The BBC breathlessly reports that a Bridgwater social club has gone up in smoke and are claiming it was definitely an arson attack by the far right EDF who very definitely attacked it because it was rumoured the club had received a membership application from a Muslim, and in a positive move for community cohesion the club was actively considering letting him join.

Locals say there are EDF links to the site.

The BBC report that the police, who say they are investigating the ‘suspicious’ fire, will be maintaining 24 hour patrols in ‘vulnerable’ sites which suggests that further attacks may follow.  The Muslim community is living in fear of this wave of anti-Muslim attacks.

That of course is not what the BBC said…..everyone knows that EDF isn’t the EDL…don’t they?

The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones @ruskin147 tweets: Feeling sorry for the poor devil running the @EDFenergy Twitter account – spending their day explaining that they’re not the EDL…

However a similar approach was taken by the BBC to the recent fires at a Muslim community centre and a Muslim school. 

The BBC reported that the two fires were ‘attacks’…long before police made some arrests for the school fire...but nowhere was there a statement from the police  saying that the fires were arson nor of course, who started the fires.

The police have been patrolling various Muslim sites just in case these were arson attacks…but that was precautionary….

The BBC’s Danny Shaw interprets that as:

“This suggests the Met believes further attacks may follow.”

No..it doesn’t, what it ‘suggests’ is that police didn’t know…they didn’t even know if these were ‘attacks’,  but were taking precautions.

As the BBC itself reports:

“Detectives are working tirelessly to establish whether these fires were started deliberately, and if so, to catch those responsible.”

The BBC round it all off with this pronouncement of implied guilt:

Following the fire, police said, the letters “EDL” (English Defence League) were found sprayed on the side of the building. [ref.  the first fire]

The blaze prompted local Muslim groups to call for the authorities to take “serious action” over anti-Islam attacks.

What ‘anti-Islam’ attacks?

The police had made no statement that this was arson…they were just investigating  ‘suspicious’ fires.

Just as with the Boston bombings the BBC  leapt to conclusions that it wanted to be true….white racists attack Muslims in this case…may be true…but the BBC had no evidence of that at all….but that didn’t stop them running stories implying such a thing….and feeding the Islamophobia industry that glories in the death of people like Lee Rigby as it cranks up the motors to claim that Muslims are the real vicitms of such attacks….

The BBC are once again actually encouraging Muslims to be afraid, encouraging them to think that there is a wave of anti-Muslim attacks…despite the evidence being that there are in fact very few such attacks.

The BBC are in fact helping to stir up discontent, fear and anger…and potentially the radicalisation of Muslims.

 Ironic when the BBC does everything it can to persuade the British Public that they have nothing to fear from Muslims or Islam…..everytime a bomb goes off or a Muslim terror cell appears in court or a grooming gang attacks only white girls, or two Muslims attempt to behead a British soldier on the streets of a British town….or an MP gets stabbed.

 In contrast there is this report today in which the BBC report a ‘spokesperson’ who is quick off the mark to say ‘nothing to do with Islam’ here:

Explosion at MP Nick Boles’s office in Bourne

‘A spokesperson said early indications suggested the incident was not linked to any wider issues or recent events in the county.’

The ‘Right Wing’ Patrick Mercer was an agreeable target for the BBC…they had no problem setting him up for a fall.

The Chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Committee, Tim Yeo, was a different matter altogether….and even now as the BBC reports this latest potential scandal they downplay its significance, miss out ‘evidence’ and in fact actually deny that some of the claims were made despite them being highlighted by other news providers….even the Guardian reports the claims in full:

Tim Yeo denies claims he offered to advise solar energy lobbyists for cash

As pointed out several times on these pages Guido (the Sunday Times video is ‘revealing’ to say the least…the BBC misses out major chunks of it) pretty much nailed Yeo’s potential conflict of interest by highlighting his numerous business interests in renewable and green industries……earning £530,000 from private firms since taking over the committee according to the Sunday Times…and having £585,000 in share options in low carbon companies.

Yeo has been caught in a Sunday Times sting in which the Times claims he was offering to smooth the path of green industry lobbyists by helping them meet the right people, including government figures….being close to “really all the key players in the UK in government’ and ‘able to introduce them to ‘almost everyone you needed to get hold of in this country”.

[Sunday Times is paywalled so here’s the Telegraph’s report]

The ST claim he told them he also advised GB Railfreight on how to present their case before they gave evidence to the ECC committee….he told the Sunday Times ‘lobbyists’ that he could advise them also….as it was a “good way of getting your stuff on the map”.

What many might think is most damning is the claim that he said he could not speak for the lobbyists publicly because “People will say he’s saying this because of his commercial interest…..but….what I say to people in private is another matter altogether.”

The Sunday Times also claims he said he could work one day a month for the lobbyists when the offered a fee of £7,000 per day.

Yeo denies all such accusations and says he was about to email the lobbyists to say he wasn’t prepared to work for them as it was incompatible with his role as chairman of the ECCC….and he denies ‘coaching’ GB Railfreight.

What is interesting is the BBC’s article in which it finally catches up with events having for so long ignored them.

However….the article does all it can to distance Yeo from the accusations and any thought that he might in fact have something to answer for, it asks no difficult questions itself.

For a start there’s the title:  ‘Tim Yeo Facing Coaching Claim’

The BBC highlight the claim that he ‘coached’  ‘GB Railfreight’…but that isn’t the main accusation…the other accusations, listed above, don’t get a mention in the BBC’s story.

The bulk of the BBC’s ‘report’ is in fact made up of statements that are supportive of  Yeo…and as stated actually misses out the most serious allegations against him.

Here are the BBC’s ‘supportive statements’:

1.  “Lobbying – attempting to influence politicians – goes on all the time and is perfectly legitimate,” says BBC political correspondent Chris Mason.

2.   Mr Yeo has since said he had not tutored this representative, the managing director of GB Railfreight, about giving evidence.

There is no suggestion GB Railfreight did anything wrong. It has said in a statement that its managing director made the same arguments the company has made regularly.

In the committee hearing, Mr Yeo publicly excused himself from the questioning because of his acknowledged conflict of interest.

3.  Mr Yeo said: “I intend to contest these allegations very vigorously indeed.”  He denied “absolutely” to the Sunday Times that he had breached the MPs’ Code of Conduct.

4.  He also told the paper’s undercover journalists, after they withdrew their offer to work with him, that he was relieved because he’d come to the view that the work was not compatible with his position as an MP and committee chair.

5.  Asked about the issue, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said he could not comment on the allegations but told the Murnaghan programme on Sky News that “if you’re obeying the rules, you’ve got nothing much to fear”.

6.  Mr Yeo denies this and says he intends to contest all the allegations.  The BBC understands Mr Yeo has referred himself to the Parliamentary standards commissioner.

7.  Lobbying isn’t illegal. Trying to get MPs to change their mind is all part of politics.  Paid advocacy – paying cash for questions in Parliament – is against the rules.  But that’s not the allegation here. There’s no suggestion Tim Yeo’s agreed to do anything like that.

Hang on…..‘Paid advocacy – paying cash for questions in Parliament – is against the rules.  But that’s not the allegation here. There’s no suggestion Tim Yeo’s agreed to do anything like that.’

Really?  The Sunday Times says that he was offered £7,000 a day as a fee for him to push for new laws to boost its business……the claim by the Sunday Times is that ‘He told them he could commit to at least one day a month.’

So when the BBC says there is ‘no suggestion’ that he agreed to work for a green energy company that isn’t true…the suggestion is very much there.

Regardless of the truth of the allegations, which Yeo vigorously denies, the BBC is taking sides here before knowing the truth….it plays down his ‘coaching’ and fails to mention altogether the other accusations of a more serious nature.

As for the ‘coaching….he says he excused himself from questioning Railfreight because of the perceived conflict of interest….but then he didn’t need to question Railfreight…because, according to the Sunday Times,  he had provided them with the answers..he knew the answers already….not only that he knew that they were the answers most likely to be accepted by the committee.  But still…no conflict of interest there..he  had ‘excused’ himself.

Rather than investigate and seek to establish the truth it looks like the BBC has already also decided what the answers should be…..Yeo is innocent of all charges.

I imagine anyone from the general public reading the revelations in the Sunday Times might well be astounded and would say that this is potentially an extremely serious breach of trust and have reams of questions to ask…not so the BBC.

 Bishop  Hill says:

‘While it looks as though Yeo is going to fight the allegations, claiming without a hint of irony that he was on the point of writing to the company to tell them that he was uncomfortable working on the basis they’d discussed, the general vibe among the Westminster insiders seems to be that Yeo is toast.’

…whilst the BBC instead of making toast of him ‘butters him up’ instead.

‘conservativehome‘ says:

‘If the allegations are proven, then it is very hard to see how he could continue not only as committee chairman but as an MP.’

So, serious allegations that the BBC doesn’t take seriously…for some reason.

Is the BBC corrupt? 

When it comes to covering up for the climate change industry it certainly looks that way.

Stop the world, but Mandela is ill, again, and BBC instantly go into full panic. I dread to think what their coverage will be like should this ancient communist loving terrorist commander pop his clogs.

Here you go, a new Open Thread! Wasn’t it fantastic that Her Majesty put John Humphrys in his place the other day?

Seems to be a slightly different tone from the BBC when reporting the same story, that of the US PRISM electronic intelligence gathering revelations.

This side of the Pond the Brits get this headline:

GCHQ US spy claims ‘chilling’….allegations that Britain’s electronic listening post GCHQ has been gathering data through a secret US spy programme

and the report adopts a pretty negative attitude towards the intelligence gathering….nothing to do with who is leading the charge?…

Labour’s Keith Vaz said the claims were “chilling” and shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper demanded an inquiry.

Across the Pond its seems the BBC think Obama was taking difficult decisions, doing a difficult job, and all for the safety and security of the American People and the programme is closely monitored by good, trustworthy people:

Obama backs surveillance programmes….saying they are closely overseen by Congress and the courts.

The report spends 95% of its coverage ‘defending’ Obama’s position.

They insert this one negative comment from a Republican right at the bottom of the piece…but then counter that with a positive one from …another Republican and a Democrat:

Republican Senator Rand Paul called the programmes “an astounding assault on the Constitution”.

But his colleagues Republican Senator Lindsay Graham and Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein both defended the phone records practice on Thursday. 

I  imagine if this guy was still in charge the headlines might have been a tad different:

The BBC’s World At One  (7 mins 30 secs) dignifies and white washes Mau Mau terrorism.

The BBC’s Gabriel Gatehouse talking to one of the, as he calls them, Mau Mau veterans:

‘I must say sir you sound very magnaminous considering what you went through.’

…the ferocity and barbarity of what went on at that time has left deep scars…on the victims of torture.

Not the ferocity and barbarity of the Mau Mau but of the Brits.

Max Hastings on the programme suggests Gabriel Gatehouse ought to die of shame for the one sided report that he just delivered.

Gatehouse thinks its all a big joke:

Gabriel Gatehouse ‏@ggatehouse 6h  @Nowheria Max Hastings said on Radio 4 I should “die of shame” for my reporting on the story

Gatehouse  highlights claims that ‘London’ implicated in  Kenyan local decisions;

Gabriel Gatehouse ‏@ggatehouse 7h Those involved in the case say the decision of the court and the settlement do point to “systematized” violence orchestrated from London

Not one sided at all, no shilling for the Mau Mau terrorists by Gatehouse:

Gabriel Gatehouse ‏@ggatehouse 5 Jun Mau Mau: UK thought to be offering around £14m for 5,200 claimants. That’s £2700 each. Some had their testicles ripped off with pliers.

Gatehouse seems keen to ‘encourage’ others to make similar claims:

Gabriel Gatehouse ‏@ggatehouse 6h  Seems inevitable today’s settlement will encourage other people with colonial-era grievances to come forward. Malaya? Cyprus? Palestine?

Tim Stanley in the Telegraph takes a line that the BBC obviously doesn’t:

The British must not rewrite the history of the Mau Mau revolt

Spot the difference:

From the Daily Mail:

Cashpoint card snatches treble: Romanian crime gangs responsible for 92% of thefts from cash machines, police believe

• Number of thefts carried out by cashpoints has trebled in the past year
• Police intelligence suggests 90 per cent are linked to Romanian immigrants
• Cost of card fraud expected to total £400million by the end of this year

From the BBC:

Bank card thefts ‘soaring at ATMs’

The BBC tells us of ‘thieves, ‘gangs’ and ‘pepetrators’…but who are they?  The BBC doesn’t tell us that.

These are crimes that wouldn’t have happened if the BBC’s favourite political party hadn’t deliberately and knowingly imported these criminals…..along with all the rapes, murders, shop lifting, drugs and vehicle theft etc that were also imported on the coat tails of Labour’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ of ‘hideously’ white British people.

And all supported by the BBC….a support the BBC is still giving by deliberately covering up the true cost of immigration……no mention of ‘Romanians’…because the BBC doesn’t want to associate this with the probable influx of new Romanian migrants coming our way soon.

Still, I’m sure the BBC is only waiting until tomorrow before they report this:

Beggars and thieves from across Europe are flocking to the streets of Britain, Theresa May warns the EU

• Home Secretary warns of ‘unacceptable burden’ on schools and hospitals
• Uses speech to EU ministers to demand changes to border rules
• Highlights how EU nationals are fleecing the British taxpayer

This is a response to some of the points raised in the comments about the last post on A&E …a good debate …thanks to everyone who had a go.

The real point is to ask whether the BBC should have taken the King’s Fund’s press release at face value or should it have questioned the figures more deeply.

Looking at the King’s Fund’s report it seems to be more an opinion piece than about conclusions based on the facts…and the crucial piece of information is missing…how many people were treated at minor injury units pre 2004 and how many after the new GP contracts were introduced….these figures were just lumped together….making the report useless…at least for gauging the effects of the GP contracts…..

Though possibly looking at the graph you could calculate that perhaps one half of the walk-in centre data, shown in red, (but only that in 2004 as it’s a one off increase),  could be attributed to patients diverted from GP surgeries…the other half being the previously unrecorded data.  The King’s Fund makes no such calculation.

Dez in the comments raises some points stating:

‘The actual number of people attending A&E units has hardly changed since 2004.

In fact the number of people turning up at A&E has remained fairly constant since 1987.

Or in other words, the longer waiting times for people in A&E have nothing to do with GP contracts or increased demand.

Got it yet?

There – has – not – been – an – increase – in – demand – at – A&E – units.’

Well firstly the walk-in centres and minor injury units were A&E’s by another name…they were created to take patients with less serious ailments out of the major A&E units to allow more serious cases to be treated quicker…but they are still ‘A&E’.

Major A&E unit patient numbers remained apparently ‘stable’ …but that hides the truth…it may be the same number of patients but they are more seriously injured or ill people….the less serious have been ‘diverted’ to the walk-in centres…so overall numbers have risen.

Next…well common sense should immediately say that Dez’s claim that there has been no rise in numbers going to A&E can’t be right.

Between 2001 and 2011 the population increased by 3.7 million in England and Wales….7.1%.

And between 2004 and 2011 the population increased by 3 million.

Dez….you are saying not one of those 3 million extra people went to A&E….John Bercow yesterday said that immigrants were harder working than Brits…he didn’t tell us that they were also so remarkably healthier!

So you say there has been no rise in numbers at A&E units….. the NHS’s College of Emergency Medicine says something different in 2013:

‘A&E departments have seen a rise in the number of patients they are seeing in recent years, with an extra 4 million people a year using emergency services compared with 2004.’

The very King’s Fund report you quote even tells you that numbers have risen enormously:

‘The NHS has experienced a phenomenal increase in accident and emergency workload over the past decade.’

So does the BBC….a trustworthy advocate for you Dez surely ? Not only does it state that numbers have grown substantially but that the GP’s refusal to do out of hours work led to part of that increased workload at A&E:

‘It has been clear for some time that pressures have been growing in A&E.

For the past decade the numbers attending the units have been rising year by year. There are now more than 21 million visits annually – up 50% in a decade.

There is a combination of reasons why they have grown, including a rise in number of people with chronic conditions, such as heart disease, that end up having emergencies; the ageing population; and problems accessing out-of-hours GP care.’

And look, the BBC says it again:

‘GP consultations are up by a third since the mid 1990s.

Some of this workload has been passed on to hospitals with referrals for non-emergency care at one point during the 2000s rising by 15% a year.

There are signs the GP workload has had an effect on A&E too.

Amid complaints that doctors could no longer cope, they were allowed to relinquish responsibility for providing out-of-hours care in 2004.

This has been taken on by agencies, but with confidence in the system low there are large numbers of patients now attending A&E who do not need emergency care.

The College of Emergency Medicine estimates up to a third could be treated elsewhere.’

And here even one of the radical BMA’s representatives admits numbers have risen whilst rigorously denying his members had anything to do with that:

Dr Buckman told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme:

“People who go to A&E are not going because of GPs. There is no doubt some of it is because people are confused about how to get access to out of hours services and some of it is because NHS 111 is sending people there.

“But some of it is about a rapid rise in demand.”

Surely he’s not in the pay of the government is he…nor the BBC or The College of Emergency Medicine?

And yet more evidence:

‘Nationally, 20 per cent of patients attending A&Es during normal GP opening hours require an admission. But at some primary care trusts the average is as low as 6 per cent, suggesting significant numbers of patients are visiting A&Es in place of GP surgeries – even when practices should be open.

NHS Alliance chief executive Mike Sobanja said: “At its simplest these figures may show that patients are ringing up for an urgent appointment and cannot get one, and so go to A&E.”’

GPs are under pressure even when they are ‘open’…because of immigration and the vast numbers of new patients…resulting in people not being able to get appointments during the day…so they go to A&E….and in out of hours times patients go to A&E as well… immigrants often going straight to A&E treating it as a GP practise.

So Dez, your point:

There – has – not – been – an – increase – in – demand – at – A&E – units’

…has been comprehensively debunked.

What about your other point…that a change in the way data has been recorded explains why it looks like there has been a rise in admissions due to GP contracts changing?…you say…

‘It shows that from 2003-04 the way the data was recorded was changed – so that it included visits to “walk in centres” & “minor injuries units”.

You haven’t read the King’s Fund report properly….it does say data gathering changed but not in the narrow way you suggest.

Previous to 2003/04 there were these walk-in centres in existence……the government then introduced the GP contracts….and set up a whole new set of walk-in centres….to cope with an expected increase in workload at A&E….an increase you must presume they believed would arise from the fact that they knew that a majority of GPs were going to opt out of working ‘out of hours.’

The change in methodology in recording data  included adding in these already existing walk-in centres….but it also included the newly set up centres as well…and as stated earlier the King’s Fund makes no distinction between the two…which is the crucial figure that you need if you want to know how GP contracts effected the data.

Here the King’s fund evades giving the actual figures just claiming ‘much of the increase was due to previously unrecorded data‘:

‘So, much of the increase [how much?] in 2003/4 was due to previously unrecorded attendances now being collected, but also additional – but less serious – work being carried out in the new units. From 2003/4 to 2012/13, attendances in type 1 units have remained more or less unchanged. It is attendances in type 2 and 3 units that account for all the increase.’

Here it tells us that there were new walk-in centres created in 2003/04 to divert less serious cases away from expensive major A&E units:

‘Until 2003/4, statistics on A&E attendances included ‘major’ A&E units only. But around this time more, smaller units – including walk-in centres (WiCs) and minor injuries units (MIUs) – were introduced with the intention of diverting less serious emergency cases away from the larger, more expensive A&E departments, and the statistical collection was changed to record attendances separately for ‘type 1, 2 and 3’ units. Type 1 essentially reflecting major A&E units and types 2 and 3 defined as the smaller, walk-in and minor injuries units, together with specialist emergency departments.’

So 2003/04 Labour created more walk-in centres to cope with an expected rise in attendances at A&E.

Immigration contributed massively to the rise in attendances at A&E.

GP contracts and opting out contributed to a rise in attendances at A&E.

And finally….

Yes in 2004 some of the initial rise in the data showing higher rates of attendance at A&E could be attributed to previously unrecorded data….but much of that was down to new patients in new walk-in centres….but that was a one off change in the data that couldn’t be replicated for any following year.

So what of the following years? How to explain patient numbers that continued to rise year on year…from around 16 million  in 2004 to just over 20 million in 2011 before levelling off?

Are you saying Dez that that rise was because, year on year, the NHS kept finding ‘forgotten’ walk-in centres whose data they hadn’t recorded and so each year these undiscovered centres had their data added to the charts?

Plausible….or maybe not.

The truth is a complex combination of things…mostly increased population due to immigration combined with the difficulty of getting access to GP services whether in opening hours or not.

And the point of all this? Perhaps the BBC should have been delving a bit deeper into the King’s Fund’s claims and not taken them at face value.

Dragon Den’s Khan was given plenty of airtime to make excuses about employing his daughters…but so far nothing on the Telegraph’s story of Labour donor’s tax dodge..helped by the Labour Party….

Anyway…another open thread….all yours….

Compare and contrast:

The Telegraph on the A&E targets:

The graph that shows Labour is to blame for the pressures on A&E

and

Migrants partly to blame for A&E waiting times, Tory MP says

In 2004 Labour introduced GP contracts that paid them more for less work…resulting in patients going to A&E instead…and of course immigrants were ‘swamping’ the country by then as well, making use of the NHS.

The BBC on A&E targets:

NHS ‘misses A&E waiting time target’

Right at the end, the very last sentence, it slips in this:

‘But the government has in part blamed a “disastrous” legacy from Labour, including the renegotiation of GPs’ contracts which allowed them to opt out of providing out-of-hours care.’