Monthly Archives: July 2012

The BBC tells us this:

‘Documents seen by the BBC on Monday indicate ministers in the last Labour government held discussions with banks about policies which would allow the Libor rate to fall.

Speculation about how much the government of the day knew prompted a statement on Tuesday evening from former Labour minister Baroness Vadera of Holland Park.

She said she “has no recollection of speaking to Paul Tucker or anyone else at the Bank of England about the price setting of Libor”.’

Miliband…all fur coat and no knickers?

I listened to Campbell and Derbyshire this morning…and of course the news bulletins….but  don’t recall any mention of the fact that the Labour Government may have given Barclays the nod to manipulate the Libor.

I think Peston was onto it on Monday…but a deathly silence seemed to descend upon 5Live at least. 

This has the potential to be THE story….Miliband has been scurrying around demanding criminal procedures against Barclays and a full-on inquiry…..if the allegations are true Miliband and Labour should be toast…if only for his denial of truth and attempt to deceive everyone with highly opportunistic political statements.

They may well have mentioned it but the fact that I did not notice would say a lot….that it was downplayed and essentially ignored.

A lack of facts didn’t stop the BBC giving Miliband endless airtime to make his accusations and presumptious demands.

The BBC should now be nailing Miliband to the floor with questions.  Maybe Balls suspects the guns are going to be turning on them…I believe he is denying all knowledge..’I was education minister at the time!’

However if so, perhaps he could explain why the exam boards were rigging the education system and destroying a generation’s life chances…to put it in BBC talk.

And why Miliband as Environment minister saddled British industry with a target to cut CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050…a ruinous demand that no other country was stupid enough to implement.

Hopefully tomorrow in PMQs Cameron will wipe the floor with Miliband and the BBC will be forced to open that can of worms.

What would Jesus do?

The alternative title was ‘Kristallnacht’ in light of the unremitting ‘pogrom’ against all bankers regardless of guilt in pursuit of a Socialist ideology of a  banker free world….with the Occupy storm troopers putting boots on the ground and a Goebbels like media riding shotgun behind Miliband.

To save you reading all of this I’ll give you a quick precis….Exam boards have been rigging the market for their exams leading to a dumbing down of exams and the resultant narrowing and truncating of pupil’s education and destruction in trust in their qualifications and therefore reduced job prospects and a commensurate damaging effect on the economy.

And yet there are no opportunist Milibandian calls for a judicial inquiry or cries that this has damaged our schools’ reputation world wide etc.

How different a reaction to the banks rigging the market….surely no more important than education, education, education?

However it seems no one is really interested in the kids when they’ve got bigger fish to fry.

Ed Miliband receives his certificate of education.

A funny old world where the massive chorus of outraged politicians and media commentators shouting to the rooftops about scandal and rigging the financial markets to the detriment of ‘the public’ have marched Bob Diamond out to the firing squad and told him to shoot himself.

We’ve been told the bank’s actions have been unprecedented.. a shock to all…a scandal of historic proportions…who knew! who knew!

Really? I would imagine fixing of the Libor has been going on since its inception…as have all the other dodgy financial scams that the banks have (yet again) been caught at recently.

Let’s ask ourselves ‘what would Jesus do?’ Two thousand years ago he was tipping over the money lender’s tables……so not a new problem then with bankers and financiers….and yet it comes as a surprise that bankers are involved in shady practises?

The BBC have singularly failed to join the dots on this and gone solely with the banker bashing narrative. They deserve to be bashed…but it was ever thus. Who doesn’t remember the old black and white films from the 20’s and 30’s where the desperate widow was being evicted by the greedy banker?

The BBC’s highly focused reporting and commenting on essentially one aspect of a society in pursuit of its chosen victim…not so long ago it was Murdoch…..means that other ‘culprits’ , such as Brown, Miliband and Balls, are allowed to escape and an overemphasis is placed on Barclays which suffers enormous damage whilst others get off scot free.

Look at this story which has gone not unreported but reported without exclamations of shock and horror and cries for judicial inquiries from the opportunist flim flam artist that Miliband is turning out to be.

Exam boards are ‘rigging’ the market to sell their products….meaning exams are being ‘dumbed down’ , made easier, so that more schools will buy them with a resultant increase in pass rates and a leap up the league tables and….

“a public loss of confidence in exams such as GCSEs and A-levels”.

…leading to pupils with a narrow and truncated education, leaving them without the jobs they could have obtained and employers either importing skilled immigrants or restricting their production and therefore the country’s economy.

Is not the rigging of exam papers and the dumbing down of education  a national scandal that equals and maybe surpasses Bob Diamond and his nifty footwork with the Libor?

And yet this comparison passes the BBC by….it simplifies to the point of stupidity which results in a massive distortion of the news and the relative importance of a story.

Sure the bank scandal is big but not unusual or unexpected in reality…we all know it went on since the first ‘bank’ was created.

Examine the claims that the banks manipulation of the Libor may have cost people money whether in pensions or mortgages or otherwise.

Labour instigated a massive printing of money, Quantitative Easing, to stabilise the economy. This resulted in a devaluation of the pound…and inflation….it therefore cost everyone, rich and poor, a lot of money (remember the BBC reports of the ‘poor’ being hit by Tory VAT increases…but no such squeals here). Not only that but interest rates are being held down…making savings a worthless prospect especially if you rely on savings to fund your pension from the interest on them….all of which continue now…with the prospect of another interest rate drop and more QE.

And yet such serious consequences go pretty much unremarked by the BBC…..no comparison to the Libor…in principle it is the same thing…rigging the interest market…only it was being done by the Labour government to cover up its own massive failures in financial regulation and overspending.

And yet Labour get away unscathed…Miliband claiming today that ‘Yes we failed to regulate properly and we’re truly sorry…but hey, we’ve learnt from it and we’ve learnt lessons for the future…let’s move on and so vote us in!’

‘Sorry’ isn’t enough….Labour have brought the economy to the brink of complete ruin and go unscathed legally and without public scrutiny by the BBC…no trial by media inquisition here. Let’s face it Bob Diamond resigned…’sorry’ didn’t cut it for him, he had to go.

In fact he sent a letter to his staff yesterday in which he made the same claims Miliband made….‘What went wrong happened on my watch…and I’ve learnt lessons and so it is up to me to put things right.’

And now he’s gone whilst Miliband and Balls are still there and basking in the lime light from the unquestioning BBC.

As I’ve said the banking scandal is massive with important consequences but it should be looked at in  respect to other events and in relation to history, neither of which is happening, leading to a highly febrile atmosphere and media lynchings…all of which the BBC is supposed to prevent by a measured, balanced and accurate reporting of events.

Now WHO would have seen this one coming? 

John Simpson, BBC broadcaster, has admitted he used to be a tax avoider, placing his home with an offshore company until he saw the error of his ways.

Ah, the “error of his ways”. How touching and so moral. I wonder how many other highly paid BBC staff have similar tax evading arrangements in situ and why hasn’t there been a call  from the BBC for a full investigation into this sort of activity? Just wondering.

The news that Bob Diamond has resigned from Barclays was breaking news on Today this morning. The euphoria in John Humphrys voice was almost touching. Shortly afterwards the Chancellor was interviewed and the thrust of Humphrys questioning was whether Osborne had personally put pressure on Diamond to go. Osborne rightly pointed out that it is not the business of Government to tell a private company who it should employ, to the obvious annoyance of Humphrys! I thought Osborne did OK and his reference to Ed Balls “being in the dock” was met with studied silence!

Any thoughts on why the BBC seems to have somewhat overlooked this story?

An NHS quango has provided its staff with a £1 million fleet of luxury cars, including a BMW convertible, an Audi TT and three Range Rover Evoques.

Time for a public enquiry into this abuse of precious taxpayer funds, maybe even a judicial review into NHS sharp practise? Thought not.

Jeremy Vine, BBC R2, has a new book out in which he relates many a story about his contacts with the Blair spin machine….Alastair Campbell and Mandelson….ALL SERIALISED IN THE DAILY MAIL:

A piece in the Sunday Express ‘Cross Bencher’ reveals that the much vaunted BBC independence is easily sidestepped by the vigorous use of threats.

Vine’s new book ‘pulled no punches’ in describing events and Alastair Campbell, also with a book to plug, decided he should be on Vine’s show and emailed him demanding an appearance….‘You have no choice in the matter of my coming on to your show to promote my latest volume of truth.’

Arrangements were immediately made and Campbell duly made his appearance on the Vine show a week or so ago.

Even if tongue in cheek it does show that influence not only allows you to shoulder your way onto the BBC but also you get a free advert for your book.

Independent my *****.

Now that little diversion is out of the way we can look at what Vine said in his book.

It makes for interesting reading.

“At any point, Peter would be involved in about 20 highly personal run-ins with political journalists… The BBC’s Nick Jones pointed out the way Alastair Campbell and Mandelson worked as a pair — the baseball bat and the stiletto. ‘If they don’t like your story, Campbell screams down the phone at you while Mandelson quietly goes to the Director-General,’ he said.”

Nice to know you can just have  a quiet chat with the Director General if you have a complaint and want it sorted out….just how many of those did Mandelson have with the BBC DG to influence the narrative of BBC output?

Of Mandelson: ‘The charm was still there. But it was simply the scabbard on the rapier. If you helped him, he’d pump you up. If you crossed him, he’d run you through.

And by the way, if you think history has done him a disservice with its dark and menacing caricature, I’d agree. He was far more dark and menacing than that.’

…and look at this little story….it suggests that somewhere in the BBC the Labour Party has a helping hand who is willing to prevent uncomfortable truths emerging to the inconvenience of Labour when Prescott reveals that there was a ‘Blair Labour Party’ and a ‘Prescott Labour Party’:

‘Yes, fine,’ I (Vine) said. ‘I’ll just be asking you about the speech, if that’s OK.’

‘OK, hang on.’ Prescott was stooping to see his reflection in the lens of the camera, running his hand across his fringe. ‘Actually, I got Tony to sign my copy of it.’

‘Really?’ I asked. Prescott was staring at himself in the lens, straightening his tie. ‘Yes. So I had a record of the moment he gave my party a stuffing.’

Campbell took a step forward. ‘That’s not for you.’

Nick Jones, a political correspondent who never went out without a full set of spanners to insert into the spokes of any party press operation…. eyes boggled. Within hours, he was on air saying: ‘At least one Shadow Cabinet member has described Mr Blair as “stuffing the party” with this speech . . .’
Retribution was swift. Campbell bulldozed into the press room. With dozens of journalists looking on, the communications chief berated my colleague, veins jumping in his temple, calling his story ‘b******s’ and ‘a load of f*****g c***’ and asking him how he dared report it when he had no way of knowing it was true.

‘But this is terrible,’ I told our producer. ‘Prescott himself said that thing about stuffing the party and we’ve even got it on tape.’

I went to the edit suite to fetch it. Everything was exactly as it had been left the night before. But where the tape had sat on a top shelf, my hand now probed a gap: it had vanished.

To this day, I have no idea what became of it.’

Finally the best is saved till last.

The BBC insists that Murdoch was the power behind the throne, if not the King himself…however Murdoch has said that he was often ‘summoned’ to Downing St much to his inconvenience, and Vine reveals the truth about how scared labour was of the Press:

‘The New Labour crew fought with unmitigated ferocity for control of every single paragraph, printed and spoken, hand-to-hand, tooth-and-nail. And they were very good at it.’

Does that sound like a Party that would roll over and play dead for Murdoch?

Murdoch was the messenger boy who jumped ship and they’ve never forgiven him for it.

I don’t think I can add anything to this story from the Telegraph  in which Newsnight’s resident Marxist, Paul Mason, gets a kick up the backside:

‘It’s not that bad to be a graduate, despite what Left-wing agitprop merchants like Paul Mason might tell you.’

The mother of a British soldier in Afghanistan didn’t stick to the narrative in so many ways this morning on Nicky Campbell’s show (42 mins in,  Judy from Bracknall) in which he asked

‘Is the future of Afghanistan worth the price our troops are paying?’.

That question alone should tell you all you need to know about the BBC’s attitude throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The only time Campbell and Co are interested in British troops is when they come home injured or in a body bag…and can then be used by the BBC to tell us about the ‘cost’ of this war…and ask as Campbell has: ‘is it worth it?‘…before shoving a microphone into the face of a grieving wife or mother to demand if she is ‘angry’.

However today Campbell was shaken. The mother revealed she had once been a BBC employee and was loyal to it…but no more, not since 2003.

Why? Because the BBC had offered no support to the troops…the BBC had been entirely negative and only reported the bad side to the war…they had let the troops down.

She did have her hero though proclaiming:

‘God Bless that scallywag Rupert Murdoch because the Sun has supported the troops throughout’

Campbell was taken aback and suddenly she was no longer welcome….Campbell declared ‘well we’re not going to talk about the BBC.’

BBC presenters never do want to talk about the BBC, and are highly reluctant to accept that it is even remotely possible that the BBC could be at fault.

Humphrys was similarly silenced into a spluttering confusion a couple of years ago when an army officer came on and denounced, unexpectedly for Humphrys, the BBC’s dire coverage of Afghanistan which was consistently downbeat and negative. Humphrys found it harder to brush off the comments of a respected officer who knew what he was talking about…but he did try.

　God Bless Rupert Murdoch.

Strange article here on the BBC magazine site, and this caught my eye in particular..

And indeed there were Jewish anarchists in Europe, as there are Muslim extremists now. But there was never a Jewish problem in France, any more than there is a Muslim problem now

Not sure the next of kin of those slaughtered in Toulouse might agree with that contention.