In my book “Unionism Decayed”, there is a section on how the UK government used the media, and the BBC in particular, to advance it’s’ own appeasement agenda at all costs. In particular, I point to how an accidentally leaked memo by a senior civil servant, Tom Kelly, made clear that certain high profile individuals had been identified as “champions” for the government view. One of the named individuals was Lord Eames – the same man who has co-authored the current proposals to pay the families of terrorists the same amount of money as their victims. The BBC is VERY sympathetic to Lord Eames, as you can read here. Ever wonder where that manipulative Mr Kelly came from? That’s right – the BBC. Ever wonder where he went to after the deal was done to institutionalise terrorism? That’s right – Tony Blair’s press office. It’s a funny old world watching those from the BBC effortlessly melt into the heart of government propaganda. I guess their on the job training is very good?
MORAL DEPRAVITY DEFENDED.
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On the Today programme this morning the state shills were talking about compensation for “terrorists” and their victims in Northern Ireland. So it’s OK to continually use the “T” word here. But Arabs who attack Israel and want to destroy an entire country and have a Charter that calls for the murder of Jews anywhere in the world are darlings called “militants”.
tax-payer,
So true. However when one of those terrorists is Deputy First Minister, his bloody pedigree is sanitised.
Ed Stourton interviewed Eames about 15 minutes ago on Today. Gave him a pretty good going over. No evidence at all the Bbc were taking sides.
Did you know that john major’s policy unit head left that post to become head of policy at the Bbc. The director of policy there at the time, patricia hodgson, was a Tory.
The door revolves on all sides.
It’s not 12k compo apparently, it’s err….. something completely different!
More likely it will be significantly more*.
Mailman
*My comment is not based on fact…hahahaha, sounds like Al Beebs facts 🙂
Every time the BBC isn’t completely and utterly biased and has the odd moment of clarity and by accident is objective, certain people say “well that proves it, the BBC isn’t left leaning and pro Hamas etc”
The point is that on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis the BBC is generally biased
When was the last time anyone heard the ‘impartial’, tax payer funded bbc, question the staggeringly high cost of the utterly pointless ‘Bloody Sunday’ enquiry ? How much tax payers’ money has this open ended lawyer fest cost so far, £300 million ? !!!
… to advance it’s’ own appeasement agenda …
David, one redundant apostrophe may be regarded as unfortunate. Two are the sign of an addiction 😉
Did you know that john major’s policy unit head left that post to become head of policy at the Bbc. The director of policy there at the time, patricia hodgson, was a Tory.
Special pleading from the arch-apologist. Do you also sell indulgences?
It’s not WHO does or did what: it’s WHAT the BBC is doing.
The director of policy there at the time, patricia hodgson, was a Tory.
The door revolves on all sides.
mikewineliberal | 28.01.09 – 8:09 am | #
You raise an interesting point, MWL – but probably not the one you were hoping for.
In order to advance her career at the BBC, Hodgson had to publicly disown her Tory connections ten years previously:-
…..She developed an interest in party politics: she stood as Conservative candidate in Islington South in 1974, and spent four years editing the Bow Group’s journal. But she is not, she insists, “a party person”, pointing out that her Tory links ended in 1981.
http://www.davidrowan.com/2004/02/media-patricia-hodgson-and-bbc.html
The exact opposite of Birt, Dyke, Davies etc. etc, etc…. who kept their Labour affiliations before after and during their BBC careers – often flitting effortlessly from Labour politics to the beeb and back again.
That’s what we mean here by the “revolving door” syndrome.
See here:-Chairman Gavin Davies (later Labour adviser)
Chairman Sir Michael Lyons (previously Labour council chief)
Director General John Birt (later Labour adviser)
Director General Greg Dyke (previously Labour donor and candidate)
C.O.O Caroline Thomson (previously Roy Jenkin’s aide)
Head of Political Research Bill Bush (later Labour spin doctor)
Deputy Head of ditto Catherine Rimmer (later Labour spin doctor)
Director of Strategy Ed Richards (later Labour spin doctor)
Head of Corporate Planning James Purnell (now Labour Minister)
Head of Northern Ireland News Tom Kelly (later Labour spin doctor)
Scottish News Editor Tim Luckhurst (previously lLabour spin doctor)
Political News Editor Joy Johnson (later Labour spin doctor)
Political Editor Andrew Marr (student Labour organiser)
Home News Editor Celia Barlow (now Labour MP)
Head of European Affairs Chris Bryant (now Labour MP)
Newsnight Producer Phil Woolas (now Labour Minister)
Foreign Correspondent Martin Sixsmith (later Labour spin doctor)
Current Affairs Reporter Ben Bradshaw (now Labour Minister)
Current Affairs Reporter Lance Price (later Labour spin doctor)
“Question Time” Editor Gill Penlington (previously Labour researcher)
Many of them actually worked for the Labour party before, after and even during their BBC employment.
I think David Vance has a point here. This money is about agenda and not victims. If you listen carefully to Eames as someone pointed out above he will tell you first about victims then about inquiries. And that is what this money is about – inquiries. It’s to shut people up. No more inquiries, this is your pay off after this the past goes to bed.
Once this money is taken, its goodbye to what is left of justice. This money = closure. End off.
I find that revolting. And yes it is about the governments agenda.
John Reith 10:07
Great post, sums it up perfectly !
I’m looking forward to Mikewine’s reply.
See here: Chairman Christopher Bland (former head of Conservative Bow Group and GLC member)
Chairman Marmaduke Hussey (later Tory Peer)
Deputy Chairman Lord Ryder (previously Tory Chief Whip)
Director Corporate Affairs Howell James (later Political Secretary to John Major)
Head of Public Affairs, Andrew Scadding, (previously Head of Broadcasting, Conservative Party)
Head of Public Affairs Michael Hastings (formerly in Margaret Thatcher’s Number 10 Policy Unit)
Political Correspondent Guto Hari (now spin doctor for Boris Johnson, Mayor of London)
TV Producer and manager, Chris Grayling (now Shadow Home Secretary)
Economics Correspondent Damian Green (now shadow immigration spokesman)
Today Reporter Michael Gove (now shadow schools secretary)
Reporter Jo-Ann Nadler (previously Conservative Party press officer)
Bloke who’s name I forget who is George Osborne’s special adviser and used to produce the World at One……. Plus countless others
…..Daily Politics Editor Robbie Gibb (previously on staff of Conservative Central Office; before that BBC Political Research Unit).
My MP Roger Gale (Con) says he used to be producer of the Today Programme, But that was ages ago.
I doubt the government needed to do much to convince the British public of the merits of getting “the troubles” out of its funding commitments.
Cockney | 28.01.09 – 12:51 pm
The trouble is the funding commitment is as great as before. In NI state spending is 70 per cent of GDP.
Now every group of six council houses has its own community centre, sports hall and arts centre, all staffed by former paramilitary ‘community workers’, it must be hard to know what to spend the money on next.
Your point was raised by the DUP in PMQs today about how it should never equate a terrorist murderer to an innocent victim, seemed to have a lot of MPs agree with it.
Bufton – not a very convincing list, is it? You were scraping the barrel so hard, the second on the list actually died in 2006!
Well done John Reith spins in his grave – another nail in the coffin of ‘BBC impartiality’ (sic)!
Bufton:
See here: Chairman Christopher Bland (former head of Conservative Bow Group and GLC member)
Chairman Marmaduke Hussey (later Tory Peer)
Deputy Chairman Lord Ryder (previously Tory Chief Whip)
As GC said, we’re not argueing that the BBC wasn’t a model of impartiality in the distant past, when the people you mentioned had senior roles.
We’re talking about the organised and comprehensive infiltration of the post war beeb by the political left – starting with Milne and accelerating out of control under NULAB with Birt and his died-in-the-wool NULAB successors.
Maggie appointed Duke Hussey try and stop the rot – but it was him against twenty odd thousand lefties so he didn’t have a prayer really.
Birt’s master stroke was to represent himself to her as a managerial modernising type – when he was really a political sleeper.
Maggie made a serious mistake and trusted him.
John Reith spins in his grave | Homepage | 28.01.09 – 2:30 pm
Birt’s master stroke was to represent himself to her as a managerial modernising type – when he was really a political sleeper.
No, he really is a managerial type. Talks nothing but business school bollox. Bloody bore.Works for a private equity company now. Socialist, ha!
Only met Milne once. Tweedy. Fond of whiskey. Manner of a down-at-heel scottish laird. Effete ,but certainly no radical either.
GC
You were scraping the barrel so hard, the second on the list actually died in 2006!
Well, it may have passed you by, but the Conservative Party hasn’t been in office since 1997.
So not many opportunities to bestow patronage on its favoured beeboids.
Once in govt (or getting close) you’ll see those who’ve been sitting out the wilderness years at the BBC knocking on the door of Downing St. once more and stepping forward to do their bit running the country.
Like Nick Pisani, who left off being Editor of Question Time when he spotted Cameron would be a winner and betook himself to CCHQ as head of presentation, whatever that may mean.
I don’t disagree with you JRTIHG, the Labour types are at it too.
Twas ever thus since they were all in the Oxford and Cambridge unions together.
Bufton – It’s not a case of ‘Labour types are it it too’. Coming up with a few Cameroons or wannabe Cameroons-in-waiting is just not a credible response to the shameless shilling that goes on day after day.
Yes, there may be a few token Tories in the fold but they make the lads in Zulu look like they were in with a fair chance.
GCooper | 28.01.09 – 3:52 pm
But you surely don’t think the shameless shilling is carried out by the sort of people who are part of the revolving door culture, do you?
No, the shameless shilling is done by third raters who would be totally unemployable anywhere else, even in politics.
Bufton – Well done! Demonstrates my point perfectly.
Bufton:
John Reith spins in his grave | Homepage | 28.01.09 – 2:30 pm
Birt’s master stroke was to represent himself to her as a managerial modernising type – when he was really a political sleeper.
No, he really is a managerial type. Talks nothing but business school bollox. Bloody bore.Works for a private equity company now. Socialist, ha!
So Birt wasn’t a socialist – Ha! indeed.
…I try another tack. As part of this portfolio post-big-job life, does he see himself as a peer? There is a pause while the big man cogitates. I ask again whether he would accept a peerage. Like Dyke, who donated £50,000 to new Labour, Birt has been a member of the Labour party. “I’m sorry, Eleanor,” he says shaking his head, “I just won’t get into specific questions.
https://homepages.westminster.org.uk/steven.curran/contemporary/john_birt___.htm
or
…..This streak of ruthlessness helped turn the BBC from an organisation derided by the Tory government into the most powerful political lobby in Britain. As the political pendulum swung towards the Labour party in the mid-Nineties, Birt anticipated it brilliantly. Former Tory stalwarts such as Howell James gave way to the bright young things of the Blair tendency. The last and current media policy men in Downing Street (James Purnell and Ed Richards respectively) were both previously recruited into the BBC. Bill Bush, the special adviser to the Culture Minister, Tessa Jowell, also worked there.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/oct/27/biography.tvandradio
or
Lord Birt is now the most influential adviser in Downing Street, having replaced Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson as the Prime Minister’s closest confidant on the sofa. Hired five years ago to work one day a week, he is now in a virtually full-time, although unpaid, government job. He has his own office at Number 10, as well as an eyrie in the Cabinet Office, which he approaches by his own spiral staircase in order, the civil servants mutter, to avoid mixing with hoi polloi. As if to prove the depth of his involvement, his former personal assistant, Katie Kay (who introduced him to the Blairs when she was living next door to them in Hackney in the 1970s), is now the Prime Minister’s diary secretary.
Politically, Lord Birt is an increasingly important figure. He has started to attend most of the key political strategy meetings held in Downing Street, as well as sitting on the Cabinet Office Strategy and Civil Service Reform Programme boards, two crucial bodies set up to drive through public service change.
Cabinet ministers summoned to present the contents of their five-year plans to the Prime Minister late last year were surprised to see him sitting there flanked, not just by Alan Milburn, Labour’s policy supremo, but also by an Armani-suited Lord Birt.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3614101/The-rise-of-John-Birt,-the-dalek-of-Downing-Street.html
or
…Tony Blair and John Birt go back more than a decade. His friendship – shared equally with Cherie – dates from the time he met him through Barry Cox, the TV executive, who was Tony Blair’s next door neighbour in Hackney in the late 1980s. He was invited to Tony Blair’s 40th birthday party before he got the leadership.
So while he was not part of Blair’s historic election-winning kitchen cabinet, he now fills a rather large gap left by two of Blair’s closest confidants, Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell.
Indeed, he was helpful to both of them – he is credited with refining New Labour’s “top down” approach, which allowed both spin doctors to dominate the media in the run up to 1997.
Clearly Birt is a completely apolitical animal.
If you think we’re daft enough to believe that, Buffy old chap – you’ve got to be a paid up beeboid yourself.
Bufton asks: “But you surely don’t think the shameless shilling is carried out by the sort of people who are part of the revolving door culture, do you?”
In some cases, I do, yes.
And then:
“No, the shameless shilling is done by third raters who would be totally unemployable anywhere else, even in politics.”
Alternatively, perhaps they are nearly all third raters?
As for your faith in politicians, I’m afraid I don’t share it. How else could one explain 9/10s of both front benches? Do you think these imbeciles are employable? By whom? Woolworths has closed down!
John Reith spins in his grave | Homepage | 28.01.09 – 6:04 pm
Your long and over emphatic quotations establish what exactly?
A. That Birt was keen on becoming a peer and was close to Tony Blair.
Neither of those facts suggest he is particularly left-wing.
Rather the opposite.
Buffy old chap – you’ve got to be a paid up beeboid yourself.
Hardly. Ex-Telegraph (downsized).
Bufton – true, Birt didnt need to be a raving Trot to support ZaNuLabour. But he did support them, as you agree.
Which is the point, surely?
GCooper | 28.01.09 – 6:31 pm
O sure, but he wasn’t ideologically driven.
Had the course of history and the realities of power been different, he would have supported the other lot.
My point is merely that the BBC snake pit contains snakes of all political hues.
According to the text in bold, the Blairs lived in Hackney in the late 80s. I have a feeling they were living in Islington by then.
I see also from the Telegraph link that Birt had a son who converted to Islam. You couldn’t make it up! (I will admit an urge to laugh when I read that, but I am afraid that David P might castigate me for giggling at religious belief.)
Unless I missed it on the radio this morning the BBC gave no hint that the Alliance party finds this compensation objectionable. The BBC’s main website report refers to “Unionists and some victims’ groups” being opposed. Surely the BBC is not trying to suggest that opposition to this proposal is purely partisan and limited?
Tom Kelly looks like a young David Trimble. I think I have heard of of Lord Eames before, is he not the same Archbishop who was exposed as being a freemason whilst holding such high office(cue Atlas)?.
My point is merely that the BBC snake pit contains snakes of all political hues.
Bufton | 28.01.09 – 6:41 pm | #
Possibly true, Buffy, but the problem is that the hues mainly range from pale pink to deep red.
The point at issue is not whether Birt was a raving Trot – he clearly wasn’t. He was however a devious Blairite who was in at the inception of New Labour and used his position at the beeb to infiltrate as many Labour placemen as possible into all levels of BBC management and operations.
This, together with his decision to end the previous BBC ban on “editorialising” – in favour of “explaining” current affairs issues to the great unwashed – brought a once proud national broadcaster to the sorry state it’s in today.
I’m impressed that you worked at the Express – I myself live in the Playboy Mansion with a dozen or more nubile playmates ready to indulge my every whim.
Sorry Buffy – misread Express for Telegraph.
A thousand apologies – I’m even more impressed now.
This, together with his decision to end the previous BBC ban on “editorialising” – in favour of “explaining” current affairs issues to the great unwashed – brought a once proud national broadcaster to the sorry state it’s in today
If there was such a ban, it was not observed. BBC ‘reporters’ were ‘editiorialising ‘ – in fact, venting antisemitic feelings – from Beirut in 1982.
John Reith spins in his grave writes: “Sorry Buffy – misread Express for Telegraph.”
Don’t be hard on yourself, JR – it’s an increasingly easy mistake to make.
If there was such a ban, it was not observed. BBC ‘reporters’ were ‘editiorialising ‘ – in fact, venting antisemitic feelings – from Beirut in 1982.
Nearly Oxfordian | 28.01.09 – 9:51 pm | #
Yes, the rot set in under Milne with their reporting of the miner’s strike, Falklands war etc. – which is why Maggie got rid of him.
I was basing my previous remark on Robin Aitken’s book, “Can we Trust the BBC” . He explained that,when he was a young trainee, “editorialising” was regarded as the gravest sin a journalist could commit. Standards slipped later but it was Birt who postively encouraged “interpretation” and “explanation” of current affairs issues.
The rest, as we know to our sorrow, is history.
Well, whatever the political background of BBC apparatchiks, the bias goes on.
Gramsci lives whenever the BBC deals with education. On Today the statistic that 60% (not 6% as set out in the BBC Today website) are basically illiterate is discussed by an English “teacher”, Phil Beadle, who – surprise surprise – writes a monthly column for the Guardian and who’s political line is that literacy as we have understood it since the year dot really doesn’t matter. Then we have John Denham – the shyster in charge of this part of the “education” ministry – claiming it’s not true or the statistics are misleading or it’s going to be 110% literacy by 2012 or 2050 or whenever but “trust me” things will improve (although how can they get better than the perfection we’ve created in the last 10 years?). And anyway it’s all the Conservatives’ fault since the failure Today brought on to illustrate the problem left school 10 years ago.
Then we have another toiler in the garden of (mis)education – Professor Peter Tymms, director of the Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre at Durham University – pleading that “English is too difficult” and recommends a “simplification” of English to make literacy easier to attain. Funny, my grandfather left school at 12 and my father left school at 14 and they could both speak and write English fluently as well as do their sums without recourse to either calculators or counting on their fingers. Do you think it’s possible that it’s the Phil Beadles and Prof Tymms of this world who are the functionally illiterate?
While I’m on, Liam Donaldson – who is to medical science what Alfred Rosenberg was to German science 1933-45 – pleads (unchallenged of course) that children under 15 must be prohibited from drinking alcohol on the basis that . . . . he thinks it may be a good idea although he has no reliable, disinterested research to back him up.
Umbongo
A spectacular Godwinian last paragraph. Comparing “X perfectly decent person” with the Nazis doesn’t strengthen your case you know. In fact, it rather detracts from it.
Not that you have provided any factual rebuttal, of course.
The MWL school of ‘argument’: Ducking & Diving Ltd.
OK, my rebuttal would that Today interviewed Edward Leigh in relation to his Committee’s report on the Government’s basic skills strategy. And in fact, we went outside the remit and said he blamed 1960s education reforms. He wasn’t challenged on this.
Good enough?
Don’t forget that Birt installed Polly Toynbee as Social Affairs editor
Millie Tant | 28.01.09 – 7:55 pm |
I see also from the Telegraph link that Birt had a son who converted to Islam. You couldn’t make it up! (I will admit an urge to laugh when I read that, but I am afraid that David P might castigate me for giggling at religious belief.)
You’re not on the BBC, paid for by the taxpayer, and under a special obligation as representing the UK.
The boy was obviously inspired by “White Girl”. Giggle away.