As David Vance notes below, Nicky Campbell is continuing the BBC pro-riot love-in today. Here (scroll down to find the dedicated comment piece), Peter Hitchens explains how the anti-cuts frenzy party began on Friday night and continued at fever pitch through the Today programme with BBC “presenters” excitedly looking forward to the action ahead. Says Peter:
The atmosphere of much of its coverage was what might have been found in a Left-wing London household as Granny got out her old Aldermaston marching shoes, the head of the household dusted off his anti-Thatcher placards and the children dressed excitedly for their first demo.
Shame the BBC could not find room for a reality check like this, which puts the feeble Cleggeron cuts into their true, left-wing perspective.
I wonder whether the BBC might air a debate about how hours of reports from their correspondents swooning over events in Tahir Square could have added some spice to the adolescent tantrums in Trafalgar Square?
Afterall the BBC pushed the idea that a bit of demonstrating in Egypt has in some mysterious way brought ‘freedom’ and a ‘future’ – job done.
I would give most BBC news a ‘PG Certificate’. (Parental Guidance advised. Contains strong and sustained political content and scenes of wishful thinking that some may find disturbing. Analysis – mild and infrequent).
Looking in from Spain, the only reference to the Marxist rampage in the UK’s capital city on the BBC website is a socialist press release entitiledTUC condemns post-rally violence
Robin, Hippiepooter won’t like your accusations against Nicky Campbell. I avoid his show like the plague but have seen him in action on occasion and, although not the worst at the BBC, his bias is pretty obvious to me too.
I dont watch his Sunday prog, just listen to him on radio.
The questions asked on his Sunday prog do seem pretty weighted, but his compereing?
Personally, since yonks ago, I perceived NC to be generally a bit of a leftie but not part of the rolling ‘vote Labour’ campaign that his much of the BBC. He’s a ‘people’s leftie’ though. He doesn’t hold looney opinions (insofar as the can be perceived) just to differentiate himself from the ‘morally inferior’ common folk.
If you remember when the Bulger killers were released, he very publically declared he would be biased in covering that, he was implacabley against it. That’s a ‘people’s leftie’ for you.
As a follow-up, ‘Top Man’ alert for Nicky Campbell.
@ 08:17 Rachel Burden interviewing ‘Lucy’ from UK Uncut on Breakfast 5Live, going on about ‘tax avoiders’. NC chips in asking her why target Fortnum and Mason who do a lot of good work for charity, there’s plenty of other people who could be called ‘tax avoiders’ including The Guardian?
I really do think that a number of people here need to stop viewing everyone on the BBC through ideologically tinted spectacles and start being more objective. I’m not saying that NC doesn’t deserve any of the criticism that he gets here, but to be a pet hate figure?
Being biased about BBC bias can only discredit the complaints we make.
Here’s a snippet from an Daily Mail article on the latest version of the Lonely Planet:
England has been damned as celebrity-obsessed with a ‘dicey’ economy and an addiction to junk food.The verdict is in the latest Lonely Planet travel guide, which also portrays the Coalition Government as devious over spending cuts.
Now remind me again who owns Lonley Planet?
Yes but surely there is some considerable distance from the owners parent organisation? Surely? … Or maybe not.
“…Coalition Government devious over spending cuts…”
Sounds spot on to me but not in the way the writer probably intended. “Devious” as in pretending they are cutting the deficit, though not stopping futher borrowing or debasement of the currency in order to keep spending money they haven’t got, which will futher increase the deficit. That’s fairly devious isn’t it? Perhaps “mendacious over spending cuts” would have been a more accurate description.
When the Wheelers, who founded Lonely Planet, sold 75% for a rumoured £120m to the BBC in 2007 , they said about the sale, “its time to move on”. By which they meant “its time to cash in”. Seems deviousness is in its genes.
Here is the bBCs have your say on the Protest march:
What did the cuts march achieve?
nothing – all the valid protests are wiped out by the idiots – those trashing things and those making it a “Get out of Libya” march – incredibly ironic given that those protesting in Libya against government are being murdered, “disapeared”, shot at by snipers and being beaten, raped and tortured.
Untilthose making valid protests assist the police with identifying troublemakers – hey how about making a citizens arrest?? The protests will continue to be a joke.
Just how much did it cost to police this event ? Whatever it was, it’s money that now can’t be spent on more important things. I wonder if the marchers get the irony ?
well. In all fairness, my milk isnt sour but hey WHO’s IS?! The participants of the march have got to be joking! HOW ON EARTH are these idiots meant to change the ways of the cuts???? THINK THIS IS A TOTAL OUTRAGE MYSELF. WHO’s WITH ME? C’MON PEOPLE OF THE NATION, WERE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER RIGHT?!
What did the cuts march achieve?NOTHING! Some funny placards though.
Ignoring the rent-a-mob thugs who seem to gravitate towards all marches and protests today, the ‘cuts march’ simply served to underline how selfish, ignorant, and out-of-touch, public sector unions and their members are. We in private sector employment cannot continue to fund the gravy-train public services any longer. It doesn’t matter whether the public sector is overpaid or underpaid, it is a monkey on the back of productive workers that can no longer be carried. The bottom line of the bill for the public sector is simply far to high.
That people is the first five posts on the above board. the vast majority are of the same bent. It seems that the bBC isn’t telling it as it is.
Actually most of the first 36 are like that. I posted elsewhere that I got to reply 37, the first moron.
I would just like to point out the vast chasm between the Narrative the BBC put forth on these protests and the way they wanted you to think about the Tea Party protests in the US. There is no journalistic integrity.
All day yesterday, various Beeboids kept repeating the line that the main TUC protest was entirely peaceful, so full of rainbows and unicorns that people “felt comfortable bringing their families”. I lost count of how many times I heard them try to make a distinct separation between the violence of “a few” and the angelic many.
How very different from the way they told you time and time again that some outlier with a swastika on a poster was the face of an entire movement of more than one million people. I don’t remember any of the BBC correspondents in the US asking a Democrat if they were going to now change their plans because the people had spoken.
Come see the bias inherent in the system.
Peter Hitchens (in the article Robin links to) cites a particularly bad interview between a BBC reporter and an UK UnCut thugette called Lucy. Paddy ‘Dave Spart’ O’Connell had another one on ‘BH’ this morning called Sandra (a girl with a posh voice).
Needless to say, she was “very upset” at the media portrayal of the violence and blamed the police for the violence. They were “overstretched and at times seemed really panicked”. “There was a lot of overreaction as well.” She then listed a few ‘acts of police brutality’ against her “defenceless” friends. She was “really terrified” by the violence meeted out by the police in Trafalgar Square.
Paddy O’Connell made a couple of half-hearted attempts to challenge her, but basically let her run amok.
He then talked, as BBC people always do, to Brian Paddick, the liberal ex deputy chief of the Met, who also criticised the police. “So you’re telling me the police could have protected property better?”, asked Paddy. “That’s my believe,” said Paddick.
Police blamed by both guests!
Police blamed by both guests
It seems the BBC norm, someone else mentioned the Hillsborough Tragedy recently where the police had to carry all the blame, as they had at Heysel (Belgian police but it’s the same thing) and in the Stephen Larwrence case.
Put together with them getting the blame for being too easy in the first student riot, to being too hard in the last (kettling complaints) and there seems to be a theme.
If the TUC hadn’t planned this riot the police wouldn’t have needed to react.
And so it begins. Now I hear on the News Channel that Brendan Barber “bitterly regrets” the violence done by his fellow travellers. He “hopes the message won’t be lost”. Don’t worry, the BBC has made sure of that. The violence had nothing to do with anything, please ignore it, the unions are as innocent as newborn lambs. What a difference from the way the BBC portrayed the Tea Party protests. Those were described as wholly extremist, not a happy group who meant well but got hijacked by a couple of nutters. And there is no muttering about a specific side ramping up the rhetoric to unfortunate levels.
So whom to blame for the violence? The police, naturally. Why did they let it get out of hand, etc. Could it have anything to do with the fact that the androgynous Saracen character from Robin Hood and her Liberty gang were in the control room standing by ready to blow the whistle the moment they saw something they didn’t like, and then plaster it all over the news the next day? Funny how the BBC didn’t mention that at all.
“How successful do you think the main protest was?”
“I think it was very successful….a good-natured event….”
I also think the position that if the Government doesn’t change on a dime based on one protest then it doesn’t achieve anything is moronic, and shows the intellectual failure of BBC News brains. Protests can also raise awareness of an idea, and can continue to do so for a period of time with the hope of affecting change at the next election. It’s not like the only measure of success is an immediate transformation.
BBC bigs up the numbers: it’s 250,000 now in the march, and of course it’s the fault of the police that property got damaged. No mention of the mindless morons who did the damage of course. Oh and the blame laid on the police by Paddick of course….
From start to finish the Beeb has acted as recruiting sergeant and propaganda machine for the protestors. What a bunch of wankers.
From Union Maven Paul Mason on yesterday’s protests:
The demographics were interesting. Unison – a union which has a reputation in the trade union movement for passivity – had mobilised very large numbers of council workers, health workers and others: many from Scotland and Wales; many from the north of England. Unite likewise, and the PCS seemed capable of mobilising very large numbers.
What this means, to be absolutely clear, is people who have never been on a demo in their lives and in no way count themselves to be political.
That last bit is meant to tell you how vitally important this issue must be. If it motivates apolitical people to protest, it must be really serious situation, no? Funny how the people involved in Tea Party protests – which, contrary to these protests, were started by apolitical people who had never been involved in anything like this in their entire lives – weren’t give such a positive spin. Instead, sinister motives were always projected onto to us.
Have to be careful here, as my better half “is of the Left” and an “NHS worker”.
You won’t hear it from the Unions or the halfwits calling themselves The Government, but the issue that has mobilised NHS employees is the threat to their pension rights (index linked, final salary) in the event of TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment) following transfer to a non-NHS employer. Under the cuts/reforms, the patient continues to gets free NHS as always, and the Government pays for it all, as always. But the provision of service can move to “any willing provider” ie a market in supply, not a monopoly supplier. Competition. Aaargh!
All this tosh about “NHS Not for Sale” Anti-Privatisation Anti-profit that comes from the Trots is a just fear-mongering. NHS staff are marching because they fear being transferred pension-wise to the sort of terms and conditions the proles in the private sector have had to accept. It’s about protecting privileged access to unfunded benefits, paid for in the main by the poor sods in the private sector now on career average or defined benefit schemes.
You would think a journalist might have found that out? Nah. Its about “cuts”, cue Balls.
Likewise I have family working for the NHS and this is a big fear for them. Oddly most of the fear seems to be coming from the NHS management who presumably fearing for their jobs are feeding their staff with tales of departments being sold to Specsavers and staff working for minimum wage etc etc.
Incidentally the NHS seems a very weird employer. Staff working on the “front line” seem to be treat like dirt and paid not a lot. Those performing the back office and support type functions on the other hand appear to be very well paid and carry with them a lot of staff who don’t do a great deal.
One can support the NHS and still be honest about reporting facts. From the start, the BBC tried to pave over the fact that the Tea Party movement was started and mostly populated by people who had never been politically involved in any way before, and even trying to tell you that their opinion wasn’t valid because they didn’t vote for the President and didn’t support Him anyway. Yet here’s Mason giving this protest the exact opposite spin, even though it truly is organized by national bosses and none of these people supported the Tories anyway.
It’s an inherent bias at the BBC, all the way across.
The NHS is like The Army, carefully graded heirarchy from top to bottom. Privates don’t earn as much as generals, as in any other walk of life. Its not about being treated like dirt, though that’s the way they will often tell it.
Many of the people at the tree-top are ex-nurses, with proverbial padded shoulders, not men in suits with clipboards beloved of BBC TV soap scriptwriters. Professonal jealousy is endemic in the heirarchy of patient care. Honestly the public haven’t a clue, so they are ripe for fear-mongeringby the Trots who have a different agenda.
Mos of the back office support staff are Clerical Band 2, earn a fraction of a nurse. Often, they are treated like dirt by clinical staff. No, its not like it is on Casualty. But then Casualty is Fiction.
Obviously subject to confirmation, but BBC-related sources say:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/8409735/The-Chancellors-measures-make-it-easier-for-new-firms-to-find-money.html
‘Quote of the year must come from the reporter caught up in the police “kettle” at Trafalgar Square who told BBC News on Saturday that the protesters had only set fire to rubbish and wheelie bins in order to keep themselves warm.’
Next… What Mrs. Kennedy needs to understand is that Lee Harvey Oswald was possibly only concerned at the Presidents brain lead levels?
BBC-NUJ-UK Uncut:
[Extract]-
“Last week the BBC’s Newsnight programme came under fire for giving UK Uncut minutes of free publicity without questioning the mysterious group’s policies, funding or any links to political organisations.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1370655/Miliband-faces-protest-backlash-Unease-Labour-leader-ranks-marchers-alongside-suffragettes.html#ixzz1Htj4jLfM
I don’t suppose the store owners can sue this kid, now that he’s admitted to organizing vandalism?
Usually a bit wary of Order-order on a variety of levels, but it was interesting to note in the comments (the rational, non-Tourettes variety) how a certain uniquely-funded national broadcaster was viewed in all this.
http://order-order.com/2011/03/28/ed-milibands-split-screen-speech-horror-remixed/
I wonder how Mr. mason is doing explaining his unique level of prior access, possibly restricted to the telephone, with the ‘organisers’ of the vandalism pre and during…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2011/03/a_snapshot_of_the_26_march_dem.html?postId=107607587#comment_107607587
Just listened to John Humphrys and the Today producers revealing how ignorant they are about what Anarchists actually are. “I thought Anarchists didn’t want anything to do with” planning and organization, says Humphrys.
Obviously the primary goal of this segment was to rehabilitate UK Uncut and provide a platform to absovle them of repsonsibility for any violence at the protests and shift blame to unnamed others. The expert they brought in to explain what Anarchy actually is was very helpful in this regard. It’s not the same as the Anarchists from the beginning of the 20th Century, UK Uncut isn’t like the baddies, these other unnamed groups are more like spiritual descendents of the protesters from….wait for it….the 1980s, UK Uncut is innocent and non-violenct, etc.
Actually, the whole ‘label’ thing can get pretty screwed up, especially as collective meanings, such as they are, evolve and even change or flip over time.
A bit like Global Warming to whatever the heck it is that sells this week in the production meetings.
Kinda fun when the most grotesque label throwers and abusers get hoist by there own petard, mind.
Better yet when nailed scrabbling to ‘explain’.
Either way, it seems pretty obvious that the BBC has an agenda going to defend UK Uncut and get their message, to separate them from any violence and vandalism. Can’t see the BBC delving any deeper to find out who the real culprits are, either. Just some anonymous people signing up for the Black Block twitter feed.