The Independent reports:

The BBC has been censured by Parliament’s spending watchdog over its relationship with a powerful property company which has been criticised over its tax arrangements.

In a report published today, the Public Accounts Committee raised concerns over the BBC’s arrangements with the Peel Group, a private real estate conglomerate which owns the BBC’s new Salford broadcasting complex.

“The BBC risks becoming overly dependent on the Peel Group for long-term success at Salford,” said the report. “The Peel Group owns the BBC’s buildings at Salford, the on-site studio facilities and surrounding property.”

During earlier evidence to the PAC, the Labour MP Fiona Mactaggart made reference to a report on the Peel Group by the think tank ExUrbe “which suggests that the most profitable parts of the Peel Group are managing to pay nil UK corporation tax.”

“The BBC’s relationship with significant partner organisations also involves potential reputational risks for the BBC, for example, the extent to which partner organisations are transparent about their tax status in the UK and the amount of tax they pay,”

In its report the PAC also expressed concerns over the BBC’s disastrous handling of the Digital Media Initiative (DMI), which was scrapped at a cost of almost £100 million.

The BBC said: “We are pleased that the Public Accounts Committee has recognised BBC North was delivered on time, under budget and with no break in services. We have just celebrated two years of award-winning TV, radio and online content and the whole region is sharing in the momentum of Media City.”

So all good then.

Germany’s Energy Poverty: How Electricity Became a Luxury Good
Germany’s aggressive and reckless expansion of wind and solar power has come with a hefty pricetag for consumers, and the costs often fall disproportionately on the poor. Government advisors are calling for a completely new start.

Bob Ward’s paymaster, Jeremy Grantham (investor in Big Oil) doesn’t like climate sceptics:
The [Sceptic’s] misinformation machine is brilliant. As a propagandist myself , I have nothing but admiration for their propaganda. [Laughs.] But the difference is that we have the facts behind our propaganda.

We can try to bypass them on one level and we try to contest the political power of the sceptics.

They are using money as well as propaganda to influence the politicians, particularly in America.

We also fund old-fashioned style investigative journalism which is dying out in newspapers because the newspaper industry has become incredibly tough.
All we were interested in was the net result of whether it could produce a more effective presentation of the facts.

So that sets the scene…now you know not only who pays Bob Ward but what his mission is…to destroy the Sceptics and deny them an outlet in the Media.

And he goes about it with considerable vigour.
On the 4th of October  the hyperactive climate activist and propagandist Bob Ward  released this into the wild:

Lord Lawson’s campaign group for climate change sceptics, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, has been executing a carefully co-ordinated campaign with its media and political allies to discredit and misrepresent the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

On the 11th of October the BBC’s Roger Harrabin, caught and tamed the feral press release and re-shaped it so that it could introduced into civilised society….but instead of crediting the alarmist spinner Bob Ward with being the author he re-attributes it to the more statesmanlike Lord stern, thus giving it gravitas and authority…he hopes…..
Lord Stern says energy and media firms ‘mislead’

Climate-sceptic newspapers are conspiring with energy firms in a campaign of misinformation on bills, says the former head of the government economic service, Lord Stern.
He says they want to shift blame for rising bills on to green taxes.
It is clear, he says, that the real culprit for bill increases has been the soaring price of gas.

More than likely it is merely a coincidence that ever since the IPCC published it’s AR5 Summary for Policy Makers Ward, of The Grantham Institute, has been attacking the BBC for daring to invite a couple of climate Sceptics to comment….and all of a sudden Harrabin publishes one of his articles, essentially a press release….claiming it is a ‘news report’…attacking the Sceptics.

Ward of course is not the only one criticising the BBC, the passed over scientist, Steve Jones, rescued from obscurity by the BBC, put in his two penneth worth, as did John Ashton, formerly the top climate-change official at the Foreign Office:

“The BBC should now explain how its decision to give a platform to Carter [Sceptic]   serves the public interest. Otherwise, it will be undermining its friends when it needs them most and throwing the scavengers a piece of its own flesh.”

This surely demonstrates not their certainty about the science but that their case is so weak that they need to silence even the few critics that get the slightest bit of airtime.

And what exactly does Ashton mean by…‘it [the BBC] will be undermining its friends when it needs them most ‘?

Is the BBC not so independent as we thought?  Climate scientists and activists are the BBC’s ‘friends’?

On the day the SPM was released I know of only two sceptics who were brought in to 5Live during a whole day devoted to climate change and the IPCC report…one was Andrew Montford, aka Bishop Hill, who was given a couple of minutes on Sheila Fogarty’s show and then Professor Bob Carter on 5Live Drive ….but the tone of the presenter contrasted starklywith the obsequious, deferential treatment pro-AGW scientists or advocates received.

Carter was told that he possessed a ‘dangerous state of mind’ ….and asked ‘Don’t you worry about the future?’.
From that you can see that the presenter was not there to listen and weigh up information, he had already made up his own mind…the world is in danger….and sceptics are ‘deniers’.

Despite the bare minimum of time and the dismissive, accusatory attitude of the BBC towards the critics it seems that that was still too much exposure for Ward to accept….despite himself being a bit of a climate sceptic…….

“We don’t really know yet what the explanation is for the slowdown,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of economics.

Harrabin himself isn’t well disposed towards climate sceptics who upset the applecart:

The BBC’s Roger Harrabin — one of the Beeb’s army of die-hard Warmists — has noticed too. ‘What’s a know-nothing like Delingpole doing on a science panel?’ he has asked the organisers, as if this simple fact alone is enough to render the entire conference invalid. (Moments later, when I introduce myself, he says he’s quite tempted to punch me because of all the lies and disinformation I put out — though he later apologises and puts it down to jet lag.)

Let’s have a closer look at Ward’s attitude towards Sceptics, here dismissing a well known scientist as irrelevant to the debate:

Bob Ward Bob Ward ?@ret_ward .@mehdirhasan But why have you made Lindzen the focus of the debate? He no longer contributes to the science and is irrelevant to policy.

However:

Richard Lindzen – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940) is an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and books.[1] He was a lead author of Chapter 7, ‘Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,’ of the IPCC Third Assessment Report on climate change.

Here is Ward attacking Bob Carter after his appearance on the BBC:

Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, based at the London School of Economics, said: “The BBC’s coverage of the new climate-change report was variable, with some excellent reporting by its science and environment correspondents, but some very poor contributions from presenter-led programmes.
“In particular, the World At One on Friday provided a stunning display of false balance when it devoted less airtime to IPCC scientists than it did to Bob Carter, a sceptic who is funded by a free-market lobby group in the US, the Heartland Institute. Carter was allowed to make a number of inaccurate and misleading statements unchallenged.”

And in the Guardian fellow alarmist John Ashton keeps up the attack:

The BBC has been criticised for its coverage of the most comprehensive scientific study on global warming yet published. Prominent climate experts have accused the corporation of bias towards “climate sceptics” at the expense of mainstream scientists.
According to John Ashton, formerly the top climate-change official at the Foreign Office, the BBC’s coverage of last week’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was “a betrayal of the editorial professionalism on which the BBC’s reputation has been built over generations”.
Writing in the Guardian on Wednesday, he says the BBC had given “the appearance of scientific authority to those with no supporting credentials”.

Ward and Co try to paint Carter as a non-scientist…in fact he was a practising geologist……unlike Bob Ward whose scientific credentials are that he has a …geology degree….but he has not actually worked as a scientist…and is definitely not a ‘climate scientist’, he has worked in PR for most of his career…….

Bob joined the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) from Risk Management Solutions, where he was Director of Public Policy.
He also worked at the Royal Society, the UK national academy of science, for eight years, until October 2006. His responsibilities there included leading the media relations team.
He has also worked as a freelance science writer and journalist.
Bob has a first degree in geology and an unfinished PhD thesis on palaeopiezometry.
He is a Fellow of the Geological Society.

Ward’s other line of attack is to try and discredit the Sceptics by claiming they are funded by ‘Big Oil’ or some such vested interest….needless to say he doesn‘t apply the same critical criteria to people such as himself pushing the climate hoax.….

Here he is in the Guardian again attacking Carter…

The BBC jumped at the chance and Carter and Singer were soon touring the studios at Broadcasting House giving back-to-back interviews. Radio 4’s The World At One even gave Carter more airtime than the IPCC.
BBC editors appeared to be unaware that Carter and Singer are paid by the Heartland Institute

The BBC are ‘unaware carter was paid by the Heartland Institute’….really?

Let’s see if Bobby is right, this is by the BBC‘s Harrabin:
For anyone who doesn’t spend every week up to their waists in the ordure of climate politics, the Heartland Institute is a US-based organisation with an overtly libertarian bent to its work.
To itself, it’s a think-tank; to critics, it’s a lobby group, paid to oppose regulation on a number of fronts – including climate change.
The institute says it retains the services of several “high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist AGW message”.
These include the US-based Craig Idso ($11,600 per month) and Fred Singer ($5,000 per month plus expenses), and Australian Bob Carter ($1,667 per month).
Heartland is not unique. We still have no idea, two years after its formation, of who funds the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) in the UK, nor what the funders’ motives are.
Who’s raising a flag now for openness in the lobbies of climate change debate?

And this:
More from Heartland
May 18, 2010 BBC Climate: other
Another Roger Harrabin report from the Heartland Conference, this time looking at the question of whether sceptics are all right-wingers.

If who finances who is so important you might be justified in asking who funds Bob Ward?  Bob Ward doesn’t want you to ask that though…because the answer ain’t pretty…it’s Big Oil…….

Ward works for the Grantham Research Institute, a “research department” at the London School of Economics (LSE)funded by an American hedge-funder called Jeremy Grantham and headed by the economist and former treasury official Lord Stern.

This is what Jeremy Grantham, Bob‘s ultimate boss and paymaster said about how he makes money:
Jeremy Grantham on how to feed the world and why he invests in oil
On whether there’s any conflict in him (via GMO and/or his foundation) investing in oil and gas companies?

The first point is that each fund we have at GMO – maybe 80 or so – is run by its own team. I don’t think that money management can easily have too many rules coming down from the top. Our first responsibility is to make money for our clients….and nothing is more important than oil.

His first responsibility?…not to the Planet…but to make money.

How big is Grantham’s company GMO?

GMO is a global investment management firm committed to providing sophisticated clients with superior asset management solutions and services. Investment management is our only business. As of June 30, 2013, we managed $108 billion in client assets, $50 billion of which was in asset allocation strategies.

How much cash does it provide for climate activism?

As a Sunday Times article revealed recently:
So concerned is Grantham, 70, over this issue that he has set up the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, endowed with £165m of his own money, to fund environmental research and campaigns. From it he is funding the LSE and Imperial donations, and other grants to American groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund.

Impartial?

Taking its lead from Lord Stern’s (tragically flawed) report, it is  committed to the ideological position that man-made “Climate Change” represents a major, immediate threat which must be dealt with urgently through costly intervention. There is not much tolerance for “climate scepticism”, let alone “denial” at the Grantham Institute.

But Ward not only works for the Grantham Institute he also, and so does Lord Stern, work at the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy…which is essentially yet another climate change propaganda outfit:

Nicholas Stern – Chair of CCCEP and Management Board
Bob Ward – Policy and Communications Director

Our mission is to advance public and private action on climate change through rigorous, innovative research into economics and policy

The Centre is hosted jointly by the University of Leeds and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and is chaired by Professor Lord Stern of Brentford.

It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

The ESRC tells us:
We are a non-departmental public body (NDPB) established by Royal Charter in 1965 and receive most of our funding through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).

Funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills…government then…the same government that is trying to flog us wind farms and carbon taxes?

And of course government is providing funds elsewhere to drive the ‘consensus’:

Bishop Hill, which in turn came from Not A Lot Of People Know That:
I can…reveal that, during the financial year 2009/10 (the most recent for which the data is available), Research Council spending on “climate change research and training” amounted to £234 million. This analysis was provided by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) on behalf of Research Councils UK (RCUK).

The government could of course think such messages could be easier if we, the Public, were more amenable, more in tune with the message….perhaps the ESRC could help…via Bob Ward & Co:
Influencing behaviour and informing interventions
We need better understanding of the behaviour of people, social groups and organisations, and how to influence them. ESRC-funded research throws light on the underlying reasons for different behaviours and therefore how people and groups might respond to different interventions. This could help rethink the delivery of public services, influence consumer and corporate behaviour, and enhance wellbeing.

How to understand behaviour and risks at multiple levels and a variety of contexts?

The ESRC shapes and defines society’s sense of itself, guides the creation of new social knowledge and collaborates with those who make policy and executive decisions in government, business and the third sector.

But of course there is that other big institution that can be relied upon to push the right message:
The BBC foists on us a skewed version of reality
The news media are engaged in a political argument about whether the purpose of journalism is to report the world as it is or to purvey an idealised view
So this is where the bigger question comes in: what is the dissemination of news for? For the BBC – by which I mean, for those who decide these things at the corporation – there is little doubt that the function of news broadcasting is to enlighten the public. I use that word advisedly, in its specialised sense, meaning not simply to inform but to “free from prejudice and superstition”.
BBC news output is specifically designed to counter what it sees as ignorance and popular prejudices. Its coverage of issues in which it believes such prejudices to be rife – immigration, for example – is intended to be instructional and, specifically corrective of what its managers think of, and describe openly in conversation, as the influence of the “Right-wing press”.
The unabashed dissemination of this highly political official viewpoint is justified on the grounds that it is needed to balance the influence of scurrilous newspapers.

A perfect example of that is this recent BBC ‘report’ that pumps up the alarmism by saying El Nino will be intensified by global warming (If there is any)

WUWT begs to differ:

Will Global Warming Increase the Intensity of El Niño?

As well as funding by the ESCR the CCCEP is also funded by a large insurance company, who might obviously have a vested interest in creating some alarm about climate change:

‘Generous support for the Centre’s work is also provided by Munich Re’

The Munich Re programme
Evaluating the economics of climate risks and opportunities in the insurance sector
This research programme is funded by Munich Re and benefits from research collaborations across the industry and public sectors. It is a comprehensive research programme that focuses on the assessment of the risks from climate change, and on the appropriate responses, to inform decision making in the private and public sectors.

Now surely just a coincidence but Bob Ward used to work in the insurance industry:

Director of Global Science Networks at global risk insurance firm RMS.
While Ward’s employment is ostensibly with the Grantham, he also doubles up as PR man for the CCCEP. The CCCEP is funded jointly by the UK’s research councils and risk insurance giants Munich Re.
The close association between climate alarmists and the insurance industry is no less natural than that between ‘sceptics’ and Exxon. Just as Exxon might be expected to play down the threat of climate change when it suits them, Munich Re can be relied upon to overstate the dangers. Fear of risk is to the insurance industry what oil is to Exxon.

The difference is that Bob Ward doesn’t write letters of complaint to Munich Re insurers or articles for the Guardian when Munich Re disseminates ‘misleading and inaccurate information about climate change’ – which they surely do.

And Ward writes papers about climate and insurance risk:

Herweijer, C., Ranger, N., and Ward, R.E.T. July 2009. Adaptation to climate change: threats and opportunities for the insurance industry. The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance: issues and practice, v.34 pp.360-380.

Ward, R.E.T., Herweijer, C., Patmore, N., and Muir-Wood, R. January 2008. The role of insurers in promoting adaptation to the impacts of climate change. The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance: Issues and Practice, v.33, pp.133-139.

Ward, R.E.T., Muir-Wood, R., and Grossi, P. 2007. Flood risk in New Orleans: implications for future management. Geophysical Research Abstracts, v.9, 04542.

Oh and look….more ‘vested interests’ at the Grantham Institute:
Glancing down the profiles of Grantham’s management team, we spot another corporate Green to have found a new home among academic foliage. The last time we looked, Sam Fankhauser was Managing Director of IDEAcarbon:
IDEAcarbon is an independent and professional provider of ratings, research and strategic advice on carbon finance. Our services are designed to provide leading financial institutions, corporations, governments, traders and developers with unbiased intelligence and analysis of the factors that affect the pricing of carbon market assets.
IDEAcarbon’s parent company is IDEAglobal, where Stern is Vice President.

Ward, the geology graduate turned PR spinner, continues his attack on the BBC…apparently its presenters, not being scientists, can’t possibly understand what the issues are….unlike himself of course…..

Here he launches into Andrew Neil:
He [Andrew Neil] falsely claimed that Professor Hans von Storch, when discussing the recent slowdown in the rise of global surface temperature in an interview with a German newspaper, indicated that “if there is a 20 year plateau, then we’ll need to have a fundamental re-examination of climate change policy, not to abandon it, but to wonder whether we should be doing it so quickly and in the way we’re doing it”. In fact, Professor von Storch did not make any such statement.

Unfortunately Storch did make such a claim….this illustrates perfectly the arrogance of people like Ward….who claims non-scientists can’t possibly understand the science….but then of course how do politicians make decisions based upon that science if they don’t understand the concepts?
Bishop Hill suggests that it isn’t necessarily the politicians who are at fault…but those scientists who give the advice:
On advice to government
Reasonable people might wonder why the Government Chief Scientific Adviser is basing his briefing of the Cabinet on data that is known to be erroneous.

Is Ward saying we are implementing billions of pounds worth of climate programmes on a politician’s hunch…or is the truth that scientists are misleading the politicians…some politicians happy of course to be led by the nose as they have vested interests in green technology?

Here von Storch is interviewed by Der Spiegel:

Climate experts have long predicted that temperatures would rise in parallel with greenhouse gas emissions. But, for 15 years, they haven’t. In a SPIEGEL interview, meteorologist Hans von Storch discusses how this “puzzle” might force scientists to alter what could be “fundamentally wrong” models.

Storch: I’m not aware of any studies showing that floods happen more often today than in the past. I also just attended a hydrologists’ conference in Koblenz, and none of the scientists there described such a finding…..since there has been only moderate global warming so far, climate change shouldn’t be playing a major role in any case yet. [Compare with Met Office’s Peter Stott’s claim that the risk of flooding has doubled due to climate change (despite there being no apparent trend in rainfall statistics)]

Storch: Unfortunately, some scientists behave like preachers, delivering sermons to people. What this approach ignores is the fact that there are many threats in our world that must be weighed against one another. If I’m driving my car and find myself speeding toward an obstacle, I can’t simple yank the wheel to the side without first checking to see if I’ll instead be driving straight into a crowd of people. Climate researchers cannot and should not take this process of weighing different factors out of the hands of politics and society.

Storch: If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models. A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario. But even today, we are finding it very difficult to reconcile actual temperature trends with our expectations.

SPIEGEL: That sounds quite embarrassing for your profession, if you have to go back and adjust your models to fit with reality…

Storch: Why? That’s how the process of scientific discovery works. There is no last word in research, and that includes climate research. It’s never the truth that we offer, but only our best possible approximation of reality. But that often gets forgotten in the way the public perceives and describes our work.

SPIEGEL: Does this throw the entire theory of global warming into doubt?
Storch: I don’t believe so. We still have compelling evidence of a man-made greenhouse effect. There is very little doubt about it. But if global warming continues to stagnate, doubts will obviously grow stronger.

If the models are wrong, then the science is wrong and the politics based upon that science is wrong….and Ward is wrong.

So that’s Bob Ward….not a scientist but a peddler of a very one sided view of the world, funded ironically by ‘Big Oil’ and his boss’s huge financial empire built on exploiting the planet’s resources.

He attacks the Sceptics for being funded by business and yet he is himself funded by big business, not to mention by government.  He criticises them for being non-scientists…when in fact often they are scientists…whilst Ward himself is not.  He criticises them for not having the facts…but then the facts seem to elude him also.

In fact all these criticisms are the very same ones that Harrabin frequently raises about the Sceptics….the very Sceptics he has also tried to silence and smear.

Any coincidence that Ward seemed to be a favourite source of quotes for Richard Black….has Harrabin ‘inherited’ him?

Perhaps Ward was doing Harrabin and the BBC a ‘favour’ by claiming the BBC were giving too much airtime to the Sceptics….maybe the whole charade was designed merely to suggest that the BBC was ‘impartial’, listening to all sides to blunt the attacks on the BBC for having decided that the ‘science was settled‘ and was no more than a climate propagandist.

Whatever, Harrabin and Ward seemed to have kissed and made up…which is why Ward’s (or  Lord Stern’s if you prefer) message trying to damn Sceptics was so readily given such prominence by Harrabin….a ‘more effective presentation of the ‘facts”?

Heard this report first on the radio ….not a hint of who was being ‘racist’…though the accents gave it away.

London letting agents ‘refuse black tenants’

A long, detailed report…and yet that one essential detail is missing from it.

This is the closest the ‘mainstream’ BBC gets to admitting who are discriminating on racial grounds:

BBC London was initially tipped off certain letting agents were willing to discriminate against African-Caribbean people on behalf of landlords, with the alleged misdoing rife in parts of west London.

Because they use a white ‘tenant’ and a black ‘tenant’ they make it appear on the radio and in print as if this is a white/black issue when, in this case, it is not.

Curiously it is the BBC’s Asian Network that actually ‘names names’ as it so often does when looking at these ‘sensitive’ subjects.

Nihal asks if you are shocked that Asians will discriminate on grounds of colour, after a BBC documentary shows Afro-Caribbean people being turned away from Asian letting agents.

Curious that the BBC isn’t keen to highlight that it isn’t just good old Whitey who is racist.

The BBC clearly don’t have any concept of that others can also be racist as they ask:

Are you shocked that Asians will discriminate on grounds of colour?

The BBC has history when it comes to manipulating the news…it seems that for different audiences there is a different agenda….BBC London may reveal the full truth but the BBC nationally will try to hide the race/religion of the culprits…especially if Muslim.

This post from September shows the same way of working…..

We Sikh Him Here, We Sikh Him There…That Damned Elusive …er…Muslim

Here the BBC in one article is protecting the ‘Muslims’ whilst allowing the Sikh community to be tarred with suspicion because it is not made clear that the guilty are Muslims and not Sikhs.

When you start manipulating the news for your own political and social ends as the BBC so often does, there are always consequences…in this case Sikhs become victims twice over.

Time for a new one…..

The Left are panicking, the election is looming ever nearer and their Leader is looking ever more dire.

Miliband makes a decision, is forced to change his mind, and then proclaims that the U-turn conveys an image of strength, the power to make decisions.

The Left have lost the argument on climate, immigration, the economy, welfare and to cap it all UKIP are still riding high in the polls.

Still there’s always The Now Show to fall back on, along with a well used canned laughter track to, in the best Soviet fashion, give the impression everyone is going along with the joke.

Well known for its lefty leaning tendencies the show excelled this Saturday and kept the Right Wing bashing flowing….

Here Nick Doody(16 mins) entertains us with what might pass for comedy in…. well I can’t think of any place that it might pass as comedy…it’s an outright political tract…attacking the Right of course…..

Apparently the Hard Times have given rise to a scary new group of populist right wing parties…there’s Golden Dawn in Greece, the ‘unhinged’ Tea Party in the US and UKIP….now, don’t get him wrong, Doody’s not conflating UKIP with the BNP just because they have some of the same policies…but, well, actually he is…and oh yes…the Tories…not immune to this unpleasantness either he tells us….apparently they’re all just racists.

And as for welfare reform….he tells us ‘This argument is hard to make…because of the Right Wing media’….really?  So Doody’s admitting this is not comedy but an ‘argument’.

And as for ‘Right Wing Media’…well the BBC is vastly more powerful with an enormous reach….I guess it must just be the Public using their own thought processes don’t like what you’ve got to say, nothing to do with the Daily Mail.

Oh yes….you may have noted he’s against all those nasty right wingers such as UKIP..and Tommy Robinson….you know the campaigner against extremist Islam…but…

Have you heard the one about the Racist BBC comic who didn’t know he was racist…I guess if you have the same policies as the EDL then you are EDL…eh Doody?

By Nick Doody himself:

On 10 October 2008, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain is holding a conference called Political Islam, Sharia Law and Civil Society. They have assembled an impressive list of speakers….Oh yes, and me.

It can always be a little nerve-wracking, being a non-Muslim making jokes about Islam. On the one hand, there’s the risk of real reprisals – those people who were angered to the point of violence over what someone called a teddy bear are going to get really upset if they ever hear about what I’ve been calling them.

On the face of it, it looks promising (as long as I’m not on after Johann Hari – he always finishes with a song and is very hard to follow). The event is against the death penalty. Hey, I’m against the death penalty. It’s for standing up against theocracy. Guess what? Me too. Fighting for freedom of expression on behalf of the oppressed – wow, if the British Council of Ex-Muslims were a girl, she’d be my type. I wonder what they’re doing after the conference? If they’re anything like ex-Catholics, they’re great in bed, too.

Reviewers have described my material on Islam as both “easy” and “brave”, apparently depending on whether they were offended or not. In reality, it’s neither. Easy would be writing jokes from a knee-jerk position, pandering to the racists…..there’s the risk of being misunderstood by bigots, who think you’re on their side because they’ve heard some key words. You know the type: shiny-faced, shaven-headed Littlejohn larvae. “Too right – tell ‘em to take their mosques back to, er, Moscow!” I’ll take an edgy confrontation with an offended bunch of young Muslim men any day over a slap on the back and the offer of a pint from one of these twats.

Brave would be doing my act in Tehran.

            No to Shariah law! No to the EDL!

Date: Saturday 21 November 2009
Time: 1200-1400

Confirmed speakers and performers include: Nazanin Afshin-Jam, Mina Ahadi, ‘AK47,’ Fari B, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Roy Brown, Nick Doody,

What’s the campaign about…..

• It is dangerous to incorporate religious laws
• It is not racist to criticise Islam
• We will have nothing to do with the English Defence League
  
• One Law for All is against the Beth Din too
• The pathetic excuse of much of the European Left is no better
  
• The battle against Sharia is against both the Islamists and the far right
• Please don’t export your Islamists, deal with them

Isn’t that exactly what the EDL want…apart from the ‘nothing to do with the EDL’ obviously’?

If only we could see ourselves as others see us……you’re clearly a racist Islamophobe Doody by your own logic…..oh hang on…you said it’s not racist to criticise Islam…all cool then with Tommy?

The BBC’s Home Editor, Mark Easton, is very pro immigration, telling us we must all get used to it……maybe that’s why he  and the rest of the BBC seem to have ignored this report:

True scale of European immigration
An EU study has found 600,000 unemployed migrants are living in Britain – a 42 per cent rise

More than 600,000 unemployed European Union migrants are living in Britain at a cost of £1.5 billion to the NHS alone, according to an EU report.
The authoritative study, obtained by The Sunday Telegraph, shows the number of jobless European migrants coming to Britain has risen dramatically in the past five years, intensifying demands for the Government to renegotiate EU membership.
Opponents of the EU seized on the figures to suggest Britain could not afford to allow European migrants to come here at will while continuing to provide a universal benefits system.

The BBC has in fact been reporting the complete opposite of that for a while now,  creating the impression that immigration and ‘health tourism’ isn’t a problem for the NHS…..pressing a point that in fact we must treat everyone otherwise they would represent a health risk to the nation.

To me that would indicate that immigration should be controlled, to the BBC et al, that immigration isn’t the problem and all services should be provided for the immigrants.

Those working in the NHS are much less exercised about the health tourism “problem” than politicians.
There are good public health and moral reasons why the health service provides treatment for infectious diseases such as TB and in emergencies.
Non-emergency care is a much greyer issue – and that is why ministers are now talking about applying a levy for that.

On Twitter, shadow public health minister Diane Abbott said: “What price xenophobia?
Stigmatising foreigners accessing NHS creates a public health risk.”

The National Aids Trust said the policies would “undermine years of work to encourage marginalised at-risk groups to access HIV testing and treatment”.
Chief executive Deborah Jack said “limiting access to primary care for some migrants” would cut off “the only place many of them will get an HIV diagnosis – short of presenting at A&E many years after they were infected once they are very seriously ill”.
She added: “If they go ahead, they risk putting lives at risk and accelerating the spread of HIV in the general population.”

Mark Easton hasn’t bothered with that latest report revealing the costs to the NHS of mass immigration, and of course the cost in services that would otherwise have gone to the people who are entitled to the service and now do not receive it.

Easton is more concerned with attacking the Daily Mail for having had some meetings with Government…..strange he doesn’t mention the meetings with the Guardian and the [independent?] BBC…over ‘policy’…or any other media outlet.

Could it be that he mentions the Mail because he is trying to suggest that the Mail’s story on Ralph Miliband was a Tory plot…even though the Mail is outside the political cliques?:

 
Mark Easton ?@BBCMarkEaston 7 Oct
Importance of Mail to govt. illustrated by 4 lunches with @George_Osborne and @dannyalexander in May/Jun  https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/246388/hmt_ministerial_transparency_april_june_2013.pdf

Mark Thompson: BBC chief talks to No 10 about selling the cuts The director-general of the BBC has been accused of risking the corporation’s editorial independence after it emerged that he attended a private Downing Street meeting to discuss coverage of Government spending cuts.

The only comment on the report is a ‘what the papers say‘ link to the telegraph….so they know but tuck the story away……in a quiet corner of the ‘UK News’ page:

Newspaper review   Papers focus on immigration at home and abroad

Very eye catching.

Mark Easton has other things on his mind:

Mark Easton ‏@BBCMarkEaston 21h  The lost art of napkin folding. The utterly extraordinary Joan Sallas @waddesdonmanor #madeentirelyofnapkins pic.twitter.com/bN7wCEeJ92

From Littlejohn in the Daily Mail 2009:

Following the inquest into the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand bullying scandal, BBC entertainment chiefs have issued new taste and decency guidelines, including a ban on swearing before 10pm.

It comes after a week in which Labour minister Ben Bradshaw, himself a former BBC correspondent, accused the corporation of being biased in favour of the Tories.

He said that an interview which the Today Programme’s Evan Davis conducted with George Osborne was ‘fawning and feeble’.

This would be the same Evan Davis who, in the course of a single interview, asked David Cameron four questions about foxhunting in an attempt to portray him as a ‘Tory Toff’.

Earlier Andrew Marr had quizzed Cameron about his personal wealth and Jeremy Paxman sneered at Boris Johnson’s Eton and Oxford background.

I don’t remember any BBC reporter asking Tony Blair about his privileged upbringing or questioning Peter Mandelson on where he got the money to buy a £2.4 million home, let alone a £24,000 Patek Philippe wristwatch.

The idea that the BBC is biased in favour of the Tories is risible.

What has not been publicised, until now, is that the corporation’s news and current affairs department has also issued a directive to editors, producers and presenters.

It contains a lexicon of approved swearwords which must be used in all BBC news bulletins and interviews, at every possible opportunity, and delivered with a curled lip.

This column has obtained a copy.

BBC NEWS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS

TO: All producers, editors and presenters

FROM: Controller, Editorial Standards Board

RE: Swearwords

A American, aggressor (see Israel, below), anti-Islamic, Ashcroft (Lord).

B Banker, Bullingdon, baronet, bonuses, BNP.

C Capitalist, Conservative, Christian, chinless, chumps (‘bunch of’), Chelsea tractor.

D Denier (as in ‘climate change’), duck house, defeat (in Afghanistan), Daily Mail.

E Etonian, ex-public schoolboy, europhobe, extremist (see also sceptic, euro).

F Foxhunting, financier, fascist, free market, fee-paying, Far Right.

G Globalisation, genocide (against Palestine, see Israel), greed, gasguzzler.

H Homophobe, homophobia, homophobic, hedge fund manager, hater, hate crime, heartless (see Tory Cuts).

I Islamophobe, Islamophobia, Islamophobic, Israel, Izza-ra-aylee, investment banker (but not Labour ‘investment’), inheritance tax cut.

J Jewish State (see aggression, etc), judgemental.

K Knights of the shires (see duck house, moat dredging).

L Little Englander (as in anyone who wants a referendum on Europe), Loyalist.

M Merchant banker, multinational, motorist, moat dredging, mansion, Murdoch.

N Nazi (see also Tory and Israel), neo-Nazi, neo-Con, Nasty Party.

O Oil companies, Old Etonian, Oxford, occupation (see Israel).

P Profit, privilege, privatelyeducated, private medicine, polluter, populist, Palin (Sarah, not Michael).

Q Queue-jumping (see Tory health policy), Queer-basher (see Christian).

R Racist, racism, rich (anyone earning more than £50,000 a year), Right-wing, reactionary, rapists (all men are), roadblock to peace (see Israel and Loyalist).

S Savage (see also Tory Cuts), silver spoon, sceptic (as in euro), selfish, swivel-eyed.

T Tory, Tory Toffs, Tory Cuts, Tory Split, Thatcher, Thatcherite, torture (as in British troops, CIA), tax cuts for the wealthy, two-tier (see Tory health/education policies).

U UKIP (see also Nazi, fascist), Unionist, USA.

V Victorian (as in ‘values’), Vietnam (see Afghanistan).

W Wealthy (see ‘rich’ above), Waffen SS (see also Tory, UKIP), war crimes (as in American and Israeli).

X Xenophobe (see Tory, UKIP, Little Englander, etc).

Y Young Conservative.

Z Zionist.

Evan Davis was on great form today, lambasting those nasty, capitalist Tory voting types for buying Royal Mail shares, falsely claiming Clegg supports the Guardian over Snowden and now a fine example of wilful blindness.

At 08:21 on the Today programme Davis was talking to Vince Cable and claimed that:

‘It’s odd that politicians grumble about high energy prices when at the same time they are adding to those costs [with their green taxes]’

Funny how I’ve yet to hear him raise that very issue with Ed Miliband, the very man who wrote the law that requires all these green taxes…and who now complains bitterly about high energy prices.

The BBC tell us that when energy company SSE raised prices:

The decision prompted fevered political debate over who to blame for the rise.

Not on the BBC it didn’t…..no finger of blame was pointed in Miliband’s direction…he was given plenty of airtime for his soundbite that it was a ‘scandal…and the government is allowing the energy companies to get away with it.’

Here the BBC quotes Labour without any real attempt to question their claims:
SSE ‘out of touch’ over gas and electricity price rise says Labour

Shadow Welsh Secretary Owen Smith said the rise was “breathtaking,” given the difficulties customers were facing.

Labour leader Ed Miliband, who pledged a price freeze for 20 months if his party wins the next election, described SSE’s price rise as a “scandal”. He accused the UK government of “letting energy companies get away with this”.

In the interview in this report Miliband is asked some obvious questions but is allowed to bat them away with nonsense answers.

He’s asked what if the energy companies put up prices before his price freeze?..he says:

‘If power companies get together and collude that will be illegal.’

Well, yes, but that wasn’t the question….that being…what is he going to do if power companies put up prices..without ‘collusion’?  No answer.

He was allowed to get away with claiming the companies were ‘unreliable witnesses’….and he isn’t?  No self interest here for the Labour leader in grandstanding?

He claimed they had been overcharging for years and now they had to answer for that.

Have they?  Not according to the facts..and this analysis on Guido Fawkes

So Miliband has an easy ride on the BBC Breakfast couch.

Plenty of hypocrisy from the BBC on display there.…but the Guardian tries to outshine them, Polly Toynbee allowing her hatred of Tories and Michael Gove in particular it seems, to overcome what little sense she has (via Guido):

A remarkable headline…one as it’s not true, two Baby P and Hamzah Khans died during the Labour years…and three the sheer hypocrisy of that headline as Toynbee politicises the deaths of these children……

and yet not so long ago when Tories claimed that Mick Philpott’s living arrangements, with several women, numerous children and an income of £60,000 per year from benefits, made the case for welfare reform the Left claimed this was politicising the deaths of the children…when in fact the deaths had no part on the Tory claims…it was the ability to claim benefits for that lifestyle that they were highlighting.
From the Guardian:
George Osborne was accused of a demeaning attempt to use the killing of six children by Mick Philpott to bolster the Conservatives’ case that the welfare state is subsidising inappropriate lifestyles.
In what is turning into a bitter row over welfare reform, Labour accused the chancellor of overstepping the boundary of decency by implying there is a connection between welfare and the crimes committed by Philpott.

Osborne in fact very carefully and deliberately avoided any connection between the deaths of the children and his own point…unlike the Left..who were the ones in fact ‘politicising’ the deaths.

Again where’s the Lefty outrage at the headline?  If you’re a Daily Mail columnist or a Tory it seems you are more ‘accountable’ than if you are a champagne swilling socialist.

Yet more hypocrisy from Labour…and once again the BBC makes no comment on that hypocrisy:

Labour’s Chuka Umunna told us it was Labour’s (13:07) :

‘constitutional and democratic duty to scrutinize what the government does and hold to account the government for its policies.’

So that’ll be why Labour’s Andy Burnham is saying he will sue Jeremy Hunt for questioning his stewardship of the NHS under Labour……so accountable…..
The Health Secretary has been sent a legal letter after taking to Twitter to criticise Mr Burnham, Labour’s former health secretary, over his record in government between 2009 and 2010.
Mr Burnham has acknowledged that suing his counterpart as would be an “extraordinary step”, but said that he is considering it because of the “exceptional circumstances” he has found himself in.
He is demanding that Mr Hunt should remove the comments from the social networking website or face further legal action.

Now Mr Burnham, writing on the Labour List blog, has accused the Conservative party of starting a campaign to “politicise” the failures in the health system after the Francis report.
He said: “What has followed can only be described as an orchestrated smear campaign against the last Government and the integrity of Ministers who served in it.”

Of course Labour aren’t used to being held to account….13 years of disastrous rule goes practically unmentioned by the BBC.

H/T  Bobo

Evan Davis on fine form:(08:10)

‘Well we’ve had a Royal Mail sale but for some it’s a Royal Mail fail as we’re selling off shares in a national asset on the cheap, a way of handing out free money to Conservative voting types who already have enough money to fork out and buy some shares……the market will give us a first indication of whether that account gets out of the starting blocks….’

Yes…let’s have a whip round for those poverty stricken Labour voting types eeking out a living on BBC wages.

Tory’s are beyond the pale….but an Iranian regime which hangs gay people and 16 year old girls from cranes as a way of handing out free warnings to non-conservative Muslim types is worthy of his respect.

 Evan Davis pulled a fast one this morning  (08:23) trying to make it look as if Nick Clegg supported the Guardian’s publication of Snowden’s material….when he clearly does not.

Davis was interviewing Vince Cable about the Royal Mail sell off when he slipped in a question about the Guardian.

Davis asked (abridged) ‘Has the Guardian done the Public a service by its revelations, which it maintains are true, whilst Nick Clegg has suggested we need more control of the surveillance industry, or has the Guardian done enormous harm by its revelations?’

Davis has run Clegg’s statement into his question about the Guardian, a question which suggests that the Guardian was merely revealing the extent of the surveillance possible….and that Clegg therefore supports the Guardian by saying we may need more control of that.

What Davis doesn’t reveal is the true nature of the concerns about the Guardian’s revelations which revealed so much about surveillance techniques that it may allow terrorists to evade surveillance.

Clegg’s real position is that:

So no he doesn’t think the Guardian has done the Public a service.  Evan Davis took his quote out of context to support his own defence of the BBC’s stable mate.

The  BBC may have had comments about that little bit of trickery as later we get this on the web:

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg and his cabinet colleague Vince Cable appear at odds about the Guardian’s disclosure of secret surveillance.
Mr Cable said the newspaper performed a “very considerable public service” by publishing details of documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
But Mr Clegg reaffirmed his belief it was “not good at all” and said the information could “help terrorists”.

Curiously in a sidebar on the same article we get Frank Gardner also defending the Guardian:

Vince Cable is right to draw a distinction between the actions of Edward Snowden and those of the Guardian, because the two often get conflated.

Well…no…there wasn’t an ill-judged conflation as Gardner claims…Snowden stole intelligence data and the Guardian has published it….both obviously intended the same outcome. The Guardian is just as guilty if it published material that is gifting information to terrorists.
Gardner goes on:
[One] side of the argument is that had it not been for the Guardian publishing some of Snowden’s revelations we might never have known the extraordinary extent to which our governments can hoover up private information, something that is prompting some to question whether, in this digital age, the current oversight of Britain’s intelligence agencies is adequate.

So…that’s Evan Davis’ defence of the Guardian, and Gardner’s, and presumably the line of defence as approved by the BBC editorial team…that no one had any idea of the extent of the Intelligence Service’s capabilities and therefore now we know this we can arrange proper oversight of the system….thanks to the Guardian.

Except….we already knew just how  all seeing the spooks are…and have been for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Here is a BBC report from 1999….spot the difference from today’s concerns:

Imagine a global spying network that can eavesdrop on every single phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet.
It sounds like science fiction, but it’s true.
Two of the chief protagonists – Britain and America – officially deny its existence. But the BBC has confirmation from the Australian Government that such a network really does exist and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are calling for an inquiry.
the NSA of conducting a broad “dragnet” of communications, and “invading the privacy of American citizens.”

The Echelon spy system, whose existence has only recently been acknowledged by US officials, is capable of hoovering up millions of phone calls, faxes and emails a minute.

Notice that phrase ‘hoovering up’ again ….nothing changes….and nothing’s really new..so why all the fuss?

The BBC is smoothing over the Guardian’s massive problem…if it is seen to be aiding and abetting terrorists…the end result of which could be carnage on our streets….a different order of scale when compared to the Mail’s ‘The Man who hated Britain’ headline….and yet absolutely no barrage of outrage from the BBC or any on the Left as they blitzed us with over the Mail’s attack on their Marxist hero.

Once again the BBC’s coverage of events has serious consequences…..here allowing the Guardian’s dangerous revelations to go unchallenged, not just that, but Davis went so far as to make a false claim by implication about a senior politician and his views for political gain…..and so continuing the BBC’s playing down of MI5’s ‘scathing condemnation’ of the Guardian’s treachery.