Monthly Archives: May 2009

SAVE THE TIGERS..?

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BBC so upset that the Tamil Tiger terrorists have been wiped of the map. Humphyrs keen to point out that China has been supporting the Sri Lanka government and so any sense of moral satisfaction about defeating terrorism is ameliorated. Some liberal woman from Chatham House made a brief appearance to complain about the blood bath that hasn’t even happened. Pathetic stuff indeed. The BBC, like the rest of the internationalist left, has been pushing the narrative that the best way of dealing with terrorism anywhere is to use the Northern Ireland model i.e naked appeasement. Sad for them that Sri Lanka thinks differently. Even better news comes as it is reported that the leader of the Tamil Tigers has been shot dead. Wonder will Gerry Adams sent his sympathies?

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SAVE GORBALS MICK?.

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It would be great if the Conservatives actually showed a bit of bottle and helped us get rid of the bloated parasite in the grotesque form of Michael Martin that occupies the historic role of Speaker of the House of Commons. There is far too much prevarication and triangulation going on when what is needed is clear leadership on this issue. The BBC reports that their darling, Nick Clegg, has actually said the unspeakable and called on Gorbals Mick to go. Naturally cronies in the form of Stuart Bell and Stephen Pound has come to the aid of their pal Martin. Reading the report, it feels like the BBC wants to see Martin stay and so the prospect of his immediate political demise is downplayed. Let Cameron go for the jugular and start the process of cleansing out the stable.

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A commentary of biases

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We don’t normally scrutinise the BBC’s essayists. We haven’t tried a survey of how many we consider right versus how many left. As a matter of fact I’ve never read any in-house commentary on the BBC that showed any strong right orientation, but I thought I’d look at this piece from Iain Watson. It’s about the Labour party launching its election campaign for the Euros with the expenses row echoing around it. The bottom line is the most interesting:

“the party will have to hope that their core voters will be thinking more about the economy than expenses. “

Objection, your honour! Only a true Labour hack laden with assumptions of “it started in America” and “it’s all about deregulation” so “what would the Tories have done differently?” would come up with this marvellous summation of wrong-headedness. It’s the economy, stupid, that Gordon Brown has taken from boom to bust.

There’s also a sly aspect to this: the journalist ignoring the base reality that the “core” vote don’t judge the Labour party on their handling of the economy- they judge them by their benefits cheques and their cushy state incomes and pensions. Anyone who were to judge the Labour party on their handling of the economy would vote against them. Simple as. To suggest that the economy might be a selling point for the Labour party is Goebbelesque.

In addition, if you look closely at the article you will see it has a certain wry affectionateness towards Labour, and deals with the expenses scandals humorously, pointing out just a few individuals who have apparently failed their genial and public spirited leader. Ok so Gordon’s a little old school and a bit stuffy, but y’know, basically it’s all about schools n’ stuff and good folk.

Can you imagine- is it possible to conceive of such a situation even- of how the BBC would be covering matters had the Conservatives been presiding over the economic meltdown?

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TIGER TIGER…

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Great to see that the Sri Lankan government has cornered the remnants of the “Tamil Tigers” and are moving in for the kill. In my view, this is how you deal with the menace of terrorism – wipe them off the face of the Earth if they do not surrender and face justice. But, oh my, the BBC aren’t happy about this and I just watched a news report on BBC1 which gave us the usual hand-wringing “isn’t it awful” mantra which conforms to the narrative that terrorism can never be defeated. Well it can where there is a political will to do so. The UN and the usual shills like the BBC are dismayed as the Tigers face extinction. Look on it as Darwinism in action…

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ISLAM AND CIVILISATION

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I wonder what being Muslim in name only means?

The BBC has an item on Today asking if Islam is not compatible with modernity, can Islam ever comfortably conform to Western society? Ali Allawi, former cabinet minister in the Iraqi post-war governments, argues in his new book The Crisis of Islamic Civilisation that Muslim modernisers have been seduced by a certainty in scientific knowledge to the extent that they are now Muslim in name alone.

Not sure where this one goes. It seems to me that for some Islamics their interest in “scientific knowledge” does not extend much beyond wiring up an explosives belt or planting a road site bomb. Or maybe piloting a plane or two. To express such a view on the BBC, as I have done on a few occasions, is to invoke the wrath of the Beeboids. It strikes me that Muslim modernisers is an oxymoronic term, a bit like principled politician or balanced BBC. Why can we not challenge Islam, just as every other faith is challenged? Might it be that whilst all religions are equal, some are more equal than others?

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OVER REPRESENTED…

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Interesting to hear our old friend Abdal Hakim Murad, Muslim Chaplain at the University of Cambridge back on again Thought for the Day this morning. He’s never off and yet what % of the UK population is Muslim exactly? I have no problem with TFTD providing platforms for all faiths (and indeed for pathologies such as Islam) but it is the frequency with which the ROP gets to broadcast which is alarming in this nominally Christian country – and that’s BEFORE the recent promotion of a Muslim to head up Religious affairs. Allahu akhbar!

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THE THREE CARD TRICK

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Nice to see the BBC oblige poor beleaguered Mr Brown by allowing his attack dog John McFall to posture on Today that it was the bankers that caused our economic recession, sorry, I mean down-turn that’s now on the up-turn, any day soon.

It’s my view that the Labour spin machine is trying a three card trick routine on us by introducing the evil bankers as a useful distraction for public anger from the corrupt political establishment. The Treasury Committee seems obsessed by the behaviour of bankers and suggests that it was the bonus structures that encouraged reckless behaviour. In turn, this helped crash the econ0my; ergo blame the bankers. Brown’s political DNA is all over the economic disaster we live through but oddly enough McFall can’t seem to find any of it! Oliver Kamm does provide a counter-balance to McFall’s propagandising but the BBC headline for this story is that it was the bankers wot done for us. And a lot of people just take in the headline. Natch.

Look at the right hand, never mind what the left hand is doing….

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"a city they had recently tried to wipe off the map"

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Isn’t life strange ? One day you’re trying to erase Berlin, another you’re trying to save its people.

North by Northwest on this Dan Bell report. I can see what Mr Bell is trying to do – the human side and all that. But a little context would be in order – maybe a little about why Stalin was trying to “expel the Western powers from the city” – aka “starving its inhabitants”. Maybe the words “Communist” or “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” might put in an appearance here and there.

(Surprisingly for the PC BBC, Mr Bell’s cheery account of Hamburg brothels, black markets and the ‘hedonistic post-war atmosphere‘ misses out the important contributing fact that, while historians differ over the degree of starvation and the number of deaths incurred, it is accepted that post-war Germany was extremely short of food and fuel – a condition exacerbated by the harsh winter of 1946-47.)

NNW asks – and rightly so – what effect this lack of context, repeated again and again, does to a British people with a dumbed-down history curriculum, and overseas readers for whom the BBC is their window on British culture :

“… think how this is being read in Islamabad and Cairo, in Ankara and Nigeria, in the Caribbean and in mill-workers’ cottages in Leeds and Burnley where 1066 is never mentioned, and in Halifax, West Yorkshire and in curry houses in downtown Halifax Nova Scotia. What impression will this give to people who don’t grow up with the perspective and (limited) historical knowledge that The Great Escape and Tora Tora Tora and Kelly’s Heroes and Schindler’s List provide ?”

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