YES, EX PRIME MINISTER

Here’s another take on one of the most important stories in the UK today, if one believes BBC coverage! Biased BBC’s Alan notes;

“Listening to ‘Today’ this morning raises two, at least, questions….first, just how much can a serious news organisation dumb down and secondly, just how high will that organisation jump when the Labour Party bosses tell them to? A prime example of why the BBC should have been in Leveson burst onto the airwaves with all the power and excitement of one of Geoffrey Howe’s dead sheep.

Some trainee security guards are turfed off a bus and have to wait a whole two hours before they are collected.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9726000/9726250.stm

Hold the front page…no!   Let’s hold an inquiry.

You must be kidding!

But no, it’s not a joke, it’s John Prescott calling the shots at the BBC….the Labour Party make some bizarre and completely out of proportion claims that are of course highly politicised…can you imagine the same fuss if the train was late and commuters were left standing around for an hour or two?

The BBC leapt into action sending in their top political reporter to the front line where the vulnerable youngsters were left ‘stranded in the middle of the night’.  Evan Davis  concluded that the labour market was heading back  to the 19th century, with Dickensian treatment and cheap labour …..happily passing on Prescott’s message that this was setting a precedent for the exploitation and abuse of the workforce. It’s the top story on the ‘Today’ website right now…and gets a mention on the BBC website ‘Frontpage’…..the Telegraph seems to have, quite correctly, totally ignored it.

The ridiculous story gets more time than the legionnaire bug in Edinburgh which has killed one man and hospitalised many more…..Prescott not asking for an inquiry into the company that didn’t maintain it’s air conditioning system and killed a man?

Guess there are not many votes there as it’s in Scotland.

Evan Davis should be red faced all day over that one, just how much can one man humiliate himself for his political masters?….talk about shameless, blatantly filling the airwaves with a Labour Party black propaganda stunt.  It is always apparent that Davis, likeable though he is, is not suited to sober analysis and thoughtful comment and debate when people with opposing views to his own come on the programme.  He treats them with a barely concealed disrespect and contempt, more often than not giggling his way through an interview.

Perhaps someone should do their job and have a word in his ear.   I don’t mind the mocking of politicians, the more the better, but it should be all politicians or none.”

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38 Responses to YES, EX PRIME MINISTER

  1. NotaSheep says:

    This is a nothing story, given prominence by a BBC desperate to get government cuts back on the agenda (even if the story is nothing to do with cuts) and boost some anti-establishment sentiment following an incredibly popular Diamond Jubilee. The BBC hate that they have to cover Royal events so completely and this time tried to add some edge to the tone and received brickbats as a result.

       32 likes

  2. Gladiatrix says:

    David

    There is slightly more to this story. The would-be stewards were initially told that they would all be paid. It was only on arrival in London that they were told that only the official apprentices would be paid.

    They were not provided with any changing facilities, let alone ones where the two sexes could change clothes in private. They weren’t fed during the day or provided with proper toilet facilities, which given the temperature and the rain would have been pretty miserable for everyone.

    I agree that Prescott should not even have been on the programme, but it is a bit off for a charity working on the Jubilee to fail to ensure that it had all its admin worked out, and to tell volunteers two different things about what the work would involve, and to just drop off a group of people who weren’t at all familiar with London in the pitch dark without so much as a cup of tea.

       8 likes

    • alan says:

      I think you read this:
      http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/04/jubilee-pageant-unemployed?intcmp=239

      ….where the Guardian has got hold of two world class whingers.

      They claim it was wet and cold under the bridge….the photo at the top of the page shows quite clearly it was dry as a bone…and they all look fairly comfortable in the circumstances….as for cold…really?…chilly maybe, hardly freezing….sure they could cope for a couple of hours….no worse than watching a football game.

      No toilets?…there would have been probably hundreds of toilets provided for the crowds.

      No food? Where does it say that? It says they had to wait for food…but you know there’s a great invention called a sandwich and it comes with a tupperware box.

      Changing facilities…meant to be on bus but that disappeared….mini bus for the girls…but they didn’t have the wit and initiative to find the person with the key.

      As for pay….the charity would have made them fully aware of the conditions….I would expect that one of the companies employees mistook them for an apprentice and said they were getting paid.

      Not ideal at all but more cock up than conspiracy.

      Having said that £2.80/hr for an ‘apprentice’ is probably the real surprise……if you are getting high quality training and skills then OK but for security work? That’s what I call exploitation not being left waiting for two hours because the bus was early for once.

      And let’s have a look at the Guardian’s comment moderation standards…..just what do they think is acceptable and meets their community standards?:

      This comment does:

      Ishowerdaily
      4 June 2012 10:47PM
      Maybe now the guardian will stop with the “gor bless em” shite.
      Rich fucking parasites who want us all to be serfs.
      Recommend? (3914)
      Responses (4)
      Report

      but this obviously didn’t, whatever it was:

      DoctorWhom
      4 June 2012 10:48PM
      This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn’t abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.

         11 likes

  3. John Anderson says:

    Davis is an embarrassing lightweight.

    Except that the word embarrassment is not in the BBC’s dictionary.

       12 likes

  4. Guest Who says:

    Gladiatrix’ calm extra insights noted and concerns shared, but to ‘just how much can a serious news organisation dumb down and secondly, just how high will that organisation jump when the Labour Party bosses tell them to?’, I doubt the full extent the BBC will plumb in either of these directions will ever fully be discerned.

    http://tradingaswdr.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/bunting.html?
    I rather suspect that the BBC’s coverage “problem” on anything lies, editorially, internally, from root to branch.
    And failing to twig when the DM has sussed the public mood pretty well, and simply going into more arrogant denial to blow it off as always, may not be the smartest play no matter what market rate informs the ‘talents’ actual competencies..

       10 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      In other news…
      Matthew Hancock ‏@matthancockmp

      Good on Labour’s Stephen Timms slamming @johnprescott’s opportunist attack on the Work Programme saying #jubileestewards not connected
      The BBC seems incapable of fielding anyone other than opportunistic attackers, if mainly from one direction, and that Prescott has a permanent berth to do so from Today to Newsnight will be their undoing eventually.
      Even Labour MPs with some integrity appear to have seen that writing on the wall.
      For those that don’t, the wall may yet be of further use.

         20 likes

    • Whitman says:

      Molly King or whatever her name was got far more airtime on this than Prescott. It is quite a serious issue, but it allowed King to dispel myths around the issue and reassure people that the same wouldn’t happen. Davis’ use of Dickensian was just to sum up Prescott’s point of view before passing over to King. From that, I’d say he came down on the side of King, if any, challenging Prescott at the end who said it was the precedent for the Olympics. Poor, supposedly solid, ‘evidence’.

         3 likes

      • JAG says:

        I agree, Molly King admitted it was a cock up, Evan Davis tried but failed to conjure up an evil ogre grinding the faces of the unemployed, and Lord (!) Prescott just talked ungrammatical bo##ocks, as usual.

        The obvious question, which nobody asked, was “Why didn’t you just pay them the going rate for the job?”

           2 likes

      • alan says:

        Trouble is Prescott, (I’ll never be a )Lord Prescott and Labour don’t give a fig for the workers.

        If these people had not been on the government sponsored work programme we wouldn’t have heard a peep out of Two Jags.

        And the BBC wouldn’t be giving him prime air time to belch out his poison.

        Remind yourself of exactly what New Labour was all about:

        Labour betrayed the workers:
        Madeleine Bunting….
        ‘Of all the feelings about New Labour at the last election, it was hatred that was the most striking. It was the view of a minority but they were vocal, and it was the intensity of the emotion that made such an impact. Hatred is about betrayal. For some the betrayal was the Iraq war or civil liberties, and that has been powerfully articulated. But there was – and is – another account of betrayal in which a liberal elite, smugly superior in their metropolitan progressivism, championed globalisation and sold ordinary working people down the river.

        It’s a betrayal that hasn’t had the attention it deserves.

        New Labour’s orders, “Forward march”, came across as bullying, authoritarian and inhumane. It also came across as self-interested; globalisation might serve the London middle classes well, but outside the south-east, where secure jobs were drying up and affordable housing was scarce, it had much less to offer.

        “Arguably we are living through the most destructive period of capitalism since the 1930s. Is this progress?” asked Cruddas in his speech.
        New Labour insisted it was. It brushed aside those who didn’t agree as reactionary, and it urged adaptation and acceptance of change without recognition of the costs entailed in terms of relationships, communities and sense of place…..marginalised by both liberalism, technocratic statism and internationalism…. (& immigration.)

        http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/03/new-labour-local-elections-nostlagia

        and try this for size:

        http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/simonheffer/3556813/Labour-is-malignant-not-incompetent.html

           5 likes

        • chrisH says:

          Excellent post.
          As you say, this has not been dug up and thrown at New Labours ciphers and stooges ever since they hijacked the Labour Party-and ate it from inside the cocoon, just like that awful wasp that horrified Darwin.
          I was happy to see the Tories go in `97…and didn`t vote for that demon-eyed creep Blair…but I still blaze about what he did to this country-and the cabbages he`s left us with, by way of politics.
          Of the people who buggered up Britain, he`s got to be way up there…only Heath or Jenkins have a claim, and at least both of them did some war/national service…unlike that corkscrewed shit Blair.
          yet-no mention at all from the BBC or Guardian-and Milibands and Balls are allowed their amnesia or mere dreaming those thirteen years.
          Urgh!

             7 likes

  5. Poosh says:

    Is there any non-guardian/independent/BBC information about this? Trying to get facts and truth concerning this event is proving most difficult.

       2 likes

  6. Millie Tant says:

    Davis likeable? Blimey!

       4 likes

  7. chrisH says:

    Was it a dream then?
    Seems now that this story has slipped off the BBCs list of stories….as if it was mere kite flying only with a blimp instead of a kite.
    The Flying pig will no doubt get ample coverage as he ensures the police secure all Chinese meal delivery routes for him and his godawful troughers of a family.
    Only wish someone would try to persuade Tracey Temple to oppose this oaf and his efforts to make this country his sty of choice.

       4 likes

    • chrisH says:

      Sorry-spoke too soon!
      For wee Wark was blowharding some Tory Baroness or other, about her companies refusal to provide pasties and cider to those “trainee stewards” who got bussed in down the M4.
      Sounds like a shambles, but hardly Screbrenica…but it may yet turn out to be, if the BBC can keep fanning the flames…in their own sad worlds anyway.
      Surely the BBCs studios could have been commandeered by the trainees in an Occupy type way…where`s the gumption with the unemployed these days?
      Now we know the BBC are offering their facilities to wayfarers from Wessex…so hope to send a few buses up to Wood Lane.
      This must NEVER happen again…and it is THEIR BBC after all is it not?

         8 likes

    • Alfie Pacino says:

      Prescott is still tweeting it, but the story has now lost all steam – he shouts loudly, says nothing of substance and when the truth is out, he’s slipped away on some other Dickensian romp.
      He wants to be Sheriff of Hull you know…

         11 likes

      • Justin Casey says:

        Let`s have an enquiry regarding his “Bulimia” claims!!

           5 likes

        • Justin Casey says:

          Tell him that Fearne still has some Jubilee sick bags if he is still suffering… hehe..

             7 likes

        • Alfie Pacino says:

          Let’s not… he’s got enough on his plate as it is 🙂

             4 likes

  8. alan says:

    Try reading the post…..it states decisions about climate change are influenced by culture and politics….the so called ‘green agenda’ is more about Marx than saving the planet:

    As Mike Hulme, AGW advocate, admits:
    ‘The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us.
    Because the idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs.
    We will continue to create and tell new stories about climate change and mobilize them in support of our projects.
    These myths transcend the scientific categories of ‘true’ and ‘false’. ‘

    If we are all about to burn to a crisp just after drowning in glacier melt water why is it that Chian and India and Brazil et al are to be ‘allowed’ to continue to pump out vast quantities of CO2?

    If things were that desperate, regardless of the desirability of ‘progress’ in those countries, wouldn’t it be better to be poor and alive than rich and dead? Clearly the decision to allow them to continue ‘polluting’ means things are not what we are being told.

    It is politics and the anti-western ideology of the Left that is driving the green agenda.

       12 likes

  9. Justin Casey says:

    What`s next? A modern day Conservative Matthew Hopkins travelling from boro to boro… weeding out anyone with a mole or a perhaps old ladies with a cat or a witchlike nose? Or an EU/Labour controlled modern day Torquemada burning Euroskeptics and those who question multiculturalism for speaking “in tonques”??? I am so f**king sick and tired of endless so called Enquiries for purile reasons and blown out of all proportion by the BBC which end up costing us millions!!! Anything to avoid paying attention to topics that really matter to US!!! The entire political establishment seem to be “fiddling” pardon the pun… whilst Rome burns and BBC News are streaming a Live feed 24/7 into our homes in a vain attempt to show they actually have a reason to exist…. What we need are for people who drop the preverbial b*llock to just say “Yeah!! It was a mistake it was on my watch and I am going to make it right and for them to just do it… The public would actually respect them for it and it would be refreshing to see some honesty for once… No more enquiries FFS!!! Let`s just get the basics right, and concentrate on “real problems” I don`t care about what`s going on in Greece… Spain … Syria!!! I don`t feel a “moral obligation” to fund education programs in India at a cost of Billions especially when they have a Space program and Aircraft Carriers!!! We need to get real… It`s not all our responsibility to make things right across the World the only overseas conflicts we should involve ourselves in are the Falklands and support of Isreal as they are the only people we could count on in the entire Middle East.. There is no Arab Spring and there will never be a genuine democratic outcome in any of the Arab Spring States… If Isreal were wiped off the face of the map the Arabs would control the entire Suez region and could strangle our entire economy… At the moment we have only a few genuine allies Canada, Australia, Isreal and New Zealand!! These countries didn`t wait to be asked in the Wars of the last 100 years, they have always been steadfast, honest, reliable and true to thier promises even in the darkest of times….. These countries will trade as equals and between them can offer mineral wealth, technologies, foodtuffs, even oil and with them all we would have a level playing field…. Why should we pay taxes for the Eurozone crisis?? They have shown themselves to be a money pit, if we give them any money they just come back for more!! and more!! Europe has ruined us for 100 years in two world Wars and now this psuedo Federalist EU debacle… Let`s get out and steady our own ship before we too end up on the rocks too!!! We don`t need endless migrant workers to fill employment holes… Train our own kids and give our own kids the incentives to stay in education rather than to corrupt third world states and Economic powerhouses such as India and China in the hope of garnering trade links… I know I sound xenophobic… but how much more is left in the piggy bank??? The truth we actually do not know!!! And that is a very dangerous position to be in… If you disagree, i don`t care!! It`s my opinion and it`s my right to express it.. 🙂 Just don`t let leveson know what I said eh???

       4 likes

  10. Roland Deschain says:

    They are still trying to keep this story going! As I write, there’s a prominent link to it on the main news webpage.

    Why is this man’s every utterance given such prominence on the BBC? Do they think his presence gives it credibility?

       5 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      ‘Do they think his presence gives it credibility?’
      Maybe it’s a hidden cry for help.
      By using such a person… over and over and over… as some kind of bizarre notion of moral spokesperson for the nation, perhaps they are saying ‘see, we are that deranged… please… put us, along with him, out of our misery’.
      Or, possibly, he’s the best they can scare up from a very limited pool of a very sorry job lot.
      They say fish rot from the head.
      True in politics of course. And media… especially unaccountable public sector ones.
      Read this and much about the BBC, past, current and future, is explained if not excused….
      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9314127/Whats-going-on-at-the-BBC.html
      ‘One BBC staffer responded: “Well, that’s all very Pravda, isn’t it?”’
      Realisation dawns even with the bubble.

         4 likes

      • Roland Deschain says:

        From that Telegraph article:

        There are a great many young presenters who have got used to being given gobbets of information on a clipboard, and they are very often know-nothings.

        Couldn’t have put it better myself.

           3 likes

  11. Deborah says:

    Jeremy Vine had a mother of one of the people concerned on yesterday – she said that the young people all knew before they went that they would not be paid – but they all were on Job Seekers Allowance which was equivalent to pay, that apart from the 2 who had gone to the BBC the others were furious that the story had been taken up and could affect their chances of a job as they would be labelled as trouble makers. One of the ones complaining was 25 so as far as I understand the story is that some people in their mid 20s couldn’t cope (unlike the poeple camping out for the jubilee) with a 2 hour wait to start work. I don’t think this was the story Jeremy wanted.
    I also noticed that on Newsnight the use of ‘the 4 day event’ so that listeners would subliminaly think these people had been dumped for the 4 days.

       4 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      ‘ I don’t think this was the story Jeremy wanted.’
      What, one that appears now to be reflecting what actually happened, versus what the Labour/BBC/Graun axis of weevils have tried to portray?
      Please, let this lady’s testimony be accurate, captured from iPlayer and sent out via twitter and FaceBook.
      I will happily post it on the Newsnight page.
      I’ll even ask if they might like to get in the (very powerful) Loud Prescott and hold him to account.
      But I am guessing they will suddenly again decide Bolivian Throat Warblers at The Tate needs to become their ‘news’ focus.

         4 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      Here it is:
      http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wr3p
      Kicks off (in all senses of the word on a JV bunfight) at 9′ 35″
      Shiv Malik & John Prescott in perfect harmony on when working unpaid is ‘horrifying’ vs. when they, and their respective organisations are more sanguine about such things.
      I notice to JV’s challenge on a fact, a gabbling Mr. Malik kicks off with ‘”I think…”. I would have liked to hear that shift between what is and what is presumed explored further. Along with which claims were verified as a lot of ‘they say’s’ came out.
      And Prescott wants another freaking inquiry???! For damp tents at a campsite? It’s most folks’ summer holiday.
      To be fair, JV was actually tasking Prescott quite hard, and the oaf then defaulted into ‘well I don’t know’ mode. Ask, confirm, verify, first… before turning into a bloody knee-jerk snark show… yes you, Labour and you too… BBC.
      Caroline Mast 25′ 30″ – blows the blowhard and the Graun activist out of the water.
      Adrian is brought on as he’s ‘angry’, and kicks off ‘if the stories are true’. He doesn’t freaking know. The lady did. The whole sorry farce in a nutshell. It was a matter of choice, as the BBC would doubtless prefer not to see investigated too much.
      Opportunist media whore John Prescott on.. ‘incompetency’ in the media brothel that is the BBC. Bless. The man is a national joke, indulged by the other one.

         4 likes

  12. Fred Sage says:

    Prescott did not mention the distinguished old couple one 85 and her husband 92 who stood for over 4 hours on a river boat in the cold or the millions who stood for over 10 hours in the freezing cold and those children who camped in Green Park overnight. Most of us are amazed at the goodwill there is to the queen but not by Prescott and the BBC.
    Incidently did others see Newsnight last night the last item (after Prescott) showed how some other countries viewed the Jubilee they selected only the derogatory ones , of course.

       5 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      I wonder if the old boy was anywhere near D-Day (or serving elsewhere), as many have noted was not a matter of concern for the good Lord and his glee clubs as they were getting their frilles in a froth about some young folk not having the best day out (it now seeming most not complaining either).
      Prescott. BBC. Guardian. Pretty much the perfect storm of what is wrong in this country, and has been for a fair while. I am simply amazed ‘Anger and Protests’ editor Mason hasn’t allowed Laurie Penny out of his basement to give a yoof account on Newsnight.

         4 likes

  13. smell the glove says:

    Workers rights what about the poor secretary who had to lay beneath lard mountain Prescot ?

       8 likes

  14. starfish says:

    Presumably Prescott has claimed his £300 attendance allowance for this day’s work

       4 likes

    • #88 says:

      I think it’s called Malfeasence in Public Office. If I remember correctly a policeman in the Midlands was jailed last year for enjoying such pleasures* in his office, whilst on duty. One law for one…

      *Not that Tracey Temple could have enjoyed it that much.

         4 likes

      • Guest Who says:

        There appears, as with so many aspects of politics and media, a droit du seigneur attitude pervading, with a unique level of uni-directionality to add spice to the already rampant hypocrisy.
        That the BBC sees Prescott as a chief spokesperson on matters moral or ethical, simply because he is prepared to lower himself below the sewer level they now inhabit to say what they dare not (yet) first hand, is an association that they will come to regret, I suspect.
        There are many from the political infirmament more venal or dangerous I suspect, but if I was in a room with that man I would worry in any proximity what might be caught.

           1 likes

  15. Guest Who says:

    More on Prescott (read that quickly):
    http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/54991/john_prescott_this_government_is_exploiting_cheap_labour.html
    He needs putting out to grass.

       1 likes