Yearly Archives: 2015

The Radio Times, the BBC’s independent but apparently still loyal, Pravda-like publication has trumpeted this finding today:

Two-thirds of viewers opposed to the licence fee changed their minds after just nine days without BBC services

“Being without the BBC was absolutely dreadful, just awful,” said one man involved in the ‘deprivation study’. “I just didn’t realised how much we watched it…”

First comment of  course is that no one is proposing abolishing the BBC and therefore the BBC’s association of licence fee changes and such an abolishment is clearly just outright scaremongering intended to whip up a storm in response however ridiculous and unthinking its roots.

Curiously the very same story came out a month ago  in the Radio Times:

BBC puts families through two weeks without Sherlock, Doctor Who… and everything else in “deprivation test”

Why, why you might ask is the Radio Times recycling an old story on behalf of the BBC?

The Daily Mail might have the answer as today it published this very disconcerting news for the BBC:

We would endure adverts to end BBC licence fee: Just over half of viewers back abolishing charge and forcing corporation to fund itself

Now I’m not claiming that the BBC, and its friends, are engaged in a Machiavelllian plot to counter that bad news with their own pro-BBC propaganda by grabbing the headlines with this recycyled piece of BBC funded self-promotion…but they are aren’t they?

The problem with the BBC’s ‘Deprivation Study’ is that firstly the BBC’s premise is based upon a lie that the BBC is to be abolished, and second, that no alternative was provided…even if the BBC were abolished in its present form there would be something else in its place…so to metaphorically  ‘broadcast’ a blank screen or the sound of silence on the radio is just slightly dishonest.

Very creative these creative types.

Here is the Comres poll as reported by the Mail:

Whitehouse Consultancy BBC Survey

Poll of 2,032 British adults about how to fund to BBC, on behalf of The Whitehouse Consultancy.

Base: GB adults (n=2,035). Changes may not sum to zero due to rounding.

Amused to hear the Today programme bring us a story about the government’s Ministry of Nudge…

0835

Behavioural scientist Dr David Halpern heads up Number 10’s ‘Nudge Unit’, the world’s first government institution that uses behavioural economics to examine and influence human behaviour, to ‘nudge’ us into making better decisions. We speak to him this morning.

Only to be followed by the BBC’s own masterclass in nudging us on immigration with yet another tale of desperation, danger, bravado and a lesson in humanity…..

0840

Europe is facing what the EU has called the worst refugee crisis since a World War Two. Greece alone has seen almost 160,000 people landing on its shores since January, the majority of them Syrians. We hear the story of one young man, who fled the war-torn city of Aleppo in pursuit of a new life in the UK.

Trouble is the story was entirely without any point other than that ‘nudge’, clearly designed to connect us emotionally to an immigrant, an ‘enemy’ only being someone whose story you haven’t heard yet, and once you’ve heard his tale your heart will open to him and you’ll be on his side rooting for immigrants and immigration.

It didn’t help though that at the end the immigrant said that his tactic was just to get into the UK and thereby force Britain to accept him just by stint of him being here already and the obvious trouble it is to return such as him from whence they came.  It hardly generated any sympathy towards him.

Remember this from a previous post describing how the public were to be gulled into accepting mass immigration?….

‘We had someone on from Oxfam.  He was asked how he would sell the public the idea that we must allow in more migrants…..not a leading question at all is it?, one that pre-supposes we should let them in….once again the BBC not reportng but campaigning.

His answer was that Britain has to accept more asylum seekers… he’d sell the idea by ‘describing the misery of the lives of people in Syria and the desperation of those who are crossing the ocean with terrible risk to their lives and terrible suffering….when you get that sense of personal connectivity you recognise that these are not just people who are looking for a sunnier tomorrow, they are people who are living in fear and in poverty.’

Curioiusly that is exactly how the BBC goes about ‘reporting’ the issues already.  In other words they are ‘selling us the idea’ of more migrants being allowed in to Britain….wherever they come from and for whatever reason.’

 

Justin Webb didn’t have a good day yesterday…….here’s yet another example….

Lock, stock and barrel from Bishop Hill:

The unmentionables

Today – Met Office BBC

Bob Ward, funded by Big Oil and Jeremy Grantham….not a scientist, just a PR monkey, a mercenary attack dog set to close down debate about the science….why so scared if the science is real?

Maybe Richard Black will be penning another green inked scrawl of outrage to the Guardian over this betrayal by the BBC.

The BBC hates Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and apparently Sikhs.  It loves Muslims regardless of what they do.

Hate?  Well maybe that is too strong a word but the BBC is perfectly willing to attack the foundations of almost all religions, to attack their credibility, authenticity and integrity and to charge a religion with accusations of violence and hatred towards other religions….well, towards Islam.  No such criticism is directed towards Islam and its teachings or towards its adherents who say they commit violence in the name of Islam, but the BBC insists they don’t.

On the Today programme (08:30) we had yet another example of this double standard where Sikhs were the target of BBC censure…

There’s been a spate of unpleasant scenes at weddings held in Sikh temples involving couples where only one partner is Sikh. The weddings are being interrupted by uninvited guests who object to inter-faith weddings. We speak to Shamsher Singh, spokesperson for the National Sikh Youth Foundation, and Anita Kapoor, former member of the Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education.

Justin Webb was sat in judgement and pronounced that such actions by Sikhs were ‘unpleasant and nasty’ (kind of reminds me of the Muslim Mishal Husain saying that Christianity was deeply unpleasant and backward…wonder about her reaction to Humphrys saying the same about Islam should he ever dare to).

The Sikh spokeman responded that Sikhs, especially second and third generation in this country, were becoming more religious and wanted to follow their religion more strictly.

Justin Webb couldn’t help himself and butted in with the exclamation ‘Just like Muslims’…only to rapidly forget he said that…as the obvious conclusion would be that Muslim ‘extremists’ and ‘radicals’ were merely Muslims who wanted to adhere more strictly to their religion and to live a life devoted to its teachings….and the BBC has spent an awful lot of time and energy trying to persuade us that these extremists and radicals are not in fact Muslims…they are ‘perverters’ of the religion.

Webb then compounded his error by suggesting the Sikhs who wanted to live by the strict tenets of their religion were culturally more Punjabi and those who were more flexible were culturally British.  So we can take it from that that following such religions is not ‘British’ and impacts negatively upon society bringing ‘unpleasant and nasty’ cultural practises to the UK?

I await a similar response to Muslims who wish to impose their religion upon the world in its fundamental form…oh, hang on we’ve not only seen that in the Uk with the Trojan Horse scandal but we’ve also seen the BBC response…which was at first to deny there was any such scandal, then to admit it may have been happening but it’s really all a lot of fuss about nothing driven by racists, Islamophobes and paranoia, and finally complete acceptance but with the suggestion that perhaps if that’s what Muslims want they should be allowed to get on with it…after all weren’t Ghandi, Churchill and Mandela all once extremists too??!!!

No, can’t really see a BBC presenter or reporter stating that Islam is deeply unpleasant, backward, violent or nasty.  No problem with labelling other religions in that way though.

The memo has gone out to all and sundry at the BBC….pump out the pro-immigration propaganda at every opportunity…and they listened.

I caught this little exchange (2 hrs 4 mins) between a BBC sports presenter and British runner Rabah Yousef….

‘Rabah, you’re proudly wearing Great Britain across your vest, you were born in the Sudan and came to Britain and had to seek asylum, how much does it mean to you to be here with those two words on your chest?’

Blatantly clear what message she intends us to get because this wasn’t really about Rabah Yousef, it was about all those other asylum seekers heading this way.

Now Rabah Yousef has certainly worked hard and done well for himself and for British athletics, and has picked up an impressive amount of colloquial English…..but he’s not an asylum seeker, more of a draft dodger to be blunt, as he admits….he came to the UK and saw the opportunities on offer here and decided he wanted some of that….as the Telegraph tells us…..

Excelling both on the track and in jumping disciplines, it was on what should have been a routine trip with the Sudanese junior athletics team at the age of 14 that he made a sudden decision that would change the course of his life.

Stopping off in Sheffield for a training camp en route to the World Junior Championships in Jamaica, the young teenager made a break for it. He ran away, he hid and he lied – all in the name of becoming a better athlete.

“Athletics in Sudan was cut-throat,” the 28-year-old says. “They recruit you into the military and if you don’t train they threaten you. It sounds like they want the best for people but they did things that I didn’t think they should.

“I hadn’t thought about staying in Britain at all before I left Sudan but when I came here and saw the facilities and coaches I decided to give it 100 per cent to stay here and achieve my goals.”

So he had no thoughts about seeking ‘asylum’ before he saw the streets of the UK paved with gold….and only then decided he needed the protection that only a rich country like the UK could offer.

And why flee Sudan?  After all British Muslims head out there for an education...before joining ISIS:

Most of the British students at UMST were the children of British-Sudanese parents who are successful UK doctors.  They had sent their children to Khartoum to study medicine because they wanted them to reconnect with their African and Islamic roots, before returning to work as doctors in Britain.  Nine British-Sudanese students and recent graduates disappeared from Khartoum in March, flying to Turkey, and then crossing over to Syria. Seven more followed in June, although two were detained in Turkey and returned to Khartoum.

Now I don’t blame him for seeing the bright lights and being dazzled, why not grab the opportunity if it’s offered to improve your life, who wouldn’t?…My objection is to the BBC’s glorification and misleading sexing up and exploitation of his story.  He wanted a better life, he took the chance to get that, good luck to him, end of.

His story though is being used as a shining example of what can be achieved by ‘asylum seekers’…therefore, the BBC is suggesting, we should allow in more, no limit suggested, and that such generosity would result in an endless supply of brilliant runners or somesuch that will enrich and enhance our nation.

Trouble is of course he’s not really an asylum seeker, nor can the country support endless numbers of immigrants, nor do we need countless numbers of 400m runners, however brilliant.

This isn’t an argument from the BBC it’s pure emoting and manipulation of the audience’s perceptions.  There is no genuine attempt from the BBC to discuss the real issues around immigration be they a matter of resources, culture or politics.  This is just ambush tactics by the BBC, spraying pro-immigration graffiti across the airwaves catching people unawares and they hope, unthinking.

And whilst we’re here….Rabah lied to the immigration service in order to get asylum and yet no one raises an eyebrow.  Contrast that with another famous asylum seeker, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was chased from Europe by the liberals and the Left because she was a critic of Islamic values and culture….

Secrets and lies that doomed a radical liberal

Ayaan Hirsi Ali championed the rights of Islamic women and warned of the dangers to Holland from refugees. Now she must leave the country after being accused of lying her way in, writes Jason Burke in Rotterdam

I see the BBC have a new programme called Charisma: Pinning Down the Butterfly is a two-week series presented by Francine Stock starting on BBC Radio 4 on Monday, 24 August. I notice one of those to whom the BBC attribute “charisma” is Robert Mugabe. I am sure the next of kin of those white farmers murdered at the behest of this thug will be tuning in to hear just how charismatic Robert really is.

I noticed the BBC have instantly gone on the attack as regards the plans announced by Iain Duncan Smith to reform the way in which the Disability system works.

To my mind, IDS is being very sensible, seeking to move the model away from an absolutist whether you can work or not to one that examines how much work some might be able to do. To listen to the BBC, and I’m thinking of William Crawley on BBC Talkback here in Northern Ireland, one could be forgiven for thinking that IDS is suggesting culling everyone who claims this benefit and killing the firstborn for extra cruelty. It seems that everybody claiming it is “the most vulnerable” and utterly deserving of a life on welfare. As IDS points out, there will be some seriously disabled people who cannot work and they will be protected – but there are others out there who could benefit from work and this system is about trying to encourage and help them to find it. The BBC hates IDS and that is as good a recommendation as he is going to get.

Time for a new one of these. What’s been bothering YOU about the BBC and its bias? Detail it here.

After a tragic and shocking event like the air crash at the Shoreham Air Show in which possibly 20 or more people were killed it would be expected that there would be a feeding frenzy from the Press with all sorts of claims, accusations and wild assertions being made. You’d expect the BBC, as an organisation that has no papers to sell and no axe to grind, to stand back and take a considered look at the crash and its surrounding circumstances.  However listening to John Humphrys this morning on the Today programme (08:10) when he was haranguing John Turner, chairman of the British Air Display Association, I got the impression that this was an interview driven more by emotion and anger, with a good dose of holier than thou sanctimony mixed in with a little bit of ignorance than a measured news interview.  Consider also that the pilot of the aircraft, Andy Hill, was very experienced, ex-RAF Harrier pilot, and no doubt very ‘responsible’ and would have been highly aware of the risks and no doubt shaped his display to ensure it was as safe as possible…..something that Humphrys seems to have overlooked.

Humphrys’ thrust was that the Airshow had been highly irresponsible in allowing the aircraft to display overland and that, obviously, it should have been done over the sea….because there was nowhere for a plane to crash land should the need arise.

Well let’s have a look at Shoreham and see…I’ve put the video of the crash at the top of the post so that you can see that the aircraft approached from wide open countryside and did the loop the loop whilst in open country.

The Mail provides this graphic to show that the people on the road were incredibly unlucky to be hit…and note that the runway is actually directly next to the crash site…so a plane taking off or landing, not doing aerobatics, could have crashed in exactly the same spot….

Look on Google Earth and you can check out the exact layout of the land and you can see that to the north is the open country, to the south is the sea  with urban areas either side….there is plenty of space for an air show.

What do the Red Arrows do? Do they display overland and built up areas?  Yes they do…

….but here’s their latest at Bournemouth where they displayed over the sea but also flew over land…..

The Daily Mail and the Mirror , amongst others in the Press, have got another angle on this…the Red Arrows, they tell us, won’t fly over Shoreham because it’s too dangerous….well, they may have changed their criteria since 2009, but here’s the Red Arrows at Shoreham in 2009 flying north to south:

But let’s go back to John Humphrys and his outrage at the Shoreham Airshow’s  dangerous ‘irresponsibility’….what has he got to say about Farnborough?…once again Google Earth it and you can see the surrounding area is massively built up with even less open land.

Here’s the Red Arrows flying overland at Farnborough last year…

If you are going to pillory someone on national radio, on the BBC’s prime news programme, at the prime slot of 08:10, then you’d better get things right and in perspective….perhaps he should read the BBC’s archives…here they could have told him that a Red Arrows plane crashed, after displaying over the sea, on land.  Perhaps Humphrys thinks the planes should take off and land at sea just to be really safe.

As far as I can tell this interview was pure emotion and ignorance.  The deaths were shocking and tragic but to start whipping up outrage and sounding off about practically closing down air displays is highly disproportionate and wrongheaded based on a complete misreading of the situation and a lack of perspective.

Certainly things need to be looked over as always but to hang someone out to dry based on your own prejudice isn’t news or even  considered opinion, it’s a kangaroo court.

Remember Locherbie?  What would Humphrys say about the routing of airliners using this extreme case as an example?

Apparently Alex Salmond would like to ship the BBC’s Nick Robinson off to a desert island and abandon him there….the spat continues as Salmond uses Robinson as his whipping boy.

The former First Minister described as “ludicrous” the outgoing BBC political editor’s comparison between the separatists’ mass protests against his reporting of the campaign last year and Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Robinson bites back…the SNP are the anti-Establishment party, one which, Robinson suggests, organised the protests against the BBC….

• Nick Robinson ‏@bbcnickrobinson Aug 21

  .@GeorgeMonbiot What you call “anti establishment” runs govt in Scotland. Governing parties protesting outside a media HQ not a good look