Any one catch this interview with Met A.C. John Yates on the BBC this morning? The Labour Party must be absolutely delighted that the BBC is enthusiastically advancing the Coulson attack strategy.(Nothing like trying to undermine the Coalition on a wet Monday morning) And who would have guessed that allegations from John Prescott entirely unencumbered with evidence would nonetheless be treated as Holy Writ by the BBC? I though Yates did very well but the Agenda to start the week could not have been more biased in favour of Labour.
COULSON ATTACK
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Yes, I heard this travesty of an “interview”. John Yates is no fool, the stupid, inane questioning didn’t seem to achieve anything. A total waste of time, I did wonder if he was going to be asked what his favourite colour or biscuit was, such was the banal degree of questioning. The BBC just CAN’T wheedle out the words that they want. Would this have been the same level of interest had it been a labour man under the spotlight? Of course not. I think Mark Thompson ought to be dragged back to No. 10 to explain himself. The BBC WAS biased, eh?
This is the beeboids comming out fighting !
Lets take a dead story , egg on our mates at labour , throw in a bit of a conspiracy theory that Yates might have been nobbled , report any shit the grauniad prints as gospel and make it our lead item .
Look forward to seeing them report the £50 million cost to the taxpayer, of funding trade union activists from the public purse, that seems more of a scandal to me, which is why the Taxpayers Alliance repeatedly had their freedom of information requests ignored.
This is now Day 3 of the Coulson offensive by the BBC ?
Again this whole story seems to be based around a couple of New York Times twats (or Pulitzer prize winners as Marr kept telling us yesterday as if that mattered) who interviewed a sacked NOTW reporter (like he hasn’t got an axe to grind?) who had a drug and alcohol issue when he worked there.
Do the Police really think this is a credible witness? I think not. The other thing here is Coulson resigned (something Liebour politicians never liked to do) at the time as he admitted it happened on his watch.
I really don’t see where this story is going other than the BBC are yet again shows up bigging up a story from their favoured toilet roll newspaper.
I was very surprised to hear Justin Webb’s interview with Inspector Yates this morning. It was quite surprisingly ill-tempered on the part of Justin Webb – unusual considering that he had absolutely no information or evidence for the accusations he was making. Inspector Yates, with increasing sense of exasperation, try to point this out. To no avail. Justin Webb (who I normally find one of the less offensive BBC journalists) seemed seriously out of his depth. He had nothing to say and simply came back repeatedly to the same thin allegations: ‘unknown sources have accused etc…’
The BBC is playing a very very dangerous game here. I’m sure it’s all part of the behind-the-scenes negotiations over the next licence payment. But by jumping on the bandwagon that the Guardian is driving they are making a potentially enormous mistake.
The BBC seems to be getting the entire farm on these allegations. Now, unless they have some heavy duty evidence, I would suggest that if they had it would be in the public domain by now, they are running an incredible risk of appearing to be entirely politically motivated.
We know that they are. However, if this all falls apart in their face it will be all too obvious to members of the public who have previously not considered this.
I wouuldn’t say Yates was exasperated, just wearily bewildered that he should be having to state to a supposedly professional journalist about the need for evidence to make accusations and address them.
Martin
And, of course, the Gray Lady has a reputation for being unbiased??!!
The past four days have seen the Independent and Guardian lead on this story. Yet, the leftie papers’ combined readership is less than any other, individual, national newspaper (sans Racing Post & FT). No other paper, not even The Mirror, have led on this story once. If the BBC reflected its taxpayers then this non-story would get a five second mention and the stories on the front of the Telegraph, Mail and Times would get all the coverage.
If this is really about license negotiations (Prof Pizzle above) I really do hope that Mr Hunt and the rest of his party really begin to understand the bias we, the British population (not just conservatives) are having to endure.
Where was Sean Hoare, apparently the star witness, when the original investigation took place? At any stage, he would have known that the issue was under scrutiny and could have provided apparently crucial testimony but, instead, he chose to remain silent until spilling the beans to the NYT.
Far from being engaged in a fearless search for the truth it seems that Sean might have his own agenda.
On the wider issue of hacking, I was aware of the ease with which voicemails could be “read” as it was a bit of a game around the office about 10 years ago. I hasten to add that the current furore has made people realise that it is now considered to be a very serious offence but in those days it was seen as a bit of a party piece…
As far as the BBC goes, this story is almost a bit of light relief and a pleasant distraction from the wall to wall “Cuts” narrative that seems to have taken over today!
I suspect that the reason why Labour are keeping this up is that anyone who held the position Coulson did is bound to have been involved in some activities that were, shall we say, morally dubious. Keep up the drip, drip insinuation and something may be uncovered. Which, frankly, reflects badly on the Tories for taking on somebody around whom such allegations were already being made and confirms that they are indeed the Stupid Party.
But it is NOT the job of the BBC to assist Labour in this. If there’s no new evidence, other than the word of a junkie alcoholic former employee, then there’s no story. And still the Tories are too stupid to do anything about them.
“On Andy Coulson, the BBC is dancing to Labour’s tune”
(Tim Montgomerie)
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2010/09/on-andy-coulson-the-bbc-is-dancing-to-labours-tune.html
If the comments to this piece on ConservativeHome is typical of conservatives no wonder the BBC can act with impunity. Cameron has done a great job of turning his party into a position just left of Livingstone.
By the way since the election has anything changed in Britain? No!!
Superb piece by Tim Montgomerie.
I’d just like to point out to the BBC that your star witness, Sean Hoare,
has claimed that phone hacking is endemic in the newspaper industry.
So dispatch some reporters to The Grauniad and the The Mirror forthwith, and give them a good grilling. Otherwise one might get the horrible idea that you’re just after Coulson, the Conservatives and News International.
Webb just sounded on a muck raking expedition for the Labour Party. He kept going on about the Met’s relationship with News International, one admires Asst Commissioner Yates’ professionalism for resisting the temptation to ask him about the TODAY programme’s relationship with the Labour Party. If the dumbo Conservative Party would like to stop tripping over its dumbo ears for a moment, this is a question they will be demanding an answer to from the TODAY programme.
Did you notice he alleged that policemen were making money from News International? And dropped it very quickly when Yates suggested he might need evidence for that.
Well, there are allegations, there is evidence, and then there is proof.
Nice to see that good old watertight oversight Aunty is cool with just the first… when it suits.
One wonders what next will see Lord Creosote fork-lifted in to claim to all who will willingly listen… in some quarters.
That he is not best at dealing in actualite, and seems untroubled by those at home being too fussed at his presence, suggests that he will be a frequent guest haunting BBC studios for a while yet.