Monthly Archives: August 2015

The fall of Camilla Batmanghelidjh has distressed the BBC and I see they ran the following “news” story earlier today …

“Much of the focus of the collapse of charity Kids Company has been on its finances and its(cough) flamboyant founder Camilla Batmanghelidjh – what has increasingly been overlooked is the fate of the people who relied on it.

Part of the problem concerning those “helped’ by the Kids Company is precisely what they were helped to get.

“A teenager has boasted that she and pals used cash handouts from Kids Company to buy drugs. The youngster said they would queue up to collect an oyster card and £30 which they could spend how they wished. She claimed: “It was weed heaven on a Friday, you could smell it coming down from the landings.”

I thought that this was a strange item on the BBC earlier today.

“Large supermarkets are becoming a thing of the past – shoppers are increasingly using smaller shops, discount stores, and local retailers. What might those changes mean for our towns? We hear from retail consultant and broadcaster Mary Portas, and Matthew Price reports.”

The item sang the praises of the German discount chains, Lidl and Aldi. It also allowed Mary Portas to pontificate unchallenged – as if she were an expert. Is this the same Mary Portas…?

Retail guru Mary Portas has been branded as a ‘Queen of Flops’ by critics who say her plans to help struggling high streets are nothing more than ‘gimmicks’ that have failed. Traders in the seaside resort of Margate in Kent, which won a £100,000 government grant, claim the town’s high street is now in a worse state than when she arrived to help, as the Government-appointed ‘retail tzar’, six months ago.  Her plans for the town have included displaying art in abandoned shop fronts.

Great to see the Today programme focusing on issues that really affect our lives!

Labour leadership contender Yvette Cooper has called for a “feminist approach to the economy”. It has been a branch of economic thinking for a long time, but what does it mean in practice?

Feminist economics shows how the models and methods of traditional economics are biased towards masculine perspectives and masculine topics, said Oxford University’s Prof Jane Humphries (pictured above). “Equality is economic sense,” said Polly Trenow of the Women’s Budget Group.

Unbelievable that they actually devote time and resource to this male bashing tripe.

The most popular boys name in England and Wales is….Oliver with 6,649 lucky lads so named, whilst Muhammed just squeaks into the top 100 with 7,240 lucky lads with various spelllings of said name as the BBC tells us.

The BBC gawd bless ’em, still hiding uncomfortable truths as they see it….

What’s in a name?

Born in 2014

6,649  Olivers – most popular boys name

5,327 Amelias – most popular girls name

• “Mohammed” and common variations of in top 100: 7,240
• Chart places “Harper” has moved up in a decade: 3,636

The ONS itself barely mentions Muhammed and hides the name way down its statistics briefing.

The BBC happily reports what the ONS said without question despite other reports clearly stating that Muhammed is top…and the figures, reported as you can see by the BBC,  saying that.

The Baby Centre says:

The entries are in, the numbers crunched, and the top 100 boys’ names of 2014 have been unveiled!

For the first time at BabyCentre UK, the name Muhammad has topped the list, when alternate spellings such as Mohammed are included. Meanwhile, Oliver is holding fast in second place.

How is it that an organisation like the Baby Centre can get it right and the BBC with all its resources, and the facts in front of them, can’t? Or rather won’t.

The Spectator asks the same question about the ONS’ similar reluctance to admit that Muhammed is top of the list…

Why doesn’t the Office of National Statistics want us to know that Mohammed is the most popular boys’ name in England and Wales?  Yesterday, it put out its annual survey of the top 10 baby’s names.  In 2014, it reported, the most popular boys’ names were Oliver, Jack and Harry. This contrasts somewhat with a similar survey by the website BabyCentre last December which claimed that the most popular boys’ name was now Mohammed.

Ten years ago, the ONS was quite happy to announce in its press release that Mohammed – then apparently the preferred spelling — had entered the top 20 most popular baby’s names.  But now it seems it has become shy of informing us that it is now the single most popular boys’ name in England and Wales.

It does seem that once again the news is being ‘managed’ so that we only get to hear what they want us to hear in the hope we don’t realise what is going on.  When Germany is facing the prospect of over 750,000 asylum seekers, not general migrants, and they will be mostly Muslim, you have to start asking questions about the effects importing large numbers of people with such a radically different set of beliefs and values into Europe will have on society.

That of course is the question the ONS and the BBC want to stop you asking.  They certainly won’t be asking it themselves.

From the Mail:

BBC screens foreign ‘propaganda’: Corporation accused of breaking broadcast rules by showing programmes that promote charities and governments

The BBC has screened ‘propaganda films’ funded by foreign governments in a blatant breach of broadcast rules, an Ofcom investigation found.

The broadcaster has shown dozens of programmes designed to promote charities, NGOs and governments in what the regulator described as an ‘inherent risk to [the BBC’s] independence and integrity’.

The Ofcom probe revealed the BBC had bought the ‘sponsored’ films for as little as £1 from public relations companies.

Officials found 20 breaches of sponsorship rules by BBC World News, the broadcaster’s 24-hour news channel that is shown across the world.

One programme was made by a London-based media company which was given millions of pounds by the Malaysian government, The Independent reported.

The probe revealed the BBC had failed to declare which programmes were funded, leaving viewers unaware that they were watching ‘propaganda’ from foreign companies.

Here’s part of Ofcom’s decision….there is also a long write up about the BBC’s acceptance of sponsorship for programmes in the Ofcom document….

Ofcom noted BBCWN’s admission that, in hindsight, FBC was not an appropriate producer of the programmes investigated and that there had been a risk to BBCWN’s editorial independence by what it described as “the lack of knowledge” available to it at the time the programmes were broadcast.

Ofcom acknowledges that BBCWN was potentially misled by FBC in its pre-production and pre-transmission checks. However, broadcasters must always seek to apply the utmost rigour in investigating and documenting the relationship between producers and the interests featured in their programming. That third party interests might exploit their role in programming made available to a broadcaster at no charge may not have been inevitable, but its obvious possibility in this case should have been a strong indicator that better care was required.

It is essential that broadcasters take steps to ensure that content is not used as a vehicle to promote the interests of a third party, especially in current affairs content.

In circumstances where broadcasters have acquired programming, they should be able to demonstrate that they have taken adequate steps to obtain all information necessary for them to make appropriate independent editorial decisions. For example, they will need to ascertain how such programmes have been funded to assess whether a funding arrangement has influenced the editorial in a way that would call into question the programme’s editorial independence. We welcome the steps that BBCWN has since taken in this regard to strengthen its compliance procedures, as detailed above, and will invite BBCWN to attend a meeting with Ofcom to discuss further possible  improvements.

Here’s the BBC’s own guidelines about Ofcom:

Woman’s Hour had a long love in with the Female leaders of Scotland’s political parties (I think the Tory one, Ruth Davidson, might have been mentioned somewhere in the piece.)

Woman’s Hour asked how is it that if there is so much success in Scotland for women why is that not the case in Westminster?

You may have thought that that would be the occasion when the BBC might take a look at the prospects for women in a reborn Labour Party, would they prosper under one of the new leadership candidates, two being women and one being a far left, sorry, as corrected by a BBC presenter the other day, ‘left’ politician, Jeremy Corbyn?

But no, instead of looking at Westminster they concentrated on the rise of women in Scotland.

You could be forgiven for thinking Jeremy Corbyn is irrelevant in Scotland…but you’d be wrong…as the Spectator spells out..

Jeremy Corbyn can fill a Glasgow hall quicker than Nicola Sturgeon. It’s time for her to worry

Strange things have been happening in Scottish politics of late, and Jeremy Corbyn’s speech in Glasgow on Friday was one of them. I’m a Labour supporter, and can safely say it was the most electrifying and energetic rally I have ever attended. 

Within two hours of tickets going on sale for Corbyn’s Glasgow event, they sold out. A frantic search for a larger venue began and the rally was moved to the Old Fruitmarket in the centre of Glasgow; capacity 1,500. Again, it sold out within a few hours. Corbyn could have filled a hall four times the size.

Scottish politics dramatically changed in last year. If Corbyn wins, it could do so again.

That didn’t merit a mention in the BBC interview which might seem odd as surely it would be of interest/concern to the new Scottish Labour leader.

There was a swift mention of the leadership candidates, and Jane Garvey homed in on Corbyn…but it was his desire to get rid of Trident that was her only concern asking Scottish Labour Leader Kezi Dugdale ”You didn’t discuss Trident with Jeremy Corbyn, I can’t believe that?’

Apart from that brief foray into what life might be like under a Jeremy Corbyn regime Corbyn was allowed to slip off into the shadows once again without the BBC turning the spotlight upon him.  Which is just as well really as with his dubious associations with Islamists you might be justified in asking how women like Dugdale would fare in his brave new world.

Nick Cohen asked such questions….

The British left has a lot to answer for. The Labour Party’s long-shot leadership candidate, Jeremy Corbyn, embodies the worst of it.

He has a purity and certainty his rivals, who must deal with the messy business of governing, cannot hope to match.

But then comes the rub. The tribune of the left, the indomitable defender of equality and decency, is also the greatest apologist for clerical fascism in the British parliament.

Corbyn indulges radical Islam, and by extension  all that comes with it: the subjugation of women; the judicial murder of homosexuals in compliance with sharia law; the racism, most evident in its anti-Semitic conspiracy theories; the denial of democratic rights, the demand to create a global caliphate must bring; and the denial of religious freedom the sharia-prescribed death penalties for blasphemy and apostasy do bring with miserable regularity.

Islamism is against everything the left pretends to believe in. But in Britain and elsewhere, leftists rather than conservatives are the first to defend it.

I could give you a dozen reasons why right-wing parties are winning elections everywhere here. But one ought to be obvious. Politically correct left-wingers say they believe in equality for women and gays. Everyone must agree with them apart from protected religious leaders, who can be as misogynist and homophobic as they please. 

The voters look on with jaundiced eyes. They mutter that political correctness is a sham and the left is filled with the most brazen hypocrites. The worst of it is, they are right.

The BBC just isn’t interested in Corbyn’s Islamist friends.

Why might that be?  Is it that they like the [Far] left wing candidate who favours the policies long peddled by the BBC itself...’There would be an end to austerity, higher taxes for the rich and protection for people on welfare’  or is it because he’s leading light in the ‘Stop the War Coalition’, again a cause the BBC has a lot of time for, or is it because the BBC also has a similarly benign and supportive approach to Islamist extremists and terrorists?

Curious how even the Woman’s Hour bunker can overlook Corbyn’s associations when they appear to be so strongly against the interests of the sistahood and indeed progressive politics as a whole.

The BBC does have a lot to say about Corbyn…but very little is critical, certainly none of it mentions his very dodgy friends and honoured citizens he applauds…..most is very positive and upbeat…

What is Jeremy Corbyn’s programme for government?

Where is Labour’s ‘Jeremy Corbyn mania’ coming from?

Labour risks ‘annihilation’ if Jeremy Corbyn is leader – Tony Blair

Jeremy Corbyn: It’s going extremely well

You may have thought that a man who seems to turn a blind eye to all of this ‘ the subjugation of women; the judicial murder of homosexuals in compliance with sharia law; the racism, most evident in its anti-Semitic conspiracy theories; the denial of democratic rights, the demand to create a global caliphate must bring; and the denial of religious freedom the sharia-prescribed death penalties for blasphemy and apostasy do bring with miserable regularity.’  would merit close inspection.

Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson were torn apart by the Leftwing media, BBC included, indeed the BBC leapt in to recruit LBC’s James O’Brien after his mendacious kangaroo court hatchet job on Farage, and Andrew Neil, of all people, shamed himself by trying to hammer Robinson with questions laid out by the Islamist Mehdi Hasan who thought the BBC was ‘going easy’ on Robinson.

It does seem that Jeremy Corbyn is untouchable…..and Owen Jones seems just as unconcerned as the BBC about Corbyn despite his proclaimed passion for equality and the rights of oohh just about everyone if there’s a book in it.

They’re right, absolutely right.  Owen Jones, Mehdi Hasan, the Cardiff stooges.  They’re all right.

The BBC is right wing.  The Guardian is just to the left of the Telegraph. The Pope is Muslim.  It’s all so obvious now.

Alex, when you stated…‘How can anyone possible say that the BBC isn’t massively biased to the left? It’s plain for all to see!’ in the comments, you too are wrong. So wrong.

I know this because my eyes have been opened.  A whole new world has been shown to me, a world where the Truth really does exist and the News is not manipulated by sinister vested interests for their own nefarious purposes.

Russia Today is now my news provider of choice.  A more upstanding, professional and ethical broadcaster would be hard to find.  Think not?  Here’s a couple of samples of their work that persuaded me without doubt that RT is, IS, the only broadcaster with integrity and the balls to take on the Establishment…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqoIZxfT398

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p54hHhlLjRk

The BBC, pah,….faking chemical weapons attacks, whinging about Frankie Boyle making an anti-Semitic joke, not allowing comedians to make rude jokes about bankers and UKIP…the BBC’s a joke itself!

Songs of Praise sang forth last night to great joy.

We heard that there was a Sudanese migrant ‘called Daniel, who claimed to have fled the war-torn country after being persecuted for being protestant; he said he tried to cross the Channel every night ‘under trains’.’

Now as there are around 50 million Sudanese, North and South.  Is the BBC suggesting we re-home all these people…surely all must be suffering like Daniel in a such a war torn region?

Damien Thompson in the Mail notes ‘Sorry to sound cynical, but the script glossed over one rather inconvenient but unavoidable fact about the camp: it is overwhelmingly Muslim.’

Which echoes my own cynicism about Aaqil Ahmed’s motives which I noted earlier…

‘Ahmed is of course Muslim…far be it from me to suggest an ulterior motive, but I have yet to hear a Muslim in the public sphere who doesn’t use his job to promote Islam.  Mishal Husain said she would use her position on the Today programme to improve people’s perceptions of Islam and Baroness Warsi in her role as minister for faith promoted the idea of more influence and a bigger role for religion in society knowing that promoting Christianity meant the government would also be obliged to do the same for Islam and provide it with similar privileges and powers.  A slightly more sophisticated version of ‘my enemy’s enemy’.

Ahmed knows that many, if not the majority, of illegal migrants and those claiming to be asylum seekers are Muslim…any chance he has stitched together this programme to promote migration and thence to further increase the Muslim population of Britain?’

The Songs of Praise programme seems, on the surface, to be a nice, heartwarming tale about migrants keeping the faith in difficult conditions but the reality is that this is a hard edged political stunt by the BBC as it tries to make a powerful statement in order to influence immigration policy, and there is that subtext about Muslim migration….dismiss it or not, it’s there.

The BBC in an even more obvious attempt to intervene in the immigration debate with an attempt to prick our consciences with the usual arm-twisting guilt-inducing tear-jerking emoting that passes for journalism at the BBC tells us that the migrants are ‘wonderful and beautiful people’.

The BBC reveals that we should all be horrified by Calais and that we should all leap into action to help out:

Thousands of migrants are camped in and around Calais. A handful of British people can be found there too. What are they doing?  Matthew Wright grew tired of shouting at the TV.  “I got sick of hearing the excuses and the lack of action,” says Wright, 45. “This isn’t an immigration crisis – it’s a humanitarian crisis.”

Calais migrants making nightly bids to cross the Channel have attracted negative press coverage in the UK. Prime Minister David Cameron has promised the UK will not become a “safe haven” for them.

So painting Cameron as the nasty Tory denying them a ‘safe haven’.  Are they entitled to such a ‘safe haven’ anyway?

The BBC has the answer…and tries to twist the guilt into the credulous, they hope, reader….

But Wright believes the British public will do more and more to help the migrants: “I know how generous British people are.”

Then we have another volunterr who is ashamed of Britain…

“I used to have a quiet pride that Britain was more liberal than most countries, but now there is a worrying strand of xenophobia running through social media and the press,” he adds

So anyone who wants to control immigration is maligned as xenophobic….who’s the fascist?

Don’t forget how terrific all the migrants are..

‘Morphew-Hedges says she knew people who wanted to help the migrants, but many were too “scared of the unknown” to make the journey.

“You don’t know what you’re going to find. We have found wonderful, beautiful people and we really want to help.”‘

Never mind that they had just told us that the women don’t feel safe in the camp…why would that be?  Surely wonderful and beautiful people don’t go around raping and attacking women!

And those security measures…they are a danger to the migrants…much like the Israeli security barrier is a danger to terrorists…how awful!

‘Every night hundreds of migrants risk their lives to reach the UK via trains and ferries from Calais. Some say new security measures mean it is now too dangerous – though most still harbour hopes of crossing.’

And of course yet another BBC junket for Giles Fraser….the Occupy patron saint who is now wealthier than ever on the fertile fruits of his TV evangelising. Just think of all those hair shirts he can buy.

The BBC has been pushing this story hard this morning;

The number of people living with diabetes has soared by nearly 60% in the past decade, Diabetes UK warns. The charity said more than 3.3 million people have some form of the condition, up from 2.1 million in 2005. The inability to control the level of sugar in the blood can lead to blindness and amputations and is a massive drain on NHS resources.

It interested me because I am a type 2 Diabetic. But this interested me too and yet the BBC completely ignores it.

Doughnuts and pizzas on the NHS: £116million of gluten-free junk food was handed out in prescriptions in the past year

The NHS is a sacred BBC cow that must not be criticised and here we have the BBC pushing the “Diabetes epidemic”  overwhelming the NHS narrative whilst studiously ignoring NHS culpability

A new week and time for a new Open Thread! Here is where you detail the bias! The floor is yours….