Monthly Archives: November 2011

QUESTION TIME LIVEBLOG 17TH NOVEMBER 2011

By | |
8 Comments


Well, Question Time comes from the vowelly-challenged Aberystwyth and on the panel we have Grant Shapps, Chris Bryant, Elin Jones, Will Hutton and Sir Simon Jenkins. Regardless of that line up of dross, I am sure we will all gave a good time so come along, bring a bottle (or more, I fear you may need it!) and join the good natured banter. I’m hoping ASE and David Mosque will be able to join in – see you all in an hour!

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER?

By | |
6 Comments


This man, Robert Lamb, appears to be at the heart of the BBC’s environmental programmes scandal. Surprise, surprise, he was trained as a BBC producer in the 1980s and has since become a one man blizzard of greenie programming. Two of the companies he has has set up and run have been named by the BBC trustees as “causing concern” because they accepted funding from external sources in alleged breach of current affairs programme guidelines and were made in such a way that there could have been conflicts of interest. In other words, the production standards and financing stank to high heaven.

So who is Robert Lamb? A partial profile is here. As you see, he ticks almost every greenie activist box – the BBC, the UN, and various right-on pressure groups. His own, self-righteous assessment of his eco-fascist agenda is here. Basically, he set up the Television Trust for the Environment in the 1980s and ran it until around 2005. Over the past few years, he formed and now runs his own outfit called One Planet Pictures. He also helped establish, and is now an executive producer of, Dev TV.

TVE, as I reported yesterday, has mysteriously vanished from the web (on October 24, a B-BBC reader found) and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Under the template created by Mr Lamb, it currently (according to its latest charity commission return – h/t Tony Newbery, Harmless Sky) generates more than £1.4m a year of support from sources that include various greenie tranzis and government departments that have an EU-driven climate change agenda. From the beginning, again under Mr Lamb’s nakedly aggressive political agenda and template, its goal was to disseminate unbridled greenie alarmist propaganda in accordance with the UN agenda. The only surprise really is that it has taken this long for this to be seen as a conflict of interest.

Dev TV and One Planet Pictures – set up, I surmise, on the basis of my own inside information, after Mr Lamb fell out with the TVE trustees – appear to be run on exactly the same lines. I urge you to have a quick look at what they say and how they are structured. Their output is hardcore, unqualified propaganda. And Dev TV’s co-production guidelines here appear to be a recipe for exactly the conflict of interest and undue outside interest that the BBC trustees have now – so belatedly – fingered.

I do hope this signals the end of Mr Lamb’s eco-fascist career. But the BBC both spawned him and has kept him in business for almost 30 years – I suspect that like the hydra, he will keep on going.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

BBC Surprisingly Unfazed About White House Shooting – I Wonder Why?

By | | , , , ,
7 Comments

The man supected of shooting at the White House last Friday had become obsessed with President Barack Obama, officials have told US media.
It is thought Oscar Ortega-Hernandez, 21, believed God had given him a personal mission to attack the White House, said law enforcement sources.
A US Park Police bulletin said he was “unstable with violent tendencies”.

You would have thought that someone bringing a rifle with him and shooting at the White House would have been on the BBC website’s loop for several days accompanied by a lorry load of speculative think pieces on the dangers of political violence in the US from an assortment of pundits and experts.

Not one mention of the dangers of violent rhetoric.

Could it have been because of the suggestion that this man had been hanging around the Occupy DC gathering? There is no evidence that he was a “member” of that “movement”…..but he might have listened to some of the rhetoric which could have echoed fiery outbursts in New York

Naturally the BBC goes for the safe option and doesn’t even wonder if there is any connection between the endemic violence in so many of the Occupy encampments and an “Obama obsessed” gunman firing a rifle at the Presidential residence.

I wonder why?

At least in the BBC website report of Rep. Giffords interview with the ABC’s Diane Sawyer they had the good grace not mention Sawyer’s sly and serpentine attempt to rehash the lies and innuendo pumped out by a complicit US/UK media associating the Tucson shooting with Governor Palin and the Tea Party….

cross posted at The Aged P

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

ALL CHIEFS, NO INDIANS

By | |
8 Comments

Did you see this?

The BBC may have embarked on some of the most dramatic cost-cutting in its history, but it seems there is still some way to go. There are almost 4,500 job titles in existence at the Corporation, it has emerged, and almost 2,000 of its staff have the word manager in their title. It is thought there are even more staff on top of this who are classed as and paid as managers but do not have the word in their job titles.

It has to be that unique funding that allows all of this largesse.


Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

BBC NEWS-FIXING ROW – FURTHER REVELATIONS

By | | ,
15 Comments

From today’s Independent:

The London-based television company being investigated by Ofcom over a global news fixing row tried to “cultivate” a world-famous environmental economist and other leading opinion formers in the green movement for the documentaries it made for the BBC and other news broadcasters.
FBC Media claims in its promotional literature that it targeted Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York, to be an “ambassador” for its corporate client on programmes it made about the controversial palm oil industry in Malaysia.
Mr Sachs, a special adviser to United Nations secretary general Ban-Ki Moon, was a prominent interviewee on a BBC World “Third Eye” documentary about Malaysia which was produced by FBC. The Independent has established that FBC was paid £17m by the Malaysian government to work on a “global strategic communications campaign”. The documentary was one of eight FBC programmes made for the BBC found to have been in “serious” breach of corporation editorial guidelines in a report issued yesterday by the BBC Trust.

Previously:
BBC VIEWERS HOODWINKED
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

WHEN EXTREME IS MODERATE

By | | ,
19 Comments

Words; they are the ammunition the BBC uses to disguise profound and systemic bias. The BBC on numerous occasions via website & television, describes Ennahda, the Islamist party that won the recent Tunisian elections as moderate. For example see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15438945 Click here to see just how “moderate” Ennahda is.

Hat-tip to Martin.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

I Didn’t Wanna Do It

By | |
14 Comments


You made me write this
I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want to do it
You made me do this
and all the time you knew it
I guess you always knew it.

I know. I’m no Judy Garland. But I really wish I didn’t have to bother addressing the ridiculously biased reporting of yet another publicity stunt by Palestinian activists.
‘Freedom Riders’
Look at that photo! What do they look like? Not Rosa Parks, that’s for sure.
The BBC ‘s report ends thus: “There are around 500,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Settlements are illegal under international law although Israel disputes this.”
Every BBC article has one of these. Israel disputes this because it’s not true. The allegation of illegality is ‘without foundation’. But we’ve become accustomed to seeing it. Should anyone fail to reach the intended conclusion after wading through the article, it’s hammered home at the end.

I was impressed by a speech that was delivered at the conference “The Perils of Global Intolerance: The UN and Durban lll” by Shelby Steele. It’s called ‘The Narrative of Perpetual Palestinian Victimhood’
He does compare the victimhood status of the Palestinians with that of the civil rights movement, but concludes that perpetual victimhood and an obsession with the blame game merely displaces facing a harsh reality, namely acknowledging and coming to terms with ones own shortcomings.

“you are humiliated and you say,”Well you know the real truth is I am not free. Racism still exists. Zionism is my problem. The State of Israel is my problem. That is why I am so far behind and that is why I cannot get ahead.”

His main point concerns what he calls ‘poetic truths’. That is, the Palestinian narrative that has caught the imagination of the media and the ‘liberal left’. No amount of facts can dislodge poetic truths. Once poetic truths have taken hold, real truths count for nothing.

“Poetic truths like that are marvelous because no facts and no reason can ever penetrate. Supporters of Israel are up against a poetic truth. We keep hitting it with all the facts. We keep hitting it with obvious logic and reason. And we are so obvious and conspicuously right that we assume it is going to have an impact and it never does.”

The tone and content of the BBC report is a typical example of the romanticised narrative that is the basis of the BBC’s poetic truth. For the facts, read the JPost report. From the Israeli perspective, certainly. But all the better for that.
So 50 reporters and photographers were there, chasing the poetic truth. The BBC must know that flocks of cameramen regularly hang around Palestinian stone throwers and activists hoping to catch some poetry in motion. If there’s no action they’ve even been known to set some up. But the BBC doesn’t quite tell us that. “The West Bank Freedom Riders punched above their weight, drawing a lot of publicity for what was a relatively small event,” says Jon Donnison, “and I’m helping by spreading the word,” he implied, though no doubt he disputes this.

“Palestinians from the West Bank are not allowed to cross into Jerusalem without Israeli permission.” says the BBC, simplifying the truth so that the restrictions appear discriminatory and unreasonable, adding:
“Israel says such restrictions are for security reasons”
The ‘Freedom Riders’ demand unrestricted freedom of movement. They can surely have it when Israelis have the freedom from fear of being blown up on a bus.
The BBC quotes the freedom activists, so why not also include some Israeli quotes, for balance? I suppose certain people would consider that too “pro Israel”.

JPost:

“It is Israelis who have issues with transportation because of fear of terror attacks,” an Israeli passenger said. “These are buses that are protected against stones and bullets in case of Palestinian violence.”
“It’s not racism, it is security,” she said.
“When I can walk freely in Ramallah with my children, they can ride on my bus.”

“Another passenger, Haggai Segal, who wore a skullcap, said he had asked the Palestinian activists, “‘Can I go on a bus in Ramallah as a Jew?’ They answered: ‘I could not.’” He shook his head at the comparison to the civil rights movement.“This is not a Martin Luther King bus”.

What’s wrong with mentioning these points? I know my words will have no impact on your poetic truth BBC, but if YOU, purporting to be an impartial news organ, make a start by allowing the real truth to reach the public, it might filter through. But in the meantime I have to keep doing what you’re making me do.

You make me angry sometimes, you make me sad
But there are times, Beeb, you make me feel so bad.
You made me sigh for, I didn’t want to tell you
I didn’t want to tell you
I need some news that’s true, yes I do, deed I do, you know I do

Give me, give me, give me what I cry for
You know you ought to tell the public what you lie for
You know you made me loathe you.

Doobedo.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.