North Korea seems to have jammed Panorama on the iPlayer so here’s another open thread to play with…fill it before Kim Jong Un nukes the BBC and it is no more…..
OPEN THREAD MONDAY
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Open thread? so for once i might be on topic 🙂
Remember QT ? got bloke sledging bbc clip coming up tomorrow 🙂
(hope this comment not taking the mick)
Ps can i just say that my thoughts are with those who have been caught up or know someone in Boston terrorist attack. x
sadly, early reports tried to dress it as a criminal act –
that in itself is criminal … absurd … a saudi national is in custody.
Which could turn out to be nothing. It’s too early to tell. Whatever happens, unless it’s a white supremacist, the BBC will be among the last to inform you properly.
I was watching on Skynews but turned over at 10pm to the BBC. Sky had been broadcasting the statement live from (I think) the Mayor, he was mentioning the incident at the Library. BBC seemed half hour behind presumably because they were getting their reports ready before they came on air.
hmm … well david,
Fort Hood shooter – work place violence,
Benghazi – video s fault
CIA/FBI – taking out all references to islamic and jihad from their literature.
… a pattern emerging?.
Boston, isn’t that the place where Irish Americans raised money to fund the IRA ? The expression ‘ What goes around comes around ‘ comes to mind.
It’s one place. I can name a bar or two in NYC which helped out as well. So will you now say that we 9/11 coming?
We all feel nothing but sympathy for your fellow countrymen after this outrage but you can understand DB’s comment as the IRA issue is a thorn in our side when it comes to the US support it received. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been quite so blunt and now wasn’t the time to say it .
@David Brims,
Your comment is awful as is your opinion that the citizens of Boston had this coming to them due to a minority of Bostonians supporting the IRA.
This site is correct to flag up the usual BBC policy of stereotyping the “West” as imperialists, slandering Israelis and of course its support of all things Islamic. It is also good at demolishing the BBC’s attempts to use hyperbole and insensitive reporting whenever the three areas I mentioned are discussed on the various BBC entities.
So in this instance I think that you and the 17 people who “liked” your post need to reflect hard on their lack of compassion.
Fair comment really….just as the Left rejoiced over 9/11 as payback for US foreign policy and were castigated for it.
Having said that the US turned a blind eye to IRA fund rasing and held a romantic notion of IRA terrorism…until 9/11 when that attitude changed.
The US didn’t ‘have it coming’…but it certainly opened their eyes to the reality of what terrorism is.
IRA fundraising really should not be brought up here! Tarnishing the name of the Boston victims in this way is just not right.
Is it just me (again) or does Al Beeb keep trying to push blame on white supremacy groups. With no evidence apparent at present why speculate on who may or may not be responsible for this atrocity.
Yep, and the Police and Fire dept. funded it the most.
Being just old enough at the time, pre-election 1979, to comprehend the dire straits Britain was in, I’ve tried to point out to a few people over the last few days that the supine, ostrich-like Callaghan administration finished paving the way for Margaret Thatcher (there had of course been other ‘roadbuilders’ before Sunny Jim). Alas, in some cases, the concept of cause & effect was overridden by a red mist of blind hatred. Coming from a very disenchanted Old Labour family, with relatives in nationalised industries in the 1970s, I heard how bad things were from the sharp end. My family always knew that the ‘loony left’ did the working classes no favours, which makes this article of particular interest:
http://www.venerablebeads.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lessons-from-death-of-margaret-thatcher.html
“Students put at risk for an ego-boosting stunt and why we need a total purge of BBC top brass.”
By MAX HASTINGS.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2309618/Students-risk-ego-boosting-stunt-need-total-purge-BBC-brass.html#ixzz2Qbr7b0bF
“Betrayed by the BBC”
[Excerpt]:-
“This grossly irresponsible exercise was approved by the BBC’s £166,650-a-year acting director of news, Francesca Unsworth, who is in charge of the safety of 800 journalists and operational staff.
“The Savile and McAlpine scandals… the insults to Lady Thatcher… Does anyone in this monstrous bureaucracy have the wisdom to make a sound decision?”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2309658/When-welfare-net-vicious-trap.html#ixzz2QbsQgjIO
‘This grossly irresponsible exercise was approved by the BBC’s £166,650-a-year acting director of news, Francesca Unsworth, who is in charge of the safety of 800 journalists and operational staff.’
—
A new name in the frame to add to the comfortably believing Ceri Thomas.
Maybe, given her apparent remit, Ms. Unsworth can offer answers on the lack of written sign-offs, that were denied the LSE mules, but would be mandatory for BBC staff?
Or is this a line the BBC feels ‘not relevant’ and need not be pursued?
The corridors of the Corporation or the restaurants surrounding the HQ evidently need stenographers on duty to capture what is whispered but not heard; offered in warning but not recalled.
‘Such so-called ‘sting’ operations, for example by those posing as foreign businessmen or sheikhs, are sometimes criticised.
—-
Indeed they are.
Interestingly, often by the same groups pushing Leveson as the future of responsible news management.
For instance the broadcast community and its supporters, luckily outside the remit & recommendations put forward.
It seems OFCOM is in place to ensure any questionable activities for our TV screens are impossible. As it was with McAlpine, and now this.
Ever get the feeling we’re being played?
A purge of BBC top brass would be a good start, but won’t fix the endemic problems. After all, nearly all of them are BBC lifers. Who will fill the void, even assuming that eliminating some of the mandarin positions isn’t sheer fantasy and might actually happen? They’ll just promote more biased Beeboids from within, who will do the same things once they’re in charge. Top management didn’t make the McAlpine report. Top management didn’t re-edit the President’s first inaugural speech to make Him appear more eco-friendly. Top management didn’t fake all those phone-in competitions. Top management didn’t make Mark Mardell declare that someone who shouted “Allah Akbar” while killing a bunch of people was not in anyway related to jihad. Top management didn’t make all those Beeboids tweet vicious stuff about Sarah Palin or declare their love for The Obamessiah or insult hundreds of thousands of people with a sexual innuendo on air. Top management didn’t call the Muslim Brotherhood “moderate”.
Lots of them have to go, and working for the BBC should be considered much more of an honor and responsibility if they’re to actually change the culture. Good luck with that.
BBC pensioner and trustee Robin Lustig says stop making such a ‘fuss’.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/15/why-is-lse-making-fuss-over-panorama?CMP=twt_gu
‘But did the BBC put LSE students’ lives at risk? I don’t think so.’
‘So why is the LSE making such a fuss?’
It is quite a spectator sport watching two Lefty cats scrapping within the pages of the Guardian. Lustig makes a nice side swipe at the LSE for their dubious Middle Eastern connections.
Overall he reveals himself to be dripping with that familiar holier than thou BBC arrogance.
It might be worth getting Mr. Lustig together in front of cameras to exchange thoughts and take a bite out of the Ceri, as one feels there was no risk even as the other has said there was, but it was worth it.
If fielding BBC apologists on a ‘what’s all the fuss about?’ basis (one oddly not too often adopted by the BBC when holding others to account), they might be advised to try an ensure continuity on the basics if hoping not to come across as a collection of arrogant, unaccountable mass-delusionals.
With regard to the attitudes of the bbc that resulted in them infiltrating North Korea, to tell us something we already know, I suggest that if the bbc was really determined to ‘do’ investigative reporting they could start with iran.
For those who do not know, this might be of interest:
http://global.christianpost.com/news/pastor-saeed-abedini-severely-beaten-fainting-from-internal-bleeding-93977/
Pastor Abedini is being systematically tortured in an iranian prison just for being a Christian. And his wonderful President; mr obama; has chosen to do nothing to protect an American citizen, just as he didn’t in Benghazi.
But I suspect this story is too difficult for the bbc to tackle – there would definitely be dangers of physical harm not just in iran but here in England because of iranian supporters living here. And not least, any reporting of this case might harm the reputation of the bbc’s favourite people, the muslims.
evan davies was rather desperateley claiming on the today programme that Boston bombing was unlikely to be Islamists as it was not a suicide attack.
Al Beeb clearly want this to be outrage to be due to an extreme right wing group.
if it turns out to be Islamist then the narrative will “why oh why didn’t the authorities do something !” “FBI bungling ” “inept cops” etc etc
#seenitallbefore
If that was his line, as no one still knows anything, his spinning who it wasn’t can be placed in the same category as those punting who it is… Or might be.
Neither deserve much respect.
I find it ironic that the BBC are capable of covertly carrying out such a mission in the most paranoid state in the world when you look at how over 40 years at no point did they manage to hide a camara in Savilles` dressing room… Let`s face it, they had the technology and also ample opportunity to investigate the ” rumours which nobody at the BBC apparently heard about “…
None so blind…?
the BBC `The only corporate body in the world that uses Gang Rape as a team building exercise.. and describes BBC childrapes in Stoke Mandeville as outsourcing… Or there`s the `Human Resource Department……`
James Harding has been appointed Director of News at the bBBC.
Judging by what he did as Editor of The Times, turning a national newspaper into a London-centred fashion magazine, the prospects for our state tax-funded broadcaster don’t look good.
(This fell off the end of last night’s Open Thread.)
Just saw Dermot Murnaghan and Tim Marshall on Sky News, dancing on a pin head, talking about Boston, even though it’s not BBC, it’s really all the same, BBC, SKY, ITN = NUJ
” Let’s not jump to conclusions, it could be home grown terrorism !! Timothy McVeigh neo nazis, white supremacists , anti government types, Uni bomber, the weathermen” etc etc, you get the drift.
Giant elephant in the room successfully ignored.
It reminded me of what the late Lawrence Auster said ”Why do we deny the reality of islam ?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZkvExDz-Ao
I don`t supposed either Newsreader suggested that it might have been an elephant did they??
Yes – when even Sky start referring to ‘international terrorist groups’ what chance have we got.
Are they news outfits or branches of the social services.
Uncle Bup
George Bush started this phrase ” war on terror.” What a preposterous statement. How can you have a war on a tactic ? It would be like Churchill declaring war on blitzkrieg.
I suspect, as we all know, it’s not to upset the 900 million muslims.
I agree with the position that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions yet. However, all of the media bastards seem to be equally eager to jump to the conclusion that whoever did it was not somehow inspired by an interpretation of Islam. To jump to that conclusion with no evidence isn’t proper journalism any more than declaring the opposite before the evidence is in.
Totally agree.
However, there are games being played, and when chips get counted it may be worth having adopted a more cautious attitude to avoid the inevitable #2wrongs counters.
As it stands I still have no clue on perpetrator identities and/or motivations, and hence feel speculation is futile.
If the BBC (and others) wish to nail their colours to any particular masts, to either allude or conceal for whatever less than trustworthy reasons, then the rope is is there.
Here’s David (Never let a crisis go to waste) Axelrod giving the BBC and other media outlets a lifeline and hinting at right-wing terrorism.
What a shameful man.
The latest news from the Boston Police is that the bombs were made from pressure cookers filled with explosives, nails, ball bearings etc. Apparently they warned people a couple of months ago to look out for packages like this as I.E.D.s made in this fashion are commonplace in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Now,this could be yet more duff information from poorly informed news networks, it could be a false flag operation or ,if true could point to the followers of the Religion of Peace.
It could also be the reason why it wasn’t suicide bombers. Taliban bomb makers don’t usually deliberately vaporise themselves with their own devices. They like to be able to carry on making and planting more in order to kill even more people. Suicide bombers only do it the one time. It’s probably also the reason why no one has yet claimed responsibility – they want to be free to create more death and destruction.
That’ll be the US off invading another country then! Unless it turns out to be one they more or less control like Saudi then!
Makes you wonder what they think they can do with a state like Pakistan which is crammed full of people who hate the US, Christianity, Indians, Hindus, other Moslems, in fact just about anything which moves !
Thoughtful ….. They hate everything and would rather have hate becouse that at least gives them a purpose in life…. They despise the non Muslim world obviously becouse all that squalor and misery is way better than what we have in the West (flushingtoilets, soap, empathy, reason and women without a hairy top lip) If you showed an arab an underage female they would get to her faster than a BBC Radio employee….
Hey, thoughtful, we already know what the US thinks it can do in Pakistan: the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate-in-Chief has been drone-bombing the daylights out of them for some time now.
If it turns out that this Boston bombing was done in protest of that, the BBC will describe it as generic “US foreign policy”, with no blame laid at His feet.
Didn’t the BBC tell you that He would change the world for the better?
Mid-morning and for some reason reception of BBC Radio 5 goes blank.
I can’t claim to have been enjoying their Left-slanted news and current affairs with a portion of sport with Left-wing politics shoe-horned in – but having paid for this stuff I sometimes do persist with it. I suppose if I were a personal injury lawyer or single issue campaigner I might feel I got money’s worth.
I retune and up comes Radio 4.
Oh the horror. I think it was Wimmins Hour. Various already feminist speakers are nudged ever further leftward by the interviewer.
It seems there is to be a BBC drama show entitled ‘The Politician’s Husband. With completely deadpan explanation we discuss certain political marriages.
The Blairs, the Kinnocks and the Cooper/Balls.
Turns out – according to the BBC – Cherie would have been better than Tony, Glenys better than Neil and….. oh, they stopped there.
Woman’s Hour should more accurately be called Victim’s Hour, since the default position of any and every discussion is “Woman as Victim”. Regardless of whether the topic is politics, education, science or even gardening or cooking, there is always a man to blame somewhere for women’s lack of success in any particular field. It seems to be an article of faith for WH that Patriarchy is solely responsible for keeping women from achieving equal success to men in all areas of life. Heaven forfend that millions of years of evolution have equipped men and women with distinct but complementary attributes. No no; in WH World men and women ought to be interchangeable, and if they are not then it can ONLY be due to “societal” differences imposed by those nasty men. Thankfully, in the real world outside the middle-aged, middle-class bubble of Woman’s Hour, real men and women know the difference.
‘Regardless of whether the topic is politics, education, science or even gardening or cooking..’
Funny you should say that…. I caught a WH discussion about modern acedemic mathematicians…. and guess what? The blokes are holding back the females! Something about maths requiring peace and quiet and kids just don’t let the gals have their thinking time. BBC : 2 + 2 = 5
How about some “anti-racist” maths?
Question: PC Plod’s van is 9ft by 5ft by 6ft. How many average-sized muslim youths – arrested on trumped up charges – can PC Plod fit in his van?
There’s plenty feminist, postmodernist anti-science around…
…did you know that Newton’s Pricipia is a rape manual !!! OMG!
…or that E=mc2 is a ‘sexed equation’ because it privileges the speed of light over other speeds! Damn!
This is well worth a read…
http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/824
Create your own postmodernist BS…
http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
…ecxuse typsos
Reed, I loved the clip.
I was at a Sherlock Holmes convention over the weekend dominated by feminist academics (?) each trying to outdo the other. One of the more sensible ones muttered to me slyly, “There is nothing worse than watching feminist academics having a dick waving contest.”
I am about to write a a paper protesting the feminisation of Sherlock Holmes (Thanks to the BBC series). I fear for my manhood.
Ahh Sherlock Holmes! to me that character died with Jeremy Brett ! his fantastic acting in ITV Holmes series makes the BBC one look like blue peter as compared to Dispatches !
The BBC want you to move over to DAB radio that’s why they keep messing about with BBC radio 5 on medium wave and Radio 4 on long wave hoping you will get pissed off and buy a DAB radio.
I have posted about DAB previously, allow me to repeat. I live in wales. Can I get Radio Wales ( eng lang) or Radio Cymru ( welsh lang) on DAB ? Errrr…nope! Zilch diddly squat.
Can i get Asian? Oh yes!!! Great service huh beeb?
I have an e mail from an exec producer explaining why I can’t get it, …..so that’s all right then!
Dab is useless, I am in a good signal area but it keeps cutting out and the radio eats batteries , also the sound is pretty rough, I still have my DAB radio but don’t use it anymore.
FM > DAB
It could certainly be a domestic group.
I’m thinking…. “OCCUPY”
Four of them already convicted of plotting to blow up a bridge in Ohio.
The BBC censored that connection when reporting the arrests. The BBC refused to report another incident where Occupiers brought explosives and mortars in glass jars to the party.
I realize, of course, that the game here is to speak of only those incidents where acts were actually carried out. They don’t even mention the home-grown jihadi attempt to blow up Times Square, because his bomb was a dud. No blood, no foul, as they say.
It’s a very safe and easy way to dismiss all the other evidence which might lead to unapproved thoughts. Otherwise, they’d have to list just how many people from different….er…..backgrounds have been arrested for plotting or caught red-handed ready to go.
This is the dishonesty inherent at the BBC about this issue. They’re actually intellectually incapable of dealing with it, so they play games and obfuscate.
“MILITANT WHITE EXTREMISTS’ – A shockingly racist term used alongside “Al Queda Terrorists” on the BBC News at Six, tonight, in its coverage of who might be behind the terrible Boston attack. Now, the PC leftist censorship-brigade at the BBC would NEVER DARE use the term ‘militant black extremist’ or very rarely use ‘Militant Muslim extremist’. They just have to get the old white right wing in there whenever there is an act of terrorism (which invariably involves Muslim extremist/murderers/terrorists/pieces of rat excrement etc.
In the BBC pseudo-logic, “right-wing” is always bad and thus (non sequitur) anything bad must be “right-wing” or at least “conservative”. So North Korea is Fascist (“right-wing” ) not Communist. Anthony Blair was too right-wing in following the US over Iraq and Afghanistan. Think-tanks are either “right-wing” or just plain think-tanks. The Daily Mail is “right-wing” but the Grauniad is merely the news.
To be fair to the Beeb the same sort of reports were on the ITV News and Channel 5 News.
Though there has been no mention on the news that a pressure cooker bomb used was exactly the same type of device that the failed Times Square bomber tried to use.
“no mention on the news that a pressure cooker bomb used was exactly the same type of device that the failed Times Square”
expand please for the uninformed (like me)
It’s not, though. That guy had propane tanks off a barbecue in the back of his car. The Boston bombs were, however, very similar to some IEDs that are popular with the local lads in Afghanistan and Iraq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Times_Square_car_bombing_attempt
The team found in the rear of the vehicle:
two travel alarm clocks with batteries that apparently were fashioned as triggering devices, connected by electrical wires to
two red full 5-gallon cans of gasoline, sandwiching
40+ consumer-grade M-88 firecrackers inside a 20-ounce metal container (wrapped in duct tape, with its end removed),
gunpowder,
three full 20-gallon propane tanks, and
a 55-inch (1,400 mm) x 32-inch (810 mm) green metal gun locker that contained:
a metal pressure cooker pot containing a thicket of wires, that also connected to the alarm clocks;
250 pounds (110 kg) of urea-based fertilizer in 8 plastic bags; and
120 M-88s.[17][22][27][28][29][30]
So there was a pressure cooker.
They all get the same materials off the jihadi websites that the BBC doesn’t like to talk about. But the NYC one was a mess, not done like the one in Boston.
The BBC have published the Order of Service for tomorrow’s Funeral of Lady Thatcher (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22156159). Alongside it they include some very tasteless comments of a political nature by John Campbell, a biographer of Lady Thatcher.
There is nothing particularly exceptional or surprising about the Order of Service. Why can’t the BBC just accept that Lady Thatcher was a deeply Christian woman who desired a religious funeral, and leave it at that, without wanting to politicise everything?
OK this is a bit of a heads up for an innocuous story which covers up something much much more dangerous.
http://www.adrianhart.net/Racist-kids/
This comes under the umbrella of ‘bullying’ and sometimes hate crimes. or ‘racism’ in schools. The most worrying part about this is the hidden & insidious nature.
It came to light to me with a young lad talking about a campaign of anti bullying but it’s deeper than that:
“Anti-racist officials believe that these incidents are the ‘tip of the iceberg’, and call on schools to step up identification and reporting, and extend reporting to even younger age groups.”
This policy requires a bullying leftie teacher to see ‘racism’ in a pupil as young as three years old, there’s a required report to the LEA and the first the parent knows is there’s a visit from the LEA often accompanied by the Police. There is no appeal and the incident stays on the childs record for life. Sometimes there is a requirement for the child to be ‘re educated’.
Mums net carries a report of an 8 year old who with his friend had been taught about Guru Gobin Singh in the playground they were taking turns to be the guru, when it was the turn of the Pakistani kid he ran to tell the teacher, the first thing Mum knew was the knock on the door from the LEA and Police.
This is apalling and it seems to be being pushed again watch for it being pushed as something innocuous such as anti bullying when it is hiding something very sinister indeed.
Dear god, sweeney needn’t have botherd going to north korea it coming to a town near you. soon
Like a witch-hunt of old. Racism is the stick that is being used to beat the native population into submission. So easy to accuse, so hard to disprove. Racism = Crimethink in “1984”.
Oh it gets worse than that if say three kids are playing and little abdul is standing around then that’s racism too because they’re not being inclusive !
So even doing nothing is not enough to protect our kids.
Unless parents get some balls and stop being intimidated, they’re going to be walked all over.
Yes its appalling. Children are not free to even choose who they want to be friends with anymore. Any kid who wants to push his way into a group of friends who dont want him simply has to squeal bullying and he can demand to be let in.
An American study claimed that the ‘popular’ kids were the biggest bullies; or isn’t it more likely to be simply that the ‘popular’ kids simply have the most ‘unpopular’ kids trying to crash in on their friendship groups?
http://healthland.time.com/2011/02/08/do-popular-kids-bully-more/
BBC news must have found the only Moslem at the scene of the Boston Marathon. Obviously she’s very sympathetic or they wouldn’t have broadcast the clip but they really are a set of sickos manipulating a situation like this.
Hi ppl 🙂
I got that clip of Thatcher Biographer talking about BBC on Question Time, I know its against rules ( and admin/mods can delete if they so wish) , but here is the link > http://kebabtime.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/biased-bbc.html
Hope that is OK?
Despite 60% of people opposed to spending a penny on Thatcher’s funeral why does the biased BBC insist on inflicting it on the public? The right wing bias of the BBC is disgraceful.
Dreadful, 60% of Daily Mirror readers coming out of the pub say….
Take the funeral cost out of the £75 billion she has saved us from our contribution to the EU, tightarse.
Perhaps because Gordon Brown’s government agreed to most of the arrangements for the funeral in 2008?
Go back 25 years to some Saturday in June 1988 and the BBC were inflicting Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday bash on the public ALL DAY – on both Radio 1 and BBC 1 !
Sorry how much tax payer cash did Tranny Boil spend on his NHS porno fest ?
Intemperate response – please forgive but the provocation has got to me.
You know I advocate tolerance Colditz, just read my previous posts, and I try not to use bad language but today you have really pissed me off with one pointless and wholly inappropriate jibe too far. Why don’t you fu*k off. Fu*k off back under your bolshevist safety blanket and stay there.
A waste of money? I was forced to watch the country squander 12 billion of money that we had to borrow from the Chinese on the ‘Danny Boyle’ Olympic games – any sign of its ‘legacy appearing yet, was it a good investment with each UK gold medal costing about 400,000,000 pounds? Mrs Thatcher literally changed the World for the better, hundreds of millions now live on a better planet because of her and all you can do is carp about her funeral costs. She was a towering national and international figure weather you liked her or not. This country wastes more than the cost of her funeral every day on bond interest costs imposed on the population by the criminally incompetent Labour policies of the 1997-2010 regime (used advisedly as that is how the BBC preferred to refer to Mrs Thatchers three consecutive Governments elected by a popular mandate). If you were alive in the 70’s you would know why so many respected her and stand amazed at her achievements.
Even the BBC noted that journalists out numbered protestors – and Colditz, did you notice just how many people there were attending on the streets – so much for the myth of her universal loathing.
Like our Islamic fiends I have a right to be offended and this patty small minded distortion of reality by the left really offends and incenses me
Amen.
Sign this petition! http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/47553
Jeff
Done !
BBC : Good & Bad
Quoted from a fellow poster further back and used in a different context…..
‘In the BBC pseudo-logic, “right-wing” is always bad and thus (non sequitur) anything bad must be “right-wing” or at least “conservative”.
Yes, that is exactly where we are with the BBC
BBC 5 Live likes to mix sport and Left-wing politics. Yesterday I heard a discussion about soccer where a winning team was described as being ‘progressive’ following a spell in the doldrums when it’s attitude was said to have been ‘conservative’.
BBC : The language of political bias.
Anyone who has watched or played sport will understand that sometimes, by playing “conservatively” and not attacking at all costs, a team can improve its results. Italy have done well in many football World Cups by having a sound defence and counter-attacking.
Who will and won’t be attending Lady Thatcher’s funeral – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22109759
Curious that the BBC have told us that Bush Jr and Sr won’t be coming, but they have neglected to tell us whether President Obama will be attending…
Jeff
Perhaps it’s just as well that Dubya won’t be going – that would set the rabid Left even madder.
Such grace and generosity of spirit from Lord Kinock
“Lord Kinnock – former Labour leader of the opposition – will not be present because of a commitment to attend the funeral of a former local councillor in Wales”
Perhaps these figures put this decision into its real context:
1979
Mrs T 13,679,923 votes, 43.9% 339 seats
Callaghan, 11,532,218 votes, 36.9%, 269 seats
1983
Mrs T, 13,312,016 votes, 42.4%, 397 seats
Foot, 8,459,934 votes, 27.6%, 209 seats
1987
Mrs T, 13,760,935 votes, 42.2%, 397 seats
Kinnock, 10,029,270 votes, 30.8%, 229 seats
1992
Major, 14,093,007 votes, 41.9%, 336 seats
Kinnock 11,560,484 votes, 34.4%, 271 seats
Just watch the Kinnock here celebrating his humiliating defeat at the hands of John Major
All Right! Yeah! ALLL RIGHTTTT!
Watch from 2 to 2.5mins
now tell me, would he not have carried that of better if he had sported a toothbrush moustache?
‘….He left as I joined… but Thatcher was a friend of his….’
The contemptible Nicky Campbell this morning prior to 9am shoots the breeze with fellow BBC Left-winger John Peinaar.
Previously Campbell has insisted that he knew or heard nothing of Jimmy Savile’s extra curricular activities despite his previous employment at Radio One. Campbell’s excuse was that their periods at the BBC hardly overlapped and that the office chat was that Savile was no more than ‘a sexless eccentric’.
This stretched public credulity considering the frank admissions of many fellow BBCers – for example Bill Oddy.
Could Nicky Campbell really have lived in such a secluded gossip free cave at the Beeb?
So Campbell put up something of a smoke screen with the further suggestion : ‘I thought he might have been gay’
You see what Campbell was attempting to do there? He was admitting that there were indeed rumours about Savile – how could he seriously deny this? But by deploying the gay canard he hopes to explain away why no BBCers ever challenged Savile.
Now this morning by reminding his listeners of Savile’s hobnobbing with Mrs T he hopes to reinforce his own and the BBC’s defence in the Savile case and to blacken the Tories with the stain of Savile.
John Pienaar is a seasoned old journo and although he obviously dresses to the Left he does do a nifty two-step suggesting balance. Campbell on the other hand is a lightweight and an emotional – please please love me lefty – but he is worth watching carefully because he is so loyal to the BBC and so in tune with the Leftist thought there.
I see him as a useful weather vane for BBC management thinking.
Contemptible.
Plus Nicki Campbell is in love with himself, a supercilious, self indulgent, narcissistic egotist who suffers from verbal diarrhea.
”A condition suffered by an individual who has the inablility to shut the f**k up, A serious disease which, once it has control of a person, causes them to spew forth incoherent babble from the bowels of the voicebox.”
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=verbal diarrhe
‘something of a smoke screen with the further suggestion : ‘I thought he might have been gay’’
If he did, that seems a rather febrile route to go down these days.
Too much to hope that those whose antennae are attuned to the merest whiff of such things will now be writing to him to demand explanations and atonement for making such a connection in such a context.
Even if regulars here sidestep to do this (so far no shares on their outraged attempts BBCwards, or any replies), they can’t beat deputising a smalltown boy or two to cover here by cutting and pasting vast tracts of BBC ‘It’s true because we say it is’ stats & research that may convince Hugs Boaden but few not sharing the market rate bubblehead echo chamber.
“Previously Campbell has insisted that he knew or heard nothing of Jimmy Savile’s extra curricular activities despite his previous employment at Radio One.”
Rubbish. I was told about Jimmy Savile’s activity more than twenty years ago by a friend who was a bog-standard BBC producer at the time. Everyone at the BBC knew, it was common knowledge, according to my friend. In fact, the form in the corporation was to joke about it. But nobody would say anything, because Savile was too powerful within the corporation, and in wider society.
About that Fatcha thing: let’s pretend that the Lady broke off from running the country once a week to call Sir Jimmy and swop showbiz gossip – there’s still no evidence that Saville raped anyone at No 10. BBC Broadcasting House on the other hand…..
Slightly off topic as not really about BBC bias. But this morning on the Today programme they had three young people to talk about Mrs Thatcher’s legacy; a young woman whose grandfather had been a miner – she was well spoken explained that the closing of a mine had affected her grandfather a lot and to a lesser degree her mother but she admired Mrs Thatcher as a role model; a young male entrepreneur who also spoke well of Mrs Thatcher and who explained that Mrs Thatcher had given people like him the opportunity to create business; then a young woman studiying engineering at Somerville (Mrs T’s old college) with the dippsiest voice but who said that Mrs Thatcher had destroyed manufacturing in this country. The young woman went on to say that she was being courted by the finance industry for work after she graduated – well heaven help the finance industry as someone so unquestioning to think that she could speak on Radio 4 about things she knew nothing about makes me wonder about the admissions process of Oxford and the recruitment ioprocess of the Finance sector.
Also there still are manufacturing firms in the UK but they may have given up on trying to recruit engineers from Oxbridge. But just because people from the financial services were stuffing job prospectuses under her door it does not stop her from speaking to academics about engineering prospects, going to specific engineering recruitment fairs (I’m sure they exist but will be at other universities) and speaking to engineering firms directly.
I bet she will end up as the Quisling Broadcasting Corporation engineering corespondent in about a year and a half.
“said that Mrs Thatcher had destroyed manufacturing in this country”
So the young lady was deprived of an opportunity to buy an Austin Allegro MkII?
She should be grateful.
Manufacturing output increased by 7.5% by the time Maggie left office. Over one million manufacturing jobs were lost between 1997 & 2010. It seems Oxbridge doesn’t do a good job teaching history.
Dimblebey commenting on Thatcher’s procession: “the crowds, rather larger than people had expected”
Too bad, David…better luck next time.
Political translation:
‘the crowds, larger than leftists and BBC-NUJ had wanted.’
I wonder what Richard Dimblebey would be thinking about his son’s performance. The ultimate impartial professional must be disappointed with his son.
So what he’s basically saying is that the everything the BBC has been predicting for the last week was garbage?
Can we get a refund?
‘“the crowds, rather larger than people had expected”
Expectation management can be another double edged sword, one supposes.
There’s telling the ‘people’ how to behave, and explaining to your ‘people’ why they seem to be failing to comply.
One is sure that it can all be sorted in post, and with the appropriate commentators invited on to steer away from what is to what ‘should’ be.
They’re rather good at trying that on. Even on this blog.
Not had the BBC coverage on. had the SKY coverage on telly and bits of Nick Ferrari on LBC.
Yes, I watched Sky.Thought they did a pretty good job.
Agreed. I clicked onto BBC a couple of times. Once a reporter was asking a family why they were supporting Lady T and they all answered well, particularly the mother who replied to the Thatcher divisive question that the divisions were all in place prior to 1979. A very good performance by lady in the crowd, totally outshining her Beeboid interviewer.
Sky News always comes out on top when covering the big national events.
St. Paul’s from above. Image from Sky News…
BBC coverage of state occasions used to set the benchmark. something somewhere went wrong. I think at heart the BBC discovered that it was no longer patriotic. State occasions became events to be viewed with a satirical wry commentary.
This morning Dimbleby was ill informed and sarky in tone.
Dimbleby seems to be losing his marbles getting his facts all wrong as well.
Time for “Les Freres Dimbleby” to retire, methinks.
And what of james Naughtie just after 7am on Today where he referred to Margaret Thatcher as both a “mother and a grandfather”.
What kind of neural synapses does the like of Naughtie have…it`s inexplicable, frankly weird!
Nick Robinson writing on the BBC website concludes: “By making this case David Cameron was, I believe, consigning Thatcherism to the past instead of claiming, as he could have done, that he was its inheritor and that today’s battles were an extension of hers.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22180611
It’s worth remembering that Nick Robinson himself was a Heseltine supporter back in his Young Conservative days. I don’t think one can deduce that Cameron (yuk) speaking about being in school when she was elected was necessarily trying to distance himself from her.
There is no Thatcherite voice on the BBC – nor it seems in the country. That will have to wait till her prediction (“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money [to spend]”) comes to pass.
Not for those of a nervous disposition, and certainly not for those of BBC thinking:
http://www.moneyweek.com/endofbritain
I agree with the previous post – there is absolutely no Thatcherite voice within the bbc (they can’t even bring themselves to address her properly – always ‘Thatcher’, not Lady Thatcher or any deferential title she carries) but I do think there is in the Country…as demonstrated today at her funeral – spontaneous applause as her coffin was lead through the streets and the 3 cheers at the end of the church service – all of it unrehearsed, not conceived, not scripted just the voice of the real people who are now not represented by any of the mainstream political parties. The well forecasted anti demonstrations just did not materialise because (yet again) the bbc had reported the death and what followed inaccurately and unfairly and given the viewer with their own view of Mrs. Thatcher
Yep, it’s deja vu all over again.
We had all this with the Diamond Jubilee, when the BBC went into full sneer mode and assured us that the whole Royalty thing was, like, so ten minutes ago and the whole thing was a guaranteed flop.
And then reality bit and the BBC had to grudgingly admit that there really were people out there who approved of Britain.
and the death and funderal of the Queen Mother was also badly judged by the BBC. Can they get any State occasion right?
From the DT today:
“Ms Jones, from Poole, Dorset, a director of the cosmetics company Lush, said: “I wanted to be here today because they have turned this into a public event paid for from the public purse. Therefore we need to represent the wide breadth of public opinion ….””
Now there’s a coincidence. I’d like to see “the wide breadth of public opinion” on the BBC, which costs a darn sight more than £10m.
“I am NOT happy to pay for Thatcher’s funeral” says the sign.
Someone chuck the bloke his 16p contribution…shut him up.
Tell him to take it out of the £36 million the left was bunged for Danny Boyle’s Nuremberg Rally last summer.
Fairly certain that I pay through my taxation for every single aspect of his life, every tin of beans, every trip to the chippy – even his toilet paper. If not him specifically there are plenty others for whom I as a taxpayer undoubtedly do fund. Here is the news (strangely not appearing on the BBC), I am not happy paying benefits of up to 26,000 (net) PA for families where the bread winner(s) have never exerted themselves to do a single day of paid employment in their entire cosseted and privileged lives
IIRC, Lush is a right-on cosmetics company anyway.
Just looked at the website – I see what you mean.
The famous “Shower gel against third world poverty” movement?
In the 1970s Peter Simple invented “Devon cream-teashop owners against the Nazis” , he really could make it up.
“Anti-semitism” = 13 characters.
“Jewish claims” = 13 characters.
BBC says it won’t use “anti-Semitism” because the word is… too long?!
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3269/bbc_says_it_won_t_use_anti_semitism_because_the_word_is_too_long
BBC is biased = 13 characters.
I hate TV tax = 13 characters.
Labour Forever = 13 characters
We are pioneering a new form of Haiku, fit for the austerity Britain of the future (13 letters, rather than 17 syllables or whatever). Can we get a government grant for this?!
EU = glorious = 13 characters
The BBC loves Ed = 13 characters
Another ‘Accuracy (or, more often than not, plain truth) won’t fit’, ‘Semantic-Fantastic’ from the CECUTT delusion factory.
This one deserves a four weasel rating.
It of course has all the default cookie cutters, including the ‘we sat on it until it got embarrassing, but who really cares as we were only ever going to say we got it about right anyway’ non-apology. Not mentioned, but I bet there was the ‘we value this stuff and will stick it in the giggle log no one worries about… but don’t you dare share this beyond the two of us. As Jimmy would say, ‘it’s our little secret”
I wish the guy well with round two. Usually their response to being shown up and properly held to account is to throw all their toys out the pram, and kick it into the long grass in hope attrition will achieve where bovine idiocy has failed.
On very rare occasions, this can be be overcome, but it will take a lot, and a long time.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/trust-upholds-complaint-against-bbc-news-over-inaccurate-tweet
But not often. And in many cases they will lie and cheat all the way to The Trust to kill it off.
And even the Trust may well chip in with some astounding uncuriosity on top of some awesome po-faced credulity.
‘The Committee agreed with the BBC that considerable skill was needed to ensure that headlines subject to space restrictions remained duly accurate.
This to the BBC subs writing utter tosh, and then several layers of BBC Complaints swearing black was white and invoking beliefs and comfort levels until faced with the fact they had been nailed.
For which the consequences were… are… ‘oops’.
I’d call it unique, but given the frequency it really is much more than that now.
Intentional bent journalism complemented by clumsy stupidity, propaganda backed by censorship, call it what you will, but it’s the BBC in all their dishonourable, unaccountable, factually unsupportable glory laid bare.
13 Characters = 13 characters
(by coincidence)
What I find interesting with the BBC ‘no space for accuracy’ deceit is how their obsession with twitter, or ‘for mobile’ seems to result almost exclusively in headlines that serve a singular tribal direction.
Their excuses are, anyway, risible, because quite simply if you can’t do the job correctly with the space available, you don’t whack out a bodge that doesn’t cut it.
Unless professional integrity was from another time too.
I was moved by the funeral (which I watched live on the BBC HD channel). It really did look like history in-the-moment and it was a respectful, quietly impressive ceremony – the sort of thing this country does so extremely well when it actually wants to. The BBC refrained from any petty political point scoring throughout the coverage. Even Dimbledore somehow acquitted himself well in the proceedings.
The person Lady Thatcher was remains a figure of singular significance in this age of pygmy politicians – of this there really can be little doubt. Even if clouded by nostalgia for the younger me – just 16 years old when she came to power – I find now that I admire her all the more. To me, it’s never felt more like we need her now. I grieve.
For me, today closes a door on a huge influence in my life. As you get older (I’m 50 this year) these kind of events take on a strangely personal personal significance. I celebrate the towering political figure she was and I mourn all that has been lost with her passing.
When I look back (with the benefit of hindsight) at the way the Thatcher government was reported by the BBC it is hard not to view them with contempt – indeed as I get older my contempt for the Left in general (and the middle class Left in particular) only increases, whether it be the Stalinists pre-1968 Left, or the terrorist loving post 1968 Left, the planned economy of the Old Left, or the multicultural nihilism of the New Left.
I view the Left essentially as malignant narcissists working through their resentments, making very little to contribution to the world. How typical that the BBC expect us to pay for their hatred of this country – the Left these days is almost by definition somebody who lives off the tax payer and calls their reward social justice.
If you want to experience greed (and resentment) and snobbery (with especial contempt for the aspiring working class) nobody can match middle class socialists.
When I look back over the work of the BBC I see that must of its best work has been by people who despised or ignored the Left i.e. that it was DESPITE not because of of the BBC that they got employment, and these days (since “Alternative Comedy” for example) they would not get any work.
Why would anybody with any talent waste their life writing for the BBC these days – which is why the BBC drama Department is such a wasteland. Precisely the opposite of the plurality upon which Huw Wheldon sought to justify the BBC.
It seems that everything the Left touch they destroy – it is all these psychopaths have to offer. What a thin veneer there is over Stephen Fry and his thieving cankerous soul.
“… malignant narcissists working through their resentments”. I think you are on to something here.
I went to an old-style grammar school in the north of England; discipline and work-load were heavy by present standards and there were certainly things I would have changed … but that didn’t mean I wanted to abolish them or that I don’t understand the need for discipline. My father lost his job in the early 1980s, after some years of thinning down of employee numbers (pre-Thatcher too) but he accepted that it was the correct decision, as he no longer had a full job; he was depressed for a time but he then made a success of a small business by hard work.
Hatred of your society and nation from those who have had so much (e.g. free university, as I did, and/or interesting well-paid Public Sector jobs in the BBC) is hard to excuse.
BBC tv have had Margaret Becket on for a long time now spilling her bile regarding Margaret Thatcher, the only interruptions by the Interviewer being those which assist her rant. I had to change channel.
At least Margaret Thatcher went quietly and peacefully, not writhing around with a stake through her heart.
“No, no, nosferatu!”
So what Bronski!! So sheep are sheep and not Dolphins (an intelligent creature I am lead to believe). Are you trying to prove Winston Smith’s realisation that in the totalitarian state “insanity” is being in a minority of one? If so remember that that is the maxim of the totalitarian state whose aim is the destruction of the human spirit.
Keep on quoting your statics, which only go to prove that most of us are sleep walking conformist. Or take a look on the other side. Read Jonathan Foreman’s article in Commentary: The Decline of the BBC. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-bbc/
Jonathan rehearses all the recent damaging scandals, from; Savile/Newsnight/The Saville- McAlpine affair/The Panorama Primark manufactured sweat shop footage/The editing of footage of the Queen’s portrait session to make look like she walked out in a huff/David Attenborough’s fake footage for his Frozen Planet series.
He goes on to say:
“Usually the BBC’s staff, PR unit, and supporters have successfully dismissed even the most deserved and well-founded criticism as politically motivated or threatening to the organization’s prized independence and objectivity. Accusations of endemic and consistent political bias have been particularly easy to bat away, largely because those making the accusations fail to understand that the organization’s very real biases—even those against Israel and America—are largely unconscious. (My emphasis).
“If the latest scandal carries so much more weight, it may be because of the cumulative effect of smaller scandals, some of which, like the contemptuous coverage of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, have exposed the elitist attitudes of the corporation’s management. The BBC’s partisans—and it remains a much-beloved institution—fear that the Savile-McAlpine affair could end the system according to which the BBC draws much of its annual income from the UK’s television-license fee”.
He is worth quoting at length as this passage regarding the quality of BBC programming shows by hitting the nail on the head.
“In fact, the costume dramas so often bought by PBS and the current-events programs that were widely believed to be such fine examples of professional “objective” journalism account for a very small amount of the BBC’s product and budget. It actually spends much more public money trying to compete for audience share with lowest-common-denominator dreck like Hotter Than My Daughter, My Man Boobs and Me, and Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents—a reality show in which teenagers were taken to the Mediterranean and encouraged to behave badly without knowing that the BBC had secretly brought their parents to watch. It was the BBC, not one of its commercial rivals, that first imported the original junk-reality TV series Big Brother to the UK. It goes almost without saying that the free market has a proven ability to fund such programs”. (My emphasis)
He goes on to discuss the ingrained institutional biases of the BBC.
“It only takes a few days of listening to BBC talk radio or watching the news to get a sense of its institutional biases. You will never, ever hear an interviewer suggest that maybe the state should play a smaller role in some aspect of national life, that unrestricted mass immigration might have adverse effects, or that Britain’s welfare benefits might have undesirable social consequences or be prone to exploitation. You will certainly never encounter any skepticism about the UN, foreign aid, and the European project. Anyone who is unconvinced by the attractions of a European superstate is treated as a bigot or dinosaur or deemed mysteriously blind to the obvious appeal of “Europe” as envisioned by the modern and the cultured”.
Then this:
“Commentary readers may well have some sense that the BBC’s news division—the largest news organization in the world—has an Israel problem, as it was widely reported in the United States that the BBC’s then Jerusalem correspondent Barbara Plett actually wept in 2004 while covering the final illness of Yasir Arafat. (A BBC investigation responded to listener complaints by saying that her reporting met required standards of “fairness, accuracy, and balance.”) Plett, a Canadian, is now the BBC’s UN correspondent and remains obsessed with Israel. Another BBC correspondent in Israel, Irish journalist Orla Guerin, once produced a story about a curfew in Bethlehem titled “How the Israelis Stole Christmas.” But neither is as anti-Israel as some of the local BBC correspondents in Gaza, who in some cases are pro-Hamas activists in their spare time; their “balance” is nevertheless asserted by the organization”
And this is something I have long thought:
“The institutional prejudices apparent in some of the BBC’s news and current-events coverage are often mirrored or even exaggerated in its entertainment output, a classic example being the successful spy series Spooks—which represents a world in which there is no Islamist terrorism and Islamist threats invariably turn out to be ruses created by evil Mossad agents and domestic right-wingers”.
But this is most insightful:
“The most important thing to understand about BBC bias is that, like its institutional obsessions with youth and celebrity, it is neither conscious nor in any way officially mandated (My emphasis). There are no orders from the top reminding journalists that Israel should be considered the greatest threat to peace, freedom, and justice, or that businessmen should generally be treated as crooks until proven innocent. That is just what everyone in the corporation believes in the same way that they know the world is round. Moreover, it is what they believe that everyone else—by which I mean everyone who is intelligent, educated, and of decent moral character—believes.
And finally this, the most devastating indictment:
For anyone who knows people who work at the BBC, this makes perfect sense. Many of my university contemporaries joined the BBC; they were pretty much all of a type, as if they had belonged to the same clique in high school. They were middle-class, middle-ability kids with predictably “right-on” (i.e., conventionally left-liberal) views. They shared mildly bohemian ideas about culture as a progressive, transgressive enterprise and were prone to conform to mainstream intellectual fashion (My emphasis). (There were a couple of exceptions: a girl whose spectacular sex appeal and wild clothes masked skeptical views about Third World virtues, and a hard-line Communist of working-class background whose eccentric career trajectory eventually took him to the Washington Times.) Those with whom I am still in contact decades later tend to have the same assumptions and attitudes that they had back in the Thatcher years. Conservatives are heartless, greedy, socially snobbish, and probably sexually deviant in repressed and dangerous ways. The UN is good, aid organizations are good, peace activists are good, unions are good, and the EU is good”.
It is a must read article and deserves to be read. I would urge you all to read it.
Comment at Guido’s…
Time 2 CTRL, ALT & DEL says:
the BBC in usual mode
“A protest was staged along the route of the funeral procession, although the crowds included many thousands of well-wishers”
should have been written
“many thousands of well wishers lined the route of the funeral procession, although there were some that were there to protest”
If anything this tells us Maggie didn’t go far enough.
http://order-order.com/2013/04/17/the-collective-bitterness-of-kevin-maguire/#comment-1678747
Evan Davis was picking at the Thatcher brouhaha this morning with all manner of sly digs, smarmy and selective quotes, the previous poses of Cameron(well I`ll be…he`s not all we think him to be!).
Hospital radio sneers and aimless jousting in search of the “killer app” for the 9am news.
It didn`t come-bland, boring but would have got Evan a bit of brasso for trying anyway.
Why the hell does Jonathan Sacks waste his breath?…his eulogy was that good, I`m surprised that Sue and Evan dared to pontificate further on the point and purpose of Margaret Thatcher..but they`re shameless little mushrooms aren`t
they?
Time to bin Today…like Newsnight, it needs a merciful release from its once-proud history. A parody of “news” these days.
“The BBC distorts and suffocates an industry. It is too big,” it said. “The BBC’s charter will be up for renewal in 2016. It stretches credibility that it could or should be renewed in its current form.”
“The BBC ought to be a creative force for entrepreneurship. In reality it stifles innovation,”
“Its websites… have destroyed jobs, livelihoods and creativity by dumping free content on to markets where its rivals have no public subsidy.”
“What the BBC is not, and has never been, is an organisation devoted to investigative journalism. This is neither its forte, nor its primary métier,”
“demands in 2010 for the BBC to “consider selling Radio1”, home of youth news service Newsbeat, or to “give up BBC Three”
” call for the BBC to be regulated by Ofcom and berated the BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten for “arrogance and defensiveness”. It complained repeatedly of BBC executives earning “more than the Prime Minister”
“Big, bloated and cunning”
Do these quotes sound like something which wouldn’t be out of place on these forums? Something many of us have been voicing for quite some time?
Well the source of them might come as a surprise because they’re all from James Harding the new head of news taking over from Helen Boaden. I wonder how long it will be before he sings a different tune??
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/honoured-to-join-the-bbc-james-harding–the-man-who-tore-it-to-bits-8575634.html
Criminy… that darned… Independent… and its… readers.
‘I wonder how long it will be before he sings a different tune??’
Well if he doesn’t, and the new DG’s deal is anything to go on, they are going to need to get Dr. Who on some retroactive contract redactions pronto.
Maybe it was all… a different time?
Ah well, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
The BBC – stretching credibility, because it can
Is it just my imagination or did the BBC manage to interview every single crustie, shoutie, smelly, blac blocer, class warrior, duvet-day social worker, South Wales miner, soap-dodger, duvet-day teechur, Orgreave ‘veteran, bruvva, polyversity Grant, SWPer, UAFer, trustafarian, ex-Durham miner, ‘activist’, sundry other leftie, and every twat-with-a-twitter-account-and-a-grievance who turned up in Central London today.
Twice, but there was only a dozen of them.
No Kevin Maguire? For…’balance’?
http://order-order.com/2013/04/17/the-collective-bitterness-of-kevin-maguire/
Oh, sorry… missed this…
‘every twat-with-a-twitter-account-and-a-grievance’
Lucky such an obsessed extreme is not daily fare as a political ‘commentator’ near daily on the broadcast media.
Maybe he should get his own show? They could call it… ‘BBC Politics Daily’.
So Kevin Maguire praises Ken Livingston who himself is an IRA sympathiser. The IRA butchered more Catholics than all of the other armed groups put together! Yet they accuse Lady Thatcher of war mongering!!! Hilarious stuff!!!
Good luck getting the BBC to play along…it would probably be ‘racist’ or something…
UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom calls for St George’s Day to be made a bank holiday
http://www.thisisgrimsby.co.uk/UKIP-MEP-Godfrey-Bloom-calls-St-George-s-Day-bank/story-18729892-detail/story.html#ixzz2TTTzZWx9
I’m sure we’ll still get the annual Newsnight discussion on ‘what is Englishness’ – in which a panel including Billy Bragg, Will Self and Bonnie Greer* tell us all that there’s no such thing as ‘The English’ or a culture to match. Cheers. Always good to be told you aren’t relevant in your own country, especially by a foreigner*. (yes, I used the ‘F’ word! OMG!)
*Did you know – Bonnie Greer (not English) is on the advisory panel of English Heritage’s Blue Plaques scheme? Some people really know how to work their way into the public sphere. They’re the new social climbers.
Bonnie Greer on Question Time ” We all came out of Africa !! ”
Yes, Luv, you did, but I certainly didn’t. The lefty subtext is, you can’t be ‘waaycist’ because we’re all Africans.
Back in the 1980s, the BBC had a series called “The Africans”, introduced by Dr Ali Al-Masrui, perhaps to “balance” J. M. Roberts’ earlier one “The Triumph of the West”.
Masrui claimed inter alia that “We invented the family”, we being the Africans. So there!
”Some people really know how to work their way into the public sphere. They’re the new social climbers.”
Well, she’s black, tick box, she’s female, tick box, a liberal, tick box, don’t know if she’s a lesbian or not.
Just seen Charles Moore give the BBC a right slagging live on the news channel.
News woman completely lost her tongue.
Best thing on telly so far this year!
Have you got an iPlayer or Youtube link? Want to see this one…
so do I
It was at about 17.50 on News 24 -wondered if anyone else had seen it as Mr Moore would not be talked down!
and me
I`ve been thinking of this word “divisive” that seems to have been used against Margaret Thatcher.
Indeed she was, now I come to think of it.
She divided the Labour Party into the SDP and the Militant Tendency hosts, thereby separating Denis Healey from Polly Toynbee, Roy Jenkins from Tony Benn/Viscount Stansgate.
No wonder the Lefties hate her so…she kept them out of power for years, and neutered the dangers of a Foot or a Kinnock turning us over to Moscow, Berlin or Brussels. I bet Toynbees card is still marked by those who clung to the wreakage in those happy times. I hope so.
She also split the unions into those who believed in democracy, and those prepared to kill others rather than have a ballot, or elect a shop steward.
She split the Republicans into those who`d put themselves up for election (yes, even the likes of Bobby Sands/Owen Carroon) -as opposed to those who preferred to bomb Thatcher out of office, without the courage to face her.
Indeed she WAS a divisive and a decisive figure…if you were a Lefty with aromatherapy oils and homoeopathic remedies, where a surgeon is needed…wouldn`t you just hate the fact that you`re a chattering squit of history, as opposed to a woman-THE only person since Churchill-to actually have changed our lives.
The evidence is all around…anything after her will leave no shadow of the likes of Major through to Cameron and their rotten regimes.
God Bless her….and a great eulogy from Jonathan Sacks(TFTD-Today this morning) makes all else redundant by way of comment from the BBC.
As if that`ll stop them though.
Just got my email summary from C4:
http://www.channel4.com/news/margaret-thatchers-funeral-is-held-at-st-pauls-cathedral
Mr. Snow is a know quantity, so… and in a few cases but a few things stood out…
A final farewell for Margaret Thatcher
Unsurprising was the epic spectacle of Mrs Thatcher’s send off – more surprising was the extraordinary eclectic nature of the public turnout. Bulked up by tourists who could not believe their luck that such a thing would happen while they were in town, office workers from companies along the route, passers-by and the rest ensured people three-deep and sometimes much more along the route from Westminster to St Paul’s.
And yet two hours before the funeral started at 9am there were more police and media than there were “the faithful”. I spent the build up to the funeral wandering amongst them, along the stretch of Fleet Street through which the gun carriage was due to trundle. I picked up absolutely fabulous responses from a few protesters who turned their backs or who, in the case of a wonderful miner’s wife from Derbyshire, had caught the early train to be with similarly red-clad women of her age on the approach to St Paul’s.
I met the Tory faithful, ten men in black ties and dark suits who all turned out to be MPs, and then another four men in black ties who turn out to be MPs, the one Afro-Caribbean man amongst them turned out to be no less than David Cameron’s parliamentary private secretary.
It was a strange kind of morning. There was a spirit of subdued revelry, there was no rude protest. I found one man and one woman who turned their back on the coffin but I caught both of them sneaking a look over their right shoulders.
Joy was it to be amongst the throng. You’ll catch my piece tonight on Channel 4 News you’ll catch Gary Gibbon’s account of the funeral itself, in which there were amazing top shots from the dome looking down on the congregation below, albeit accentuating the vast array of men in black suits that dominated the occasion. And then there’s George Osborne crying – perhaps the shot of the day, and Amanda Thatcher – a star is born, a generation is missed and a legacy lives.
To contrast from all of this Katie Razzall is in South Yorkshire where the protest was very definitively less genteel, angry miners’ families protesting the destruction of communities, and the death of livelihoods. You may feel you’ve had your fill of the Thatcher passing but I think you may want to catch this final moment and then move on.
Yes, he’s not what you’d call a fan, and seems to persist professionally in face of clear partiality, but in amongst it all he at least managed not to sound like a 35yo eternal student union president Wolfie Smiff tribute. Which too many have.
So just like every other leftist fellow traveller Snow, apparently a journalist, was seeking validation of his opinions rather than facts. Puts me in mind of the famous “we had to look really hard to find him” comment by a Beeboid re a pro immigration vox-pop.
Finding some embittered 80’s activists to give ‘absolutely fabulous’ opinions eh. How unfortunate for the leftist narrative that they were quite obviously a minority amongst a very large number of people. Speaking of which, as for tourists ‘bulking out the crowds’ FFS 1) how many tourists does he think are in London at any one time 2) Isn’t it odd that foreigners had heard of her and felt strongly enough about her to pay their respects at her funeral. Would you go to stand at the side of the road to watch the funeral of Michel Rocard – French socialist Prime Minister 88 – 91 if you happened to be in Paris when he died, ditto Poul Schutler in Copenhagen etc or Gaston ThornPresident of the European Commission 81-85. You get the point – how many tourists would forego going to the Louvre / eating in fantastic brasseries etc to see ANY French politicians’ funeral procession go past !
3) Any chance of vox pop from one of the millions of happy ex Sov-bloc citizens who have taken up their hard won freedom to travel to and live in the UK. Does Snow member remember Lech Walesa?
As per my post above Mr Snow – Mrs Thatcher never polled less than 13 million votes in a general election. Blair only just managed to top her lowest poll in his ‘glorious landslide’. Millions of people respected her
Anybody wonder why people are still living in mining villages where the only source of employment closed over 25 years ago?
Jon Snow really belongs on the BBC.
Bit like Ken Barlow on Coronation Street…somebody who found a job at the very start , and never quite found it in himself to create a portfolio for a career…just a sinecure that craves a white poppy and bright socks and ties.
Very much the BBC template for a Hampstead rebel.
Poor old fop was reduced to bitching with Shirley Williams about Thatcher grinding women under bike wheels of inequality-or other such slops(Channel 4 News).
Poor Shirley-and indeed poor Snow saw empty lives in each other…no prospect of a state commemoration of their fatuous lotus eating lives…and Shirley said that she`d never known what women wanted.
Apparently she was not the daughter of a Bloomsbury scribbler, therefore Mrs T had it privileged being a grocers daughter.
And Snow didn`t laugh…God, what a circus in their minds.
Maybe a cover of Hollow Back Girl to mock the demise of Shirley….the girl don` nothing, despite all that privilege.
Did Margaret know that Shirley would be going to her funeral…enquiry into that one please?
Jon Snow is very definitely a BBC type – for one thing (and God knows there are so many to choose from), he’s a fully paid-up member of the self-righteous, delusional congregation known as The Church of the Holy Consensus on CAGW. Snow’s been a useful idiot for ‘The Cause’ for some years now. This is why you’ll never hear even a whisper of climate dissent on Channel 4 News. The only upside is that time is against him now. How long before he finally gets shown the door marked ‘retirement’ and we can get back to some honest reporting on the non-problem of so-called ‘man-made climate change’..?
The funeral has made people rather bolshi. Charles Moore of the Telegraph was on BBC News 24 telling the Beeb how disrespectful they were to Margaret Thatcher and that the Beeb had always hated Thatcher.
There was a stunned silence and then he was cut off.
Best bit of TV I have seen in a long time 🙂
Part of the interview is here……
thanks +james. Enjoyed that. 🙂
The BBC is reporting that a letter liberally spiced with ricin has been sent to a ‘US Senator’. Later they report that similar has been sent to the White House. So you’d think those nasty Tea Party lot are up to no good wouldn’t you.
Except you have to go to Sky to find out that the Senator is a Republican, one Roger Walker.
Funny how when it’s the Republicans in the cross hairs they become Senators and when it’s the Dimocrats it’s stated out right.
Listened to the 1600 news whilst driving home where it was clearly stated that the senator was a Republican.
This is confirmed on the BBC News site:
“The letter was intended for Roger Wicker, a Republican senator representing Mississippi, Mr Reid said.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22178517
Not on News 24 it ain’t – wall to wall Senator – no party attributed.
As to the 1600 News – do you have a link for that?
not on 2200 BBC 1 news thier ‘flagship’
I noticed as it struck me as strange
I nearly crashed my taxi when the crowd cheered and applauded as Mrs T was carried from St Pauls – I was laughing so much – the BBC have really got it so wrong.
Yet an hour later The World at One was there giving equal coverage (if not more) to the very small number of protesters. Must be because she was so “Divisive”!
If by “equal coverage” you mean that they were given a mention, then you are correct. To not mention the protesters would of course be an example of “bias”.
Isn’t the story, despite the mass coverage and the ‘Ding-Dong’ campaign, that there was a vanishingly small number of protests, that there was a huge groundswell of respect for Mrs Thatcher that manifested itself in a city full of people paying their respects.
Using your logic the BBC will of course give substantial coverage to the anti-debt protestors, or people in the town who simply disagree, at the next ukuncut riot in central London.
Not at all. You cannot dispute that protesters were in evidence. For any news organisation to pretend otherwise and not report on the protesters presence would be “biased”.
Following the riots the BBC and other organisations carried many reports on those who disagreed with the action taken by the rioters and in the days afterwards there was a lot of reporting focusing on those who were impacted and those who volunteered to assist with the clean up.
Proportion out the number of people on the streets today wanting to show respect and the tiny few who wanted to protest, the BBC should have had just a few seconds of mention of the latter rather than the time they spent on them.
Listened to the entire coverage on Radio 4 as I drove to a meeting. Any mention of the protesters was limited to acknowledging their presence – amounted to less than a minute in total out of the 120 minutes I listened to.
The BBC coverage of the funeral itself was impeccable – at least on the TV and on Radio 4.
After that, normal service was resumed. On the news following, equal coverage was given to the tiny number of protesters – ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie – dead! dead! dead! ‘ – as to the vast crowds of supporters who were there to pay their respects.
Funny how the BBC picks and chooses which minorities it gives equal airtime to, eh?
I have been surprisingly moved by the funeral for Baroness Thatcher today. It was, despite the ceremonial pomp and circumstance a very simple British family affair as we said goodbye for the last time to Lady Margaret the Prime Minister and Margaret the mother.
I have also been angry and ashamed as I listened to one after another broadcaster call her divisive, spitting it out as if she were an enemy of the state instead of its savour. This really has been a week for the intellectual losers in our country to vent their bile and to have the sort of amnesia usually the prerogative of zombies and the un-dead.
Do not talk to me of the industries that she is accused of closing, they were decimated by Labour’s nationalisation policies, incompetence and their bully boy unions long before Mrs Thatcher came to power. They brought Prime Minister Heath down in 1974 after the three day week. The most terrible time for Britain in the twentieth century, other than the two world wars.
I was running a small innovative electronics business at the time and the three day week was a nightmare but I and my 25 staff worked around it as best we could. What finished off the business is another factor that seems to be forgotten now. Because of the financial problems Heath was forced to impose a cap on business overdrafts, in our case it was reduced to zero at a minutes notice. Up to that point we had been successful, were growing and managing to compete with Japanese imports. We went out of business and 25 jobs were lost, forever.
I then saw at first hand that same year what unions were really about when I worked in the car industry on the assembly line. Strikes every week due to union shop steward stupidity, ignorance, greed and bullying. Management had no chance to run a profitable business and eventually gave up trying. That once great car manufacturer went bust and thousands lost their jobs. It was the same in the cycle, motorcycle, steel, coal and many other industries.
The labour years after Heath were no better and ended with more and more strikes, rubbish piled in the streets and the bodies of loved ones stacked up unable to be buried due to industrial actual. What a misnomer that is ‘Industrial Action’. It actually means unions trying to bring hell on earth to get their way.
It took the most determined politician other than Winston Churchill to eventually get it right after she was elected in 1979. What followed was uncomfortable and a lot of people got hurt but what was the alternative. A National Socialist Party? Remember that is what happened in Germany when their economy collapsed after WW1 and Britain was going that way fast.
I am 70 this year and remember well those days, so for children who had not been born then, or those who have never worked hard and struggled to feed their children through those terrible days and wish to denigrate Baroness Thatcher’s memory I say blame the unions, blame the Labour Party, not Mrs Thatcher. History will prove her not only right but a great heroin of this country.
What an excellent comment!
I, too, was around at the time and that is exactly what happened.
Albaniaman wasn’t even born at tht time but I bet he’ll be along tell you that is exactly what didn’t happen.
Spot on, Old Timer. Exactly as I remember it, too. The country was more divided then than at any time after Margaret Thatcher became PM, because the unions thought they had all the power and could treat the government and its citizens with absolute contempt. We were one step away from anarchy in 1979 and if Mrs. Thatcher had never been elected God only knows where the country would have ended up.
Heard the 8am News on Today.
Who else but Dianne Abbott to squauk about “constitutional protocols”?…not quite the divisive anti whitey, private school patronising guff of a fat no hoper that plays the race card as substitute for a brain…for principles. Still Thatcher demands the views of real heavyweights, not pips like Kissinger or Walesa. Hence Dianne Abbott.
Who else but Dianne Abbott to tell us of the cost.
New Labour?…captains, faithful custodians of the public purse 1997-2010?….Supreme Courts on the backs of fag packets, whilst butchering the country into European regions for Prescott to serially shag his diary secretary…THAT constitutionally proper august defender of the “State Protocols”, evidenced since the Magna Carta?
And not a mocking interviewer in sight..good old BBC eh?
A charming article I found on the BBC website
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22183064
A jeering ‘crowd’ of people in a ‘mining village’ who were either 5 or not even born in 1979 burn Mrs Thatcher in effigy and amazingly enough the BBC just happens to be there to film it. I wonder how that happened? I guess BBC crews are just out in these ‘ex-mining’ villages 24/7.
A sick and contemptible publicity stunt joyfully broadcast to the planet by the BBC. The event itself, although not instigated by the BBC, was almost certainly stage managed by the BBC crew (I will never forget millenium night when there was a big street party where I live and the odious arrogant and patronising metropolitan BBC crew ordering about the “dung spattered yokels” as if the party was a stunt put on just so that it could be filmed. Luckily the crowd told them to **** off and that they could film if they wanted to but we were not ‘performing’ for their benefit)
Sorry blog readers for taking so much space on this thread today: the behaviour of the left in relation to Mrs Thatchers’ death has really infuriated me! I promise to calm down!
“A sick and contemptible publicity stunt joyfully broadcast to the planet by the BBC.” – This was reported on the radio news at 1600. The BBC were not the only news media on site as the report mentioned school children looking at the group of satellite trucks.
As for it being “stage managed by the BBC crew”; do you have any evidence to back up this claim or is it merely your “bias” showing through?
For goodness sake its her funeral today hence, this report is available on the internet for the planet to see – hence my view that it is “a sick and contemptible publicity stunt”. That is my opinion and I believe it falls under the definition of “fair comment”, which is still (if only just) permissible in post Leveson Britain.
Further, if you read my comment, I say that the BBC certainly did not initiate the event – but I am absolutely sure that the TV crew and continuity people present told the cart driver when to move, where they should position themselves to ensure the shot is framed correctly etc. This is by definition “stage management*”. There couldn’t have been more than 50 people at this event. How was it news worthy?
And yes I accept that I am very biased, but then you don’t have to pay me 145 per year to read the sputum-spattered rabid right wing nonsense that I type out. In fact you can ignore me completely and I won’t cost you a penny and for a bonus I do not pretend to be an even handed genetically impartial commenter.
*”Stage management is the practice of organizing and coordinating a theatrical production.”
Just watched the coverage of this on Sky News. Lots of journalists, lots of photographers and lots of people milling about in a very disorganised manner. If you are “absolutely sure that the TV crew and continuity people present told the cart driver when to move, where they should position themselves to ensure the shot is framed correctly” that is one heck of a conspiracy that everyone else is keeping quiet!!
Picking up on trivia again, Albaman. Desperate, mate, desperate.
Oh for gods sake, I’m sorry. Hyperbole got to me along with strong coffee. You are right it was a complete farce and badly managed, clearly there could have been no BBC crew involvement in the way it was presented at all and the crew just happened to be passing and stopped, their interest peaked by a Steptoe cart carrying a coffin.
I admit I am completely in the wrong and unreservedly withdraw my comment that it was a “sick and contemptible publicity stunt”.
It was clearly a sober and well presented critique of her and her regime and the single most important item worthy of reporting today. It’s not as if there has been a constant barrage of recusants on the BBC bravely the incontrovertible truth that she “destroyed Britain” for the last week. I now see that the BBC and news media presence was entirely spontaneous and co-incidental and that this was a brave and popular act of revulsion by the serried ranks (perhaps in the tens of thousands) of the working class, entirely appropriate to the day of her funeral, by those who still suffer her evil influence who had found the perfect way to once and for all destroy her pitiable alleged legacy and consign her fatuous social and economic reforms to the dustbin of history along with the ravings of her philosophical bed mates, Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Alfredo Strossner, General Pinochet, Fransicco Franco and Owald Mosley.
Is there any further retraction you would like?
I’d pay £145.50 just to hear a Beeboid for once ask one of these professional ex-miners something like this: ‘it’s twenty-three years since Lady Thatcher stepped down, we’ve had the longest boom in history from 1990-2007 and 200,000 Polacks who virtually walked here have all found jobs, have you ever thought that the problem might be you?’
You will not hear it asked. I know a S.Wales town where they really do feel that the jobs must be bought to them. Nice people but it is very sad. To survive one has to adapt. I appreciate that they wish to see their communities thrive but sometimes it is better just to let them go and move somewhere else. It is not easy but de industrialisation also means that the towns that were created no longer have a purpose. The legitimate criticism of Mrs T is that she seemed not to realise the implications of this. She may have thought the problem unsolvable and put it out of her mind. Either way it has left us all with a problem.
And when the bBBC have finished interviewing the ex-miner about why he couldn’t work anywhere other than down t’pit, how about the bBBC asking any Labour politician why, if Mrs Thatcher’s policies were so bad, they didn’t reverse any of them during their 13 years in power 1997-2010. Labour didn’t re-open any mines, nationalise any industries, legalise any trade union actions, or any of the many things that they say they hate Mrs Thatcher for.
They just rely on their lackeys in the bBBC, schools and the SWP to continue with the misinformation, whilst recognising that her policies were right.
Margaret Thatcher was interred in the grounds of the Chelsea Royal Hospital next to her husband and in the shadow of the Margaret Thatcher Infirmary, erected in her honour, with Chelsea pensioners to tend her memory for as long as is needed.
I wonder what will be the name of the yacht where Blair will be rolled over the side in a knocked off Baghdad rug with his arse facing Mecca?…he`ll not be allowed anything so provincial or nationalistic as a plot of (urgh) British soil will he?
No peace for the wicked thankfully.
And yet Thatcher is divisive, when Blair can`t even walk down a British street to sign his fictional portrayal of “power”.
Maybe we need to write some bile about Ali Campbell and put some off key bagpipes over it, come the great day.
Could you imagine any of this lot having a wing of a hospital named after them?
Margaret proved Enoch Powell wonderfully wrong…not ALL political life ends in failure…and we are proud to have known the one who was NOT one of the 99%.
Stuff that in your spliff, Occupy!
BBC’s Jon Kelly earlier this month:
“Three US justice officials who tackled white supremacist prison gangs have been killed…
three murders in less than three months have shone a spotlight on far-right prison gangs, whose empire of drug-dealing, racketeering and murder extends well beyond the walls and barbed wire around them.”
Slate’s Justin Peters today:
“Suspect in Texas Prosecutor Killings Has Nothing to Do With the Aryan Brotherhood…
Though much still needs to be explained at this stage, the arrests of Williams and his wife serve as a lesson for all those who, like me, immediately jumped to the most extreme conclusions in the Hasse and McLelland cases.”
Yes, quite.