The BBC used to mock Prince Charles for talking to his plants…now they have recruited him to chat to us, to persuade us that we are doomed by global warming unless we change our behaviour….we all know his views….and if you don’t here’s a clue:

The BBC presumably thinks we are rather plantlike…mushrooms maybe?

The BBC’s Countryfile has 7 million viewers allegedly…so a vast potential recruiting pool for green propagandists that is not to be wasted. Prince Charles has agreed to be guest editor for the 25th anniversary show.

The Prince of Wales is to guest edit a special edition of the BBC One flagship Countryfile programme as part of its 25th anniversary celebrations.

Charles will talk about his passion for the countryside in interviews with Countryfile presenters Julia Bradbury and Matt Baker and will also explain his choices for the special edition of the weekly rural affairs programme.

The final shot?  An earnest Charlie leaning on his stick telling us how important the environment is and that we must become ‘one’ with the environment to save the Planet from certain catastrophy.

OK…obviously the show hasn’t gone out yet…but any bets I’m wrong about the content and the final ‘wrap’? …and the BBC’s reasons for having him front their show piece propaganda?

You can always tell what the BBC line is on any subject by seeing what they don’t report and of course what they do carefully select to highlight.

Bishop Hill has noticed this:

‘….the comments of Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England at the launch of the Bank’s quarterly inflation report. Environmental policies it seems are an “own-goal”.

Sir Mervyn blamed the Government for the overshoot, claiming that the Coalition had scored an “own goal” by damaging household incomes with a range of environmental and education policies that have pushed up energy bills and tuition fees.

He said: “It’s a bit of an own goal as it looks as if inflation is worse without any change in the underlying behaviour of the economy. And clearly the attempt to put up prices charged by utilities – to pay for green charges, green policies – are pushing up administered prices in a way that [is] … self inflicted in terms of damage done to real take home pay.”

 

The BBC miss out the ‘environmental costs of green policies’ paragraph and skip to the next one, happy to highlight the government scoring an ‘own goal’ for its economic policies reducing take home pay:

‘Own goal’

Sir Mervyn said that factors outside of the Bank’s control – increases in university tuition fees and utility bills – had added to inflation recently.

“If you like, it is a bit of a self-inflicted goal in terms of the damage done to real take-home pay, perhaps another way of trying to implement fiscal consolidation through moving up the price level,” he said.

 

 

And whilst reporting this:

Although economic output has been broadly flat for the past two years, Sir Mervyn said that masked “a more encouraging underlying picture”.

Manufacturing and services – which make up the bulk of the economy – had grown during 2012, seeing a similar performance to that in the US and considerably stronger than in Japan and the eurozone, he said.

 

They do not give the figures…which say that growth for 2012 was 1.2%….just below the US 1.5%….despite its massive stimulus, Labour like Plan B, spending!

I imagine they prefer you to think along the lines of a measily 0.3% or some such figure…they certainly aren’t going to give the government an inch on good news.

 

Curious what catches the eye of a BBC journalist.  And what gets suppressed.  The massive inflation in fuel prices cause by green policy is surely something of importance and something that should be discussed.   But that would rasie all sorts of awkward questions not just about the ‘renewables’ policies but about the cause iof it as well…ie ‘global warming…man made or not?’  for instance.

 

I suggested in my last post that the BBC has given up on promoting Labour’s Plan B as its main line of attack and has now targeted unemployment, long term youth unemployment in particular as a government weak point on which it can be undermined.

Just clicked on ‘People Like Us’ on the iPlayer only for a different programme to appear…  one called ‘Freespeech’ presented by a bearded Nicky Campbell apprentice.  (Probably disappear by the time you read this but no doubt ‘Freespeech’ will have its own spot on the iPlayer later…yep….here’s actual programme link)

First subject of this first programme….youth unemployment….‘call them shirkers call them strivers….long term youth unemployment is continuing to cause concern…tripling since 2010.’

We get the message.

A trendy yoof version of Question time…nothing to do with free speech….the panellists are what you would expect the BBC to round up…a Muslim woman (a Tory candidate and knicker entrepreneur…but she never herself admits, see here also, to being Muslim…but she is…BBC subtly trying to alter your perceptions of what being ‘Muslim’ means?),  a socialist, a yoof journalist and to  be fair, the trendiest Tory MP they could find, David Morris ex musician and hairdresser (Straight).

If it was truly freespeech it would be on absolutely any subject and the only voices we would hear would be the Public’s and not a panel chosen by the BBC for their very obvious political or social/cultural  adopted positions.

A film made by a non-political, non professional person, given time to expand their ideas and thoughts and explore all the issues from their point of view would be freespeech…to have everything stage managed and choreographed in the usual BBC manner is anything but freespeech.

The BBC sets the boundaries for what can be said…limiting the subject, choosing the panel of people to speak and then having the power to edit anything they don’t think ‘fits’ with the narrative.

As Chomsky said:
‘The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.’

You think they’re listening and taking note….they’re not.

Anyone else catch Mark Mardell’s gushing coverage of Obama’s State of the Union speech? You would need a heart of stone not to laugh at Mardell’s sycophancy towards President Narcissus and his equal desire to blame those wicked gun-loving Republicans for not lying down and doing the will of their master in the White House.  As ever, the BBC go with Obama’s windy rhetoric and choose not to examine the substance of the issue. Obama came to power boasting of “fixing” the economy, he has waffled some more about this last night and it swallowed by Mardell.

Wednesday morning and time for a new one of these for your attention. Has the BBC been showing bias? If so please detail it HERE!

Anyone else noticed that the left wing “think tank” aka advocacy group The Resolution Foundation is never off the BBC? I caught one of their propagandists on Today this morning being given a free ride without an opponent. I debated one of them a few weeks ago and the bit that irritates is the way the BBC presents their Press Releases as fact. Naturally, the Resolution Foundation is firmly opposed to the Coalition and in essence is just Labour with another face. Wish the BBC would introduce their items by saying “and now here is the claim from the left wing think tank the Resolution Foundation….” That would be fair. They don’t and THAT is both unfair and indicative of a lurking bias that is not that far from the surface.

The BBC has failed to persuade the Public that Labour were not responsible for the economic crash…and they have not been able to persuade the Public that Labour’s Plan B is the answer.

Flanders admits as much:

‘…if you ask business leaders, or most economists, which government decisions taken over the next few years will have the biggest long-term impact on our economic future, I’m not sure that Plan A versus Plan B would even make it to the top three.’

So why has she spent so much time lecturing us on the merits or otherwise of both?

The BBC has come up with a new plan……concentrate on unemployment, especially youth unemployment, long term youth unemployment, attempt to undermine the upwardly surging employment figures, and incite ‘generational conflict’….attacking the ‘baby boomer’ generation for apparently being greedy, robbing the future leaving nothing for the kids.

As they seem to have given up on Plan B and on persuadng us that Plan A is failing perhaps that explains why the BBC has unusually ignored a strong attack on George Osborne’s policies.…and one that came from inside the Tory Party itself…reading it you might understand why the BBC ignored it….as it pillories Osborne for essentially continuing Labour’s own failed policies when in government:

Douglas Carswell, Conservative MP for Clacton, 08 Feb 2013

Yep, you can see why the BBC ignored that.

But they also ignored this which slams Labour’s research and development funding which should help drive the fabled Growth:

‘The lack of taxpayer support over the past decade may have “eroded” Britain’s competitive edge, given that R&D capital is seen as one of the major drivers of economic productivity, the OECD said.
The study, based on spending figures from 2008-9, shows the UK ranks last for funding support out of all 27 OECD countries, including America, France and Germany. The OECD said the decline in R&D spending in Britain is largely “historical”. The share of R&D expenditure in output fell from around 2.2pc in 1985 to 1.8pc in 2010, with both public and business R&D contributing to the decrease. ‘

The BBC has continually ignored or played down good economic news whilst headlining the bad.

It has indulged in an unflagging attack on the ‘Tory led Coalition’  (TLC) cuts portraying them as if it was the German army sweeping across the Russian Steppes slashing and burning as they go….a scorched earth policy reducing everything to ruin.

There has been little reflection or perspective….for instance when Labour councils took the politically motivated choice of closing libraries because of ‘cuts’ did the BBC ever stop to ask how those libraries survived wars and depressions over the last century…and yet now, at a time when council resources are higher than ever, they are being closed?

The fact is that there is still a huge amount of spending going on…a huge amount of investment in infrastructure by government and councils…but you wouldn’t know it from the BBC’s coverage.

Then of course we get onto tax…..the poor are suffering so much worse than the richest in society….taking a bigger ‘hit’ in the recession than the wealthy.  Aren’t they?

The BBC ignored this:
Top 14 per cent of taxpayers pay 60 per cent of all tax .   Britain’s wealthy are expected to
pay 60 per cent of the money raised by the Treasury from income tax official figures have shown.
According to a report in The Sunday Times, the number of people liable for the 40 and 50 per cent tax rate has increased from 3.25 million in 2010-2011 to 4.13 million in the current financial year. Their share of the income tax burden has risen from 54.2 per cent in 2010-11 to 61.3 per cent in 2012-13. The wealthiest one per cent of taxpayers, nearly 300,000 people who earn more than £150,000 a year, are shouldering 26.5 per cent of the income tax burden.

Here’s a table which shows how much better off the lower income earners are now than under Labour, and how much more the rich are paying:

Check the statistics for yourself:

Income Tax statistics and distributions

Income tax liabilities by income range 2010-2013

Income tax liabilities by income range 1999-2010

Income tax liability by income range….1999-2008

Here is Flanders kicking off the new Plan X
Long-term thinking for the UK economy

Why do we spend so little time talking about what really matters?
That’s the question I once again asked myself, reading the final report of the London School of Economics’ Growth Commission.
Reading and listening to the political debate about UK economic policy, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the most important economic decisions the government makes are all fiscal: Will they or won’t they press ahead with Plan A, or Plan A-minus? How much, exactly, will it cut from welfare? And when?
Strategic failure
These are important short-term issues. They might have some impact on the recovery. And, of course, they are exciting politically, with lots of opportunity for the main parties to lay into one another…..But if you ask business leaders, or most economists, which government decisions taken over the next few years will have the biggest long-term impact on our economic future, I’m not sure that Plan A versus Plan B would even make it to the top three.
Far more important, to them, would be the kind of long-term strategic choices highlighted in the LSE’s report….infrastructure, planning and funding….To economists, all of these things probably matter more, to Britain’s economic future, than the short-term debate between Plan A and Plan B.
 
I’ve been speaking to one respected economist and policymaker who thinks I’ve forgotten one big way that short-term decisions on UK fiscal and monetary policy could affect the UK’s long-term economic health. That is through their effect on youth unemployment.

The authors of the report (and the secretary of state for work and pensions) would probably agree – one of the greatest investments that any government can make in its future workforce is to help get unemployed young people into work.

The BBC continue to downplay rising employment whilst highlighting youth unemployment as the worst….they totally ignore the fact that it was youth unemployment that fell the most in the last set of figures.

I heard the below as a 5Live broadcast….it was a 5Live ‘investigation’….that seemed to consist solely of having a few people ring in with their experiences….naturally there is no way of knowing just who these people were…especially as most refused to give their names.

The BBC classed such calls as ‘evidence’ and proceeded to attack government policy based mostly on that:
Work advisers ‘pushing jobless into self-employment’
By Hannah Barnes 5 live Investigates

It was part of the BBC’s desperate scramble to explain away the good news on the jobs front….the jobs aren’t real, they’re self employed but in odd jobs…or lower wages….lower productivity…so why are employers employing people?
They can’t explain it other than GDP figures must be wrong…but they can’t accept that.

Here the BBC stir up inter-generational strife and conflict:

Generational theft?
The argument that young people have never had it so bad

Rising wages and low house prices helped the baby boom generation to prosper. Today’s young face high unemployment, expensive education, and a lifetime of renting. Have they never had it so bad?
The question for today’s young might be, have they ever had it so bad?
There have been eras indisputably worse. A whole generation went to war in 1914 and 1939. There was the hunger and unemployment of the Great Depression. And child labour in Victorian times.
Today, for the first time, a person in their 80s has higher living standards than someone working in their 20s, the Financial Times reported in October 2012.
A student who started university in 2011 will graduate with average debts of £26,000 and bleak career prospects.
Despite austerity, the state pension has been bolstered, winter fuel payments are outside the reach of means testing, and free bus pass and TV licence retained for the elderly. At the same time the government has cut benefits in real terms and axed the Education Maintenance Allowance in England.
Pensioners have traditionally been portrayed as vulnerable or deserving. But it is time for a rethink,
It comes down to fairness, says James Sefton, professor of economics at Imperial College Business School, who has done economic forecasts at the Treasury. Government debt is stacking up for the young.
So why are the young not taking to the streets?
The generational squeeze hasn’t hit home yet, says Sefton. But it’s coming.

The reality of that is that Labour piled on massive future obligations on the young….to pay for its apparent largesse when in government…Gordon Brown borrowing massively to hand out jobs in the Public Sector, buying, he hoped, Labour voters, voters who didn’t think where the money is coming from to pay their wages and how their pensions will be funded when the time comes….and not forgetting all those PFI schemes that only later, when it is too late, do the bills start appearing for them… bankrupting the NHS…meanwhile Brown swans off around the world being praised for his ‘genius’ when he should be in prison.

That portrayal is so far from the truth by the BBC that it almost defies comment…the poorest of the young today are so much better off than 20 years ago…the life opportunities are so much wider and easier to attain…..the Internet has made setting up a business vastly easier, travel has never been cheaper, goods are extraordinarily cheap now, and no, tuition fees are not ‘debts’…..and it is a fact which the BBC quietly slipped out that more people applied to be students this year than last….despite the rise in fees….the opposite effect the BBC have constantly trumpeted.

As for housing the Smith Institute figures say that…to suggest that the norm is to be a house owner throughout recent British history is dishonest.

In 1918 home ownership was 23%, private rentals at 76% and public housing 1%.

Home ownership peaked in 2003 at 70% and has declined slightly since….In England in 2011 there was over 67% home ownership, 17% social renters, and 15% private renters.

That is still very high and a historically unusual figure for home ownership.  As the Smith Institute makes clear the numbers will go up and down…that is to be expected.

Those expectations of home ownership should be lowered to a realistic level…and not raised by the BBC to the level of a ‘Right’ that is being denied.

The BBC is uninterested in delving too deep into the real causes of the economic crash, and not too interested in the real solutions…nor in any good news that appears on the economic front…their sole aim is to make sure the economy is perceived as a basket case destroyed by Tory policies so that Labour get re-elected.

A Labour minister once said the below in an unattributed quote:

‘There is a rather excellent piece in the Sunday Times today about Brown and his constant lying on spending that is well worth a read. Most tellingly in it though is the following quote from an unnamed minister about the real driver behind the entirely stupid dividing “line of cuts vs ‘cuts’ as ‘investment'” :

‘We don’t care if the commentators or the economists turn against us… This is all about shoring up the base in the northern heart-lands, which we lost in the European elections. We don’t want or need them to understand the nuance of the argument. We just want them to hate the Tories again.” ‘

That’s the policy….make sure the voters hate the Tories.

The BBC’s very own Jeremy hardy agrees it’s a good policy:

‘The Tories have taken on human form, which is when they’re at their most dangerous…..Something weird is going on.  People don’t hate the Tories as much as they should. ‘

And it seems you can’t keep Richard Black down either….I think we need a reminder of just how bad he was….and how ineffective the BBC is at policing what its own journalists get up to.

 
“It’s politics, not science,” Richard Muller told me by phone. “Politicians have been doing this kind of stuff for a long time – look at what Al Gore did with all his disinformation.
“Some start with their conclusion and they pick the data to find what they want. People should listen to scientists, not politicians or journalists.”

Certainly not ‘journalists’ like Richard Black….unfortunately others disagree:

As many have commented on here, Richard Black has resurfaced as the Director of Communications for the grandly titled ‘Global Ocean Commission’….launching today officially, with David Miliband being first out of the blocks with an interview on Today (08:20) ….Black was way ahead by pushing his new boss’s thoughts last week.
Richard Black ?@enviroblack
Political leaders need to catch up with business on #ocean issues, says @figuerescr http://www.efeverde.com/content/view/full/154760

It seems the GOC is where the men that once showed promise go to resurrect their careers.

A couple of questions….who funds the GOC and who exactly voted for them?   A ‘Commission’?  Who commissioned them?  What’s their authority?  They are essentially just a very well connected pressure group which undoubtedly will prove highly influential merely by virtue of being who they are.

One partner…and presumably funder, is the Pew Environment Group…an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts.
The Pew Charitable Trust has total assets of over $5.3 billion…it spent a total of nearly $341 million last year…..on a variety of projects not just the environment.

Just thought it was worth mentioning that when Black and Co are always so eager to try and discredit sceptics by saying that ‘deniers’ are backed by enormous corporations….never mind that  massive charities, NGOs and pressure groups, not to mention the oil companies now,  back the global warming agenda with large wads of hard cash….as well as government funding of course.

That aside it is quite extraordinary that the GOC would employ Black…after all he has just about zero credibility, certainly with those who value the truth….even amongst the true believers there cannot be many who don’t raise a cynical smile when they hear Black’s name.

It was long apparent that the BBC’s Black was not a journalist but an out and out advocate for man made global warming theories….an advocate who was prepared to mislead readers and malign sceptics, happy to boldly misstate facts, ignore highly relevant  information that contradicted his narrative and use his position at the BBC to discredit  sceptics and make vast rambling attempts to disprove their criticisms…..so long and involved you had to believe this was a deliberate ploy to stop anyone actually doing their own research and checking what he himself claimed.

Here is a classic example of Black’s misrepresentation of what is happening in order to ‘prove’ his supposed point:

‘The original “hide the decline” claim is one of the most easily de-bunked in the entire pantheon of easily-debunkable “sceptic” claims.
Phil Jones wrote the email in 1999, immediately following what still ranks as one of the hottest years on record, and well before the idea of a “slowdown” or “hiatus” or even “decline” in warming gained currency.
So it can’t have had anything to do with hiding a global temperature decline.
If it were a scientific idea, the notion that it did would be consigned to the garbage bin of history alongside perpetual motion machines, the steady-state theory of the cosmos and the idea of HIV/Aids as a gay-only disease.

It’s that wrong.’

As Bishop Hill shows (see below) the sceptics did not make that claim about that particular  ‘hide the decline’ phrase….but the emails and later statements do show that Jones et al were prepared to hide the decline in global warming and other inconvenient information:

From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Tim Johns <tim.johns@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, “Folland, Chris” <chris.folland@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: FW: Temperatures in 2009
Date: Mon Jan 5 16:18:xxx xxxx xxxx
Tim, Chris,
I hope you’re not right about the lack of warming lasting
till about 2020.

Phil Jones, July 5, 2005:
“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. Okay it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”

Phil Jones, director of the CRU, writing to Michael Mann, creator (le mot juste) of the now discredited “hockey stick” graph, about two academics who disagree with him:
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow—even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
Professor Mann on an academic journal foolish enough to publish dissenting views:
“Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.”
Professor Jones’s reply:
“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”
And you’ll be glad to hear they did!

Here is what Richard Muller, the supposed ‘sceptic AGW convert’ thought of the UEA‘s CRU crew:
‘What they did was, I think, shameful. And it was scientific malpractice. If they were licensed scientists, they should have to lose their licence.” ‘

So there you go…not only did Black misrepresent what sceptics said but he also sidestepped what Jones and Co were really doing….which was, em,  ‘hiding the decline’.

Here Bishop Hill examines and debunks in detail Black’s claim:

‘I’m struggling to put an innocent gloss on Black’s misrepresentation of what the allegation was. I can remember Sarah Palin making this claim a couple of days after the story broke, but did anyone make such an allegation to any of the inquiries? Perhaps readers could see how many people made the allegation as framed by Black and how many got it right – i.e that it was about hiding the divergence between instrumental temperatures and some proxy records.
The misrepresentation seems very blatant to me.
Update on Nov 2, 2011 by Bishop Hill
I’d also posted an update – something along these lines.
Richard Black responded:
Re ‘hide the decline’… yes, the Jones email concerned reconciling the tree ring record. But that’s not how it was interpreted – at least by some – which is my point. Read Fred Pearce The Climate Files.
Pearce cites Sarah Palin and Senator Inhofe. What Black seems to have done therefore is to find the least informed commenters he can lay his hands on and then say “one of the most easily de-bunked in the entire pantheon of easily-debunkable “sceptic” claims”
One can draw one’s conclusions about his journalistic standards accordingly.
Update on Nov 2, 2011 by Bishop Hill
Steve McIntyre has now added his thoughts in the comments:
Black’s article is especially misleading because David Rose, the author of the recent Mail article on Muller (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html ) had a very precise and accurate understanding of “hide the decline”, which he published in a Dec 2009 Mail article here
( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1235395/SPECIAL-INVESTIGATION-Climate-change-emails-row-deepens–Russians-admit-DID-send-them.html ).
Rose’s original article on Hide the Decline showed that IPCC had deleted the adverse portion of the Briffa reconstruction. The Climategate emails showed that this had been done intentionally so as not to “dilute the message” or “give fodder” to skeptics.

Black is clearly not impartial and aims all his effort at proving that global warming is happening and is caused by man… that sceptics are funded by evil corporations and are in some way mentally scarred and damaged individuals with no scientific qualifications…err…much like himself…. having no scientific quals.

Why is Richard Muller mentioned here?…because he was the man who claimed to have been a sceptic but became a believer…but the real truth was that he was never a sceptic….The BBC, probably Black, leapt on his ‘conversion’ as proof that AGW is real…even ‘expert’ sceptics renounce their scepticism in the face of the facts……

Ex-sceptic says climate change is down to humans

A formerly sceptical climate scientist says human activity is causing the Earth to warm, as a new study confirms earlier results on rising temperatures.
In a US newspaper opinion piece, Prof Richard Muller says: “Call me a converted sceptic.”
Prof Muller describes his own change in standpoint as “a total turnaround”.

A quick look on Google would have revealed this:
Do you consider yourself an environmentalist?
Oh yes. [Laughs.] In fact, back in the early ’80s, I resigned from the Sierra Club over the issue of global warming. At that time, they were opposing nuclear power. What I wrote them in my letter of resignation was that, if you oppose nuclear power, the U.S. will become much more heavily dependent on fossil fuels, and that this is a pollutant to the atmosphere that is very likely to lead to global warming.

Muller also set up the Berkeley Earth Project which measured surface temperatures around the Earth and  the results of which Black defended rigorously. in ‘Hide the Decline’

When looking at the results of that project, that temperatures are rising as a result of man made influences,  you might bare in mind that Muller, and his daughter run ‘Muller & Associates’...providing ‘Impartial Energy Expertise’

Muller is President and Chief Scientist of Muller & Associates, an international consulting group specializing in energy-related issues.
We know that in order to be effective, solutions must be sustainable
Power and Energy, Climate Change, Profitable Sustainability

Executive Leadership
Richard Muller, President and Chief Scientist
Elizabeth Muller, CEO

Naked Copenhagen
The numbers behind the OpEd
Richard A Muller

Conclusion
These scenarios suggest that even if the IPCC climate models are accurate, the Kyoto/Copenhagen approach (developed countries cut now; developing countries follow eventually) will not work.

What would work? The only clear hope would be a massive effort into making the energy use of the developing economies cleaner (more solar, wind, and nuclear) and more efficient. How can one achieve this? I suspect it would require much more intrusive cooperation between the developed world and the emerging one.

“If Al Gore reaches more people and convinces the world that global warming is real, even if he does it through exaggeration and distortion – which he does, but he’s very effective at it – then let him fly any plane he wants.” – Richard Muller, 2008

Interesting observation here from our friends at BBC Watch;

On February 6^th, the BBC ran a report entitled “Hezbollah hits out after Bulgaria bus bomb report” in which it devoted considerable space to the denials of involvement coming from the organisation’s deputy leader. However, even after the announcement by the Bulgarian officials and despite the fact that five civilian holiday-makers and a Bulgarian bus driver were killed and around 30 people injured  in what was obviously a terror attack, the BBC still insists upon using the word ‘militants’ in all the above reports from February 5

It’s not a surprise though – the BBC does not think Hezbollah are terrorists. Just like they did not really believe the IRA were terrorists. Through the BBC prism, the only real terrorists are the likes of US marines or British soldiers,

My goodness, another week commences and time for the BBC  to hype the weather, drone on about horse meat and do everything possible to avoid discussing the killing fields of the NHS! A new open thread for you!