I am sure that you, like me, will have been touched to read David Cameron assert that he is “pro-BBC”.
But the Tory leader told the Radio Times: “I’m probably the most pro-BBC Conservative leader there’s ever been.
Looks like we will have a job to do SHOULD Cameron get into power….
What a prat !
He comes across like a hall monitor desperate not to be beaten up by the classroom bully. Twat.
I think there are several issues at play here. Firstly, I think there is a place for the public broadcaster, I support the BBC, and I think that’s probably the position of David Cameron. Is the BBC too powerful? Is the BBC delivering services beyond it’s remit or to the detriment of commercial operators? Probably. Is the BBC partisan and is its news and current affairs offering bias? Yes.
It is possible to be both supportive of the instiution and critical of some of its actions.
I think this the true Conservative position. Clearly the headlines would be BBC to face axe if Cameron makes any negative comments about the BBC so I think he’s taking a politically expedient line now.
I think it’s clear that BBC faces much more scrutiny under a Conservative administration then the Labour lovies.
I agree with everything you said Ryan bar the last paragraph. I think the moment the BBC turn its propaganda guns on his Government should he try to do anything genuinely conservative Cameron will jump like a frightened rabbit and back down like Major did on ‘Back to Basics’.
I’d love to see ‘Back to Basics’ brought back with a proper battle strategy to counter the propaganda assault of the Media Left. A good place to start with ‘Back to Basics’ would be to restore impartiality to the BBC and gun down Jon Snow and Co on Ch4 if they try to pull the propaganda stroke they did under John Major.
Ryan, sorry mate but you are living in denial. Cameron knows that the BBC has more power over the hypnotized masses than he does and will do whatever it takes to suck up to them. It doesn’t matter how badly the BBC beat up on the Tories, Cameron and his cronies will just choose to look the other way, as per Islam, Climate Change, the EU and everything else in their shitheap manifesto.
One trusts that Cameron is campaigning left but will govern right.
Because after 13 years of loony left-wing failures (let alone the previous 100 years) that’s the choice the British people want: three LEFT parties.
Cameron is clearly being advised by people who have NO idea about the seething under-current of anti-SO MUCH that this gang has foisted upon us with the help of the BBC.
Ih he did, there would be no talk of “hung” parliaments as the conservatives swept to power as they did in 1979.
One also trusts that there will be air-born bacon the day of the election, but alas, reality must persist.
I’m pro-BBC, that’s why I want to see it purged of the subversives who are wrecking it.
I used to think that Dave was playing a clever long game not giving away any policies and letting Labour have enough rope to hang themselves. Then when the election was upon us out would come the Tory policies and the gloves would come off.
Its now looking obvious that Dave is in fact clueless. Elected by the party to fight Blair because he was young and with his own hair he is now the wrong leader at the wrong time. When he has got something right in the run up to the election (the NI tax cut) it seems to be by accident rather than by thought. The correct thing to say about the Beeb was that he was worried about bias but hadn’t decided what to do at this stage. Also although he is committed to public broadcasting the country doesn’t have the money it used to and there may well be changes if he was elected. In other words put the buggers on the back foot and scare them a bit.
Of course Cameron is pro-BBC. He does, after all, espouse to a large extent the policies of the bien pensant left of which approval of the BBC and the belief that the BBC can do no wrong are articles of faith. Even so, the BBC seems to ignore this ally on the mock-right of the political spectrum. On Today this morning (as every morning) the Conservatives were crucified; this time concerning their position on crime.
The Conservatives claimed that crime has risen over the last 10 years. Today interviewed the Home Secretary who – unsurprisingly – denied this claim. Then, in a display of “impartiality” Today interviewed the well-known criminology academic Rod Morgan. Since “criminology academia” has as much connection with the real world of crime as “education academic” has with the real world of schools and universities, Mr Morgan agreed with Webb that the Conservatives had got it “plain wrong” on crime. Then Webb blasted Grayling for the sheer chutzpah of the Conservatives in disagreeing with a Labour rent-a-gob and a distinguished lefty academic. We only learnt from Grayling – not the distinguished academic – that the British Crime Survey (the statistical bible of choice) is in essence an opinion poll which, among other things, omits all crime concerning under-16s as well as homicides etc. If Cameron cannot be either bothered or brave enough to call the BBC to account when his party is being consistently unfairly targeted, why would we expect him to deal effectively – or deal at all – with the mess Labour has created.
I wonder if they take Camerons batteries out when they switch him off at night, as I’m sure He’s a droid.
Well, he does bear a passing resemblance to Data from Star Trek, who had an off button.
If only…
If only he was more like Data’s sneaky, cunning twin LORE. Cameron would walk the election.
Supporting the BBC is a bit like supporting the NHS. Most people probably do. Doesn’t mean there aren’t things wrong with them or that they shouldn’t be reformed. There are huge problems with both organisations and how they are run. I expect Cameron knows that but dare not go on the attack against the BBC. I mean, given the existing anti-Conservative bias, imagine how that would go.
Actually I hate the NHS, it sums up all that is crap about the UK. The morons who work for the NHS (like the BBC) think it exists to simply employ them.
If the staff of a McDonald’s took the attitude that you see from people in the NHS it would go out of business in days.
The NHS is a big version of the BBC, even if you don’t like it, use it or want it, you’re forced to pay for it.
The NHS wastes billions on crap often making people worse than when they went in. Take the endless cases of shitty hospitals that murder hundreds of patients through crap care, yet no one ever pays the price.
If a McDonald’s killed hundreds of its customers, the manager would be banged up for life. Yet if you say anything negative about the crappy NHS you’re looked up on as a baby eater.
But Martin — the NHS is “the envy of the world” Just like the BBC.
Of course, if you contract any of the most common causes of death: prostate cancer, breast cancer, MOST cancers… then forget it as we have the worst five year survival rates the supposedly developed world.
Oh — and the NHS killed my dad — thanks to the world-class a-hole cardiac consultant he was unfortunate enough to get at his local NHS hospital.
I hate the NHS too, for the reasons you mention and especially for the way its sense of entitlement is so extreme that it acts as if it owns you. But look how Cameron has to prove all the time that he is not against the NHS.
Even yesterday someone posted an interview by Stephen Nolan in which he tried to create a drama out of making out that pay of the NHS was going to be cut – and that interview wasn’t even with the BBC-hated Tories but with Labour!
It’s a sacred cow, like the BBC.
Great point, the NHS talks about patient care. If you go to a restaurant but bring your own wine they might charge you a small fee, but if you want to pay towards drugs the NHS won’t provide the NHS can withdraw ALL TREATMENT.
F**king twats we’re paying for them in the first place.
Thank God we don’t have an appalling health service like France, Germany, Sweden, Holland……..
I had some contact with the health service in Gambia last month. Far superior to the rubbish NHS and Gambia is one of the poorest countries in the world. Not a “free” service , of course, but surely the NHS would be better and cheaper if we had to pay through insurance rather than taxes.
And Cameron is a scared cow !
I absolutely agree. I have long felt that as a taxpayer I am getting screwed. The state, including the NHS, is getting plenty of input from the likes of me, but not much by way of output comes my way.
I would MUCH rather keep the bulk of what I currently hand over to our larecenous government and decide for myself how I will provide for my healthcare, retirement etc.
Anybody that thinks Cameron is pro-small-government is deluded. I believe he is interested in nothing except his own advancement and he spells trouble for the tory party. Should there be a hung parliament, I think the backlash would be such that the party would have no choice but to oust him.
Its because the BBC know they can be biased against the Tories without a whimper from Cameron that they do so with such abandon. If Cameron’s not prepared to take on the outrageous bias of the BBC he’s not fit to run the country.
UKIP dont cower before BBC bias. The best chance of saving British democracy is as large a vote as possible for them.
VOTE UKIP 6th MAY
I’d like to, but my choice is Conservative, Labour, LibDem, SNP or Green, in a 3-way marginal.
I’m tempted to vote for the Tory, if only because Nick Clegg called me a nutter for my views on climate change, but I had a doorstep argument with the Tory who made it pretty clear he’d fallen for the eco-wibble.
Roland, you actually open the door to politicians ?
Unfortunately, in my constituency in Edinburgh ( not the same as Roland’s ), the only way we can get rid of the Labour MP is to vote Lib. Dem. What can I do ?!
Maybe Cameron does not listen to “News and Current Affairs” on the BBC this may be more to his taste.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8250256.stm
Afetr all, politicians are not like they used to be, you remember?, the ones who had principles.
No two organisations could be more different than the NHS and the BBC.
The BBC does nothing which is necessary. Most of what the NHS does is necessary.
The NHS warns us of the dangers of junk like hamburgers, fatty foods and cigarettes. The BBC is overwhelmingly a producer of junk, and the consumers of that junk sit slumped on their couches getting fatter and fatter.
If you are poor you pay nothing for the NHS. If you are rich you pay a lot towards it. Princes and paupers all pay the same flat fee to the government for the dross the BBC makes.
Mentioning the NHS and the BBC in the same sentence is usually done by pro-BBC types who like to tell us their favourite trash TV provider is a genuine public service – either because they are paid by it or are moronic enough to actually think government financed trash TV like Eastenders and Casualty is a public service.
I don’t give a s**t about the BBC, I just don’t want to be forced to pay for it, make it pay as you watch like Sky or advertising.
Maybe Cameron is just a hive member on a bit of day release. Buzzing about with bad attitude bumble bees and wasps. He is probably longing to get back to the hive.
Dave.. Behive yourself.
This is no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to Cameron. If he wasn’t born the toff that he is, he’d be a LibDem.
HARE BRAINED
You have to read this claptrap from David Hare who thinks it’s the “governments” JOB to “protect” the arts. Specifically the BBC.
Because luvvy, how can one possibly be an edgy, angry, polemical, iconoclastic “artiste” challenging the status quo, without also being a BIG GOVERNMENT statist in the pay of the government!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/27/conservative-arts-promises-david-hare
told my local tory either do something about the bbc fee or lose my vote.didn’t say a word…..me thinks they will do something but after the election .
If there is some break up or privatisation of the BBC, I’m sure what will come out of it is all the ususal suspects with financial backing from someone like Soros funding them to continue providing us with their ‘impartial journalism’, and such will be the spin to fanfare it there’ll be enough suckers still willing to buy their spun news as the end word in objective reporting. I’m sure Cameron would so cock up the terms under which it’s broken up/privatised, they’d be far less Government could do about its Pravdaesque output than can now.
DePravadisation, not Privatisation.
I see the BBC is attacking Cameron again for being confronted by an ordinary voter. At least Cameron faces them, unlike the one eyed coward who surrounds himself with grinning drugged up idiots and runs away at the first sign of trouble.
Clegg made a total twat of himself on Radio 5 this morning as well, but got the softest interview of Nikki Campbell going. No mention of St Vince once.
Callers were allowed to spout on about how great Brown is because Lloyds is back in profit.
BUT IT WAS THE ONE EYED CRETIN WHO DESTROYED LLOYD’S IN THE FIRST PLACE, HE MADE THEM TAKE OVER SHITTY HBOS.
The BBC re-writing history again.
He’s not an “ordinary voter”. He’s a BBC plant! See my comment on the open thread.
The parent (Jonathan Bartley look up Ekklesia on the net) with the disabled child is a LIB DEM activist; it was no accidental meeting.
Cranmer’s view:
“David Cameron’s profound empathy”
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2010/04/david-camerons-profound-empathy.html
Blimey! I didn’t recognise him. He’s that bloke from Ekklesia – the one they have on that programme on Sundays: The Big Questions. You know the one with Nicky Campbell. Well, well… =-O
The BBC should keep very quiet indeed about the Lloyds news. After all, never forget that it was Peston’s still-uninvestigated leak that the govt was to engineer the take-over of bust Halifax that a) scuppered the share price in the first place, resulting in a false market for a full day so, b) cut the price at which the government subsequently ‘got’ Lloyds. Writing as a individual shareholder of both companies, who got royally reamed as a direct consequence of the BBC/Peston/Cabinet Office conspiracy, I frankly will neither forget nor forgive.
Excellent point. I also remember Peston proudly blogging that his biography subject (Gordon Brown) had encouraged Lloyds to take over HBOS.
Almost immediately he started spinning away to distance Mr. Brown from the financial problems that followed.
Exactly, Lloyds was a good healthy bank before Peston and the one eyed idiot got involved. Remember how Peston triumphed the one eyed idiots involvement (the marriage) but as soon at it went sour Peston stopped talking about one eye’s involvement.
Not a word about that by Peston on his blog today, either. I see he says that the marriage was “controversial”. I’ll say.
Who held the shotgun at the wedding, Robert?
One other wonderful NHS story ..
if the NHS is so friggin’ great how come my NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOURS (as in the house next door) are having to raise £70,000 in order to send their 5 year old grandson to America for an operation to fix his legs damaged by cerebal palsey,
If Cameron is still 100% supportive of the BBC after today, he’s a fool and the Tories don’t deserve to govern under his leadership. Just now yet another Beeboid was pressing Clegg on his potential action in the even of a hung parliament.
“Will you support Gordon Brown or not?” is the endless refrain. I know he said that he wouldn’t support Mr. Brown if Labour came in third, but he has tried to slip away from that ever since. It seems to be the only issue the BBC is interested in clarifying: is there any hope for a Lib-Lab coalition to keep the Tories out? If the Tories don’t get a majority and Labour still has the most seats, it’s still a possibility. And the only one the BBC is focused on. Curious.
To his credit, Clegg at least told the Beeboid that it wasn’t right to keep going on about a hung parliament like that. I realize that in this case it’s the story of a hung parliament that’s got the Beeboids so excited and fascinated. They’re simply caught up in the story itself, and that’s outside of partisan bias. But the angle from which they approach the issue reveals a Labour-centric bias.
Why is the BBC afraid of the Tories – its not as if they are conservatives or anything. It must be just a tradition at the BBC to attack the party of “Thatch”. Well Cameron is no Thacher he is not even a Heath.
Well Cameron is no Thacher he is not even a Heath.,
Hamptead Heath, maybe? At night.
Whazzat? The arrogant Metropolitan berk who’s never had a proper job supports a load of arrogant Metropolitan berls who’ve never had proper job? The deuce you say!
Meanwhile, some of us would settle for the government just removing the (bogus) requirement for balance on broadcasters (one guy who thinks Palin is worse than Hitler vs one guy who thinks Hitler is still worse than Palin because he was weak on ‘gay marriage’). Let the BBC stop pretending and let the Fox run free, and we’ll see just how ‘fringe’ real conservatism actually is in modern Britain.
As I have said before, the BBC are very afraid of an NAO audit.
The Conservatives have been pushing for this for several years, albeit quietly, in opposition. Labour’s response was to say they might do it before the Charter ran out in 2016! Perhaps their mates at the Beeb told them it might turn up some very nasty surprises. Labour’s only concession was to allow a Conservative led select committee to ask the BBC to provide some detailed information on how they have been spending tax-payers money, the BBC flatly refused! Much to the disgust of the committee.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/7560191/BBC-should-be-held-to-account-MPs-say.html
The Conservatives are playing a sensible game, they will let an NAO audit do the talking for them. To attack the BBC in an obvious partisan way could be very damaging for the Tories. Lessons from the Iraq dossier affair with Blair and Campbell have been learnt, no doubt, as Labour came off second best in the public image stakes after that argument.
Politicians will always be more widely distrusted than news broadcasters, even when they are as obviously biased as the BBC. Many people still have an affection for the BBC, God knows why, but they still do! Especially the middle-age provincial Tory voting middle-class.
Cameron is probably blowing smoke up their arse, to make it look like any bad publicity and resultant changes are as a result of very proper NAO work, and not politically motivated.
I think the commenter on here should understand that politicians very often make very partisan decisions and actions, but do not want it to look as if it is merely Party self-interest at work, they will always cloak them in other reasons. Financial impropriety and scandal of the a public organisation, like the BBC, gives them all the reasons they will need to make great changes to public service broadcasting without waging a potentially very damaging political war against them.
Cameron has seen what they tried to do to Thatcher, succeeded in doing to Major’s government and seen them kick the crap out of every Tory leader since, except himself.
He’s not stupid and that letting BBC scandalise themselves out of existence is clearly the best option.
So when Cameron says he likes the BBC – its the same as his promise on a referendum? Maybe your right Scott N. Cameron may just be doing a Liberal Democrat*. I hope you are right but somehow I just do not see Cameron as that clever.
(*Have two opinions at the same time depending on who is listening)
Oh! for God’s sake! Do you think he is stupid!! Get real, he’s a politian and soon to be primeminister, not to mention, someone who is very familiar with broadcast media. Why the hell do people like you expect the Conservative leadership to get into open warfare with the contry’ s most influential news outlet? Do you expect them to rant “Communists!” at the BBC and declare their intent to inflict politicied revenge on them? Cameron is much more aware of the relationship between the BBC, the British public and politicians than most of the commenters on this site.
It’s being in the presence of such sophisticates as ye that make me feel so ‘umble, it do! Oiz ints gowinoo incur the wrath of ‘the man who knows’ ever again. I be pardoning you squire. I bees on my way now, bidding you good day sir, mind the dog turd. …
If Cameron is clever, he certainly hides it well. Has he ever had a real job in his life ? Mind you neither have Gordon the Moron or Prick Clegg. A bunch of wasters , all of them.
Oh Scott, how you will be eating your words a year after the election. You also come across as a Tory fanboy, so naturally, even when Cameron fails to act you will make some more absurdly complex excuses for the pathetic twat.
“I think the commenter on here should understand that politicians very often make very partisan decisions and actions, but do not want it to look as if it is merely Party self-interest at work, they will always cloak them in other reasons.”
NO!? Well now we know.
I think Cameron has just taken the least line of resistance to gain power and once in power wont do anything useful, he’ll just be looking to perpetuate his power by sucking up to the BBC’s cultural Marxist agenda.
Yesterday we saw someone who seems a very good Tory candidate fired for making these remarks.
http://www.philiplardner.com/index.html?_ret_=return
When the Conservative Party is so in thrall to BBC propaganda power that it literally sacrifices candidates on the altar of BBC bias, democracy in Britain is in very serious trouble.
Here is another comment from Philip Lardner’s website:
“I urge all common-sense people in my Constituency to stand up to the politically-correct bullies in this country and vote me into Westminster to stand up for freedom of speech and common sense. That really WILL be a vote for change!”
Unfortunately, in the ‘brave new Conservative Party’ of David Cameron, The Tory Party acts as a BBC Correctnick bully by proxy. How servile to BBC bias the Tory Party as become. How unfit to govern.
I happen to think he’s wrong to say homosexuality isn’t normal, because it is, however much I don’t like the thought of it. But for God’s sake, have we reached the point where you aren’t allowed to have opinions outside the “mainstream”? (I use inverted commas as mainstream refers to BBC mainstream thought, not, I suspect, the viewpoint of the population at large.)
Yet Nick Clegg can call me a nutter for my views on climate change and no-one bats an eyelid? Truly, this country deserves whatever shower lands up in power after this beauty contest of an election.
The Eyyptians have started gassing Palestinians to death in the Gaza tunnels.
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=174245
Any chance that our stinking “National Broadcaster” will report this? I doubt it. As we all know, it only matters when joos can be blamed.
They have reported it, and honestly to boot. It seems one small page has turned in their treatment of the issue. Egypt is given credit for its border and its actions, and no emotionally manipulative treatment of the tunnels. Somebody must have changed something in that department, and it’s for the better.