Monthly Archives: September 2015

John Whittingdale has made a speech about the BBC...He ends with this positive note…

Finally, I want to say something very simple.

The UK television industry is celebrated and loved across the world. It provides a huge number of jobs and generates massive economic activity. It informs and entertains.

The years ahead promise to be tremendously exciting for the industry.

I see it as a huge privilege to be the Government’s television champion at this time.

The Guardian has a run down of the speech and of the appointment of an Ex-Bank of England deputy governor to lead review into BBC regulation…I’ll let you read them at your leisure…but one sentence stood out…

In a speech at the RTS television festival in Cambridge on Thursday, Sharon White, the head of Ofcom, is expected to talk about the huge impact adding BBC governance to her department would make.

Complaints to the BBC dwarf all other broadcasters combined.

Hilary Mantel is infamous for her self-gratifying fantasy that expressed her deeply felt desire to kill Keir Hardie, a man for whom she still feels a ‘boiling detestation’…even more infamous is that the BBC felt the need to broadcast the short story...‘In Hilary Mantel’s mischievous story a knock at the door announces an unexpected visitor who has plans to alter the course of history as we know it. Harriet Walter reads.’  The Left were naturally outraged that such an iconic figure should be treated in this way by the BBC.  Here is a small snippet from the short story….

The gunman kneels, easing into position. He sees what I see, the flat cap crammed onto the unruly bush of wiry hair. He sees it bob like a dog turd in a gutter, he sees it big as the full moon, but dark with ill-omen. On the sill the wasp hovers, suspends itself in still air. One easy wink of the world’s blind eye: ”Rejoice comrades,” he says. ”Fucking rejoice.”

The BBC, which has presumably cemented its credentials as a right-wing instrument of the neo-con, bourgeois Establishment, has flung caution to the wind and decided that the story resonates so strongly with its audience that it deserves to be short-listed for its short story award…..as reported in the Times…

Mantel’s The Assassination of Keir Hardie, published by the Telegraph after the Guardian refused to print it despite paying for exclusive rights to the piece, sees a sniper disguised as an Aga repairman set out to shoot the radical left-wing politician.

The story was attacked by the Mirror when it was first published in September last year, and then again in December when it was chosen as the BBC’s Book at Bedtime on Radio 4 (“Radio 4 ignores protests to give author’s ‘sick and perverted’ fantasy a coveted broadcast slot,” wrote the paper). Mantel said at the time that “I recognise that this latest nonsense from the Mirror is not about me or my work; it’s a skirmish in a war with a right-leaning BBC.”

Now the BBC has chosen the story from among 438 entries as one of five going forward to compete for its prestigious national short story award, which is presented in partnership with by Booktrust. 

Hilary Mantel has had Keir Hardie in her sights for more than 30 years. Somewhat surreally, Mantel reveals that it was her grandmother who gave her the idea for the story as her grandmother had seen Hardie as he wandered into view around noon on Saturday 6 August 19o6. Mantel’s grandmother’s flat, on a quiet Windsor street lined with cherry trees, overlooked the working man’s club where Hardie was having a pint and a fag. She was just standing by the big sash window in her bedroom when she spotted Hardie “toddling” around the club yard with a rabble of flat-capped mates.

“Immediately your eye measures the distance,” Mantel says her grandmother told her, measuring each syllable, her finger and thumb forming a gun.  Her grandmother said “I thought, if I wasn’t me, if I was someone else, he’d be dead.”

Apparently Mantel’s grandmother had long held a deep loathing for Hardie as she recognised that his type of politics would do untold and long-standing damage to the nation and her own life.  Mantel herself says she feels a ‘boiling detestation’ for Hardie as he made her grandmother’s life, and that of others like her in the coming decades, so miserable.

Mantel’s grandmother, like Hardie, was self-made – her mother was a mill worker and her father left when she was 11. But, Mantel believed, Hardie hated the end result of his self-transformation into a maverick, wild-eyed radical…he wanted to be loved, respected and welcomed into the Establishment, but it wasn’t to be, he was never accepted: “He couldn’t turn himself into a posh politician with the right vowels. If you’re that dissatisfied with yourself you try to fix other people, and if they won’t be fixed you become punitive.’

Hardie had to die or his terrible legacy would be like a running sore throughout British history….he had to be stopped.

I wonder if the BBC would be so keen to make ‘The Assassination Of Keir Hardie’ its ‘Book at Bedtime’ and then short-list it for its Short Story Award?  Possibly not.  It was just before the latest Labour leadership elections that the BBC decided to broadcast a Gordon Brown elegy to Keir Hardie….I wonder why?  Looking at the BBC’s own history of Hardie you might be suspicious that someone at the BBC was trying to suggest, when they broadcast Brown’s hagiography of Hardie, that a maverick radical such as Jeremy Corbyn could be viewed in a similar light and therefore is worthy of the leadership….unusual dress sense, radical politics, anti-monarchy, not good at dealing with internal rivalries and anti-war (all perhaps except the championing of women’s rights)…….

In 1892, Keir Hardie was invited to stand as the Independent Labour Party candidate for West Ham in east London. He won and took his seat in parliament. He marked himself out as a radical both by his dress – he wore a tweed suit when most members of parliament wore more formal dress – and the subjects he advocated, including women’s rights, free schooling and pensions and Indian self-rule. He was heavily criticised for appearing to attack the monarchy, which may have contributed to his defeat in the 1895 election.

After a long battle to win another seat, he was finally elected MP to Merthyr Tydfil in 1900 and was one of only two Labour MPs in parliament. But by 1906 this number had increased to 26. Keir Hardie was elected leader of the party in the House of Commons, but was not very good at dealing with internal rivalries and he resigned from the post in 1908. From then on he devoted his energy to promoting the Labour Party and championing equality, particularly in the cause of women’s suffrage. In 1910, 40 Labour MPs were elected to parliament and Keir Hardie gave up the party leadership to George Barnes.

During the first year of World War One, Keir Hardie was an outspoken pacifist. He died on 26 September 1915 in Glasgow.

And look…Corbyn can sing (croak)…the Red Flag…

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

The BBC has been plugging its new film ‘The Gamechangers’ recently but the subject of that film, Rockstar Games, isn’t happy…

  Rockstar Games Verified account ‏@RockstarGames

@BBC Was Basil Brush busy? What exactly is this random, made up bollocks?

— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) September 15, 2015

Rockstar also filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against the BBC, as reported in May, after saying that no-one at the gaming firm was consulted about The Gamechangers.

The film, from director Owen Harris and writer James Wood, did however make it very clear that it is in no way authorised by Rockstar.

That hardly makes things better does it? Not only is the film ‘made up bollocks’  it had no input from the game producers.

Not the Ten O’Clock News but sounds awfully familiar as a modus operandi for BBC reporters.

Can’t say I approve of this reaction to the BBC…

BBC cameraman ‘is in hospital with neck and face injuries after scuffle with Corbyn’s driver as Labour leader left home’

Let’s hope the Hungarians don’t get any ideas when confronted by a holier-than-thou BBC reporter!

Despite this coming out of a BBC Today programme interview have you heard the BBC giving it much airtime?…normally such a statement, were it pro-staying in the EU and scaremongering about leaving, would be quoted all day on the news…either I missed the endless reports or they didn’t bother…for some reason….from the Telegraph..

Ignore the scaremongers, manufacturing powerhouse Vauxhall says it would be fine outside the EU

Boss of Vauxhall, which employs 35,000 people in the UK, says a British exit from the EU would not trouble the car maker

A British exit from the European Union would not stop Vauxhall from doing business in the UK because it is “unthinkable” that the rest of the bloc would shun a new trade deal, its chairman has said.

Tim Tozer, who is also managing director of the car maker, described the EU referendum as a “good thing” and said if Britain voted to leave, the company would continue its operations as usual.

He told the BBC: “I don’t think in that event there would not be a trade agreement with what was left of the EU. We’re a very, very big market for European products, goods and services, and it would unthinkable to us as a corporation that no such trade agreement would ultimately be negotiated if this country chose to leave.”

Listening to the BBC ‘report’ on the ever-growing migrant pressure on EU borders and you’d think that Hungary alone  was the ‘villain’ of the piece as the BBC blitzes Hungary and pours scorn and contempt upon it whilst at the same time downplaying problems and policy changes in heroic Germany.  The BBC for some reason seems to believe Hungary doesn’t have a right to impose border controls and the tone adopted by the BBC reporter’s is more often than not one tinged with contempt and disbelief…and whilst they continue to refer to Hungary they fail to mention in the same reports that Germany itself, and other countries, is imposing border controls and is also trying to send back Kosovans and Albanians.  There is little acknowledgement from the BBC that there is going to be a massive problem as the migrant flow continues and Europe’s policy of accepting anyone who steps foot inside Europe as a migrant will have obvious and shattering consequences for Europe as people around the world realise that once they get to Europe the Europeans will feel obliged to house, feed, clothe, educate and nurse them and that a powerful media elite is on hand to make sure that any attempt to restrain or deport them will be represented in the most brutal and disturbing ways possible with all the usual highly emotive references to the Holocaust, Berlin Walls and suffering exploited to the full.

This morning on the Today programme we heard that Hungary was implementing the Dublin Regulation that said asylum seekers should claim asylum in the first safe country they land in.  The BBC reporter ignored the fact that the migrants had been through numerous safe countries such as Turkey and declared that the UN had stated that Serbia was not safe for refugees thus attempting to paint Hungary as the bad guys…indeed the UN has said that Serbia is ‘unsafe’…

Until such a system is fully established in Serbia, for the reasons stated above, UNHCR recommends that Serbia not be considered a safe third country of asylum, and that countries therefore refrain from sending asylum-seekers back to Serbia on this basis.

But what is the reason, why is Serbia ‘unsafe’?

UNHCR has worked closely and intensively with the Serbian asylum authorities both before and after Serbia assumed responsibility for the conduct of the asylum procedure in April 2008. Despite some incremental improvements notably with regard to reception standards, Serbia’s asylum system has been unable to cope with the recent increases in the numbers of asylum applicants. This has exposed significant shortcomings in numbers of personnel, expertise, infrastructure, implementation of the legislation and government support.

Purely logistical….there is no ‘danger’….Serbia is not ‘unsafe’ as you and I would understand it in terms of war and persecution…it’s just slow and under-resourced to cope with large numbers of migrants.

And on that basis not only Hungary but Germany itself could be declared ‘unsafe’ for refugees as their own systems cannot possibly cope with the numbers…as Der Spiegel tells us…

The Breaking Point? Germany’s Asylum System Struggles to Cope

As the migrant influx continues, the ‘Refugees Welcome’ high is beginning to wear off. People are beginning to wonder if Germany will really be able to cope with all the newcomers. And the system is already completely overwhelmed.

The German system is in near meltdown but the BBC prefers to ignore that and instead presents us with a misleading interpretation of events to spin against Hungary and its policy.  Germany is as ‘unsafe’ as Serbia.

Here the BBC continues that spin about Germany, suggesting that the closing of the German borders is not about the vast numbers causing unmanageable chaos but is a result of ‘Right-wing’ pressure…

Why has Germany changed its mind?

In fact Mrs Merkel’s policy hasn’t actually changed so much – but the message has, and it is mainly a political one to her allies in government.

The chancellor is already regarded with suspicion by many on the right of her party, who accuse her of dragging the Christian Democrats to the middle-ground to win votes.

Being soft on migrants only confirms their worst suspicions.

After blaming the ‘Right’ the BBC then admits the truth…but still manages to portray it as the Right having mistaken and prejudiced views..

This is a huge logistical challenge which the authorities only just managed to pull off, thanks in part to help from local people.

So controlling the borders temporarily is supposed to give regional authorities breathing space, as well as allay the fears of state leaders and right-wing allies that the situation is out of control.

The situation isn’t really ‘out of control’ the BBC seems to suggest, that’s just a cover for less savoury anti-immigrant, right-wing, conservative attitudes presumably….naturally their views are ‘unjustified’ and irrational.

Curiously, whilst the BBC frets about the Hungarian fence it barely mentioned the German’s deciding to ignore the Dublin Regulation that said migrants must apply for asylum in the first country they land in….and then the BBC downplays the Germans reinstating this EU regulation…here failing to mention the previous decision to ignore it….

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has made it clear that EU rules are still valid, and that migrants must register and apply for asylum in the first EU country they arrive in.

Odd how the Germans can ignore EU treaty regulations at will and the Brits can’t, and that it is Hungary that gets all the vilification for its decision to regulate the flow of migrants in a more orderly fashion and impose the EU treaty regulations in regard to the Dublin Regulation.

Oh yes…getting to the title of this post…the Guardian publishes this:

The refugee crisis will hit the UK’s working class areas hardest

The article tells us that the white working class suffer the most from the massive influx of migrants and their problems and concerns have long been ignored by the politicans, the Media and the ‘do-gooders’….and they are afraid to speak out because if they do they are then labelled ‘racists’ and they are being priced out of housing as a result of the migrant invasion.

The Guardian says:

As a researcher focusing for more than a decade on inequality and the stigmatisation of working-class people and communities, particularly connected to council estates, I fear what will follow this summer’s refugee crisis.

The women I was working with in Nottingham were aware of how accusations of white working-class racism are played with by politicians, the media and the do-gooders, as they called teachers and social workers – the people who, they knew, never had to put up with this. They were careful about what they said, and who they complained to, about those they called the Iraqis….they told me that they were most unhappy and frightened that every day, as they walked through the precinct, a group of men they referred to as “Iraqis” were constantly asking them for “business”, meaning sex. It happened to me on several occasions. The women felt angry and disrespected at these incidents.

One woman told me that she and a group of women had “battered” (physically attacked) “one of the Iraqi asylum seekers” for asking to buy sex from one of the women’s 15-year-old daughter. When I spoke to this woman about it, she said: “Why should we be the only ones having to put up with this?”

The women in Nottingham and in Bethnal Green are fully aware of the pressures on the limited resources within their neighbourhoods, and they know they are expected to share the very little they have, while others may stand in judgment of their complaints. They see this as something else they have no control over. The dominant narrative in Britain for working-class people is about feeling powerless, having no say, being disrespected, and having accusations of ignorance, small-mindedness and racism thrown at you if you point out that your neighbourhood can’t take much more.

But then we get to the real Guardian agenda…as always there’s a sting in the tail as the white working class are exploited by the Guardian do-gooders to attack the government welfare policies…

The women of Nottingham said to me in 2005 “we don’t begrudge anyone a roof who needs it”, but at the core of suspicion and fear of the “other” is the lack of resources. The consequence of austerity measures is that working-class families all over Britain have found themselves struggling to stay in their homes, to feed and clothe their families, and to keep warm. As people are being evicted from their homes because of the bedroom tax, and hundreds of thousands socially cleansed out of parts of London, Bristol and Manchester because the land they live on is worth more than they are, we cannot allow local councils and private landlords to profit from Osborne’s offer to fund homes for refugees in Britain.

Actually it’s not just a ‘lack of resources’ but social, cultural and political concerns as Muslim immigrants move in and try to change the norms of a British way of life to suit themselves….as we’ve just looked at...

Canon CHRIS CHIVERS ‘I’d previously worked in South Africa, in Cape Town, which is of course emerging from an apartheid history which was deeply divided and deeply divisive, and I think I can honestly say that I’ve never worked in such a segregated community, or lived in one as this’…..in Blackburn, UK.

And as Charles Moore reminds us:

It seemed to me that most Muslim leaders saw their role not in integrating Muslims in Britain, but in asserting difference and increasing their muscle. Many favoured sharia law trumping British law. They would not support Muslim membership of the Armed Forces if those forces were deployed against Muslim countries. They wanted it to be illegal to attack Islam, let alone denigrate its prophet; and they waged constant “lawfare” to try to silence their critics. They tended, I thought, to see the advance of their cause as a zero-sum game in which the authorities had to cede more ground (sometimes it is literally a matter of territory) to Muslims.

And what of that last bit….’we cannot allow local councils and private landlords to profit from Osborne’s offer to fund homes for refugees in Britain.‘?

Clearly all these ‘refugees’ need somewhere to live…and it is the council and private landlords who will provide the homes…homes that previously would have gone to British residents…so where will the displaced British residents who have been waiting years for a home go?

Here we hear that it won’t displace British people, but of course it will…and the EU is going to pay, along with the British over-seas aid budget….people might feel aggrieved that so many resources can be suddenly found to help ‘refugees’ whilst they have been ignored and left to fend for themselves for years.

It isn’t about asking landlords to donate the housing for free. The first 12 months will be paid for by the European Union under a scheme for placing vulnerable refugees. “We’re not asking for charitable homes, we are asking that people who would be renting out a property anyway will consider this scheme, and take a year out of their private rentals and be paid by the EU instead.” 

It won’t displace British people queuing for housing here. We’re not suggesting they be put on the housing register; we are alive to the sensitivity of that as an issue.” 

That was always a fraud that made me laugh when councils declared that migrants didn’t take housing from those on the housing register because the council kept a separate list of houses for migrants…so the council may have 150 houses available and puts 100 on the housing register and keeps back 50 for migrants who have their own register…this allows the council to claim that migrants don’t jump the queue for housing because they are not in the same queue, on the same register.  Clever huh?  Smoke and mirrors.

Brits are being denied housing because of immigration, housing price rises and a massive shortfall in the number of houses available, a shortage that can only get worse as more and more migrants flood in….just where do those near 700,000 migrants that came here in the last two years live?  Where will next year’s 300,000 + live?

The system’s broke, the future’s grim and the BBC thinks all is wonderful.

If you want to control immigration and believe that mass immigration is going to be highly disruptive and de-stabilise countries then that’s because you are a little Hitler, a little bit Fascist, a little bit Nazi.  That’s the lesson we must learn today as the BBC lectures us on our failings as humane beings.

The BBC, already almost extremist in its proselytising for immigration, has, in desperation as the borders are being slammed shut, resorted to bottom-dredging and name-calling….Godwin’s Law has been unleashed.

Sarah Montague broke us in gently, (08:51) not letting on where she was really going with this, as she asked ‘Why did Hitler want to kill the Jews?’  She tells us that sure, he was mad and evil, but, she asks, was there something more to his ideology…something that can provide a lesson for us today?…still no clue as to the subject of those lessons from her though….but of course you really know where this is going.

Apparently Hitler referred to the Jews as a ‘pestilence’ who would cause a global ecological crisis….politically, scientifically and ethically the Jews were crushing the world…preventing prosperity, peace and security for the other races….not explained how the Jews managed this world domination.

Hitler’s fear was that ‘If the Jews had their way’ the Germans would suffer…starve to death.  He wanted not only physical, geographic room, to live but also to live in comfort…to preserve the kind of life style that they had.

Now we’re getting to it, the real reason the BBC are looking at this…the lessons from this are what we should be applying now…it was not that Germany became an overly powerful state that classified and eliminated people but it was that Germany eliminated other states which created anarchy and the room for chaos to ensue….and this is happening now with the movement of people into Europe due to the West’s destruction of Iraq…and of course you, with your complaints that the migrants will destroy your living standards are just a touch ‘Hitler’…aren’t you?  So selfish.  So Why would Hitler want to kill the immigrants?

Ironically, and it can’t be what the open borders, anti-nation state BBC wanted to hear, we were told that states have to be preserved, state structures and citizenship actually protect people, we should be trying to prop up state structures…but then we get to why the BBC, grinding its teeth no doubt, accepted that ‘necessary evil’ of the nation state in this crude bit of modern exploitation of the past to try and conveniently explain the future….what’s happening in the Middle East shows that we need state structures...the Iraq state was destroyed and this has contributed to the problem of mass migration apparently….not the Syrian state then?

And there you go, the BBC’s favourite hobby horse, the Iraq war is the cause of all the world’s ills and ‘we’ are the cause therefore of the migrant crisis and therefore morally responsible for the migrants…never mind that it has little to nothing to do with events in Syria which were the result of the Syrian people rising up against Assad and Assad releasing ISIL members from prison and allowing them to rebuild their forces.

So from this we can summarise that refusing to accept mass, uncontrolled immigration is like denying the Holocaust, in fact it is akin to actually implementing the Holocaust…..you are no better than a Nazi death camp guard…as Ken Livingstone might say.

Just another day on the BBC which, as Tony Parsons says, ‘is about as representative of the British people as the men’s toilets at the Guardian.’

If you believe the BBC all of Britain’s problems can be traced back to 1979 before which was the ‘Dark Ages’, dark in terms of political significance..nothing happened before 1979 apparently, and in 1997 British political and economic history once again stopped with nothing to report, only to restart in 2010 as Doomsday, and the Tories, approached….similarly the History of the Middle East only began in 2003 and there were never any Muslim extremists in the world before 7/7/2005.

(Was it just me or did the good historian, Timothy Snyder, seem to sort of agree with Hitler on the Jew’s attitude towards science and the alleged risks that posed to Germany…he says we have ignored the ecological aspects to Hitler’s ideology because we are in a time when we don’t want for food and so we can’t understand Hitler’s perspective, we don’t understand Hitler’s appeal…hmmm…he was justified then in some shape or form for his anti-Jewish stance?…..all in all a curious report from the BBC that demonises the Jews and gives more ammunition to the anti-Semites by raising these matters even though supposedly qualified by saying ‘this is what Hitler thought‘…wonder what any Jewish people who heard it thought?)

A little reminder to the BBC and we do like to bring a little joy to the world…

“I would like to pay tribute to the contribution you and your company make to the prosperity of Britain. During its one hundred and fifty year history, Lehman Brothers has always been an innovator, financing new ideas and inventions before many others even began to realise their potential. And it is part of the greatness not just of Lehman Brothers but of the City of London, that as the world economy has opened up, you have succeeded not by sheltering your share of a small protected national market but always by striving for a greater and greater share of the growing global market.”

 

Antonia Quirk in The New Statesman expresses doubts about Jeremy Vine’s qualities as a hard hitting investigator of news as he interviews, very nearly, Max Mosley…..

Pain is so close to pleasure: Max Mosley on BBC Radio 2

Mosley was coming over as the most clubbable man in the universe. Not a peep from Jeremy Vine.

Apparently Jeremy wasn’t too keen on getting to the truth about Mosley and his S&M proclivites….but then why invite him on?..surely nothing else about Mosley is of greater interest…his black-shirted father aside.

Oh hang on, there’s his musical tastes which have broadened the apparently innocent and insular Jeremy Vine’s world view…

Mosley, on the other hand, was coming over as the most clubbable man in the universe, even playing Janis Joplin singing “Mercedes Benz” and affectionately declaring it “so funny in so many ways” – after which Jeremy admitted, “I’ve not heard that before, ever, [not] once in my life.” Never much of a freewheeler, Jeremy.

Can a man who works for Radio 2 and plays a great deal of music on his show really not have heard one of the most famous songs in the world?  Talk about a BBC ‘bubble’!  (4 mins 30 secs in interview)

He has though heard of Yusuf Islam’s music and loves it, as do many at the BBC…perhaps more out of solidarity than actual appreciation of his music.