Monthly Archives: December 2009

JUST SPREADING THE WORD…

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As if things weren’t bad enough….

“The public will be able to gain online access to masterclasses delivered by some of the BBC‘s best-known journalists, including John Simpson and John Humphrys, under plans to be announced later today.

BBC executives plan to let licence-fee payers use the corporation’s internal training website, which includes thousands of hours of material, as part of a range of partnership agreements. Rival news organisations and broadcasters will also be able to use the material.

The BBC claims the website is the most comprehensive of its type in the world. Other journalists who contribute material include the BBC business editor, Robert Peston, and the security correspondent, Frank Gardner.”

Oh no!

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COMPARE AND CONTRAST…

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Interesting to reflect on the news the BBC reports that Gordon Brown is to provide extra equipment for our Armed Forces in Afghanistan to the tune of £150m (over 10 years, natch). This £150m is not new money, however, and must be found from the existing MOD budget. Last week, the BBC reported Brown committing an extra £300m to a Climate Change Fund for chirpy third world kleptocracies and since there was no mention then of cuts elsewhere, we can assume this was “new money” he found. So, you might then ask yourself why it is that not one intrepid BBC journalist wondered aloud why an extra £300m can be conjured up on the one hand for Copenhagen cultists but £150m for our military must be financed by cuts elsewhere? Is there no BBC curiousity left these days? Can’t the State broadcaster ask difficult questions of this government, and if not, why not?

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LESSONS FROM THE CELTIC TIGER

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I initially missed the 7.32am item on Today this morning but it concerns the demise of the Celtic Tiger and the response of the Irish Government. In fairness to the Irish Government they have tried to grasp the nettle of the ballooning costs of the State sector, unlike our delusional Brown and Darling. Naturally the BBC are very alarmed at the prospect of a shrunken State sector and so, as one B-BBC reader observes

“The entire thrust of the programme was to warn this country that cut backs in the public sector will inevitably cause crime and social injustice. At one point he actually asked a group of homeless, drug addicted teens, “Do you think you could turn to crime?

The BBC is setting up the future agenda. When Cameron comes to power and once cuts are instigated in the public sector, the BBC will wail and beat their chests at the sheer awfulness of it all. They are simply using Ireland as a dry run.

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IPCC CHIEF WHITEWASH

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James Delingpole of the Daily Telegraph, and Richard North Of EU Referendum, are this morning hot on the trail of Dr Rajandra Pachauri, the head of the UN IPCC, and also of a so-called research organisation linked to the Tata steel company, which stands to benefit massively from CO2 trading. It’s a long, complex tale, but well worth persevering with because it shows the corruptness at the heart of the UN and thereby in the whole ‘climate change’ freak show.

They point out that the man who is the world cheerleader for climate change panic stands to benefit – to put it mildly – from the lunatic measures he is so assiduously pursuing. I have searched very carefully to see if the 35 BBC staff at Copenhagen are interested in this, but – surprise, surprise – it seems they aren’t. Instead they are keen to give Dr Pachauri a platform to lecture us that, despite all the hullaballoo and revelations over Climategate, the science is sound. No doubt the boys and girls at the BBC are hoping that he will continue to feed them such earth-stopping exclusives.

Update: The Times shows graphically this morning the nonsense that ‘climate change’ fanatics such as Al Gore spout. Again, at the time of writing, the story is conspicuous by its absence on the BBC website.

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The misreport

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Jobs could go to fund Afghan war
The defence secretary is due to detail cuts, which could see thousands of jobs go, to pay for new equipment in Afghanistan

I give you no more than the headline and the introduction (but the report is bad enough). It sounds from this as though the Government is pulling out all the stops for Afghanistan, doesn’t it? It sounds as if they have the priorities right and a spirit of sacrifice? In fact, the Government is cutting the Defence budget in a time of war (helllllloooooo?), because they will not cut elsewhere, because they have proved incompetent in managing any kind of budget for anything whatsoever. The idea that there is a positive side to this (ie. winning in Afghanistan) is just pure silage of Brownstuff, tying in with the Prime Mentalist’s ‘gallant visit’ so nicely promo’d by the BBC the other day. And the deeper truth is that Defence is one of the few targets the Mentalist’s “moral compass” will consider for cuts while he ringfences or even cushions HealthnEducayshunnBenefits to assist his election chances. The man is sick, obviously, but the BBC laps such putridity right up.

It is difficult to find a healthy approach to defence in the UK, but at least this report is closer to the truth.

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BISHOP VENNER

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Poor old Bishop Venner – he has come running to the BBC to say that he is sorry if anyone has taken offence at his suggestion that the Taliban could be admired. Using the normal political formulation for something that looks like an apology but actually isn’t, he digs the hole deeper by adding…

” It was one small phrase in quite a long interview, and a phrase that simply said you cannot describe everybody under one heading as Taliban as being equally black, equally evil,” he said. “These are human beings and there are some amongst them who could – we don’t know – who could perhaps be people with whom at the end of the day we could do business. “

Moral equivocation is very much at the heart of the BBC agenda and so it must be a dream for them that this clerical clown comes out and praises Jihadists for their devotion to Islam.

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JUST ANOTHER DAY IN BBC PARADISE

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I’ve been very busy in recent days with little time to blog. Luckily, I have also managed to avoid most BBC news – but then this morning I tuned into that daily fest of institutional bias that is the Today programme. What joy!

For starters, we had a concerted attack on the Conservatives at 7.34am. Cameron has said that all MPs and peers would have to pay taxes in the UK under legislation that would be rushed through if he became prime minister. Ah -but what about BBC bete noire Lord Ashcroft? I felt a bit sorry for Phil Hammond – he got more abuse from the BBC interviewer than from Lib-Dem Chris Huhne. The BBC seems to obsess about Lord Ashcroft and nothing Hammond said was good enough. Of course we all know that Labour and the Lib-Dem’s are squeaky clean on the issue of tax, right?
This item segued effortlessly into a character assassination on the new AGW realist leader of the Australian Liberal Party, Tony Abbott. The Aussie opposition has committed the cardinal sin of removing Malcolm Turnbull from his leadership position for his inept indulgence of Rudd’s pro-AGW fantasies and therefore the BBC has no sympathy whatsoever for this Party or it’s leader! Poor Abbott, it’s only Diane the BBC likes.
I also see that the Today will be guest edited by Communist-loving Robert Wyatt over the Christmas period. Here’s Robert sharing his wisdom on the subject..

“What I liked about the Communist party,” he says, “was that it was internationalist and opposed to the totalitarian global empire in which we’re enveloped. It was the only party to see things on that scale

You can see why the BBC like him, can’t you?
Listening to the Today programme is akin to enduring one sustained leftist whinge – no wonder I try to avoid it. I never hear news, all I listen to is sustained propaganda. I couldn’t bring myself to listen to Hillary Benn as he hypes up the acid oceans drivel, nor indeed did I pay much attention to Ed Miliband’s PR announcement that we are running out of time to save the world at Copenhagen.
I also see that the BBC have found a new hero in the shape of Sir Ken McDonald, the Torquemada of Matrix, who gets stuck into George W Bush and Tony Blair for their “foreign policy disgrace.

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BENN NONSENSE

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Hilary Benn, who has spent his entire useless life as a lefty trade union official and politician – after reading eastern European languages at right-on Sussex university – has risen, by some fluke, to be a government minister with a brief to pontificate about “climate change”. Not content that he and his government cronies last week pledged to blow £1.5bn of our money on “carbon emissions”, he is today to warn the the new world government assembled in Copenhagen that we face yet another threat – “ocean acidification”. Despite his complete lack of relevant knowledge, he somehow believes he’s qualified to interpret to the world the highly complex science behind the absorption of CO2 by seawater. Of course, to him and his fanatical brethren, it’s another huge threat, another reason to spend billions of our money on vast nonsense schemes. For the BBC and its environment correspondent Richard Black, another man without a single scientific qualification to his name, it’s a top story that must be breathlessly reported without qualification or challenge. And without reference to latest scientific papers (here and here)that suggest that the whole issue is yet another greenie load of hot air.

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Comment is Free But is Ignorance Bliss?

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If anybody who shares my interest in the BBC’s bias against Israel is reading this – as they say on Amazon – you might also like ……CifWatch.
CifWatch’s raison d’être is to draw attention to the anti Israel and anti-Semitic flavour of the online Guardian’s, ‘Comment is Free’. (Cif)
CifWatch commenters and posters document, then knowledgably and authoritatively rebut, anti-Semitic slurs that abound on Cif.
Recent CiFWatch posts by commenter AKUS give an outsider’s view of the British media and the ‘Brainwashing of Britain’
CiFWatchers must be aware, and indeed some of them have pointed out, that the BBC has a far broader reach, and necessarily influences a wider spectrum of the public, but the Guardian’s malevolence grates on this pro Israel and mainly Jewish online community more than the BBC’s seems to. If only it weren’t so virulently anti Jew and anti Israel, the Guardian might be their newspaper of choice. They remember with sadness the days when it was known as the Manchester Guardian and was highly respected. Perhaps they see the BBC as a lost cause, with a passive, easily brainwashed audience.
The Guardian isn’t hampered by a charter or any other inconvenient obligation, so it can more or less let rip and pander to an Israel hating audience if it so wishes, whereas the BBC has to restrain itself. The BBC is at least obliged to appear even-handed, but its underlying agenda often seeps through.

This morning for example there was an item on the Sunday Programme R4(0.19.50 in) about the multi faith celebrations in Haifa. A feel-good item one would think. Then just as you begin to feel good, Hugh Sykes chips in at the end with a reminder about the settlers who vandalised a mosque. Report it, okay, but put it in context, and don’t bring it gratuitously into an unrelated report lest the listeners might stop hating the Jews.

I don’t think the BBC’s bias is always deliberate. Ignorance has permitted myth to replace fact. Shoddy research, laziness and incompetence have worn away at the truth over many years, and these imperfections compound themselves as they bed in.
Now – we have what we have. One undoubted result is appalling ignorance from many who should know better; it produces characters like the gentleman outside the Baptist Central Church in the video that I linked to recently. Not the runny nosed John Sullivan, but the other one, the well-spoken John Benyon, who seemed blissfully ignorant about the organisation his church was hosting.
The virulence with which people express their indignation is matched by the ignorance in the endless strings of comments highlighted by CifWatch. What could be a clearer demonstration of the extent of the damage done by the brainwashing of Britain?

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