Sorry I have not been around that much but you all know I am actually fighting to win a seat in this General Election and so my time for blogging is cut to shreds! However, I must tell you that it is my view that the BBC has proven to be as treacherous and poisonous during this election as any of us could have forecast. I listened to the final “panel” discussion on Today this morning just after 8am and it really was an utter disgrace. It seems that everybody wants to see PR introduced into the UK (A key BBC meme) and that, yes, everybody loves Nick Clegg. In fact the discussion was essentially Conservative-free, which is remarkable given that Cameron for all his faults is in pole position. The BBC are cheer-leaders for changing the very essence of British society and that means bringing about a situation where the political left can contrive coalitions to keep it in permanent power, where shady deals can be conducted behind closed doors away from the public. I have long argues that the BBC embraces the radical leftism of the Lib-Dems and this election has shown that bias manifest. I think the BBC know Gordon is a goner, but with Nick riding to the rescue, and with Saint Vince as the people’s Chancellor, all is not lost. Except our country, of course. Watch BBC, vote Lib-Dem?
WATCH BBC, VOTE LIB-DEM
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I agree total disgrace, just followed by up with an artical by the lefty Will Self on what its like to be a labour supporter. Sell the buggers off and let them survive in the real world.
AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGG now they are biging up Nick
Yes, it was amazing – perhaps the BBC just bussed them in from the audience of the latest edition of Any Questions or Question Time. Strange (well not really) how they all seemed to be on message. Notice how people like Mrs Duffy never seem to be on these things.
At least Michael Gove showed some passion this morning and showed just how fed up he is with the BBC “pretend to be neutral but obviously pro Lib-Dem/Labour questioning” this morning:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/listen_again/default.stm
listen at 7.09
Abandon,
Thanks for that link. Humphreys really is the most revolting little prat. That interview with Michael Gove is a total disgrace even by the BBC’s low standards.
Craig,
If you are reading this, have a listen.
He won’t be able to. He is currently unable to access any bbc internet site from his pc, i’m not aware of anybody else having any issues, strange……………………………
Is that really happening ?
Sounds very odd – especially as Craig is probably the most assiduous checker in the whole country of balance in BBC radio and TV political coverage.
Yes, he’s posted about it here, he also mentions that he is unable to access the comments on this site.
Hmmm, yes, he seems to be having some very odd tech issues.
One extra reason why the BBC likes the Lib Dems now:
“‘Thanks be to Allah!’ A sick-making display of Lib Dem opportunism by Simon Hughes”
(Damian Thompson)
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100037500/thanks-be-to-allah-a-sick-making-display-of-lib-dem-opportunism-from-simon-hughes/
Thank heavens someone else heard this (see my comment in the open comments section) I hadn’t had my morning coffee when I heard this rubbish and thought it might be a nightmare !
1327 (pin number?)
I couldn’t agree more. I saw your comment on the open thread. The infantalised TV debates must have given these infantalised viewers the delusion that they were sophisticated political analysts. This is what your telly does to you.
I’m certainly no fan of Alan Johnson, but his remark about Nick Clegg : “slowly deflating tyre” and “beginning to grate’ were spot on. “
It makes you doubt democracy altogether. Raise the voting age to 95!
There was nothing wrong with the franchise pre-1832. Why do people insist on tinkering with things? Repeal the Great Reform Act.
One morning last week, the BBC (Yorkshire) News bulletins repeatedly bigged-up the Lib Dim candidate in Penistone with no mention of any of the other candidates, let alone an interview. He was allowed a free ride to capitalise on Nick’s supposed “triumph” in the TV debates. It’s not just pathetic, it’s as if they know they are invulnerable to any practical disciplinary sanctions.
The Bias of the BBC is literally unbelievable.
I have significantly modified my listening & watching habits during this election campaign because the BBC is so utterly out of step with its audience.
Why do I pay £142 to be bombarded with this tripe each year?
I visited family over last weekend and slightly to my surprise this was a deeply held feeling aroud the dining table.
There can be only one result after this election – the BBC must be broken up & sold off on the grounds of anti-competitiveness, on the grounds of common sense (why do I pay £6m p.a. to be insulted by a pervert?), on the the grounds that technology is making broadcasting (as opposed to narrow-casting o the internet, cable, satellite etc) out of date. On the UK internet their sheer size blots out the commercial competition.
Sell them & use the money to pay off part of the national debt. The executives could then earn as much as they like in the REAL world.
What the lefty (sorry – Marxist) commentators and comedians do is up to them.
BBC: tactical voting to keep out Tories advisable, BUT:-
“Lloyd Webber’s Tory endorsement inadvisable, says BBC”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7678210/General-Election-2010-Lloyd-Webbers-Tory-endorsement-inadvisable-says-BBC.html
Today’s Today was worse than ever, a parody of itself – apart from the few words Gove was allowed to utter. And the sharp attack by Johnson on Clegg’s amnesty policy. Why wasn’t johnson given more time to elaborate his onslaught on Clegg ? And how come Nick Farage got about 10 seconds ?
I dread a hung Parliament – and dread PR for the same reason, muddled results, sleazy political compromise on the European pattern. But the BBC is pushing both ideas all the time. Roping in ignoramuses from the street to play along with fed questions.
Craig’s numerical analyses of the election coverage look like proving once and for all that the BBC is biased against the right. At a time when they are under even more strict injunction to be balanced, they have blithely ignored house rules and stacked the deck right across BBC programming.
Ah, but Gove was quick and sharp and got his point in – twice.
He’s good at that.
The BBC is completely all over itself with anything anti-Tory at the moment. I watched the Campaign Show on BBC News 24 last night. For the first time inthe campaign would I see one of their random voters choose to vote Conservative? They were in Richmond Park, a seat I used to live in, know very well and where I am still registered to vote. Sure enough, their random voters were a Labour voter who will probably vote Lib Dem to keep the Tories out, and someone who voted Tory last time but will be voting Lib Dem this time. Has anyone seen anyone saying thy will vote Conservaive on this programme?
Then you had Jane Hill absolutely effervescent with enthusiasm for Gordon Brown’s “barnstorming” performances and passion.
And I get to the car this morning, just in time to hear Will Self “taking the political temperature” before another by-now-regular “hung parliament” slot. John Hymprys asks aloud “Where will “we” put our cross tomorrow? For a hung parliament perhaps” before discussing the wonders of Nick Clegg and the failures of the Conservative Party for the umpteenth time with Mary Riddell and Rachel Sylvester (one of those supposedly “right wing” journalists they seem to go to in the knowledge that they will happily discuss why the Conservative Party is not doing better without disputing the premise of the question). Then it’s the 9am news and we are not told the figures of any opinion polls, just that they suggest the result is “too close to call”. What exactly does that mean? That it is too close to call which party is the most popular party? That Labour might win? Then we have an Alan Johnson soundbite played to us. Nothing at all from the Conservatives.
They really are pulling out the stops.
Richmond Park is finely balanced between LibDems and the Tories. Labour is nowhere. So it was ridiculous to interview a likely Lab voter but no Tory. Or rather – shameless.
You know, it’s not all LibDems on the BBC. BBC1 London News at 10:30pm (“News where You Are”) transmits party political broadcasts on behalf of Labour (via its political correspondent Tim Donovan) every night. On Monday, for example, Tim went to Westminster North. The Labour candidate was given a 1/1.5 minute uninterrupted speech direct to camera. The Conservative was introduced as a bimboid, posh friend of Dave and wealthy beyond the dreams of Donovan, was shown knocking on the occasional door in a smart bit of the constituency and was aggresively shouted at – it wasn’t an interview – by Donovan for having the temerity to canvass in a constituency with some poor inhabitants. The LibDem – an obvious idiot who couldn’t be bigged up even by the BBC – was given a few moments of glory before he disappeared, only to reappear in the same street as the Conservative.
BBC1 London has taken every opportunity to smear the Conservatives since the election was announced – not that it didn’t before but there was a bit of other news as well. Thank God – well Mohammed anyway – that it is only Labour crooks who are preparing to commit fraud at the election otherwise we’d never hear the end of it!
Don’t forget the turd sniffers at Radio 5, especially the queen of breakfast radio Nikki Campbell (the man who puts the M into mince) and of course Richard Bacon.
It’s been anti Tory for the last 4 weeks.
The BBC have been a disgrace over the way the Liebour party have gotten away with murder (the one eyed mong on Bigotgate) the Liebour MP who tweeted the results of the postal ballot the way the BBC ‘ignored’ the Liebour candidate who said McMong was the worst PM ever. It doesn’t end…
But the Tories have themselves to blame, they take this crap off the BBC and none of them have the bottle to come out and say they will put the BBC down.
Announce a tax cut of 142 pounds a year by ending the TV tax.
Nikki Campbell (the man who puts the M into mince)
And the arse into hole!
(A 50 year old man called Nikki, PLEASE! He should be a hairdresser in Rhyl.)
Jack, I thought hairdressers were called Keith. 🙂
MT — snippy!
I believe his salon is NIKKI KEITH… Hairdressers seem to like names comprising two Christian names!
Yes I know Mr Vance is right as is every one here, that the Tories are treated badly by the BBC and this is what the blog is about,bias. But I have no symphathy for the Tories at all. They have sat back and said nothing despite the bias (excepting Mr Grove) and CallmeDave has even endorsed and tried to suck up to the BBC despite its open hostility. The BBC has got nothing to lose – they can go hell bent on being anti-Tory with impunity because the Tory party is now just another party very slightly to the right of Nick Clegg.
Whoever wins on Friday – Britain will lose.
I don’t know about that. Financial markets seem to think that the Tories are the best option for sterling not going into the toilet. The BBC keeps trying to sweep that under the rug, but it’s there.
The BBC has been blatantly and relentlessly promoting Labour during the election campaign and letting people like Jack Straw (on Any Questions) and the rest spout downright malicious lies and dirty smears on its programmes.
But one thing the BBC has inadvertently done by pursuing this line of favouring and showcasing Labour, is actually to show up Brown and Labour in all their brutal dirty thuggish nastiness.
And they are nasty through and through, not just here and there and by odd little incidents and individual indiscretions or ill-judged over enthusiastic local campaigners or maverick MPs or would-be MPs.
Lying and smearing has clearly emerged as the deliberate campaign strategy and it has come all the way from the top – Brown and the rest of them. It has been extremely revealing of the character and lack of quality of Brown. It has painted a very ugly picture of him and the rest as arrogant hectoring thugs who are desperate and will stop at nothing. Nothing is too low for them to stoop to. Their sheer arrogance and ruthlessness are breathtaking. The more I saw of Brown, the more I thought he came across like something out of a horror film. And the whole shower of them and of their misrule comes more and more to seem like a nightmare. Thanks, BBC, for highlighting the horror.
Apologies for a couple of minor typos in the above.
I wish I could agree with you that Labour’s nastiness has been shown up. To those of us who already recognised it, it’s been shown in all its glory. But too many people have been conditioned by the BBC to think it’s the Tories who are nasty and simply refuse to recognise what’s right in front of their face.
The Tories aren’t blameless though. They’ve sat back and allowed all that the BBC throws at them in the belief that the cycle will come round to their turn again. This election should have been a walkover but too late they are finding that years of skewed reporting and “representative” voter samples such as those heard on this morning’s Today have had their corrosive effect.
Frankly, I’m at the stage of hoping Labour, along with the Lib Dems, win the election so they have to sort out their own mess. Because huge piles of sh*t are coming after the election, and the populace is too dim or uneducated or simply in denial to recognise it. If the Tories are forced to take the necessary action (which they’ve been too frightened to spell out up to now) then the BBC will be merciless in its portrayal of eeeeeeevil Tory cuts.
I think you are right RD.
Although the Tories want to win, I think they will be done an enormous favour, if they lost to a Lib/Lab coalition.
The sheer volume of s**t that’s in the pressure cooker and waiting to blow will render Libs and Labs unelectable for a generation.
Whoever gets in will have to slash public sector spending by 20-25%, They will have to raise taxes, cut benefits, and worst of all, cut the un-funded, gold plated, bullet-proof pensions across the whole public sector.
If they don’t do the above, they may buy 6 months of denial before the inevitable explosion of Gilts strikes, rampant inflation, and ultimately, bankruptcy.
If they do make the necessary cuts, the country will be crippled by strikes, riots and anachy (remember the poll tax riots).
I think Cameron would be safer sitting this one out.
I agree with this. On one hand I would love the Tories to win a majority simply to shove it to Labour, the Lib Dems and the BBC, but the pleasure would quickly wear off and they will become deeply – possibly terminally – unpopular very quickly if they do what they need to do. Ideally I would like to see the Tories as the biggest party by some distance, with the most seats, but put Labour-Lib Dems into bat under an uncomfortable coalition relying on Scottish and Welsh votes led by an unelected PM who is a hack from the previous government – I think that one of the consequences of the debates is that much of the Great British Public will be mystified if after watching the Presidential showpieces it is announced that the Prime Minister will after all be someone called Alan Johnson, who looks like a coach driver and who the public may or may not have seen being interviewed on the TV during the campaign once or twice. That’s the New Politics for you. The Lib Dems would be stress-tested to within an inch of their lives and it would be a recipe for disaster, leading to another election in 12-18 months.
After 13 years of ruinous misrule – and their current state of denial and unreality about the need for cutting wasteful spending, public sector, immigration etc, surely it is obvious that even now, Labour WON’T cut what it SHOULD cut. They may cut some of us to the bone but that’s a different story.
The prospect of that shower of single-minded (or simple-minded!) fanatics continuing in our present circumstances is frankly terrifying. Too terrifying even to wish them in to punish them by having to deal with their own mess. We will continue to reap what they have sown. Terrifying on their own, put them in bed with the LibDems (talk about simple minds )- and we are all en route to hell in a handcart.
Excellent posts above. I’m not sure it will make much difference what the result is. The UK has gone past the point of no return. I doubt if even the IMF can sort it out and doubt if they would even bother.
I like the idea of Cameron calling in the IMF for a complete audit of the books.
What people are not realising is that the “debt” figures are unreal – they exclude all the PFI projects (schools, hospitals) with a capital cost that is huge after 13 years, and also exclude the massive overhang of unfunded public pensions – civil servants, teachers, postmen etc.
Which carries UK debt levels far above those of Greece and the other ClubMed wobbly economies.
Turned on R4 around 10am. Report on poluted rivers then the political twist, by some convuluted arguement around policy on planning permission fasttrack’s only the glorious progressive people’s party would be helping to to resuce our once green and pleasent land.
Lib dems and Cons policy would apparantly stop people claening rivers, and a Lib Dem mouthpeice popped up to say “oh now we wouldn’t” – nasty Tories!
There is some cynical, twisted and dishonest bit of propaganda on every time I turn on the radio. It is just relentless. And Cameron says he is a BBC supporter. If he cannot stand up for himself against the Beeboids, how on earth are we to trust him to stand up for the country?
I see that this story – at the top of The Guardian’s website – hasn’t made it onto the BBC website:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/05/uk-budget-deficit-worse-than-greece
When it comes to NuLab, the BBC thinks that every day’s a good day to bury bad news.
For my sins I am a tad addicted to Twitter. I do follow a few BBC types (eco, science and media in the main) and a broad spread of others.
Now I am the 1st to admit it is a niche digi-media entity, however it can have influence as a few like-minded luvvies can create the impression of a huge event that then gets propelled by complicit editorial mates onto mainstream broadcast. I am often surprised at some minor online punt that ends up being intoned by the teleprompter reader next day as ‘breaking news’.
And the rampant rigging has been breath-taking, with every editorial trick in the book (From ‘Prime Minister Brown says..’ to ‘Cameron claims..’) used to twist every last positive for their favoured friends and to stick it to those they dislike.
It will be interesting how many ‘forget’ (tee-hee) and keep on broadcasting their opinions as news well after watershed.
One suspects that ‘Don’t forget to vote tactically’ will be pushed quite hard.
In a balanced manner, of course.
It’s funny how all these twittering Beeboids reveal their bias, and at the same time demonstrate just how much narcissism drives the phenomenon of Twitter.
Radio 5 sounding DESPERATE!!!
“Gordon Brown is surging in the polls” was the closing comment tonight on Drive.
However, Tom Bradby on ITV said that speaking to his regional colleagues the Tories were doing better in places that they needed to.
I still think the Tories may manage a small majority on will end up with 300+ seats.
Clegg will be a fool to do a deal with the one eyed liar, Clegg will be shafted by Brown, Mandelson and Balls and the Limp Dems will take the blame.
If the Tories do win, I hope they cut the BBC out of their inner circle letting Toenails and that tosspot Peston run around looking for stories.
That would be the DEAD CAT SURGE.
This is an excelent piece – It sums up the Tories and Cameron to a tee.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100037983/the-great-betrayal-of-britain-teaches-conservatives-the-election-abc-anyone-but-cameron/
Had to laugh at the BBC finally talking about the unfairness of Westminster which is full of jocks, Welsh NI MPs and how they can vote on English matters but English MPs can’t vote on their affairs.
The BBC wheel out a fat jock bird with bad teeth to tell us that stopping the jocks voting would be bad for the UK.
Like anyone in England gives a shit what she thinks.