On-time and awaiting your completion! A brand new Open thread to detail the bias! Over to you…

Jonathan Dimbleby is worried….the family inheritance, the hand-me down job at the BBC, is under threat…what will the young Dimblebys do to earn a crust?

He urges a public revolt, an uprising to save the BBC….to save it from what I’m not sure…

Jonathan Dimbleby urges public to rise up in support of embattled BBC

‘The veteran political broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby has attacked the commercial enemies of the BBC for setting out to destroy it, and has urged audiences to rise up to defend the corporation.

“Even people within the BBC [who are] now beginning to stand up for it, fail to identify those vested interests. The Murdoch press is an enemy of the BBC for commercial reasons,” said Dimbleby, 70, in reaction to the release of the government’s green paper on the future size and remit of the corporation.

Making an unexpected intervention at a recording of Radio 4’s long-running current affairs comment show, Any Questions?, Dimbleby, brother of David and son of the BBC’s first war reporter, the late Richard Dimbleby, said the corporation’s opponents “have to be taken on by the BBC and by those viewers and listeners who own the BBC”. He added: “Go around the world, listen to what people say about the BBC, they think it’s astonishing we are having to think about whether or not it should survive.”

Dimbleby’s comments were not broadcast and are not included in the iPlayer version of the programme. His impassioned outburst was made over his radio microphone at the end of the recording in Leamington Spa, in response to a question from panellist and shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna and it came as the BBC Trust, the body that oversees the corporation, prepares to step up its information campaign.’

Ah it’s the usual suspects that are being lined up as the villains of the piece….criticism of the BBC or its reform are a machiavellian plot by Murdoch and his toady politicians…..and all in response to a question from a Labour MP…one too chicken to attempt to win the Labour leadership.

As the Guardian says the BBC Trust is also on the campaign trail…

‘A trust official said trustees were about to launch “the biggest ever version” of the research and public consultation work they regularly carry out. “There will be more intensive work than we have ever done in a single period and larger-scale research likely to reach more than 100,000 people,” he said. The trust was determined to broaden the debate and prevent a focus on perceived failings of the corporation.’

Astonishing how much effort and money they are putting into defending the BBC’s entrenched and very privileged position…money and effort they never put in before to discover the Public’s views….because they didn’t want to know them…on Europe, Labour’s economic policies, immigration or Islam.

The Guardian quotes another BBC defender…

Dimbleby’s sentiments were echoed this weekend by Frank Cottrell Boyce, the writer behind the most popular recent display of British cultural values, the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in London.

“It speaks for the nation”….. ‘the “range of tones and ideas” embodied by the BBC formed a sense of national identity and provided the varied voice that politicians often claim Britain needs to defeat extreme ideologies and terrorism.’

No, it doesn’t speak for the nation, it speaks for a small group, a self-selected metropolitan elite that has no desire to listen to what the lesser mortals want or think, they only want to impose their own values and beliefs and to have to discuss or negotiate this with the Plebs is far, far beneath them.

As for defeating extreme ideologies and terrorism…has he never listened to the BBC?  Has he never listened to Nicky Campbell or Victoria Derbyshire pandering to Islamist callers on the phone-ins?  Has he never listened to the relentless drumbeat of anti-Britishness that blames everything from ‘carving up the Middle East’ after WWI to the Iraq War for Islamic radicalism…never once actually blaming the real culprits…the people who adhere to the Islamic religion and follow its commands to its inevitable conclusions.

The Guardian is in full-on save the BBC mode publishing article after article in its defence, however this one by Anne McElvoy has slipped through the net….

‘The BBC is not undergoing involuntary euthanasia’

‘[There are] howls of mawkish protest and rallying cries of “save the BBC” – before we’re entirely sure from what.

A collective protest letter from celebrities, which turned out to have been encouraged from within, has not helped. We should treat such confections with the scepticism we reserve for letters from self-interested business folk calling for Tory votes before an election. Deep breaths all round. The BBC is not really “under attack”, being “bullied”, nor on the brink of being replaced by a porn-funded network based in an offshore tax haven. But it is undergoing an exercise that it does not like – having to defend its funding model and growth of its services.

Neither is an unreasonable question to ask, which makes me think that it might be better to show an interest in the process and be firm and clear on what its red lines are, rather than adopting a “how very dare you?” one about the exercise.

Scope and finance are very much legitimate questions for publicly funded broadcasters. The BBC is big and has expanded rapidly from the 1990s. There are some good reasons for this – and some not so good. It is large because scale helped it achieve impact in a global media world and technology has enabled it to add services quickly. It has not, however, undergone much scrutiny for the impact of this on others. A serious radio competitor, for example, has never got off the ground, while newspaper websites are up against its prodigious online offering. Asking a group of people who have run other broadcasting bodies to advise the government on the BBC’s impact on media markets is not lese-majesty.’

A far more measured and reasoned tone….the BBC is not threatened with closure or very much at all in reality.  The review process has only just started and yet the BBC is firing broadsides at anything that moves trying to win the non-existent argument….or rather one, of a dire threat to the BBC, that it has concocted out of its own imaginings.

The BBC seems entirely unprepard to even contemplate the review….it may after all end up with the recommendation that nothing changes other than a few minor tweeks….and the likelihood is that the BBC’s funding will be on an even firmer footing with a simple subscription system or national tax and a charge for the iPlayer.  I fail to see how it will be prevented fom making all those programmes that the likes of Frank Cottrell Boyce say provide the UK with so much overseas influence….and even if they’re not made by the BBC they’ll be made by someone else….as with Top Gear, which will probably be resurrected under a different guise on ITV.  The real ‘soft power’, the ‘World Service’ will also still be funded and broadcast whatever.

The BBC is not under an existential threat.  Calm down and stop crying wolf.

Paul Mason is back, in the Guardian, and as daft as ever, more so in fact, having the constraints of the BBC removed seems to have completely unhinged him.  He’s offering us up for consideration a seemingly endless stream of socialist consciousness, or just an extreme of socialism.

Having got joyously over-excited about the Arab Spring and ‘The New Global Revolution’ that was kicking off everywhere, hence the Tory majority, he is back, peddling the same old glorious student utopian spindrift that tells us that….

The end of capitalism has begun

Without us noticing, we are entering the postcapitalist era. At the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy. The old ways will take a long while to disappear, but it’s time to be utopian.

Capitalism, it turns out, will not be abolished by forced-march techniques. It will be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours. I call this postcapitalism.

Capitalism is dead…he’s right, I hadn’t noticed ( Must try that in Tescos…‘What you want money for all that!!!??? Don’t you know capitalism is f**king dead!!!???’)….and Mason has dreamt up a name for the aftermath…Postcapitalism.  Wow man, what are you smoking?  I want some.

Wasn’t Capitalism pronounced dead in the 1930’s?

Even Seumas Milne acknowledges the flaw in thinking like Mason’s.…’A Financial Times-Harris poll conducted across the advanced capitalist world this month found large majorities believe the financial crisis has been caused by “abuses of capitalism”, rather than the “failure of capitalism itself”‘

The problem with people like Mason is that they think Capitalism, like Communism, Fascism or Socialism (The unholy Trinity that proves three can be one) is an ideology.  It’s not.  It’s the default human way of living and working….producing something, or having a skill, somebody else might want and selling it, then buying something with the proceeds that you need and so on….there’s no manual, little red book or sacred text.

Mason bases his disinterred theory upon three scenarios…one that we are all put out of work by robots…heard that before….didn’t happen…has he not heard of Luddites? We adapt and new types of jobs are created.  Second, he tells us, information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly. That is because markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant….what?  I make widgets and I can’t price them because…information is abundant????  What information?  Just how does that stop me pricing my widgets?

Oh hang on…here’s the explanation… ‘By building business models and share valuations based on the capture and privatisation of all socially produced information, such firms are constructing a fragile corporate edifice at odds with the most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely.’

Got that?  Good.

He builds on that...Third, we’re seeing the spontaneous rise of collaborative production: goods, services and organisations are appearing that no longer respond to the dictates of the market and the managerial hierarchy. The biggest information product in the world – Wikipedia – is made by volunteers for free, abolishing the encyclopedia business and depriving the advertising industry of an estimated $3bn a year in revenue.

Hmmm…Okay…So Google is worthless then?  Wikipedia is essentially an information service, an electronic book…Google provides a mechanism, a product, to search the internet amongst other things….it makes a lot of money…..only two days ago…

Google shares jump as profits handily beat expectations

Google shares jumped Thursday after the company reported quarterly profit that easily topped analysts’ expectations, helped by growth in advertising revenue.

The stock climbed more than 11 percent in extended trading after the Internet and technology giant posted adjusted second-quarter earnings of $6.99 per share on $17.73 billion in revenue. Sales were up from $15.96 billion.

Yep, they just can’t find a way to put a price on information and information technology….Google being completely unresponsive to the dictates of the market.

Here is the heart of his theory, what a postcapitalist™ economy will  look like…

Almost unnoticed, in the niches and hollows of the market system, whole swaths of economic life are beginning to move to a different rhythm. Parallel currencies, time banks, cooperatives and self-managed spaces have proliferated, barely noticed by the economics profession, and often as a direct result of the shattering of the old structures in the post-2008 crisis….New forms of ownership, new forms of lending, new legal contracts: a whole business subculture has emerged over the past 10 years, which the media has dubbed the “sharing economy”. ….To mainstream economics such things seem barely to qualify as economic activity – but that’s the point. They exist because they trade, however haltingly and inefficiently, in the currency of postcapitalism: free time, networked activity and free stuff. It seems a meagre and unofficial and even dangerous thing from which to craft an entire alternative to a global system, but so did money and credit in the age of Edward III.

Such sub-economic structures and mechanisms have always existed, there have always been ‘sharing economies’, credit unions, co-operatives and even parallel currencies.  People have always ‘down-sized’, dropped out of the ratrace and gone to live in communes to live the Good Life.   To claim this is the start of a global economic revolution is a sign of just how desperate Mason is to see the Revolution rolling having been prematurely pronouncing its birth for the past 7 years.

Here he is dreaming of his postcapitalist™ utopia…

I believe it offers an escape route – but only if these micro-level projects are nurtured, promoted and protected by a fundamental change in what governments do. And this must be driven by a change in our thinking – about technology, ownership and work.

We need a project based on reason, evidence and testable designs, that cuts with the grain of history and is sustainable by the planet. And we need to get on with it.

All sounds rather complicated and as if we will need many committee meetings of the comrades to execute the plans….it may take 5 years but it’ll be worth it.  I have an unfailing faith that Mason and his Pinko mates can work out just how many tractors we will need and just when the wife is supposed to turn up at the coal mine for her shift.

Up the workers!

Being a revolutionary looks like fun…..

….man the barricades!

Jeremy Corbyn is running for the Labour leadership and at the moment looks like having a chance to take on the mantle….much as one Ed Miliband did when he stabbed his brother in the back and stole the leadership from him.   That turned out well.

However we know he isn’t too keen on interviews, or at least ones in which anybody actually asks any questions.

After his debacle on C4 it looks like he’s decided that the best policy is to say nothing and dodge interviews that might prove difficult.

According to Nick Cohen Corbyn was due to have the thumbscrews applied by Andrew Neil but has declined the opportunity to make his case…

I hear that he has cancelled a planned interview with Andrew Neil, the toughest British broadcaster, rather than endure more profane questions.

Can’t imagine why.

Would he have dodged Evan Davis or Justin Webb or even John Humphrys?  I doubt it.

Andrew Neil proves that it is possible to do good journalism at the BBC.

If only there were more of him.

I laughed when I read Craig at Is the BBC biased? (Yes it is) saying he didn’t trust the cherry-picking Cardiff Uni-style mass of distorting quirks…..I had just been reading some of their work and one of the august journals that gives them a platform to spread their particular brand of bunk….The Conversation.

This is what ‘The Conversation’ says about itself….

The Conversation is an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community and delivered direct to the public.

Access to independent, high quality, authenticated, explanatory journalism underpins a functioning democracy. Our aim is to allow for better understanding of current affairs and complex issues. And hopefully allow for a better quality of public discourse and conversations.

We aim to help rebuild trust in journalism.

They are different from other, less trustworthy media organisations because…

The Conversation provides readers with a free high-grade and trusted information service.

We are quite different to anything else in the media for the following reasons:

In a world of misinformation and spin, The Conversation contributes to healthy democratic discourse by injecting facts and evidence into the public arena.

Who said that?  Stephen Khan, Editor.

That’ll be Stephen Khan from the Guardian, Observer and the lefty Independent.  Thank heavens he, and his team of inky superhero’s in search of truth and justice, are there to protect us from all that Murdochian misinformation and spin!

When ‘The Conversation’ looks at The controversial business of researching BBC impartiality   who does it go to for its research?…..

1. Mike Berry
3. Justin Lewis

   Professor of Communication at Cardiff University

4. Karin Wahl-Jorgensen

   Professor; Director of Research Development and Environment, School of Journalism at Cardiff University

5. Kerry Moore

   Lecturer of journalism, media and cultural studies at Cardiff University

6. Richard Sambrook

   Professor of Journalism at Cardiff University

7. Richard Tait

   Professor of Journalism at Cardiff Universi

Let’s think...Mike Berry…pro-BBC but likes to spin it that the BBC is right-wing…his famous conclusion…’So the evidence from the research is clear. The BBC tends to reproduce a Conservative, Eurosceptic, pro-business version of the world, not a left-wing, anti-business agenda.‘, and he is of course an anti-Israeli lefty; Sambrook, ex-BBC; Tait, ex-BBC; Moore, Hmmm…her choice of subject matter...’Kerry Moore’s research explores media and political discourses surrounding migration, racism and cultural identity. Her most recent publications explore asylum and refugee issues in journalism and government policy, ‘crisis’ narratives in media representations of migration and cultural difference, media constructions of young black men, and Islam in the news.’ ;  and  Karin Wahl-Jorgensen who has very close ties to the EU and their purse strings….just one example...’she has been Principal UK Investigator on a €4 million European Commission funded project on the European Public Sphere.’….and she also writes for the far left rag Red Pepper.

And of course the omnipresent Justin Lewis, also from Cardfiff Uni, who has long, long had a thing for the BBC. and is clear that…‘  the accusation of BBC anti-war bias fails to stand up to any serious or sustained analysis. ‘  He also peddles the usual line about the BBC’s critics…’ Leading the charge are conservative media owners and their press outlets.’  He is also the author of this….‘A monster threatens UK broadcasting? It’s Sky, not the BBC.’

Hardly independent of the BBC nor of the values of the BBC and its favourite hobby horses.  It seems unlikely, and has proven so in fact, that they will criticise the BBC in any meaningful way.

For example here is Richard Sambrook giving us his recent appraisal of the BBC’s future…

Now is the time to decide: what kind of BBC do you want?

There is now a clear choice following the publication of the British government’s green paper into the future of the BBC.

A good start….seems like he is giving us a choice.

You’d be wrong.

We get a long homily to the glory of the BBC and its benefits to society…

[One view of the BBC] believes there is an increasing role for a trusted voice in the increasingly crowded digital market – one that is accountable, focused on the public – as opposed to commercial or political – interests; that seeks to bind the country together through shared experience and national debate; that seeks to offer a diversity of views to challenge the homophily of our other media habits; that contributes to supporting and developing the creative sector in the UK and which ties the UK together to the rest of the world through international programming and services. It recognises the BBC as the UK’s only global media brand – and one which has to have the resource and remit to continue to innovate in a dynamic, international marketplace.

And ‘In the other corner is a view’ that hands over the media sphere to the commercial companies...’ it doesn’t believe the BBC can or should try to compete with the global behemoths starting to dominate our media consumption.’  That sums up Sambrook’s idea of the other view…essentially Murdoch, the enemy, will emerge triumphant…oh no!!!

He paints one side as negative the other as positive…

One view is inclusive and outward focused, recognising a UK role in a global market.

The other is driven by more insular concerns about the UK market and exclusive in its approach to programming.

Here’s a less than subtle criticism of the Charter review panel….

Whittingdale [is] assisted by an expert panel of largely commercial media experts most of whom have been critical of some aspect of the current arrangements.

Then there’s this…

And of course this follows a licence fee deal once again rushed through behind closed doors with significant extra costs imposed on the BBC under the threat of worse if it didn’t agree.

It’s the way governments hobble public broadcasters the world over.

Back to the ideological or political rather than just good housekeeping when restructuring the BBC and the government isn’t here to improve the BBC but to do a hatchet job on it.

Here he is even more blatant in suggesting this is political…

In Australia, a government-sponsored efficiency review has led to significant cuts in the budget of the ABC following politicians’ complaints about bias and insufficient support “for the home team”.

Now in Britain a similar assault is underway.

According to Sambrook it’s ‘right-wing politicians and newspapers, ideologically opposed to large public intervention in the market, that fuel discontent about the BBC.’

What he is saying of course is that any criticism of the BBC is unjustified and purely driven by right-wing ideology and prejudice….which is a comment that is somewhat prejudiced and ill-informed itself….and all the more funny when you read a following sentence...’Most discussion is governed by a triumph of opinion over fact.’  Well yes, certainly when concerned with any ‘facts’ and ‘research’ we get from Cardiff.

Oh and that choice he was keen to offer us in his position as impartial observer at an academic institution?

As a senior manager there [at the BBC] I used to tell staff who felt under siege with wave after wave of newspaper and political criticism that it meant we still mattered. And that is the point. Its critics, for ideological or commercial reasons [that old chestnut yet again], want it diminished and to matter less.

If the people of Britain do not want to see the erosion and dismantling of one of the country’s most successful public institutions, they need to make it unambiguously clear now. So what kind of BBC do you want?

I guess he’s not that impartial after all.

The Sun’s latest scoop…recently found video shows that Father Ted was a Nazi…

This is some interesting stuff from the BBC archives concerning reaction to Germany’s Lord Haw Haw broadcasts….relevant now because they were the internet broadcasts of the day.

Over 9 million Brits listened to these broadcasts every day according to BBC research at the time…the most likely to listen were young males, ‘politically’ minded, from better off families…sound familiar?

In this letter the then BBC Director General wrote to Government that…

‘The Haw-Haw question is of great importance – we here have never regarded it as
the joke which it is supposed to be by some – and I hope that you will forgive a
fairly lengthy letter about it. That Haw-Haw should be countered is of course
agreed entirely; the only problem concerns the methods.’

‘There is, first, the question of the size and the nature of Haw-Haw’s public. It
is undeniable that he is widely listened to at present: what is more doubtful is
how listeners react to him.’

The BBC did some research in 1940 to find out who was listening to Haw Haw and why….

THE EFFECT OF HAMBURG PROPAGANDA IN GREAT BRITAIN

The British people weren’t so easily fooled then it seems…

‘There is general recognition that Haw-Haw is a liar, and, though many concede
that his broadcasts contain grains of truth, we have not yet come across a single
listener who accepts his word as “gospel”.’

‘All the evidence supports the view that Haw-Haw is listened to as an entertainment and virtually never as a source of news. His undeniably great success as an entertainer arises largely, we believe, from his success in appealing, both with the audacious naughtiness of his comments and with his barefaced lies, to the latent schoolboy in each of us.’

However he was still considered a risk…and

A British Army major writes to Home Intelligence at the BBC highlighting concerns about Haw-Haw’s propaganda. He advises that these broadcasts should not be countered directly with analysis and corrections, as this would enable Haw-Haw to improve and in turn command bigger audiences. Neither should there be a veto on listening to him. Instead, the only solution lies with the BBC……

‘The Only Real Remedy Lies with the BBC’

One aspect of broadcasting is becoming very important. There is more or less consistent listening to Hamburg in the B.E.F., in Officers’ messes, men’s canteens and estaminets. The D.M.I. considers that this is a grave danger to morale and may be in the future a very definite penetration point for enemy propaganda.

“Haw Haw”, or his successor, is at present treated as a joke but by the free publicity given to him in every possible way, both out here and at home, not only has his general listening public been increased but the widespread discussion of his outstanding faults has enabled German propaganda experts to correct those faults and to make his broadcasts more palatable to British listeners.

The phrases “Of course he does bring out a lot of good points, you know” and “Let’s hear what Hamburg’s got to say about it” are still frequently heard. The danger is not serious at the moment but should any series of reverses at sea, on land or in the air take place there is no doubt that alarmist reports from Hamburg would find a large military audience ready to receive them, and ready to accept some proportion as being true.

Just a shame that the BBC doesn’t think countering the Jihadi narrative is equally important today…in fact the BBC fed into it with its attacks on the Iraq War, which also had an effect on British troops fighting that war, and still feeds into that narrative…Nicky Campbell in the past couple of weeks has made several references to the Iraq War being to blame for what is happening in the Middle East now…and it’s not just Campbell on the BBC who makes that claim amongst many others that pillory British history in the region in a very one-sided and deliberately simplistic way such as saying the British ‘carved up the Middle East’….and then there’s the BBC’s demonisation of Israel and the censoring of those who raise the issue of the conflict between fundamentalist Islam and Western ideals.

Muzzling the critics of conservative Islam and its propagandists is not conducive to social cohesion nor a free world.

Peter Grimes in the comments reminds us that…

Lord Reith revered Hitler, says daughter

LORD REITH, founder of the BBC and a member of Churchill’s wartime cabinet, was a Nazi sympathiser who abhorred Jews, according to a candid biography by his daughter.

Marista Leishman claims her father respected Hitler and Mussolini and adopted some of the principles espoused by the German chancellor in the running of the BBC.

She claims that her father was open in his admiration of the fascist leaders and continued to praise Hitler and his regime, even after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939.

The Mail reports…

‘Reith had another motive for detesting Churchill: the great man had rejected him for political office because he was ‘difficult to work with’.

There was another reason why Churchill did well to avoid supporting the BBC’s founder. In the run-up to War World II, Reith privately expressed fulsome admiration for the Fuhrer. ‘Hitler continues his magnificent efficiency,’ he wrote in his diaries, when Prague was occupied in 1939.’

And more quotes showing his admiration for the efficient Nazis..

‘On 9 March 1933, he wrote: “I am pretty certain … that the Nazis will clean things up and put Germany on the way to being a real power in Europe again. They are being ruthless and most determined.” After the July 1934 Night of the Long Knives, in which the Nazis ruthlessly exterminated their internal dissidents, Reith wrote: “I really admire the way Hitler has cleaned up what looked like an incipient revolt. I really admire the drastic actions taken, which were obviously badly needed.”  ^‘

So why did the BBC ‘muzzle’ Churchill when he was warning of the Nazi threat?

Interesting what Reith thought about the BBC’s declining standards…

‘The standards I set have been rubbished in favour of pandering to what the people – the people, forsooth! – want,’ he raged one morning at the breakfast table. When a new independent channel arrived, he ranted against this ‘bubonic plague’.

Make a good Tory MP forsooth!  Can’t have the BBC producing populist programmes can we….‘pandering to the people’.

Once the war started he changed his tune and set to with a will to defend Britain…

‘Sir Frederick Ogilvie (Director-General of the BBC, 1938-42) recounts a conversation with Sir John Reith (Director-General of the BBC, 1927-38) and reveals the difference of opinion between them over the BBC’s wartime status. While Reith is prepared to give complete control of the BBC to the government, Ogilvie disagrees, underlining the importance of maintaining its independence, not only to safeguard its own future but also to preserve democracy for the good of the country and the government itself.’

SECRET [typed]
With [printed] Sir John Reith [typed]
On the subject of [printed] B.B.C. and Government [typed]
Date [printed] February 23rd,1940. [typed]

Reith came to see me here yesterday, – the first time he had been in Broadcasting House since he left in 1938. (I gave him a copy of the B.B.C. 1940 Handbook, inscribed with greetings
and best wishes from the Old Firm.)

He had four points:-

1. He said with great emphasis that, in his view, nothing would be better calculated to raise the morale of the Home Front, for which he was told he was responsible, than a daily series of talks at about 9.0 p.m. of a “heartening kind”, – hitting at Haw-Haw, telling cheering stories of bravery in the fighting services or at home, etc. He put it as a personal and urgent request from him to me that this should be done as soon as possible. I said that I would have it considered here and taken up with the Ministry. I naturally did not commit myself to any undertaking.

2. He said that the Enemy Propaganda Unit would shortly be returning to the Ministry, Halifax having agreed.

3. He emphasized the supreme importance of broadcast propaganda to Germany, with which I of course agreed, and suggested that we ought to be broadcasting to Germany almost continuously throughout the day, – not merely news and sonderberichte, but concerts, entertainments, etc. after the manner (he said) of Fecamp or Luxemburg. In his view this was much more important than the services which we were doing to many other countries, e.g. Bulgaria. I said that the allocation of time to Germany was shortly to be increased by three additional periods; and that, in general, the B.B.C. felt – apart from the Empire Service – that the allocation of time in the foreign language services was fundamentally a matter for Govern-

Signature [left blank]
Dept or Section[left blank]

Reith also felt that the government should take over the BBC during war time…

He said he had always felt that it would be simpler for the B.B.C. to be taken over, and that this would make things easier for the B.B.C.

‘Discussing the Nazi threat and “Churchill complained that he had been very badly treated… and that he was always muzzled by the BBC”

The Queen aged 6 was a fanatical Nazi supporter….who knew?

Then again  Pope Benedict was in the Hitler Youth as was that lefty hero Gunter Grass who also served in the SS.... ‘German Nobel Laureate Günter Grass admits that, between 1944-45, he was a member of Hitler’s Waffen SS. The author says the shame of his youthful naïveté has long haunted him.’

The Sun states that..

It is an important and interesting issue, the extent to which the British aristocracy – notably Edward VIII, in this case – in the 1930s, were sympathetic towards fascism. “That must be a matter of national and public interest to discuss. And I think this video and this footage animates that very clearly.”

Fair enough but it is smearing the Queen, then 6 years old, by association in a tabloid ‘sensation’…and the BBC itself isn’t beyond trying to cast aspersions on her mother….

From the Palace perspective this is a six-year-old princess who didn’t attach any meaning to the gesture. Such an explanation doesn’t, of course, explain the thinking of her mother.

Those around the royals are also keen to focus on the war record of the then King, Queen and their two daughters.

What they’re less keen to focus on – and what the Queen would like not to be reminded of – is the behaviour of her uncle.

A man, who was briefly King, and whose fascination with Nazi Germany is well documented.

The video shows a momentary raising of the salute…there’s no sound and no other context, no idea of what was being said….are they making fun of Hitler…most likely…what else went on in the video…are they racing around uttering Hail Mary’s and mocking the Pope?  Not as if the use of the salute in other contexts is unknown…may the force be with you…..

As for the BBC’s little comment about the Queen Mother….just what was she thinking?  Would they say the same if she’d given a Communist raised fist salute so beloved of many of those in the BBC?

Apart from the probable answer being the salute was ‘larking about’ it was from a time when Hitler and his regime were undoubtedly making headlines all the time…and many were sucked into the regimes propaganda about its economic and social resurrection of Germany….here’s the British Legion meeting Hitler in 1935, two years after the Sun’s video…‘a six-man delegation from the British Legion made to Nazi Germany in July 1935, during which they met not only Hitler but also the head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering – and Major Fetherston-Godley is pictured shaking hands with the Fuhrer’s deputy, Rudolf Hess.’…

The article in the Mail goes on to say...’Professor Griffiths explained that before the Second World War there was a strong feeling in Britain that we should extend the hand of friendship towards Germany to avoid further conflict.’

Perhaps that’s the reason the BBC refused to let Churchill onto the airwaves in case he upset Herr Hitler…..’discussing the Nazi threat and “Churchill complained that he had been very badly treated… and that he was always muzzled by the BBC”

What were they thinking?

More importantly you might ask about the connections that today’s Royalty, Aristos, politicians and Media types have with the Gulf States…..what about this photograph?…

Those fundamentalist Islamic states that are funding terror around the world and are in many respects at war with us…

Consider this….

So, on the battlefields of Syria and Yemen, the Arab states are not only opposing American attacks on al-Qa’eda but actively offering support to its leader, al-Zawahiri. So two quite separate super-wars are now being fought. The first is the war waged by the US and its western allies in an attempt to defeat al-Qa’eda and Isis in Syria and Yemen. Significantly the Arab states are taking no part in this war and providing the Americans with no intelligence.

The second war is being fought by all the regional Arab states and Turkey — against Assad and other Iranian-backed forces in the region, as well as Isis. In this war, the Arab states openly avoid bombing or attacking al-Qa’eda in Syria and AQAP — and, indeed, provide both with logistical support. This is because both al-Qa’eda offshoots have now declared aims which are shared by the Arab states: they want to topple the Assad regime and oppose Iran.

From Stop the War…

David Cameron is the world’s most loyal supporter of the most brutal Arab despots

Sitting ‘at odds with Britain’s democratic ideals’ as the BBC’s Frank Gardner suggests.

Indeed….so let’s have more on current affairs from the BBC and less on 80 year old film of 6 year olds being cajoled to give a Nazi salute.

Kind of awkward for the BBC though as the money from the Saudis funds so many mosques, Islamic and academic institutions around the UK….attacking that funding would of course be seen as an attack on the ‘Muslim community’ large parts of which adhere to the same practices, values and beliefs the money goes towards promoting….and the BBC has spent years avoiding serious discussion on what that means to Western Society in the interests of that elusive ‘community cohesion’…just as it ‘muzzled Churchill’ in the interest of ‘friendly relations’ with the Nazis.

Qatar and Saudi Arabia ‘have ignited time bomb by funding global spread of radical Islam’

Does conservative Islam sit at odds with Britain’s ‘democratic ideals? as Frank Gardner suggests? What will the consequences be of remaining silent?

Hezbollah

Hamas

If you have ever wondered what the sound of somebody being publicly nonplussed sounds like check out Mishal Husain’s interview with David Attenborough (08:55), asked on to comment about butterflies only to find himself being interrogated on that ‘celebrity letter’ defending the BBC.

Now fair do’s to Mishal Husain for asking the questions…did he sign the document and did someone at the BBC ‘encourage’ him to do so?

Attenborough at first gave the disengenuous answer that he didn’t know who wrote the letter…but then admitted that, yes, the BBC asked him to sign it.

Husain then went on to point out that many of his programmes, those very popular, high quality ‘BBC’ programmes, were in fact made by independent companies….therefore would they not still be made if the BBC didn’t exist was the suggestion?

Mishal Husain also suggested that it was natural that questions are raised about the size and scope of the BBC….therefore presumably not an anti-BBC witch-hunt driven by vested interests out to destroy the BBC as Tony Hall and Friends like to portray the Charter Review?

Any possibility that Husain is now off Tony Hall’s Christmas card list?….or Ramadan card list…whatever.