The BBC intended to broadcast a show that gave a platform to last year’s rioters so that they could excuse their actions and blame society for their behaviour…which let’s not forget involved…..‘The riots across England in August 2011 should need no introduction. Following the police shooting of Mark Duggan, a peaceful protest in Tottenham developed into explosive violent disorder. Over five days trouble spread across the country with people looting, setting fire to property and attacking the police. Five people died and over 2,500 shops and businesses were damaged. To date 1,290 rioters have been sent to jail.’
But as the BBC tells us: ‘A court order has been made preventing the BBC from broadcasting the programme as planned on 16 July. The BBC will broadcast the programme at a later date. You will be able to comment on Nicola’s post when the programme airs.’
No reason is given, it may have to do with ongoing criminal proceedings but whatever the reason it’s a welcome block on the BBC’s campaign to white wash and excuse the arsonists, looters, rioters, killers, thieves and thugs who took the opportunity to have their fun at many other people’s expense.
This is what the BBC believe the programme represents: ‘As a TV production team, we were faced with the decision whether to use this important and illuminating piece of work, even though it granted anonymity to criminals. In our view it was justified because of the insights it provides into why and how the riots had happened.’
‘Illuminating, important, insightful’? Hardly, it makes all the old excuses…the report (from left wing Guardian and LSE) this programme is based upon fingers bad parents, bad schools, bad government and of course bad policing but fails to mention the truth….that a hard core of criminally minded people took the opportunity to raise hell and destroy as much as they could and steal whatever they could carry away….and enjoyed themselves immensely.
It wasn’t ‘raging at the system’, it was unbounded pleasure and criminality….the fact that the secondary riots only occurred when it was realised the police weren’t going to intervene shows that it was too little ‘system’ not too much that encouraged the riots.
The Guardian and LSE already had the answers they wanted to finish up with…they just needed to get the dogs to bark the right tune. Who knows what ended up being written out of the report, what questions were asked, what answers were really given, and what is on the cutting room floor.
Look at the format of the programme….actors are repeating the words of the rioters, it is not a normal, rigorous, in depth interview with rioters being asked to back up any statement…….
‘Whilst we are able to listen in to these accounts to garner fresh insights, viewers may feel frustrated or even angry because the tone of the interviews is very different to what we might expect from BBC TV: as journalists we challenge our interviewees and ask them to justify their words, but we can’t here.
Similarly we can’t elucidate what our characters say or ask them to explain references that they make.
Some speak in a street vernacular that is likely to be unfamiliar to many BBC Two viewers and some of the nuances and context of what they talk about are in danger of being lost.’
In other words the rioters are able to say what they liked with no questions asked….the one question that can be asked is would you believe them?
This is highly dangerous polemics…it is giving the BBC’s sanction to rioting and looting. It is meant to precipitate government pouring millions, if not billions of pounds into helping the rioters turn over a new leaf and become honest citizens.
The BBC is acting as a part of a large left wing pressure group that spins a web of lies to ensure that politicians are embarrassed and pressurised into ever more generous handouts from the tax payer’s funds….let’s remember…these aren’t ‘forgotten families’…these are families that get massive amounts of state money thrown at them already…far beyond the normal benefits of free schools, NHS, dental and opticians, policing, housing and a judicial system to protect them….they also get endless social workers, counsellors, special needs teaching, never mind constant police attention and free room and board at Her Majesties Pleasure.
Only this morning on ‘Today’ it was stated that one family was estimated to cost a council upwards of £250,000 to help keep them under control.
These are not ‘forgotten families’.
The programme is in two parts…the first the rioters, the second the police…..no victims then? And no voice of the man on the street who wasn’t in the riots…surely their views count for something?…..but the BBC and Guardian want to shut them out…because they suspect, rightly, that there will be little sympathy for the rioters from the vast majority of people in Britain.
The BBC is manipulating the facts for political ends and the consequences are that massive amounts of government funds are diverted to pay for the wrong solutions and subsequently wasted rather than being spent on people and projects who would benefit vastly from it and would appreciate what’s being done to help them…and go on to change their lives because of it.
It is a shame more of the BBC’s programmes are not forced to undergo judicial review before being broadcast….but then again that wouldn’t leave much on the telly if all the biased, highly partial, politicised, Labour supporting, polar bear hugging, Muslim extremist apologising, anti-Israel claptrap was taken off air.
Send the BBC private to stand on it’s own 2 feet watch the drop in wages then!!
This afternoon the BBC web site front page has a long, vibrant feature on Romanian and other street thieving gangs in London : it makes the criminals seem rather thrilling, excitingly clever, mere rogues . But of course they are very Ethnically differentiated and the BBC is crazed for all things ethnic and gendered just now … strange – inverse racialism .
For all the BBC’s hand-wringing about ‘right-wing extremism’, I can’t think of anyone on the right who trades in this kind of smirking endorsement of violent thuggery.
Mind you, you do have to enjoy the thought of a bunch of middle-class thespians pretending to be underclass thugs. It’s like they’re holding an edition of the Black & White Minstrel Show in a Potemkin Village.
“Romanian pickpockets, these guys are so talented, really good at it, its all they know, who can blame them, foolish me carrying my wallet in my back pocket, its all my own fault really”
Stockholm syndrome!!
Hows about these Romanian thieves are vermin, the cockroaches of humanity, they are laughing at us, stamp on them?
Gosh, that’s a bit unkind. The BBC has no opinion on right and wrong. Both are just a point of view. Anyway I get paid loads of money to present this tosh. That is sort of pick pocketing the License Fee payer, know what I mean? We are brothers under the skin.
‘…we challenge our interviewees and ask them to justify their words, but we can’t here’. There is a word missing here, and I think it might be ‘selectively’.
Throwing yet more money at the problem just perpetuates it. As with any totalitarian society (and that is really what the BBC want – socialist style) you need to keep the proles in their place, by a combination of generous welfare and poor education.
And is this the same LSE that took Gadaffi millions? It figures.
That’s why it’s called the Leninist School of Extremism.
Lucky Romanians, having dumped their Roma filth on Britain.
Its funny that Romanians , who are not allowed to work in the UK , can be so brazen about being here .
On the other hand this is Britian , run for others benefit .
Alan, a brilliant piece, thank-you.
Top piece, spot on comments !”
All these shows about the riots are incredibly frustrating to me. We should learn the lessons from the riots but the lessons have everything to do with a criminal underclass which been indulged rather than disciplined over the years, and a police force which intervened too late and sat on the sidelines early on thanks to ultra-PC concerns about being seen as not on the side of ethnic minorities. The police are there to protect people and property, to uphold the law. They aren’t social workers or community leaders. But I never hear BBC programs about the riots discuss any of this; I just hear apologists for criminality and people make tenuous links to fat cat bankers or society’s ills.
The BBC has sanctioned racially motivated violent child rapes, so why not looting, arson and murder too?
There are despicable crimes, (such as calling a black footballer black!) then there are acceptable, understandable left wing crimes. (like racially motivated violent child rape)
The BBC needs to be shut down.
As for the riots, something I wrote at the time gives a powerful reason why the state and the left’s obsession with destroying the “nuclear family” was directly to blame.
An example.
John was 14 when the riots occurred. In 2005 his parents were having financial difficulties which placed an unbearable strain on their relationship. John loved and respected his parents, but hated to see them fight.
A little bit of support, some counselling would have seen the marriage survive and John receive the firm, responsible upbringing to give him the boundaries and discipline to be successful in life.
However, his parents discovered that they would be better off, financially apart due to the benefits system. And anyway, surely it would be better for John, to not see his parents argue so much?
His parents split up when he was nine, the divorce was finalised when he was ten.
He moved with his mother to live on a council estate. he did not understand that the “system” encouraged the hatred and bitterness between his parents to become exaggerated in the divorce process. His mother fought for and won sole custody and his father moved away to take a better paid job, to be able to afford maintenance.
Feeling confusion and betrayal at his father, he was angry. Many other children at his school felt the same way.
By the time he was 11 he had been put on report at school for lashing out at another child.
By the time he was 12 he had joined a gang, where he got the male bonding and support from older boys, that he did not get from an absent father.
He felt alone, scared, angry and betrayed. the older boys gave him the support he craved and they praised him when he did what they wanted.
By the age of 13, he had been suspended from school for stealing from, and beating up, younger children. The police and Social services became involved.
John was passed from part time expert, to part time expert. He saw councillors, mentors, trainers, social workers, police officers and all sorts of other good, well meaning, strangers and he trusted none of them.
On the night of the riots, he was programmed by his circumstance to take part.
He had received the very very expensive well meaning help of more than 70 well paid experts over the previous 5 years, but ALL he wanted and needed was the FREE help, love and support of his Father.
The nuclear family had been broken, and the riots were a consequence of that.
Is there a West Indian father unspoken here? It’s cultural. I recall the bass player in Bob Marleys band boasting he had fathered over 170 children. At no time did he boast he MAINTAINED over 170 children. You wonder why all these fatherless young men brought up by only mothers and “aunts” join gangs?
No one dares say it.
In the last chapter (part 4) of Niall Ferguson’s Reith lectures, he put forward his thesis that the ever increasing state’s encroachment into our daily lives has played a large part in the breakdown of civil society. It’s well worth a listen. He gets quite a hard time in the Q & A at the end, but defends his ideas forcefully and eloquently.
[audio src="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/reith/reith_20120710-0930a.mp3" /]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/reith
Anybody think this programme was influenced by the BBC College of Journalism panel discussion featuring an activist from UK Uncut, an Occupier, Owen Jones, and a couple of sycophants from the LSE and C4 about how to report on “protest”? I realize that none of these people – so far as we know – was directly involved in these particular riots, but at least two of them have been involved in other protest violence. When you have the perpetrators themselves telling you how to report on them, it’s not hard to guess what comes next.
Excellent report! Alan. Programme was no loss whatsoever, just like the whole of undemocratically funded Al-Beeb and all its ever leftist indoctrinating shit wouldn’t be!
Going through the channels to see what to watch last night, I read what the bonce programming programme was about and just laughed.
No-one knows how to so pathetically flog a dead horse like Al-Beeb.
Currently in Thailand, Phuket.
Lovely place, despite a few off-season downsides.
One is the weather (hence online during a downpour).
The other is being told it is now not wise to walk anywhere at night as the lack of money during this period has made some ‘desperate’. An Aussie lady was knifed to death a few weeks ago.
The locals say it’s the wonderful over-border multi-culti types that are allowed in who are responsible. And it’s not good for business.
And despite this being the Land of Smiles I got the impression there may be some corrective actions off the books soon.
Shame they have no BBC equivalent here to tell them that all is well and one just needs to suck up a share the joys of diversity.