The BBC website announced as its headline story on its Frontpage earlier, in big, bold type ‘Hunt: I did not lie to Parliament‘.
Now it could just me being sensitive or is that phrased to be reminiscent of Nixon’s ‘I am not a crook’ …..when of course he was?
Is the BBC trying to give us the impression that perhaps Hunt did lie to Parliament. It manages to give the correct headline on the actual story itself….‘Jeremy Hunt denies Labour’s claim he lied to Parliament’….that is that the totally impartial Labour party are making this claim.
What else is strange today? Labour are demanding an inquiry into Jeremy Hunt’s activities….and a vote was held in Parliament today on whether that inquiry will be held…they voted ‘no’.
The LibDems were ordered to abstain in the vote by Nick Clegg.
That might be seen as rather an odd order from Clegg….as he said this today at Leveson…. ‘Mr Clegg in his evidence to the Leveson inquiry, repeated his backing for Mr Hunt, saying the culture secretary had given a “full, good and convincing account” of his handling the BSkyB bid.’
Note how far down the BBC story Clegg’s comment is….right at the bottom…where you might not read it…they hope.
Clegg’s comment is probably the most important one of recent times…it is somewhat of a game changer….certainly for the BBC’s narrative which has always been that Hunt is guilty of colluding with the Murdoch empire and Cameron is isolated after having made a very badly judged decision….and yet the BBC seem to be ignoring its significance.
Ed Miliband in today’s PMQs claimed that ‘even Cameron’s own deputy didn’t support him in his assertions about Hunt’….clearly Clegg does support Cameron’s view.
John Pienaar on 5Live (after PMQs) brought up Clegg’s comment and noted its hypocrisy in conjunction with the order to abstain…..but listen to the news and the comment gets very little, if any coverage and is relegated to an also ran in terms of significance.
It is always a wonder how a BBC journalist will actually give you the facts, the real ones….but when you hear them regurgitated and filtered through the news or other BBC programmes those facts take on a whole different life and meaning….if they are repeated at all. The BBC is very fast at plucking out information from a report say on the Today programme, when it suits them…the news team will have disinterred the information, shaped it, edited it, and mashed it together in an instant for the next news bulletin…’hot off the Press’…..however Clegg’s comment was pretty stillborn, the runt of the news litter, the ugly duckling…when in fact it was the Swan, the mighty mouse that roared…just very quietly on the BBC.
Nice to be able to shape the news to your own agenda.
Peter Hunt on ‘The World at One’ (13 mins 50 secs) gives us the important news first…Brown warned Clegg that Murdoch was only interested in getting the Tories into power…and that Vince Cable had had veiled threats against the LibDems from News International if they didn’t back the BSkyB bid.
Clegg dismissed those ‘veiled threats’ as …..’not a credible threat… just rumours and counter claims’.
So why does the BBC make so much noise about Cable’s assertion?
Peter Hunt then tackles the comment by Clegg about Jeremy Hunt…..he downplays it by claiming that Clegg has only offered ‘qualified support’…..has he?
I thought Clegg came out in full support for Hunt and his impartiality in making a decision….saying Hunt handled the bid in a way that successfully insulated himself from claims of bias…..and the culture secretary had given a “full, good and convincing account” of his handling the BSkyB bid.’
So are the LibDems, as the BBC’s Ben Wright (8 mins ) claims, ‘seriously questioning Hunt’s integrity and Cameron’s judgement’…are there ‘serious front bench rifts’?
And why does he suggest that Sir Alex Allan’s letter was ‘rather helpful to the Prime Minister…perhaps unsurprisingly’?
Does he question the impartiality of a highly respected senior civil servant who also served under the Labour government? No such questions about the ‘evidence’ from John Wilson, the Fife NHS chief exec. who stated that his staff were to blame for the leak about Brown’s son…though he had not a shred of evidence or proof to back that up…the BBC believed that it exonerated Brown and damned Murdoch and the Sun.
The BBC seem all at sea over this saga….continually wrong footed and undermined in their suggestions of Hunt’s guilt by the facts…..and being highly selective as to which ‘evidence’ they present as ‘true’ and which they seek to bury.
Still, they seem to be working hard to ignore or play down those facts and not let them spoil a good story.
Appreciate the efforts in tying up this whole can of tapeworms into something approaching a crock of slithery, slimy shite.
Noted Grant Shapps getting the Columbo “oh, and just one more thing” question from that flatnosed toothless turd John Humphrys this morning…as if the previous ten minutes moaning at Shapps re the lack of council house building was the mere hors d`d’oeuvres.
Typical Beeb-telegraphed hypocrisy about the poor and their houses-but really much more interested in trying to get a wedge between the two poltroons that head up a shambles of a Government.
Yet far better these two nomarks than any sniff of Balls or Milibands back in power.
Anbody willing at Tory HQ to blow the predicable gutter rumblings of the Beeb out of the water-Shapps has no point to make on Hunt, and Humphrys tittle-tattle agenda is desperate crap…and we get it each and every day!
I listened to that, Humphrys was really pushing his agenda, build more council houses, wasn’t he.
Mind you, allegedly he has big property investments in Greece – so he may be needing a council house himself soon!
‘really pushing his agenda, build more council houses’
Between pol and media, for our education and information, was any mention made of how water supplies for all these new houses was going to be factored in?
It just seems germane at a time when the water bans have highlighted that it may not be so much looking to the sky for supply may be the main issue, but rather not looking around on the ground at demand issues.
But, OK, the BBC has its priorities.
I just don’t happen to share them.
Another very good post, Alan. More of the BBC’s main obsession these days.
We can only hope that most people are now switching off whenever all this Hunt stuff is pumped out by the BBC. Storm in a teacup stuff, Labour’s fox has already been shot several times over.
I find my kids – who are well left of where I am – do not mention the Hunt business at all. They express no interest in all the Leveson stuff – even after days when big gums ,like Cameron, Murdoch and Brown have been giving evidence and the BBC has been headlining it non-stop, What they DO talk about is the NHS (one is a doctor, one a nurse) – they are critical of the Coalition. And one who is moving away from London wants to discuss what the outlook for the economy is – should she sell her flat quickly at any reasonable price rather than waiting for any higher offer, , and then maybe wait for the market to sag before buying, as the Eurozone problems increase this year.
These are THEIR everyday issues. Never have they mentioned Murdoch or Leveson – let alone Jeremy Hunt.
I sense that the man on the top of the Clapham omnibus has much the same out;look. All the BBC obsession over Hunt is just sound and fury, signifying nothing. But it may also be a desperate attempt to keep the focus off the BBC’s stranglehold on news delivery in the UK.
On and on drones the BBC about Hunt.
NONE of the main headlines in today’s press are on Hunt. (Many are on the new deal for Premier League matches)
But the Today programme started with Hunt – and is still droning on about Hunt !
Obsession or what ? Jeremy who ?
re Premier League football – time was, when the BBC had de facto monopoly, very little football was shown on TV. And even less was LIVE.
Sky now brings over a hundred matches per year – LIVE. Viewers have CHOSEN FREELY to pay for this new service. The Premier League has gained huge new revenues – such that it can afford to buy the best of the world’s players. A direct benefit from the villanous Rupert Murdoch. Likewise on first-release movies. (When the BBC had the chance of getting into satellite TV – originally it had the SOLE licence – it never realised that sport and films is what the punters wanted. Put bluntly – it had zero imagination, and didn’t care what punters wanted – even though the emergence of cable TV in the US showed anyone but a blind man that punters were willing to pay for sports and movies eg HBO. Whereas Murdoch is customer-oriented in his DNA !)
Half the UK population now chooses to take Sky – not all take sports or film channels, but I reckon a lot of punters out there are fed up with the BBC endlessly attacking Murdoch and Sky. They don’t give a damn about Hunt or even Leveson, but they would be pretty mad if they realised that what the BBC is trying to do is damage Sky.
The core BBC charge is that the Tories are in league with Murdoch – even though Labour looked to be more in bed with Rupert than even Cameron has been.
In yesterday’s debate Cameron made the excellent point that there would never have been a chance for News International to bid for entire ownership of BSkyB if Labour had not altered the law to allow foreign companies to be UK broadcasters. Was the BBC endlessly attacking Labour then ? I don’t think so.
The sheer virulence of the BBC’s non-stop onslaught on Hunt if offensive to any idea of “balance”. The more it looks like failing – as with the damp squib of yesterday’s Commons debate, especially with Clegg and Don Foster saying that Hunt had behaved properly “by the book” in dealing with the BSkyB bid.
But this all seems to get the warped clowns at the BBC screaming even louder.
Murdoch seems to be keeping most of his powder dry, other than directly denying the George Brown lies. He is playing a long game. He COULD argue to Leveson that the BBC has far too great a control on UK news output. But that might increase the likelihood of Leveson declaring that both the BBC and Murdoch are both too big.
If Leveson did force a reduction in media ownership by Murdoch – his simple response could be to flog many or all of his newspapers, his real profitability and cash-flow for his wider empire comes from BSkyB. What he still really wants is the main prize – total ownership of BSkyB.
I notice today the Hunt story after the result of the vote last night (i.e. No) has been completely relegated to minor news.
There is still a small link for “Hunt denies Labour’s ‘lie’ claim” and “PMQs and Jeremy Hunt debate”.
But no clear link to a “MPs vote ‘No’ to further Hunt investigation” story which is actually what happened.
Funny that.
… but the Today programme (more influential than the website) has been chuntering on about Hunt and Leveson all bloody morning !
As one of his constituents, I can in fact confirm that Jeremy Hunt is a serial liar. His reply to every letter that I’ve written to him is proof of this, particularly his insistence that they would/are/have cut immigration substantially.
. . . and if the weak pathetic spineless fool had the balls to stand up to the BBC then he wouldn’t be in this predicament.
BBC-NUJ doesn’t question anti-Tory, Speaker Bercow’s condoning of word ‘liar’ to describe Tory Minister.
“Using the L word is now fine with this Speaker”
By Quentin Letts
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2159026/Using-L-word-fine-Speaker.html#ixzz1xlqT0x4g
Bercow’s ruling was disgraceful. It is a cardinal rule in the HofC that you don’t call another member a liar – or accuse him of lying
If it’s now OK to call people liar in the HoC, then I’d say it’s OK to make use of other terms, which are probably more accurate. Such as socialist sh*t and commie b**tard and traitor and warmonger and leftwing retard. and money grubbing thief and sexual deviant. and a host of other terms that could best describe the labour and libdem parties.
Mick Hume :
“Leveson: a menace to democracy, too.
So why do so many liberal-minded observers praise the Lord Justice and his QC sidekick as a two-man ‘British spring’?
http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/12543/
Can’t disagree with much, but as to Mr. Jay’s ‘non partisan’ status, being a colleague of the Labour Leader’s missus seems also more of a ‘say what?’ conflict of interest-wise, than being the recipient of errant texts that don’t read well.
I guess it’s all in how it gets framed. Now, how will it all get ‘framed’, I wonder… in terms of what is left in and ‘analysed’, and what gets left out as ‘not relevant’.?
In contrast to BBC-NUJ, which avoids political criticism of CLEGG and Lib Dems, re-Hunt-
“Cleggie has double-dealing written in his DNA- and the bone-headed rabble he leads are even worse ”
By Stephen Glover.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2158972/Cleggie-double-dealing-written-DNA-bone-headed-rabble-leads-worse.html#ixzz1xnqRQbd4