn’t make sense. If it waa a majority, it must have voted 108 – 91. Bizarre.
Then the article has a photograph caption that reads “Capital Hill”.
When last I looked it was Capitol Hill (with an “o”). Why can’t the BBC get it right?
Another aspect of the Labour Cabinet re-shuffle for the BBC to report:
“Cabinet re-shuffle – the feminising of British politics” (Cranmer).
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2008/10/cabinet-re-shuffle-feminising-of.html
Melanie Phillips falls off her chair:
“The return of the Dark Lord”
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/2195547/the-return-of-the-dark-lord.thtml
Another angle on bias – beebers showing the world they hope for instead of just showing the real place.
This time its EU plans more help for mothers
The killer punch is the second picture – with its caption: “Nancy’s situation is like that of many mothers across the EU”
This photo shows the vibrant multi-culty vsion that beebers wish for – but it does not represent reality.
The story ends with a bizarre message:
That may encourage others to follow Nancy’s and Katharina’s example.
What example ?
The BBC is reporting that Peter Mandelson has been cleared of any wrongdoing and it was the media that set him up!
Oooooh really,so thats alright then!
Good grief. It appears that someone at the Toady programme looks inside the Daily Telegraph! One of the questions to new minister Milliband just now I believe alluded to the following statement by a well known ex Chancellor of the Exchequer in July 1997 quoted by Jeff Randall in a DT article yesterday.
“Homeowners rightly expect their investment to be protected by sensible policies…I am determined that, as a country, we never return to instability, speculation, and negative equity that characterised the housing market in the 1980s and 1990s.”
A quote worth tucking away for regurgitation on HYS or other appropriate comment sites if you get tired of the “boom and bust” quote.