With the Coalition now moving to axe at least some of the more than 1100 Quangos that infest this country, the BBC was not going to let them away with that so cue Today and cue sycophantic interview with former Quango queen Baroness Deetch. Give it a listen. At the end you can almost hear Humphrys smirking with satisfaction having “proven” what great value quangos really are.
BONFIRE OF THE QUANGOS…
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BBC is the biggest quango of them allof course…
Never come across this woman before and I hope this is the last time too: what a patronising tone she adopted throughout, let alone contradicting herself in less than two seconds at one point. Good grief, let’s rid ourselves of all these expensive, useless bodies.
‘Save our empire-building World Service quango, please.’
BBC-NUJ has lots of its chums in quangos, but the one quango which it will most defend is, of course, BBC World Service (inc. Arabic TV based at Broadcasting House, London (Mecca-facing, East wing).
Although the BBC claims to be ‘anti-imperialist’ (ignoring the on-going Islamic imperialism), in its own broadcasting ambitions, the World Service is truly empire-building, at the British taxpayers’ increasing expense.
“Global domination is the target for World Service”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/global-domination-is-the-target-for-world-service-1988995.html
And what does the World Service’s message include (in Persian* (when Ahmadinejad allows broadcasts -which will be self-censoringly dhimmified by WS) Urdu and Arabic? – That Britain has been a nasty imperial power, but now Britain people must pay for that guilt and be taken over by mass immigration from the Third World, especially from Islamic countries.
Of course the quango parasite was carefully chosen to present a certain face to the ugly world of the quangoids.
Only paid 8k a year? value for money? gets most of its income via fees? Its all great news innit?
Obviously the truth is somewhat different, most quango empires guzzle money faster than a thirsty Scot at closing time(no offence Grant) and most quangoids are obscenely overpaid with many earning hundreds of thousands each. No mention of the tens of billions of pounds wasted on duplicated functions and useless ego trip trimmings like foreign trips and fancy offices.
The BBC yet again tries to portray the quango parasite culture through one reasonable example and chooses to hide the fact that the vast majority are money pits of vanity,greed,corruption,jobs for the boys and wasteful job creation for a group of people with a common purpose.
To hear the sick beeboid talk you would think that quangoland contributed to the economy rather than syphon off vast sums.
Cassie,
No offence taken. There is no closing time at “Chateau Grant”. The Irn Bru flows 24/7 !
Last night The Telegraph published a list of quangos under review and I noticed that the BBC World Service was on it.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t on the list of those to be abolished.
Was it Sheena who, commenting on this “bonfire”, said that it is indeed a cull BUT it implies job losses? In other words, for the BBC – well Sheena/Today anyway (who parrot the BBC line on these matters) – getting rid of useless jobs in the public sector is a bug not a feature of the (non)cuts. BTW thanks to the BBC and the Telegraph (credit where it’s due) we now have it confirmed that the coalition, like its predecessors, safeguard the political class’s jobs, influence and pay (eg Arts Council England, Committee on Climate Change – saved!).
As I feared, it’s “steady as she goes” and no real cuts are envisaged. BTW don’t kid yourselves that, if Dave had won an outright majority, things would have been any different.
Isn’t Baroness Deech the lawyer in charge of Bar discipline who recently said on Any Questions? that “we” hadn’t said anything about attitudes to women, in order to keep in with Muslims?
(Displays a proper egalitarian attitude to law and human rights and all that, doesn’t it? <sarcasm>)
So was it a stolen document or merely “leaked”?
Are the patients paying for this out of pocket or not? Humphrys didn’t attempt to dispute the Baroness’s claim that it wasn’t paid for out of taxes, nor did he try to clarify it. It makes no sense.
Hear the queen of breakfast radio Nicki Campbell and leftist Andy Verity berate Eric Pickles. Pickles handles these two tools brilliantly.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00tt848/5_live_Breakfast_24_09_2010
Go 1 hour 49 minutes in.
Verity is a knob.
Supplementary:
‘Daily Mail’ –
“177 quangos on coalition hitlist: BBC World Service may be scrapped in cuts”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1314775/177-quangos-coalition-hitlist-BBC-World-Service-scrapped.html#ixzz10SgEEvYW
The British government could make a small fortune by selling Bush House.
To be honest, if the Beeb or the Guardian types that infest the national “meeja” are NOT squauking about the “loss of jobs”-theirs above all!…then the Government is not doing what it was rightfully elected to do.
Glad we have the likes of Pickles and Redwood-unfortunately they still give houseroom to a Lansley and a May…both utterly useless.
Now to the Beeb!
1. Anyone listen to the awful “Last Word” programme on Radio 4?
Gushing tributes to some lesbin in New York who wanted men abolished in effect-how fearlessly she took on Norman Mailer-we should all have been there for this seminal(can I use that word?) moment in les/femme history-some “Noo Yawk dyke sez it ,so it must be true innit”
Keep this vacuous shit for Womans Hour so we can sweep it away in the same cull one day…her`s hoping the Beeb give equal “respect” to the KKK leader who wanted blacks abolished back in the sixties too!…no, doubt thay they will…don`t you boys and girls?
The BBC News Channel’s coverage of the quangos story broadly followed the same agenda as Today.
8.35 Carrie Gracie interviews Eric Pickles. Only the last 1 minute and 1 second is given over to the quangos issue.
9.35 Reprise of Pickles interview (the first and last time it is reprised!).
9.50 Carrie Gracie interviews John Denham, Labour. 1 minute 22 seconds goes on the quangos story. Denham begins by saying Labour would also have cut quangos but goes on to make silly points about the government’s supposed motivation – “Let’s silence all the independent voices!” and “they’re really saying ‘We will be able to do whatever we like and there won’t be anybody able to shine a spotlight on what we’re up to.”
When an extract of Denham’s interview is used in a report by Ben Wright, guess which half of the interview he uses?
10.22 Interview with Sir Ian Magee of the Institute for Government, author of a report on quangos called ‘Read Before Burning’. Sir Ian was wary, particularly over the possible scrapping of the Legal Services Commission. Still, his words were carefully chosen.
11.08 Interview (lasting just over 3 minutes) with Dan Lewis of the think-tank Economic Policy Centre. He’s a centre-right critic of the quangos, so kudos to the BBC for inviting him on. He shocked Jane Hill by saying that their functions should be outsourced to the private sector. (Her face was a picture of concern and puzzlement!) She banged on about great the HFEA is, saying it “does extremely important ethical and medical work” “But you would be happy for fundamental, medical issues that have long-term ramifications, I’m talking about the HFEA, to be debated by the private sector?” That’s a typical BBC question!
After than things went downhill…
11.34 A nearly five-minute long interview with Parmjit Dhanda “from the Prospect union, which represents many of the people whose jobs could be at risk“. This union leader bore an uncanny resemblance to the Parmjit Dhanda who was a Labour minister under Brown, though the male beeboid interviewer clearly didn’t think it worth pointing that out (even though Mr Dhanda was largely making party political points).
The clips shown of the Pickles and Denham interviews were by now following a standard pattern – short clip of Pickles, longer clip from Denham.
14.04 5 minute-interview with quangocrat Lisa jardine, chair of the HFEA. “Of course I’m incredibly disappointed,” began the BBC favourite. Interviewer Julian oozed sympathy for her, and asked “I suppose the key is then, are you fearful that anything you are currently doing is going to be lost in the process of this transition?” and “And will it be done more cheaply, because clearly this is an exercise in saving money?” Lisa Jardine has always been open about her support for the Labour Party.
15.04 3 minute-interview with another quangocrat, Shirley Rodrigues of the Sustainable Development Commission (who, said Shirley, is there to hold the government to account on its ambition to “green the government”). She was not happy about the decision at all. (Understandably, as this would be the second time she’s been made surplus to requirements by a Conservative-led administration, given that Boris pulled the plug on her position as Head of Environment at the Greater London Authority last year!)
15.31 Reprise of 4-minutes worth of the Lisa Jardine interview.
16.33 Reprise of 2-minutes worth of the Lisa Jardine interview.
16.35 Reprise of 1-minutes worth of the Shirley Rodrigues interview.
17.19 Interview with independent expert Professor Kevin Morgan of Cardiff University, another BBC favourite. A Labour Party member, his claim to fame is that he led the YES campaign for the Welsh Assembly in the early years of Blair’s government. He said quangos “can be very useful” and that the government’s motives “should be scrutunised rather than accepted at face value”.
The story was then dropped from the news agenda.
This wasn’t the travesty of impartiality that the News Channel’s coverage of the scrapping of NHS Direct was, but it shows the BBC strongly biasing the argument toward one side of the argument by guest selection, hiding of useful background information about the guests, interview length, questions largely taken from the ‘Left’ side, tone of interview, and use of repeated clips.
As ever, an excellent forensic job there Craig.