In case you missed it and don’t want to plough through 3 hours of ‘Sport Relief’ here’s the ‘Only Fools and Horses’ bit…at 2 hours 38 mins on the actual show:

Sport Relief – 2014

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9H6Yxq1-EQ

We cough up 145 beer/irn bru tokens every year for the privilege of being patronised and manipulated but what has the BBC ever done for us?

Is it worth the cost? Does it do anything useful?

Here, via the Telegraph, is a site that provides, at no cost whatsoever and completely unadulterated by political spin, a sterling  public service of immense usefulness:

http://www.fixmystreet.com/

How to get potholes repaired

Honest John hears of a very efficient way to get potholes repaired

The BBC demands a ‘sustainable recovery’ and never mind what recovery there is now you’d better batten down the hatches because it forecasts a grim, depressing future as austerity really bites…you ain’t seen nothing yet….and welfare cuts are impoverishing the demonised poor.

Remarkable how the BBC have totally ignored the wave of criticism that Miliband received, much from his own side, for his abysmal response to the budget……Pienaar and Co’s only reference to the bad performance was to make the excuse ‘Well it must be difficult for the poor lad‘….strangely the same lame excuse Ed Balls muttered.

Never mind this damning look at Miliband’s robot like performance:

No wonder it seemed familiar! How Ed Miliband’s Budget speech recycled the same soundbites he has used for four years

The BBC weren’t so reluctant to step up the attacks when Grant Shapps published his ‘bingo and beer’ response:

Hardly the biggest story of the day…not a story at all really.

However the BBC clearly thought it was, putting it straight onto the frontpage:

Note also that headline….. ‘Chancellor defends pension overhaul’

He defends it does he?  So there is something wrong with the scheme?  Perhaps he was just ‘explaining’ it.

And as for beer and bingo being ‘patronising’….tell that to the workers:

Budget 2014: What do workers think?

Seems they liked the budget quite a lot.

Yep……We’ve just had the budget….but the BBC laid the groundwork for their narrative that they created and now intend to use, long before Osborne stood up and made his speech.

The BBC has had to develop a new approach to reporting the economy…just as Miliband had to abandon Plan B and has now adopted his ‘living standards crisis’ spiel now that the various double and triple dip recessions haven’t happened, employment keeps on rising, businesses keep reporting good news and inflation is down, and the recovery looks to be on its way, slowly but surely.

The BBC keeps of course trying to undermine the government, rising employment is a ‘puzzle’, or if not, it is the wrong sort of jobs, or the recovery is fragile….all based on consumer spending and borrowing or spending their savings…though no proof of that is ever given.

The basis for their latest approach….demanding proof of a ‘sustainable recovery’.  A bit of an amorphous demand….practically unachievable to prove such a thing, the BBC moving the goalposts that would signify success for Osborne….like Miliband’s ‘living standards crisis’ there would never be enough solid evidence that definitively proved anything…which of course is ideal as they can keep spinning out the talk of a ‘fragile, unsustainable’ recovery forever basically…however successful the economy becomes…..they will, and do, point back to the crash and say ‘You might think you’re doing well…but so did they way back then!’.

The second leg to their campaign to undermine Osborne is to say yes things might be improving, for some, but the future is really grim with 5 more years of austerity piling on the pain…..the country can’t take any more!

However, don’t know about you, but I have yet to meet anyone who is really struggling….or struggling more than they would be under any other government and economic regime…most seemed to have weathered the crash quite well….including the ‘vulnerable’ and the poorest.

Here is Peter Allen from a couple of days ago, doing his dead budget sketch telling us that it’s all ‘deeply depressing’ and that ‘most people would think they have been well and truly clobbered…but they ain’t seen nothing yet’.

He tells us that ‘It’s pretty grim….we’ve got several more years of cuts’……austerity is a ‘nonsense…we can’t go on like this.’

Allen rounds off his chat with economist Sarah Hewin from Standard Chartered Bank with a question…..‘Are others [countries] doing it better than us?’…meaning are they running their economy better…..you might be surprised to hear ther UK isn’t doing very well apparently…even Greece is moving ahead faster than us…..of course it is:

Later in the programme (2 hrs 45) we are taken to hear the views of those involved with the Community Links charity in Newham….a Labour controlled borough.

Community Links is run by Geraldine Blake….who is according to the Guardian, a ‘leading leftwing thinker’.

The presenter [Leslie Ashmall] starts by telling us that the budget brought no surprises [really?]…there wasn’t much in the budget for the poor of Newham…..just more welfare cuts and more local government cuts…and they hurt here, they really do, she tells us.

So you know where she is coming from…..she had a narrative and stuck to it, encouraging those being interviewed to paint the bleakest picture they could of their lives under the Tory yoke.

They responded well to the prodding….telling us that the poor will be getting poorer, they’ll be on the breadline…there’s no investment and no regeneration in the area.

The presenter didn’t bother to ask if that might have been the Labour controlled council that was responsible for that…they have been in power for decades after all.

Is there anything in the budget for people like this the presenter asks Geraldine Blake who replies……Well there’s a bit of tinkering and tweaking but not really…..this government  has very successfully demonised a very vulnerable group in society, tarring them with the same brush as fraudsters and shirkers…what we are seeing is that people are pushed away from the job market,  the situation is just appalling…a very bad reflection on how we treat the most vulnerable in society.

Pretty much confirmation that she might well be one of the ‘leading leftwing thinkers’ of legend.

Ashmall’s response…‘Yes, I’ve certainly met very many miserable people today.’

The BBC…never mind the millions who might benefit from the budget….just concentrate on the few who may, or may not benefit.

According to Guido the BBC has pulled a video from the iPlayer at the insistence of Gordon Brown

Guess Brown has no problem negotiating the BBC’s complaints procedure.

Via The Spectator…..

The BBC’s latest recruit to Newsnight, Duncan Wheldon,  has admitted to having been a teenage werewolf.  The romance of the horror, the thrill of the chase, adolescent hormones coursing through the veins, the moonlight, all lured him into making that fatal decision.  But he’s better now.

He’s over his brief dalliance with demonic Beastliness and has settled down in comfortable old age as a dinosaur…cosying up to the Labour Party and the Union Barons of the TUC….and his new comrades at the BBC…..all strictly ‘platonic’ you understand.

Actually he admits to having been, shock horror, a teenage Fascist.

He’s embarrassed and admits to having been a ‘witless prat’….but as I said, he’s better now….He tells us:

The BBC is full of journalists from a wide range of backgrounds who left their political baggage at the door the day they started work.

…or maybe he’s not so better now.

He goes on….

By the time I was 18 I had joined the Labour Party, horrified by the racism, homophobia and anti-semitism I had encountered on my sorties into far right literature.

Hmmm…was he reading the Koran or the Bible then?  Or the Guardian? Must have some interesting conversations with Katz…will Katz be doing a self-expose, a mea culpa selfie?…admitting having worked for an anti-Semitic paper?

Wheldon continues:

Reflecting on the last week it’s hard to escape the irony that I have been accused of being a dangerous leftie and also a fascist within 48 hours.

None of this should be read as a plea for sympathy.

Well as Nazis were Socialists and they swapped personnel with the Communist party as often as the BBC does with Labour, there’s not much between the two ‘ideologies’ in philosophy or practice…..both murdered millions and enslaved their own people to the ideology.

Wonder how many more ‘selfies’ we will get from within the Labyrinth admitting to having been Trots, Marxists or even UKIP members?

You can see perhaps why Alex Salmond wants 16 year olds to vote on his nationalist agenda.

The BBC has been digesting the budget and I was a tad surprised to hear none other than Chris Huhne invited on the Today programme this morning around 6.45am to give his judgement on the green credentials of the Coalition. The swivel eyed eco-loon former jail bird Huhne is hardly a bastion of balanced opinion but Evan Davies nonetheless was happy to let him ramble.

Brand new OPEN THREAD to see us all off into the wild blue yonder of the weekend. The floor belongs to you….

Iraqi gunmen launched a three hour assault on British troops with the aim of killing them all……the Iraqis ended up dead or captured…the survivors now complain they were questioned oppressively and shouted at quite loudly.

They want money…no sorry, justice….and they knew, or thought they did, just the man to get it for them.

Lawyer Phil Shiner has been filling his boots at tax payers expense for quite some time (The Iraqi team is publically funded by the Legal Services Commission)…..(thanks to Rob in the comments for drawing our attention to this story)……a frequent guest of Victoria Derbyshire no doubt she is clearing the decks for tomorrow and a few words of apology and remorse from Shiner as he tries to explain away how he has managed to find no evidence of British forces unlawfully killing Iraqis…despite £22 million being wasted on this so far.

Al-Sweady Inquiry: Iraq unlawful killing claims dropped

42 weeks of inquiry, 281 ‘witnesses’…and nothing….

A public inquiry into whether UK soldiers unlawfully killed Iraqi civilians in custody in 2004 has heard their relatives no longer believe there is enough evidence to back the claims.

However have no fear, Phil Shiner and Co won’t be on the breadline:

There remain numerous allegations of violent and other ill-treatment of Iraqi Civilians in British custody which the Inquiry will have to consider.

Derbyshire will still have something to fill the airwaves with even if it is just the sound of ‘ambulance chasing’ lawyers whistling in the dark for their money.

She must be getting worried though…what with Moazzem Begg getting himself arrested, such a disappointment, and now Shiner having the shine taken off his bilge…..that’s got to be half the year’s schedule that might have to be filled with something else other than……what’s it called? …’Lawfare’ …for when warfare fails…..a certainty she can hustle up a few welfare claimants who are ‘genuinely’ on the breadline….never mind the car, 4 Rottweilers,  six kids and all mod cons.

Top Gear went to Burma looking for the River Kwai but ended up up the River Kok without a bridge…so they built one….and Clarkson made his comment about the bridge having a slope…and all hell broke loose….well a few determined-to-be-offended liberals mobilised Twitter.

Just as well Clarkson wasn’t in London then….who knows what he would have said about this…..

At least there’s someone with a sense of humour, something that the uptight liberal thought police seem to have mislaid.

Sue at ‘Is the BBC biased’ has posted on this from the ‘Life Scientific’:

I listened to the delightful Anne Glover, professor of molecular and cell biology at Aberdeen University amongst other things, and one thing in particular resonated with me, and stayed in my mind. The strap line to her episode states:

“Opposing GM crops is a form of madness” 

I heard the interview as well and that was a stand out phrase…though not BBC bias it does illustrate perfectly the arrogant assumption that ‘they’ know best….and of course that attitude is reflected in how climate change sceptics are in fact treated by the BBC.

Interesting though…bit of a quandary for the Green Party who have been demanding all climate change sceptics be banned from the Public discourse, and indeed political positions…..doesn’t that position lead to the same demand for Greens who oppose GM crops against the scientific consensus?

Logic demands….?

Another example of the arrogant assumption of God’s mantle is Matthew Parris….again not strictly BBC bias but closely related….Parris is an oft employed zero hours contractor for the BBC and a Tory wet…possibly closely related to Justin Webb.

Tory James Brokenshire raised the idea that the ‘metropolitan elite’ are to blame for mass immigration…and of course they are…it was the Labour Party’s very own ‘metropolitan elite’ who opened the borders and flooded the UK with immigrants whilst deliberately hiding the fact by lying about the numbers expected and the effects such an influx would have on wages and jobs.

Parris harrumphed loudly in indignation in the Times (paywalled):

Panicked Tories are attacking their own voters

James Brokenshire blames the ‘metropolitan elite’ for fuelling immigration. He’s either suffered a brainstorm or gone rogue.

Panicking Tory wet attacks panicking Tories?

He calls Brokenshire ”pitiable’ and a ‘demented ferret’ rampaging against the guilty.

Brokenshire’s speech, he tell us, is ‘half-witted, disjointed, cliche ridden nonsense’…the stock in trade of the likes of rancid populists such as Juan Peron or Nigel Farrage……

Apparently it’s all ‘cab driver’ speak….so there you have it….Parris, member of the metropolitan elite has come out….don’t listen to the working class man….f**k the rancid views of the plebs.

Noting cliche ridden about Parris then.

Parris goes on to say that opposing immigration is insane and uncivilised….why didn’t the PM disown these ‘ravings’, these dog whistling to UKIP inclined Tory voter  ideas? he asks.

An EU referendum?  Cameron must have had a brainstorm that makes him susceptible to the grubby fascist entreaties from the Terrible Tory Right.

He clings to the hope that Cameron, when he regains his rationality and liberal mindedness, will reject controls on immigration.

Finally he suggests we all just shut up about immigration.

Sounds an awful lot like Mark Easton who told us we must just learn to love immigration and reap the benefits.

You can see why the BBC likes him.