Did anyone else catch Nick Robinson just after 8am this morning providing his oh-so-biased insight into the Profligate scandal? I was struck by the emphasis he put on Conservative abuse when in fact abuse by all the parties (Yes, including those awfully nice Lib-Dems) is the issue. I also don’t think selecting Ann Widdecombe did Cameron any favours. All in all, a nice little stitch up job?
GET CAMERON!
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David,
The BBC’s 6 o'clock news tonight also studiously ignored the Lib Dem story – except for mentioning some money Sir Ming Campbell has paid back.
Its report ignored the details of today's Telegraph revelations about Chris Huhne, Nick Clegg, Lembit Opik, Andrew George and co., including Sir Ming’s £10,000 refurbishment claim. (Its 24-hours news channel has been coy about THAT all afternoon).
ITN News, like Sky, provided us with all the important details.
The Beeb are so discreet when it comes to embarrassing stories about the Lib Dems. They are, in a word, biased.
This is a “flagship” news programme for the BBC. It has a duty to tell people who are tuning in after (say)a day at work what the day’s news really is.
It wasted much its second half on drivel about the vanishing Arctic (Shukman again) & in giving free publicity to some animated film.
(P.S. Ann Widdecombe was re-cycled too).
I must say it does seem to be LibDem they’re biased towards these days, not Labour. Sinking ship and all that, do you think?
Anonymous,
Up to a point. But then they've always had a bit of a soft spot for the party of Paddy, Ming and Vince (who have all "worked" for the BBC, unofficially, over the years!) – and the pro-Labour bias has not totally vanished either.
ITN’s 6.30 News has followed Sky (throughout the afternoon) in showing an audience member at the Police Federation Conference asking a hugely embarrassing question to Jacqui Smith, wondering how she justifies the expenses MPs have claimed whilst police officers have had all their expenses and allowances taken away. It was a Dan Hannan/Brown moment. The camera showed her looking uncomfortable, and the audience went wild with cheers and applause.
As with Dan Hannan, the BBC News Channel studiously ignored this, & the BBC 6 O‘Clock News predictably followed suit. That pro-Labour bias is too instinctive at the Beeb for it to ever disappear completely.
So full marks again to ITN and Sky for reporting the day’s news. Nil points to the Beeb.
"The Telegraph says it is about to reveal the "most serious abuses yet" of MPs' allowances system."
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/MPs-Expenses-Telegraph-About-To-Reveal-Most-Serious-Abuses-Yet/Article/200905215281384?lpos=Politics_Carousel_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15281384_MPs_Expenses%3A_Telegraph_About_To_Reveal_Most_Serious_Abuses_Yet
I suspect the BBC will be doing 3 versions of this story depending on who is named- Pretty low key for Labour, non-existent for the Lib Dems and over the top for the "Tories"
The BBC are hoping people will vote Lib Dem and keep the Tories out. The BBC hope that the Lib dems will align with Liebour.
Bad mistake.
1. Tories will take back the seats they lost to Liebour in 97.
2. If there were to be an alignment I think Clegg would be more likely to work with Cameron than a tired old one eyed twat.
Also, the Tories would probably end up with MORE MPs than Liebour, especially if you knock off the 50 Scottish Liebour MPs.
A bit OT but did anyone else hear Limpdick Opec trying to defend himslef on Radio 5 this morning?
He tried to claim a £2500 TV set on expenses for his second home. It got refused by the expenses people, so he purchased it himself for his main home and then purchased a £700 one instead.
you should hear Andrew Pierce tear into this piece of shit.
Opec came across as a right Weasel.
Take a listen here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/programmes/morning.shtml
Click on the Wednesday show and go about 40 minutes in.
You will be stunned.
As I’ve said before, the BBC took a decision after the ’97 election (officially or unofficially) to try to elevate the LibDems way beyond their position in Parliament.
At times since it has seemed as if the LibDems, not the Conservatives, were the real opposition party and this has suited the BBC’s average political position well: anti-Iraq war, rabidly pro-EU, generally Left of Bliar.
The easy ride the Corporation is giving the party should surprise none of us.
re so-called Aecric warming – news is that a glacier in Alaska is advancing by 7 fet a day. A DAY – not a year!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8044207.stm?table=total&order=desc
Of the top 25 TOTAL expenses claimed, only 2 are conservative.
Interesting stat, no?
My tip of the week – boorish thick bully Michael Martin could be shoved aside, replaced as Speaker by Alan Williams, Labour MP for Swansea West – Father of the House, who claimed only £5,000 for London expenses last year. Plus he’s a nice guy, old-fashioned Labour, I think very popular in the House.
David Vance,
I noticed the same thing. Both Robinson and Evan Davis tried to make the case that the real problem wasn’t expenses fraud but the fact that rich Tories can afford bigger houses, so they save more money off the mortgage claim than their less wealthy Labour counterparts. Cameron and his friends were rich, so it wasn’t fair for him to tell the rest of them that they should reduce their expenses. Demonize the messenger, and the message won’t be heard.
I also noticed that Evan Davis introduced the segment by saying something like “now that all three parties have had their problems exposed,” as if all three parties had the same number of politicians on the game.
The BBC definitely seems politically partial to former Labour Minister, Mr. Gould, judging from the tone of this BBC web report, compared with the hostile treatment given out by licencepayer-subsidised millionaire, plus expenses, Mr. Paxman, to Tory MP Mr. Marples on BBC ‘Newsnight’ tonight.
BBC report, (Politics webpage):
“MP repays mortgage expense error”
So, BBC, it wasn’t a “mortgage ‘expense error'”?
[Extract]:
“A former minister has admitted he claimed £16,000 on expenses for a mortgage that had been paid off.
“Labour MP Elliot Morley told the BBC he had repaid the money and it had been a mistake which he felt terrible about.” Really.
‘eu referendum’ has:
“In whose interests?”
[Extract]:
“There is certainly a degree of schaudenfraud to be enjoyed from watching the smug little Nicky Clegg squirm as The Daily Telegraph outs him.
“No wonder he was squealing yesterday about sticking together with ‘Europe’. He may need the bolt-hole when his grubby little party finally ditches him for a newer model.
“But the pleasure somewhat palls when we see that anti-democratic slime Denis MacShane write in The Daily Telegraph that, “The BNP must not prosper from this scandal”. Frankly, if MacShane tells us not to vote for the BNP, I cannot think of a better reason for voting for them.”
Compared to BBC’s symathetic reporting of Labour MP, Mr Gould’s ‘mortgage expense error’, the Daily Telegraph has:
“Elliot Morley claimed £16,000 for mortgage that did not exist”.
George R,
“So, BBC, it wasn’t a “mortgage ‘expense error'”?
Yes, the Beeb are often up to this trick. Further to your point (11.37 pm), the word ‘mistake’ (or ‘mistakenly’) appears four times in the BBC News web report on Idiot Morley’s £16,000 claim.
“Labour MP Elliot Morley told the BBC he had repaid some back and it had been a mistake which he felt terrible about.”
“Mr Morley, the MP for Scunthorpe, told the BBC he repaid money two weeks ago upon realising he had mistakenly continued claiming for his mortgage payments after it was repaid in 2006.”
“He said the mistake was entirely his fault, that he “should have kept a tighter rein” and that he felt terrible about the situation.”
“Elliot Morley said he felt “terrible” about the mistake.”
Shouldn’t the last three uses of the word been placed in inverted commas too?
After all, to the right of this article is a list of key stories. Here inverted commas ARE used – but only once:
‘Appalled’ Cameron leads payback.
The BBC wants us to believe Morley’s claim was a mistake. The BBC wants us to wonder if Cameron really was appalled.
Go further down the same web page & you’ll see that inverted commas return to biased effect when the focus moves on from Morley (and fellow Labour MP Fabian Hamilton) to Tory John Maples .
"The deputy chairman of the Conservative Party told BBC 2's Newsnight the claim had been "misrepresented"."
And the BBC headline reads:
'Behaved honestly'
The Beeb is not half so willing to belief Maples as it was Morley. Why's that?
Also on the Morley story, note the difference between this BBC website sentence…
“Labour MP Elliot Morley told the BBC he had repaid some back and it had been a mistake which he felt terrible about.”
…and this from today’s Times:
“Last night, Mr Morley apologised and said that he had informed the Chief Whip and the parliamentary fees office. He said he had repaid some money but refused to disclose how much.”
The BBC neglects to mention Morley’s refusal to disclose.
George R is correct – there are no speech marks around “mortgage error” in the BBC report, which means the BBC is reporting Morley’s words as the plain truth.
This is either dishonesty or wilful stupidity on the BBC’s part. Morley is being investigated for criminal fraud.
Even if we believe Elliot Morley made an honest mistake (which no one I know does), that means he failed to notice that he was £800 a month better off than before.
Surely even an MP would notice if his net disposable income had risen by £800?
But then Morley was awash with dosh.
He was letting out his London flat to a fellow MP and receivng a good rent, while simultaneously claiming the mortgage payments for that one off his expenses. So we were paying twice for the same flat.
Either he should go to jail for fraud, or he should be deselected as an MP for complete stupidity.
How can someone who can’t run their private finances be trusted to run the country?
This guy was agriculture minister for chrissake.
I wonder whether he was the minister responsible for all those delayed payments that brought farmers to their knees a while back?
The BBC sure aren’t telling us.
DP at 11:28
“…as if all three parties had the same number of politicians on the game”
I think they do, don’t they? Although Lib Dems look cleaner.
Evan Davies is one of the BBC’s best. World class. And his coverage is meticulously balanced.
And as for Morlay, see here the lead story running at the moment.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8049096.stm
Why would you lead with this if you were trying to minimise the damage to the governing party?
‘libertus said…’ (7:39 am above).
Yes, we are experiencing another BBC news website political stealth edit here on Labour MP Gould:
1.)BBC headline of last night,13 May (e.g. 11:37 pm) on this:
“MP repays mortgage expense error”
becomes, this morning:
2.)”Mortgage claim MP under pressure”.
(Politics page).
Here is a nice one for the twisted little Beeboid minds.
Conservative MP John Maples has been fiddling his expenses, but his wife is Jane Corbin, a typical Beeboid.
How do thay report that ?
Just imagine if the criminal Morley was a Tory MP !!!
‘Evan Davies is one of the BBC’s best. World class. And his coverage is meticulously balanced.’ awww thats nice of you to stick up for the poor lad !must be his mum?.
Congratulations on your new web set-up; haven’t dropped in for some time, but you appeared on my new Google Chrome link bar for some reason – what’s the deal?
Craig,
Various posts. Good spotting there. Classsic BBC bias.
The fact is that Morley has committed a serious criminal offence and must be punished.
The headline and intro of Elliot Morley made no reference to him being a Labour MP.
The headline and intro of Andrew Mackay has Tory MP in the headline and Conservative MP at the start of the intro.
Also, the Andrew Mackay gets quotes around “unacceptable” ie it highlights the word and gives them a get-out if found to be false.
Elliot Morley just gets “mistakenly” but without the quotes, ie presented as a “fact”.
The only thing balanced about Evan Davies are the metal spikes he has pierced through his nipples.
Listening to Radio 5 this morning it appears only Tories are up to no good. Hardly a mention of the 4 Liebour Peers or other dodgy dealings from Liebour MPs.
What a shock. Check out the BBC news website and what do you think the top story is?
Corrupt Liebour peers?
Liebour MP fiddling his mortgage interest payments?
Nope, a Tory MP resigning.
Isn’t the Liebour peers a bigger story?
Martin,
Guess which story is leading the news on Radio 4 now?
Yep, it’s the resigning Tory.
The Labour Peers IS the more important story – discussing cash for questions.
Slightly at a tangent, but did anyone hear Andrew Neil on the ‘Daily Politics’, when interviewing Caroline Flint (oh those teeth – they really let her down), call Elliot Morley “Eric Morley”, or did my ears deceive me? Maybe Andrew fancies Caroline Flint, and was imagining her in a Miss World outfit before he asked his question. (Or was that just me?)
BBC still trying to be sympathetic to Morley when Labour have just suspended him as an MP.
Forget news the BBC are the olds.
To clarify BBC note the tory MP has resigned his position (pushed rather than jumped it looks like). The labour mp has referred himself to the committee but has been suspended as an MP (definitely pushed not jumped then).
Despite claims of malpractice Martin was actually one of the lowest claimers yet he will likely be a casualty of this, the irony has passed the BBC by.
On a personal note… Williams for Speaker? Good call. I have met many MPs, some on many and extended ocassions, Williams is one of the best not the worst. The BBC has not joined in speculation about who might takeover as speaker.
As Cameron has pointed out though, have to be very very careful about ousting a speaker not guilty of partiality or malpractice, politicising the speaker as they are in the US would be a sad day for our democracy. Once you have let that genie out of the bottle it will be hard to replace.
One reason why I suggested that Alan Williams would be OK as Speaker is that he is generally well-liked – unlike Michael Martin – and has long ago announced that he will stand down at the next election. Labour would have to accept that the next Speaker after that would likely be Tory. But the Tories would go for Williams like a shot instead of Martin.
Martin will try to hang on, of course, but the spotlight is on the dolt, and the Telegraph and others have not really started to play with Martin’s extravagent travel expenses – and his wife’s. Martin has had his snout in the trough bigtime.
Williams is an MP for Swansea but clocks up very low expenses, he ranks every year as one of the very cheapest MPs in terms of office and staff costs, London living allowances etc.
That is – a new Speaker with clean hands. Experienced as a Minister, which helps, and recognised as senior in Commons experience eg many years as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee overseeing public accounts.
An ideal Speaker to hold the fort for a little while. And for the man personally, an honour I think he deserves, unlike Martin.
The key question is – will the labour hordes try to defend Michael Martin, which digs Labour deeper into the sleaze hole, or will they be willing to move to a decent politician, the “better face” of Labour.
(I should add – I worked for Williams for 2 years back in the 1960s when he was a junior Minister in Wilson’s Govt. He remains one of the few politicians over several decades I have any time for in terms of personal decency.)
Anonymouswineliberal @9:46AM
“…as if all three parties had the same number of politicians on the game”
I think they do, don’t they? Although Lib Dems look cleaner.
Um, no. This has 30 Labour MPs, versus 24 Tories and 6 Lib-Dems. Plus there’s the 4 Labour Peers, two of whom face suspension. Unless we get into class warfare like Davies and Robinson did (no bias there, then), it’s pretty clear that far more Labour MPs have real problems than anyone else.
Evan Davies is one of the BBC’s best. World class. And his coverage is meticulously balanced.
That’s your opinion, based on the fact that you’re taking a contrary position here and little else. Davies was very clearly trying to make it appear that the Tories were committing the most serious offenses, and Robinson played along. Davies’ history of being meticulous or whatever is irrelevant. He was biased yesterday, and he’s the one who tried to make it out to be the Tories as the worst offenders.
And as for Morlay, see here the lead story running at the moment.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8049096.stm
Why would you lead with this if you were trying to minimise the damage to the governing party?
Reality has forced the BBC’s hand here. It won’t be the lead story for long, though, don’t you worry. In any case, since they have to have it as a big story for the moment, let’s see if they try to minimize the damage anyway.
Conservative MP Andrew MacKay earlier quit as aide to David Cameron over an “unacceptable” expenses claim.
It comes after the latest round of revelations in the Daily Telegraph about MPs’ expenses.
Funny how this has really been Cameron leading the way on the expenses problem, leaving MacKay no choice, yet the BBC makes it out to be that he “quit”, and that Gordon Brown is the real leader here.
Most of the report you link to is a full apologia from Morley, complete with the defense of another implicated Labour MP. The video of Morely’s constituents has as many of them complaining about all the politicians as about Morley himself.
I’m assuming they mention MacKay’s resignation to provide balance. That’s all it is, just a brief mention. In the BBC report about MacKay himself, Morley’s situation is mentioned, also (to continue the game) to provide balance. However, nearly half the article about MacKay is given over to the same Morley apologia. In fact, there’s more defense from Morley here than there is from MacKay. There’s even a picture of Morely with a caption saying that he was “heartbroken”, and there’s an actual apology quote from him further down. And where’s the video of the Tory leader talking about taking decisive action or whatever? Where’s the video of constituents being angry at all politicians and not just him? MacKay gets none of this extra defense in the report about Morley. Curious.
There’s also the fact – as I pointed out earlier – that in the detailed MP-by-MP report, nearly every single Labour defense has a variation on “it’s within the rules”, whereas almost none of the Tories are given that assist from the BBC News Online sub-editors.
David Preiser
What’s the situation in the USA?
I have to say sorry, but I have to take issue with you on part of your ‘unequal defence’.
Given the proportion of MPs each party has the numbers indicate an almost exactly same percentage of wrong doers in each party.
they are all in the trough, and special pleading for any one party does no good from you or the BBC.
But even then that does not tell us it all, we need it published for ALL MPs then we can judge for ourselves, not just the ones the Telegraph want us to see.
I for one cannot believe that parliament has not attempted to pre-empt anything further by admitting the reality and publishing all immediately.
They must be able to see the damage this is causing day after day.
It is rank incompetance by them.
I further cannot believe that the other elements of the media are not doing likewise, the BBC should be at the forefront of such demands.
What is even more is we should also see the evidence for other taxpayer funded expenses, MEPs, MSPs, AMs, councillors, civil servants and the BBC.
Ah I get it, that’s the real reason why we don’t hear the calls from the BBC isn’t it.
The one area worse than politicians for expenses is the media and the one taxpayer funded part of the media is the BBC.
Enough said!
Who says they’re still not trying to save Gordon Brown?
The report headline Brown suspends mortgage claim MP was “Morley suspended by Labour party” until this afternoon
Never mind how ominous that sounds when it’s really not much more than a slap on the wrist.
Throughout the evolution of the piece, Mr. Brown’s heavy involvement grows and grows. But MacKay still left on his own.
The BBC’s sympathy for Morely is evident here. Where’s the equivalent for MacKay?
Still, the moooooat, the moooooat, eh?
Nick Robinson is a former Young Conservative chairman.
Some Anonymous or other,
Christopher Htichens is a former Trotskyist.