I have been away all day, in London. The news of the death of Lady Thatcher is THE story of the day, the week. I am personally distraught at her passing. On the way back from the Airport I listened to the BBC and a programme which praised her as amongst the top 4 Prime Ministers of the last hundred years. Oh, just behind Comrade Brown perhaps? I cannot stomach the BBC coverage of her passing and will leave it with you.
Let this be the thread for catching BBC bias about one of the last of the giants of the 20th Century. Love her or loathe her, as the BBC says……
The BBC’s new Director General, Tony Hall, thinks the BBC is not left of centre.
If that is the case then what is the explanation for the atrociously one sided reporting that floods out of the BBC providing neither context, history or genuine analysis of any depth or originality? Are its journalists just bad or incompetent then?
What we get from the BBC is all too often what might be considered the verbatim reading of Labour Party press releases…BBC presenter’s insisting on mentioning the ‘bedroom tax’….now known as, after being called out on this, the ‘so called bedroom tax’ or the ‘bedroom tax as Labour calls it’. And yet they won’t call the Israeli ‘security barrier’ by that name…though they will call the NI walls ‘peace walls’….and they won’t call a terrorist a terrorist so as not to upset Palestinians.
The BBC will attack Osborne for parking in a disabled bay…despite the fact he wasn’t driving and knew nothing of it.
The BBC attack Osborne for raising the subject of Philpott and his lifestyle, though he didn’t connect it to the deaths of the children.
All things in perfect alignment with Labour attacks on Osborne….never mind the sweeping BBC attacks on any reform of the welfare system against which the BBC can muster an army of ‘victims’ and lobby groups all of which are allowed, indeed are encouraged, to give voice to their deepest hatred of any cuts and to raise the level of rhetoric to an astonishing height nearing insanity…one disabled rights campaigner suggesting Osborne didn’t like seeing disabled people and would like to make them ‘disappear’. When someone starts slipping in suggestions that Osborne is some kind of Nazi, a comment that went unchallenged by the BBC presenter, you know the debate has long ago lost any basis in reality or rationality.
This attitude has been encouraged by the BBC which has presented these ‘voices’ as if they were the ‘factual baseline’ from which to start any debate rather than highly strung opinions of vested interests…whilst the ‘voices’ went unquestioned, the answers were rigorously torn into and challenged.
The whole premise of the BBC is that it provides what the commercial sector cannot or will not….programmes that may not command vast audience figures but examine otherwise neglected or ignored parts of society, art, science and politics. Most importantly it has to provide news that is impartial, balanced in its reporting, favouring no political party or ideology.
The fact that it utterly fails in this regard, however Tony Hall deludes himself, should be raising ever more urgent questions about the funding of the BBC and possibly its continued existence in its privileged and oblivious state.
If I want left of centre, biased reporting there is the Guardian or the Independent. Which kind of begs the question ‘What is the BBC for? What does it do that is unique? Does it fulfil its obligations?’
The BBC is almost worthless if you measure it by the obligations and duties imposed upon it…for it fails to fulfil those in any way that would seem, to an impartial observer, fit and proper.
The BBC is no longer ‘Fit for Purpose’.
If the BBC is not ‘fit for purpose’, if it no longer does anything that is unique, if it distorts the democratic system by favouring one party or ideology, then why should the Public be obliged by Law to fund this overpowerful, unaccountable and unrepresentative organisation?
The BBC has a contract with the Public…we pay our license fee and the BBC will entertain, inform and educate…impartially and with a depth only possible with a source of funding that is assured and abundant.
The BBC has broken that contract….the most obvious and sinister breach being its innate support for the Labour Party and ‘progressive’ policies. Sinister because the BBC has sought to close down debate and done so by demonising, vilifying or ridiculing those who oppose such policies….UKIP is frequently mentioned in the same breath as the BNP or the Nazis, Tories presented as the nasty, uncaring Party….and going so far as to declare climate sceptics in need of psychological treatment whilst dismissing their views outright.
If you or I fail to pay the license fee we will soon get a knock on the door and threats of police visits and court action.
If the BBC favours one political party, if it incites riots, if it supports terrorists, if its biased reporting encourages attacks on British troops or Jews, if it undermines national identity and unity….
….there is nothing you can do.
The BBC is to all intents and purposes unaccountable. It may lose the odd DG now and again but it sails on regardless in the same old way, if anything even more determined to cement its position and impose its will upon the world and prove itself ‘right’.
Its non-political output becomes ever more political with nary an opportunity missed to slip in a ‘message’ of some kind into the ‘entertainment’….that’s if it can be bothered to make original material more often than not just filling the airwaves with repeats or programmes about houses, antiques and gardening.
The ultimate question must be ‘does the BBC do more harm than good?’
The answer can only be one possible….that the BBC has an enormously negative impact upon British society and its way of life constantly attacking not just the politics or the Establishment but even the very identity of the native population, their beliefs and way of life.
A news provider in the form of the BBC as originally intended, impartial and objective, is essential for any democracy…the flow of information and ideas being the basis for all democratic ideas and decisions…but if it no longer provides that service what good is it?
If it cannot be reformed then you have to ask why should people be forced to pay for what is essentially the Labour Party’s mouthpiece and one which they may not watch at all given the proliferation of alternative news or entertainment material now available.
The BBC has long ago broken its contract with the Nation, betrayed a trust that it has inherited, neglected its responsibilities and duties…or rather not neglected but deliberately trampled under foot, as it seeks to impose its view of the world upon us and mould us into the kind of people that the BBC thinks acceptable…if you don’t conform to that view you suddenly become an ‘outsider’, a dangerous alien to be hunted down and silenced one way or another.
The BBC cannot be reformed, it cannot be made impartial, it is too set in its ways, its mindset organically bound to the Labour Party and the Left’s world view.
It no longer provides the unique service that would warrant the imposition of a license fee to fund it.
It is time to set the BBC free….to stand on its own two feet in the commercial world. If it acts as any other commercial organisation not just in the ‘market place’ but by adopting a particular political stance then it should not be given the enormous advantage of a constant and assured source of funds.
It is time to stop the license fee obligation and allow people the freedom to choose what they pay to watch knowing full well the politics of any publication or broadcaster rather than being forced to pay for what is essentially an extended Labour Party political broadcast.
The BBC is Political, it forces upon us its own world view, it fails to provide the original and experimental material that its funding system allows to ‘fail’ and try again, it does little that the Commercial Sector doesn’t provide or cannot provide.
It does nothing that merits its license fee.
The BBC believes that the license fee gives it license to do as it likes…..it is time that ‘license’ was revoked and order reimposed upon this organisation that has grown too big and become too powerful and too unaccountable for its actions.
Hi everyone. See the last thread is bulging so time for a new one!
Is it just me but does anyone else feel the BBC has been leading the race to ensure that the Grand National is increasingly sanitised and the fences made easy? Might this sudden interest in Animal Welfare be at all linked to the fact that Channel 4 now have the rights to show this race and the BBC is now bereft of this event? What do you think?
OK, you can breath a sight of RELIEF! Nelson Mandela has been discharged from hospital and is BACK HOME! It’s the single most important story on the BBC news web site as I type this. Naturally…they DO love Comrade Nelson, not that it influences the editorial weight they out behind this non story, no way…..altogether now “Free Nelson Man-dela..”
I don’t know if the BBC’s political correspondent, Carole Walker, has a dog which she walks in the park but if she does she should not be alarmed if some man sidles up to her and slips her a brown envelope full of cash.
That could well be a very grateful member of the Labour Party who has seen her latest report that provided apparent, and no doubt unintended, backing to Ed Balls’ malicious allegations against George Osborne.
This is what Osborne said about welfare and the Philpott case:’
“I think there is a question for government and for society about the welfare state, and the taxpayers who pay for the welfare state, subsidising lifestyles like that.
“And I think that debate needs to be had,” said Mr Osborne.
All perfectly reasonable and fair, you might think.
Not to Ed Balls who says:
“I believe George Osborne’s calculated decision to use the shocking and vile crimes of Mick Philpott to advance a political argument is the cynical act of a desperate chancellor. For the chancellor to link this wider debate to this shocking crime is nasty and divisive and demeans his office.”
Nothing cynical, nasty or desperate about our Shadow Chancellor.
However Osborne made no link between the deaths and the welfare system. He specifically separated the issues…..his reference to welfare was solely linked to Philpott’s lifestyle and not linked to his crime.
The BBC’s Carole Walker has decided, against the quite clear evidence of Osborne’s actual statement, that he did make the link…her title for the report says exactly how she wants to play this…a cynical political gamble by Osborne……just as Balls claims in fact….
Analysis: George Osborne’s Philpott gamble
‘Chancellor George Osborne chose his words carefully when he was asked about Mick Philpott on an official visit to Derby.
But it was clear the Tories’ chief election strategist was happy to link the shocking case of a man convicted of killing six of his children with the need for far-reaching changes to the welfare system.’
A very clever and slippery sentence from Walker.
Note her use of ‘Torie’s chief election strategist’…why use that instead of’ ‘Chancellor‘ in which capacity he was speaking……because she wants to imply that his comments are merely an highly cynical ‘election ploy’.
Walker doesn’t directly say Osborne specifically named the welfare system as the cause of the deaths…but she makes sure that is the message you get from her words throwing in some emotive language to spice it up and manipulate your perceptions….‘happy to link…….shocking case….killing of children….need for far reaching changes to welfare system’.
Pretty clear what she intends you to think.
As Walker actually points out later in the report Labour are on the wrong side of this argument….it is in fact Balls who is using the death of these children as the most cynical and opportunist way of scoring some political points against Osborne.
Balls says:
“Chancellors have to think very carefully before they comment on the issues of the day. How they do so says a lot about the character of their chancellorship.’
The trouble is, even with the misplaced support of the BBC, Labour won’t win this one….the Public do want to see welfare reformed and they think cases like Philpott’s, where he led a lifestyle that most of them couldn’t afford, and yet were in fact paying for, are a prime example of what has gone wrong with the welfare system.
I think it says an awful lot about the character of Ed Balls that he makes poltical capital out of dead children whilst at the same time trying to prevent the necessary and urgent reform of the welfare system.
This report from Carole Walker says a lot about BBC reporting…either she doesn’t understand what Osborne said or she cynically ignored the intended meaning and went for a heading and interpretation that would paint Osborne in the worst light possible..that of a politician gambling with children’s lives for political gain.
She finishes off her report with this statement:’
‘The real test will come when voters come to terms with the changes on the daily lives – rather than hearing of the bizarre life and appalling crimes of one particular claimant.’
So once again linking welfare reform with Philpott’s crime and Osborne’s statement and policies.
Walker says Philpott’s life was ‘bizarre’…by that she presumably means unique and unusual…a lifestyle that is by no means everyday…and therefore shouldn’t be used to invoke changes to the welfare system.
I think Walker and the BBC are just out of touch with reality. I would wager that most people reading this could name at least one family, if not many more, who have a similar lifestyle, not necessarily with a live in lover as well as the wife…but the multiple children being used to provide an income….along with numerous other examples of excessive state funded generosity…after all how many families can afford to keep three horses? It seems not to be a problem for some unemployed families when the State is paying.
The welfare system is enormously generous for some things whilst being incredibly tightfisted over others…..the balance is wrong and needs to be sorted out to provide a fairer, more equal distribution of the pot…..Strange that the BBC and Labour, both fans of equality and fairness, seem unable to agree that this is needed.
Carole Walker is a professional journalist, she knows exactly the effect her words will have and she no doubt chose them carefully and fully considered what the reader might take from them.
Therefore you have to think that her report knowingly attacked Osborne and deliberately attempts to make it appear he links the children’s deaths with welfare reform.
Conclusion…on the face of it you would say that she is doing Labour’s job for them.
Andrew Mitchell must be scratching his head in wonder.
Allegations that he called a police office a ‘pleb’ were headline news on the BBC…indeed the story is still on their frontpage today.
There was absolutely no proof he said anything of the kind.
Today we learn that Labour’s ‘Obama’ in waiting, the black MP Chuka Umunna, called Londoners enjoying a night out in the West End ‘Trash’…..
‘The former DJ, now Labour’s shadow business secretary, belongs to an exclusive online club for so-called ‘jetrosexuals’, where he asked for tips on the best nightspots to avoid the ‘trash and C-list wannabes’ of London’s West End.
‘
Not a peep out of the BBC.
Is it coz he’s Black…or Labour …or both?
Why haven’t you reported this story BBC? If Mitchell was news then so is this.
I was amused by the declaration from the new BBC DG Tony Hall that trust is rising in the BBC. I wonder what makes him think this? Was it the Savile revelations perhaps, Jimmy the long time BBC star and serial paedo? Perhaps it was how the thorough and entirely professional way that Newsnight tackled the allegations against Lord McAlpine? I wonder HOW Hall comes to this conclusion. I also note that he was COY on the issue of the license fee, as reported here.
Sorry folks, been busy but back and so is a new Open Thread…
