Worth a read from one of the last true Conservatives, Lord Tebbit;
“The resignation of George Entwistle should not be the end of the clean-up at the BBC. There has been more than one man involved in this affair.
It was bad enough for those of us who believe in the concept of public service broadcasting and who over the years have greatly admired much of the BBC’s output of music, drama, humour and factual scientific programmes to see how the Eurocentric Left-of-centre Guardianstas established and entrenched their monoply over its political and current affairs output.
Then, as Thatcher dominated the political scene and to the fury of those Guardianistas won not only the Falklands War to liberate the islanders from the fascist junta but three general elections, their lofty disdain for conservatives began to turn into something much nastier. It became a visceral loathing and determination to see off not only Thatcher and her friends, but to exact a revenge upon both them and her.”
Lord Tebbit is absolutely spot on as always.
The BBC has been infiltrated by the left. This may have begun as an attempt to take a contrary view to the Government of the day but it is now a vehicle for left wing ideology that needs to be totally dismantled.
How can you think Lord Tebbo is spot on and want to see the BBC dismantled?
Lord Tebbo believes in public service broadcasting.
Tebbit is too liberal for my tastes, the BBC like the old Soviet Union can not be reformed, it has to be obliterated.
I am absolutely loving the fact that, by using the BBC as a weapon against the Tories, ‘Fatty’ Watson has probably caused more damage to the BBC than any other person in history. Delicious irony!
. . . and the bias goes on. Just listen to Today this morning. A broadcasting dweeb, Bill Dodwell, head of tax policy at Deloitte, and Lord Myners, former financial services secretary in the Treasury are brought on to “discuss” multinationals and tax. A tax expert – who knows about tax and nothing about political argument – is set against a poacher turned gamekeeper (and a Labour one natch) who is determined to smear every multinational – particularly US ones – going. Humphrys said that Google, Amazon etc were invited on but declined the invitation. So why didn’t the BBC get somebody like Tim Worstall on?
I’ll tell you why: a tax expert from Deloittes will be able to tell you the mechanics of tax avoidance but not be able (nor be expected to) argue the toss with politicians except on the mechanics. Also I suspect that Google etc were advised to say nothing prior to its appearance before a Committee of Public Safety later today (and Humphrys would, I reckon, have known this). As part of his posturing, Myners kept instancing Luxembourg as a “tax haven” but this is only part of the truth. Various multinationals administer their EU operations out of Luxembourg because that’s the way the EU runs the internal market and, yes, by virtue of those arrangements, there are tax advantages in doing so.
A genuine discussion would have been between two politicians (or savvy media-knowing types) with opposing views (not BTW left and further left) with Dodwell perhaps being the “expert” on the facts of avoidance. Instead we got another advocate of tax “justice” set against an accountant (a profession which was also smeared by Myners).
Then later, on the 8:00 news, Greenpeace non-employee Roger Harrabin pronounced the latest greenie anathema on wood-burning in power stations. This was just flagrant propaganda delivered with a straight face.
‘…brought on to “discuss” multinationals and tax…’
‘Greenpeace non-employee Roger Harrabin pronounced the latest greenie anathema on wood-burning’
Meanwhile this morning Nikky Campbell wanted us all to talk about banking.
These are the issues the BBC would have liked to have had at the top of today’s news agenda.
The outgoing DGs pay-off will probably be treated as an ex gratia payment and will not be subject to tax or NI
Only the first £30,000. Assuming no contractual obligation. Of course, most people here would be delighted if “only” the first £30,000 of a pay-off went untaxed, but we’re dealing with the salaries of market-rate talents here, remember.
Committee of Public Safety ? Wasn’t that set up by that bloodthirsty revolutionary champion of liberty, equality and fraternity – Robespierre ?
Agreed, nothing fundamental will change outside of rearranging the management practices. The person in charge of the bias at Today, Ceri Thomas, is now stepping in for Helen Boaden. Meet the new bias, same as the old bias.
“Meet the new bias, same as the old bias.”
Excellent wordplay. Beeboids really are so blind as to what they are like.
If there were a site competition/vote for ‘Words of the Week’ for best quote or jibe, then your phrase would have to be a major contender. As, I think, would the similarly accurate:
“…the business of news gathering and broadcasting takes second place to the David Brent School of Management.”
(As linked in a post by George R in the ‘Bye Bye Entwistle’ thread – http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/harrymount/100067211/)
Mount is talking about only half the problem, though. Even if they streamline the bureaucracy and ditch the targets and pain-in-the-ass reporting system, the collaboration pods and twisted evaluation methods, the biased journalism will continue unabated. They’ll just be in a better mood.
And nothing on Margaret Hodges tax affairs , I`m sure!
Why oh why can’t the present bunch of spineless Timid Tories take a lesson from the great man on what MT would have done in this situation. Even David Mellor , the self confessed defender of the BBC in the glorious Thatcher Era , would have thrown in the towel had something like this happened with MT in charge.
Why I hate Kirsty Squawk part 97
Paxman is a shit stirrer and mischief maker, it’s all a front to get ratings, he doesn’t really care.
But Squawk does , this pretentious , pseudo intellectual is ideologically locked into socialism / marxism. She is personal friends with Gordon Brown. She went on holiday with her chum Jack McConnnel, Labour party Leader in Scotland.
Conflict of interests ?
She reminds me of those Commissars in the Soviet Union, they drove nice Zil cars, had special shops, nice houses but the people were living poverty. Squawk is a true believer in the Labour party, a champagne socialist.
Secondly, this hard faced harpy puts on an act of being a lover of culture, a bohemian, a bon vivant. She reviews books, theatre, films, art exhibitions, etc etc.
It gives the fake impression she’s cultured and very busy, but she doesn’t actually write or paint or play a musical instrument. She’s a critic and as we all know critics are the lowest of the low in the food chain.
Thirdly, she’s a bad mother, when she’s presented Newsnight for 20 years. Who’s looking after her kids ? Who’s reading them bedtime stories ?
A cold heartless bitch, she’s got a voice like fingernails scratching down a window pane. Unbearable.
Ps. Mutton dressed as Lamb
Why this personal attack on a non- entity? I know little about her but to attack her family raising is not honourable. It will only discredit this blog.
She gets £500,000 a year from an enforced BBC tax on us. I think she can take it.
There are all sorts of reasons for disliking Kirsty Wark, but asserting that she can’t write, paint, or play a musical instrument, and is a bad mother who is mutton dressed as lamb is pretty poor stuff.
mutton dressed as lamb is pretty poor stuff.
……………………………………………………..
if only. Mutton dressed as mutton, more like.
What he means, I think, is that Wark, like so many of the top BBC talent, are essentially the nomenklatura, and act like it. It’s part of the problem.
If you look up nomenklatura in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe there is a picture of Kirsty Wark.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Latest Edition)
DP
Perhaps it should be “talent” rather than talent. As I think you imply, the sole “talent” required for the nomenklatura both in Soviet Russia and the BBC is to mouth the pieties (and stroke the egos) of those on whose good opinion you rely to promote you ie the senior functionaries of the regime. Manifestly this doesn’t involve the citizenry/audience who have to pay anyway: another feature of Soviet Russia and the BBC.
As appalling as I find Kirsty Wark’s bias, it’s posts like these that make one miss the flag option.
It is far, far worse than you realise. Squawk is married to Alan Clements. She founded independent TV production company Wark-Clements in 1990, which in May 2004 was merged with fellow Scots broadcaster Muriel Gray’s Ideal World to form IWC Media. Wark is regarded as being close to the Labour Party.[7][8][9] Donald Dewar, Scottish Labour politician and former First Minister of Scotland, a close friend, appointed her to the Scottish Parliament Building Design Selection Panel, which chose Enric Miralles’ design for the new parliament. Questioned by the Fraser Inquiry, set up to investigate the building’s cost overruns, she said: “There was no way that we were making a decision on economically the most advantageous tender; you would have ended up with a shed . . . it was [about] getting a building which was the most exciting, innovative building . . .”
The Scottish Parkiament is arguably the most ugly building in the entire UK – and overran its £30 million budget by a staggering £350 million.
Wark was on the Scottish mafia panel which selected it – and she and her husband were the ONLTY TV company allowed to make a documentary aboiut the fiasco.
In 2003, Wark-Clements produced a film on the building, with critics accusing Wark of a conflict of interest. Naturally, her film said it was ‘all wonderful’ – they hadn’t wasted £350 million of taxpayers cash – and it won the ‘building of the year’ award. I ask anyone who has never seen this concrete abortion to go take a look. You won’t believe how you can waste such a vast sum of money on a pile of rubble.
“The Scottish Parkiament is arguably the most ugly building in the entire UK”
Oh, I don’t know: the Welsh Assembly building (another Richard Rogers’ contribution to the destruction of the visible environment at the taxpayers’ expense) runs it pretty close.
Most of the people in the Scottish parliament are only there because they aren’t good enough to get into the House of Commons.
‘but to exact a revenge’
Not really their remit, true.
Odd then to get to do it for so long, free of being held to account, much as Chris Patten still feels they need to be excluded from.
It is a very strong attack by Lord Tebbit. Little doubt that he has long rumbled the sickness at the heart of the BBC.
Reform? Probably now impossible without a radical reform of our society. The BBC has grown out of the decadent liberalism of the post war era.
Our society will change. It is probably changing now. As they say- we will just have to wait and see what happens.
The one vital weakness of the liberal, the current ruler of the status quo, is that he or she will never see the change coming.
Do you think so Dave?
Norman had the BBC banged to rights as long ago as 1985/6 when he lumped in the “Faith In The City” report of the CofE.
He has had years of the nasty vulpine Beeb on his case, and heroically has looked after a wife that the IRA crippled in 1984.
The mans a saint-and is way too kind to the BBC and his snapping critics.
I used to hate him when I was in idiot in the early 80s( think of Nicked Emus with Kennedy flair!)…and now I realise that he`s held the bus up for me and the “new fellow travellers”.
Great bloke, Sir Norman/Lord Tebbit!
yeah, poor little millionaire lord tebbit, having to ‘care’ for his wife. If that makes him a saint, the average carer must be the Archangel Gabriel!
He makes good points on the BBC though, they are blinded by their old fashioned liberal viewpoint to give relevant coverage on the modern Conservatives.
You sad twat.
Well said, Dave. Tebbit also earns respect with the way he engages with his readers. I’m constantly amazed at how he reads through the comments and addresses points raised both for and against his point of view. It’s only once a week, but still, nobody else comes even close to doing what he does there.
just think of it as the BBC, desperate to shift the focus of the story from its own tacit tolerance of child abuse from Savile and others, using a prompt from Labour MP and friend of Golden Broon Tom Watson to use a left-wing investigative bureau to turn it into an anti-Tory story
Haha, guy on the News Channel right now telling Sopel exactly what I’ve been saying about why Entwistle was playing George HW Bush in Iran/Contra. He used more colorful culturally relevant metaphors than I did: omerta and Game of Thrones. Same point, though.
Just been reading what passes for incisive criticism of the BBC in a couple of the ‘popular’ papers. The first is a rag which consistently, enthusiastically and unrepentantly endorsed the bestial crimes of Mosley, Mussolini and Adolf Hitler and has never recanted. The other is a rag whose proprietor has been fouling the public life of this country for decades and recently handed £7m (yes, that’s seven million pounds of shareholder money) to a sacked chief executive whose vile practices were at last named and shamed.
Clearly the BBC can’t be entirely bad after all!
Is that the best you can do?
It is the ‘closed-mind’ approach to not read several excellent articles on the BBC crisis in the ‘Daily Mail’ today.
Entwistle showed a similar trait when asked about whether he kept himself up to date with the media.
We know that the political left, inc many Beeboids, are inclined to restrict themselves to a diet of ‘Guardian’ only.
A poor effort at denigrating the Daily Mail. On that basis one might as well dismiss the present German government as inheritors of the Third Reich.
“I am pretty certain… that the Nazis will clean things up and put Germany on the way to being a real power in Europe again. They are being ruthless and most determined.” (1933)
“I really admire the way Hitler has cleaned up what looked like an incipient revolt.” (1934)
“Hitler continues his magnificent efficiency.” (1939)
All statements by John Reith, Director-General of the BBC.
Using your ‘logic’ Anthony, clearly the BBC CAN be entirely bad after all!
Nick Robinson:
” Winston Churchill’s bitter battle with the BBC.
“In an extract from his new book about the relationship between politics and the media, Nick Robinson recalls how Churchill finally came out on top in his long-standing feud with Lord Reith.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9606384/Nick-Robinson-Winston-Churchills-bitter-battle-with-the-BBC.html
Mosley, Mussolini and Adolf Hitler all insisted that they where men of the socialist left. Calling each other right-wing is an aspect of the rivalry between mass murdering socialists. Those socialists that lost the war are permanently labelled right-wing.
The BBC is morally inferior to all other media organisations because it obtains its profits by compulsion not by voluntary payment for products and services.
Anthony,
One often hears the ‘the Daily Mail supported fascism line’ repeated by critics of the newspaper, who often seem very pleased with themselves for knowing a bit of history.
Unfortunately, such people never seem to have read even just a little bit deeper into the subject. The Mail did indeed support the Blackshirts briefly, but Rothermere withdrew his support following the violence at the Olympia rally in June 1934. This withdrawal was documented in correspondence between him and Mosley, which was published in the Mail in July of that year. On 14 July, Rothermere wrote to Mosley:
‘As you know, I have never thought that a movement calling itself ‘Fascist’ could be successful in this country, and I have also made it quite clear in my conversations with you that I never could support any movement with an anti-Semitic basis, any movement which had dictatorship as one of its objectives, or any movement which will substitute a ‘Corporate State’ for the Parliamentary institutions of this country.’
This would hardly seem to constitute ‘consistently, enthusiastically, and unrepentantly’ endorsing Mosley. Neither is it true to say that the paper ‘has never recanted’ its support – it recanted almost immediately. Quite apart from the obvious logical flaws in citing the editorial stance of a paper in the mid thirties in order to criticise it in 2012, it would seem that your assertions are historically inaccurate as well.
When one feels embarrased at some of the anti-BBC comments here, along comes Anthony to show us how gibberish should truly be done.
Nick Robinson just gave a nice lecture on how the BBC is editorially independent and the government is not allowed to interfere, has no say in how the BBC is run. Fair enough to say it, but his tone was that of a stern headmaster. He then said that the only thing the government could do is replace the Chair of the Trust, “and let me tell you, they won’t” be getting rid of Patten.