I am so busy that sometimes I don’t get the time to read all that you folks write here on the topic of BBC bias but I came across this and wanted to share more broadly. It’s by Biased BBC reader Dave S and you should all give it a read;
Without any hope of enlightenment I listened to the “debate” on BBC Radio4 on immigration at 10.15pm.
Pointless apart from Douglas Murray attempting to try to move the debate into the real world and being ignored. I suppose the BBC thought it was being bold by discussing a matter usually well off limits. What I did glean from the vapid drivel spouted was that;
1. Immigration is primarily an economic matter and what is good for GB PLC is by definition good for us all.
2. That England Wales and Scotland do not and have never really existed let alone possess indigineous peoples and very defined and particular cultures. Apparently Britain is a place on the world’s surface unique in not possessing ,or allowed to possess, a defined culture created by the flow of generations. It is now always year one of the libbie dream state.
3. We have no history other than that the libbies deem “appropriate” and following from that we can safely ignore any achievements of our past generations that might lead us to maintain a sense of identity and pride in ourselves.
Be tolerant or else was the message and anyway you can’t do anything about it.
I wonder how the dull monocultural country they castigated that was old England ever managed to make such a mark in the world for so many centuries? No doubt when they have rewritten the history books I will learn the truth.
Yes, that comment gets near to the core of what BBC-NUJ’s political correctness and cultural relativism is propagandising.
And internationally, BBC-NUJ (inc the World Service, which it will soon totally control politically) aligns itself with (not least through BBC Arabic) the Islamic bloc at the United Nations; and with the Organisation of the Islamic Conference’s Islamic demands, and with the generally anti-Western, anti-Israel political propaganda of such organisations.
Great pick DV. DS really captured the perversion of truth and values that the BBC is guilty of.
“I suppose the BBC thought it was being bold by discussing a matter usually well off limits.”
Sorry, but this is just complete garbage.
Immigration has been a constant subject of debate in the media for as long as i can remember.
Just as long as the endlessly repeated cliché; “You’re not allowed to talk about this without being branded a racist…” – immediately followed by someone talking about it at length without ever being called racist.
Dez, no need to apologise for expressing your opinion.
I have to say that you and I have entirely different perceptions of reality.
It is only recently that Sir Andrew Green of Migrationwatch gets invites onto the BBC, and even then the debates he participates in are framed in a very biased way by the likes of Mark Easton beforehand.
Immigration is debated now, but only because Labour have been forced to address it as a legitimate issue by public opinion, but the terms of debate are rigged at the BBC along Labour lines.
Maybe you’ve forgotten the BBC’s remorseless campaign when Hague was Tory leader to brand him and his party ‘racist’ for raising the issue of bogus asylum seekers. We had the absurdity of the BBC accusing anyone who used that perfectly reasonable term of racism for doing so.
What the BBC is guilty of is ‘raisism’. Branding people as racist for raising the issue of mass immigration and or not debating it according to its terms that render the debate meaningless.
You have a strong point, but the branding of ‘racism’ is much more subtle that someone saying ‘that is racist’ (though they do). What I am concerned about is the rigid orxthodoxy adopted by the ‘liberal’ ruling elite in the across the entire Western world. It is not possible to question their basic belief sets – for example, Multiculturalism is always good and is adopted as a basic premise in any discussion especially by the BBC (in the same way that we assume that objects fall downwards etc), any alternate view is seen as heresy and by definition ‘not good‘, or more simply evil. I think it is correct to pitch this in quasi religious terms as we are talking about a conflict of faiths here. The BBC sees its self as a force for ‘good’ – only the public are not allowed to decide what good is.
Migration watch have been working for years with very substantial and convincing data. They have been ignored (compare the number of times the ‘Green’ movement have been on air with Sir Andrew Green) and we know that there has been a dea huge wave (remember how ‘alarmist’ and racist anyone who used the term ‘flood’ were) making Britain more ‘diverse’ for some unstated political reasons. This was covert and had to be imposed by sleight of hand on a nation that would not happily have acquiessed. The public have been lied to – we were told unequivocally that only 14,000 people would arrive from new EU states, this turned out to be 1.4 million, plus the huge numbers of uncounted and ignored ilegal migrants. There has been consistent evaision of engagement in the debate – numbers are manipulated and spun and the core of the matter is never, ever addressed. Does the British public want 500,000 new ‘citizens per year (500,000 in, 250,000 out)?
The debate is closed and rigged. It starts from an’agreed’ position that cannot be challenged and the excellent post that sparked this debate illustrates precisely the approach of cultural relativists of whom the BBC are in the ‘revolutionary leading edge’.
A debate within extremely limited parameters is not really a debate, in my opinion. Until recently, it has tended to be along the lines of “Immigration is a Good Thing – what can we do to justify more?” The basic premise was never questioned.
Dez, I also beg to differ – having written numerous letters to the bbc, to complain about them refering to Migration Watch as ‘ a right wing organisation’, which was the standard bbc introduction.
Eventually the bbc was forced to apologise and the lable was dropped.
Does anybody have a proper definition of ‘libbie’ that doesn’t include ridiculous hijacking of other peoples’ positions and beliefs ?
Nobody castigating another for narrow-mindedness deserves to be taken seriously when they exhibit such errant presumption.
People are individuals…who want things ‘to work’. They can be led easily enough if the promise that will follow is attractive enough…regardless of reality, unfortunately.
I’ll send you to a lady I consider liberated and literate both just so that you know there are such : http://mollymew.blogspot.com/
????? What are you trying to say, this is incomprehensible
On of the (many) problems with the left is that it loves to compartmentalise society into little defined groups – Classes, races, ‘communities’ as this makes the ‘analysis’ so much easier to apply. The left are not only past masters are hijacking someones position – they pretty much invented it.
How about ex-minister Woolas?
Libbie is a “gender neutral ” term and not meant to be complimentary.
The left has made a speciality of all encompassing abuse to close down discussion- accusations of phobias of one sort or another , accusations of racism etc.
There is a growing gulf between the prevailing orthodoxy of the liberal left, mired as it is in an unreal view of the human condition and that of athe now emerging right ( although I would prefer not to use that term).
The website you link to is interesting in that it epitomises the unreality that has been endemic in political discussion since the 1960s. Yesterday’s thinking.
Dez, the BBC itself doesn’t agree with this statement of yours:
Immigration has been a constant subject of debate in the media for as long as i can remember.
Here’s Alistair Burnett:
Immigration is one of the most sensitive issues in British politics. Polls indicate that it’s a major concern to many people, but it’s an issue which politicians in the three main parties – and indeed many of us in the media – have been reluctant to discuss much until quite recently.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2010/11/the_world_tonight_on_immigrati.html
Exactly. QED. And he goes on to say that he wants to “frame the discussion.
British have changed little since Ice Age, gene study says:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/07/0719_050719_britishgene.html
“….The most visible British genetic marker is red hair, he added. The writer Tacitus noted the Romans’ surprise at how common it was when they arrived 2,000 years ago…..”
Is this why Harriet Harman called Danny Alexander a “ginger rodent”?
With respect, this is nonsense.
The British have been invaded numerous times since the Ice Age by different ethnic groups, each of whom has left their own genetic markers on the original Celtic base. These include Romans, Germans (in several varieties), Scandinavians and French (who could be listed as Scandinavians but almost certainly included Gallic genes mixed in).
That’s exactly the theory that these archeologists claim to have disproved with the use of modern science. If you read the whole article you’ll see these quotes on the second page:
Many historians now believe subsequent invaders from mainland Europe had little genetic impact on the British.
The notion that large-scale migrations caused drastic change in early Britain has been widely discredited, according to Simon James, an archaeologist at Leicester University, England.
“The gene pool of the island has changed, but more slowly and far less completely than implied by the old invasion model,”
Actually it’s not quite.
If you read the book ‘Saxons, Vikings and Celts’ you’ll see that much of this work has been done on the Celtic Fringe and not in England. In fact the guy in charge of the project, a self-styled Celtophile, apologies (sort of) for spending so little time on the English leg of the research. You see, they found the Celts so interesting that they ran out of money before they could do anything but a cursory examination of the relatively small amount of data they collected from England.
Now, I’d’ve thought that England, being by far the most populous place in the UK would have had the lion’s share of the finance. But no. Is it a conspiracy? I doubt it but it shows the sort of group-think that many academics subscribe to – minorities should always come first.
So, ultimately their data is skewed towards a celto-centric view of the country so, of course, they found little evidence of ‘The English.’
They may even be right but until the data is all there no-one can do anything but speculate.
There a very real irony in Chroistopher Booker’s Telegraph Column today where he tell the story of our own people being forced to flee to Nothern Cyrpus to avoid the likelihood that their unborn children will be taken away from them at birth. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8114956/Refugees-flee-the-tyranny-of-social-workers.html
It strikes me (and Booker) that the UK was the sort of place that such people would flee to in the past, believing that their liberties would have been protected by our framework of Common Law.
How times change, and how sad it is to see the BBC (and most of the mainstream media) ignore the injustice that’s happening under their nose, whilst simultaneously championing the rights of far less deserviong folk to join the benefits queues over here.
That’s terrible, Steve, but all to easy to beieve. We’ve got similar stories on this side of the Atlantic. A Special Education Teacher of my acquaintance once told me that Family Services was always eager to grab white children because they were easy to place but try to get a black child removed from a dangerous situation!