The Today programme in BBC Radio 4 excels itself each morning, launching attack after attack on the Conservatives. In essence it is reduced to an echo chamber for Labour talking points. I listened earlier to the BBC talk up Miliband’s ludicrous assertion that David Cameron is “partly” to blame for the masses exiting from Libya to European shores. The sneering logic is that because Cameron played a role in removing Ghadaffi then he is responsible for people smuggling in North Africa. On that basis, given that Labour presided over the invasions that led to chaos in Afghanistan and Iraq, can we reasonable assert that they are “partly” responsible for the deaths of millions? Can’t wait for the BBC to bring up this point…
The other point is that not all illegal immigrants (or “migrants” as the BBC chooses to call them) departing Libyan shores HAIL from Libya. In fact it is documented that the come from a range of African countries. So why does the BBC never ask what the African Union is doing about this unfolding drama?
77% of the British population think that immigration is too high and should be controlled and reduced.
A small liberal, metropolitan elite think otherwise and are intent on importing as many immigrants as possible regardless of the consequences….and they are ready to denounce you as racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic in order to try and silence you and any criticism of them that you may have.
The pro-immigration lobby, of which the BBC is a prominent and powerful member, is fanatical and reckless in its abandonment of all reason as it presses for completely open borders to allow in unlimited numbers of people who have no loyalty to this country, no idea of its laws, its culture, its norms, and often have no intention of adhering to those anyway.
It is a quite extraordinary example of people who allow their ideology to over-rule common sense and a total and deliberate failure to address the issues that such a policy might result in, ultimately the total breakdown of the society this mass influx of immigrants profess they want to join and, we are told, will ‘improve’.
The UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants has said wealthy countries should agree to accept one million Syrian refugees over the next five years to help end the series of boat disasters.
Not sure millions of Muslims entering Europe would be good for social cohesion and stability.
The Times on Monday told us that 25% of Britons will be from an ethnic minority by 2051, double what the level is now….driven of course by immigration…the population rising to over 77 million.
This will have dramatic effects upon services, infrastructure and of course society itself especially if different groups fail to integrate and continue to segregate based on race or religion.
David Coleman, professor of demography at the the University of Oxford, said:
“Many of the consequences of large scale migration are damaging. We do not need up to 13 million more people by the mid century. Almost all that increase will be immigrants and their children. It will not make the UK a happier or richer place. Crowding and congestion will have entirely negative effects, increasing pressure on schools, hospitals and particulary housing.”
Simon Ross, director of Population Concern, said it was time people looked at the consequences migration had on quality of life.
“There’s a lot of people with vested interests in immigration, the universities and employers for instance….People talk about the taxes that migrants pay but that is a short term view. Migrants have children and get old and we need to take account of the services they will eventually use. We should not reduce migration simply to a taxation issue. We should talk about its effect on British society including the need for more housing which effects the green belt and transport infrastructure. These are quality of life issues.”
Such thoughts would be ‘ramping up the rhetoric’ and an unacceptable tone for Evan Davis and Co.
Is Britain becoming too diverse to sustain the mutual obligations behind a good society and the welfare state?
The nation state remains irreplaceable as the site for democratic participation and it is hard to imagine how else one can organise welfare states and redistribution except through national tax and public spending. Moreover, since the arrival of immigrant groups from non-liberal or illiberal cultures it has become clear that to remain liberal the state may have to prescribe a clearer hierarchy of values.
The gulf between conservative Islam and secular liberal Britain is larger than with any comparable large group….for those of us who value an open, liberal society it is time to explain why it is superior to the alternatives.
He told us that…
Some claim that if people understood Islam more everything would be fine, they would be more tolerant, I think quite the contrary….the more they understand about it the more alien they would find it…authoritarian, collectivist, patriarchal, misogynist…..all sorts of things that Britain might have been 100 years ago but isn’t now.
I believe in human equality and the unity of the human race, but I am sceptical about the economic benefits of large-scale immigration for the bottom half of British society, and worry about too much rapid change leading to segregation of communities and a withering of the kind of fellow-feeling needed to sustain welfare states.
There is nothing remarkable about those views and there are now plenty of others on the centre-Left who share them — Jon Cruddas gave my book a favourable review in the New Statesman — though official Labour remains somewhat uncertain of its position on this territory.
Like many metropolitan liberals I had very little direct experience of immigration yet I came to see it as beyond the normal trade-offs and interest calculations of political life. It was simple: good people were in favour of it, and bad, bigoted people were against it.
Alongside this belief was a twitchy ambivalence about my own country, no doubt reflecting a twitchy ambivalence about myself. Left-wing and liberal intellectual scepticism about the national was particularly strong in England because of its dominant imperial past.
I now, of course, believe this disdain for the national was immature and premature as well as loftily dismissive of majority opinion.
How did I come to change my mind about that and about large-scale immigration?
No doubt becoming a more grounded person and mixing with a wider spread of people knocked some of the undergraduate ideological gaucheness out of me as I entered my thirties. But what I like to think really changed my mind was good ideas, or openness to better ideas than I had been carrying around.
It was David Willetts, the leading Tory, who had first drawn my attention to the “progressive dilemma”. Speaking at a Prospect debate on the welfare state in 1998, he noted that if values and lifestyles become too diverse it becomes more difficult to sustain common norms and hence the legitimacy of a risk-pooling welfare state.
“This is America versus Sweden. You can have a Swedish welfare state provided you are a homogeneous society with intensely shared values. In the US you have a very diverse, individualistic society where people feel fewer obligations to fellow citizens. Progressives want diversity but they thereby undermine part of the moral consensus on which a large welfare state rests.”
That is to say, people are readier to share and co-operate with people whom they trust or with whom they believe they have significant attributes, and interests, in common.
Willetts’s dilemma seemed to me a true and powerful idea. I remember thinking when I first heard it: why is this issue not discussed more, particularly on the Left?
Having experienced the tribal irrationality of part of leftist Britain on the issue of diversity I found myself extending my critique to other aspects of the argument: the nature of community, the role of national identities in liberal societies and more.
The other idea that broke through my inchoate left-liberal instincts was even simpler than the progressive dilemma. It is this: embracing the idea of human equality does not mean we owe the same allegiance to everyone.
For most people commitments and allegiances ripple out from friends and family to neighbourhoods, towns and nations. This does not mean we should not care about the global poor. But we have a hierarchy of obligations that means we spend 30 times more every year on the NHS than we do on development aid. Is that wrong?
Immigration, at least on a significant scale, is hard for both incomer and receiver, especially when multi-generational poverty is being imported. People are not blank sheets, societies are not random collections of individuals, and objection to the arrival of a large number of outsiders in a community is not necessarily racist.
When middle-class social scientists like Michael Young in the 1950s and 1960s discovered what a high attachment people in working-class communities had to stability and continuity it was considered something to celebrate by left-wing sociologists. When people objected to that continuity being disrupted by the churn of mass immigration they were denounced.
You may want to read this forecast from 2007 of what the future may well bring….and indeed has…
From DCDC strategic trends document: Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre for the uk mod…a source document for uk defence policy: 2007-36
Mass Displacement. Conflict and crises will continue to trigger the displacement of large numbers of people, mainly into proximate regions, which may find themselves at risk of instability or exogenous shock.
Migration will increase in response to environmental pressures, deprivation and the perception of economic opportunities offered in towns and cities, as well as in wealthier regions and countries. Some 175m people, 3% of the world’s population, currently live outside their country of origin. That number is likely to grow to 230m by 2050
Identity & Interest – Potential Implications While citizenship and physical security will remain important, individual loyalty to the state and state institutions will become increasingly conditional, based on personal identity and interest. Nationhood and ethnicity in certain countries will continue to influence human behaviour and international relations. Diaspora communities and their networks will be dynamic and unpredictable features of the political, demographic and economic aspects of globalization. Physical and cultural origin will continue to be significant to identity, but will be employed increasingly selectively, based on their utility in context and in relation to personal interest. Communities will increasingly form around the pursuit of common interests.
Dynamic Diaspora. ICT developments and advanced mass-transit systems will facilitate and increase connectivity between ethnic/national diasporae and their communities of origin. This will tend to reduce incentives for integration and assimilation and allow self-contained ‘virtual’ communities to exist across continents in ways not always in step with the interest and aspirations of their host countries. Remittances from members of diasporae will remain an important source of capital transfer and redistribution, especially for developing countries. Less benignly, diaspora will remain a medium for the international transmission of social risk, including: inter-communal violence, terrorism and transnational crime, especially trafficking and illicit trade.
Changing Values. Secularism and materialism are likely to grow in significance in an increasingly competitive, inter-connected world, reflecting trends that are already well established in the more developed regions. Meanwhile, cultural mixing, the pace of change and a rapid confluence of modern ideas and traditional values are likely to increase the trend towards moral relativism and increasingly pragmatic values. These developments will trigger responses from complex, traditionally defined communities, as well as among significant minorities, which will seek the sanctuary provided by more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism.
States and Communities will be progressively challenged by the range and complexity of the national and transnational risks that are beginning to dominate the 21st century – and some will not cope.
The expansion of global media and Information Communications Technology (ICT) will heighten the sense of grievance and marginalization between ‘haves and have-nots’, nationally and internationally. This is likely to lead to populism, human crises and confrontations, typified by inter-communal and inter-ethnic conflicts at local level, but, when related to access to strategic resources necessary to sustain developed or developing economies, may increase the incidence and risk of international confrontation. Communicable disease will continue to be a feature of human life; while familiar diseases will be eradicated or mitigated through prophylaxis or cure, others will emerge, of varying intensity and impact, alongside the constant risk of low incidence, but potentially high impact, pandemics.
Evan Davis interviewed Nigel Farage and it went pretty much as you might expect, Davis not focussing on policy but instead intent on painting Farage as some sort of racist rabble rouser who uses unnecessarily inflammatory language.
The BBC website’s follow up was equally determined to paint a similar picture and uses a snearing tone to undermine and discredit Farage as incompetent or ‘angry’. The headline of their report itself is an indicator of what the BBC wants you to think…..they have decided what is important in the interview and highlighted it…but it was their question that set up the premise about Farage’s ‘tone’ and it was they who decided this was an issue, it is the BBC, Evan Davis, who insinuates that Farage’s ‘tone’ is somehow unacceptable….and that Farage used it cynically, not really meaning what he said about immigration, in order merely to ‘get noticed’….
Farage ‘used tone to get noticed’
The problem with that is what do they mean by ‘tone’? Judging by the way the interview went ‘tone’ is not tone of voice, it is not the way you say something, not the language you use, but in this case it is the content of what Farage says….that immigration must be controlled and that multiculturalism has led to various segregated communities that are unhealthy for society…..apparently that is the ‘tone’ that is unacceptable.
Davis only really began the interview (and this is where Newsnight decided to start their edit of the interview from) when he started to ask about UKIP’s polling numbers and linked it to ‘image’ saying that UKIP was polling less than support for its policies might suggest because…..‘there might be a whiff of meanness and divisiveness about the Party’.
Farage tried to answer but was constantly interrupted by Davis who then declared that he think’s this has something to do with your tone, the way you talk about immigration.
So that’s the usual Evan Davis Stalinist-like show trial technique in operation….label someone a racist, demand they prove themselves innocent, interrupt so they can’t explain themselves and then tell them they are racist ….and then declare ‘let’s move on’ before the victim has a chance to object.
So Davis has already set up Farage as somewhat sinister and possibly racist and then tries to ‘prove’ his own labelling of Farage by using the ‘proof’ of his own interpretation of how Farage talks about immigration…naturally Davis, an ardent pro-immigration extremist himself, thinks anyone who talks about controlling immigration is wrong.
But never mind that Davis not only labels Farage with a strawman argument and then goes on to ‘prove’ it with his own thoughts, is he right that UKIP is polling low because it looks ‘mean and divisive’ due to Farage’s ‘tone’?
One reason is that UKIP has been under sustained attack from nearly every news outlet with their own vested interests intent on discrediting and underming UKIP…but even that isn’t the major cause for the low poll ratings.
The real reason UKIP polls low is that people recognise the bigger picture…vote UKIP and you may well end up with Miliband….vote Tory you will at least get a vote on Europe, under Labour you definitely won’t….so one major issue for UKIP supporters has been hijacked by Cameron…..and they also know that UKIP will not, certainly in this election, become a party that can win a majority and fulfill its promise to take us out of Europe and cut immigration….so they vote tactically, and certainly many Tory voters who might vote UKIP will remain Tory although many disgruntled Labour voters may well decide UKIP is less disagreeable than voting Tory.
Davis’ interpretation is wrong and coloured entirely by his own issues with immigration and Europe, not to mention HIV and its associations with Gays in relation to Farage’s comments on HIV positive immigrants and the NHS.
The BBC website tells us….
[Farage] does plenty of interviews and he’s got two televised debates under his belt, but this was probably the toughest exchange so far.
During a half hour of intense scrutiny Nigel Farage was at times tetchy, even angry. “I’m not having this,” he said, when he accused his interrogator of misquoting him. “I don’t hate anything” he said when he thought words were being put in his mouth. “I couldn’t care less,” he said – twice – when pushed on one sensitive issue. He was combative and he stood his ground.
But the interview did emphasise one thing – numbers are not his strong point. On UKIP’s plan for big tax cuts and deficit reduction he was nonchalant in saying “dynamic growth” in the economy – more revenue from less tax – was the secret to it working.
Farage’s ‘toughest exchange yet’? Hardly think so….LBC’s James O’Brien’s kangaroo court was by far the ‘toughest’ if only for the continual stream of made up accusations and half-truths O’Brien attempted to lynch Farage with…and yet Farage kept his cool and showed O’Brien to be less than credible as an interviewer and distinctly dishonest. Evan Davis was less dramatic but had the same intent as O’Brien, to smear Farage with whatever trumped up charge came to hand.
At one point Davis played a clip from an interview Farage did on Fox News about the rise of radical Islam in the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo and claimed this was an example of an unacceptable tone. It was in fact Farage merely saying what many, many other people, from politicians, to journalists, to academics, have said.
Davis seems to be saying that any criticism of Islam is unacceptable and shouldn’t be voiced lest we ‘upset’ Muslims, making them feel ‘under siege’.…leading to radicalisation. The BBC seems to have no problem with a communtiy that says ‘If you criticise us we will turn nasty’….but does have a problem with anyone who suggest FGM, or polygamy, extreme intolerance, or indeed extremism based upon religion, is wrong.
Farage and Davis get sidetracked as to whether Farage in the clip is talking about Islam in the UK, he actually was in that BBC clip, but the interview as a whole was about radical Islam generally and was based upon events in Paris and so Farage, having done so many interviews, may be excused for not remembering the exact details of the clip…especially as it was edited to be very short and without context.
Cuious that Davis thinks this is ‘mean and divisive’……..
Davis dismisses the claim that the Archbishop of Canterbury said we should accept Sharia law in the UK by saying ‘He was misunderstood’.
No, no he wasn’t. He quite clearly ssaid that we should accept a parallel system of law based upon Sharia…because….if we don’t it will upset Muslims and there will be a ‘breakdown in cohesion’...what could he possibly mean by that?
“as a matter of fact certain provisions of sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law” ……. “the application of sharia in certain circumstances – if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples’ religion – seems unavoidable?”
Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4’s World at One that the UK has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.
Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.
Dr Williams said an approach to law which simply said “there’s one law for everybody and that’s all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts – I think that’s a bit of a danger”.
“There’s a place for finding what would be a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law, as we already do with some other aspects of religious law.”
So we must accept that Muslims do not want to be ruled by British law and must have their own legal system…and whatever else they want to keep them happy and quiet.
Farage was right, Davis wrong on that important point.
Things then got surreal with Davis suggesting the recent children’s film about Paddington Bear showed the wonders of immigration and multi-culturalism….‘a proclamation of the virtues of multiculturalism which I know you hate…’
Farage then objected to the word ‘hate’ as it was perjorative and seemingly designed to be a ‘ramping up of the rhetoric’ about him by Davis.
MANY Britons were raised on tales of Paddington, the second-best-known bear in fiction after Winnie-the-Pooh. A kind of ursine Jacques Tati, the well-meaning Paddington caused chaos wherever he went through a mixture of clumsiness and cultural misunderstanding; the best moments usually involved his clashes with pompous British officialdom.
A new film version, directed and written by Paul King, focuses on a quality for which the British once prided themselves—a welcoming attitude towards refugees. An archetypal British explorer called Montgomery Clyde (who travels with grand piano and grandfather clock) meets Paddington’s aunt and uncle, introduces them to the joys of marmalade, and tells them of the warm welcome they can expect in London. When an earthquake destroys their home in “darkest Peru”, Paddington is duly sent to London to seek shelter.
[Laughed at this bit..]
If this interpretation had been served up by the BBC, the publicly subsidised national broadcaster, the howls of protest from the Daily Mail and Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-immigrant UK Independence Party, would have been deafening.
It was a reminder that UKIP polls relatively poorly in multicultural London and that its national ratings are still in the mid-teens, well below the Front National in France.
Not everyone in Britain is a “little Englander”; a lot of people, if they met Mr Farage, would be tempted to follow Paddington’s example and give him “a particularly hard stare”.
Well not this particular commenter…..
‘Why, instead of making Paddington into a bear in this new film, they could have just stuffed a coat with straw so the evil characters were directly attacking a strawman!
How about this for a film – Paddington arrives in the UK and instead of openly assimilating with society, invites in more of his bear-friends and sets up a parallel society in the neighborhood. Instead of following his adopted country’s rules and laws, the bears insist that their radical religious rules are sufficient for controlling issues within their separate community. The bears prey on young and vulnerable girls within the city subjecting them to gang rape and torture while native civil servants nervously sit by wondering just how this got so out of control. What a fun children’s movie when the complex, sensitive issue of immigration is brought more in line with reality!’
Ouch! Very mean and divisive!
Davis then pulled another of the anti-UKIP lobby’s favourites out of the hat asking Farage if it was ‘patriotic to support Mo Farrah?’ Why not ask if it would be patriotic to support the 7/7 bombers or Lutfur Rahman? Ridiculous, as Evan Davis might say.
Davis accuses Farage of ‘ramping up the rhetoric’ but in fact he merely states the truth that many have stated before…so why pick on Nigel Farage and suggest he is somehow a dangerous and divisive influence polluting people’s minds? Here’s the Independent on the dangers of segregation, Muslim in particular…
Segregation between different classes and ethnicities in Britain is worsening due to increasing numbers of faith schools and the opening of free schools, a leading campaigner on social equality has warned.
Matthew Taylor, the respected chair of the Social Integration Commission, called on governors to issue regular reports on how their pupils are mixing to prevent serious divisions in society – saying that Muslim schools were of particular concern as their intakes tend to be less diverse.
Social segregation is already costing the British economy £6bn a year, recent research from the Commission has found. The study showed Britons increasingly seek the company only of those most like themselves, with profound consequences.
The resulting drop in social mobility and increased isolation between groups means that problems are emerging in areas from employment to health, costing the UK the equivalent of 0.5 per cent of GDP.
Here’s the BBC itself on such dangers…quoting Trevor Phillips…telling us that the dangers of segregation should come as no surprise (They obviously do to Evan Davis)….
The head of the Commission for racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, is warning of increased segregation…..
But it should come as no surprise – it has been on the government’s books since the riots of 2001 in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham.
The most damning report into the disturbances, by Ted Cantle, a former council chief and expert in local communities, warned of communities living “parallel lives” and recommended wide-ranging changes to policy.
The words chosen by Mr Phillips for his speech are more strident – but they amount to the same thing: People share space in Britain’s towns and cities but do not know who each other are.
The CRE chairman has already attacked what many increasingly regard as the heart of the problem, multiculturalism, a concept that few people agree on.
In his speech, Mr Phillips argues that the nation is becoming more divided by race and religion, with young people being brought up in enclaves.
He warns that Britain is “sleep-walking” its way towards segregation on a scale already seen in the USA. The evidence is there to be seen, says Mr Phillips, it’s just going unspoken.
So remind me of the virtues of multiculturalism and mass immigration Evan!
Then we had another even more bizarre attempt to show Farage as ‘mean and divisive’ by misquoting him on his comments on breastfeeding suggesting he had a problem with women doing that….Farage said he had absolutley no problem and the quote was about a very particular circumstance…and he couldn’t care less if women wanted to breastfeed in public….and he repeated that.
The BBC’s analysis on the website tells us…..’ “I couldn’t care less,” he said – twice – when pushed on one sensitive issue’. That makes out that Farage is being aggressively dismissive of a ‘sensitive issue’ when really he is saying the opposite and is in fact supportive of that ‘sensitive issue’. The BBC twisting his words to make him look crass and callous…..why hide the fact it was on ‘breastfeeding’ instead of calling it a ‘sensitive issue’….were the BBC trying to get you to think he was talking about something else…such as race?
Davis then got on to some policy asking how Farage’s policy to reduce tax would encourage growth in the economy and lead to more tax revenue in the end.
The BBC web report tells us…’But the interview did emphasise one thing – numbers are not his strong point.’
Well, no not really. Farage used an economic thinktank to run through the figures and verify his policy…and it is a well established principle…the present government is convinced…from HRMC:
‘The modelling suggests that the tax reductions will increase investment by between 2.5 per cent and 4.5 per cent in the long term (equivalent to £3.6 billion – £6.2 billion in today’s prices) and GDP by between 0.6 per cent and 0.8 per cent (equivalent to £9.6 billion – £12.2 billion). Lower Corporation Tax will also increase the demand for labour which in turn raises wages and increases consumption. Given the share going to labour this equates to between £405 and £515 per household.’
‘In any case, the lesson from the studies conducted is that long-term economic growth is to a significant degree a function of tax policy. Our current economic doldrums are the result of many factors, but having the highest corporate rate in the industrialized world does not help. Nor does the prospect of higher taxes on shareholders and workers. If we intend to spur investment, we should lower taxes on the earnings of capital. If we intend to increase employment, we should lower taxes on workers and the businesses that hire them.’
So perhaps numbers are Farage’s strong point after all despite the BBC’s attempt to undermine him.
All in all Davis’ interview and the follow up ‘analysis’ on the web were pretty dire and intent only on showing Farage as a racist, someone who doesn’t really care about things and as an incompetent winging it on his charm. Davis was highly selective in what he chose to emphasise and the bulk of the interview wasn’t at all about Farage’s policies, or even about his actual immigration policies, but about the ‘tone’ of his comments on immigration…..or rather the fact that the things he said were critical of immigration policy….apparently being critical of immigration policy and talk of controlling and reducing immigration to sustainable levels somehow means you are unacceptably ‘ramping up the rhetoric’ and are a danger to a cohesive society in which immigrants want to feel the love.
Personally I thought Farage kept his cool and held his ground well under sustained and often bizarre attack.
BBC accused of left-wing ambush on David Cameron over hostile Radio 1 interview
The BBC has been accused of launching a left-wing ambush on David Cameron after a deeply hostile Radio 1 interview in which the presenter bet the Prime Minister £1,000 he could not win a majority.
Appearing on Radio 1’s Live Lounge, Mr Cameron was repeatedly interrupted by audience members and presenter Chris Smith, leading to widespread accusations of bias.
The Telegraph understands the Conservatives are considering lodging a formal complaint over the interview.
Join us for The Night of the Deputies, live from West Brom.
Deputy Dimbleby is accompanied by former Leader of the Conservative Party William Hague, Labour’s Deputy Leader Harriet Harman, Scotland’s Deputy First Minister John Swinney of the SNP, UKIP Deputy Leader Paul Nuttall and Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett.
Robertson: You don’t think that this man deserves to die? Y. Islam: Who, Salman Rushdie? Robertson: Yes. Y. Islam: Yes, yes. Robertson: And do you have a duty to be his executioner? Y. Islam: Uh, no, not necessarily, unless we were in an Islamic state and I was ordered by a judge or by the authority to carry out such an act – perhaps, yes. [Some minutes later, Robertson on the subject of a protest where an effigy of the author is to be burned] Robertson: Would you be part of that protest, Yusuf Islam, would you go to a demonstration where you knew that an effigy was going to be burned? Y. Islam: I would have hoped that it’d be the real thing.
Just had this from my marvellous Observer colleague Andrew Anthony: “He told me in 1997, eight years after saying on TV that Rushdie should be lynched, that he was in favour of stoning women to death for adultery.He also reconfirmed his position on Rushdie. He set up the Islamia school in Brent, which is currently undergoing council-backed expansion. Its mission statement three years ago explicitly stated that its aim was to bring about the submission of the individual, the community and the world at large to Islam. For this aim it now receives state funding. Its an incubator of the most bonkers religious extremism and segregation, and is particularly strong on the public erasure of women. Why do people go to such lengths to ignore these aspects of Yusuf Islam’s character and philosophy?
If the BBC’s continuing endorsement of a Muslim fundamentalist with views that are evidently quite extreme, in British society, is quite scary this (H/T Sue at Is the BBC biased?) should create a great deal more concern as it looks as if the BBC’s much vaunted independence has been compromised by Muslim activists seeking to change how the BBC reports Muslim issues:
Aaqil Ahmed, the BBC head of religion and ethics, said: “Religious literacy is far too important just to be left in the hands of people who are not subject specialists. I think you need both.”
Replying to criticism that BBC cuts and the pressures of the 24-hour news cycle had stripped out specialists, he said: “There are a lot of conversations with BBC News. There is a different leadership in BBC News, understanding exactly the world is different.”
He said editors, including director of news and current affairs James Harding, had attended a recent meeting with Muslim academics covering “the rise of religiosity in young Muslim children, the Trojan horse schools, which are not one-offs, they are a glimpse of the future.
“We have to find out the right way of telling that particular story. That notion has landed.”
‘A glimpse of the future’? What did Ahmed mean by that exactly? Is he saying that Muslims are becoming more devout, fanatical, in their religious observation and will be demanding British Society adapts to them…or else?
I think he is saying precisely that….but he is also looking to have the BBC report such issues, such as the Trojan Horse scandal, in a Muslim friendly manner rather than present them as the threat to a democratic, secular, tolerant and peaceful society under one law that is the British way.
All of which is a bit laughable as the BBC already does its utmost to pretend there are no such issues with the Religion of Peace and happily sweeps them under the carpet more often than not…or if forced to report them looks to downplay any issues and deny a connection to Islam…the Trojan Horse scandal being a case in point, the BBC claiming it was all a hoax, that there were no issues, that it was a result of islamophobia and racism…the BBC that refused to publish information that indicated that the lead Muslim advocacy group, the MCB, was at the heart of the scandal. Why would the BBC do that?
Even John Birt noticed the BBC’s failure to address the issues….
The BBC is failing to address the “awesomely difficult questions” facing Britain, including the economy and the threat of radical Islam, according to the corporation’s former chief.
John Birt, director-general of the BBC from 1992-2000, said its current affairs analysis was falling short.
“What it’s not sufficiently doing is addressing the very big, awesomely difficult questions our country and our world are facing at the moment,” he said.
There is a war going on, a war of words and ideologies. Activist Muslims have launched a media assault on our society with the intent to intimidate the Media into censoring themselves on Islamic issues, forcing them to whitewash any crimes or behaviour that can be associated with Islamic teachings in order to silence criticism of Islam and deceive non-Muslims about the serious concerns that the rise of a fundamentalist religiosity, one that is highly intolerant of other religions and which incites high levels of violence in many adherents, in the West raise.
It looks like the BBC has been groomed and recruited.
I think we should know who were these ‘Muslim academics’ that lobbied the BBC and what exactly was said and agreed. How can it be that private interest groups can shape how the BBC reports the news in their favour?
This morning the BBC filled the airwaves with tall tales about Tory Grant Shapps and Wikipedia edits.
The BBC told us that the administrator who had made the claims about Shapps had said that he ‘couldn’t be sure who had edited the account’….so the question is did the BBC know the identity of that administrator and if so why did they not report it? Was the story about Shapps just too good to put a stop to?
The Telegraph reports that the administrator at Wikipedia was in fact a LibDem activist…
The Wikipedia administrator who accused the Tory co-chairman, Grant Shapps, of creating a fake identity on the online encyclopedia to boost his reputation is a leading activist in the Liberal Democrats, the Telegraph can reveal.
Richard Symonds admitted today that he had been “chastised” by other administrators at Wikipedia for not checking with more people before banning a user who he claims is Mr Shapps, or someone working for him.
Mr Symonds also admitted that he had briefed The Guardian newspaper, which broke the alleged story yesterday.
No mention of the identity of this administrator in the Guardian story, nor of his inability to actually provide any evidence that linked Shapps to the edits….so where did the BBC get their quote from about his lack of evidence? Did they contact him personally?
After spending the day slinging mud at Shapps, and he was also interrogated on Newsnight last night so important is this story, the BBC hasn’t bothered to update the story with the rather significant fact that it looks like a bit of LibDem skulduggery at work.
Funny how much time the BBC spends on a story when it seems to suit their bias, as with the ‘Jihadi Bride’s father, and then can suddenly lose all interest when the truth comes out and contradicts their quality journalism…and never a sign of an apology or a rowback from them….they’ve already managed to imprint people’s minds with the BBC version and they know that may well stick however much ‘truth’ comes out later. All very Goebbels-like.
I’m sure Nick Clegg will be rewritng his jokes now…
Asked about the claims, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said he was “prepared to believe” that Mr Shapps had not altered his Wikipedia entry but joked: “It just could have been someone else – Michael Green, for instance.”
I happened to watch Newsnight on BBC2 last night. It’s been a while and with good reason. The entire programme was one long extenuated assault on the Conservative Party. We had geo-political analysts such as “White Dee” (from Benefits Street) there to explain why Welfare reform is an evil. It is clear that the BBC has decided it must be EVERYTHING possible to help get Ed into Downing Street and with around two weeks to go, it is throwing ALL it can to ensure Cameron is “locked out” of Downing Street for the next five years as the Left run amok with their glove puppet Miliband installed as glorious leader.
“As an aside to the Hopkins and other immigration threads .
Calamities happen in the world , and movement of people’s is one of the consequences .
It could be a huge global catastrophe, or so localised it happens just to you .
Now imagine your neighbours house burns down , so you offer his family succour for a period .
You think this is a temporary accommodation, until insurance or whatever sorts it out .
But your new intake gets permanent , and divides your house into separate quarters , or even — takes over your ( the )house and you have to move into the garage .
An implausible situation , but not on a global scale for many people in the world in times past , as Romans would testify Where are the Romans today ?
The Britons had the same , but they are still with us , as they kept a toe hold in Cornwall , Brittany and God’s own country ; Wales . Much as a Welshman reveres the place , it cannot be disputed that they were forced to be there .
This was because the low lying areas where the Angles, Saxons and Jutes were living were being flooded and waves of invasions (or migratory) pressures from the East meant there was no land to settle in mainland Europe, so they invaded Britain .
This wasn’t welcomed . The Romano British didn’t say” Oh you’ve come to take over , no problem we’ll just move westward until your satisfied with the land grab you got .” There was resistance .
And thus it’s been throughout history , and the latest long running saga is with the Palestinians , who feel they have been replaced by Jews. A people who migrated for worse reasons than sea levels encroaching upon land .
The main point is what the Gramscis and BBC omit , that the mass movement of humanity from one part of the globe to another – apart from the USA for a limited period – is not a peaceful event .”
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