36 Responses to Open Thread

  1. George R says:
    March 27, 2010 at 7:23 am

    Labour’s mass immigration policy, and BBC’s reporting of it:

    1.) ‘Daily Mail’:

    “How Gordon Brown’s podcast turned an immigration rise into a fall”

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1261067/How-Gordon-Browns-podcast-turned-immigration-rise-fall.html#ixzz0jMJpdjR1

    2.) ‘Daily Telegraph’:

    “Gordon Brown accused of fiddling immigration figures”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/7528770/Gordon-Brown-accused-of-fiddling-immigration-figures.html

    3.) BBC report:

    “Row over Gordon Brown immigration figures podcast”

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8590248.stm

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  2. George R says:
    March 27, 2010 at 7:40 am

    European Union sophistry is ideal way for BBC and Labour to deceive British people –

    “Herman Van Rumpuy coins new ‘EUphemism'”

    [Extract]:

    “‘We consider that the European Council should become the economic government of the EU,’ said the Franco-German text.

    “To get around the G-word, ‘ideologically unacceptable’ to Britain, but insisted on by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, Mr Van Rompuy came up with a novel solution to keep everyone happy.

    As a result, the French version of the binding summit text, agreed on Thursday, used the original words ‘le gouvernement économique’.

    To spare Mr Brown’s feelings, the English text used the more innocuous and less controversial term ‘economic governance’.”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/7528593/Herman-Van-Rompuy-coins-new-EUphemism.html

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  3. fred bloggs says:
    March 27, 2010 at 8:39 am

    An observation – I find that I watch far less BBC and less BBC radio now because of the strong possibility of the Beeb Bias.  This occurs for several reasons, first a programme might just be spoilt because they have shoe horned in a contrived story and made it silly.  Second, blattent partizan programme like Question time,  thirdly the bias by ommission or snyde comment.  Put these effects together and the outcome is my private boycott of the BBC.

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  4. Phil says:
    March 27, 2010 at 9:24 am

    Soon I’ll be charged if I want to read the Times newspaper online. I’ll pay because I like reading the Times.

    What a shame I’m forced to pay for the BBC’s web site and its dreadful, dumbed down, selective, global apocalypse obsessed and politically correct version of the news, and have been for years. There’s no way I’d pay voluntarily for such dross but I don’t want a fine and a criminal record for the heinous crime of watching football on Sky with first having paid the BBC to mass manufacture trash like Eastenders.

    Why does the TV licence fund the BBC’s web activities anyway? When were we asked if we wanted the corporation to spend some of our money on anything other than trashy TV and radio?

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    • All Seeing Eye says:
      March 27, 2010 at 9:39 am

      I made exactly the same point over on ConservativeHome yesterday to a 24-carat tool who wanted the telly tax *raised* because of this. He made the strange point that he didn’t read the Times and so wouldn’t pay, but the BBC was all hallowed and should get more taxpayers money to stay free to balance out the loss of the Times website…without seeing the stupidity of that attitude.

      Looking back on it I should have re-raised his trolling by arguing for a taxpayer susbidy of the Times, including the Crossword section, to raise educational standards.

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      • John Horne Tooke says:
        March 28, 2010 at 12:25 am

        “ConservativeHome” – even there, how the “right” have changed. Not very educated either  “.. more taxpayers money to stay free..”?? Obviousley not someone who pays tax.

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  5. Gerald says:
    March 27, 2010 at 3:23 pm

    A throw away line in an article on Gaza during the week was that the population was growing at 4.5% a year. That equals a doubling in less than 20 years. I’m surprised that the BBC haven’t picked up on an “Israel restricts contraceptive supplies resulting in huge growth in Gaza population”. Or is it a religious thing?

    What a fine example of responsible parenthood.

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  6. George R says:
    March 27, 2010 at 9:57 pm

    BBC and Labour not interested in upholding free speech.

    BBC is disinterested in how the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is permanently attempting to make illegal, globally, any criticism of Islam; and, the BBC fails to report UK Labour government’s cowardly abstention from the UN vote:

    “Islamic drive against religious ‘defamation’ may be losing steam”

    http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/63391

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  7. George R says:
    March 27, 2010 at 10:43 pm

    This sounds like  a BBC TV series of interest:

    “The agony of frozen-out fathers”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/7528771/Agony-of-the-frozen-out-fathers.html

    Of course, the long-standing, unjustifiable legal discrimination against fathers in Britain has been consolidated in the Brown-Harman discrimination against men, and in favour of women. It should be an Election issue.

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  8. Guest says:
    March 28, 2010 at 8:17 am

    Andrew Marr Show intro.

    Totally ignoring yet more scummy behaviour in Government, he basically sets out British voter decision stall exclusively as Labour vs. Rupert Murdoch.

    Clever. Hardly objective. Unless he had chosen to point out that this is rather ‘complemented’ by Conservatives vs. the BBC.

    Thing is, I am only required by law to ‘uniquely fund’ one.

    At least the Evening Standard ed lady makes the point, on the issue of charging for journalism, that if all others end up paid, all that remains ‘free’ is the BBC and its unique views on what we need to think. Well, at £142.50.

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  9. Craig says:
    March 28, 2010 at 8:56 am


    The Sunday Times today spotlights two more Labour ex-ministers who are keen to be ‘cabs for hire’ – former defence minister Adam Ingram and former sports minister Richard Caborn. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7076041.ece
    The story is now being reported on the websites of Sky News, The Sunday Telegraph and The Observer (just a random selection).

    There’s not a word about it yet on the BBC News website though. Here we go again!

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  10. Beeboidal says:
    March 28, 2010 at 9:59 am

    Craig,

    The only mention of it is tucked away near the bottom of a review of the Sunday newspapers.  Of course if these were Tories, we wouldn’t need to go hunting for it. It would probably be leading TV and radio news bulletins.

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    • Craig says:
      March 28, 2010 at 11:30 am

      Ah, that’s where they burried it!

      I see the story has finally appeared as the third story on the Politics page (better late than never I suppose) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8591485.stm. Like a shooting star, it will doubtless soon vanish.

      It has the usual BBC headline whenever Labour are caught out: Ex-ministers deny wrongdoing over lobbying claims.

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  11. George R says:
    March 28, 2010 at 10:36 am

    BBC prefers  termination of any ‘British’ foreign/defence policy; BBC wants policy subsumed into ‘EU defence policy’, with Islamising Turkey as leading member.

    “Special relationship between UK and US is over, MPs say”

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8590767.stm

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  12. Matthew says:
    March 28, 2010 at 1:55 pm

    More ‘Obama is the Messiah’, Republicans are evil propaganda:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8589399.stm

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    • Craig says:
      March 28, 2010 at 3:07 pm

      That’s Simon Schama again. The BBC think it’s so good that they’ve put it on their homepage as the lead story on their ‘Features, Views, Analysis’ section.  

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  13. Will says:
    March 28, 2010 at 4:29 pm

    A timely warning for anybody foolish enough to contemplate allowing Michael Gove to reorganise schools

    The Thieving Headmistress<!– END titleInfo –>

    Sunday 28 March
    10:00pm – 11:00pm
    BBC4
    Drama-documentary based on the true story of Colleen McCabe, an ex-nun who as a headmistress embezzled her school out of an estimated half a million pounds. While McCabe enjoyed the champagne lifestyle with her ecclesiastical friends, pupils and teachers at the school sat shivering in classrooms without heat and books. Despite suspicions among parents and staff, the death knell for McCabe’s regime came when the Labour government returned grant-maintained schools to LEA control.

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    • 1327 says:
      March 29, 2010 at 5:56 am

      Will – I caught this program last night and the propaganda wasn’t subtle. The narrator actually pointed out that the fraud only ended when Labour were elected. |

      Not to worry I’m sure the Beeb are busy right now making a jokey drama about Elliot Gould’s fiddles.

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  14. deegee says:
    March 29, 2010 at 8:13 am

    Athens bomb kills Afghan boy and injures two
    The BBC doesn’t speculate who were the bombers but other media gives the background of the hostility by Greeks towards Muslim immigrants. Way down the page they write: Athens has seen a number of recent attacks blamed on leftist militants.Only blamed maybe the left is innocent of this baseless libel?

    But the interesting bit comes at the end.

    Are you in the area? Do you have any information you would like to share? Please let us know by using the form below. [Call the BBC rather than the police?]

    At no time should you endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.
    [I wish the BBC would consider this when they write puff pieces on members of banned Islamic organisations I write on military matters without submitting to local censorship].

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  15. George R says:
    March 29, 2010 at 8:26 am

    Two female Islamikazes murder 37 or more on Moscow Metro this morning; for BBC, the killers are not ‘Islamic Jihadists’, but ‘Islamist rebels’.

    Some background on Chechen Islamic jihadists:

    “How Chechnya became a breeding ground for terror”  (by L. Vidino)

    http://www.meforum.org/744/how-chechnya-became-a-breeding-ground-for-terror

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  16. George R says:
    March 29, 2010 at 10:10 am

    The BBC makes no strong criticisms of Erdogan’s Islamic Turkey, and his demand to join the E.U.

    The BBC only has this:

    “Turkey’s EU bid overshadows Angela Merkel’s visit”

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8592170.stm

    In the UK, Labour, Lib Dems, the Tories are all campaigning to get the 75 million Muslim Turks into the E.U., and to speed up the Islamization of Europe (and it would suit the BBC’s politics too), although most people in the E.U. oppose

    Turkey’s application.



    Under-represented opinion on BBC:

    “Turkey in Europe: A Bridge Too Far”

    (by Paul Weston)

    http://paulweston101.blogspot.com/2009/07/review-of-bridge-too-far-by-philip.html

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  17. David Preiser (USA) says:
    March 29, 2010 at 3:00 pm

    Mark Mardell continues to plumb the lowest depths of biased reporting (well, blogging).  He was at the rally for John McCain’s reelection campaign where Sarah Palin showed up for a speech.  Apparently some guy started hurling abuse at her, and was eventually physically removed.

    Mardell’s intent here is to paint Republicans and Sarah Palin as acting hypocritical and disingenuously about the First Amendment.  They want to protect it, he says, but having a dissenter removed doesn’t square with that attitude.  Ironically, it’s Mardell who comes off as being hypocritical and disingenuous.

    I don’t see any problem in protesters being hustled from a political rally. It happens in Britain, it happens everywhere. I was at a recent Obama rally at a university in Fairfax, Virginia, when an anti-abortion protester was taken from the hall by campus police.

    If he doesn’t see any problem with this, why even mention it?  He just makes up this straw man in Republican’s clothing so he can bash it down.  There’s even dishonesty in Mardell’s feint at balance when he mentions that a protester was removed from an Obamessiah rally.  By saying that the protester was taken away by “campus police”, he distances the act of suppression from his beloved Obamessiah.  Funny how I see cops removing the guy at the McCain rally in the picture Mardell puts on his own blog post.  So he’s a hypocrite about he whole thing.

    He’s also being disingenuous about the suppression of the protester at the McCain rally.  He even admits that the crowd was tolerant at first.  But the guy kept on going, wouldn’t shut up, and was removed for being abusive.  At some point, he’s just being a disruption.  He had his say, time to move on.  But no, Mardell plays it as censorship.  And he infers – without substantiation – an ugly condoning of this suppression:


    John McCain winked at Todd Palin while all this was going on…

    Mardell’s main video report is just a laundry list of negative opinions of Sarah Palin.  Nothing informative or new, just more BBC efforts to find people who don’t like her.

    And notice the BBC News Online editorial bias: Right below the video clip is a link to a report about the bogus Coffee Party.  The BBC refused to report on the Tea Parties for months (and then lied and cast aspersions when they did) but rushed to celebrate the Coffee Party immediately.  Surely there are other, more relevant, more important, more factual reports to which they could have linked here.

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    • John Anderson says:
      March 29, 2010 at 4:49 pm

      What patronising twaddle by Mardell.

      And he describes Palin as a “phenomena”.  Didn’t people at school teach him that is the plural ?

      Palin did not support McCain “to please the party heirarchy”.  She supported him because she is loyal to as manhe admires as an anti-porkbarrel maverick who brought her into the limelightThis is a refreshingly non-calculating view – not even cluttered by some of the attacks made on her by McCain’s staff.

      What Marde3ll and the BBC consistently omit is that Palin has a knack of getting through to Obama with acid punchlines that puncture all the Obama arrogance.   And her opposition to “Big Government” – along with the Tea Party – is not some hick attitude,  it is engrained in the aims of the Founding Fathers.  

      Time for Mardell to learn some US history.  He wouldn’t need to learn much to know more than Frei, Kay and Webb.

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  18. Gerald says:
    March 29, 2010 at 4:50 pm

    HELP WANTED

    While driving today listening to Radio 4 I heard an “advertisement” for a news series of “What the papers say” stareting at 10.15 on Sunday.

    The presenter said his name was Kevin McGuire (spelling?). The name rang rather a bell with the No,10 dirty tricks story not too long ago.

    Can anybody confirm just who this gentleman is and his background? If it is who I think it imay be what a surprising (not) choice  for the BBC to make!

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    • John Anderson says:
      March 29, 2010 at 8:57 pm

      Maybe Kevin Maguire ? – a political editor at the Mirror,  totally pro-Labour

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  19. Lloyd says:
    March 29, 2010 at 7:59 pm

    Oh God, that Ask The Chancellor audience was so clealy rigged. How else do you explain raptuous applausle for  the Cable guy?

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  20. Ian says:
    March 29, 2010 at 11:59 pm

    I know that this has been brought to attention before and as much as I enjoy the work you do, my tolerance levels of the beeb are so low that I have to avoid them as much as possible, to able to enjoy life.

    But looking at the website (beebs) 2 stories have me vexed.

    Firstly yesterday the second round of the sting operation regarding cash for access kicked in.

    There no headlines on the website, just the story rebuttal routine we’ve seen countless times before. I.e. “ministers reject allegations” etc. Thus automatically diminshing what is I think pretty explosive stuff.

    Look at the fuss they made of the tories cash for questions. This is whole new level of sleaze, this is cash for policy.

    They’ve done the same today on another equally devastating story.

    This is the one that Brendan ‘Darkie’ Hughes told to Ed Moloney in 2002 regarding the Jean McConville outrage.

    Jean McConville was a 38 year old single mother of 10, who was ‘disappeared’ from her Divis Flats home in 1972 and never seen again. She was murdered by the IRA for the crime as it was reported of giving succour to a dying soldier outside her home although Hughes has added a new ‘context’ to this story.

    Gerry Adams although ‘never in the IRA’ was in fact the Commander of the Belfast Brigade at the time and Brendan Hughes was I think, OC of Belfast Brigrade.

    He told Ed Moloney for his book that in fact contrary to what Adams told the press and Mrs McConvilles family, that it was in fact Adams who gave the order for Jean McConvilles murder.

    Hughes died last year and now Ed Moloney has reiterated what he was told for a new book about to be published – Hughes stipulating this could only be made public once he was dead.Its pretty devastating because although he was a serious member of the IRA, Hughes had engendered some respect from his protagonists in the Army and Parachute regiments. He and Adams were close ‘comrades’.

    And the story on the BBC website?

    Under the NI section not even in the UK headlines section we had the disengenous, ‘Adams denies allegations’. That was it.

    Update now at 1.00am the story has completely disappeared from even the headllines on NI and can only be found by digging deeper.

    This is a huge story because Adams had been visiting the family and ‘offering support’ and basically denying all knowledge.

    It is a hammer blow from his old friend ‘darkie’ but this story is being quietly dropped by the BBC. An absolute disgrace.

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    • John Anderson says:
      March 30, 2010 at 4:46 am

      You are surely not suggesting that the BBC has a soft spot for terrorists ???

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  21. Guest says:
    March 30, 2010 at 7:51 am

    What on Earth is the BBC Breakfast ‘news’ on, he asks, rhetorically?

    So far I have seen a MP committee critique of waste and failure responded to by a sole ex-‘freedom fighter’ given a pulpit with no rebuttal arguments present, stoutly defending the vast amounts of money funneled his way to ‘understand’ his charges’ motivations.

    Then I find the ‘result’ of the Chancellors’ debate pretty much decided by selecting the best ‘narrative-enhancing’ post match vox-pop in the edit suite, from an audience who has spent the last few years being told Alastair is honest, Vince is the Messiah and George is a novice.

    If they’d wheeled out Kevin Maguire as the last minute SWP Chancellor they probably would have seen him as a balanced voice of reason because he’s on the telly so much.

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