Monthly Archives: March 2015

In regard to the EU’s alarmist scaremongering film given a platform on the BBC …..,

A BBC spokesman responded to the accusations over EU funding and bias saying:

No EU money was used in the making of the programme being aired on the BBC. Impartiality is of paramount importance for the BBC.

 

 

UKIP says different…

The mockumentary producer Bill Emmott confirmed on twitter last night that the production company had received EU funding for the film’s dubbing and distribution across Europe.

The BBC itself didn’t get the funding for the film but the film  itself did get money from the EU….Can’t see that Tweet from Emmott...but there is this though…

 The Mail confirms the funding went on translations for the film.

The film was  broadcast across Europe..

The film will be aired across Europe by eight different broadcasters, a feat Piras described as her “impossible challenge”.

 

Apparently, if I read this right, someone at the BBC thinks it should be shown in the EU Parliament….

Good that the same BBC person, Philippa Thomas,  Lead presenter World News Today @BBCWorld & BBC4,  thinks comparisons of Christianity with ISIS are fair in this day and age…..presumably Jihadi John is Henry VIII?…..

One raised finger…seem familiar?

Compare the Telegraph’s report on Mohammed Emwazi’ school  and the BBC’s.

The Telegraph tells us there was a ‘Muslim Mafia’ at the school that was very religious and pro-active in demanding that the school adopt Muslim friendly practices such as introducing a prayer room. The BBC gives us the ex-headteacher’s thoughts….you might think the BBC would have tried a bit harder to challenge what was in all likelihood a bit of backside covering by her.

The Telegraph reveals Omar Emwazi, 21, was known as a member of the ‘Muslim Mafia’ at school and supported an Islamist cleric who inspired one of Lee Rigby’s killers

[Omar] Emwazi attended Quintin Kynaston, the same north west London school as his older brother, and was known there as a member of the “Muslim Mafia” – a group of particularly religious teenagers.

He is an integral member of a network called Power of Dawah, an evangelical Islamic group that tries to convert people in the street.

The group has hosted lectures by various preachers, which are filmed and put online.

Its Twitter account follows Abdur Raheem Green, a controversial preacher who has justified domestic abuse and has suggested that the 7/7 and 9/11 attacks could have been carried out by western governments.

Emwazi registered the PowerofDawah.com website.

A friend of Emwazi’s said she believed many pupils were being groomed by radicals whilst they were still at school…The “Muslim Mafia” were not popular among their peers as they were considered too judgmental.

“They had a very specific set of values,” she added.

“Quintin Kynaston was full of that. It was 70 per cent or 80 per cent Muslim. There was only one white kid in our class.

“In every year there was a set that was the Muslim Mafia that hung out together and were very religious.

“So many of them are second generation immigrants whose parents are still very much in touch with their culture.

“I think there was a system of grooming at Quintin Kynaston because there have been a few of them.

“They petitioned to have a prayer room so they could pray five times a day and they always went to Regent’s Park mosque every single Friday.

“I think that’s where it happened. A lot of them suddenly got very religious.

 

Was Mohammed Emwazi just as religious as his younger brother at school?  The Daily Mail suggests he did….

After finishing primary school in 1999, young Mohammed moved to Quintin Kynaston Community Academy, in St John’s Wood, where he is believed to have studied alongside former X Factor judge and pop star Tulisa Contostavlos.

Once there, he became more observant of his religion and began wearing more traditional Islamic dress, and his sisters began to wear the hijab.

Curious that the head teacher claims she saw nothing amiss.

The BBC whitewashes the school and makes no mention of any problems with overly devout religiosity from some Muslim pupils…

‘Jihadi John’: Emwazi’s school not aware of radicalisation

Islamist militant Mohammed Emwazi was never suspected of being radicalised at school, his former head teacher says.

Jo Shuter, who was head of Quintin Kynaston Academy in north-west London until 2013, said he had not been “seen as a huge concern” as a pupil.

Emwazi has been named as the man known as “Jihadi John” in several IS hostage videos.

Two other pupils from the school are also thought to have gone to fight in Syria and Somalia.

Ms Shuter, who was head teacher for more than 10 years from 2002, said there had been no indication that any pupils were becoming extremist.

“I am not prepared to say when the radicalisation took place. All I can say is absolutely hand on heart, we had no knowledge of it. If we had we would have done something about it,” she said.

“There was never any sense that any of these young men as I knew them were radicalised when they were in school.”

 

 

The BBC’s renowned and respected journo in Oz, Jon Donnison, brings us the news we really want……

Monday arrives and so does this new Thread. Anyone catch an interview with an Amnesty spokesman on Today this morning. He was wriggling like mad trying to distance his organisation from the Jihad apologists in Cage and was lobbed far too many soft ball questions. The BBC treats Amnesty with kid gloves and I can recall doing a BBC debate with Moazzam Beggs. He was accompanied to the studio by the local Amnesty Rep.

No surprise the BBC favours this….From the Independent:

End of the licence fee: BBC to back radical overhaul of how it is funded

The BBC will back a radical overhaul of the licence fee, paving the way for the end of the current system of funding the state broadcaster, the Corporation’s head, Tony Hall, is expected to say today.

In a speech to staff at Broadcasting House, Lord Hall is expected to indicate the Corporation’s backing for a broadcasting levy that would apply to every household, regardless of whether they have a television.

Last week the parliamentary Culture, Media and Sport Committee said the £145.50 annual licence fee should ultimately be replaced by a German-style “broadcasting levy” that would apply to every household. The change would allow the BBC to collect funds from the estimated 500,000 households which claim not to have a television or only watch programmes on-demand through platforms like the BBC iPlayer.

However MPs believe the earliest that a levy could be introduced in the UK would be 2026.

Extraordinary excuse from the BBC that it claims allows it to broadcast programmes that are explicitly biased….it’s OK as long as they aren’t made by the BBC itself…(H/T George R)

A BBC spokesman responded to the accusations over EU funding and bias saying:

No EU money was used in the making of the programme being aired on the BBC. Impartiality is of paramount importance for the BBC.

This fictional programme reflects the author’s vision. BBC editorial guidelines do not prevent the acquisition of independent programmes which approach subjects from a particular perspective. ”

 

That gives the BBC an extraordinary freedom to broadcast basically what it likes under the guise of it being ‘independent’ regardless of any ‘message’ being embedded within such programmes.

Did like that  ‘ Impartiality is of paramount importance for the BBC.’

What on earth will the BBC do with all its time if Labour wins the election?

‘The Casual Vacancy’ is continuing on its merry leftwing way whilst BBC News brings us the Truth when the Legend becomes the Truth.  Tomorrow we have Panorama bringing us a whole series of programmes on the state of the Nation…the description doesn’t  give you much confidence that it will be a programme that is in any way uplifting….any doubts that the ‘rich will be getting richer whilst the rest are getting ever poorer’ under the Tories and a new economic system or plan must be implemented…preferably a 5 year one?….

With the General Election fast approaching, reporter Fergal Keane investigates whether modern-day Britain is up to the task of delivering on the things that have traditionally defined `good living’ for generations. In the first of four programmes, Keane asks if owning a family home, having a good job, feeling part of a community and retaining hope for the future remain realistic aspirations for today’s Britons.

As the standard of living, or ‘good living’ as the BBC terms it, is a Labour meme it might be thought that the BBC is feeding us a line that ties in with the Labour election campaign.

The BBC receives millions of pounds from the EU to pump out pro-European propaganda.  What does it get for its money?

The BBC is  bringing us something that is outrageously biased and should result in an immediate referral to Ofcom for gross failure to comply with its legal duty to be impartial….or in the words of the BBC something…’Sombre, thought-provoking and witty, the film frames Europe through the eyes of those who have most at stake – the Europeans themselves.’

BBC’s apocalyptic drama about the tragedy of an EU break-up is condemned as ‘scaremongering propaganda’

An army of Islamic State terrorists has advanced to the outskirts of Vienna, Spain has cut off routes to Gibraltar and Nigel Farage – prime minister of ‘Great England’ – has deported all immigrants who have arrived in the past ten years.

This, according to the BBC, is what the world would be like if the European Union were to collapse.

The apocalyptic vision of a continent in which social order has broken down – to be screened on BBC4 tonight at 10pm – has been condemned by Eurosceptic critics as ‘scaremongering’.

The 75-minute film shows what the supposedly impartial broadcaster suggests might happen should the EU implode, and depicts the final days of the European dream as it turns into a nightmare of worthless currencies and predictions of even darker days to come.

The BBC describes The Great European Disaster Movie as an ‘authored documentary’, but the film – which features comedian Angus Deayton as an archaeologist struggling to explain what the single currency was to a young girl sitting next to him on a plane – has been criticised as a hyped-up piece of pro-EU propaganda.

Horrifying images of concentration camp victims are interspersed with wartime footage of devastated cities, while commentary is provided by former Economist editor Bill Emmott, who made the film with Italian journalist Annalisa Piras.

• In the film, Mr Emmott warns: ‘Our worry is that if Europe continues on its current path, the EU will collapse and that that would have catastrophic consequences for all of us.’ Viewers see a glimpse of a post-EU continent in which:Visas and landing cards are required for travel between European countries;

• A power crisis in Germany has put Berlin airport out of action.

• The new president of France, far-Right leader Marine Le Pen, has declared a state of emergency.

• EU chiefs, meeting in Berlin, have abolished the euro.

• Looters are rampaging through Rome after the shooting of protesters by police.

• Fierce fighting erupts in Vienna as the ‘unstoppable’ advance of IS fighters continues.

The terrifying sequence of events ends with Angela Merkel resigning as European Council president and overseeing a vote to abolish the EU. In his commentary, Mr Emmott admits immigration imposes financial burdens on nations but insists that in the long term it creates the resources needed to maintain a welfare state.

In the film, the girl – apparently being deported from Britain because she has an Italian mother – asks Angus Deayton about pictures of bridges on an old euro banknote.

He tells her: ‘They were supposed to symbolise unity, unification, all the countries being connected. It was a great idea but unfortunately it didn’t work.’

Son of a Labour Peer, Robert Peston, will be ‘debating’ the film on Newsnight…

The Great European Disaster Movie: Newsnight Debate

Robert Peston presents a discussion in which a panel of guests debate the issues raised by Bill Emmott’s authored Storyville documentary on the problems facing the European Union.

 

 

 

Back at the beginning of February the BBC carefully picked its target, chose the perfect time and let loose hoping to mix things up for the Tories in the run-up to the election.

When the BBC and the Guardian fired a broadside at HSBC earlier this year the target was not in fact HSBC….after all HSBC’s tax avoidance story was over 5 years old and well known.  To be sure one of the biggest and most successful banks in the world would be a famous scalp for the anti-business BBC and Guardianistas but they had their eyes on targets closer to home.

They knew that Stephen Green’s history as head of HSBC and his position as a Tory Peer, elevated to those dizzy heights after the HSBC tax evasion story broke, would be toxic for the Tories and fed directly into Labour’s narrative of the Tory Party protecting its Big Business friends in the City whilst cutting the benefits of the poorest and most vulnerable in Society.  And so it turned out, that was exactly what happened as the sinking Miliband clutched the lifeline thrown to him and launched his own attack…

Miliband attacks ‘dodgy’ PM in HSBC donor row

Ed Miliband has called David Cameron a “dodgy prime minister surrounded by dodgy donors”, in a row over party grandees with Swiss bank accounts.

 

The story was more about Stephen Green and his Tory connections than HSBC and the hoped for damage that this could do to perceptions of the Tory Party as the party of City financiers.

Which brings us to a report in the Sunday Mail…

Revealed: Tax scandal-hit HSBC is paying an astonishing £513,000 in fees to BBC Trust chairman

The woman who leads the BBC is being paid a staggering £10,000 a day by the scandal-hit bank accused of helping millionaires to avoid paying tax.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Rona Fairhead – chairman of the BBC Trust – was paid more than £500,000 last year by HSBC for non-executive roles carried out working the equivalent of one day a week.

Last night MPs said the astonishing payment from the bank raised questions about her priorities, as it dwarfs the £110,000 salary she is paid to work the equivalent of three days a week to oversee the BBC on behalf of licence fee payers.

If the Tories were so inept or careless to make Green a Peer and employ him as a Tory minister after revelations about HSBC broke, and note it was an appointment welcomed by Labour at the time, how much more difficult must it be for the BBC to have  Rona Fairhead appointed as head of the BBC Trust especially as she was chairman of HSBC’s audit committee for a long time?

Now the BBC claim ‘ “she had not taken part in any discussions about its coverage of the bank.” But the tax evasion claims have been discussed at board level within HSBC. And if the bank complains about the BBC’s reports, the Trust could be asked to adjudicate’ .

So Fairhead would be compromised in any situation where HSBC, or I suppose the Tory Party, complained about the BBC’s coverage of the story, but it also shows the BBC’s hypocrisy in attacking the Tories for making Green a minister when the BBC, so many years later and with Fairhead still employed by HSBC, and considering her actual position at HSBC as chairman of its audit committee, the BBC has her at the helm of its own regulatory body overseeing its strategy and dealing with complaints.

It’s no wonder she admitted she didn’t think the BBC was biased in the run up to her appointment…it looks like she would never have the time to watch, listen or read the BBC’s output with so many lucrative jobs under her belt.