Detroit has declared bankruptcy at last, and the BBC is on the case. Emily Buchanan, one of the battalion of Beeboids working the US scene, has put together a video report explaining why the once successful city has fallen so far. Her reasons:
White flight, leaving inner city blacks to suffer and find themselves trapped in an urban nightmare
The collapse of the car industry
“Detroit has suffered a vicious cycle of decay, mismanagement, and population decline.”
This last one, a direct quote, is a meaningless statement. It says nothing about how or why it all happened. Who let the urban center decay after the whites fled? Why did the auto industry collapse? Is there a relationship between the crushing burden of pensions and the collapse of either the auto industry or Detroit? There is, but don’t expect the BBC to tell you, because that would tread on sacred union ground. If the population has been dwindling for so long, and the tax base along with it, why did the city spend as if it still had the historically full population and wealthy tax base?
(UPDATE as the story has “evolved”: For some reason, the BBC has removed Buchanan’s video and replaced it with some disaster pr0n by Michelle Fleury.)
Spot the missing political party which has been running Detroit for the last 43 years: Democrats. Every single mayor since 1970 has been a Democrat, and they’ve all been African-American since 1974. Neither Buchanan’s video, nor the accompanying article, nor Jonny Dymond’s inset “analysis” mention either of these key facts. Why the censorship? Because it doesn’t help the Narrative.
The BBC isn’t really interested in discussing the realities behind Detroit’s destruction. No, they’re interested in the emotional impact of the story of evil wealthy white people abandoning a proud industrial city, destroying the lives of the working class and black people, and the city in general. They don’t talk about the corruption, they don’t talk about profligate spending in the face of a declining tax base. They admit that it’s been going on for a long time, but only that it’s “linked to declining industry”. Detroit’s income was largely dependent on a single industry. People in Britain know all too well how this is never a recipe for lasting success. But there’s no Thatcher to blame here, so the Beeboids aren’t really interested in going after the culprits. Although, didn’t the President save the auto industry a few years back? How’s that working out, BBC?
The accompanying article is only marginally better than the video. At least there we learn that public sector pensions have strangled the city coffers. Oh, wait, no we didn’t. We learn instead that two city unions opposed the bankruptcy plan to give creditors – union pension funds included – 10 cents on the dollar. The ones the BBC mentions are for retired workers, in case you hadn’t teared up enough yet. Dymond actually mentions corruption and mismanagement, but leaves it there. Instead we get more sexy details over which to shed tears and feel bad.
But there’s something of a dichotomy between the two quasi-explanations give. Either it was white flight and a declining tax base due to the collapse of the auto industry, or it was corruption and mismanagement. It’s both, of course, and mostly the corruption and mismanagement has been done in the last decade or so. One mayor even went to jail for it. However, there’s no identity politics benefit to be had from going into that issue, so it’s ignored entirely.
The thing is, we’ve seen all this from the BBC before. Two years ago, they sent Ian Pannell to spin a similar tale of woe. Pannell’s story was that the poor urban blacks whom Buchanan now describes as being abandoned and left to rot by wealthy whites were victims of income inequality, thrust upon the city by outside forces. The city was on the brink of bankruptcy in 2005. Eight years later, after much more corruption and fiddling and shuffling the deck chairs, the city was finally allowed to declare it openly. At least Dymond and Buchanan now admit (barely) that there was some local responsibility for the problems. They won’t say whom or how they ruined the city, but at least it’s a tiny improvement. The corruption doesn’t really burn all the money, but it does keep the powers-that-be from doing anything useful. It’s also likely that politicians who are so corrupt were never capable of doing anything useful in the first place, so it’s a no-win scenario no matter how you slice it.
Simply listing unpleasant statistics about empty homes and population decline and murder rates isn’t an explanation of anything. It’s merely a laundry list of indicators. How did it rack up such debt in the first place? What policies led to the city being so burdened by retired workers and public services maintained at a level which hasn’t been sustainable for a decade or more?
Actually, there was a brief period of potential growth after 2001. The city built casinos and sports stadiums, the kind of development which usually brings in a short-term boost. Of course, since the place was already falling apart and the population exodus was underway, it was never going to be sustainable. There’s that word again. The only time the BBC ever seems to understand that word is when discussing so-called “green energy”. When it comes to endless government “investment”, the word “sustainable” vanishes from their dictionary. By the time the next mayor took office and started burning money, the serious financial problems became clear. Here’s a more informative timeline, giving you more insight than anything the BBC can provide. As usual, you’d have been better served by a news aggregator than the millions of pounds spent on all the staff in the US.
The BBC isn’t interested in any of this, or in informing you of anything really useful or important. All they see here is a tear-jerker, and story-tellers love that sort of thing. So that’s what you get from the BBC: a story. Nothing particularly informative or worth your time, but that was never the point. The point is to manipulate your emotions. Plus, it’s an opportunity to continue to spin the myth that this kind of collapse is due largely to those outside, uncontrollable forces Pannell was talking about two years ago. The BBC brings up Stockton, CA, and other cities elsewhere which have declared bankruptcy recently, as if they’re all part of a piece. They are, but not the way the BBC wants you to think.
Here’s an example of how the BBC prioritizes the causes in Detroit:
The city, once renowned as a manufacturing powerhouse, has struggled with its finances for some time, driven by a number of factors, including a steep population loss.
The murder rate is at a 40-year high and only one third of its ambulances were in service in early 2013.
Declining investment in street lights and emergency services have made it difficult to police the city.
And Detroit’s government has been hit by a string of corruption scandals over the years.
Between 2000-10, the number of residents declined by 250,000 as residents moved away.
Steep population loss, which equals steep tax loss. Less tax revenue means less money for the local government to spend, which in Beebspeak becomes “declining investment”. Murder rates on the rise, which, I suppose, translates into more white flight. Only then do we get to the corruption scandals. This should come first, not last. I say last and not penultimate because the last item is simply a more specific reiteration of the population decline point. Gosh, I wonder why people left in droves over the last decade, BBC? White flight, or cutting losses in a clearly corrupt and financially suicidal regime, with no real industry or commerce developed to replace what the auto industry provided?
All those other bankrupt cities the BBC mentions, except for San Bernardino, were run for a very long time by Democrats and powerful unions as well. And San Bernardino had massive public sector employee debts anyway. As Margaret Thatcher said, it’s fine until you run out of other people’s money. Instead of pointing the finger at the corruption and mismanagement and long-term unsustainable fiscal policy, the BBC blames other people’s money.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the BBC played another Spot the Missing Party game about another city where decades of Democrat, African-American mayors and city mandarins screwed the place up, where the economically deprived African-American urban community suffers most: St. Louis.
UPDATE 2: The BBC does, in fact, mention a political party: The Republican Governor who agreed to the bankruptcy deal (h/t Rufus McDufus). Naturally, the reason they mentioned a political party can be gleaned from the sentences preceding it:
But Ed McNeil, the lead negotiator for a coalition of 33 unions, told Reuters news agency the move was about “busting the unions”.
“This is not about fixing the city’s finances,” he said. “It’s about the governor and his own agenda to take over the city of Detroit.”
In a letter accompanying Thursday’s filing, Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican, said he had approved the request for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.
“It is clear that the financial emergency in Detroit cannot be successfully addressed outside of such a filing, and it is the only reasonable alternative that is available”.
Could the innate bias be any more obvious?
Don’t bother trusting the BBC on this or any US issue.
The unions in Detroit killed most of the auto industry by overmanning, restrictive practices and excessive benefits.
And the public-sector unions made the city bankrupt by excessive wages, overmanning,and greed on pensions and benefits. Abetted by a Democratic city council.
Those who could – have left.
Yes, the people at the bottom of the heap – often black Americans – are trapped in this bankrupt city, often in the housing projects. When oh When will black Americans realise they are being done over by unions and politicians who claim to be helping them – THAT is the real political story, but the BBC could not see it if it bit them.
Detroit is the largest US city to go bankrupt. Forget all the fancy promises of federal help implied by Obama in elections. There is a whole stream of cities going bankrupt – and they are Democrat-run cities.
This seems like a good analysis of what happened in Detroit
Great video but so sad. I went to Detroit in the late 1960s, a buzzing city but with the seeds of decay. Desperate to see it now.
Interesting post, David. You write incredibly well, if you don’t mind me saying… you could earn money writing like that! Anyway, can’t really comment on this subject as I don’t know enough about Detroit politics and it’s too hot here so I’m going out to my daughter’s paddling pool to cool off with a pint of beer. We English don’t handle the heat very well! But not surprising that the BBC fail to highlight the link between abject profligacy and the Democrats.
Spot on, David. I had the misfortune to hear the Today programme’s pathetic coverage this morning; no mention of unions, bloated public sector salaries & pensions or the Democrat party.
Pathetic.
The problem is that, even when the BBC does mention unions and public sector obligations, they act as if the only problem is that other people’s money stopped flowing in to pay for it.
Yup!
That is public sector broadcasting for you.
The reason why public sector broadcasting in Britain is not bankrupt is?
Because of people like me that are forced to pay for it on pain of imprisonment if I don’t.
There was one bit on that show that had I been eating my breakfast I would have choked on it. They had some commentator on discussing Detroit and about the exodus of people. She then mentioned about the remaining population who hadn’t left and therefore “presumably there must be something that they like about the place” . Because Detroit has so many compelling reasons to stay. It never seemed to occur that they’re trapped in that dump.
That was Detroit Free Press columnist (read: opinion-monger, not reporter) Nancy Kaffer. Look at her columns and you’ll see she’d fit right in at the BBC.
Several stories, video pieces, and special reports over two years, all singing from the same hymn sheet, and Today found a local voice for a solo from the same perspective. Once again we see a Narrative spread across the spectrum of BBC broadcasting. Agenda? What agenda? Groupthink? What groupthink?
David – great piece. Did you ever write a round up of the zimmerman verdict. I know others (DB and Alan) did comment on the verdict but I would especially love to read your summary of it all if you have the time to write it.
Agreed. Left in the hands of the left liberal elite, including Obama, the facts of this case will be totally re-written over time to fit their race agenda – in fact it’s already happening.
Brother Ivo at Cranmer’s did a fairly succinct summary the other day.
Michael Yon’s latest blog has the best coverage of the aftermath I have yet read.
Wait a minute. Is this the same place that Obama was talking about in June 2012 when he declared “We saved Detroit”?
Jesus, I’ve been to Detroit, and it’s staggering. It’s looks like ‘escape from New York’ meets Aushwitz via ‘I am Legend’. I’ve never felt so unsafe in a city anywhere in the world.
Just the way democrat politicians like it.
I remember seeing the comedy “Kentucky Fried Movie” directed by John Landis in the late 1970s. They had a spoof of “Enter The Dragon” where the villain, after having tried various methods of torture on a government agent who wouldn’t give up any information, said to his henchmen “Take him to Detroit!” Whereupon the government agent screamed and moaned and immediately spilled his guts.
Looks like Detroit has had a reputation as a squalid dump for decades.
Family and I drove into Detroit from Windsor, Canada ( lovely place), some 20 years ago.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that I had to get out quick. Looked for any interstate sign, any one, just to get on the motorway asap.
Never felt so unsafe in my life.
Me too, spent a year in Canada but had flown to Detroit and bused over to Windsor then London. Detroit is the only place I have ever been robbed.
Los Angeles is also broke. Give a year or two and will follow the same path.
There was talk a few years ago of turning huge tracts of it back into farmland/prairie, or whatever it was before a settlement was there.
Peter Hitchens says today that it is just naturally going back that way anyway.
The BBC spent a bit of your license fee on a documentary about just that. No Democrats were harmed in the production of this video.
But…but…but…the BBC have been telling us the US has been a startling success ever since Obama stimulated the economy.
They have been downplaying these issues in the US for years…california is all but bust as well.
This from 2010:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/thirty-two-states-are-now-officially-bankrupt/19292
Courtesy of Economic Policy Journal we now know that the majority of American states are currently insolvent, and that the US Treasury has been conducting a shadow bailout of at least 32 US states. Over 60% of Americans receiving state unemployment benefits are getting these directly from the US government, as 32 states have now borrowed $37.8 billion from Uncle Sam to fund unemployment insurance. The states in most dire condition, are, not unexpectedly, the unholy trifecta of California ($6.9 billion borrowed), Michigan ($3.9 billion), and New York ($3.2 billion). With this form of shadow bailout occurring, one can only wonder how many other shadow programs are currently in operation to fund states under the table with federal money.The full list of America’s 32 insolvent states is below, sorted in order of bankruptedness.
California might be recovering – last year the people even voted to raise some taxes.
Indeed they did.
But those people who don’t want to pay more taxes will leave, probably for low tax locations such as Texas.
http://www.texastribune.org/2013/03/11/polling-center-californias-conservative-migration/
That will leave behind the people who are in favour of even higher taxes, and it will go on.
Now consider that the people who favour higher taxes are usually those on lower incomes who themselves pay less in tax but benefit from others’ taxes, and it’s obvious* what happens over time.
* Not to some, obviously…
I’d love to know what the demographics for each place are. I think we can pretty much guess though.
Plenty of what Rush Limbaugh calls the “low information voters”.
Thanks David – knew I would receive more information from you than the Beeb. But that is the problem with the Beeb – always a narrative and the story has to fit their left wing viewpoint – which means we the license payers never get a true understanding of what is happening elsewhere – and are often missing what is happening here in the UK too.
Like joeb above, I have had the ‘pleasure’ of visiting Detroit a number of times. That city, over the years, has been just about the only place in the world where I have ‘praised the lord’ that the o ly thing I ever had to do was transit from airport-hotel-office-airport, with no stops en route.
Most cities (and I have been in more than my fair share worldwide) have some redeeming feature that a visitor like myself might have wished to see whilst in the city on business……Detroit, Michigan, does not fall into that category by any stretch of the imagination – and in my experience, has never done so. Wasted by the left-wing powers-that-be in virtually every respect.
White flight ? The only reason, in my view, that it isn’t a desert at the moment, is the typical handout culture that pervades left-wing fiefdoms.
Good job there isn’t a sign saying “DETROIT USA” at the city boundary, since removing two letters from it will give a very apt description !
You mean DETRITUS from Alpha to Omega?
Been checking it out on Google Streetview. Christ alive.
Mind you, not really all that different from a northern town nowadays. Been to Bradford lately?
But Bradford doesn’t look quite so “empty”.
I wrote a comment on the equivalent story on the Daily Mail mentioning the BBC ‘forgot’ to mention the Democrats, and mentioned only Republicans. Sadly I hadn’t read the full DM article – they’d done the same thing!
Steven Crowder gives a quick history…
…oops, wrong video – here’s the correct one…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwame_Kilpatrick
“Former United States politician who was a Michigan state representative and mayor of Detroit
Kilpatrick’s mayorship was plagued by numerous scandals and rampant accusations of corruption, with the mayor eventually resigning after being convicted on felony counts, including perjury and obstruction of justice. Kilpatrick was sentenced to four months in jail after pleading guilty, but with good time awarded to county jail inmates in Michigan, he was released on probation after serving 99 days. On May 25, 2010, he was sentenced to 18 months to 5 years in prison for violating his probation, and served time at the Oaks Correctional Facility in northwest Michigan.
On March 11, 2013, Kilpatrick was convicted on 24 additional federal felony counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, and racketeering. The conviction stemmed from a 38-charge felony indictment, in what a federal prosecutor called a “pattern of extortion, bribery and fraud” by some of Detroit’s most prominent officials. His sentencing was expected before the end of April 2013.”
The wiki article gives some very detailed information on his behaviour – a very, very long list of graft, peculation, corruption, cronyism, etc etc. Enough for an entire series of TV specials
And his party affiliation is?
The same as the current mayor, and all previous ones going back a few decades, which the BBC declined to tell you.
I should have included this in my post, so here’s Jonny Dymond’s previous installment in his considered study of Detroit.
Glimmers of hope in Detroit
Don’t laugh, it’s rude. Seriously, though, he was referring to the recent phenomenon of local businessmen who have invested their own money in new local projects in an attempt to pick up the pieces. Some nice ideas, and I certainly wish them all the best of luck and success.
Only at the very end of Dymond’s tale do we get some information. He’s already expressed his personal feelings about the scene, and he starts to wrap it up in similar fashion. It’s okay to abandon impartiality when story-telling for the BBC, of course. One would have to have a heart of stone not to care deeply about the city’s plight, right? I’m sure Dymond will be impartial next time.
I thought of the shiny new offices of downtown, all glass and steel, climate controlled with flat-screen TVs and famous-name coffee machines.
Apart from the odd computer, nothing in the station that had been purchased in the last 20 or so years. And, with all due respect to the company, there was no-one new in it either. Apart from one recent transfer all the men were middle-aged or more.
How long can it go on like this?
I’m not entirely sure, but isn’t Dymond suggesting that the company should have dumped some of the older crew in favor of some younger and obviously lower-wage staff? That’s a bit mean. Or is he showing flashes of cruel, cold-blooded fiscal conservatism? Alternatively, he could just be engaging in a bit of age discrimination. I hear the BBC has a problem in that area.
Now back to Dymond’s closing shot, where we finally learn something:
In his first report a few weeks ago, the city’s new emergency manager wrote of Detroit’s public sector being “dysfunctional and wasteful after years of budgetary restriction, mismanagement, crippling operational practices and, in some cases, indifference or corruption”.
For 50 years Detroit meant mass assembly, it meant the automobile, opportunity for an uneducated – often black – workforce.
Is it somehow a worse problem because of the skin color of those affected? Seems an odd metric. In any case, Dymond left something out of his list of what Detroit represented: a majority of corporate and municipal expense going to retired workers. It was always going to be unsustainable if left to grow to what it became. Even before the “Great Recession”, Detroit was doomed. Yet the BBC can’t address the underlying problem.
The BBC censored the name of the political party largely responsible for Detroit’s woes in this recent article as well. They pretty much always do that, and generally refuse to get into the policies which led to the current situation. Instead, it’s a black & white tale of the evil overlord pulling the rug out from under the heroic people from afar. It’s never the fault of the BBC-favored State-and-union-driven economic policies.
The original video I was complaining about has been removed and replaced by something from Michelle Fleury using a Packard factor abandoned ages ago as
“In part, it’s due to white flight”, she says, and a decline in the auto industry due in part to competition from overseas. The poor workers are worried about their pensions. Who kept spending over the decades as revenues declined? How did the pension obligations get so high? Don’t ask the BBC, ’cause they won’t tell.
Exactly the same thing Buchanan said, the key talking points verbatim. Agenda? What Agenda? Groupthink? What groupthink?
Once again the bankruptcy crime is “black on black” (like 90% of murders of blacks in Chicago, home state of the Community Organiser in Chief) but once again it HAS to be the fault of white folks, for fleeing or stopping buying union built cars that are no good and preferring to buy cars built by competitive yellow people in The East.
The bBC are so BORING with their automatic pilot left-wing anti-white racist narrative. Yet Cameron forces me to pay to be lied to because he is afraid of the BBC, and that is why Cameron will never again get my vote.
Spot the missing political party … Why the censorship?
So is The Wall Street Journal part of the same conspiracy of silence? Here is there story. The only party they mention is the Republicans.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323993804578614144173709204.html
Here is there story the day before – still no mention of the Democrats.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324263404578611893593441664.html
In fact in the last two days they published 64 stories on Detroit. Guess how many of them contain the word Democrat or Democratic.
None.
They did however have one video on “How the unions killed Detroit”
Why would The Wall Street Journal be part of this “censorship”?
Had a look in the Evening Standard on the way home. No mention there of the Democrats. Nor did the Daily Mail. Nor did The Economist.
This seems a very extensive conspiracy.
Their not there. For shame.
You’re right, James. And the WSJ even mentions that the Governor is Republican. But the BBC mentioned the former Mayor Bing without mentioning his political party. And he was actually trying to get it right, so mentioning that he was a Democrat wouldn’t have done any harm. The WSJ didn’t bring Bing up at all.
Unlike the BBC, the WSJ doesn’t engage in race-baiting. They say the urban center was:
hollowed out by the flight of residents and businesses to the suburbs.
Just as accurate, more even, than the various BBC tales, but for some reason the WSJ chose not to make it about race, while at least two different BBC journalists did. Sometimes, people move to the suburbs for reasons other than not wanting to live near the darkies. Not that the BBC would allow such thoughts. For them, everything in the US is ultimately about race.
I’d suspect that the bulk of the coverage in the last two days is about what’s going on right now, and there are no Democrats involved. I can’t access the second piece you link to, but I can see that the first one does tell us something the BBC refuses to:
Detroit and its adjacent cities were to the early 20th century what California’s Silicon Valley is today: a crucible of industrial and social innovation. Henry Ford perfected the moving assembly line for his Model T, while GM developed innovative marketing and management strategies that became the model for modern global corporations.
In response to the power of the car makers, the United Auto Workers organized employees and bargained for pay and benefits that for years set the standard for workers in other industries.
Guess how that worked out. The BBC doesn’t go there.
James – what do you put that omission down to?
James, I’m not forced to pay for the WSJ, nor is the WSJ by law and charter required to be impartial and report all the facts. The BBC on the other hand is and that’s why we come here and why this blog exists, a point that you seem not to comprehend.
Yes, every single defender of the indefensible makes this same error.
It’s not an error, it’s the single fundamental point that they never answer because even they know that it is unanswerable.
Once again Preisser hits a home run.
But what will happen next? Will BBC bosses looking at the evidence of their one sided reporting, see the inadequacy of their analysis and offer a different comment of the Detroit disaster or, more likely, retreat behind the gated community of their liberal mindset. (Mark Steyn’s phrase on the radio today)
Journalists like Jonny “searching for a metaphor” Dymond cannot see, will not see and refuse to see is the truth that is blatantly staring them in the eyes. As the Blessed Margaret would have said, the government of Detroit (Democrats, as Preisser points out and the BBC refuses to acknowledge) ran out of other people’s money.
By the way, Jonny, check in with Mark Steyn for a lesson in how to create metaphors.
“Once again James Stables hits a home run.”
Only in his own mind. I hear he’s a legend in there, a hero of the people, fighting the forces of the evil right, Left-wing Person (Man offends his PC sensibilities).
“If I had a city, it’d look just like Detroit”
PMSL! @ MH. 🙂
Wow!
Michigan judge halts Detroit bankruptcy because it dishonors Obama
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/19/michigan-judge-halts-detroit-bankruptcy-because-it-dishonors-obama/
Fox news comments that this is unlikely to stop the bankruptcy as bankruptcy per se in law gives the administrator powers to reduce pension entitlements.
Holy heck, what’s happining over there? Has he declared himself king or dear leader? The USA is realy starting to become North Korea or China more and more as the days go on.
Sometimes you’ve just got to laugh. The Mail’s account tells me that the only city to be through this process is Central Falls, Rhode Island, population 19,000. Wiki tells me Central Falls problem was “an $80 million unfunded pension and retiree health benefit liability that is over five times its annual budget of $17 million.” The previous mayor, Charles D Moreau – a Democrat, started a two year prison sentence for corruption in February.
Mark Steyn nails the responsibility on the Democrats :
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/353959/downfall-detroit-mark-steyn
And the bankruptcy Democrat politicians have forced on Detroit is different only in scale to what Obama is trying to do to the US.
did i not watch on sky news tonight old footage from 2008 where barack obama promised to pull detroit out from its economic decline by investing millions of pounds to create employment in the car industry if he got voted in again as president.maybe i was just dreaming.
Turns out what He really meant was that He would save the union and their pensions. Legally higher-priority secured creditors and actual shareholders got the shaft. Contract law? What contract law?
There were other schemes to prop up GM (“Cash for Clunkers”, the subsidies for the Chevy
VolgaVolt), but that’s for another time.“The All New General Motors Allegro”
What could possibly go wrong?
Just re-invent the quartic steering wheel.
HOW HARD CAN IT BE ?
Motown records saw the game was up and cleared out early. Black flight? Does that count?
Wealthy black flight, no. it doesn’t count. The liberal narrative comes only in black and white. The black can do no wrong, to admit anything less is to deprive them of their victim status. And the white can do no right.
Once the city and suburbs (all part of the same municipal district, if not the same property tax zone) deteriorated enough the house prices on the outskirts of the city proper and the immediate suburbs dropped, lower-middle class black people were able escape the pit of despair and move into some pretty nice houses. That’s “flight”, but it ain’t “white”.
People have been moving to the suburbs ever since the highway system was born. It was considered part of the American Dream. White people were moving away from other white people to have a little back yard and white picket fence in the ‘burbs. Sometimes, people move to the suburbs for other reasons besides wanting to avoid “the other”.
Of course, if one is a bigot and sees nefarious intent in someone simply because of the color of their skin…….
I posted back before the first election of Barack Obama.
Dont think it was on this site but it was along the lines of what would happen in detroit. I was told this by a work collegue who has relatives in the US. He said they would be moving out because Detroit, struggling then, and although they could see investment comming in from the Democrats, they knew the money would be mis-spent and would eventualy lead to it’s downfall. They were getting out whilst the house was still worth selling. I’ll have to ask him what happened to them.
deznickedchrisjamesalbaman?
I have no problem accepting that the BBC coverage has been biased by omitting to mention the Democrats. Although my knowledge of this issue, and US politics in general, is very limited so I’m not really in any position to comment.
read a book called detroit: an american autopsy by charlie leduff.
It tells warts and all about the city and its problems,a must read because it describe Blairs britain
Haiti on Eyrie?
Having been a Radio 4 addict, plugged in 24 hours a day, I’ve been turning it off more than on for the past two years as every programme seems to be about homos, muslims, blacks, slavery, etc, and they even manage to shovel those themes into the most innocuous programmes where you think you’ll get a bit of respite.
The appointment of Mishal Hussein was the final straw. My radio now sits in the wardrobe. Even my husband (who I’ve been trying to persuade for ages not to pay the license fee anymore due to the anti white rhetoric) has had enough and has stopped watching. For hime though, it was Channel 4’s disgusting call to kill, I mean prayer, that really did it. The TV now stays off unless we’re watching a DVD. There will be no more license fee money from us.
“for the past two years as every programme seems to be about homos, muslims, blacks, slavery, etc, and they even manage to shovel those themes into the most innocuous programmes where you think you’ll get a bit of respite.”
What an absurd assertion. Care to back it up with some facts?
If you are offended by discussions about “homos, muslims, blacks, slavery, etc,” I would suggest that you have come to the wrong place. This site often contains material concerning at least 3 of these topics on a regular basis.
Ah, the typical lefty request for ‘facts’. The facts, Mr, are what I hear with my own ears and I don’t need to give you anything. It pleases me no end though, that my comment has riled you enough to put your silliness on display.
Nothing wrong with homosexuals if its behind closed doors in private not in public.
Albaman is one of our resident defenders of the indefensible (see troll) and will often be found howling with derision because someone has challenged his left wing world view or said something harsh about one of his protecteld societal groups.
Yes, how ‘silly’ of Albaman to ask for evidence to back up what is a very big claim to make.
Unless you can provide it, there is no reason to take your assertion seriously. My family listens to Radio 4 all the time, and what we hear with our own ears does not tally with what you say.
By all means defend the BBC agenda on various issues, but do not pretend it does not have one, otherwise you are going to look rather silly, and you wouldn’t want that to happen would you.
There are plenty of times here when I don’t defend the BBC because, frankly, I can’t (either because I don’t know enough about an issue or because the accusation of bias/having an agenda is justified, or both). In this case, however, someone has made an allegation which I think is wrong, and for which they can’t provide evidence. Can you?
As Daisy said “The facts, Mr, are what I hear with my own ears and I don’t need to give you anything.”
We’ve all listened, watched and read the BBC’s coverage of matters Islam, homosexuality, race relations and the rest and we know the bias is there and there are mountains of facts to back these assertions up throughout this blog, so do us all a favour and leave off with the faux indignation because we’re not playing your silly left wing troll games
You still have provided no evidence to back up the claim that on Radio 4, for the past 2 years “every programme seems to be about homos, muslims, blacks, slavery, etc,”
Dear oh dear, you’re obsessive aren’t you?
So asking for actual evidence counts as ‘left wing troll games’? Right.
If this site is to be taken seriously, it needs to provide evidence for its claims. A lot of the time it does. Here, however, it hasn’t.
I’ve told you both that this site is full of examples of what Daisy has claimed you just need to look, the fact that you can not even be bothered to do this simple thing proves you have no intention in honest debate but just want to force your left wing outlook onto everyone you come across.
We are talking about Daisy’s claim that ‘for the past two years as every programme seems to be about homos, muslims, blacks, slavery, etc, and they even manage to shovel those themes into the most innocuous programmes where you think you’ll get a bit of respite’.
She claims EVERY programme. That is a heck of an assertion to make, and she has not provided evidence.
If you can prove that EVERY programme on Radio 4 is ‘about homos, muslims, blacks, slavery’, then fine. Until then, there is no reason to accept her claim. Of course, there are some programmes about these things but to say that EVERY programme is seems far-fetched to me.
Out of interest, from my contributions to this site, what makes you say I have a left-wing outlook? Disagreement on issues of BBC bias is not the same thing as being left-wing.
Can you PROVE they aren’t Chriseumada?
She made the claim. It’s up to her to prove that they are.
I don’t have to prove a negative, by the same logic that I don’t have to prove the non-existence of the flying spaghetti monster.
A dullard Dawkins fan ,I might have known. I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then
Given your lack of EVIDENCE I choose to believe Daisy
Stewart, standard arguing practice is that the person making the claim has to substantiate it. Do you disagree with that?
She has not done so, so we have no reason to accept her claim.
On what grounds do you believe Daisy when she says that EVERY BBC Radio 4 programme is ‘about homos, muslims, blacks, slavery, etc’?
Every programme I happen to tune into, cloth ears; not every programme.
That’s cos you’re a screaming lefty and everything that comes out of the BBC tallies perfectly with YOUR world view you twit.
Information on how to stop paying the bloated wages of BBC traitors:
http://www.old.tpuc.org/stoppayingtvlicencefees