Ed Miliband must be delighted with his pals at the BBC this morning.
They have been leading all their news items this morning with the results of a Labour Party survey which claims to show that the evil Coalition is behind a sharp rise in the cost of council services for elderly and disabled people. Nothing to to with the efficacy of Councils, of course, who are sitting on top of BILLIONS in their reserves, also unreported by the BBC. Quite why a Labour press release justifies being lead story is beyond me but I suppose it conforms to the narrative.
As an extra follow up, we also had the ghost of Geoffrey Howe being asked to explain why he thought that the Government regenerating Liverpool back in 1981 was like making “water flow uphill”. Now, there is little that I found to admire in Chancellor Howe, but it seems to me that his assessment of Liverpool back then was pretty accurate. Of course the Government DID introduce Enterprise Zones and the like but the BBC was more interested in portraying the evil Conservatives led by…gasp..THATCHER…as being detached from the north of England.
Managed decline is a good thing, I don’t think that has sunk in to the BBC or Labour talking heads this morning. Also, Maggie did not take Howe’s advice! so she comes out well from this story.
Can not remember any fuss or who ha from the BBC and Graudian about the release of records from the Callaghan administration.
I wonder why? Oh, this is why.
Yes, BBC-NUJ is desperate to politically support the Labour Party;
so desperate (and obvious) that the story was the lead for BBC-NUJ this morning!
Are BBC-NUJ and Labour Party willing to cut foreign aid to shift more resources to Britain’s vulnerable older people?
“It’s nuts! Britain is STILL giving aid to Brazil – even though it’s richer than we are”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2079628/Britain-STILL-giving-foreign-aid-Brazil–richer-are.html#ixzz1i0u1E8cx
BBC-NUJ and Labour still talk as though the British economy does not have an enormous debt problem.
They talk as though the social projects they would like more spending on would not increase Britain’s debt.
They talk disconnectedly about increasing public spending, and not about the resultant increasing public debt!
They have still not learnt the lesson of Labour’s irresponsible economic policies.
Could only bear casual observation of BBC broadcasting over the last fews days but still noted scare stories about unemployment, white racial crime, the privatisation of the health service and Ken Livingstone bemoaning the rise in transport fares (which would not happen if he were Mayor – no of course not, we would go back to a fare-dodgers paradise and I would pay for Ken’s political posturing through my rates).
But the point is this: if the Labour Party had a broadcast wing would it sound any different to the current BBC?
The BBC have led on Liebore ‘surveys’ before. As for Maggie it’s foaming at the mouth day at the BBC.
Thank goodness that we`re among the few that give a stuff about what the BBC and their Labour Party surveys are telling them.
Just like Smith and Jones facing off and squabbling about the halitosis.
Ed Balls is the corpse on the back of the BBC as it hawks itself around and complaining that we`ll not share the burden or approach them due to the cloud of flies.
Think their little Island of Lost Socialists is piling up with the washed-up zombies that will be competing for depleting oxygen with their Wolfie Smiff spawn.
All those drugs, halitosis, inbreeding and diminishing oxygen of their own publicity outside their bubble? A recipe for delusional light-headedness that affects all they say and do.
This will be their last Olympics and freebies to Obamaland in 2012…
Wait… what? Sir Geoffrey Howe, supposedly the von Stauffenberg of the Thatchler Regime turns out to be pretty much the degenerate snob that us right-wing extremists always said he was?
Could it be that when Sir Geoffrey stabbed Thatcher in the back he wasn’t acting on any coherent point of principle, so much as leading the counter-attack for the ‘Born to Rule’ wing of the Party?
Yep, another Hero of the BBC turns out to be a nasty tosser, after all. As ever, it would have been useful if they’d told us that at the time.
Interesting discussion about the lack of women in senior positions on Today this am. Three women, who have made it to the top, were given free reign to put their case while the highly trained BBC journalist reporter interviewer just sat and listened or put some patsy points up for discussion.
How much more interesting it would have been if the usual anti-Tory anti-anyone not left wing stance of posing demanding questions and demanding answers, while interrupting all the time.
If it had been me, I might have posed the question, are the evident declining standards in general education due to the feminisation of education with so many schools devoid of male teachers and role models for boys? Should the exam system go back to being exam based (favours boys in general) or just continue with coursework assessments, which favours girls and leads to ‘cheating’/
Should there be quotas favouring men to achieve a balance of male/female teachers?
In addition to teaching, should there be quotas in favour of women as refuge collectors, building labourers, civil servants, trainee doctors, (two thirds now female.)?
One of the lady’s interviewed was a Board member of Tescos, she might have been questioned about that company’s policies of squeezing British farmers and producers and of wholesale employment, even providing accommodation for workers from Poland instead of our own kin. Obviously, as a women on the Board she would take into account ethical issues. This was the main point all three made about having women on boards of large companies. Has she opposed any of these policies?
Obviously, the BBC man much cleverer and worldly wise than I, would have thought up much better questions and been ready to challenge the answers. Pity neither he, nor any others on Today have the balls to ask them!
You and Yours at 12 noon followed up some stories covered during the year. Allowed them to interview an female Labour MP who complained that the evil tories had fillbustered her bill to stop touts reselling tickets; and the council using heat from the Crem to warm the local swimming pool. ie of the stories covered one allowed an attack on the conservatives and one on climate change – so par for the course really.
Thoe who pull Eddies strings may well be delighted….but poor Ed himself won`t know whether it`s a good thing or not.
I do hate this heavy-handed smearing and sneering about anything that gets the BBCs gag reflex going…but as long as we can still vote, we`ll surely not ever let Balls-Cooper, Milibands and Blears back over the threshold and into any state department, will we?
Which is where the BBC and its Eurovision Youth Wing come in with their perpetual march through the institutions, and perpetual war of attrition against the “forces of conservatism” as they see them.
They themselves see themselves as the “political arm of the British people” do they not.
And until we stop funding our leeches and popinjays that we`ve farmed and incubated since the 60s, they`ll not go away…any more tha blowflies around the corpse of a country they`ve long lived off!
Damn. I listened to the Radio 4 anti-tory fest this morning on the way to work, and can’t log on here at work so couldn’t register my fury. You lot have got here before me.
What utter rubbish this morning from both the BBC and the Guardian.
a) Surely Thatcher comes out of this on top as she ignored the advice she was given. Yet all the headlines are subtexts towards linking Cameron with nasty Thatcher
b) Heseltine advocated the complete opposite during the same period yet that doesn’t make the headline
c) We then get a survey highlighting that care costs have gone up. That’s a fair enough talking point except there’s no balance to the discussion. And by the way, what’s wrong with a postcode lottery? Surely that’s reasonable given that costs and priorities will vary accross the country.
d) What these stories are trying to allude to is that wider healthcare is facing cuts. Labour has to go after social care because that comes out of council funding where they can say there have been cuts. They have to do this because they want to say that there’s been cuts to NHS budgets which isn’t the case, the NHS budget is actually increasingly in real and monetary terms.
Honestly, Today this morning was complete rot. And so was Yesterday with Labour supporter Victor Blank, whom they completely forgot to ask about how he led the banks to ruin BTW.
Sorry, rant over.
Sky are hardly mentioning the Liebore propaganda survey, perhaps realising the scum in Nu Liebore churn these pieces of crap out on a regular basis.
The BBC however, are much more KEEN to big up their lefty mates.
As I posted in the general thread expect to see the BBC go all out in 2012 to try to big up Liebore and attack the coalition at every opportunity.
And why don`t the idiot tories do anything about this total bias? They could start by having this blog on a large screen at CHO & a proper monitoring unit reporting to the PM.
How interesting that on the day that we find out (not from the BBC) that hospital readmissions rose by a massive amount under Nu Liebore (due to their obsession with targets) the Liebore party and BBC dream up this pointless ‘survey’ bu Nu Liebore, in fact the readmissions story isn’t even on the front page of the health section on the BBC news website.
I seem to remember that the last time the BBC got together with the Liebore party to drum up another pointless survey there was also bad news about what Liebore had been up to when inGovernment.
In order to understand the Left it is useful to know something about one of their favourite political thinkers -Niccolò Machiavelli.
You have to completely ignore truth and morality and focus on only two considerations – how do I get power and how do I retain it once I have got it?
In a democracy the best way to do this is 1) Create a voter client base via dependency 2) Flood the media with politically motivated lies.
1) is why Blair-Brown expanded the already huge State sector – not only the usual redistribution of wealth to Guardian readers who feed off (and perpetuate) a dependent underclass, but also the cynical strategy of allowing a flood of migrants on the grounds that (either because they assume they will swell the underclass or because they assume that they hate the English) they are more likely to be Labour voters.
2) is why you are forced to pay for the BBC as it orchestrates attacks upon the free press. It attempts to completely dominate television and radio broadcasting in the UK. Name me a single programme about the Falklands on the BBC (to pick a single example) over the last 30 years which did not promote the notion that the Belgrano was sunk for cynical political reasons and not in order to save British lives?
Go down the Leftist checklist and find a single Leftist policy (lie or attitude) that has not been endlessly promoted by the BBC over the last 30 years? The BBC is a cesspit of self-serving middle class leftist crap made by and for people that hate this country with a passion, and who desire nothing less than its complete destruction.
This is why these Machiavelli loving Guardian reading parasites hate Thatcher so much – she is the epitome of everything they are against. Freedom – Independence – and Prosperity for ALL. They want tax slavery and complete economic and intellectual dependence upon the “enlightened” of “progressive” ones – namely themselves.
In short the Left (and its broadcasting arm the BBC) want fedualism – which is why they hate the free market so much. Freedom of choice is everything they are against.
The Left justify their lies (and hatred) by claiming that the means are justified by the end. The end is a Britain run by and for Guardian readers.
1981, and 2011, BBC-NUJ wants to be the Government!
BBC-NUJ is putting on a big mock song-and-dance routine today about how in 1981, under a Tory government, ‘Panorama’ didn’t have complete freedom to say what it wanted about Britain’s security services!
Note to BBC-NUJ: you are NOT the Government, and like it not, security restrictions are placed on you and other broadcasters in times of both Tory and Labour governments.
No doubt you regard this as unacceptable, BBC-NUJ; but it is reassuring for the rest of us citizens and licencepayers who are concerned with Britain’s national security.
Managed decline terrifies the beeboid. We could manage the decline of the BBc by cutting the funding 10% per year. I don’t think they would like it.
This question of managed decline is anathema to a statist. That means it automatically goes on the BBC list of things they hate or ignore.
The reality is that in many places in Britain it is the only possible option that does not involve ever more state subsidy.
As we gradually run out of money and our income as a nation drops we are going to have to face up to it.
Will we? Will we ever really face up to anything unless events force us to.?
There are towns in South Wales that would not exist except for the industrial revolution. I know a few.
The industry has gone and will not return. Managing the decline of these towns would have been the sensible course but instead we subsidise them and try to make them prosperous again.
But all the while they decline and you can see and sense it.
To even state this reality is forbidden. It probably applies to many places all over Britain and is just not talked about.
The BBC has gone to Salford at huge expense in pursuit of this chimera of regeneration.
I would go further and state that with London possibly excepted most major cities are in terminal decline and gradually being abandoned by the taxpaying class.
Don’t expect the liberal media to deal with these matters.
I’m sure the 6 o’clock radio news said that the then govt proposed to “abandon” Liverpool to “managed decline”.
How can something be both abandoned and managed?
(I should add, as a Lancastrian, that Liverpool should be on the receiving end of a far more laissez faire economic approach than it ever has. The lazy, maudlin, scrounging Scouse bastards.)
Brillo had a go on Twitter at C4 news as well, the whole of the lefty movement seems to think that Thatcher DID let Liverpool simply die (shame she didn’t actually) when in fact she didn’t.
The simple question is:
‘Do you think all the pits and factories would still be open if Thatcher had never been PM?’
But, what with our balanced and fair national broadcaster and all, it’s only a matter of time before this angle is explored in depth on a prime time tv/radio broadcast…
At 8am this morning on Radio 2 the second headline was “Official papers have revealed how Margaret Thatcher’s ministers believed Liverpool should be abandoned to a fate of managed decline”.
I quote that verbatim after going back to check it. Note how one sole cabinet minister – whose opinion was overlooked – saying “I cannot help feeling that the option of managed decline is one which we should not forget altogether” in the BBC’s hands becomes a collective belief among ministers – plural – that Liverpool should be “abandoned”.
I have dropped the BBC complaints service a quick e-mail simply asking who the ministers referred to in the headline were.
‘I have dropped the BBC complaints service a quick e-mail simply asking who the ministers referred to in the headline were. ‘
Please do share the reply.
A 2012 with ‘news’ via the BBC ‘learning’… from ‘sources’, when in fact it is misinformation concocted by their ediotorial or PR from Labour, is perhaps the year they cease to enjoy the trust of the public, and lose national treasure status.
You’ll note they have edited the title, “Toxteth riots: Howe proposed ‘managed decline’ for city”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-16355281
but they left the “Thatcher told ‘abandon Liverpool’ (also still on Google search) one on the main page, didn’t get a screen shot of main headline but got the main page just now:
Well done.
That is a blatant a stealth edit as it gets, having been nailed and nailed.
I am asking for an explanation via the complaints system now, as it will be hard to justify any story evolution grounds.
Also notice the comments pulled in short order.
Well, some good(ish) news, at least on the complaint front for 2012.
The good part is the turnaround time of my lastest, regarding this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-16355281
Either they are a bit sensitive, or the holiday period saw fewer posing questions. Mine involved the original headline and its variable incarnations.
This is what has come back, almost by return:
‘Our stories are often changed and added to as they develop and as, for example, new information from those involved and others is made available. There is no intention to be stealthy. Headlines also have more than one version for reasons of length so what you see on an index will differ slightly from what you see on the story itself.
It is our practice to shut down comments after a period of time as all comment threads need to be moderated.
If you wish to tell me in more detail what in particular it is you object to I will be happy to look into it.’
Hmn. that last challenge is one worth tackling.
I might wonder how ‘new information’ became available, especially as both headlines referred to events decades ago, and the change was only in how the BBC wished to present this.
Or how, at the BBC, ‘intention’ is used in a Clintonian admission to allude to what actually happens… but what are you going to do about it?
Headline length is a favourite, but less credible to excuse when the new one seems a lot longer:
Toxteth riots: Howe proposed ‘managed decline’ for city
vs.
‘Thatcher told abandon Liverpool’
As to the ‘practice of shutting down comments after ‘some time’, claimed rather bizarrely, ‘for moderation’, maybe it’s more to avoid comments like this?:
252. Loke
30TH DECEMBER 2011 – 22:54
Why is this introduced as: “Margaret Thatcher was urged to abandon Liverpool to “managed decline,” when this was evidently not the case? The 6 and 10 pm bulletins trotted out the same disingenuous “urged,” then adjusted to “advised” and “suggested,” softer the tone, but still trying to ‘big it up’. This is red-top style journalism at best and white propaganda at worst. Better journalism please!
So, basically, I got a fast response, but one that didn’t answer any of my questions, enagaged in cherry picking, straw men weasels and misinformation. Neat summary of their output.
Now, how to get her to ‘look into’ that?
Good effort, didn’t see these replies until just now.
I like this sentence: There is no intention to be stealthy.
That’s funny. And easy to say, just as I could stick my elbow in your face and say I had no intention to do so.
Also the one about closing the comments is a sentence of two halves, in which it is impossible to know what exactly the second has to do with the first. Are they saying that they are closed in order that someone can moderate them? So do they open them again? Or is it that they cannot keep them open for long because they don’t have enough people for moderating duty so they have a policy to time-limit all of them? Or is it limited by number of posts?
I noticed that too. It’s the usual incoherent, ambiguous, obfuscatory smokescreen of total bollocks.
But on the premise that the intelligent, questioning people who are likely to complain will also have better things to do (like go out to work) it is effective, because most won’t have the time or inclination to go to the second round of complaints.
It is actually a semantic masterpiece of Clintonian weaselosity.
Actually the overall piece pretty much confirms everything, but in a way that attempts to sidestep any admission, topped by a ‘what are you going to do about it?’ taunt.
As I retain the inclination, and it doesn’t take too long, I will pursue this.
Guessing the 3 month technique will next be adopted hoping one forgets about iot, before getting a ‘sorry this is late but we’re busy being inpartial, but we have had another look and are still right. It will possibly get mentioned as we laugh at the submissions Newswatch won’t be featuring as they are impossible to rig’.
“to the end of 2011, the drumbeat is the same…”
And into 2012 as well, need I even bother to add!
1. Rowan Wulliams squauking about “yoof being let up on the shelf”…helping Camilla recharge her Segway, and packing CFC smellies for the marginalised and vulnerable(presumably those who missed out on the riots at the time)…and -of course-getting top billing on the news.
Williams is nothing if not perpetually on the side of Godless slackers, and against any defence of the faith that he is supposed to speak up for(unless it`s Marxism).
2. The Riefenstahl drums already being rolled out for the year long puff of Zils and privilege that is the Olympix…”I wish it could be Christmas everyday” looks like a parallel prophecy…lots of circus hoopla and possible a few breadcrumbs if we `re lucky.
3. Desert Island Discs used the death of Wogans baby to try to get him to slag off religion…unsolicited and completely out of context. Gratuitous and-when the obligatory shaft of the Jesuits/Christian Brothers is included-all too typical of the slime, slurry and lime green tinted whitewash that the BBC will be heaping on truth and honour.
It`s what we seem to be paying it to do…
Maybe Rowan needs to sing an extra line “people getting angry”…and they don`t just riot either you bearded Baalblubberer!