Monthly Archives: September 2011

CURIOSITY KILLED MORE THAN THE CAT

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Let’s start with the bare if not so lovely bones, so to speak. This paean to the IRA Chief of State and Irish Presidential candidate Martin NcGuinness appeared on Today this morning. (8.43am)

Martin McGuinness, once a leading figure in the IRA and who was feared and loathed in almost equal measure, is now a respectable political leader. So respectable that he wants to become president of the Republic of Ireland. Ireland correspondent for the Guardian and Observer Henry McDonald.

For starters, turning to the Guardian and Observer correspondent for opinion is hardly balance but I suppose it is natural for the BBC to seek the opinion of their own print arm. Helpfully, Henry is able to instantly point out that just like Martin McGuinness, he lives in Northern Ireland but chooses to have an Irish passport in preference to a British one. Natch. We know where this one will go,

Then let’s move on to this business of McGuinness being “once a leading figure in the IRA”. Good to see that the BBC now grudgingly admits McGuinness actually was a terrorist commander but their journalistic curiousity seems a tad restricted. For example, why not ask when did McGuinness leave the IRA, exactly? When he was occupying the position as Capo di tutti capo, just how many innocent lives did he arrange to have terminated.Perhaps even more pointedly, how many peope did he murder HIMSELF? What exactly did he “command”?

Why is the BBC so coy about pursuing these aspects to the McGuinness pedigree?

I venture to suggest because the State Broadcaster has been central to sanitising the reputation of bloodthirsty IRA killers and McGuinness is being increasingly presented as a warm if not cuddly character that we all need to learn to love. Not sure if those families who visit lonely graveyards care of the actions of this piece of Republican scum would agree – but then again, through the BBC prism, I’m the extremist.

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Editorial Independence, Or Unaccountability?

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Can somebody please read this update of the BBC Agreement (as in “Charter & Agreement”) and tell me if “Editorial Independence” actually translates into “Unaccountability”?

Continuing Agreement

Concerns have been expressed that the NAO reviews could lead to individual star’s salaries becoming public, or the details of managerial decisions on finance, because the NAO can ask for any information it needs for its audit. The wording of the agreement makes no specific reference to those concerns and no such information has been revealed in previous NAO reports on the BBC.

A Trust spokesperson said: ‘The NAO already have full access to the information they need to carry out reviews of the BBC; today’s announcement confirms and continues that arrangement. In addition it will now enable the NAO to decide which areas to look at, but in an arrangement where it will continue to submit reports to the Trust. We believe that the terms agreed build on the BBC’s existing relationship with the NAO to the benefit of licence fee payers, while preserving the BBC’s independence.’

Editorial Independence

The agreement makes clear that whilst the NAO is ‘entitled to review any BBC decision’ it is not entitled to ‘question the merits of any editorial or creative judgment or policy decision about the way BBC services are made or distributed.’

The Trust will still do its own value for money reviews, in fact the agreement requires it to lay out its own programme of such work each year. The NAO can’t examine the same area as the Trust in the same year.

The NAO will submit its reports to the Trust, which will prepare a response before sending both to the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament.

There’s more at the link. The NAO (or anyone else, presumably, like OfCom) can say what they like, but the Trust will decide what to present to Jeremy Hunt, decide what is value for money, and decide if the BBC can syphon off extra Government/taxpayer cash to spend on the World Service. (Hopefully not for hiring yet another field correspondent to cover the US.)

This sounds like unaccountability by any other name.

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COMEDY BY MISTAKE!

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I was alerted to this from Melanie Philips a few days back. Well worth a read!

“And last week on BBC News Hard Talk, former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani repeatedly laughed incredulously at the assumptions of his interviewer, BBC correspondent Stephen Sackur. Wouldn’t you admit, said Sackur, that American policy after 9/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq was a mistake? Why should I admit that? said Giuliani when he had finished laughing; the US has foiled 42 separate terror attacks since then because of that security policy put in place by President Bush.

Sackur tried again. But surely, he said, the police security strategy of targeting the Muslim community ‘gets in the way of the healing’. Giuliani laughed again even more incredulously. Well they would hardly target synagogues or churches he said. Of course the police targeted the mosques. It was from the mosques that the terror plots were coming. This is no more bad for Muslims than it was bad for Italian/Americans when I went after the Mafia in New York! 

No wonder Giuliani laughed – he must have thought he’d wandered onto the set of a BBC comedy show by mistake.”

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BRASS IN POCKET

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Oops.

“The BBC’s font of all knowledge Arab, has been possibly in receipt of Gaddafi gold for the last 3 years. Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of Al Quds newspaper, is often a guest commentator on the BBC sofa. They happily ignore his rabid anti-semitism…..such as telling us that he will dance in the fountains in Trafalgar square if Israel is nuked. Documents have come to light in Libya which suggest he was in the pay of Gaddafi (in Arabic here translated using Microsoft translator)….

http://www.microsofttranslator.com/BV.aspx?ref=IE8Activity&a=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.palpress.co.uk%2Farabic%2F%3Faction%3Ddetail%26id%3D20479

‘One of these documents are stamped secret it contains lists of the honoring of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, the present document contains two names, Khairy Mansour (editorial writer dustour) and Abdul Bari Atwan, the Al-Quds Al-Arabi, published in London, Al-alkzavet is a monthly salary of $ 4,000 dollars paid for them for 3 years extendable and document issued in the year 2008. Document spread with lightning speed and are in circulation and agencies covered some forums even including Arab satellite television channel’

No doubt the BBC will ‘investigate’ and pronounce its horror as it has with the revelation that Britain had ‘relations’ with Gaddafi’s regime in the name of engagement,disarmament and peace”

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ICE WITH THAT?

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I leave the science bias to some of my colleagues here who are so much more expert than I am. However, I see that the BBC are still droning on about the Arctic Ice.

Sea ice cover in the Arctic in 2011 has passed its annual minimum, reaching the second-lowest level since satellite records began, US scientists say. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) says the minimum, reached on 9 September, was 4.33 million sq km. That value is 36% lower than the average minimum for 1979-2000.

Watts Up has an alternative perspective here. As always with the BBC, there is only one perspective and it is the alarmist one!

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The Prophet Carter

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Octogenarian Jimmy Carter was given a lovely long spot on Today, with James Naughtie questioning him deferentially about his particular version of the Israeli Palestinian situation and his support for the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN security Council.

They both forgot to mention the Palestinians’ continual refusal to recognise Israel or to renounce violence, and Jimmy Carter made, at length, a number of factually incorrect statements about settlements and various other things.

His prediction that a bid would succeed at the General Assembly, if not at the UN Security Council, was announced as if it was a great insight on his behalf. Perhaps he didn’t hear Jeremy Bowen stating something which we all know, namely that there’s “a built-in pro Palestinian majority, and no veto, at the General Assembly.”

Some of his remarks indicate that he thinks Palestine is already an independent state, so why does the BBC bother to broadcast his bonkers views on the forthcoming Palestinian bid for statehood?

Update. Melanie Phillips is wondering if the British government is about to vote for a Palestinian state.

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Once Upon A Time

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They still don’t get the Arab Spring. They think toppling Gaddafi and Mubarak is the end, not the beginning. Even after Iraq, they still think this. Even after witnessing the chaos and the antisemitic frenzy in Egypt they think it. Even with the rise of Islamism they think it. Even with the new liberated Libya calling for sharia law they think it. Judging by the euphoric drivel I heard this morning, Zubeida Malik is going to tell us about the British Arabs’ participation in this glorious event, as though once the despots and tyrants are sent off everyone lives happily ever after.

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QUESTION TIME LIVE

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Question Time returns tonight after the horrendous 9/11 Special last week. Tonight it is from Londonderry, here in tne peace process terrorist appeasing land of Northern Ireland. David Dimbleby is joined in Londonderry by NI Sec of State Owen Paterson, Diane Abbott, Nigel Dodds, Martina Anderson and Nicola Horlick. Martina Anderson, a convicted IRA bomber, may require subtitles. And as a taster for what lies in store, here’s lovely Diane…you have been warned!
Diane Abbott
Don’t think ASE will be able to join us tonight but if David Mosque is around that would be great!!

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GALLIC THIEVERY

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The crooks at EDF – their Gallic gullets already bloated by massive government renewable energy subsidies – are putting up electricity prices in the UK by an eye-watering 8.9%, forcing tens of thousands more Britons into fuel poverty. Their website is crammed full of eco-nonsense like this…they are saving the world dontya know, so who gives a stuff about pensioners and low income families? And meanwhile, the BBC brings us the pathetic squeaks of protest of climate change minister Chris Huhne, who, they faithfully report like lapdogs, is going to fight the increases. If they were doing their job properly they would be telling us instead just how much his rabid climate policies have caused the hike.

But fat chance. The reality is that the BBC is also part of the scam. EU pensioner and apparatchik Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC so-called trustees, tops up his fat earnings by a number of directorships, including as a member of the “stakeholder advisory panel” of a company called…EDF. His companion in the three-monthly pow-wows to tell the Frenchies how to extract more of our cash is – er, another BBC trustee, Diane Coyle, his deputy chairman. Chances of the ranks of BBC eco-warriors – already dragooned by the trustees into suppressing the views of those who disagree with climate change lies – reporting the truth about this gang of Gallic thieves? Zero.

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