Based on BBC GE coverage, two things strike me.
1. It’s going to be a hung Parliament.
2. Most people are bored with it.
ELECTION OVER?
Bookmark the permalink.
Search Biased BBC
Recent Comments
- MarkyMark Nov 15, 11:30
Midweek 13th November 2024
Unfortunately, Sukur is one of several imams to be convicted of child abuse offences in the UK, in recent months:… - MarkyMark Nov 15, 11:29
Midweek 13th November 2024
1400 raped kids – net zero interest – net zero arrests. - Zephir Nov 15, 11:26
Midweek 13th November 2024
“Fury of Rotheram grooming victim as rapist gets parental access to her child. A WOMAN made pregnant at 14 by… - Fedup2 Nov 15, 11:10
Midweek 13th November 2024
Similarly to all those mosques the paki racist paedo rape gangs have to go to and pay into . We… - Zephir Nov 15, 11:07
Midweek 13th November 2024
Regarding the MUSLIM in charge of religion at the disgusting, racist bbc and his prediliction for sexual abuse stories regarding… - atlas_shrugged Nov 15, 10:56
Midweek 13th November 2024
> 650 MPs to implement assisted killing (dying) by being trail blazers I wonder if they do requests? - MarkyMark Nov 15, 10:51
Midweek 13th November 2024
Pension megafunds could unlock £80 billion of investment as Chancellor takes radical action to drive economic growth https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pension-megafunds-could-unlock-80-billion-of-investment-as-chancellor-takes-radical-action-to-drive-economic-growth - Fedup2 Nov 15, 10:32
Midweek 13th November 2024
Not BBC Some growth figures came out today for the last 3 months – there wasn’t any – but there… - Fedup2 Nov 15, 10:28
Midweek 13th November 2024
Rich – I don’t think he ll be ‘brave ‘ enough to pull out of the UN – but -… - Rich Nov 15, 10:22
Midweek 13th November 2024
I can see Trump pulling the US out of the UN with the UN having to then find a new…
Categories
agw anti-American anti-conservative anti-Israel anti Israel. pro Palestinian Antisemitism BBC - sickeningly biased at all times. BBC agenda BBC bias bbc bias and balance. bbc bias by omission BBC censorship BBC Question Time BBC selectivity bias Biased BBC climate change dhimmis general thread immigration Islam israel Mark Mardell obama obama bias Obamalove open thread pro-labour pro-palestinian pro EU pro Hamas pro Islam pro Labour bias pro Obama PRO OBAMA AT ALL COSTS. pro Obama BBC agenda question time question time live Richard Black save gordon. USA politics US economy US News US politics US presidential elections
Not sure I’d disagree with the second one.
As to the first, why is the fact that the Tories need a 10% lead for a majority but Labour need almost no lead always mentioned as if it’s the natural order of things? To me it speaks volumes about how the system has been corrupted over the years yet no-one, not even the useless Tories, brings it up.
Good point. Did you see Jeremy Vine on the 10 o’clock news last night? He had the map of Britain up with all the boundaries with the all various party colours. A large propotion of it was blue and he said (something like): “…it looks as if the majority of the country belongs to the Conservatives but the Conservatives tend to stack votes up…”.
The fact that Labour have completely rigged the boundaries in order to give themselves a massive advantage has nothing to do with it then? If it were the other way round do you think it would be portrayed in the same way?
Bias beyond belief.
Because Labour and Liberal Democrats are the same shit but different assholes, maybe?
My impressions also David. They did rather go on about a “hung” parliament this morning, as though there were no chance of any other eventualities.
Latest polls suggest a comfortable conservative majority, even the bookies seem to be saying this.
I still think polls are taken far too seriously. They are little more than a snapshot of opinion of a small group of peoples thoughts, given the information known at the time the poll was taken.
This is a classic case of BBC-style liberalism, which over time, makes one irrationally optimistic that things will go your way. Stupid in other words.
It’s funny, but has anyone else noticed that you never see the BBC touting the success rates of their various chosen polling outfits?
What struck me this morning was the way the Today programme managed to conflate Cameron’s appeal to ‘the great ignored’ with Richard Nixon’s appeal to ‘the silent majority’. They even managed to splice the two together into one soundbite. Ergo: David Cameron = Richard Nixon.
Time-consuming to do, of course, and you’d have to be a political obsessive to think of it.
But if you’re in the business of making political slurs, attempting to hitch Cameron to Nixon in the public mind is a good start. So congrats the Today programme.
I wonder which Tory they’ll try pinning to which BBC hate-figure tomorrow?
Hi, can you link to that?
It’s http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8606000/8606567.stm.
Cheers!
Is David Cameron too posh to be PM? For well over an hour, this was the vital question on the lips of doughty Radio 5 class-warrior Nicky Campbell this morning, and luckily, the Beeb managed to trawl up large numbers of shouty low-IQ pond life to provide the correct answer (“Yes”). Lucky he’s not too gay. Or too black. Or too Scottish, eh? No phone-ins for morons weighed down with the sheer weight of chip on shoulder in those cases, I suspect.
Rainbow, nice one !
The Labour/BBC tactics for the election campaign have been agreed and were in evidence yesterday. I’ve identified some here – http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2010/04/election-narrative-has-been-set.html – perhaps you could add any more that you spot.
Exclusively Lib Dems and Labour on the Live Event BBC blog here until at least until 10.40am when I posted this.
Blatantly partisan. Where is the accountability. I hope you add this to the daily bias email to MPs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/liveevent/
Hi Ryan, it would need to be a piece here or Craigs bbcbiascraig site.
I’m reading a lot about these blatant imbalances across a range of programmes. I’m hoping Craig is going to collate this information in a post. If so I will send the info out under separate cover. If the disparity between BBC commitment to impartiality and its delivery is so vast and the Tory Party doesn’t make a major issue of it, then we’ll know for certain they’d be useless in power anyway, just dancing to a Labour BBC tune.
An added thought. If the pattern of systematic election bias that appears to be emerging is validated, I hope there will be a banner request here urging people to make formal complaints to the BBC and BCC their complaints to the injured party/ies concerned and B-BBC with the codicil that they demand from the BBC a breakdown of complaints made to the BBC for anti-Tory / anti-Labour election bias. If the BBC give accurate figures, and they are as I anticipate, the correlation to a huge disproportion of complaints for anti-Tory election bias and the huge empirical imbalance in coverage of the parties and left/right commentators will put BBC bias centre stage in this election.
There’s something in this.
Counting only the number of posts reporting comments from party politicians (direct or indirect quotations) between 6am and 2pm today on this Live Events blog (ignoring all those between 12.00-12.35 that come from PMQs) reveals the following:
Labour got 14 posts
The Lib Dems got 13 posts
The Conservatives got 3 posts
UKIP got 1 post
Ryan was right, it was pretty much Labour and the Lib Dems all the way.
Those figures are more than interesting, surely Conservative Central office would be intersted in this or are they completely incompetent?
As Harry Hill says, ‘there’s only one way to find out….”
NotaSheep,
Yes.
Rejoice, rejoice, R4 news has just told me, in suprising detail, that the next boom has arrived, the Uk economy is growing faster than anywhere else. Glory to our glorious leader. SAVE GORDON
The last General Election ever in the UK ?
PS Some brilliant posts here. Great stuff !
Everything certainly seems to be rosy in the economy, according to the BBC. To listen to them, one would think that the UK is the strongest economy in the world outside of China, growth is everywhere, unemployment not so bad. All because the only way Labour can possibly win the election is if the public have more confidence in them over the economy. It’s an old election trope that the party in power will remain there if the public feels the economy is doing ok, and the Beeboids know it all too well.
Never mind that more than 1 in 5 working age people are unemployed, and that 1 in 5 of those employed are in the public sector. No economics or business Beeboid will openly state that it’s a bad idea to increase public sector jobs with that equation.
Cameron mentioned the NI tax increase again today, so the BBC felt obligated to defend Labour. This news brief on it isn’t particularly biased, although the whole thing feels like a knee-jerk reaction to a Cameron statement the editors felt must be addressed rather than a legitimate news article.
But the real issue of bias lies in the accompanying audio clip. The BBC puts itself in a very difficult place whenever they have on somebody who is going to be critical of the Government because then the Beeboid is forced to take the position of defending Labour over whatever issue is being discussed. I realize this is technically just a ‘devil’s advocate’ thing and doesn’t represent official support from the BBC. But it sure sounds like it here, because Martha Kearney just reads out Gordon Brown’s talking points. She even reads the planted “taking £6 million out of the economy” question from PMQs. It doesn’t get more blatant than that.
Fortunately Luke Johnson explains how stupid that is. But Kearney is way out of her depth here, and this segment shouldn’t even have been done. Yet, the BBC went ahead and did it anyway, just because they felt that they had to try to make a story about Cameron’s statement on the NI tax increase.
Taking 6Billion “out of the economy” is just kindergarten level rubbish. And they know it.
The Government is taking the money out of the real economy. What is so hard to understand about that?
For the BBC just about everything. It takes billions out of the real economy to stay in existence.
One tax eater always supports another trax eater.
The thing is, Kearney just read it off as if it was a legitimate economics question when it was really the same planted question for Gordon Brown at Prime Minister’s Questions this morning. It’s not even a legitimate ‘devil’s advocate’ approach.
And what a shock, other BBC reports about this morning’s exchange have the same narrative. This one uses the language of Labour talking points in a supposed impartial interpretation of the debate. How is putting more money into the public sector going to prevent a double-dip recession? That’s also economically illiterate.
And the inset commentary from a BBC political correspondent even uses Mr. Brown’s own words to sum up what the election is going to be about.
The BBC’s election coverage will be colored by Labour’s language, which compromises the whole thing, no matter how much air time they give the Tories.
Exactly, 6 billion is less that 2 years worth of beeboid taxes. As Adam Boulton pointed out to the one eyed idiot on Sky, it’s less that 0.5% of the economy, but it has a huge impact on jobs. The one eyed idiot just wouldn’t have it and that is McBust’s problem, he is so thick skinned he can never admit to being wrong. Even the Limp Dems can see that it’s a crap tax rise and I expect to see them soften on it, but McFailure won’t. The Tories need to keep digging away.
BUT, remember how Toenails claimed last week that “Labour would soon wheel out it’s own business leaders” to support the NI rise? Well I’m still waiting Toenails.
And Brown biographer Robert Peston was trying to dismiss the whole thing the other day by saying that all the signatories were Tories anyway, can’t take it too seriously. He’s not saying that today.
Putting money into schools and hospitals does not increase GDP or have anything to do with growing the economy, for heaven’s sake. Yet not a single Beeboid will dare bring it up. Even Peston openly danced right past it today. The only bit of honesty is their leaving up of the Luke Johnson statement. They wouldn’t even have that to show if Martha Kearney hadn’t read out the script from No. 10 like she did.
Sorry – education and health expenditure do count in the aggregate GDP. GDP is the aggregate of all final output of goods and services – and it includes Government expenditure.
I think the core point is that if you overtax the private sector you damage the ability to continue let alone create new employment in the private sector. And it is the private sector’s performance that sustains the public sector.
The “bosses” – many of whom are household names in the UK – are saying that the NI increase is bad for business and therefore for aggregate private sector employment. It is damaging to UK competitiveness.
The biggest damage Brown has done is to increase the scale of the public sector within the GDP to some 53% from the 40/42% level he inherited. I think it used to be called “killing the goose that lays the golden eggs”. All reflected in the dismal value of the pound against other currencies. Brown has presided over devaluation of some 30% – in the good old days devaluation was a resigning matter for any Chancellor of the Exchequer.
John A,
That’s only if one calcuates GDP by expenditure. I don’t like using that interpretation because it’s useful only as a measure of living standards and societal wealth, and not for economic sustainability or wealth creation. But I guess by that measure, no wonder Labour wants to artificially pump it up.
When I say GDP, I’m talking about real income, by which calculation government spending isn’t involved. The only way it does affect GDP calculated by the income method is if cutting government spending leads to job cuts, which in turn reduces consumption and tax revenues. I assume the UK uses the expenditure method.
But if Labour wants to cling to that – even though it has clearly led them down the garden path with regards to public sector excess (PFIs, anyone?) – there are two problems with it:
1. Public sector employment is inevitably a net tax revenue loss. An economy needs more people earning money on which to pay tax from the private sector than the government, or it’s unsustainable. So putting more people to work in the private sector as opposed to public is always going to be a net plus, not the other way round, as Labour and the BBC keep saying.
2. The biggest problem: Not raising the NI tax doesn’t remove money from the economy because that money is already in the economy. Taxing it just redistributes it elsewhere.
I’ve been out all day but I did note that the BIG story from the BBC seemed to be Cameron going off on his bike without his safety helmet on. Really BBC, is that really worthy of comment at all? Especially as the BBC have ignored the Baroness Scotland story totallty!!!!!!
Yes, the BBC website’s ‘live event’ blog has this as its ‘scandal of the day’. Yesterday’s was Cameron missing out the words ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ from one of his speeches. What scandalous thing will David Cameron do tomorrow?
This “Live Blog” reminds me of something similar the BBC had some time ago, but for the life of me I can’t think what it was for. I do remember how trivial it was.
The BBC are clearly very scared of a Tory government. Perhaps this is what scares the crap out of them the most.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/7560191/BBC-should-be-held-to-account-MPs-say.html
I think if you say the words N A O to a senior Beeboid they break out in a cold sweat, rummage around for their passport and book the tickets to Rio (and not just on a reccommendation from Mandelscum).
£3.5 billion pound of tax-payers money spent secretly. Hmmmmm i wonder what the NAO might find? =-O
I heard Edward Leigh on the “Media Show” on Radio 4 attacking the BBC over their secracy of what they spend the “TV Polll Tax” (the words he used) on.
Anyone else see Guidos blog about Prescott dropping himslef in it with his son and Tory adverts? I see Channel 4 are onto the story but the worlds finest broadcaster?……. nothing to see move along.
Baroness SCotland….. nothing to see move along.
The Beeboids are too busy clicking away on the link to write up a news brief. You know they all got the tweet already.
Wait, they’ve reported it now. And of course they defend Prescott right from the top, taking his son’s word (Guido provides evidene which suggests otherwise, BBC not interested) that he re-tweeted and didn’t start it. Even though that doesn’t matter at all. If he sends it around, it’s still encouraging fraud, whether he started it or not.
The BBC tried to play it down by reporting that Google says they have a system in place to prevent click abuse. Again, this is irrelevant to the intent to commit fraud.
You can tell by the number of typos and poor construction that this is something some poor sub-editor just rushed out.
Didn’t another Labour politician get caught out in the same way a while back about Twitter? Didn’t they claim their account was hacked, even though Guido showed the original tweet came from their mobile phone and not thier office computer? I’m sure the BBC defended that Labour MP as well. Can’t remember the name, it might click here with someone though.
You’re right: it was Labour Whip David Wright. Claimed somebody hacked his Twitter account to change one of his posts to say that the Conservatives were “scum-sucking pigs”. And the BBC helped with the defense.
Cheers David, funny that Liebour and the BBC seem to think the proles are all stupid when it comes to Twitter.
BBC manages to show a very sanitized version of Brown’s encounter with a less than enthusiastic voter (6 PM TV news).
In contrast ITV showed the whole sorry episode.
Great television and not what the bunker would have wished.
Never mind Beeboids – you tried your best and I am sure the bunker appreciates it
“Why does the patronising BBC insist on presenting election coverage in the style of a children’s programme?” (Harry Mount)
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/harrymount/100033020/why-does-the-patronising-bbc-insist-on-presenting-election-coverage-in-the-style-of-a-childrens-programme/
Because the BBC are appealing to doped up idiots (sorry core Labour voters) on council estates.
Anxious to prove that there are no depths to which the Evil Tories will not stoop in their vote-grubbing endeavours, BBC correspondent Carole Walker accused them of “wafting the smell of freshly-baked bread” through a bakery which David Cameron was visiting, in order to build up the feelgood factor surrounding him. While smellyvision may exist in the kind of heavyweight political journals which she reads (ie The Beano), one can only assume that, for bakery workers, the seductive smell of freshly-baked bread rather goes with the territory.
Presumably beeboids prefer the smell of freshly ground cocaine.
or bottoms, Martin !!!
Don’t I’ll vomit!
I haven’t studied economics since my A Level 25 years ago but what small proportion of govt spending and GDP is £6billion? And how does cutting £6Billion of waste and not borrowing that amount stack up against the £200Billion of quantatative easing money created for the economy? Finally, if Britain is coming out of recession most strongly in Europe, that gives an opportunity to begin cutting borrowing (ie paying less interest to foreign investors) sooner. Simples.
100% of the nation’s money should be at the disposal of the state, and or our glorious leader. It is not a tax rise . It is a legitimate use of the wealth of the nation .
As Brown might say- I am leaving you enough to buy bread- you greedy ungrateful Tories want cake.
I believe UK GDP is of the order of £1400 billion. So £6 billion is a fleabite, under half of 1%
“Immigration: “Now it’s the Foreign Secretary Who Get’s His Facts Seriously Wrong” [on BBC Radio 5]
http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/pressReleases#224
Just watched Robert Peston spout utter nonsense on bBc 1. He really doesn’t have a clue does he? Just how does the public sector generate real wealth?
I was just saying exactly that a few minutes ago. Anyone who has followed his blog and other reports regularly will know that he’s basically a corporate statist with Keynesian tendencies. That mentality thinks the government is the economy. Funny how his viewpoint fits in with Gordon Brown’s vision, the one Peston championed in his biography.
Heads up on the next Guardian/BBC Tory attack story. Some non story about some Tory that MIGHT benefit from public sector cuts as he has some link to a private health care group.
Problem is he’s never hidden it, the Tories themselves have said NO CUTS to the NHS andf Labour also are happy with private healthcare.
So it’s a total non story just like Ashcroft, but expect to see the drug addicts at the BBC try to make this the story of the day, anything to get the story away from McCretin and his NI rise.
@David Preiser: So it looks like you boys in the USA are going to get the VAT tax at some point in the future to pay for all tohse freebies Barry is handing out.
Welcome to OUR world here in Europe!! I’m sure the BBC will love it.
Ugh. Don’t get me started.
Well Barry did say he was going to spread the wealth around and fundamentally change America!!!
PAC: “The television licence fee is a tax which the BBC collects . . .”
“In 2008–09, the grant to the BBC was £3.5 billion.”
“In short, the BBC is a public corporation funded by taxpayers.”
Obviously, all large well-funded public corporations must be accountable to Parliament. Effective accountability should be ensured, at a minimum level, through the substantial involvement of the National Audit Office. I assert that, under the important convention of responsible government, it should also involve the Communications Minister of the day in the accountability process, The public both needs and demands an elected representative, of their choosing, in this vital process.
Otherwise, we may as well disband parliament itself, and try out some other system.
I see the BBC is pimping the idea of electoral reform as some kind of rescue for a dying democracy.
Here is the real reason, remember that there is always a reason for everything the political classes do.
The EU demands that the regional state of the UK replaces its electoral system to conform to the ‘continental system’ and this key demand is going to be a central feature of the new local regimes plans.
The illegal EU constitution demands that each regional regime works for and places the interests of the EU ahead of their own electorate and a major part of this obligation is to harmonize the regions electoral process.
The new UK regional regime has a big problem doesnt it? How to sell electoral reform to an unwilling UK public, what a funny coincidence then that the recent expenses scandal has helped to destroy the reputation of parliament making the EU demands to reform and re model the UK parliament more acceptable.
The liblabcon would love a hung parliament for that reason, they will be free to impose the continental political system on us, the promise of a referendum will only be kept if they are sure of a victory for the EU demanded reforms.
All the seperate threads start to make sense if you factor in the illegal EU constitution in the plans that the liblabcon are drawing up, this election is perhaps the first in our history where the interests of a foreign state being put before our own national interest.
The liblabcon have worked hard to get the UK ready for assimilation into the EU federal state as a minor region and all done without having to get the permission of the UK electorate!
Our history, our glorious history of making and shaping the modern world ends not in a blaze of glory but in a grubby series of secret deals,double crosses,political fraud,treason and backroom secret deals, we fade into nothingness as if we have never existed, sold out by backstabbing traitors into a future of servitude to a foreign empire.
The traitors in the times of the Greek city states would take the gold of the Persians and then open the city gates at night, time passes but the methods of the traitors never changes does it? Our modern traitors have opened our city gates while we slept hoping that the new masters would shower favours upon them.
I hope to see these traitors heads on spikes before I shuffle off my mortal coil and visit the hot place!
Spot on , as usual , Cassie !
Thanks Grant! 😎
You two should get a room : 🙂
The Today Programme was yet another daily Labour party broadcast, in full save Brown mode this morning. The conservative party are absolutly stupid not to hammer this blatent bias by the BBC and I am fast losing all respect for them as a result.
In a BBC shocker, they are probably right on the first point and mostly right on the second point.
Bit rich of the Tories here to complain about the electoral system going against them when it is only them who are in favour of keeping it as is.
I actually think it should be AV (only after a referendum though). Only other system like first past the post that retains an localities right to have its own MP, doesn’t place too much power in the hands of the party systems, yet insists that a majority in each seat must be obtained by the MP (why shouldn’t they have to in a democracy?). Would also allow Conservatives in more strongly Labour seats to vote Conservative in that seat still knowing they can redistribute their vote to stop Labour getting in if need be (and vice a versa of course), much better than having to vote for someone that you don’t agree with just to keep one you wholly disagree with getting in.
Bit surprised the BBC haven’t banged on about this if they are so Brownophile, perhaps Cameron’s constant crawling and toadying to the BBC has actually done the trick for some of the coverage at least.