Has the BBC been caught red-handed pumping out black propaganda against the government whilst promoting Labour policy?

Today was the day when Ed Miliband was to relaunch his energy price freeze policy….just a coincidence that a story broke today, exclusively on the leftwing BBC, that Cameron was supposedly also going to adopt that policy…the only thing was the story was a load of bollocks….in fact “complete b******s”  according to the Government.

 

The BBC this morning reported that:

The government is asking the Big Six energy companies to hold energy prices until the middle of 2015.

 

This was reported as fact.

The sources for this report were ‘energy companies and one of the Big Six’, all unnamed….and still unnamed….the story, the BBC says, ‘broke over night’.

So let’s get this right….several energy companies apparently got in touch with the BBC, and only the BBC, this is a BBC ‘exclusive’, a Scoop, in the middle of the night, and told the BBC that Cameron, who has spent the last few weeks castigating the Marxist Miliband for state interventionist plans, his ‘con’,  has suddenly decided to do exactly the same thing and freeze prices.

I’m buying that…sure I am.

Not only that but there appeared to be no government spokesman available at all to come onto the BBC for a very long time….on 5Live the only one we had was Peter Lilley…after 13:00….and Lilley said that in fact it was the energy companies that had come to the government and said they would hold down prices if the government axed some green levies….a completely different picture of events.

 

But at 07:10, death O’clock in the morning, The BBC had managed to get hold of Labour’s Caroline Flint and put her on the Today programme to talk about this:

0710

The government is asking the ‘big six’ energy companies not to put up prices until the middle of 2015 – after the next general election. The shadow secretary of state for energy and climate change, Caroline Flint, speaks to the Today programme’s Sarah Montague.

 

Which the BBC followed up with a big splash:

Flint: Cameron ‘following Miliband’s lead’ on energy

“David Cameron is desperately now running around the energy companies asking them to impose a price freeze when he’s spent two months saying that the price freeze that Ed Miliband announced is a con.

“He has been too weak, too indecisive,” she continued.

 

 

Stitch up?  I think so.

 

So the question must be….Just when did the BBC first ask the government to confirm these stories?

It looks like the BBC  haven’t bothered to ask the government and went right ahead and reported this as fact without any confirmation…because the government vigorously denies they ever made any such request…and looking at the facts it seems hardly likely that they would.

The BBC are still reporting (at 16:00 today) it as ‘fact’ on their front page…despite having  a separate story of the government denial….and one story of Miliband claiming Cameron is following his policy, and another reporting Miliband’s policy.  Here is the main headline with the denial…..but still followed by the ‘complete bollocks‘ reported as fact:

Ministers deny energy bill bid

The government denies BBC reports it is seeking a commitment from energy companies to hold their prices down until 2015.

• Cameron wants energy rise limit Watch
• Labour: PM ‘pleading’ with firms Watch
• Government wants energy prices held
• Labour to pledge major energy reform

 

Ed Miliband: David Cameron pleading with energy companies

3 hours ago

Labour leader Ed Miliband says the prime minister has been “pleading with energy companies to get him off the hook”.

 

Government asks energy firms to hold prices

 

Energy bills: Ministers not seeking ‘price pledge’

 

All a bit of a shambles from the BBC.

 

 

But there’s more to this….not only had the BBC managed to get Flint onto the radio at 07:10 but they had rounded up Dale Vince, the boss of Ecotricity…..who not very long ago at all was quite open about his leanings:

Ecotricity boss Dale Vince backs Ed Miliband in energy company power struggle

And:

Ecotricity founder Dale Vince today called for Ed Miliband to go further than thoughts of a price freeze and consider either renationalising the energy industry

 

He appeared on Wake Up To Money(05:49ish)….so a very fast move by the BBC to get him on early doors.

When asked about the alleged government’s proposal he said:

‘It does sound awfully similar to what Ed Miliband is proposing’.

Well, fancy that.  Of course it does….and that is why it was so unlikely to be true…and yet the BBC report it, unconfirmed by anyone, as fact.

Here is a further taste of Vince’s politics…..

‘The Big Six threatened blackouts if Ed Miliband tried to freeze prices (note ‘threatened‘…I thought ‘warned of’ more appropriate’)…I remember the 70’s when the blackouts were caused by the miners…and now we’ve privatised the energy industry it’s the bosses threatening blackouts.’

The presenter asks:  ‘Do we get stitched up by the Big Six?’  ( a leading question or what?  Vince isn’t exactly neutral here)

Vince replies :  ‘Oh yeah…for years…..since privatisation they’ve been running rings around the regulator and they get away with murder.’

 

OK…so the privatised energy firms are ripping us off….whilst the jolly little green midget is a ‘friend of the people’ providing energy at affordable prices?  Vince boasts he has fixed his prices until the end of winter as well.

 

 

Let’s compare Saint Vince and one of the evil Big Six:

Here is npower’s offer:

Fix your energy prices now until December 2017

You can switch tariff or supplier at any time, with no early exit fee.

 

So….just what benefit is Miliband’s price freeze when it is already happening?…and from 2013 not some time after the election….I don’t think I’ve ever heard the BBC mention these price fixes by the big companies…why not?

 

And what about that ‘rip off’…that ‘stitching up’ by the Big Six?

Well UK energy is one of the cheapest in Europe.

Here are Ecotricity’s prices compared to SSE’s:

Electricity……15.67 p/kwh        But SSE costs 13.08 p/kwh

Gas………………04.66 p/kwh        But SSE costs 04.36 p/kwh

 

Not only that but SSE’s standing charge is much cheaper if you pay by direct debit.

Don’t know about Vince’s arithmetic but I’d say SSE’s prices are cheaper.

So if the Big Six are stitching consumers up, ripping them off…..just what is Ecotricity doing as its prices are higher than SSE’s, one of the Big Six?

Why isn’t the BBC doing these checks on claims by Vince?  They don’t want the facts just as they didn’t check the false claims made by the owner of OVO Energy who was caught out twice making false claims but was given huge publicity by the BBC.

 

So let’s round this up…..the BBC reported a completely unconfirmed allegation as fact….they made no attempt to confirm it…but they did get in a lot of people who are on Labour’s side to talk about it at suspiciously short notice.

Miliband was relaunching his big ‘price freeze’ policy and it is just coincidental that the BBC was making claims that Cameron was now to adopt that very same policy on the same day?

The BBC are still reporting it as fact on the politics page…3 reports saying the government wants a freeze…and one denying it:

• Ministers deny energy bill bid
• Cameron wants energy rise limit Watch
• Labour: PM ‘pleading’ with firms Watch
• Government wants energy prices held

Note in this ‘breaking story’, ‘Energy bills: Green levy reform plan revealed‘ there is no mention of the denial…but there is a video of Miliband smearing  Cameron…why is it on that page when it is irrelevant to the article?

 

Note also that the interviewer in the video asks if we should re-nationalise the energy industry?…this is a constant theme from the BBC…..Dominic Laurie is a particular exponent of this policy…he has history ranting about the evils of privatisation…and today continued that theme.

Laurie was talking about this alleged government policy….and brought on some callers….well, one or two…the first two were likely Miliband supporters…and both remarkably demanded nationalisation of the power companies….followed up by texts…also demanding nationalisation…with only one doubter.

Laurie told us this was a policy that was extremely popular with the Public…not sure how he knows.

Laurie also had on Labour MP Alan Whitehead who was allowed to speak practically uninterrupted…only stopping to be fed a question by Laurie that seemed purely designed to allow Whitehead to continue his hatchet job on the Tories…one example….

Laurie asks:  ‘Shouldn’t we wait until the energy companies come out on the record [regarding the alleged government attempt to freeze prices] before we call it a shambles?’

So…Laurie thinks it is all a shambles…and gave Whitehead the chance to ‘confirm’ that, as he would.

But hang on…this was after 12:00pm….so the BBC hadn’t yet had an ‘on the record’ report from the horse’s mouth that the government had asked them to freeze prices?

So why had the BBC been reporting this as an absolute fact?

It looks very much like the BBC has been deliberately putting out false information about the government not bothering to check a story that is highly damaging to the government whilst enormously helpful to Labour…and all on the day Labour were relaunching their own energy policy.

 

Caught red handed peddling pro-Labour black propaganda?  I think so.

 

Let’s have a look at some recent BBC history:

Paxman made utterly false and insulting allegations about David Cameron and the BBC has not made any apology.

The BBC gave Miliband a massive platform on Desert Island Discs to sell himself to the Public.

Then John Humphrys wrote an article for the Labour newspaper,  the Mirror, defending Miliband’s appearance on the show.

The BBC has been pretty uncritical of Miliband’s price freeze policy, in fact has been supportive of it whilst being extremely critical and negative towards Cameron’s cutting of the ‘green crap’.

The BBC has been party to the massed attacks on the energy companies…the most recent example being the reporting of the ‘excess winter deaths’ which was vastly exaggerated with the BBC not reporting all the facts allowing it to lay blame at the energy companies’ door…..high fuel prices causing the deaths apparently…along with slogans like ‘heating or eating‘ and then the latest..‘heating or healing’ where cancer victims were also suffering because of the high price of cancer treatment or so we were told by the BBC….but blamed on the energy companies.

And today we have the BBC printing ‘legend as fact’ which conveniently tied in with Labour’s narrative.

 

Taken together a cynic might suggest there is a thread which runs through all of the BBC’s actions….that of helping out the Labour Party, publicising and promoting its policies whilst burnishing Miliband’s image which every commentator agrees is unappealing to the voters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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