Amused to see Andrew Neil once again lose his ‘right wing’ credibility…is it cowardice, genuine feelings or political correctness that make him lose his brave professionalism and sense of what’s right and what’s not when the subject of Islam crops up?
Neil infamously tried to target Tommy Robinson at the instigation of the Islamist Mehdi Hasan [Nice that the Islamists can call on the BBC to do tailored character assassinations to order] and now he completely refuses to enter a debate about Islam in the West with Katie Hopkins resorting instead to shouting and straw man tactics.
Neil seemed more concerned with defending the BBC than anything else half the time…at one stage he claimed that the BBC got the election result correct…on the night. Well good for them….it’s just that the previous couple of months the BBC got the result entirely wrong. No good claiming some sort of credit for getting an exit poll right as the vote is actually going on….and it wasn’t a BBC poll as Neil claimed, it was a joint BBC/ITV/Sky poll done by NOP/ MORI….not only that but Sky’s coverage was considered far better than the BBC’s.
An astounding video clip. Neil made no attempt to interview Hopkins, he just read “questions” off his laptop – I presume his producer was typing them in so that Neil could concentrate on emoting. Hopkins did very well to keep her temper. He was disappointed that he couldn’t provoke her.
When I couple this “interview” with his attempt before the General Election to smear the Conservative who suggested tactical voting between Conservatives and UKIP, I no longer have any respect for him. He has abandoned journalism for propaganda.
Neil is an arrogant buffoon. I must have seen 4 o 5 of his interviews with Farage. Farage’s claim that white Labour voters in the north are switching to UKIP was always poo pooed by Neil. The topic is now never mentioned.I’ve never heard Neil say he was wrong about this even though it must have been an idee fixe of his for a year or two. Obviously, the truth or falsity of the claim was never important.
The comments Neil, McAlvoy and some other nonentity made after the interview were more revealing. They seemed genuinely nonplussed by the increasing resentment at the Muslim 5th column. “What is happening to main stream poitics?”, they ponder. The German TV commentariat also have the same puzzled look when they ask “Why are so many ordinary German citizens burning down refugee reception centres in their neighbourhood?”. They really do seem to think that everyone who is dissatisfied with the Willkommenskulturr must be a Hitler worshipping fanatic who is building a gas chamber in his cellar. The Americans also seem unhappy with the post americanism of their elites. I wonder if the French media are still similarly dismissive of the FN?
That is one of the most disgraceful ‘interviews’ I have ever seen. Kate Hopkins was trying to say some reasonable comments, nothing she said or tried to say was provocative or inflammatory but she wasn’t allowed to finish anything she wanted to say.
Post the infamous Robinson interview, Brillopad tweeted that he would interview and treat any islamist. In the few months following that, and in those days I was using twitter, I constantly reminded him and asked where was the interview.
Of course there was no such showdown on his or any other show.
Grand idea meets moral cowardice eh?
Katie shafted him in this interview, and if he’s got the guts to review it he will know.
I have never rated Neil as an interviewer. He is a one question operator, with that question written by his superiors, on his sheet of paper or lap top, which he repeatedly asks despite the fact that it has been answered in numerous ways. The shouting adds to his incompetence. Even when he has turned nasty to a left wing politician the technique has been the same – you have not answered my question, not answered my question. Their is a consistency in his selection of targets, Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, and anyone who attacks the BBC line of immigration and Islam. Neil is lucky, rarely is he pitted against a hard case of the conservative right: Pamela Geller, Anne Coulter, and Donald Trump could teach this empty mouth how to squirm before reaching for the cut off switch.
Trump does say some stupid things, I suspect to stir things up. His ‘banning of all Muslims to enter the USA’ is not a practical suggestion but it does ask a serious question about our willingness in the West to open our doors to those wanting to destroy us – and I think it well established now that certain elements in the Muslim world want to destroy us all in the West (though not really established by the BBC).
However the general reaction to Trump’s rhetoric which contains the vestige of a serious point is terribly worrying. Leftish thinking now seems to run through all our Western society like the writing through a stick of rock. The way so many people come down with the word ‘ban’ whenever they hear a comment at odds with their left dogma is a rather chilling thing. Free speech is all but dead now. People like Katie Hopkins should not be ridiculed by the likes of the BBC & the Guardian as she genuinely believes what she says, she should be allowed to say what she thinks without bullies like Neil doing their best to silence her & make her look ridiculous. Particularly so because many people without a public voice agree with Hopkins. Is their veiw secondary to the ‘correct’ thinkers who like automatons tick any anti-right petition, then put on their masks & go out to shout “scum!” at a Tory, trash a breakfast bar, & spit at a Jew.
No, Trump is no darling of the right as he is pretty obnoxious & purposely so, but when he hints at a serious concern to our future welbeing we should look beyond the horrible hair & the loud mouth & actually discuss these concerns in an adult & objective way. The BBC & the Guardian are certainly not leading that debate!
Cranbrook Phil – that’s probably the best post I have seen on the Trump statement and its aftermath. Very well said.
Thanks Demon.
Guardian journalists should have the freedom to publish middle class Leftist trash; it is the newspaper of choice for the sort of sanctimonious imbeciles who say that only whites can be racist and the USA got what it deserved when thousands were murdered at the twin towers. I also have no problem with the disinformation factory that is the BBC giving a platform for hate preachers like that Mary Beard (who seems to be working through her anger at God for making her so ugly) but I object to the way the BBC arse kiss Mary Beard (because she is a Leftist bitch) while demonizing Katie Hopkins (because she is a Conservative bitch) while pretending to be a politically neutral. The BBC is just another Leftist lobby group, and should be treated as such, and its funding by the taxpayer is not simply a gravy train for Leftists, it is an abuse of power. It is run by the sort of people who view a free society as the enemy. Support free speech and scrap the BBC.
Trump is a winner and he looks at this as a competition. First he’ll set about winning the nomination, then he’ll devise a strategy to beat Clinton. The BBCs trashing of Trump from the start is nothing short of a disgrace. Trump is actually just linking to what many are thinking that all this leftist nonsense about muslim terrorism being nothing to do with Islam is utter rubbish. It’s as ridiculous as saying that 1970s and 80s football hooliganism in the UK was nothing to do with football! Trump has the front to get up and say what many think and the ‘liberal’ left look lost for an answer. Couldn’t be the president? Could.
Most of the argument about Trump’s proposal to ban Moslems have focused on the so called impracticality of his proposal. Perhaps this needs to be addressed. It has to be admitted that no attempt to prevent any group leaving or arriving will be successful. After WW2 thousands of Nazi’s left Europe and made it safely to South America and elsewhere, despite the efforts of the red army and the allies. Note that the UK is currently failing to prevent people leaving here to join ISIS. Of course a 100% tight security net is impractical, but as with Carter’s prohibition of Iranians it can work in a limited sense, although a determined Iranian would have found a way through.
I believe 16 Moslem countries ban Jews. No one has pointed out that this is absurd and impractical, although I am sure that it is possible for a number of determined Jews to find ways of entering should they desire.
Trump’s proposal would in effect prevent many travelers with a background in Islam from entering. It is not impossible to implement. It could involve restrictions on entry of family members of known Moslems in the US, and could apply to bogus students from Islamic countries, and in a general sense place barriers on easy travel from countries with a reputation for Islamic extremism. Immigrants who then involved themselves with Islamic and anti American organizations could of course be deported.
When the inevitable civil war breaks out in Europe, the US will be obliged to impose entry restrictions to prevent out tragedy from happening there, despite the fact that they can never be 100% water tight.
There was an odd item on R4’s Today this morning. Apparently, some nonPC PCs had been contacting the media and claiming that police raids could not go ahead in certain areas if there were objections from “community leaders” or the local imam. The political commissar plod being interviewed explained that this was to do with “different styles of policing” for communities organised on various bases. Trump had “done no one any favours” with his comments. This is just a mealy mouthed confirmation that what Trump said was correct. Supposedly, plod acts independently of the executive in policing matters, yet unelected imams can determine how police operations are planned and implemented. Trump, of course, has done the police “no favours” as he has drawn attention to their unwillingness, whether from inertia or fear” to enforce the law. Anything for a quiet life. It’s not Beirut, but things may eventually end up that way. Trump thousands of miles away in the USA seems to have a better idea what is going on in the UK than top plod.
Yes ID, point well made. “different styles of policing” for communities organised on various bases’.
The PC indoctrinated plod would say that. It is a requirement of the MacPherson Report on the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.
Click to access 4262.pdf
The section on Institutional Racism is instructive on policing diverse multikulties. For example:
6.18 As Lord Scarman said (Para 4.97) there can be ” …. failure to adjust policies and
methods to meet the needs of policing a multi-racial society”. Such failures can occur
simply because police officers may mistakenly believe that it is legitimate to be
“colour blind” in both individual and team response to the management and
investigation of racist crimes, and in their relationship generally with people from
minority ethnic communities. Such an approach is flawed. A colour blind approach
fails to take account of the nature and needs of the person or the people involved, and
of the special features which such crimes and their investigation possess. As Mr Dan
Crompton, Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary (HMIC), helpfully said to us it is
no longer enough to believe “all that is necessary is to treat everyone the same. …. it
might be said it is about treatment according to need.” (Part 2, Day 2, p 57).
Now I thought that Martin Luther King advocated a colour blind approach,
‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character’.
Under multikulturalism Martin Luther King is a racist. His daughters should be treated according to their needs as members of the black/ethnic community.
So much for us all being equal in the eyes of the law.
Section 6.18 is tantamount to a suicide note when your dealing with Islamic terrorism.
The Left flourish in the public sector – the Labour Party is a public sector job creation scheme – which is why they hate a system based on freedom to choose. The last thing the public sector unions who fund the Labour Party want is freedom of choice. A free society is everything the Labour Party is against. That is why it supports the BBC.
Andrew Neil and Donald Trump do have some things in common – “the horrible hair & the loud mouth”.
I wonder how a mindless hack like Neil would cope with these two supporters of Trump. He could not shout them down Go Diamond and Lace. Here talking about immigration.
Thanks for posting that G.W.F. – great stuff.
This is brilliant, put these two in the House of posh benefit scroungers to shake the whole lot up. Corbyn-laden would be shaking in his Doc Martens.
Good to see a growing outrage against Neil’s bullying. He’s been going downhill a bit lately – Alzheimers ?
Might be Alzheimers DB, or perhaps he worries about being replaced with the proposed BBC version of Loose Women – Joke O’Burn, Lees Douchebag, Krusty Wart and Orca Gerrin – for genuine, unbiased political comment.
The trouble with Katie Hopkins, no matter how much you might sympathise with her view, is that she’s too easy to demonise. Her central point, picked up by CranbrookPhil above, is cogent. She correctly explained that a petition with 400k votes to suspend immigration until the threat of Islamisation and ideologically motivated violence is a very good demonstration of public sentiment. Shouted down. Trump calling for the same in the U.S. is indicative of the need to seriously consider the implications of Islamification.
Trump is a ridiculous buffoon and I’d ban him from the UK purely on the basis of that criminal toupee, but he’s put the sensible elephant in the room that the Islamist sympathisers are keen to obfuscate on the agenda. This is a good thing.
Neil attacked Hopkins for supporting Trump’s call on the basis that it was impractical – he’s right, it is. But the mechanism to achieve it isn’t the central point. It’s that the idea of recognising a threat from Islam in our own countries resonates with the people. It’s a shame Hopkins wasn’t allowed to express, or didn’t press strongly enough, this point.
Its not a toupee, its a creation made from what little hair he does have, yes it looks daft, but this is the problem we have in this media led society, we must all look nice, if he were a woman with alopecia and anyone took the piss, the feminists and the Twitterati would be jumping all over them.
Bugger the fact that he talks sense, lets vote for the pretty boy’s because they ‘look nice’, note that the same happens with Farage, the press always choose the most unflattering picture they can find. This ain’t the bloody X-Factor.
I was introducing some levity into my post Geoff – it’s the weekend!
Agree – Al Beeb maintains archives of unflattering photographs of those with the ‘wrong’ views.
Keep your hair on 😉
It wasn’t a dig, merely pointing out that this is how shallow politics have become, from eating a bacon sandwich to a bad comb over…
It’s OK Geoff
I agree with you – media driven views are shallow, society, at least mainstream society (the X Factor audience) is shallow.
I’m beautiful though.
This is the first time I’ve seen the interview and feel totally bemused that Hopkins should be demonised for wanting to open a serious topic for debate. That was the main thrust of her argument and why she thought Trump was showing leadership i.e. because no other politician wants to. The BBC should hang its head in shame that one of its so-called impartial interviewers should be so obviously hostile to such a basic democratic principle. She was not breaking the law and not even being offensive – not easy these days with the thought crime minefield you have to tiptoe through. Her point about Muslim groups disappearing without anyone in the ‘community’ knowing anything about it was a good example of why we should be concerned about the rising number of closed, parallel societies we now have in this country. His response ‘lots of people go missing’ was an appalling lefty smokescreen tactic of irrelevant moral equivalence.
No, her only crimes were holding views the BBC finds distasteful and which are contrary to its ‘Islam is beyond criticism’ narrative, and writing for the Daily Mail. Oh, and accusing the BBC of bias – always guaranteed to get the vitriol going.
Hopkins 1 Neill 0 in my book. He was appalling.
Billionaire Saudi prince: Trump should end campaign
“@RealDonaldTrump, you are a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America,” Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal tweeted Friday. “Withdraw from the U.S. presidential race as you will never win.”
Bin Talal’s request follows Trump’s controversial call for a ban on admitting Muslims into the U.S. Trump has repeatedly defended the measure as necessary to prevent radical Islamic terrorism on American soil.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/262982-billionaire-saudi-prince-trump-will-never-win
When a Saudi Arab objects to Trump’s call for banning Muslim immigration, you know you have the correct policy to hurt Islam where it hurts most.
If one looks at the map of where the petitioners to ban D Trump from the UK are coming from, they are mostly from enriched areas.
Why do all these foreigners – Cameron; this Saudi Prince, Netanyahu etc think it is acceptable for them to try to influence U.S. public opinion and interfere in who the Republican Party decide to select as their candidate, or who the Americans decide to elect as their president?
They all need to keep their snouts out. The U.S.A. is a democracy – government by the people – let that system operate.
I agree. Its OK if Saudis etc interfere in the internal dynamics of a vibrant democracy such as the USA, but it is downright stupid for Cameron to have said anything.
Just suppose. Come Dec 2016 and Donald Trump is president of the USA. Is Cameron going to ring DC offering his congratulations. How after his absurd performance? The Conservatives and Republicans are supposed to share a common PoV. Will Cameron have to go cap in hand to DC? What if Brits decide to leave the EU. We will need a strong and friendly partner in the USA. Even more humble posture.
David Cameron should have given some thought to what he said about Trump. Trump is not contesting a position in some two bit African or ME country but as the president of a very powerful country. Cameron, by his ill advised comments, has put Britain’s interests in jeopardy. Its his duty to guard them and not vice versa.
Another thing to note. We are just one Jihadi attack away from an America that will go full Clint Eastwood.
I agree. Its OK if Saudis etc interfere in the internal dynamics of a vibrant democracy such as the USA, but it is downright stupid for Cameron to have said anything.
Just suppose. Come Dec 2016 and Donald Trump is president of the USA. Is Cameron going to ring DC offering his congratulations. How, after his absurd performance? The Conservatives and Republicans are supposed to share a common PoV. Will Cameron have to go cap in hand to DC? What if Brits decide to leave the EU. We will need a strong and friendly partner in the USA. Even more humble pie..
David Cameron should have given some thought to what he said about Trump. Trump is not contesting a position in some two bit African or ME country, but the president of a very powerful country. Cameron, by his ill advised comments, has put Britain’s interests in jeopardy. Its his duty to guard them and not vice versa.
Another thing to note. We are just one Jihadi attack away from an America that will go full Clint Eastwood.
AS
Two problems with this democracy business.
One, giving stupid people a vote, result stupid decisions.
Two, nobody trying to be elected has ever trusted the electorate, so bribes, spin, duplicate votes,
propaganda, lies, threats, irregularities in counting, fraud in constituency creation, fraud in opinion
polls and no doubt some others I have forgotten.
With the latest creative method being import you own voters: mainly Muslims in by the left wing Labour
party, mainly Hispanics in the USA by the left wing Democratic party, as ever the lefties are cooking
the books.
So the Prince would have no objection if I, as a non-muslim, visit Mecca then. Or is that ban somehow different?
The prince would have no objection at all. In fact he would love to have Hindus and Buddhists build temples in Mecca. Christians to build churches – no problems. Islam is tolerant religion of peace. Everyone says so.
Who? David Cameron, Tony Blair, the BBC, all the Western media, Pres Obama, Clintons, UN chiefs, the Pope, archbishop of Canterbury, sundry bishops, CNN, and all the rest of Western media.
We will forgive the Saudis as far as Jews are concerned. It may be a bridge too far.
This from the land where WOMEN have been allowed to vote in their very first election today-as long as they didn`t approach any men.
Or presumably vote in any other way that “UncleAnjem” did at Oldhams Post Office a few weeks ago.
That will be 10,000 votes then for Claire Baldie as Sports Wiz of the Year 2015 coming from Riyadh PO Box Number 666, disabled sports seeing as there`ll not be too many two handed sportsmen or ladies to admire.
“If one looks at the map of where the petitioners to ban D Trump from the UK are coming from, they are mostly from enriched areas.”
The Americans have a term which fits this anti-Trump petition – Astroturfing. This is where a political group uses technology to create multiple identities which are then used to give the impression of a mass movement or a particular “public” view. The opinion of the “grass roots” of public opinion is faked.
Even The Guardian admits that the technique exists, although it blames the nasty tobacco companies.
“It now seems that these operations are more widespread, more sophisticated and more automated than most of us had guessed. Emails obtained by political hackers from a US cyber-security firm called HBGary Federal suggest that a remarkable technological armoury is being deployed to drown out the voices of real people.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/feb/23/need-to-protect-internet-from-astroturfing
I wonder if the BBC would like to use some of its journalistic resources to examine the anti-Trump petition for astroturfing?
Ezra Levant looks at what Donald Trump actually said, and what it was based on.
Ezra, Turkey, geopolitics and the wind up: Links 1 on Dec. 12 – 2015
http://vladtepesblog.com/2015/12/12/ezra-turkey-geopolitics-and-the-wind-up-links-1-on-dec-12-2015/
or
A Rasmussen poll of ALL American voters finds 46% agree with Trump on a temporary ban on Muslims entering the US, while 40% disagree and 14% don’t know. Some ammo next time the establishment media types try their bullying tactics on those they deem ‘islamaphobic’, and too extreme to treat respectfully.