Monthly Archives: August 2015

Sorry for delay but here’s the new Open Thread to detail the bias. Has the BBC been annoying you with egregious bias? Detail it here please.

A job for one of us I think…

Do you want to be a part of the public debate about the BBC’s future at a critical moment in the Corporation’s history? A rare opportunity has come up to play a key role at the BBC Trust – the governing body of the BBC which represents the interests of licence fee payers.

The Trust is currently recruiting for a Head of Communications, on a fifteen month contract basis. You will help ensure both our work and ambitions for the BBC are clearly communicated across traditional and digital media, so that they are understood by the public, Government and the rest of the industry.

As the principal communications advisor to the Chairman and Trustees, you will oversee and manage proactive and reactive communications and will develop and protect the Trust’s corporate reputation and brand.

 

The BBC Trust’s new head of communications will also be capable of devising “a programme of proactive engagement encompassing the full communications mix”, someone who demonstrates “imagination, creativity and divergent thinking and encourages it in others”, and who “manages personal effectiveness by controlling emotions in the face of pressure, setbacks or when dealing with provocative situations” and who “Is able to present complex information and arguments in a coherent and accessible format to senior management.”  Well that would help as head of communications.

Just remember…‘The BBC exists to serve the public, and its mission is to inform, educate and entertain. The BBC Trust is the governing body of the BBC, and we make sure the BBC delivers that mission.’

Not so far.

No idea what the pay is, sure to be good though.

Alternatively you could go for…

Celebrity Manager, BBC Children in Need

BBC Children in Need’s vision is that every child in the UK has a safe, happy and secure childhood and the chance to reach their potential. The Charity funds 2,500 projects across the UK working with disadvantaged children and young people. We are looking for a Celebrity Manager to join our team who has excellent experience, knowledge and contacts within the entertainment industry. 

As Celebrity Manager you will manage our portfolio of high profile supporters to ensure that the Charity’s key objectives are met. Central to this will be your ability to utilise Talent in innovative and creative ways, to raise awareness of the Charity and the work that it does.

Strategically manage the Charity’s celebrity portfolio to ensure it is reflective of key audiences.

Or you could have a job with Aunty as Big Brother.…gathering data and information on individual audience members and use it to target them as part of the BBC’s ‘social campaigning’….

Social Campaign Executive (myBBC)

myBBC is a programme exploring the opportunities for the BBC to fulfil its mission better by knowing, at an individual level, who its audiences are.

As more consumption of BBC content takes place on connected platforms, we can inform, educate and entertain our audiences in new ways; unlike with traditional broadcasting, we are able to identify people individually, learn about them and deliver richer experiences and deeper engagement. To deliver this, the BBC must invest in three areas: Insight for creative people. Tools that allow creative, marketing and online teams to understand and learn from individual audience member’s behaviours. These additional insights, combined with a new culture of rapid experimentation and testing will lead to more rapid development of new content and product ideas Personalised online experiences. Capabilities that allow the BBC to deliver unique, personally relevant experiences to every user of its online services.

Tools that allow the BBC to deepen its relationship with its audience through direct communication and relationship marketing programmes. Deeper relationships will allow us to shape our content and creative ideas around our audiences and give us new, personal ways to introduce new content to people. The myBBC programme has been created to deliver this capability.

Oh and …‘There is a requirement, however, for all staff to work flexibly across all media and genres.’  which is why a BBC executive should know that ‘Photoshop skills desirable’ for the job.  Best know how to work the hoover as well in these straitened times.

The BBC’s Roger Harrabin, he who has been campaigning on behalf of the climate change lobby for 20 years, is always very vocal about the funding, or supposed funding, that those who are critical of the climate extremist lobby gets.  He of course fails to mention the enormous funding that those climate extremists themselves get…and let’s not forget the £15,000 Harrabin’s CMEP propaganda unit received from a climate change lobby group in order ‘to shut down’ journalism that didn’t toe the line….and what of the funding for Harrabin’s project that came from the Labour government...the same Labour government that was introducing draconian climate change legislation?

MEP Daniel Hannan has put together a video that shows just how much money the EU ploughs into various NGOs that strangely enough all support membership of the EU…one he misses off the list is the BBC itself which has received millions from the EU...a source of funding that the pro-EU BBC was very, very reluctant to admit.

Here’s the video (via Bishop Hill):

Bishop Hill also states this about the BBC’s coverage of the government’s decision to cut renewable’s funding:

Today’s top news: greens write a letter

Listening to the Today programme this morning (08:07:40) and you can hear Harrabin’s campaign for the renewable industry continue as he ‘reported’ on Obama’s climate change politicking but used it as a launch pad to attack the British government’s renewable’s policy…which ‘controversially’ imposed a tax on wind and solar power and Harrabin demanded to know why renewables were deemed unaffordable in the UK but not so in the US.  Here’s the answer.…

Officials admitted that so-called “green” energy schemes will require a staggering £9 billion a year in subsidies – paid for by customers – by 2020. This is £1.5 billion more than the maximum limit the coalition had originally planned.

This was nothing less than outright propaganda from Harrabin and had zero connection with the Obama policy announcement.

Remarkable that Harrabin seems to have not the slightest concern for the people who have to pay the energy bills, he is quite happy to see them gouged by the renewable industry for every penny if it means getting his pet project off the ground….how different when it comes to welfare spending cuts when ‘heat or eat’ is the loudest mantra mouthed by the BBC to villify the government….and now the government cuts fuel bills and the BBC is up in arms!

It was noticeable that when Ecotricity green tycoon Dale Vincent was in the news as his ex-wife tried to get some back dated ‘alimony’ she believed he owed her the BBC in its interviews with him never asked how it was that an ex-hippy running a green energy business could amass a personal fortune of over £100 million….and never of course raised any issues about morality and equality.

Curious that the BBC didn’t press him on that, after all it’s not shy about pressing other business leaders on their salaries…what is it about Vincent that makes him untouchable?

Could it be that if you are in the hallowed environs of the Green movement anything you do can be seen as a ‘necessary evil’ if it achieves the aims that the likes of Harrabin wish to achieve?

Who is paying for Vincent’s astonishingly large bank balance?  The poor old customer who has to find the money to pay the exorbitant bills with their added green taxes that make up the subsidies that go into the pockets of ‘green tycoons’ like Vincent.

But let’s not mention that…let’s attack the bankers and other ‘big business’ fatcats who deserve our approbrium.

Harrabin should be removed from his job.  He is clearly unift to be graced with the title of ‘journalist’ when his every word seems more intended to promote a cause….that’s not journalism, it’s propaganda.

Richard Black abruptly vanished from the BBC, was he pushed for his blatant pro-climate change ‘reporting’ or did he jump first?  The BBC should take a closer look at Harrabin’s clearly prejudiced and partial reporting and either rein him in or allow him to leave and go and work, officially, for Green Peace or whatever NGO thinks he would be an asset to their cause.

Not as if Harrabin isn’t open to suggestions on how his reporting could be changed for the better...here’s his response to a green blogger who wanted him to change his report…

Harrabin: “Have a look in 10 minutes and tell me you are happier. We have changed headline and more.”

The Today programme on BBC Radio 4 was quick to afford air-time to IRA apologist and Sinn Fein luminary John O’Dowd this morning at 7.20am. O’Dowd was on to claim that MI5 were “conflict mongers” and were colluding with the “I can’t believe it’s not the IRA’ fanatics that…erm..used to be colleagues with Mr O’Dowd’s comrades in the IRA. Remarkably, the BBC see no irony for an apologist for a terror organisation that murdered THOUSANDS and maimed TENS OF THOUSANDS being given the prime time opportunity to impugn the reputation of OUR lawful security services. QED.

Why does the BBC’s Alan Yentob have such a crush for the pantomime dame of British “Charity” Camilla Batmanghelidjh?

“BBC boss Alan Yentob personally intervened in the corporation’s news coverage of a scandal-hit charity of which he is chairman, it was claimed yesterday. Mr Yentob, the BBC’s £330,000-a-year creative director, telephoned Newsnight staff hours before it aired a damning report into Kids Company last month.

Newsnight was about to reveal that government officials were withholding £3million of funding from Kids Company unless its chief executive, Camila Batmanghelidjh stepped down.  It is claimed he tried to ‘influence the direction’ of the item – an action that would leave him open to allegations of a conflict of interest.

Mr Yentob did not stop there. The following morning he joined Miss Batmanghelidjh at the studios of Radio 4’s Today programme when she was interviewed. “

Curious. For years now I have wondered why Batmanghelidjh got SUCH an easy ride from the BBC when she was quite clearly barking.

The Now Show ploughs on in its pinko commie furrow, bringing us comedy through a hazy miasma of liberal good intentions supposedly the work of the comedy collective, the salt of the earth ploughmen, and wimmin, of comedy who till the fertile soil from which springs its virile and feculant offspring…the left-wing joke.

Apparently right-wing jokes just can’t exist in the rarefied atmosphere of the BBC….the hardy right-winger, having to be fed on a diet of truth and commonsense, just cannot survive on the naivety, high hopes, self-delusion and large quantities of pious, sanctimonious, smug, self-regarding morality/bullshit that the left-wing joke grows so vigourously in.

It’s true…the Now Show has given up pretending and admitted it is unremittingly and unapologetically left-wing (16 mins 50 secs).  There are no right-wing jokes, it’s impossble to come up with any.  They’ve strained their little minds and, no, no, the muse just doesn’t do jokes about the blessed Obama, the welfare state, immigration or the NHS…..evil bankers, Tescos and the Daily Mail not a problem.

The problem is compassion and humanity…the Right just doesn’t possess such virtues, allegedly, the Left of course claims to have them in spades….and they are vital ingredients in the nurturing of fine, organic, wholesome, worthy comedy.  It is, we are told, just easier to express left-wing beliefs in the medium of comedy…presumably because they are so comic.

The end of the skit by Nish Kumar was a big hurrah for Jezza Corbyn along with the obligatory rant about capitalism, foodbanks and real banks.  No wonder even Nish’s mum thinks he’s a boring little twat, derivative, unoriginal and cliched.  I couldn’t possibly comment.

I can see why Kumar couldn’t find any material…the panic and horror as the realisation sets in at Labour HQ at the rise and rise of Corbyn after being promoted by Labour’s ‘morons’ has not the slightest comedy value, the likelihood of us heading back to the 70’s with the streets full of mountains of rubbish and dead bodies, with factories more often shut down by strike action than not, with 3 day weeks as the lights go out….no, nothing to make any satirical comments on there.

No comedy in the fact that people are fighting to get into capitalist Europe whilst they were fighting to get out of the left-wing paradise of the socialist Soviet Union?

No comedy in Labour’s attack on the government’s handling of immigration when it was Labour that opened the floodgates after lying through its teeth that only 13,000 immigrants would trickle across the border and millions turned up?  No satire when Labour attack Cameron for using the word ‘swarm’ instead of having a coherent immigration policy of their own…no satire in the infamous lack of trust in politicians when the public sees such opportunistic gameplaying on a serious subject?

No comedy in Labour’s once Shadow-Chancellor now saying the Labour election economic policy was rubbish and unworkable? No comedy in just about every Labour politician denouncing Miliband and his manifesto after having backed it every inch of the way before?

No comedy in the fact that left-wing compassion for the poorest and under-privileged is a fallacy, a useful political illusion cynically employed to gull the most vulnerable in society when in fact all they are is cannon-fodder for the socialist elite, the Poor being a socialist petting zoo that makes the champagne socialists feel good about themselves and provides a jusitification for their own wealth and privilege…..look at what we do for you with all our wealth!….an ironic comedy construct in its own right…a socialist elite.

No comedy in the fact that it is the hated Right that in fact provides for the poorest by generating the jobs and wealth that gives them self-respect, money in their pockets and opportunity to fulfill their aspirations whilst the Left, that cares so much about the poor, prefers to keep them on a tight welfare leash, clients of the welfare state, ever dependent, grateful and grovelling for the handouts so generously provided by their socialist masters?

Here’s what that other favourite of the BBC, Stewart Lee, thinks about Right-wing comedy.…they shouldn’t do it…the Right has already won the world and comedy is for the under-privileged to use as a weapon against the powerful…

The African-American stand-up Chris Rock maintained that stand-up comedy should always be punching upwards. It’s a heroic little struggle. You can’t be a right-wing clown without some character caveat, some vulnerability, some obvious flaw. You’re on the right. You’ve already won. You have no tragedy. You’re punching down. You can be a right-wing comedy columnist, away from the public eye, a disembodied, authoritarian presence that doesn’t need to show doubt. Who could be on a stage, crowing about their victory and ridiculing those less fortunate than them without any sense of irony, shame or self-knowledge? That’s not a stand-up comedian. That’s just a cunt.

That’s the problem…people like Lee just see comedy as another tool in the Gramscian tool box to undermine and smash society and rebuild it into the Marxist utopia that they know can be achieved if only they can just get it right, this time.  Maybe only a few million dead this time, higher walls, quicker firing machine guns, bigger gulags and a programme of road building in Siberia ought to do the trick.

The Socialist Paradise awaits.  It’s a funny old world.

Is the BBC completely out of control, more intent on promoting a left-wing social and political agenda than in actually just being a media organisation producing straight forward news and entertainment?

Who are the extremists when it comes to immigration?  Is it UKIP and others who want a sensible, measured policy to control immigration or the likes of the BBC who promote mass, uncontrolled immigration without thought for the consequences?

Should the government ‘renationalise’ the BBC and take it out of the hands of these left-wing media extremists who seek to undermine British society?

The BBC’s highly irresponsible promotion and encouragement of illegal immigration continues apace with the Today programme on Saturday (08:35) once again trying to paint those who oppose open borders and unlimited, uncontrolled immigration as immoral and inhumane.

Today presented us with two immigrant tales that were intended to tug on the heart strings and dragoon us with moral blackmail into flinging open the borders, more so than they already are, and letting in all and sundry regardless of the consequences, the disastrous consequences which the BBC assiduously fails to point out, one of which will be the end of the beloved welfare state with the hallowed NHS, state education and those welfare handouts that the immigrants, ironically, so often come here in search of made unworkable and unaffordable.

Of course it is the BBC that is setting the parameters when it comes to deciding what that ‘morality’ is…if you don’t agree with the BBC you are by default then ‘immoral’.  Nice when you can make the rules of the game up yourself to suit yourself.

First up we had a tale of a Pakistani ‘asylum seeker’.  No explanation as to why he was seeking asylum…could it be that he was just an economic migrant seeking  those ‘streets of gold’ that the UK is famously paved with?

He tried to leap onto a moving train and hit a concrete wall and subsequently died.  We are supposed to think...’How desperate they must be to take such risks’...and then unlock our hearts and the border.  Most people would have thought ‘That’s bad luck…but it was his own fault…why are we being held responsible by the BBC?’

What is this moral obligation that the BBC seeks to impose upon us just because some people have decided to make a dangerous journey to get here? As you’ll hear from the interviews they have come through eight countries, including Muslim Turkey, but none were to their taste…they want to come to Britain.

If they are so ‘desperate’ for sanctuary why do they not stop in Turkey where Islam is the national religion and claim it there from their fellow Muslims?  Why camp under plastic sheets for weeks in France when they can claim asylum in France, or Greece, or Italy, or Germany that they have travelled through?  What is it that they think they can get in the UK?

Makes you think the real reason has absolutely nothing to do with ‘asylum’ and all to do with the handouts they expect.

Immediately following the ‘harrowing’ tale of the death of an immigrant the BBC brought us another tale, this time of an Afghan who came here when he was 13 and who successfully got inside the system…but shows not a smidgeon of gratitude….Europe, apparently, is ‘uncivilised’ and the British public are wrong about immigration…misled by the Rightwing Press apparently…he’s really caught onto the scrounger/victim narrative hasn’t he?  He’s going to write a book about his experiences…a guaranteed ‘Book of the Week’ on the BBC and a fabulously adoring write up in the Guardian and the Independent.

If Europe is so uncivilised perhaps he should try his luck back in Afghanistan.  No?  Thought not.

It takes not even seconds to realise that the premise of the BBC’s immigration narrative stands up to not even the slightest bit of scrutiny.  Migrants make dangerous journeys to get here, therefore we must let them come to Britian and start paying for them….OK, and then what?  When does that stop?  Where is the line?  There can be no line.  If it was immoral, in the BBC’s eyes, to stop the first lot then the case remains exactly the same for the next lot.  They have to be let in.  And then what? Millions upon millions will turn up on our doorstep.

What of those who suffer some sort of persecution or harassment or oppression of varying degrees, or poverty or lack of opportunity?  The BBC is always making the case that these should be let in.  It must take the most optimistic and naive or stupid of people to think that such a policy could ever be made to work.  Apart from the fact that you could go to many parts of Britain where the same case could be made for its inhabitants is the BBC really suggesting that we let in all those who are in poverty and bring them here?  Really?  Billions of people…from China, from India, from Brazil, from Africa, from ……almost everywhere.  Billions.

The BBC’s continued attacks on those who oppose mass, uncontrolled immigration and its promotion of that immigration is dangerous and irresponsible.  The results of such an enticing narrative can be seen in Calais and Libya where maybe a million people wait to swarm into Europe with many more millions moving up behind them.

If governments don’t take control others will eventually try to do so.  The very thing that the BBC tries to engineer by its head in the sand approach, a huge conflict based upon race and or religion, is an ever closer likelihood ironically because of policies on immigration that the BBC itself has fostered.

The BBC’s charter says it is the job of the BBC to promote civil society and cohesion…if it is failing to do that then the government should step in and change the message.  The BBC was given that obligation by government and therefore there is no reason government shouldn’t decide what message is in the best interests of the country.  Why is such an important issue left in the hands of a small group of self-selected people who are clearly socially and politically antagonsitic to the national interest?  Would we have left the BBC in the hands of Nazi sympathisers during the war just because of the BBC’s famed independence?  No of course not…so why leave it in the hands of a cabal of simplistic, left-wing elitist liberals who act against the British national interest?  The BBC is the ‘extremist’ in this debate not the supposed ‘far right’…ie anyone who wants to control immigration that the BBC brands ‘toxic’ and racist.

‘Nationalise’ the BBC and take it out of the hands of the extremist, elitist, media royalty who have hijacked the People’s broadcaster.

No need for much comment here…Paul Mason spills the beans...

“I went into journalism at the age of 30, confident that because I could write polemical propaganda leaflets, news wouldn’t be a problem.”

Not a problem when he was employed by the BBC anyway.

Even an ex-Labour MP writing in the Guardian thinks Mason is beyond the pale, and , not even Jeremy Corbyn would be a fellow traveller on the journey Mason proposes.  What was it that the BBC thought he could bring to the debate as economics editor on Newsnight?

The BBC’s Norman Smith strikes again.  How is it that a man with such an everyday name can manage to come up with the most fantastical, imaginative, sinister flights of fancy that would have Roald Dahl turning in his grave with envy?

The government has announced that landlords must check the immigration status of tenants and has given them the ability to evict them without a court order…the penalty for not doing so may be 5 years in the clink…whilst the illegal immigrants are entertained no doubt in fine style by HM’s social services.

The government says that this measure is targeted at rogue landlords who deliberately exploit immigrants and the system not your every day law abiding landlord.

Norman Smith’s main conclusion on Today?  This would lead us back to the 1960’s or 70’s with signs saying ‘No blacks, Jews or Gays’.

Not sure how he made that huge leap, and definitely unsure where Jews and gays come into this as part of the landlord’s ‘profiling’ of potential tenants.  Why would a landlord think Jews or Gays were illegal immigrants?  Perhaps he was thinking of a different future in England once another ideology gets the whip hand.  Funny no warnings about that possibility.

Why did he make that claim when the main concern of the landlords was that if they tried to evict tenants it might result in violence as even the Guardian points out?..

A government plan to require landlords to evict tenants living in Britain illegally from their properties without a court order could lead to violent confrontations, the National Landlords’ Association has warned.

Smith has a habit of making hyperbolic, highly political statements of nonsense…claiming pre-election that the state of the economy was ‘utterly terrifying’ and that government plans to cut spending would take us back to the 1930’s depression era and Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier….and claiming that budget predictions read like the ‘Book of Doom’.

“While there was a lot of enthusiasm on the Conservative benches and political joy at a lot of the popular measures, when you sit down and read the Office for Budget Responsibility report it reads like a book of doom.

“It is utterly terrifying, suggesting that spending will have to be hacked back to the levels of the 1930s as a proportion of GDP.

“That is an extraordinary concept, you’re back to the land of Road to Wigan Pier.”

 

Curious that he failed to mention that Labour’s spending in 2000/01 was almost exactly the same as predicted for the Tories’ spending plans….and the country wasn’t reduced to poverty and ruin or indeed put on the road to Wigan Pier.

More quality reporting from the BBC.

As David notes the Today programme set out to ‘prove’ the BBC’s contention that Narendra Modi’s election would be the start of persecution against minority communities in India was correct….Modi apparently being a ‘mass murderer’…a claim that went unchallenged on the BBC.  It is notable that the BBC is keen to link Hinduism to terrorism and extremism (not to mention its same approach to Buddhism)…but reluctant to link Islam to ideologically based terrorism….not just reluctant, it in fact sets out to completely deny the very obvious link.

Timing is always relevant when looking at what the BBC does.  Why for instance did the BBC choose today to broadcast this attack on Modi?  After all it based the attack on a report that came out on May 1st.

The Today programme running order doesn’t include this report….why was it suddenly squeezed in?  Could it be that the BBC is trying to counter the BJP’s allegations against the Congress party in India made on Saturday?

If so why is the BBC involving itself in Indian politics?

If it is going to report alleged attacks on minorities by Hindus it should also be making quite clear that Muslims are by far the most likely terrorists in India along with the Communists….Wonder why the BBC doesn’t want to make that clear.  Two of its favourite fellow travellers?  The BBC will however find time and space to list the Palestinian casualties in Gaza in just about every report from Israel however tenuous the link to the conflict there.

Why has the BBC specifically chosen India to target when mentioning that report?  After all India is in the second tier of concern, where it has been since…2009….not 2014….Pakistan is in the first tier, the report noting…

Key Findings

Pakistan represents one of the worst situations in the world for religious freedom for countries not currently designated by the U.S. government as “countries of particular concern.” In the past year, the government grappled with a challenging security environment and initiated efforts to fight the Pakistani Taliban. However, despite these efforts, Pakistan continued to experience chronic sectarian violence targeting Shi’a Muslims, Christians, Ahmadi Muslims, and Hindus.

Why has the BBC set its sights on Hindu India and not Muslim Pakistan?…after all the biggest number of asylum claims to the Uk come from…guess where…not India, but Pakistan.

So India has been of on the second tier of concern for a while, meaning that attacks against minorities are nothing new…in 2010 this was being said..

“In controversial comments, Rahul Gandhi has told US Ambassador to India Timothy Roemer that growth of “radicalised Hindu groups” posed a bigger threat to the country than militant groups like LeT, according to a leaked American diplomatic cable.” 

There is definitely Hindu based violence against other minorities but the other minorities aen’t innocent of exactly the same.

When the BBC quotes Hindu politicians making Hindu nationalist statements perhaps they should consider if that is a response to the Muslim attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001? The BBC normally loves a good ‘blowback’ conspiracy theory when explaining away Muslim terrorism.  Perhaps the BBC should consider all those other Muslim attacks on India such as the Bombay bombing in 1993 and Mumbai recently….‘Murder in Mumbai: There was nothing remotely random about it. This was no hostage standoff. The terrorists didn’t want to negotiate. They wanted to murder as many Hindus, Christians, Jews, atheists and other “infidels” as they could, and in as spectacular a manner as possible. In the Jewish center, some of the female victims even appear to have been tortured before being killed.…So why are so many prominent Western media reluctant to call the perpetrators terrorists?’

…….along with many many other attacks.

The report that the BBC uses to attack Modi says this…

Despite the country’s status as a pluralistic, secular democracy, India has long struggled to protect minority religious communities or provide justice when crimes occur, which perpetuates a climate of impunity. Incidents of religiously-motivated and communal violence reportedly have increased for three consecutive years.  

The country has experienced periodic outbreaks of large-scale communal violence against religious minorities, including in Uttar Pradesh in 2013, Odisha in 2007-2008, Gujarat in 2002, and Delhi in 1984.

Based on these concerns, USCIRF again places India on its Tier 2 list of countries, where it has been since 2009.

 In light of these concerns, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement in support of religious freedom made after the close of the reporting period (discussed more fully below) was a positive development.

So the report recognises that such events have been happening for a long time and then goes on to praise Modi…the Today programme didn’t report that bit.

Oh and to finish….as for Hindus forcefully converting Muslims as mentioned by the Today programme…Muslims converting people by force is rampant in Pakistan…and not just Pakistan…

Police protect girls forced to convert to Islam

Extremist Muslims who force vulnerable teenage girls to convert to Islam are being targeted by police, Met chief Sir Ian Blair has revealed.

Police are working with universities to clamp down on “aggressive conversions” during which girls are beaten up and forced to abandon university courses.

The Hindu Forum of Britain claims hundreds of mostly Sikh and Hindu girls have been intimidated by Muslim men who take them out on dates before terrorising them until they convert.

Ramesh Kallidai, of the Hindu Forum of Britain, said: “Some girls are petrified because they are constantly being phoned up, having their door knocked.

“One girl was beaten up on the street and others have been forced to leave university.”