OPEN THREAD…


Well, what a week it has been with the BBC in full on “Fight the Tory Cuts” mode. As we prepare to enter the weekend the floor is yours. Please share your thoughts on the National Propagandist.

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120 Responses to OPEN THREAD…

  1. Andrew Mars says:

    Nice bit of propaganda in favour of ‘asylum seekers’ on The One Show last night. You could almost hear the violins.

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  2. fred bloggs says:

    Yesterday morning from Parliament, was released three disciple notices.  1)  ex MP Mckay told to repay money.  2) MP Dorries told she has been cleared.  3) Three Peers told they will be suspended because they fiddled expenses.

    Although all three got mentioned at some point during the day, I noticed the following.  Midday 24h news has a rolling banner about Mckey and a website entry about it.  Mid afternoon the three peers had a normal news entry (not a continuous rolling banner) and a web entry.   On the R4 news prog 5-6pm was Mckay and Dorries, no Peers.

    I could only come to the conclusion there was a strong preference to concentrate on white MPs than Asian Peers.  Can we add racism to the list of bBC misdemeanour’s.

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  3. Abandon Ship! says:

    Hot on the heels of the Murdoch “did you know he was a Nazi”-type piece on Today, was a piece about Ian Dury, which included at the beginning this line “Thatcher the milk snatcher”. What gives? Is Today becoming the rolling-news-that-bitch-Thatcher programme, or just rehearsing for the state funeral?

    One other thing, I think it was Evan Davis who this moring said “pissed off” in one interview just before nine. This may be normal generic Beeboid speech off air, but surely this is not appropriate for a programme with the supposed gravitas of Today?

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    • ap-w says:

      I heard that, but I think it was “taking the piss” he said. It was in the context where he was purportedly interviewing the Chairman of National Grid about the country’s energy needs, but as the Chairman has also served on the court of the Bank of England it was a perfect pretext for Davis to branch off to discuss financiers who “take the piss” being paid too much, and leading him on to the interviews’s end destination, which was to get Sir John Parker to brand people who take their wealth to Monaco and Switzerland “irresponsible” “Thank you very much” said Davis when they finally got there.

      But even better I thought was the following item, which was the crescendo of the Today programme’s pro-France fetish which has gripped them all week. Justin Webb was depicting French society as a utopian model for us all to aspire to and there was a wonderful moment when Pierre-Yves Gerbeau referred to Sarkozy’s attempts to fix the French economy. If you go back and listen to it the genuine mystification in Webb’s voice as he says “What neeeds fixing”? is priceless.

      I also gather that Jon Sopel has fallen off his scooter and broken his hip, although at first I mis-read the report and thought it was his hip flask which was broken.

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      • Millie Tant says:

        Yes, you’rer right. I’ve just listened to it and he said he was quoting a former Cabinet minister when he said “taking the p…”. That makes it all right then, eh? No doubt it was a Labour former minister whom he was quoting.  There is always an echo of Labour when these Beeboids speak.
        This is the same presenter to referred to a “spliff” when interviewing Lord Young recently. What a twerp.

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      • Grant says:

        Gerbeau is one frenchmen the BBC hate. He is not left-wing and loves the UK.

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    • David Vance says:

      Yip, I picked up the Milk Snatcher line, they can’t help themselves!

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  4. Guest Who says:

    The Editors’ Blog is a rich seam to mine as the market rate talents who control what we get served grapple with guidelines, etc.

    One of the more recent, though actually on a relatively innocuous subject, is rather telling…

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2010/10/biodiversity_lost_or_missing.html

    … in that 10 out of current 15 posts are modded out.

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  5. fred bloggs says:

    I am keeping this separate as it is so important.  Yesterday and probably for days (weeks) to come will be the story of the cuts.  Last night on R5  they did what are the papers lead stories. The one from the Times was interesting about the carrier contract why it was placed and why it could not be broken.   I though ‘wow’, this story will run and waited for bBC to pick it up.  So far I have not heard a peep.

    The story says that the ex Lab PM deliberately put conditions in the contract that favoured the contractor.  This is the opposite to what he is supposed to do.  It also said it was done to garner Scottish votes.  So the news story is Gordon Brown accused of Gerrymandering and corruption.  Why is the bBC so quiet about this?

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  6. canon alberic says:

    Is it just me or does it seem like the Today programme and other consistent sources of Tory bashing are increasingly left to fill the airtime talking amongst themselves? I do hope so. It has long seemed obvious to me that if they stop putting up sacrificial victims no-one will notice and the BBCs claim to be the forum of the nation will be completely undermined.

    The result of depriving them of their expected Aunt Sally’s is an efloressence of unwise bias revelation and some of the most boring and pointless radio imaginable,

    There was the BBC labour party sokesman Norman Smith suprisingly concluding that the utterly hopeless Ed was doing a good job in favourable circumstances.

    I especially enjoyed the agit-prop feature/promo for the “musical” about the saintly Ian Drury; this protracted puff with its obligatory reminder of the Thatcher terror entirely failed to mention his very, how shall we say, “controversial” performance as a human being despite the recent revalations about it from his own family.

    Also the ongoing “why cant we have revolution like the French?” meme pursued today in a nauseating cultural cringe interview with an hilariously patronising Frenchman lecturing us stone age rosbifs about his exquisite life between the 16eme arrondisement and his “house in the country” (presumably Fontainbleu) in an atmosphere of rapt envy.

    a la lanterne with the coalition Ca ira!

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  7. NRG says:

    The Ian Dury feature mentioned the “turmoil” of the late seventies, without mentioning that it was the socialists that ushered in the turmoil. Then skewed the whole report into a childish anti-Thatcher Trot whine.

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    • Demon1001 says:

      This is the bit I can never fathom: they are always trying to imply that Thatcher was somehow responsible for the Three Day Week (caused by the Unions and the Arabs while Heath was pm); 27% inflation (Callaghan); Winter of discontent (Callaghan again); the disenchantment of youth that led to the Punk movement etc. (At its peak during the Wilson, Callaghan years).  They never quite say it as it would be easily laughed out but you always know the implication. 

      All these troubles were from before she came to power but Cameron’s Consocialist position is to not defend Mrs T on anything even though the attacks on her are 90% lies.  (She was not perfect so 10% of their attacks may have some justification.)

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  8. Pounce says:

    The bBC and how it reports on half a story in London.

    Luthr Rahman wins Tower Hamlets mayoral election  

    A former leader of Tower Hamlets Council who was dumped by Labour then stood as an independent has been voted in as the borough’s new mayor.Lutfur Rahman secured 51.76% of the vote to become the east London borough’s first directly-elected mayor.Former council leader Mr Rahman was Labour’s initial candidate.But when he was rebuffed by the party he announced he would stand as an independent with several Labour councillors’ backing……Labour’s London mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone has risked internal discipline by campaigning for Mr Rahman against the party’s new candidate, Helal Abbas.

    Mr Abbas launched a bitter attack on Mr Rahman, accusing him of being “in the gutter”.

    So the bBC reports on the new Mayor of Tower Hamlets, yet doesn’t explain why the labour party removed him, or even why his replacement Helal Abbas felt the need to speak out.

     

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    • Pounce says:

      (Part 2)

      Maybe it has something to do with how Mr Abbas reported Mr Rahman for electoral fraud an allegation which was found to be true. Not only that but Mr Rahman is a member of theIslamic Forum Europe, an Islamist pressure group with a very public anti-western agenda. Which probably explains why last Friday “special issue” of the London Bangla newspaper dropped through the letterbox of every household in Tower Hamlets, the election for the borough’s first all-powerful mayor plumbed new depths.

      The paper carried outrageous and unsubstantiated smears against Labour’s Helal Abbas, calling him the “wife-beating candidate” and “racist” while trumpeting Lutfur Rahman — as the people’s choice. Typically, 30,000 copies of this weekly freesheet are distributed outside mosques every Friday. This time a mystery funder had tripled the print run to 90,000 copies, 

       

      (The underlined section cut and pasted from Harrys place)

       

      It seems the bBC only investigates the past of people if they are white, and no Islamic. So much for being a so called impartial news org.

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    • fred bloggs says:

      The story is even better than that.  With Rahman expelled, the candidacy should have gone to the second place person.  This second place person (who was not named but believed to be John Biggs)  was not selected by the Labour Party but given to the third place person Abbas. There can only ONE conclusion why Biggs did not selected he was NOT BROWN enough.  The Labour Party is also racist.

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  9. Martin says:

    The BBC have come out in full defence mode for James Caan trying to buy a kid. He’s been given full positive spin on Radio 5. What a great man what a humanitarian.

    The BBC are always quick to defend those who serve them and Liebour.

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  10. Biodegradable says:

    Excuse the messy formatting  🙁

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  11. Olly boy says:

    In relation to the ‘Cuts’ I keep hearing the BBC claim that it is a ‘gamble’ and that we don’t really know whether making cuts or carrying on spending is the right decision. Either way it’s a 50/50 choice and only time will tell.

     

    Well that’s fine but I never heard them once say the same thing when Labour decided to carry on spending as opposed to cutting. They implied that racheting up the deficit and debt was the only way forward and certainly never accused them of ‘gambling’.

     

    In my view not making cuts is a much bigger gamble as we could lose our credit rating and have to be bailed out by the IMF both of which would have catastrophic implications to the UK and all it’s citizens.

     

    Labour policy = the right decision

    Coalition policy = a gamble 

    Fair and balanced?

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    • Martin says:

      Other EU Countries have had to throttle back on the public spending, one leftie mong was moaning that soon Germany will have no deficit at all and will be in surplus and how terrible this will be.

      The spend your way out of recession doesn’t work, Barry Obama is finding that in America, the only stuff that’s shovel ready is the manure from the White House.

      The US economy is strangled and Barry’s only answer is more borrowing (from China of course)

      But the BBC doesn’t get it.

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    • prpw says:

      Spot on Olly – in the BBC’s warped world paying down debt is a `gamble’, while piling on unsustainable debt levels historically associated with national defaults and crushing poverty for future generations is seen as responsible. UNIQUE

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      • David Preiser (USA) says:

        And what a shock, Matt Frei is using the exact same language in his latest biased blog post:

        The UK coalition’s great gamble on austerity

        Agenda?  What agenda?  Groupthink?  What Groupthink?

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        • prpw says:

          Has Matt Frei ever had an original thought in his life ? Pretty much everything he writes is so obviously derived from external sources he should be embarrassed if he had any integrity.

          I also had a laugh earlier re-reading Matty Boy’s recent vacuous blog drivel about whether Tea Party members would feel more at home in the UK.

          Sent to the US with a remit to cover major stories, is that really the best he can do ?

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          • David Preiser (USA) says:

            He anchors BBC World News America four nights a week, and it’s the full BBC propaganda puppet show.  It goes over so well with the sophisticated, educated viewers they think they’re targeting that BBC America has stopped repeating it at 10pm and added twenty year-old Star Trek:TNG episodes instead to fill the gap in the schedule.

            He lives in the US (just outside the Washington, DC area) and takes Fridays off. 

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      • hippiepooter says:

        The BBC had their toy snatched away from them on May 5th.  These ego-maniacs love having power to play with.

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    • hippiepooter says:

      That’s BBC bias of the ‘look, no hands’ variety.  Their favourite party trick.  Disarms you with an apparantly reasonable and neutral proposition to implant in your mind the smear that the Government doesn’t really know what its doing, but errs on the side of making people suffer because we all know Tories are evil.

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  12. Guest Who says:

    By way of a ‘what does the team think?’…

    I person i hold dear and shares many of my views is having some fun with the complaints system.

    For some reason the BBC are taking it very seriously, which might suggest they are a smidge worried in my view. Opportunity, yes, but caution advised.

    Rather than fill up the thread with the full screed of over-formatted BS only Aunty can get into an email to a complainant, might I share just one snippet, regrading dissatisfaction expressed a) with an initially dire piece of journalism, and b) it being lost from an original story having been revisited later to, er… well… read on :

    As for your concerns about this paragraph being “excised” or “tided up” from our story, or us “backpedalling”, we can only reiterate that the story moved on and new information was introduced. This is perfectly common on all news websitesand does not constitute rewriting history.
    Now, is it just us, or is it a tad disconcerting that it is ‘perfectly common’ to go back to what was, which was wrong, and replace it subsequently with what is a bit less wrong, or maybe even factually accurate, and not feel in any way slimy at covering the initial horlicks up? This is, after all, what most folk will have sen/heard, and moved on none the wiser. 

    Especially when it’s deemed smugly acceptable to refer to overwriting initial rampant agenda and personal belief with something more innocuous as ‘introducing new information’.

    So let me get thsi straight?

    The BBC guidellne/ethics system reckons that a journo could write anything they felt like, and see it published but… even if it is total pants, so long as later on they drop the dodgy parts and pop soemthing else in, that is honest ediotorial?

    Please tell us we’re missing something here, because it would be good to take this as far as it can go on a strong foundation of semantic-proof fact, in the hope that, eventually, somewhere at the top of Aunty there is still a person of professional competence, intelligence and integrity who can see a world of hurt coming their way if they don’t get frikkin’ real.

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  13. RooBeeDoo says:

    Ref: Chris Summers Story about the teenage killers, the article has been amended today:

    “Note: October 22. This story has been amended to change the headline and the introductory paragraphs to ensure it is factually based and could not be interpreted as commentary on the circumstances surrounding the case by the BBC.”

    I don’t know how different it now looks.  Could somebody comment who read the original version?  Thanks

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    • John Horne Tooke says:

      I wish I has taken a screen shot.

      This looks like it has been removed.

      “The girl was in many ways a victim of circumstances.” 
       
      “When her defence lawyer, Judy Khan QC, draws up a mitigation speech for her sentencing hearing she might start by asking: “What chance did she have in life?”

      This was the part which I commented on in another thread. All these words were Summers own.

      Looks like the BBC have read this and c taken out Summers pleading for the defence.

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      • Millie Tant says:

        It would be if I could find the amended article on the vast website.

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      • RooBeeDoo says:

        Wow, the beginning of the article and headline has been significantly amended. Thanks again.

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    • Guest Who says:

      RooBeeDoo 
      Ref: Chris Summers Story about the teenage killers, the article has been amended today:  
       
      “Note: October 22. This story has been amended to change the headline and the introductory paragraphs to ensure it is factually based and could not be interpreted as commentary on the circumstances surrounding the case by the BBC.”  

      Well, at least the change has been acknowledged, and no twatting about trying to claim a tweak to the timestamp is all that’s required to make this clear.

      But… really?  That note seems to reiterate my point. It was pants, and now has been changed because the original that went out at the time was not looking too good under scrutiny.

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  14. jazznick says:

    I see that the environmentally friendly David Shukman has a ‘travel speaker’ slot at the Conde Nast Luxury Travel Fair in Novemver at Olympia !

    Co2 not a problem any more then ?

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  15. Phil says:

    Does anybody know the average time it takes for the BBC to reply to complaints?  I complained on Monday about the unbelievable bias of the odious “7 day Sunday” that I had the misfortune of listening to last week.  I am stil lwaiting for an acknowledgement let alone a reply – is this standard practice?  I work in the private sector where we have to respond with a solution to a complaint within 24 hours – these lot at the Beeb are a shambles!

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    • Martin says:

      Phil, I once waited 3 months to get a reply. 

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      • Phil says:

        Thanks Martin – these lot would last 5 minutes in the real world.  By the way, don’t ever consider listening to “7 day Sunday” – you’ll end up bawling at the radio.  Right-on trendy lefty “comedians” – w@nkers!

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    • NotaSheep says:

      Current complaint is 7 weeks unanswered, last one was never answered.

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    • Guest Who says:

      Phil,

      As you’ll gather… it varies.

      I have several ‘on the go’, with chums running others in complement.

      What is notable is the variety of different entities that you can end up addressing, or hearing back from, depending on the complaints route taken.

      Most are designed to blow you off with a cookie cutter and make any escalation impossible…. if you hear back at all. A good technique is to ignore you, as after a few weeks who remembers? And how do you remind them?

      What’s interesting is if they sense you have drawn blood, in which case the replies are quick, and vast. 

      They are also, fortunately, usually written records of further excavation.

      I just need to find some pol with a spine to bring such evidence to so arbitration can be made outside the BBC canteen.

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    • hippiepooter says:

      In my experience over the election they dont generate automatic complaint receipt numbers.  Complaints from the oiks aren’t something to be encouraged, dont you know old boy?

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  16. Beeboidal says:

    RooBeeDoo

    The headline was “Guilty of killing but were pair really victims?”

    The first paragraph was

    “Two teenagers have been convicted of killing a man on the day he learned he was not going to be charged with sex offences. But was the Crown Prosecution Service to blame for the chain of events?”

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  17. sue says:

    I have distant memories of interviewers asking the questions I myself would have asked. Can’t remember who, exactly, but it never happens now.

    I realise Desert Island Discs isn’t Hard Talk, but when Kirsty questioned Michael Mansfield, I wanted her to at least acknowledge the strange anomalies in Michael Mansfield’s philosophical musings.
    He was keen to convey his empathetic approach to his terrorist clients, because he likes to share their pain, when, as he and Cherie Blair do declare, all democratic means have been exhausted.
    After all, a bomb and a bit of collateral damage is an undeniably effective strategy for getting your own way.

     Okay I thought, you’re a QC. It’s your job to defend terrorists, and thinking of them as freedom fighters might help your conscience. But that was not all. He kept on bringing in Hamas. He wanted to persuade us that they too were righteous freedom fighters, and democratically elected, at that.
    Democratically elected means something when applied to Hamas then, but not so much when democracy impedes the will of the IRA , who have no other choice but to implement a bombing campaign,  the only alternative means at their disposal so who can blame them, or suicide bombers, whose self-detonating habit is an understandable last resort; or activists who are forced to damage property or organise flotillas and other blackmailingly effective means of persuasion.

    Of course, if you’re in favour of violence as a means of enforcing your will, you won’t have a leg to stand on when criticising countries which retaliate, will you?

    We don’t need no edu-cashun, (which might explain why there’s an otherwise inexplicable black-speakin’ rap singer in the family) Is this champagne socialism gonnn maddd?

    I know it was only Desert Island Discs, but I wish they wouldn’t feature these hypocritical pro-terrorism celebrity self publicist bloated wrong headed filthy rich pretend anti materialists on the BBC. Or, send them off to a real desert, doesn’t have to be an island.
    This is a bit of a rant, so I’m posting it in the rant thread.

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  18. prpw says:

    Competition as we head into the weekend: which Beeboid do we think would win a coveted BBC Sneerer of the Year award ?

    Paxman would probably win an individual category award for Sneers Delivered Over The Shoulder to People Appearing on Video Screen behind him, but I reckon he’d face tough competition overall from Matt Frei, Gavin Esler, John Humphreys, James Naughtie etc etc.

    Who are everyone’s favourite BBC sneerers ?

       0 likes

    • Craig says:

      I think I’d nominate one from your list prpw – Matt Frei. From just the last week of his blog along we’ve had these sneers-made-print:

      Teargas is new perfume wafting over from Paris. The British government is hoping that it won’t catch on in London and that the new smells will be confined to the cabbage soup being prepared in austerity households around the country.

      …the desperate nostalgia of the Tea Party movement.

      The coalition government thumbed its nose at deficit spending
       
      Today is Axe Wednesday in the United Kingdom. The Chancellor’s scythe has swept across dozens of government departments in a way that would make the Grim Reaper proud.

      Cool Britannia has been replaced by Cruel Britannia.

      The supine Superpower of Leisure and Welfare (Europe) is slashing with the gusto of Freddy Krueger in yet another Friday the 13th remake.

      I am told that the Royal Navy – yes, the same one that once helped to establish the British Empire – will be back to what it was under Henry VIII, albeit with more sophisticated ships. But then European governments are passionately embracing the era of gruel and gloom.

      You can hear the perpetual Frei sneer in all of them. And the bias.

         0 likes

    • Grant says:

      prpw,
      This thread isn’t long enough !

         0 likes

  19. George R says:

    “Women’s boxing to be shown on BBC”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/boxingandmma/8079113/Womens-boxing-to-be-shown-on-BBC.html

    The week after on BBC: women’s mud-wrestling?

    Is that a picture, below ,of Stephanie Flanders and Jane Hill in training?

    http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_5Ul3kvGr10s/SgS6X8Z7qAI/AAAAAAAAoDM/pg-Aw5go3Ps/s400/women+wrestle+2.jpg

       0 likes

  20. George R says:

    INBBC seems to have missed a chance in not reporting the ‘victimhood’ of a Muslim, and criminal charges against non-Muslims in France:

    You run from police…You accidentally get electrocuted while hiding from police…You get a monument built in your honor…and the police go on trial!

       0 likes

  21. David Preiser (USA) says:

    Quick, somebody tell Greg Palast and Newsnight:

    Leftist Group Finds 3,000 Suspect Hispanic Voters to Register & Vote on Last Day of Early Voting in Ruth McClung’s District….UpdateL 65% Are Invalid

    This is an interesting race in an Arizona district where McClung is backed by the Tea Party movement in the state, and her Hispanic opponent is best known for calling for a nationwide boycott of Arizona over that infamous immigration enforcement law.

    Raul Grijalva got a racialist association – One Arizona – to get out the vote.  Turns out they loaded it up with fraud.  The One Arizona website shows them to be supported by a coalition of exclusively race-based groups, some of which are clearly Socialist in nature.  Amusingly, a couple of them are native tribal groups, which obviously have no fears from the nasty Immigration Stormtroopers. All of them are from the Left, and are supporting a Democrat, based exclusively on his race.  And now they’re engaging n voter fraud.

    “A source from the Yuma County Recorder’s Office has found that 65% of the registrations have been found to be invalid!” Wrong address. Not citizens. The registrations were all dumped off at once. Now before the requests for early ballots expires, the groups are requesting early ballots.

    The BBC will never report any of this, as it doesn’t fit their agenda.  As a reminder, here’s Greg Palast’s report for Newsnight about how only white Republicans engage in voter fraud, and the now defunct ACORN is INNOCENT.

    More info on this, including my email exchange with Newsnight producer and Palast’s co-conspiritor Meirion Jones, can be found on this open thread from the time, beginning on Page 2.

       0 likes

  22. john says:

    “Impartiality is in our genes”
    How then do the BBC defend in a News summary at 7.00 pm on Radio 4 covering the unfortunatly named submarine Astute being “beached” ?
    Well there’s the bit about it being nuclear of course.
    But in a news headline( 1min 30sec ) to go on about the tug which assisted at the scene is about to be decommissioned by the evil Tory cuts is not impartial, it’s political.

       0 likes

    • Grant says:

      John,
      On R4 news yesterday, a Beeboid was relentlessly grilling a former submarine captain that the Navy were incompetent ( maybe they were, but how would any dumb Beeboid) know. Despite all the “sophisticated equipment” the sub still hit rocks.
      The captain explained that the manouvers were very risky and complex and accidents were bound to happen sometimes and happened to all navies. He didn’t go on to say most of them probably never get reported.
      However, the Beeboids position was clear, to denigrate the RN. Scumbag.

         0 likes

      • Grant says:

        “Beeboid know”.  Wish this site had a preview facility !

           0 likes

        • hippiepooter says:

          Grant, you can delete and repost if you want – although I’m usually too lazy which is why so many of my offerings seem dyslexic!

             0 likes

          • Grant says:

            Hippie,
            Same here with my postings.  often I am so angry about something it results in me typing too quickly and making slip-ups !

               0 likes

      • hippiepooter says:

        So many BBC journos are just petty tyrants.  They like to bully, Humphrys being a classic example.  They know that when interviewing someone from the services their protocol is to show restraint under all circumstances and your average psycho beebo likes to take full advantage.

           0 likes

  23. Martin says:

    On the subject of the London council merging some services to save money the first comment on News 24 as soon as they read out the leadline was “but critics of the plan say….”

    So just who are the critics? The Liebour party and the Unions. hardly independent then.

    This idea of sharing resources is totally against the ideology of the BBC. Sky, fox, ITV and C4 share resources with other networks but the BBC always has to get its own staff and equipment out there to news stories costing us a fortune.

       0 likes

    • John Horne Tooke says:

      The BBC tend to use blanket terms all the time. “Scientists”,”Campaigners”, “Critics”, “Experts”.  They all seem to be anonymous. Its just another propaganda technique which the BBC have mastered.

         0 likes

      • Grant says:

        Journalists should never be allowed to quote from anonymous “sources”. How do we know they are not invented ? 

           0 likes

        • hippiepooter says:

          Grant, you really do have to rely on the integrity of the journalist.  Are you seriously suggesting that the BBC would employ people who do not possess the highest standards of integrity?  😀

             0 likes

          • Grant says:

            Hippie,
            Heaven forbid that I would imply anything like that !
            Of course, journalism is not a profession. There is no professional body, no professional qualifications required, no quality assurance procedures, no disciplinary procedures and no-one has ever been prevented from plying that dirty trade.
            Sir Denis Thatcher hads it about right when he described them as “reptiles”.  With a few exceptions , I would say more like low-level ponlife.

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  24. David Preiser (USA) says:

    Related to my comment above about Democrat voter fraud:


    Illegal Aliens Canvas for Votes in Wash. State


    When Maria Gianni is knocking on voters’ doors, she’s not bashful about telling people she is in the country illegally. She knows it’s a risk to advertise to strangers that she’s here illegally — but one worth taking in what she sees as a crucial election.

    The 42-year-old is one of dozens of volunteers — many of them illegal immigrants — canvassing neighborhoods in the Seattle area trying to get naturalized citizens to cast a ballot for candidates like Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who is in a neck-to-neck race with Republican Dino Rossi.

    Pramila Jayapal, head of OneAmerica Votes, says the campaign is about empowering immigrants who may not feel like they can contribute to a campaign because they can’t vote.

    “Immigrants really do matter,” Jayapal said. “If we can’t vote ourselves, we’re gonna knock on doors, or get family members to vote.”

    Anyone want to bet that these illegals won’t magically end up registered to vote Democrat?  Any bets that the BBC will report this or any voter fraud perpetrated by Democrats?

       0 likes

  25. TrueToo says:

    The World Service latched onto the story yesterday of Israeli settlement construction and wouldn’t let it go, describing it alternately as, “Illegal settlement construction on occupied Palestinian land,” and the more moderate, “Settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.” The World Service noted that the Israeli group, Peace Now, had objected to the construction and then kept on pushing that fact the entire day, along with the typical Palestinian objection to settlements, both designed to portay Israel as the obstacle to peace.   
      
    Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev was given a couple of half-minute slots, and that was the sum total of the attention the World Service paid to the official Israeli point of view.   
      
    Good news that the World Service will no longer be funded by the Foreign Office, but by the licence tax. This has already no doubt got Britons thinking what the hell the BBC is doing with their money and why they should be funding the World Service so that foreigners can listen to it for free. 
     
    Sure the World Service was funded out of taxpayers’ money anyway through the FO but that wasn’t such a direct and obvious drain on people’s pockets. Soon it will be and I hope that will arouse even more opposition to the BBC.

       0 likes

    • hippiepooter says:

      I’m perfectly happy to have a BBC World Service as long as it is the voice of a free Britain promoting democratic values, as it used to be, not a mouthpiece for Britain’s Nazi Left.

         0 likes

    • John Anderson says:

      True Too

      I agree – the World Service will get squeezed now,  and that is fine by me,  it no longer represents much of what Britain is about.

         0 likes

      • David Preiser (USA) says:

        The World Service occasionally discusses topics and has on certain guests whom the Mother Ship wouldn’t dare touch.  Losing that would be a shame. But they could certainly lose some of that navel-gazing correspondent stuff, and the propaganda pieces for FO-funded projects, such as giving simple electronic devices to pygmies so they can identify important trees.  (The reference to the FO is absent from the article, but it was there when I heard Keane’s radio broadcast at the time).

        Of course, I assume an assimilated World Service would toe the BBC editorial line even more strictly, and the World Have Your Say will be more biased than it is now.

           0 likes

  26. John Horne Tooke says:

    Just look at this monumental attack on the “nasty Tories”. The whole page is a torrent of over reaction by left wing union spokesmen. And all because the evil IDS suggested that people should look for a job in the nearest town if there were none where they live.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11606537

    The BBC are going back to the 80s with a vengeance.

       0 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      It’s on Newsnight as well.  “Get on the bus” is an updated version of “Get on yer bike”, and once again the BBC takes the position that people have a right to stay where they are and demand the government provide jobs there.

      Out of the other sides of their mouths, they take the position that mass immigration is perfectly acceptable because the rest of the world moves around to where the jobs are.

         0 likes

      • Martin says:

        To all beeboids, get on the train and piss off to Salford.

        Ha ha ha, you know its cold oop north beeboids, you won’t be hanging around in the urinals in your y fronts up there, not unless you want to catch a cold.

           0 likes

        • Grant says:

          The easiest way for the BBC to save money would be to scrap the Salford move. All the same , the thought of Beeboids suffering in that dump does give me some pleasure.

             0 likes

        • Millie Tant says:

          It’s not just cold …brrrrrrrrrrrrr…oop north. Oop north west, it’s always raining!  Sopping wet oop there.  😀

             0 likes

      • George R says:

        And many Beeboids oppose going to work at the new studios in Manchester, on a generous and publicly subsidised move.

           0 likes

      • NotaSheep says:

        Is that why Labour raised the rates of Stamp Duty to keep us all from movong to find work?

           0 likes

    • Martin says:

      I moved 200 miles to get a job when I left the forces. It’s what you do.

         0 likes

      • John Anderson says:

        IDS was not even telling people to move.  The specific example he quoted was Merthry Tydfil.  Valley towns like that,  and places like Barry, have huge unemployment – but there are tons of jobs just a bus ride away in Cardiff.

        I’d love the job of managing a JobCentre on an incentive for getting idle people off the register.  A real purge is what is needed,  and I think IDS is focussed on this.  BBC wusses might not like his approach-  “unfair” they squeal – but what most people feel is truly unfair are the hordes of able-to-work people sponging off the rest of us.

           0 likes

        • David Preiser (USA) says:

          I suggest a simple rule for the purge:  If their flat-screen TV costs more than you as a manager earn in one week, they’re off.

             0 likes

        • dave s says:

          Merthyr is a problem case as are many of the old valley industrial towns.
          There is no simple answer but it would have been much better if we had not outsourced so many manufacturing jobs abroad because the profits were bigger and it was so easy to do.
          Old fashioned Tories would have had a care for this. Nulabour and ,I am sorry to say, new Tories have not .

             0 likes

  27. TrueToo says:

    Impartiality might have been in the BBC’s jeans a very, very, long time ago but if it was they forgot to take it out when they put them in the washing machine.

       0 likes

  28. Demon1001 says:

    A little thing which shows the BBC emphasis in innoccuous stories:  Showing the brief shots of Sir Norman Wisdom’s funeral, they showed his trademark cap on his coffin – but instead of pointing out that it was the cap worn by his character they claimed the cap represented his “humble origins”.  True he did have humble origins but it didn’t seem to be a problem to him, it acted more as his inspiration. 

    Shortly after that they described him as always playing the “Worker”, but again, in the sense that the BBC talks about workers, that wasn’t what he played so much as the little man triumphing over adversity to win the day and the girl.  Yes, he had a boss (Mr. Grimsdale!) but don’t we all.

       0 likes

    • Grant says:

      Yes, the BBC would see Norman as a working-class hero, not something that can be said about the middle-class filthy rich “comedians” on the BBC’s books today.

         0 likes

      • hippiepooter says:

        Ideology obsesses Marxists always try to politicize every aspect of life.  Would have been nice though if the funeral of a much loved British comedian could have avoided the Marxist indoctrination treatment from the BBC.

           0 likes

  29. Martin says:

    Anyone else notice how the BBC tried to kill the James Caan buying a human being story?

    Read the BBC website and it’s full of him saying sorry, yet if this had been a Tory donor, say lord Ashcroft the BBC would have kept the story going for weeks.

    On ITV there are damming interviews of the childs family including her mother, yet on the BBC zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

    Could it be that Caan is a big Liebour party donor and a beeboid so he’s one of them now and the BBC always look after their own.

       0 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      I bet a number of Beeboids feel like they would have done the same thing in his position.  Remember how much BBC air time was devoted to that flood?  Because they agree with him, it’s a non-issue, and they report from that perspective.

      And isn’t he a non-dom Labour donor?

         0 likes

  30. Martin says:

    What a shock, the BBC have ‘exclusive access’ to the new Wikileak files along with the Guardian. Yet again the media axis of evil strikes back.

    funny that the BBC happily calls the Wikileak files ‘leaked’ not stolen unlike say the CRU emails on the lies about climate changed as parroted by that twat Harrabin.

       0 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      Here’s my morning email:

      Subject:  US forces ‘ignored Iraqi torture’

      Up to 400,000 US files being released by Wikileaks claim American military turned blind eye to torture in Iraq by Iraqis.

      For more details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news 

      Know what? I am pretty sure that there is some fire behind this smoke.

      But my being ‘pretty sure’ doesn’t make a viable news story. Yet. Especially one with a rampant bit of agenda being ‘excused’ in the headline by sticking something in ‘quotes’, then followed up with a weaseled ‘claim’ get-out, and directing to a vague generic landing page to try and find out more.

      And no, Mr. BBC complaints apologist, it is not excused because SKY is doing it too. I have written to them and told them that if they think being taken seriously as ‘news’ outfit is popping the odd Wikileaks PR in amongst a 58/60min Wayne Rooney obsession, I have better uses of my PiP screen and these ad eyeballs are going elsewhere.

         0 likes

    • prpw says:

      Yes, if someone were to leak the contents of the Balen report about the bias in the BBC’s reporting to another broadcaster I doubt the BBC would take the same attitude towards the leakage

         0 likes

      • hippiepooter says:

        If the wikileaks guy does it I’ll rescind the contract I’ve taken out on him.  Somehow, I dont see it happeneing though.

           0 likes

    • hippiepooter says:

      A double-like on that.  In saner times this wikileaks guy would have been taken out and the BBC been given a carpeting by HMG if they so much as touched this treasonous information.

         0 likes

  31. Oliver says:

    A fair and balanced BBC piece on the Tea Party Movement/Fox TV???

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vhflj/The_Culture_Show_2010_2011_Episode_11/
    (skip to about 10m 40)

    Foster Kaymer toes the BBC line in this pathetic item on the ‘culture’ show.

    To be fair, I pick up a few tit-bits which will no doubt be useful in my next 6th form debate:

    (in chronological order)

    1. Glenn Beck is racist and behaves like a drunk uncle.

    2. Reporting of the news in the US was fair and impartial…just like it is now in the UK(!), until Ronald Reagan spoilt it all. 

    3. There are partisan voices reporting news in the US on both the left and right. However, only footage of Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck expressing right-wing views or embarrassing themselves exists.

    4. Tea Partiers love nothing more than to make and display signs that depict Barack Obama as ‘The New Face Of Hitler.’ (From this report I can only assume these signs were not made by Democrats and moreover, that similar signs depicting George Bush as Hitler have never been displayed by Democrats)

    5. Liberals want public health care and Conservatives/Tea Partiers want Jesus to come back and govern America (Max Blumenthal is allowed to make this point completely unchallenged, also interesting to note the caption refers to him as a ‘Journalist & political blogger’ with no mention of where his political alligiances lie.  

    6. Tea Partiers are racist as they can’t accept that the US has a black President. I assume Tea Partiers have no interest in fiscal responsibility etc because this in never mentioned in the report.

    I could go on, but I have had enough now.

    Oh yeah, I almost forgot….

    JON STEWART IS AMAZING!!!!!!!!! 

       0 likes

  32. David Preiser (USA) says:

    I posted a comment on the previous page of this thread about Democrat Hispanic voter fraud in Arizona, perpetrated by a group called One Arizona.  Among the partners listed on their website is Mia Familia Vote Education Fund.  It’s clear from the name that it is an ethnocentric group.

    Now in Colorado, 6000 fraudulent voter registrations are being purged by the courts because of errors and violation of the state’s 20-Day Rule, which exists to prevent this kind of mass registration.  It takes time to certify voter registrations, and groups wanting to register fake voters to rig elections use this tactic to overwhelm the system in the hopes of getting fake voters to affect elections.

    Mia Familia and the SEIU are behind it.

    Guess which Presidential candidate said the following about the SEIU during the last election:


    “The SEIU agenda is my agenda”

    And worked closely with them as a Community Organizer.

    Somebody tell Greg Palast and Newsnight.

       0 likes

  33. NotaSheep says:

    Did anyone else endure Newsnight’s debate on the CUTS? An allegedly representative panel had only two out of around 50 people willing to support the cuts and only one person willing to say that public services were overmanned. What was the YouGov poll finding? 70% supported the cuts, yet the BBC’s representative panel was 4-6%… 

       0 likes

  34. David Jones says:

    The Daily Mail has an article on biased Question Time audiences:

     

    One observer told the Mail that he was shocked at the level of hostility towards the government.

     

    ‘They are taking some tough decisions on the deficit but the level of attack from the audience was off the scale.

    ………………………………………………………………………………………

    After the audience grilling, a BBC producer was overheard telling Sir Richard Dannatt, a panellist and the former head of the Army, that the show was held in Middlesbrough because the audience would be the most hostile to the cuts.

    ………………………………………………………………………………………

    A BBC spokesman said: ‘The Question Time audience holds politicians from all sides to account.’

     

    Oh yes, pull the other one.

       0 likes

    • Buggy says:

      In the words of the late, great Michael Wharton:

      Political bias ?”….”How can the programme be biased when all shades of progressive opinion will be represented ?”

      (From 1966. Plus ça change).

         0 likes

      • Grant says:

        Buggy,
        How funny, I just posted the “we are all guilty” quote from him recently.
        Great man, irreplaceable !

           0 likes

  35. hippiepooter says:

    Apologies if this has already been linked to, in todays mailonline:-

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323032/Question-Time-faces-bias-charge-audiences-hostile-Government-cuts.html

    “After the audience grilling, a BBC producer was overheard telling Sir Richard Dannatt, a panellist and the former head of the Army, that the show was held in Middlesbrough because the audience would be the most hostile to the cuts.

    A Conservative source said: ‘Now, more than ever, is the time for the BBC to be careful and frame the debate responsibly so that the facts are properly heard. The spending review is a serious topic for all of us, it needs to be treated as such.’”

    In other words, (ex) Conservative Party: “Please BBC, dont be nasty to us”.

       0 likes

  36. Grant says:

    As posted my me and others here R4 “The Week at Westminster” is 30 minutes of boringly predictable coalition bashing.
    As there are no right-wing journalists in the UK it is presented a left-wing journalist or a Beeboid ( by definition, left-wing ).
    I just caught a few minutes with left-wing journalist, Steve Richards and guests, Geoffrey Howe and Alistair Darling.
    Richards keeps pushing Osborne’s “lack of experience”.  Howe, to his credit , pointed out that Osborne had been shadow chancellor for years.
    At that point Darling jumped in and pointed out that he knew nothing when he was made chancellor.  Richards immediately added that the 
    the current shadow chancellor, Alan Johnson , is as thick as two short planks, and has actually admitted it.  Er….ok, I made the last bit up. For some reason it didn’t make it into the programme.

       0 likes

  37. Will says:

    Is John Humphrys suffering from Tourettes, Senile Dementia or just in love with the sound of his own voice? Throughout this morning’s “Today” programme, if he couldn’t think of an interruption he instead just made grunts, oohs and aahs.

       0 likes

  38. Will says:

    I don’t watch the BBC soap “Merlin”, but from the Radio Times website I see a character played by Adetomiwa Edun. So that will be a chap from the well established negro branch of the ancient Britons. I wouldn’t mind but for the fact that the BBC seem to crowbar anachronistic racial diversity into all their productions.

       0 likes

  39. George R says:

    An ‘education’ cut which BBC-NUJ is not reporting:

    The first teacher banned for life for being useless

       0 likes

  40. Grant says:

    Following Qestion Time from Middlesborough, comes Any Questions from the University of Derby.
    Now, let me think which end of the political spectrum students tend to inhabit ( to my shame I did when I was a student and then grew up) ?
    First , suprise question , are the cuts fair ?
    Fraser Nelson says it is not fair for a family on benefits to get more money than a family in work. Greeted by stony silence.
    Next , Gen . Sec. of the NUT  says cuts not fair. Rapturous applause, then I switced off. After all , what is the point , it is so predictable.

       0 likes

    • David Vance says:

      Grant

      I heard it too. The NUT woman was lionised even as Fraser was marginalised. 

         0 likes

      • Grant says:

        David,
        I think I have said it before, but I spend more time on this website than with our dear friends at the BBC !

           0 likes

  41. NRG says:

    After the audience grilling, a BBC producer was overheard telling Sir Richard Dannatt, a panellist and the former head of the Army, that the show was held in Middlesbrough because the audience would be the most hostile to the cuts.

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323032/Question-Time-faces-bias-charge-audiences-hostile-Government-cuts.html#ixzz13C5scuuC

       0 likes

  42. David Preiser (USA) says:

    Another personal freedom lost in The Obamessianic Age:

    Union Fires Stage Hand For Wearing Bush Hat and Shirt

    It’s not that Bush.

    Obama’s visit to Los Angeles today (Friday, Oct. 22) has stirred controversy even before he arrived.


    A stage worker setting up the stage was fired for refusing to remove his hat and turn his sweatshirt inside out and the reason? The shirt hat and shirt both had the name “Bush” printed on them but not just any Bush but, that of George H.W. Bush.

    The IATSE (Local 33) union fired the worker even after he explained the shirt to his bosses. The shirt didn’t explicitly support George H.W Bush but that of the aircraft carrier named after the former President and the aircraft carrier his son has served on for the past many years and is currently deployed.

    The IATSE is, of course, one of the unions loyal to Him.  Such is the oppression we’re seeing when the far Left is in power that even a simple, personal family pleasure is forbidden if it even remotely strays from approved thought and behavior.  The stage hand wouldn’t even have been visible to the President once he arrived and the show began, so the man was fired on suspicion of having an unapproved thought.  I mean, the aircraft carrier is on the guy’s hat.

    Video at the link, so everyone can see the offensive garb and judge for themselves.

       0 likes

    • Grant says:

      David P,

      That is quite incredible. I would like to think it couldn’t happen in the UK but……….

         0 likes

    • hippiepooter says:

      That is absolutely horrendous.  I would guess the guy has a case in law, but what are the chances of him getting an ‘activist judge’?

         0 likes

  43. sue says:

    Anyone noticed what Ade Edmondson had to say about  the BBC? There may be an element of sour grapes, in that they’re not on it any more, but:

    ‘Writing for telly is mind-numbingly humiliating and undignified. You’re never told anything. You feel like a naughty schoolboy. At the BBC things get made and broadcast, but no one tells you if it’s liked or disliked. I don’t have the patience any more to come in and out of the door of executive TV land. It’s a blur of idiots.

    ‘When we first made The Young Ones there was only one person who had to say yes or no. Now you have to go through about ten people, and because they’re changing channels so quickly, the executives are all just whizzing around trying to make a name for themselves. They hate anything that anyone who was there before had going. They have no interest in TV at all. They’re all career people.’

    This outfit, supposedly the best in the world, is run by some of the highest paid execs around.  It’s a shambles.

       0 likes

  44. David Preiser (USA) says:

    Even Cuba understands that small businesses need tax breaks because they create jobs and wealth, yet the US President wants those tax cuts to expire because they’re for “millionaires”.  Even the BBC admits that Cubans are actually being encouraged to enter the private sector.

    Cuba details taxes for the self-employed

    But this raises a question for the BBC:  Is Fidel Castro still someone to be admired for being the David standing up to the evil Goliath US brute? If it’s okay for the Cuban economy to shift to free market private enterprise rather than one that is state-run, is Castro still a hero for preventing the people from empowering themselves for the last 50 years?

       0 likes

  45. George R says:

    BBC-NUJ in its 1960s, utopian irresponsible way has been enthusing over the French violence on the streets of France over the past month.

    A non-BBC NUJ comment from France:

    “French schoolgirl asks: what’s trashing school got to do with retirement?”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8083094/French-schoolgirl-asks-whats-trashing-school-got-to-do-with-retirement.html

       0 likes

  46. john says:

    Lambs to the BBC slaughterhouse.

    Hello obscure Tory and Lib-dem MP’s.
    It’s fever pitch time for those of you invited to appear on to-morrow’s BBC Andrew Marr show.
    Go to bed early, wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed.
    Try not to look too stupid when asked the following questions :
    1) Cuts.
    2) Savage cuts.
    3) Wise French Trade Union reaction to their stupid right-wing Gov.
    4) What Bob Craw and Tony Wobbly have in store for you.

    Should you manage to answer any of these questions without interuption after 10 seconds into your rebuttal, consider it going well.

    I shan’t be watching and trust your parents won’t be either.

       0 likes