Monthly Archives: June 2011

DEAR JOHN..

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The underlying bias of the BBC comes across in some small ways as well as more obvious ways! I was listening to an interview concerning a new book on the interrogation of Rudolf Hess at 7.42am. John Humphyrs was conducting it and all seemed quite reasonable until suddenly, as from nowhere, Humphyrs makes a snide comment about waterboarding and then answers himself by pointing out that “some” use waterboarding as an interrogation tool. His voice was dripping in disgust – the most curious thing of all being that he seemed to talking to a voice in his own head. It’s located at 2.30m in – really odd. I suppose the BushHitler meme runs deep.

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TARGET; PHILIP DAVIES

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Conservative backbencher Philip Davies is one of those rare things – a really solid Conservative voice. Naturally the BBC loath him and so everything he says is subject to great scrutiny. Today has a go at him over allegations that he suggested disabled people are disadvantaged because of the minimum age and should accept a lower rate of pay than their able bodied colleagues, you can listen to it here. Davies is talking common sense and showing a sense of humanity towards disabled people. Of course any economist worth his salt will explain that the socialist construct of a Minimum Wage is harmful to the employment prospects of many people but through the prism of the BBC, the Minimum Wage is a good thing and there can be no negative consequences.

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IT’S 1926 ALL OVER AGAIN….

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BBC seem to be enjoying the bellicose threats coming from the Trade Union comrades. Today we have the (helpful for the Unions) news headline from the BBC that Unison and other unions could bring about the biggest wave of strikes since 1926. This, of course is in defence of the unsustainable pension provision that the State workers demand, beyond their already inflated salaries. In a hilarious example of just providing us with one side of the narrative, the BBC quote Unison’s Dave Prentis and then invite on TUC leader Brendan Barber in order that he can provide the much needed balance by..agreeing with everything Comrade Prentis said! This is a perfect BBC meme – evil Tory led Coalition attacking helpless low paid kindly public sector workers. Danny Alexander is getting it in the neck for daring to suggest a degree of balance and at every point the BBC is selling the Union line. What a disgrace.

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NAUGHTIE AND THE BROTHERHOOD….

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As we know, the BBC narrative is that the Arab Spring is a “good thing” and the Muslim Brotherhood are a kindly and progressive group….as a Biased BBC reader observes;

“Heard this this morning on ‘Today’…Muslim Brotherhood moderate, democratic, nothing to worry about…..Jim Naughtie not ask difficult questions nor dig too deep…. Egypt’s largest Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, announced this week that it is forming an alliance with one of the country’s oldest liberal groups, the Wafd Party, a union that could prove to be a powerful force in the September election. Dr Abdel-Moneim Aboul-Fotouh, a senior figure in the Brotherhood who has declared himself a presidential candidate, gives his view of what an Egyptian parliament could look like. “The democratic process will go on.” 

‘Consensus between the parties and lead to balance…not just between MB and Wafd but between 12 parties’ the MB rep. told us….Naughtie does not mention who the other groups are. 

Naughtie asks ‘Will extreme Islam prosper’…..answer…’Nothing shall happen…except progressive democracy and justice….moderate and tolerant.’ Naughtie…’Copts have nothing to fear then?’ ‘No, I myself defend them….Christians have same rights as Muslims.’


“Well that’s OK then…..except I later read this rather different picture …….“and then this.Oh, and this.“
Why is it is almost AS IF the BBC is wilfully sanitising the Brotherhood, surely not?

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OPEN BORDERS

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It’s always important to remember that when it comes to the BBC, impartiality is in their DNA. It’s one reason why they are so special. Anyhoo….A BBBC reader observes….


“Evan Davies wants usto allow in more immigrants…nice that he has a BBC programme…and a helpful spot onthe news Frontpage to broadcast his own views in highly emotive language asusual:

 ‘There right in front of us were dozens of young men walking between thevehicles and opening the backs of trucks to clamber inside. They were evidently mostly Afghans, taking advantage of the fact the trafficwas moving slowly to try anything to sneak a ride into the UK.

For me, any thoughts of disapproval at the unruly behaviour I was witnessingevaporated at the sight of a teenage boy cowering dangerously at the top of alorry driver’s cab under the back canopy. He was not a trouble-maker. He was obviously petrified but still so desperateto get on to a car ferry to Britain, he was going to take the risk. I felt like stopping the car to ask him why. What journey had he taken to gethere and where did he think it might end? What is so good about our countrythat people would go to such lengths? It is a chance to tell the migration story from the point of view of thosetrying to get into our country, rather than those of us lucky enough to be herealready.

Perhaps the saddest revelation was the indecency of the reception in theEuropean Union. It is in Greece that many Afghan migrants’ illusions of Europe as a welcomingplace are quickly shattered. 

One young couple, Abdullah and Zarminah, made the trip with their three youngchildren. “The children ask me, is this really Europe? Is this Europe where we haveno place to sleep?” said Zarminah, who relies on a local charity to feedthe children once a day.  I defy anyone to watch the programme and not think that Greece and Italy badlyneed help in dealing with undocumented arrivals. 

At the heart of this investigation lies a simple dilemma – to tolerate thesuffering on our own continent is unconscionable – but to alleviate thesuffering by simply opening the door might attract vastly more people than wecan realistically cope with humanely. We meanwhile are trying to maintain complete mobility across borders for thepopulation of the rich world while trying to build ever higher walls to denythat mobility to the world’s poor. I am sorry to say our examination of the issues does not deliver a solution. ‘

Open borders means the end of the welfare state, the end of free schooling, theend of the NHS…..it’s a shame a senior BBC journalist, an economics one atthat, allows his personal prejudices to over ride common sense and to concealthe real consequences of unlimited immigration….never mind the social andcultural disasters that will entail. Naturally Davies is a very left left winger…so ‘Internationalism’ and the endof a capitalist state might have its attractions….and he has a foreignpartner who lives in the UK….any personal reasons then for wantingimmigration?

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HOW THE DEAD FUND THE BBC..

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I found this email from a Biased BBC reader interesting…

“Just renewed my TVlicence. Last year I paid in full in one payment. This year I decided to renew online.Went on the web site and what first struck me was that the site seemedto promote the monthly direct debit option. I clicked on this method of payment.However going through the process it seemed that the monthly payments shown onthe screen did not add up.I was paying around £25 for the first 6 months andthen around £12.50 each month thereafter. You pay the full fee in the first 6months and then keep paying.

I phoned the licence people. The reason they do it like that is so that you are”always in credit”. “So when do you get the overpayment back?”
“When you stop using a TV”
“That is usually when you die”“But we will refund the overpayment if we are asked”
How many people think to reclaim this overpayment when a relative dies? Theyare clearly making a nice secret profit out of this.

There is an upside to this. Once you have paid your first 6 monthly instalmentsyou can cancel any time and you do not need to start paying again for 6 months.There must be millions paying on direct debit. If they all stopped paying andtook the 6 month holiday that the system allows, it could seriously damage theBBC.It is a double whammy. Expose dubious financial malpractice and at the sametime inflict serious financial pain.”

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GREEN JACKBOOTS AND PENSION FUNDS

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It’s 18 months ago since I revealed that the investment strategy of the BBC pension fund is run on a day-to-day by Peter Dunscombe, who was then the chair of the steering committee of the Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change (IIGC) an allegiance of climate change fanatics who now boast that between them, they manage $12 trillion of assets. Mr Dunscombe openly flaunts his own climate change credentials, as here:

In 2000 he joined the BBC Pension Scheme to head up their small in-house team to oversee investment strategy and investment manager relationships. Over the last 9 years the Scheme has developed a significant exposure to alternative assets and has been active in the areas of responsible investing and climate change.

The one ray of good news for BBC pensioners is that Mr Dunscombe (info in latest BBC pension fund report here) has since resigned that IIGC post, but – surprise, surprise, – the BBC Pension Fund Trust still boasts openly that it is a member of the IIGC and meanwhile, the IIGC itself is pushing flat out to force its climate change policies on government and investors alike. Its efforts, outlined in a press release issued this week, include trying to jackboot Australia into carbon taxes, as revealed in this chilling phrase from their Australian spokesman:

We will strive to make thematic allocations but reallocation of substantial investment to the low-carbon economy requires policy makers to step up with certain and long term investment signals.

The IIGC is also pressuring our own government to adopt ever-more-stringent green policies as this patronising release from last month shows:

The new carbon budget set out today by the UK government demonstrates determination, is ambitious in scope and sends a signal to the UK public, financial markets as well as the wider international community. We hope that the ambition shown by the UK government sets a benchmark and has a wider impact at international level. However, the suggestion that the UK could review, and potentially weaken, its own commitments depending on progress elsewhere needs to be clarified to ensure certainty forinvestors beyond 2014.

So let’s get this clear. The BBC pension fund (on which Helen Boaden, its head of news, sits as a trustee) openly supports an organisation that is brazenly using immense financial muscle in pressuring governments round the world and here at home to adopt mad greenie policies.

Call me cycnical, but Richard Black’s efforts to stongarm us all into supporting climate change agendas assume a very, very sinister and conflicted light in this context.

But it doesn’t stop there. The BBC pension fund has now also openly signed up to another international greenie organisation to guide its investment strategy, the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI). This – masquerading, of course, like all UN activities, under a deluge of Newspeak – is another front organisation for greenie jackbootery. Its agenda is to attack every element of industrial activity. And, of course, it holds regular jollies around the world to discuss how better to enforce climate change fascism.

This, like Richard Black’s reporting efforts, stinks to high heaven.

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The wrong sort of diversity

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The BBC has made an effort in recent years to portray characters in contemporary drama who just happen to be black, Muslim, homosexual or disabled. How often do you see a character in a drama who just happens to be Christian? Those Christians you do get in BBC drama come in two types. Both can be illustrated by examples from EastEnders: we have long had the slightly mad old dear, but some sort of diversity audit must have thrown up concerns that Christians were too often portrayed as elderly white Anglicans with comedy hypochondria. Ever-attentive to these issues, the BBC brought in a handsome young Pentecostalist minister who leaves his ex-wife to die, murders his wife’s ex-husband, drowns his son’s dog, strangles his wife, kills another woman who looks like his new wife, writes mad religious ravings on his cell wall in his own blood but is black. Ethnic minority: tick one, Britain’s thriving black inner city churches represented on screen: tick two.

Complaints of under-representation from the General Immoderator of the Church of Generalised Christian Fanatics have been dismissed by the BBC Trust after a spokesman pointed out that, in addition to Lucas Johnson cited above, we have in the last few years had the Christian fanatic from ‘Bonekickers’, the Christian pro-life terrorists in the opening episode of Spooks, and the pro-life fanatics in ‘Hunter’ who kidnap children and inject them with lethal drugs – of whom BBC Controller Kate Harward said that the show was based on “the day to day detail of the real world”. Really? I am not aware that there has ever been any anti-abortion terrorism in Britain ever. Aha, but what about America? BBC writers all believe that murders of people who carry out abortions occur every month or so in the US; in fact there have been two in the last thirteen years.

What set off this post, my first in a while for Biased BBC, was an email from a correspondent and Beeb-watcher going way back. (Please say if you want your name cited.) He wrote, “I just saw this from Barnabas Fund, a charitable organization that raises awareness, support and helps care for Christians undergoing persecution worldwide” and sends this link: The BBC is anti-Christian according to its own survey.

They noticed! Briefly.

Here it is. It has a boring title, “Development of a BBC Diversity Strategy: Summary of Responses to Public and Staff Consultations”. Perhaps that is why the BBC appear to have taken one look, yawned, and forgotten it. It does not exactly admit the BBC bias but the authors have gone out of their way to mention the portrayal of Christians as a recurring concern. It was leaked to the Daily Mail, and according to Harry Phibbs of that journal, the leak prompted a zinger of a response from a spokesman. He said the BBC had “strict editorial guidelines”. The existence of guidelines is not in itself considered sufficient to dismiss accusations of other types of offence against diversity.

(Apologies if this has been mentioned before – I do not recall seeing it on the main blog, but might have missed it. A Google search shows that it did come up on a Biased BBC message board, but I haven’t mastered message boards.)

There is much else of interest in the leaked document. And some things that are just strange. One female member of staff says that she has heard that a “senior member of staff in Development only employs ‘good looking people’”

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