We seem to be down a mid-week open thread so here’s one to keep things humming along…..

This Morning Robert Peston on the Today show (08:10) made a highly political statement on behalf of the Yes campaign in Scotland….and considering the fact that Peston admits that not having a currency union would be ‘the greatest blow to Mr Salmond’s separatist ambitions‘ you have to wonder at the careless, or not  so careless choice of phrase.

He told us that the reason RBS and Lloyds might relocate their HQs to England was simply because  of the refusal of the Westminster politicians to countenance a currency union.….it all flows from that refusal to countenance that union he told us.

John Swinney, the SNP’s finance minister, in a following interview, immediately leapt upon that claim saying the uncertainty was there because of the Westminster politicians…‘as Robert Peston said’.

But the truth is that the uncertainty is created by the SNP’s refusal to countenance an independent Scotland with its own currency and the SNP’s continual and blinkered claim that upon a yes vote there will be a currency union.  The SNP has consistently refused to discuss the currency issue candidly and has no ‘Plan B’ should there be no currency union.

The phrasing of Peston’s claim makes it sound as if the position of the three parties, which he keeps referring to as ‘Westminster’ or ‘London politicians’, all good SNP language, was one of pure intransigence and not based on economic and political realities.

The reality is, as the Governor of the Bank of England has just stated, that it is not possible….as this report from the BBC a mere 9 minutes ago states:

Bank of England governor Mark Carney has told trade unions that currency union in the event of Scottish independence would be “incompatible with sovereignty”. 

Mr Carney told the TUC conference that a currency required a centralised bank and shared banking regulations.  Common taxation and spending were also needed, he said.

Why would an independent Scotland want to then have its finances under another country’s governance and why would that other country take on the risks of another country’s debt?

The European Union shows why the currency union wouldn’t work.  The EU has a currency union but no overriding political and financial union, it is made up of sovereign states all making their own decisions with economies of vastly differing sizes and efficiencies.

Peston himself admits it doesn’t work in his book How Do We Fix This Mess?: The Economic Price of Having it all:

A gamble on the prosperity of an entire continent…devastating consequences for the prosperity of Europe…..wonder what the message is there about currency union without political and full financial union…taxing, spending and borrowing determined centrally?

Here Peston again suggests that their position is one based on mere stubbornness and ill-will…..suggesting they were ‘thrilled’ when they later discovered their intransigent, and apparently ‘hypocritical and inconsistent’, position was actually based on real economics and constitutional politics:

BBC economics editor Robert Peston said that the coalition parties and Labour feared that an independent Scotland in a currency union could “live dangerously beyond its means and borrow on a scale that degraded sterling”.

He added: “There was no way that the Tories, Labour and LibDems could allow full budget-making freedom to Scotland even as part of the UK, because to do so would make their argument against monetary union with an independent Scotland look inconsistent and hypocritical.

“They were therefore thrilled today when the governor of the Bank of England agreed with them that a currency union would be incompatible with Scotland being an independent sovereign state,” he said.

Looking through some of Peston’s articles it is a stance and language he has adopted consistently:

It is this refusal of the political establishment in London to countenance formal monetary union with Scotland which is seen by many to have dealt the greatest blow to Mr Salmond’s separatist ambitions.

If anything, Standard Life may have reinforced the intransigent stance of Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems against forming a partnership with an independent Scotland on stewardship of money and finance.

…their seemingly implacable opposition to monetary union.   Though, for what it’s worth, I do not see any sign of government, civil service, Labour or Bank of England lessening their opposition to currency union by even a scintilla.

It looks like Peston works in a similar fashion to the SNP….having all the facts at their finger tips, knowing and understanding the issues, and yet their final conclusions are at total odds with those facts when they come to sum it all up.

Peston frequently explains the issues and the reasons for not having a currency union and for businesses to flee South…and yet he still portrays the decision not to have a currency union as intransigence, implaccable stubbornness, hypocrisy and inconsistency.

In March Robert Peston told us this: EU law may force RBS and Lloyds to become English

If Scotland were to vote for independence, both Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds may be forced to move their registered offices or legal homes to London under European Union law, I have learned.

What matters is that the Treasury – and the cross party troika of George Osborne, Danny Alexander and Ed Balls – have cited these apparently unaffordable potential bail-out costs when explaining why they reject the demand of the Scottish government for a formal monetary union between an autonomous Scotland and the rest of the UK.

They say that it would be to trample on the interests of taxpayers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to enter into a monetary pact with Scotland, which left these taxpayers implicitly exposed to the risks of rescuing two big banks, when regulators in London would not have been in a position to keep them prudent and healthy.

And it is this refusal of the political establishment in London to countenance formal monetary union with Scotland which is seen by many to have dealt the greatest blow to Mr Salmond’s separatist ambitions.

Here Peston tells us Standard Life would relocate because of the risks of a Scottish economy too heavily reliant on the financial sector and exposed to the consequent risks….he goes on to explain why RBS and Lloyds would leave..because most of their customers in are not in Scotland….

This about Standard Life’s reasons for relocating:

Our initial observation is that the Scottish financial sector is unusually large, with total assets estimated at 12.5x GDP [or more than 12 times Scotland’s annual output].

“We would therefore likely view the financial sector as a significant contingent risk to the state. At the same time, a large part of this activity could be re-domiciled to the UK.”

Or to put it another way, S&P thinks there is a pretty good chance that Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland, both of which have their legal homes in Scotland, would also relocate to England.

Why?

In the case of the big banks, it would be even more complicated and potentially nerve-racking for their customers, than for Standard Life’s, if their regulator after independence was a yet-to-be created Scottish financial authority, rather than London’s Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority.

How so?

Well, like Standard Life, the vast majority of their millions of UK customers are in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, not Scotland.

Here again he points out that uncertainty is an issue…But it is uncertainty created by the SNP…The UK stance of no currency union is certain…it is the SNP’s ‘intransigent’ refusal to accept reality that creates the uncertainty…..

The point is that lenders to banks, including ordinary depositors, have a choice about where to place their money. And many of them will take the view that there is no point leaving cash in RBS when there is a greater than average degree of uncertainty about that bank’s long term prospects.

It is not that independence would definitely be bad for RBS. It is simply that creditors don’t like uncertainty.

So RBS will knock that uncertainty on the head by turning itself into a rest-of-UK financial institution rather than a Scottish one.

And here he points out that Scotland wouldn’t be able to bail out all the customers of its financial institutions….

Would English savers fear that the Scottish government and state might not have deep enough pockets to underwrite an effective insurance scheme for their savings?

To be clear, in an independent Scotland, English, Welsh and Northern Irish customers would be the equivalent of English customers of the Swedish bank Handelsbanken.

This statement on Handelsbanken UK’s website probably says all you need to know (it says Handelsbanken’s UK customers are protected by the Swedish deposit protection scheme, not the UK’s).

On independence it would be the Scottish government’s responsibility to protect deposits of foreign investors and depositors….and they haven’t got the deep pockets, or a big enough sporran, to do that.

So ‘all the facts’ point to currency union being a non-starter for good economic and constitutional reasons….why then does Peston insist on wording that makes it seem that currency union is possible if only it weren’t for the intransigent and unreasonable stance taken by the hated ‘Westminster’?

That’s a very, very political claim to keep making especially days from the referendum vote.

From The Evening Standard:

H/T to Teddy Bear for the title…it sums up this post in one line…how the BBC can misrepresent the facts by spinning and contorting cause and effect so that the guilty are innocent and the innocent are guilty.

A point in case, which came first, the Islamic desire for a Caliphate or Muslim anger at Western ‘interference’?  Upon that question lies the West’s response to the likes of Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Get the analysis wrong and you are fighting the wrong battle.

The BBC tries to influence that response by changing the Public’s perceptions of Islam and the reasons for Muslim ‘anger’, thereby attempting to put pressure on politicians using Public opinion.  The BBC of course blames Western interference, that is, foreign policy.

So far that pressure has worked and the politicians refused to tackle Syria and are still trying to wriggle out of any direct military action against ISIS due to the ‘hangover’ from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The correct answer is naturally that the desire for a Caliphate came before all else…after all there was no British foreign policy in the 7th century when the first Caliphate was created in a remarkably similar way to the ISIS one, a small band of fanatical warriors taking advantage of a power vacuum and the lack of will of the great powers to stop them.

There are three major questions that need to be answered….

• Why are Muslims being radicalised?  (and does it matter if they are?)

• Are Muslims obliged to go on Jihad in order to defend other Muslims and Muslim lands?

• If Muslims are so obliged are they justified in their belief that Muslims and Muslim lands are under attack and need defending?

The narrative used by the BBC is the same one used by the terrorists, that foreign policy has forced them to fight against the West which has launched a war against Islam and Muslims who now need defending.

If you don’t change that narrative it is hard to see how you can defeat this enemy and prevent radicalisation due to that narrative….the BBC’s assertion is that if you fight against ISIS then you just add to the Muslim perception that you are anti-Muslim…thereby creating more Jihadis…though it is a curious thing that the BBC highlights Muslim disapproval of ISIS and yet tells us that the same Muslims will be angry if we set the troops onto them….the BBC having its cake and eating it….telling us how moderate and integrated the UK Muslims are….and yet still managing to try and block military action in the Middle East.

Shiraz Maher in the New Statesman has a different view and gives a far better and indepth explanation of the causes of events in the Middle East than the BBC cares to do:

From Bin Laden to Isis: Why the roots of jihadi ideology run deep in Britain

Had Osama Bin Laden lived to see the present state of the Middle East he would have been rather pleased. The realisation of his ultimate ambition is gripping the Levant with the announcement of a caliphate straddling parts of Syria and Iraq.

This is precisely what Bin Laden always envisioned. His main thesis on the failure of the Islamist project was that western interference in the Middle East prevented the rise of Islamic governments. Weaken the west’s sphere of influence, he argued, and a caliphate would emerge.

The BBC puts ‘western interference’ as the cause for the conflicts….the reality is that the ‘Islamist project’ to create a Caliphate came first….’western interference’ was not the cause, it was merely an obstruction on the road to a Caliphate.

That is a crucial point……if people fail to grasp that they cannot counter the Jihadis narrative or at least the rationale for it, something we are constantly told is essential to prevent radicalisation.

Nick Cohen isn’t impressed with the likes of the BBC’s narrative, though he claims it is cowardice rather than betrayal…..

Since 9/11, western intellectuals have had a choice. They could have taken on militant religion, exposed its texts, decried its doctrines and found arguments to persuade young British men not to go to Syria and slaughter “heretics”. But religious fanatics might have retaliated. Instead, they chose the safe option of attacking the phantom menace of militant atheists, who would never harm them. Leaving all philosophical and moral objections aside, they have been the most awful cowards.

ISIS is scaring the hell out of everyone.

Famously there’s no strategy to deal with it…apart from this exercise in futility….

The US government has slipped out a sly little video that tries to undermine ISIS by highlighting its tendency to kill what the US government says are Muslims…as well as blowing up their mosques.

The video, graphic in nature, is available to view on the Huffington Post site,  or you can see it on YouTube…where ironically you cannot see it unless you sign in to ‘prove’ your age….so kind of limited as propaganda…and the fact it is obviously from the US government must somewhat undermine its credibility with anti-The Great Satan recruits.

The problem with the video’s thesis that ISIS claims it is defending Muslims but is in fact killing Muslims is that the ‘Muslims’ being killed are Shia, so not Muslim in the Sunni’s eyes, and the mosques are also Shia mosques…so no problem there….and the people being crucified are criminals….probably not a problem there either for many who like to see the smack of firm justice.  So IS is killing apostates, heretics and criminals.  All good so far for the fundamentalist Sunni Muslim.

The release of this video at least gives the lie to the claim that religion has no part in this.

Personally I prefer the sentiments expressed in this video (graphic)

A second part to the propaganda war is the wooing of discontented Jhadists who want to come home to mom and apple pie…..the BBC’s preferred course of action….treating terrorists as victims.

The BBC has leapt upon the ex-MI6 bod, Richard Barrett, who wants us to allow these Jihad dropouts to come home where they will be recruited to serve in the government’s war of ideas:

Good idea, as all the talking heads and politicians who rushed onto the BBC professed….and using an ‘ex’ MI6 person gives a degree of separation from the government…so this isn’t a government initiative…yeah right.

Only…..not so much of a good idea.

Imagine a Jihadi who jumps ship, not only does he flee the battlefield leaving his comrades to fight on but he begs the hated British government to let him back home and not to sling him in jail….and then he goes on the telly or gets a write up in the Guardian and the Times where he tells potential Jihadis they’re makimg a mistake, stay home, get an education, get a job, stay under the thumb of the Kufar.

What do you reckon any potential Jihadi would make of him, or even any ‘moderate’ Muslim?

Consider what they think of Quilliam.

They would have nothing but disdain and contempt for such people.

Consider the appeal of the Caliphate…..

You have to admit there would be a romantic appeal to this for many.  ISIS is working hard at the hearts and minds as well as slaughtering people.

So that is one aspect any government should be trying to disprove and undermine…the belief that there is an obligation upon all Muslims to defend Muslims and Muslim lands from attack and that there is any justification for acting on any such obligation….problem with that is…there is such an obligation.  Islam, that religion of peace, demands it.

If there is such an obligation that leaves only one other way out…to persuade Muslims that Islam and Muslims are not under attack….and therefore they have no need to conduct Jihad.

Trouble is….the BBC et al have spent years telling Muslims they are under attack.  Kinda hard to reel back on that one.

Another aspect to this is the frequent assertion is that, you know what, these Jihadis aren’t really Jihadis…they went to help charities, feed the poor, build schools for the children, they were just caught up in the fighting, in the worng place at the wrong time,  only radicalised once they get out there…but not true……

Islamism with a Human Face

The British media is continuing to publish puff pieces about Islamist extremists working for British charities in Syria.

“Aid workers”  use philanthropic endeavour to put a human face on extreme Islamism. These various puff pieces paint violent Islamism as nothing more than welfare provision. Although the misuse of charitable aspirations is by no means a new phenomenon, the media is, at present, particularly guilty of affording legitimacy to such barefaced exploitation.

And of course we all remember ‘charity worker’ Moazzem Begg, the BBC’s favourite goto boy for a comment…the BBC that campaigned to get him released from Guantanamo….the same Begg who is now proselytising on behalf of the Islamist cause as part of the Islamist campaign group Cage’s operation.

Why is it the BBC sees no problem with the statements made by Cage?  Islam offering a genuine alternative to neo-Liberalism?  What could that mean?

“We’ve been a bit politically naive,” he said. “We haven’t questioned some of the underlying assumptions about who Muslims are and what they believe in.”
PREVENT strikes at the heart of the transnational identity that Muslims have, and confuses or shrouds the core principles of Islam which offer genuine alternatives to an aggressive global neo-liberal system.
Asim Qureshi, Research Director at CAGE

Is it a crime to care?

The concepts of jihad, shariah and khilafah are not the exclusive possession of ISIS but core Islamic doctrines subscribed to by almost one third’s of the world’s population. It is telling that the government’s treatment of ISIS is similar to its treatment of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb-ut Tahrir, and the Taliban, despite the enormous differences of belief and methodology between the groups.
Witch-hunts such as the Trojan Horse hoax and the mass hysteria over issues of the niqab, halal food and conservative Muslim values demonstrate that the criminalisation is spreading beyond Middle Eastern politics.
Join CAGE at this series of events around the country to unite the Muslim communities against this criminalisation of our faith, our beliefs, our mosques and organisations, and our leaders.

It would be a mistake to kid yourself that what is being proposed is merely a campaign to ensure Muslims can practise their faith, within the confines of a secular, democratic society.

The BBC’s and the Establishment approach to defining the problem is the problem.

Finally it must have been very galling for the BBC to hear an Iraqi Sunni spokesman on the Today programme (08:00 ish) state that Sunnis were proud to be Iraqis an wanted to remain as part of an Iraqi nation….John Humphrys certainly sounded surprised.

That undermines the line the BBC has been spinning that the creation of such nation states is an anathema to Arabs who all want to live in a borderless caliphate…..and therefore Britain and France are to blame for all the ills in the Middle East due to the imposition of the ‘secret’ Sykes-Picot agreement.

Sykes-Picot was not secret, the Arab leaders negotiated the agreement before the Bolsheviks revealed the agreement to the world….and of course it was the League of Nations who finally settled the borders and status of the different regions.  The Arabs agreed the borders and fought with the British in order to end the Ottoman Empire, or Caliphate, and not to save it…they wanted their own nation.  Sykes-Picot gave them an Arab state, Saudi Arabia, and eventually, as agreed, much more, such as an independent Iraq and Trans-Jordan..or Palestine as it should be called.

The BBC has long supported the terrorist’s own narrative, the one that also recruits fresh blood to the cause…the idea that Western foreign policy is to blame for all ills in the Middle East and for the radicalisation of Muslims.

However that line is designed by the BBC to avoid one inconvenient factor, the responsibility of Muslims themselves for their own situation and for the urge to conduct a holy war against their chosen opponents.

Muslim supremacists want to impose Islam upon the Middle East.  That should be the starting point of any explanation for events.  This isn’t an attack on the West per se…that will come later.  The Holy war is to impose Islam…the West just happens to be in the way.

The BBC and others instead start from the point where the West is the target due to ‘blowback’ for its actions, if the West weren’t in the Middle East there would be peace, but they refuse to explain the real issues, the real cause of the wars…to do so would put the blame squarely onto the Islamists, the Muslims.  And the BBC is desperate to avoid doing that for many reasons.

IS…that’s Independent Scotland rather than Islamic State..however a cynic, a realist, might conclude that the Tartan Mussolini might well take Scotland to the edge of respectability with his promises of a free-for-all Scotland and a brave new socialist republic.  Of course when the NHS puts up the shutters and there’s no more BBC it will be free…because if there’s nothing to ‘buy’ you won’t need money…so that’s the currency argument dealt with as well.  LOL.

But is the BBC biased on the question of Scottish independence?  The Nats think so, pro-Union of course, but on the national coverage I’d suggest they were pro-Yes, though that is based purely on my perception of whatever I manage to hear or see.

It’s not scientific but I always got the impression that the BBC gave Salmond & Co a free ride in interviews whilst the pro-union camp were  dealt with in a more negative manner….for example Humphrys’ interview with Darling recently where he constantly interrupted and seemed determined to run down the pro-union campaign…whereas a little while later the SNP’s John Swinney swanned in for a quick chat and moments later was off the hook without breaking sweat.

The BBC seems prone to talking of the ‘anti-independence’ or the ‘no’ campaign rather than choosing to call it the ‘Pro-Union’ campaign whereas the Yes crowd are more often than not the ‘Yes’ campaign or ‘Pro-Independence’….all very positive.   Admittedly the pro-Union campaign didn’t help itself but the BBC should be impartial regardless of the incompetence of one side or another.

The BBC has been big on the ‘panic’ references recently, the papers are of course full of it, but again why follow the paper’s lead?  The BBC should be above the fray and giving us a cool assessment but this morning we heard that it was not the appearance of panic but actual panic that sends Cameron et al to take the road to Scotland.  But not so long ago he was accused of ducking the issues as he was unpopular in Scotland as a Tory (despite the Tories getting nearly as many votes as the SNP)….so when the campaign is on a knife edge and he makes an appearance he then gets accused of panic.

But it isn’t panic….looking at the polls they thought the referendum was probably in the bag for a long time only for the polls to suddenly show a swing to the Nats…..of course they’re going to react…it’s not panic just common sense. Why the BBC emphasises the ‘panic’ label I can’t imagine other than to compete with the tabloids…and it just happens to be the Nats own narrative:  John Swinney: Atmosphere of absolute panic in no campaign

It would be a natural fit for the BBC to cheerlead independence despite their aversion to the nation state.  Their aversion to ‘Britain’ as an historical, political, economic, social and racial, ex-Imperial construct overrides their dislike of nationalism.

Their failsafe is that independence makes the remnants more vulnerable to be picked off and absorbed by the faceless EU, something the Tartan Mussolini is desperate to achieve for his own wee personal fifedom….ironically….never mind still wanting to keep the BBC, the NHS, the Queen and  oh yes the currency.

Independence?….my arse.

I admit to not seeing the benefits of independence, it seems all based on emotion and hatred of Westminster politicians and the ‘English’ generated by the Tartan Mussolini and his mob who of course are politicians themselves.  The downsides seem all too apparent and decidedly risky….the marginal, and merely promised, benefits massively outweighed by those downsides…emotional, historic, practical and economic.

Scotland’s Future

Can’t wait to see the Tartan Mussolini going shirtless in a Braveheart moment…can’t be long now…certain to be good friends with this guy:

Why does the BBC go to the bother of recruiting a new chair of the BBC Trust when in reality, it is apparent, they are just figureheads spouting the corporate line?  Have they still got that tub of lard in the props department from HIGNFY?

In her hearing with the Culture, Media and Sport Committee the latest recruit, Rona Fairhead,  comes over pretty much as you would expect, saying everything that you would expect in a job interview for the Chair of the Trust…nothing controversial and if anything far too complacent about the status quo….happy that the BBC is impartial, happy that the DG is taking it in the right direction and concerned about the competition from commercial ‘conglomerates’….Murdoch?  Seems very much on board and on message already.

Rona Fairhead, the new chair, or as good as, looked like having little to no political or media baggage and people were giving her the benefit of the doubt as to how she would stand up to the BBC machine.

People may have to reassess that when they see this clip, and it is interesting that the BBC chooses this particular clip:

Rona Fairhead: ‘Critical time for BBC’ as charter debate looms

Regardless of the headline the BBC gives it the main thrust of the clip is about BBC bias.  An MP asks Rona Fairhead if she thinks the BBC is biased…her first reaction is to evade the question by talking of the ‘role of the BBC to be impartial’ and only when pressed does she answer the point.

Her answer, and she’s obviously read the staff manual, is that yes, the BBC is broadly impartial, the data says that the public think it is…it’s impartiality must be clear, understood and unquestioned.

The Trust’s job is to ensure nobody questions the BBC’s impartiality?  Well they certainly do a good job of that now.  As she clearly thinks the BBC is impartial there can be little hope for the future if that is the status quo she is defending.

She was though more polite than Robert Preston:

“Bollocks.” As counter-arguments go, it was a succinct one. BBC economics editor Robert Peston had been asked whether former business editor Jeff Randall was correct to say the Beeb is institutionally biased to the left.

You can watch the hearing here…

Pre-Appointment Hearing for Chair of the BBC Trust
Witnesses

1. Rona Fairhead, the Government’s preferred candidate

Rona Fairhead stated her main principles would be:

1.  She would see her role as chair of the Trust as to represent the audience and to represent the British licence fee payers.

2.  She aims to defend rigorously the independence and impartiality of the BBC…that is critical.

3.  She will respect the different roles of the Trust and the BBC Executive.  The DG and his team have done a lot of work already and she says it is in absolutley the right direction….her role would be to ensure that it goes even further.

4.  She sees her role as to ensure that the BBC responds to the challenges in its environment, and they are very challenging…..user behaviour, the explosion of choice…and the emergence of new large media conglomerates….can she mean Murdoch?

The Parliamentary committee looks to have decided though that she is the one for the job:

We were impressed by the answers given by Mrs Fairhead and are of the view that she is well qualified to take on the role of Chair of the BBC Trust. We believe that her considerable management experience will be of great value. We note that she already has and will retain significant responsibilities as a non-executive director of HSBC and in other external roles. However, we welcome her assurance that her first priority will be Chair of the BBC Trust and that she will step down from her other positions if necessary.

 

 

More people think BBC has bias to left than bias to right – poll

Poll: The BBC and metropolitan bias

Public anger at BBC bias: Viewers hit out at lengthy coverage of poll tax and miners’ strike after Baroness Thatcher’s death

Nearly 80 percent of UK Jewish community sees BBC bias against Israel

Yougov show falling trust in the BBC

YouGov also repeated their semi-regular tracker about trust in various professions following the BBC’s recent troubles. The proportion of people saying they trusted BBC News journalists to tell the trust was down from 57% last month to 44% now, and for the first time marginally more people said they didn’t trust BBC journalists than said they did.

To put this in context, BBC News journalists are still more trusted than journalists on other channels or newspapers, but there has been a sharp decline in recent years.

Interesting to see this:

Fast track for TV licence revolution: Move to scrap jail threat for evaders ‘begins in days’

and this:

Ten staff covering baton handover proves BBC is too big, says Sajid Javid

(Remarkably when you Google ‘tub of lard’ the first and most frequent result is for HIGNFY)

Donnison is still desperately trying to back up his claim that Hamas had no part in the kidnapping of Israeli teens despite a Hamas spokesman saying they did:

Our goal was to ignite an intifada in the West Bank and Jerusalem as well as within the 1948 borders [Israel]. The activity of the people has broadened to include all the occupied land, reaching its peak in the heroic operation, carried out by the Al-Qassam Brigades, in which three settlers were captured in Hebron. There has been a lot of confusion regarding this operation. Some said that this was a conspiracy of the occupation [Israel]. That’s not true. Your brothers in the Al-Qassam Brigades carried out this operation to support their imprisoned brothers who were on hunger strike.”

Donnison tweets this:

Unfortunately the impression he tries to impart, that this ‘family affair’ had nothing to do with Hamas, is somewhat undermined by reading the article………

On June 12, Hamas terrorists from Hebron kidnapped Gil-Ad Sha’er, 16, Naftali Frenkel 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19, while the three were hitchhiking at Gush Etzion Junction, and shot them dead shortly thereafter when they realized that one of the teens had called the police.

Donnison thought he had a massive scoop undermining what he claimed was the Israeli justification for the launch of an assault on Hamas , but notably no other BBC journo has picked up on this and run with it….Donnison heard what he wanted to hear and interpreted it in a way that aligned with his own anti-Israel agenda.

Rather than admitting he was wrong he is still insists he was correct despite everything pointing the finger of blame at Hamas…including Hamas itself.

This is all about Donnison’s ego, nothing to do with journalism.

Someone responsible at the BBC should have a little word in Donnison’s ear perhaps.

The BBC is going to take a look at how the Media reports events in the Middle East…or at least investigate why so much attention is paid to the Middle East…a different take altogether really.

Media and the Middle East

The rockets and missiles fly, from Israel into Gaza, from Gaza into Israel. It’s the latest iteration of the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours which has flared since the very founding of the Jewish state in 1948.

Why does this particular conflict, above all others, attract the attention it does? And why does it create such strong emotion, even among those with no connection to the region?

John Lloyd, a contributing editor at the Financial Times, examines the evolution of coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the founding of Israel to the present day.

With contributions from journalists and those who monitor them, Lloyd asks why there is such focus both on the conflict itself and on those who report it.

And he examines the challenges of reporting fairly and accurately on a conflict in which every assertion is contested.

It doesn’t actually seem to be looking at whether reporting is biased…the last sentence merely looks at the ‘challenges of reporting fairly and accurately‘…again a different emphasis altogether.

As the BBC already denies Hamas censored their reporting from Gaza how can we expect this to be anything other than a whitewash when we know that Hamas tries to control everything the media in Gaza reports?

A couple of years ago we heard a BBC reporter in Gaza being unceremoniously taken off air by his Hamas minder during a live feed to Victoria Derbyshire’s show….the BBC told us it was technical issues…no, it clearly wasn’t if you had ears to listen.

You can gauge for yourself just how truthful the BBC is about its own reporting Saturday night at 20:00 on R4.

However judging by the trail on R4 this morning when the two clips we heard were of the Arabs being expelled from Palestine and how a reporter admired the Israeli military efficiency and effectiveness you can see how this might turn out……Arabs victims of Israeli aggression and the BBC pro-Israeli.

A frothy little post nailing Victoria Coren’s ‘feminist’ hypocrisy which she berates us with courtesy of her privileged platform on the BBC, but it has a serious undertow….the usual BBC bias…as demonstrated year in year out by its approach to reporting on UKIP…originally trying hard to ignore UKIP even as it  wiped the board in local elections, then trying to ridicule it or denounce it as the nearest thing to the Nazi party we have in the UK. Failing to stem the ever growing popularity of UKIP and having to grudgingly start to give UKIP some airtime and a nodding acquaintance with ‘acceptability’ the BBC still manages to slip in the odd sly allusion to fascism and the far right into its reports but its last resort is its comedy shows where the oh so middle class comedians can’t get their heads around the fact that UKIP’s ideas on Europe and immigration are immensely popular…and therefore maligning them on TV or the radio might look like we have an elitist broadcasting organisation that is set up to serve the few who regard themselves not only the voice of the nation but its moral, ethical and intellectual guides who look down on the great unwashed that pays their inflated wages.

Is that democracy?

Peter Oborne fulminated on the death of democracy as it is apparently being bludgeoned to death by those unwilling to participate in the good natured political raillery epitomised by the likes of George Galloway.  Oborne raised the alarm that politicians are being physically intimidated from participating in the democratic process.

That may or may not be true though it certainly wasn’t a ‘political’ attack on Galloway, so democracy is safe yet.  However what Oborne didn’t investigate was a different sort of intimidation and subornment of the democratic political process….that of the Media seeking to destroy a political party.

When one political party outside the ‘Establishment’ such as UKIP, or indeed group such as the EDL, are singled out by the Media for an intensive barrage of lies, smears and innuendos with the intent of maligning their reputation and undermining their credibility and authority who can say that democracy is alive and well.

All the more so when the one source of news and information that the public should be able to rely on, the UK’s dominant news source, the BBC, is a full participant in the witch hunt.  Far from providing balanced, informative news the BBC descended to the same level as the highly partisan press in its contemptible, sustained and savage attacks on UKIP…not forgetting of course the BBC’s campaign against the EDL which it dubbed ’poisonous’, a group it claimed ’polluted’ people’s minds.  A group the BBC set out to destroy.  The trouble is the EDL were right in their attempt to highlight the downsides to Islam in a western progressive democracy….and even the self -proclaimed anti-racist Dan Hodges has finally had to take their line….Too many of Britain’s Muslims are failing to integrate. We need to find out why.  

‘We can’t carry on like this. We just can’t.  I don’t know why we have a specific problem of Muslim integration. I’m not sure anyone does. But I suspect one of the reasons is no one has really taken the time or effort to formally try and find out. And now we have to take time.
Because this I do know. The days when we could simply ignore the issue are over.
Britain’s Muslims are failing to integrate. We need to find out why.’

The BBC has kept up a relentless barrage against UKIP, everything from endless damaging news stories about UKIP members or councillors, or dragging up Nigel Farage’s supposed past….only a few days ago Newsnight’s editor, Ian Katz, was lauding LBC’s James O’Brien who conducted an interview with Farage seemingly, you’d have to assume, after O’Brien had consumed copious amounts of hallucinogenic drugs.  He was certainly tripping on something…though not over the truth.  The same James O’Brien who Newsnight now seeks to employ…guess we know where they are coming from.

The BBC continues its campaign via its current affairs programmes and into its ‘comedy’ shows such as the Now Show and the Brig Society, both of which, when the muse fails them, or just when they get the urge, indulge themselves with a  bit of gratuitous UKIP bashing…someone wants to loosen the gun laws?…oh that’ll be UKIP so they can shoot more immigrants….no really, that was a joke on the Now Show.

Have I got News For You is also in on the act and consistently drags UKIP’s name through  the mud.
Some may remember a particularly bad show when Godfrey Bloom braved the slings and arrows and put himself in the stocks.

One of the ‘comedians’ took a particular dislike to Godfrey and proceed to vilify him throughout the programme for his alleged sexist attitudes and abuse of women.

This particular comedian, Victoria Coren, took especial umbrage at a photograph of Bloom enjoying himself immensely at a party with his face buried in a stripper’s well padded chest, despite the girl,  having voluntarily taken up such a career, looking to be taking it all in her stride and laughing at the harmless, if juvenile, fun that it all is.

Not so Coren who berates poor old Godfrey, who could never have imagined that his boundless boyish good humour and playful partying could lead to a narrow minded dressing down by  a sharp tongued ‘comedian’ who appoints herself the guardian of British womanhood.

However Coren herself seems to think it is OK for her to act in a servile way…it’s OK…it’s Art:

Peter Hitchens said of her:

I would have ignored her indefinitely had she not decided to lecture me, from a very elevated position indeed,  on the subject of ‘addiction’. She did this here .

 

From a similar very elevated, and privileged, position she decided to lecture and scorn Godfrey Bloom for his antics.

Perhaps that wasn’t wise of Coren when you realise that she used to make pornographic films and admits that she sees nothing wrong with a good bit of heterosexual porn on the shelves at home…alongside the photo albums of holiday snaps no doubt…see later for reference relevance.

Here is her mea culpa:

Yes, I once made a porn movie. Which is why I feel qualified to share a few hot tips

My own porn days are long behind me. It was in 2001 that I struck out for Amsterdam with nothing but my best friend Charlie, two cheap home movie cameras (one of them without a working microphone) and a budget of £15,000 with which to make the greatest blue movie of all time.
The money had been fronted to us by a respectable publishing house, as part of an advance payment for which it received a book about our X-rated adventures called Once More, With Feeling.

In Once More, With Feeling, Victoria Coren worries whether people will think her “a nasty old tart”.

Coren believed there was a place for heterosexual porn in the home….but don’t you dare push your face into a stripper’s décolletage.

Curiously she isn’t averse to using her own charms to distract her fellow poker players…nor too fussy about the venue’s choice of entertainment…never mind the sinful ‘gambling’…..

Coren is forever trying to lecture people on how to live, and love, it seems.  No one is safe, not even an innocent tourist out enjoying a day trip to Las Vegas.  Coren decides they should be fully immersing themselves in the views and absorbing the memories. The tourists themselves prefer to take a few snaps to help preserve those memories.

 
Ironically Coren herself is not immersing herself in the views, concerned as she is with the tourist’s philistine behaviour….so much so that she spends her time taking photos of them taking photos (see above)…and then writing it all up in her own blog.

She declares…..

Come on, people! Put the camera down and look! What kind of film do you think you’ll have when you get home anyway? What kind of photograph? You’ll have a small, square frame of an astonishing view that your eyes could just take in whole! But you’re not actually seeing it, because you’re too busy creating a bad, blurry version of an aerial picture of Las Vegas that’s been taken a million times before, much better than you’re going to manage, and is all over the internet anyway. Here, look. Have this one.
You don’t need that photo you’re taking! Just have the experience! Just stand there and look at the thing, and then remember it! The vision in front of you is real! Why do you think it will only become real when you look at it on screen later? Stop being so bloody 21st Century!
Sorry. I got cross for a moment there.

Ironically….here is a piece from her blog bringing to us the joyous visions she has enjoyed on her hols…and taken pictures of…..

Holiday Snaps

She tells us….

Accept that disapproving lectures to your loved one, or about strangers, cannot possibly be helpful – and then it’s fine to say you will lecture anyway because they’re so bloody annoying. Or frightening. That’s OK.

Well in that spirit here’s some critiqueing from the cheap seats:

I don’t know so much about VC. She may be a good looker, but she’s got a very sharp tongue about her, and she can be very catty at times, eg when commentating on poker on CH4 she did a fair few (unnecessary) personal put-downs of some of the players.. Whatever, I wouldn’t care to get on the wrong side of her. She comes across as having a rather ruthless streak about her.

I didn’t like Victoria Coren, I thought she seemed patronising and weasel like.

As for Victoria Coren, I humbly know that as a woman I cannot possibly understand her appeal to so many of you – but I have to say that I find both her and her brother Giles rather smug and self-satisfied whereas her Dad Alan was a wonderful comic and yet not at all priggish.

She is a good poker player though.

She said something along the lines of Mumsnet being a site for women to join and congratulate themselves for having children. Very disparaging, and she came across as a bit of a twat.

 

Seems she is married to someone who is of a like mind...sucking the joy out of every occasion:

David Mitchell on stag nights…I watched the video but had to turn it off…he is extraordinarily tedious and hard going……..

Stag nights. Now the stag night is a totally invented tradition.
But that’s ok, so are lots of basically good things like Christmas cards and Scottish tartans.
And I suppose come to that, so ultimately are weddings, Christmas and Scotland.

The problem lies in the arrogance of trying to be unique.
Now that not everyone simply goes to the pub,
the pressure is on each new groom to prove his wedding, and by extension he himself,
are so special that only ten days white water rafting in a paddle steamer crewed by strippers can adequately reflect it.
Whereas, of course it doesn’t work like that.
If you’re boring, no amount of high-speed water prostitution will save you.
If you’re not, then a night in the pub with your friends will be great.

The response…..

As you may have noticed, there are some professional hen night hunters and serious stag do spoilers out there.

The last thing any hen night organiser wants is some sour faced, dreary analyst taking every opportunity to ask if the hen night accessories you bought were ethically sourced from the wheels of recycled Peruvian mobility scooters.
Questioning the integrity of a T-shirt manufacturer is one thing, boring the pants off everyone till they prove there wasn’t a more sensitive way of celebrating the hen night is another – remember, they chose to go to Dublin dressed as nuns draped in condoms!
If you want to take an altogether different approach, there are plenty of classy stag party options. That’s ‘options’ – no one is getting on a soapbox to say you shouldn’t stay at home writing clever comedy, introverting yourself into an early grave.
Nor are they Tallinn you to go around tearing up foreign capitals on some vodka-fuelled crusade. Trips are laid on, and the booze is often super-cheap, but ultimately, it’s people who decide how they act and celebrate on a stag party – and they don’t care what you think!

cornerswell
16 June 2011 1:08pm
27
I can’t think of anything worse than going on one of these incredibly loud and expensive ego-fests either, but it’s getting to the point with David Mitchell that, even if he was talking about something that I absolutely loved, he’d completely suck the joy out of it for me, completely and for ever.
I’m not suggesting that you start skipping around singing hello birds, hello trees, David, but you’re starting to depress the hell out of me. Please go away for a bit

 

Yes Victoria you really have met your soul mate…sucking the joy out of life for everyone else.

Still someone loves you enough to spend time photoshopping you, it’s very, very good, I’ve looked very, very closely and can’t see the join………..

Good job she has a sense of humour:

and so does David, allegedly:

Here you go, a new open thread to detail the bias. How do you think they are covering the Scottish Independence issue, any bias there? It strikes me that they would love to see a YES vote. Your thoughts?