I am finding it almost impossible to watch the BBC at the moment. Last evening, the BBC wheeled on Ken Livingstone, Gerry Adams and Neil Kinnock to pay “tribute to Lady Thatcher. I can only assume the Brighton bomber was unavailable for comment. This morning, the BBC leads with the view of the ANC. This is stomach churning and I can’t take it.
SEND IN THE CLOWNS…
Bookmark the permalink.
We all know that a large section of British opinion think that Lady Thatcher was wrong and did immense damage to Britain. Of course most contributors to this site think she was absolutely right and saved Britain from the socialist left and continued decline.
The job of the BBC should be to reflect all shades of British public opinion. So far I think that they have done this quite well on the sad occasion of Lady Thatcher’s death. They have been reasonably respectful, although one or two contributors they allowed on were not, but perhaps that is more of a reflection on the ill mannered contributors than on the BBC. They have reflected a wide range of views, many in praise of Lady Thatcher’s achievements, which I agreed with, and some that were highly critical of her , which I do not agree with.
But that is how the BBC is supposed to function ALL THE TIME , not just on the day of the death of a true great.
If only they reflected both sides of the current political debate as well as they have done on this I might reconsider my view that they are the enemy of democracy and my strong desire to see the BBC done away with. However, even if they were unbiased I still think it highly dangerous to place the power of a virtual monopoly of news and current affairs broadcasting in the hands one unaccountable organisation funded by a poll tax.
A very large minority dont believe in man made global warming. When was this percentage reflected.
A large majority believe in the death penalty when was this reflected.
I could go on but is this not a case of auntie being very selective about when it receives a broad range of views and when it doesnt
BBC will only support a consensus that they have engineered.
Do you think these shades of opinion will be voiced on the BBC when Castro or Mandela die?
No I don’t, but that will be the BBC behaving as it normally does and supporting a left liberal view .
The BBC’s position was made crystal clear when one of its reporters, Barabara Plett, lamented thus when a dying Arafat left the West Bank:
“…when the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry… without warning.”
Kevin ‘Tory Toffs, Tory Toffs’ Maguire on the Breakfast sofa as media ‘commenter’, surprisingly.
Seems the BBC production address book is operating at its full redacted extent, uniquely.
Can’t wait for the Paul Mason Newsnight special, with Laurie, Jonnie & Owen, maybe filmed from ‘it’s all kicking off if we can manage it’ Brixton.
To be fair much of yesterday’s coverage was interviews of ancient Tories saying how wonderful she was so a bit of balance was required.
But we all know what’s coming, in the interests of impartiality don’t you know, a few hours of Thatcher haters rambling on about here being the root of all evil.
I’d prefer to listen to people who served in her Cabinet (and that’s not exactly the same as saying ‘her supporters’) who actually have first hand experience of Lady Thatcher than people who weren’t even born when she was in power.
And I’d prefer to listen to people who weren’t born instead of people like Adams who actually tried to kill her. In the eyes of anyone except the BBC that tends to show you aren’t exactly impartial.
The BBC.
My part in Mrs Thatcher’s downfall.
Paid for by you.
What with Lady Thatcher being called ‘divisive’ every six seconds, where’s the evidence that this collection of Arkham Asylum rejects represent anyone other than a tiny sliver of losers?
Of course Lady Thatcher was divisive , very divisive , we think she was right in what she did but many don’t. It would have been impossible to break the strangle hold of the unions without being divisive. So public opinion is still profoundly split on her record even today. I agree that many people under the age of 40 to 50, have had their view moulded, or warped, by decades of anti Thatcher propaganda pumped out by the BBC. But a reflection of public opinion today has to include those who disagree with what she did. I think that these people are totally wrong and that their behaviour in having parties etc is appalling, but in a democracy their views should be represented.
As pointed out above I await the counter blast of the liberal left on the BBC with a series of unbalanced attack programmes about what Lady Thatcher did.
Of course if they were celebrating the death of one of the BBC liberal left heroes then the BBC would be appalled at anyone who thought it worth a party and stupid jokes. They would be reporting it all from a very different stand point. But that is exactly the reason why the anti democratic BBC should be closed down, got rid of , or better still privatised.
Oh sure, some folk hated her, but she won three elections so someone must have been voting for her.
Meanwhile, freaks like Kinnochio, ‘Degsy’ Hatton and the like were recognised as fringe nuts even at the time. Trying to present their rantings about Fatcha eating babies as some kind of mainstream view is just plain dishonest.
Look, I think Kinnock was a misguided, unreconstructed socialist who went on , as so many socialists do, to milk the system and end up a multimillionaire without ever done a days work. But at the time he was leader of the Labour party, who were throughout Lady Thatcher’s time as prime minister, the second largest party in Westminster , so millions of people voted for them and their views have to be heard no matter how wrong headed we might think they are.
I do agree with his right to free speech.
I do think though that Kinnock demeaned himself with his mean-spirited, bitter, denunciation on the news of her death. Hattersley was much more statesmanlike.
Their reaction tells us more about the men than the woman!
Doublethinker for Contributer!!
Maggie wasn’t ‘divisive’.
If she was, why did the people who condemned her policies at the time not reverse them when they achieved office?
A question not coming to a BBC studio near you soon.
She was proved right, her opponents proved wrong, and there are many who can’t forgive her for it. Their egos can’t live with being proved wrong. The only ‘divisive’ people are the haters. ‘Divisive’ is a favourite word of the BBC like ‘disproportionate’ to undermine Israel when it uses proportionate force to stop thousands of rockets being fired at it each year. It is subtle and malign.
The BBC likes ‘controversial’ too. It’s a general sloppy journalistic practice of course, always stoking sensation. But they do it in a partial way too often.
Mrs Thatcher was a uniter – she united normal people against the fascist-Left unions (including the TGWU, which was lead by a Soviet agent, Jack Jones – as everyone knew at the time apart from the BBC ) and in favour of basic economic justice. By defeating Scargill she lifted millions out of fuel poverty and entrenched democracy in the trade union movement.
She united people behind the greatest ever transfer of wealth from the state to working people – the council house sales.
And she united all media workers (other than those working for the BBC, the state broadcaster, paid for by a poll tax) when she broke the power of the print unions. The only downside of that was that the Grauniad staggered on for another three decades, providing the Beeboids with what they regard as intellectual ballast betimes.
I don’t wonder that the Beeboids hate her, but I really don’t know from where they get this idea she was “divisive”.
Labour has tried to reverse her policies of 4 million unemployed, tripling child poverty during her time or crime doubling during her time, they also reversed her policy of destroying the NHS, and reversed her policy of all politics bring run by London
I used to be one of those that railed against Mrs. Thatcher,over the years events have moderated my views.
I still think,on the whole, that more harm than good was done under her watch.Though I,m not sure it would not have been the same,in the long run, under the rule of any of the possible alternatives.
What she was not was a hypocrite.what you saw was what you got.
Back then as an active member of the ,once mighty ,TGWU (building and consruction trade group) I was routinely dragooned to go around building sites rallying the troops to get out and vote. I was astounded by the hostility I met from ordinary workers like me to the labour party (I would rather stick pins ect.) and the allmost religious regard they had for Mrs.Thatcher (I was even more surprised at the number of Irish that openly supported her,that I could never get my head round)
In retrospect I think for many workers supported her (paddy not withstanding) because she not only allowed but invited them to share a sense of national pride.she appealed to their sense of patriotism,and that is the crime the bourgeois left can never forgive.
Look at the pictures of the demonstators ,patrician class brats,unborn at the time of the miners stike,do they care about the destruction of the white working class?At any other time the would be celebrating it.
I loathe their hypocrisy more than I ever hated Mrs.Thatcher.
Good writing Stewart-very much my story too.
I had no time for her at all in the 80s, but have grown up enough to know that she was right in key areas.
The USA..Israel.the EU project, German hegemony by stealth, the soft-left compromises and where they`d lead us?
Only wish she`d wiped the BBC out, given the NHS its head, not flogged off the nations infrastructure and utilities; and nobbled the teaching unions and binned the dreadful national curriculum.
Still-like Tebbit and Lawson, there was intellect there and some knowledge of the real world. History is already bearing them out…and the cultural creeps and cringers like Kenneth Baker or Tony Benn are failed as men, let alone as politicos!
‘…..not flogged off the nations infrastructure and utilities’.
Like waiting 6 months for the GPO to install a phone line? Come on, the nationalised industries and public utilities were crap, and starved of investment by successive governments, not to mention gripped round the throat by the unions.
The TGWU was lead at the time by a traitor – the Soviet agent Jack Jones. It was common knowledge among the media classes at the time, but somehow the BBC (“Impartiality is in our DNA”) never thought to mention it. Funny, that.
What you say about Jack Jones may be right but during Mrs. Thatchers time the TGWU was lead by Moss Evans and then Ron Tod
Point of information only brother, point of information only.
I am finding it difficult to think of any television output the Beeb do that is worthwhile any more,
A few years back, you could at least point to Dr. Who & Top gear, now, we have a very low budged Dr Who, with Matt Smith chomping at the bit to escape, laced with left wing political messages in every episode, and Top gear, reduced to 6 shows per year (The beeb bought back the rights from Millman & Clarkson to drive a stake through it’s heart in my opinion)
So, what’s left to watch?….Lefty panel shows?, Sarah feckin’ Milligan?…a million cooking programs & that rank slob, Miranda Hart…
I want out of this contract that I never signed please!
Ken Livingstone’s performance on Newshite was comedy gold.
Every problem in Britain today is the result of Thatcher’s policies, don’t ya know! Even the housing shortage, which Labour’s deliberate mass-immigration policy couldn’t have possibly contributed to!?
Apparently if everyone would’ve listened to Ken, then we’d be living in a worker’s utopia.
Ken and his GLC (and later GLA) colleagues really did live in a workers’ utopia, funded by other Londoners.
Yeah let’s sell all the council homes dirt cheap in 1979 without replacing them ,then 30 years later when all the old people have sold their homes to business men, we’ ll blame immigrants, it’s not as if more people leave the country each year, than come in is it
“More people leave the country each year than come in”??
You’re quite obviously insane, unless you’re talking about another country, because it’s certainly not the case in Britain.
Try looking up ONS figures on Net Immigration (that’s the difference between those leaving and those arriving)
Nikki’ Lepollyfinish’ Campbell this a.m.
(Ancient) interview with Kinnock – tick
Billy Braggart song – tick
Interview with ‘ex-miner’ in Grimethorpe – tick
Clip of Simon Hughes ‘attacking’ Mrs Thatcher – tick
Lozatex saying she shouldn’t get a ceremonial funeral – tick
He really is a vile little shit this man. Middle-aged, middle-class, six-figure salary, gagging for the Radio 1 Breakfast Show gig, and trying to come on like a battle-hardened veteran of Orgreave by way of sucking up to his ‘left-wing’ chums. I suppose he said ‘EBallswooneverforgive me’ but I missed it.
I’m sure he never repeated though his infamous ‘yerveonygorragoogle Thatcher and paedophile’ line, not now he’s discovered that Lord Mcalpine’s got lawyers.
Anyway, talking about Scottish dross, did you see them in Glasgow spraying the White Lightning around (for the cameras). The stupid-looking fellow with the pink mohican posts on here as Albanian Man.
Nice image to show for the world.
Well done.
Noting too a renewed interest in Elvis Costello-the writer of Shipbuilding and (of course) Tramp the Dirt Down…which is an awful record, by the way.
Costello has been on Radio 2 far more than usual of late.
Costello of course is doing rather well living in the USA, and living as any expat who did well in the 80s would.
Desperate bien-pensant liberals who sing the Internationale, then piss off to the States whilst rating against Israel.
Typical luvved up BBC troubadour, but probably costs more to bring to the studios than shop soiled alternative Elvis that is Poundlands own Billibragg.
Still waiting for Guilt Aid’s Bob Geldof to let the tsunami survivors have the money he raised for them. All the same, keeping the lolly makes saves more lives than raising money for Ethiopian terrorists.
please ignore “makes”
I fear that there will be no considered, thoughtful and accurate comments from the socialists today, just the usual ignorance and bile.
My own experiences in industry and commerce leave me in no doubt as to Mrs Thatcher’s great and good influence on the country. Socialism and nationalisation did not work and it still does not and she saw that very clearly. The railways, the car industry, the motorcycle and cycle factories , the steel industry all floundered under the control bureaucrats and the unions. There no is no substitute for enthusiastic management by those who will prosper from it. It is not rocket science just a plain and simple fact of life.
I’m afraid that the NHS whilst it retained the good ethics of the time when it was formed is also another example of nationalised incompetence. It should be run better, it can be run better, but not by bureaucrats and the unions. And are the p.c. police any better?
To blame Mrs Thatcher for the demise of our industry is a shameful lie, they were lost to inefficiency, corruption and foreign competition long before she became Prime Minister. All she did was recognise it and set about providing this country with alternative ways to earn a living, the banking and services industries followed by computing and IT. That the uneducated could not see that fact was then compounded by the teaching professions who, being state employees and full unionised, taught our children that it was all Mrs Thatcher’s and the Tory’s fault. They should have taught them accountancy and enterprise not socialism, but then how could they? They have no experience of such things.
There have been two occasions when I have been utterly ashamed by my country, the first was the terrible state we were in before Mrs Thatcher took over and today upon hearing the way the mindless thugs of society have behaved since her death. It is also to our countries eternal shame that our tax funded broadcaster cannot see what the rest of the world can see.
Well said. Great comment!
Well said. I’m in Malaysia and have had many comments on this event through social media. Every single one was praising the memory of Maggie.
Left wing British scum – be damned for eternity.
They can see it. They just don’t want anyone else to see it.
BBC-NUJ (anonymously) puts up one former brother trade unionists to propagandise for the whole of Liverpool people against the Thatcher government, and for the ‘Militant’ Liverpool Labour Party council- in first 8 paragraphs here:
“Why Liverpool never loved Margaret Thatcher”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-22073199
No doubt BBC Director General , Mr HALL, from Merseyside, politically approves.
“Bristol police officers hurt at anti-Thatcher demo”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-22077072
BBC-NUJ does not say which political party the violent protesters support.
I’m shocked – shocked – to find that the BBC refuses to class these people as ‘far left extremists’.
SWP – (Sex Without Permission)
The SWP is in the vanguard of the coming Communist revolution in this country.
Good morning happy & thanks for the heads up.
Never been fond of starving, so I’d better start growing my own spuds and living on slops then.
Up the revolution!
Oops didn’t someone do that though?
Remind me how it turned out.
Ah yes 100 million dead.
Give or take a couple of dozen million.
Happy days.
I remember them well.
Of course your revolution will be different won’t it?
Free cyanide pills perhaps?
Can’t wait.
Those 100 million had to die so we could get a Socialist Utopia.
I’m a hardcore SWP street-warrior and committed white black-supremacist.
Timothy’s mummy and daddy were out last night, so a number of us from the South West Surrey Lacrosse Player’s division of UAF went around for the evening to celebrate the death of Thatcher, practise our Mockney accents and take it in turns to beat eat other with rolled up copies of The Socialist Worker, whilst begging Allah to forgive us for being white.
It helped relieve the all-consuming sense of guilt, if only for a short while.
2X+funny
“The SWP is in the vanguard of the coming Communist revolution”
And have been for the past 40yrs
Pity their guard’s van is stuck on a siding just off the Lewes to Uckfield line, which was closed by Dr Beeching in the 60s.
I think this post by Edna I found on Guidos blog reminds me of you Hoppy
‘What are you trying to prove? That shameless, nasty, disrespectful halfwits do exist?
These people are scum; no respect – either for themselves or others – and they seem to wallow in the glory of being illiterate, evil and downright stupid. Decency and integrity are words they were never taught.
Perhaps if they learnt how to behave and understood that a little courtesy and self control can get you a long way, they wouldn’t be on the self pitying scrap heap of life.
Losers.’
I’m not a loser.
I get up before midday once a fortnight to get my benefits.
The lad in the picture doesn’t even look old enough to be drinking; what, pray, does he really know about 1978?
Yeah, the ANC. Great people, love to slaughter white farmers and than lay their land to waste http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Use-land-or-lose-it-Nkwinti-20100302 . Especially the terrorist bomber Mandela: http://crime-of-apartheid.blogspot.com/2011/01/20-may-1983-mandelas-church-st-bomb.html
The ANC are freedom fighter against the evil white people.
Nothing like seeing a thing that passes very vaguely for a human revelling in others blood! so Blairite of you you fake commie!
Dumbo, does Happy know you’ve borrowed his name?
Inshini Wammi
Sorry, but I miss the relevance of this in reply to me. And yes I do know what it is.
Well the BBC have managed to link Margaret Thatcher with Nelson Mandela In a quite surprising way
Was reading a bit of the Bible in the Easter story.
Didn`t the crowds always prefer their rabble-rousing empty vessels of discontentent, destructive gesture mongers (Barrabas) to the hideous, pitiful face of truth for hard times?
So I put together my twelve apostles who the BBC would prefer us all to take as followers of their faith(leads to Moscow via Brussels)…and stand them up against the true apostles needed for these times. I know which ones I would rather keep company with. And funnily enough, my ones will change history in death, much as they did in life.
Unlike “Thatchers vegetables” who aren`t even worth the latex for a Spitting Image puppet-yet the BBC/Guardian will(as ever) let them speak as the pigmies of the age.
Ronald Reagan…..or Jonathan Miller.
Karol Wotylja….or Ken Livingston.
Vaclav Havel…or Ricky Tomlinson
Enoch Powell…or Gerry Adams
Natan Sharansky…or Polly Toynbee
Keith Joseph…or Ken Clarke pureed with Michael Heseltine
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn…or Shirley Williams
Henry Kissinger…or John Prescott
Nigel Lawson…or George Galloway
Milton Friedman…or Neil Kinnock
Friedrich Hayek…or Mary Warnock
Jonathan Sacks…or Dennis Potter.
Mikhail Gorbachev…or Gerri Halliwell
…and even Douglas Murray against Owen Jones on the subs bench.
Think I know who the greats are…and who the vegetables are…f***in baby food pureed too!
“Us communities” need to stand up and trash the likes of the squits and skidmarks that still hate(as only bankrupt, viscious lefties do) a lady who left office in 1990, and has not harmed one of them since.
Maybe Putin could arrange a tea party for them…he`d surely respect Thatcher enough to know our liberal elite need taking care of(in a caring way of course).
“Ken Clarke pureed with Michael Heseltine”
Where can I buy tickets for that?
At last I have understood the enigmatic exhortation that has puzzled philosophers for years – “if you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends”.
It means that the Spice Girls should be given top BBC jobs, with Gerri Halliwell as the next DG. Because having Helen Boaden as the token woman isn’t really girl power at all.
Hard to know where to post this
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22063340
Another load of Climate Change rear guard bollocks from the BBC
‘Flights across the North Atlantic could get a lot bumpier in the future if the climate changes as scientists expect.’
And there was me still thinking temperatures in Britain… ‘….could get a lot….’ higher(?) ‘….in the future if the climate changes as scientists expect.’
‘Not much evidence of BBC bias. In fact none. ‘
The thread title seems to have it nailed.
Some can read, too. Apparently. No word on whether possible without moving lips.
http://25.media.tumblr.com/18db813e0ae45c86dfcc879b8ee41d85/tumblr_mjwqwbO8CY1rdnjeno1_1280.jpg
Hoo-rah.
Dear David Vance,
I posted something to you on Twitter along the lines of what I posted on here yesterday, about how it is hypocritical to complain about the delight some have taken in Mrs. Thatcher’s death when you yourself took great delight, and expressed it on Twitter, in the death of Hugo Chávez.
I wanted to respond, my point being that, whilst it is indeed obscene to dance in the street at someone’s death, wishing that someone was dead, which you did, is not much better. However, I couldn’t because you have just blocked me.
Someone disagrees with you, and you block them. Isn’t that what you accuse the likes of Owen Jones on the Left of doing?
To me, that makes you a hypocrite twice over.
Chris Lutton
Dear Chris,
Your pursuit of Mr. Vance across the social media estate is admirable but, whilst wearing my #twowrongs crown of thorns, a few things are raised.
I concede that on the basis of taunting the dead alone (rather pointless as the person one presumes to be the preferred recipient is long gone, making it all rather empty as a gesture), exceptions should not be made.
However it does take something of a stretch, to which you are entitled, to equate the two people in question.
But this is for Mr. Vance to defend as and if he sees fit.
Thing is, while he is a public figure and this a public forum, it is free.
You appear to be on this site to see what can be done to prop up the BBC’s professional integrity; one founded on public funding and claims of probity and trust.
Do you take the BBC to task in such a manner when their hypocrisy flows over?
Do you write on their blogs, on twitter, etc, demanding satisfaction?
If so, what do they do?
Do they answer? If so, please share.
Or do they block? If so, please confirm.
Otherwise one might presume you are holding a free niche site owner to a much higher standard than you do a vast national media behemoth you appear to support, forgiving it when you would task others.
And there’s a word for what that would make you, too.
Maybe you are just in good company?
It’s true: you really couldn’t make it up
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9981988/Charity-shop-smashed-as-hundreds-celebrated-death-of-Margaret-Thatcher.html
Is that the same Banardos that has banned UKIP supporters from volunteering to help children because they were to extreme? Deep Joy
Cripes, imagine if they were angry and protesting (down, Mason)?
Funny how you never see conservatives rioting…
just the unwashed left wing parasitic scum that inhabit this land, stirred on and agitated (not that it takes a lot mind) by the Beeb and the good old socialist worker.
Remind me, just who is the REAL nasty folk of this nation…
Just who are the evil….Left, or right?….UAF or EDL?
I have seen the EDL attacked while they conduct a fairly quiet, march by the so called “Anti-fascist” fascists with my own eyes.
Yet the beeb would have you believe the EDL caused the trouble.
Sick to death of them, yet the scum out there, dancing and celebrating Mrs Thacher’s death are the same scum that teach kids, in our schools, and through our media…and on the socialist brainwashing goes.
It stinks.
Interestingly, the Foot/Kinnock supporting Financial Times Newspaper is the only British newspaper not using any honorific before “Thatcher” about 97%-99% of the time. The Guardian, Independent and even the Morning Star are using “Margaret” at least 50% of the time, whilst, so far, there has been no use of “‘fatcher” by the BBC.
I read somewhere a piece – I think that bog-roll London ES (Lebedev owner of stablemate The Independent) referring to “the milk snatcher”, but failed to mention that at no time in 13 years did Blair or Brown reverse school milk entitlements. Myopia of the Left.
They didn’t reverse it in their first period following the milk removal, i.e. 1974-79.