A key liberal myth, the “Myth of the Myth of the Golden Age” holds that crime wasn’t REALLY lower in the past, streets weren’t REALLY safer.”He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” The BBC is one of the main propagators of this myth.
And here’s Jonathan Freedland with today’s “Long View“, the programme which attempts to make history fit today’s liberal narrative, comparing youth crime in Liverpool now and in 1883, when a young lad was beaten to death in a street attack, or as the Beeb put it “a similar fight between gang members”, despite the fact that neither perpetrator or victim were identified as such. You see – kids were being killed then, too ! Nothing’s really changed ! Alas the programme doesn’t give the figures for, say, homicide in Liverpool 1880-1900 as against 1980-2000, a comparison which I’m sure would be instructive, although one of the contributors does point out that witnesses in Victorian times were generally happy to testify, rather than reluctant or unwilling.
The real giveway is in the description of the Michael Burns murder, which started with an arranged fight between two boys and ended with a young spectator being beaten and kicked to death. Burns is on the ground being attacked by a number of boys, when “two adults came upon the scene and the boys scattered“.
Can you imagine that happening today ? The adults would be more likely to scatter. Alas this went straight past Mr Freedland. None so blind as those that will not see.
Yes I caught this prog – and felt exactly the same. The BBC is thoroughly dishonest in its reporting of crime. Remember a few months ago when the violent crime figures jumped by 20% – the government claimed that it was all down to a change in recording procedures. This was only partly true, and the underlying truth was that violent crime had increased by 7% – but the government just continued echoing their mantra about different recording procedures. But under pressure the Home Secretary when interviewed on ITV was forced to admit that violent crime had actually risen.
This admission obviously escaped BBC ‘home editor’ Mark Easton – he repeatedly told us during the day and on the main bulletins and Newsnight that there had been a reduction in violent crime. This was blatantly untrue, and after Jacqui Smith’s admission he must have known it to be untrue. But still he blurted out the lie on evening bulletins, and on his BBC web site. In fact his main point seemed to be that those questioning the government figures were guilty of “blighting the lives” of people who would be scared by claims of increasing crime. He seemed quite angry about this.
On a related note, the BBC announced some time ago that they were reducing their crime reporting – ostensibly to save money. I’m sure the government didn’t object.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article2719381.ece
BBC to cut its coverage of crime in economy drive
Adam Sherwin
BBC News is to cut coverage of crime stories as part of its cost-saving plans. Up to 490 jobs are to go in the department as the television, radio and on-line operations are integrated, with £155 million due to be saved during the next five years.
Another trick, especially of thosed opposed to the death penalty, is to say the murder rate hasn`t risen since abolition.
True figures can be found not so much by the reclassifying some deaths as manslaughter and other dodges, but by the amount of UNLAWFUL KILLINGS which have gone up.
Note how the anticapitalist left are also fond of making the claim that life was better before the Industrial Revolution and the beginning of capitalism. They paint an idyllic picture of a Britain in which kids frolicked in the streets while their parents weaved on simple looms in the comfort of their own homes (in contrast to those dirty, dangerous factories of course.)
In reality, the majority of pre-industrial kids died before the age of 10 and the rest were extremely lucky if they ever experienced a full stomach in their lifetimes. Kids were vagabonds and urchins and child prostitutes. The Industrial Revolution gradually changed all that – which is why populations exploded exponentially after industrialization.
The left always gets it wrong. They claim that pre-industrial life was better, which it wasn’t – and then they claim that post-industrial life is and always has been wretched. They’ll not be happy until we’re all living in straw huts and reading by candlelight again.
The way I see it is, life was a miserable subsistence before the Industrial Revolution, after which it got progressively better, until of course the left began to sink its evil talons into society in the 60’s – and all of our social problems have become increasingly worse since then. Lefties just don’t want to come to terms with the fact that their influence on society has been disastrous.
Oh and then the left is also fond of quoting their hero Charles Dickens for his ‘valuable’ portraits of post-industrial Britain, claiming that he did a great service in exposing the ‘inhumanity’ of post industrial life in his writings.
In reality though, Dickens was a racist who attacked capitalism from a pro-slavery angle. He, like other essayists of his time, was of the belief that blacks were an inferior race and that they were better off under the watchful eye and command of the white man. Which was a large part of his motivation for attacking industrialization, since capitalism made slavery obsolete.
On a lighter note, the BBC invite us to celebrate the first ever ‘all black’ episode of Eastenders!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7907262.stm
May I be the first to congratulate them. Just out of interest, would a white unemployed actor have a case for racial discrimination?
Wake me up when Eastenders broadcasts its first episode actually worth watching. Surely THAT would be a significant landmark to celebrate.
Off topic, my apologies, general thread quite far down.
Did anyone notice this story on the BBC website today, about a Muslim man who sprayed a mixture of urine and feces over food in a branch of Tescos?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/gloucestershire/7908366.stm
Seems like an obvious Muslim terror attack to me. Only the words “Muslim” and “terrorist” are strangely absent from the article.
What is the point of leftie Mark Urban’s shite story about one of his ancestors fighting in Gaza and looking for his grave?
Just another excuse to do some crappy anti Jew story.
But this myth would disappear if the Conservatives were the government.
But lets say that the myth is true – does that make everything OK? I know the point the BBC is trying to drum into us, but it does not matter one jot – does that make all the murders on our streets acceptable? It is a stupid argument, put forward by the BBC to save the Labour Party. How many “initiatives” have been put in place by the government to combat crime? – dozens, if not hundreds, and it has made no difference at all.
Its just blatant propaganda. “Sorry Missus your son got stabbed to death, but at least its no worse than Victorian Liverpool”
Altering, or as the liberal left would have it, reinterpreting the past so as to control the future is a key totalitarian tactic.
The BBC is running true to form as usual.
It is very easy to do if you have control of the media and education.
ON all key issues the past is reinvented to suit the elite’s agenda
Take the case of immigration.
It is always stated that we are a nation of immigrants. You hear it on all sides.
If you ask who the immigrants were and when did they come here in the period between the 11th and 19th centuries you will never get a reply.
Only silence or abuse.
What about the Hugenots is the best they can muster.
Yet I have no doubt that every schoolchild is convinced we are an immigrant nation as are their woeful teachers.
On all key issues the truth is altered to fit the new truths we are going to believe or else.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mandrake/4800138/Miners-back-Margaret-Thatcher-funeral-play.html
Wasn’t aware she’d died –notice that the hatchet faced harpie acting her in the BBCs production supports this play.
Nice to see the lefties growing up into balanced adults at long last.
I saw the Mark Urban piece as well. It looked like faux grief over the small amount of presumed Israeli shrapnel damage to his great-uncle’s grave from the first world war, 92 years ago. I finally lost patience and turned off when started quizzing a female Israeli commander/spokeswomanabout the damage. It must have been a quiet news day in Gaza. If he is really worried about that sort of thing, he could save a whole raft of money and travel by visiting the large numbers of London graveyards desecrated by boozers, graffiti, vandalism, filth, beer cans and syringes. They would make his relation’s resting place look the well-kept site that it is. But, of course, that way he wouldn’t get the air-time and airmiles, a tan, nor a pointless dig at the Israelis. We pay for this junk reporting.
Dave S 11:32
And the BBC would have to admit that many of the immigrants were Jews !
BBC pumping out state propaganda… as per usual.
Two crucial factors that need to be taken into account when comparing modern murder rates with those of the past:
1) Reclassification of crimes. A hell of a lot of those facing manslaughter charges today would have faced murder charges in previous times.
2) Advances in medical science. A far higher number of people stabbed, shot or beaten would have simply died of their wounds in previous times.
Er non of us were around in the 1800s – people tend to compare to the 30s, 40s, 50s, etc — a safer and cleaner land in their lifetime!
Selective BBC – might as well compare against the middle ages or even the ethic cleansing by the Normans on Saxons.
oops – I meant ‘ethnic’ cleansing – but maybe I was right first time?!
Click to access rp99-111.pdf
Boy Blue, LP Gasse
Excellent points both.
As the recession deepens over the next few years and violent crime increases, it will be interesting to see how the BBC spin it. If the Tories win the next election, no doubt the BBC will report a sudden increase in crime !!
Jason, you are wrong about Charles Dickens. He was passionately against slavery. When visiting America he wrote:
“Richmond is a prettily situated town; but, like other towns in slave districts (as the planters themselves admit), has an aspect of decay and gloom which to an unaccustomed eye is most distressing. In the black car (for they don’t let them sit with the whites) on the railroad as we went there, were a mother and family whom the steamer was conveying away, to sell; retaining the man (the husband and father I mean) on his plantation. The children cried the whole way. Yesterday, on board the boat, a slave owner and two constables were our fellow-passengers. They were coming here in search of two negroes who had run away on the previous day. On the bridge at Richmond there is a notice against fast driving over it, as it is rotten and crazy: penalty — for whites, five dollars; for slaves, fifteen stripes. My heart is lightened as if a great load had been taken from it, when I think that we are turning our backs on this accursed and detested system. I really don’t think I could have borne it any longer. It is all very well to say ‘be silent on the subject.’ They won’t let you be silent. They will ask you what you think of it; and will expatiate on slavery as if it were one of the greatest blessings of mankind. ‘It’s not,’ said a hard, bad-looking fellow to me the other day, ‘it’s not the interest of a man to use his slaves ill. It’s damned nonsense that you hear in England.’ — I told him quietly that it was not a man’s interest to get drunk, or to steal, or to game, or to indulge in any other vice, but he did indulge in it for all that. That cruelty, and the abuse of irresponsible power, were two of the bad passions of human nature, with the gratification of which, considerations of interest or of ruin had nothing whatever to do; and that, while every candid man must admit that even a slave might be happy enough with a good master, all human beings knew that bad masters, cruel masters, and masters who disgraced the form they bore, were matters of experience and history, whose existence was as undisputed as that of slaves themselves. He was a little taken aback by this, and asked me if I believed in the Bible. Yes, I said, but if any man could prove to me that it sanctioned slavery, I would place no further credence in it.”
On Jason’s off topic moment:
Its a court case Jason. If it wasn’t said in court, or is one of the accepted facts of the case, then it can’t be reported.
If the prosecution at any point say “we say this was a terror attack” then the report will say, “the prosecution claimed it was a terror attack”.
Its the law.
And actually, reading the report of Day 1 of the case, he sounds like your common or garden nutter to me rather than a terrorist.
Can’t find the report of his religion. Where did you get that from?
Quite right, Mostly Lurking. Mustn’t jump to conclusions. Bushy-bearded Sahnoun Daifallah 42 could have been anyone. Probably just a common or garden nutter who was …….. lurking?
“Ms Thomas said a possible motive had yet to be established.”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1181711.ece
If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck …..
Anyone who thinks this series of attacks is anything but a deliberate insult to the way we live here, must be wilfully blind.
Yes the guy sounds nutty. But dangerously, disgustingly nutty. But there are always bleeding-heart liberals to leap to his defence.
ML, “Daifallah” is a Muslim name, “guest of God”. He may be just a common or garden nutter. Certainly a nutter! But he did target alcohol.