Yearly Archives: 2015

The Guardian keeps pumping out the pro-BBC stuff.  Here’s BBC executive Jane Tranter telling us how fabulous the BBC is…and yet not only is she jumping ship for the commercial world she also puts a whacking great hole in the BBC’s main line of defence…that it is the central prop of the creative industries in the UK which would whither and die without BBC support.

The Guardian says…

As Jane Tranter prepares to head her own UK production company, she talks about Doctor Who, her fears for the BBC – and why Wales is like New York.

It quotes Tranter saying this in response to the government’s review and the suggestion that the BBC should be smaller and do less…..

‘The BBC should mean something to all people, it should be the people’s broadcaster. To think the BBC should be made for a cultural elite with a more narrowcast is patronising.’

But the BBC is made for a cultural elite, made by them, for them.  They have zero interest in your views on immigration, Europe, Islam or austerity.

Tranter goes on….

“One thing that really strikes me is how much time politicians have got to tell the BBC what programmes they should be making. You wouldn’t get Barack Obama doing that over here.”

Apart from the obligatory mention of the sainted Obama does she say anything of note here?  Is she right? Should politicians keep out of BBC business?  If not politicians who?  The BBC itself?  Why should that small coterie of culturally elite, metropolitan media types, have the monopoly on what the BBC produces and the values and views it propagates?

The BBC has a very self-serving view of its place and role in society.  In its own eyes it is a unique stand alone organisation beholden to no-one.  An organisation that has a very religious view of itself in that it is untouchable, beyond criticism and reproach and yet has the right to pass moral judgement on society and dictate the shape and behaviour of that society. Much like Jesus it believes itself to be the product of a virgin birth unsullied by association with mankind, sent to save us from ourselves…and claims it is being sacrificed, crucified, because of its beliefs and values.

Unfortunately far from springing from nowhere in an immaculate conception the BBC’s first incarnation was as a commercial enterprise before being nationalised by those dreadful politicians…it is the love child of politicians and commercial companies, and even those companies had their broadcasts shaped by government.  When the BBC was nationalised as a public service, which the BBC seems to forget, it was still shaped by the government and owes its initial success to toeing the government line on the General Strike.

The BBC is a creation of the politicians in its present form….it owes pretty much everything to its unique status gifted to it by those politicians who set out its mission in the Charter.

To claim that politicians should have no role in deciding the size, shape and role of the BBC is absurd….it is their creature to start with…..and it is curious that when the likes of Harriet Harman, or Tories like Lords Fowler and Patten, speak up for the BBC then the BBC is happy to be the subject of their benevolent scrutiny and quote their warm words extensively.

The BBC is in any case far from independent of politics.  Its charter obliges it to maintain civil society and citizenship….a very political charge on it.  That’s an obligation given to it by parliament…politicians.  They therefore have an interest in the BBC to ensure that it is carrying out its duty…one they generally neglect which is why this site exists.

The BBC, a public service, should not be left to decide what a ‘civil society’ or ‘citizenship’ looks like.  That is surely for a democratic Parliament to decide not a small group of culturally, socially and financially elite people who happen to have got jobs at the BBC and then recruited like-minded people to work with them….the result of which we see today as they try to impose their very particular notion of what society should look like…and if you disagree they use all the resources of the BBC to either lock you out of the debate or to attack and destroy you as with Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson.

Politicians have an important role in deciding what such a society should look like and to require the BBC to work towards promoting and ‘maintaining’ that vision.  The BBC’s independence comes in only in its decisions on how to carry out that obligation, but certainly not in deciding what that obligation should be.

That is of course if you believe the BBC should have such a role in engineering what a society should look like…which I doubt it should…being too open to manipulation by its own employees….

Tranter goes on to say [Funny how she allows herself to have ‘very strong views’ about the BBC’s shape]….

“I have got very strong views about BBC Studios and they may not be the BBC’s,” says Tranter. “What they need to look at is why was it once the most exciting place in the industry to work in and why is it not now.

“I always felt the BBC was a really cool place to work, where you could make the kind of programmes you couldn’t necessarily get your hands on anywhere else. For me it was just really exciting and energising and challenging and they need to put that feeling back.”

That’s interesting isn’t it?  The BBC insists that it is the lynchpin that the whole creative industry swings around and that the British economy would lose out if the BBC were somehow ‘diminished’ and yet here we have a BBC executive telling us the BBC maybe past it having lost its energy, its excitement and its challenge.

She tells us that she believes her new commercial enterprise will itself be a ‘lynchpin’ for the creative industries bringing huge benefits to the economy……

It is forecast the new company could bring in as much as £100m to the Welsh economy over the next 10 years.

Tranter said Wales could be a “world leader” within the decade.

“TV has changed beyond all recognition in the past decade. Huge international productions made on movie scale budgets have put British TV at the forefront of this revolution,” she said. “Bad Wolf has the potential to be a game changer for the creative economy in Wales.”

So now we know, the commercial sector is not only growing but bursting out and generating other businesses and creative opportunities…..as the Times tells us when it reported on the ‘Top Gear’ Amazon deal….with a sub-story headlined “Big money digital media are biggest threat to the BBC”.

The Guardian has noticed the huge success and massive investment that commercial media is putting into production…..

Such changes are happening fast. BT, with turnover of £18bn plus, is buying giant packages of TV sport. Sky, with revenues of just over £11bn, is fighting as seldom before. Netflix has billions to spend. American giants are expanding everywhere: Liberty on the point of buying another chunk of ITV, NBCUniversal to invest $250m in Buzzfeed. The temptation at takeover time – when, say, Nikkei pays £844m for the FT – is to see these deals in isolation. In fact, the information and entertainment world is solidifying.

However they still want to paint a picture of a world blighted  by a ‘diminished’ BBC….

“Small” doesn’t mean beautiful; it may mean peripheral. Some critics know this well. They want a nobbled BBC. Some politicians are less savvy. They don’t understand the blight that threatens Britain’s creative sector. There’s a warning for the BBC here. Why concentrate on digital news at the expense of drama and entertainment? The royal charter writers must see a world queuing up to buy BBC content. Why turn it away, failing to understand what may be lost?”

The BBC’s Steve Hewlett, masquerading as an impartial observer, also notes the success of the commercial sector but tries to use it to deny the claim that the BBC’s licence to print money is a huge advantage over the private companies….

BBC’s rivals aren’t feeling the pinch as much as green paper suggests

What about its [The BBC’s] impact in the heartland arena of TV – where the big money is spent?

Conveniently, last week offered a chance to look at exactly how the BBC’s commercial rivals are spending that money, and how well they are doing at generating a return. And what a week they had – profits galore! Commercial television is on quite a roll.

Taken together the numbers make the idea mooted in the green paper – that the BBC is “crowding out” or in any way impeding its commercial rivals, in TV at least – seems almost absurd.

Indeed if there’s any cause for concern it might be something nearer the opposite: in other words that, after round after round of cutbacks (and in fairness an ongoing struggle too with its own inefficiency), the BBC could be in danger of being left behind.

 

So once again we hear of hugely successful commercial media companies that are ‘splurging’ money on investments in the industry and yet we keep hearing that without the BBC the industry might wither and die, or at least be reduced to a shadow of its former self.

Doesn’t seem like that is going to happen.  The majority of hugely popular and successful TV is produced by commercial companies, even the BBC’s productions are more often than not done as joint productions with outside companies or totally produced by outsiders and bought in….The Voice is one example, produced by a Dutch company…now owned by ITV ironically.

The BBC’s own production facilities have been put on a commercial basis so it’s hardly a relevant argument anymore that the BBC is the backbone of the creative industries when clearly there is massive money flowing in from the commercial companies.

That’s not to say that the BBC shouldn’t do pretty much what it does now, less the bias, but claims of being the creative industries’ bankroller and mentor are shown to be an argument that doesn’t have much weight or credibility as a reason to keep the BBC as it is.  The BBC is that comfortable fit, one that most people grow up with and enjoy its familiarity…and as Stalin said ‘Quantity has a quality all of its own’…the BBC is everywhere, nationwide, and provides a familiar backrop to whatever you are doing, wherever you are.  Shame to destroy that in the quest for that elusive target driven efficiency that will never result in quality….and its not the amount of money we pay the BBC that is the problem, it is the way it is extorted from us under great duress.  Subscription [not per programme] or a charge on income tax [not council tax] are the only two sensible funding options.  It costs over £100 million to collect the licence fee at present…what a waste of that money.

As the Telegraph says the licence fee has been made redundant…

The news that Amazon, which recently entered the content market with Prime Instant Video, has signed up Jeremy Clarkson and his crew is another seminal moment in the demise of the old TV structures. The programme will air in 2016 and take on the BBC’s new Top Gear show presented by Chris Evans. Next year’s launch could be remembered as the tipping point – the moment a new generation of content producers finally dethroned the old TV incumbents, and the BBC in particular.

Even the BBC admitted that when discussing the Amazon deal on the radio last week…and reminding us that there are no adverts on Amazon.

And the Telegraph backs up the argument that the BBC isn’t needed as the industry prop…..

All of this is a major blow for the BBC’s model and rationale. Supporters of the current taxpayer-financed set-up argue that without public service broadcasting we would see a race to the bottom – but that is not what the investments that are increasingly being made by US entrants into the market would suggest.

Thanks to new technology, it is now possible to produce cutting-edge content that is both extremely upmarket and commercially viable. It is also possible to produce water cooler, mainstream TV that was once the preserve of terrestrial players.

The BBC’s licence fee needs to go, for two related reasons. It is unfair and a horrendous distortion of the market, allowing vast amounts of taxpayer-financed content to be dumped for free on its website. Streaming services, national and regional newspaper websites and commercial TV all suffer.

The BBC classes the BJP as a right wing party and therefore it is open season on anything and everything they do.  Whilst Obama continues on his saintly progress reverentially recorded for posterity by BBC scribes, the BJP’s Narendra Modi is the subject of extremely aggressive and negative attacks that seem intended purely to mock and deride him and his party and to paint them in the worst possible light.

The BBC has already this week tried to claim that Modi is presiding over a vicious sectarian nationalist party that is set to wipe out all other religions, today it publishes what is nothing less than a extreme, negative, hatchet job on the BJP’s record in government after one year asking ‘Has India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi lost the plot?’

It paints a picture of a government out of control which is inept and incompetent.  Whilst the BBC presented a picture of Obama at the mercy of Republican diehards who blocked his enlightened, progressive legislation, Modi is a victim of his own fumbling, inept mismanagement of Parliament.

The BBC tells us that the Congress party is involved in a principled stand as it blocks legislation,  claiming that this is because they want certain allegedly corrupt BJP ministers removed from office.

Hoswever whilst they may want that the truth is that Congress are happy to use any excuse to block as much as they can and to disrupt the BJP’s policies.……‘The parliamentary stand-off in the monsoon session reached a new low on Monday with Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan suspending 25 Congress MPs for five days for “persistently, wilfully obstructing” the House.’

.and there is a reason they were kicked out of government and the BJP won a landslide….something the BBC seems to forget.

This BBC report almost gloats on the failure of Modi to push through some of his legislation…but isn’t that the point of a parliamentary democracy?…that legislation is put in front of Parliament for consideration and then voted on, or moderated as a response to public concern.  The BBC seems to prefer a dictatorship.

They quote a commentator saying Modi was guilty of “spineless populism” when he backed down on some policy…presumably they’d prefer he totally ignore the People’s voice?  In contrast how pleased was the BBC when our government backed down on the sale of forests after a ‘public outcry’, not ‘spineless populism’ but a correct response on a measure that as Miliband said ‘“Virtually every person in the country could see selling off our forests was a foolish and short-sighted policy”.  Imagine the outcry if Cameron had ignored them and sold off the forests.

The BBC gives a very simplistic view of tax reforms by Modi whilst others have a more rounded approach to reporting this…

 Mr Jaitley [BJP] published a Facebook post pointing out that Congress had been an initial advocate and consistent supporter of the GST.

He accused the party, which suffered its most humiliating defeat in last year’s national elections, of disrupting parliament for “political reasons”, or because they were “upset with the electorate for their 2014 verdict”.

“Should its [Congress’s] obstructionist tendencies inflict an economic injury on the country?” Mr Jaitley asked.

Why no mention of this though from the BBC?…

BJP government’s first year is one of the best years of Indian economic reform: US Expert

The first year of the new BJP government is one of the best years for India in terms of liberalisation and economic reforms, a top US expert has said.

“While we cannot claim this has been a perfect year in terms of liberalising the economy, it has been one of the best years on record. Certainly well ahead of the first year of either the Vajpayee or the Singh governments,” said Rick Rossow, senior fellow and Wadhwani Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies – a prominent think-tank

Rossow argued so far he believes the Modi government has done an excellent job of quickly opening new sectors to foreign investment and making other policy changes that will positively impact foreign investors.

Or why not report a different take on Modi’s ‘failures’?  That it is all a cunning ploy…he’s not really interested in these policies, they’re a side show as he plots to run India as a one party state and crush his opponents forever…

You know, it is wrong to say that Narendra Modi has done little in his year-plus as prime minister. This impression is common among those distracted by his casual and incoherent approach to economic reform, which was never his interest or his priority. Mr Modi is, in fact, settling in for the long haul. He is solidly and intelligently putting into place the structures that will change the nature of India’s liberal democracy forever, and make it something that he, his organisation, and many of his voters will be more comfortable with.

Which could just go to show that much of the criticism of Modi is from highly partisan sources…ones which the BBC is liberally quoting as reliable.

The BBC though has more dirt to dish as it tells us ‘That’s not all’…

This week’s hasty and inept decision to block access to internet porn and almost immediately lift the ban made the government the butt of social media jokes.

Sounds very simple doesn’t it?….the BJP wanted to block porn sites and then backed down completely.  Not true.

Acutely aware of the response in the mainstream media, the government too backtracked and said the ban applies only to websites projecting child porn.

So it was the likes of the Indian liberal press that forced a backtrack, a partial backtrack…it still intends to block child porn.  Curious that the BBC should gloat about a failure to control such porn due to media pressure..how ironic.   One of the problems is that the ISPs are complaining..

Internet service providers (ISPs) have refused to follow the government’s directive to allow adult websites that do not carry child pornography, saying the order is “vague and un-implementable.”

“ISPs have no way or mechanism to filter out child pornography from URLs, and the further unlimited sub-links,” Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) said.

Nothing new in governments finding such bans are more difficult than they hoped.

And that the sweeping measure caught up many innocent sites…

In its hurry to implement the order, the telecom department had even blocked sites hosting jokes, memes and other humorous content. A day later, it realized the mistake and decided to lift the ban on such websites.

The Guardian goes for outright lies as it claims the Indian Supreme Court passed a judgement that a ban on porn site was illegal and unwanted…..

The BJP’s ban on ‘porn’ sites mocks India’s democratic pretensions

But like all the BJP’s bans, what may initially seem amusing hides a darker truth. Vaswani first took his petition to the supreme court. Last month the court rejected his petition, and refused to block access to online porn. The chief justice of India, HL Dattu, called a ban on porn a “violation of Article 21” on the right to personal liberty. He said adults had a right to watch porn “within the four walls” of their home.

Vaswani then approached Pinky Anand, a lawyer who was appointed additional solicitor general by the Modi government, and the ban quickly came into force. In other words, the Indian government went against an institution of the state to side with a man whose personal beliefs happen to match theirs.

The BJP’s violation of the supreme court decision is the loudest warning yet that the Indian government is dismissive of due process. Surely leaders who think they are above the highest court in the land must also think they are above the laws of the land?

However that is complete rubbish, a complete lie in fact…even the BBC itself earlier reported the opposite….

In July, the Supreme Court expressed its unhappiness over the government’s inability to block sites, especially those featuring child pornography.

Straight from India itself….

Declining a plea to pass an interim order to block porn websites in India, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said it cannot stop an adult from exercising his fundamental right to personal liberty to watch porn within the privacy of his room.

“Such interim orders cannot be passed by this court. Somebody may come to the court and say look I am above 18 and how can you stop me from watching it within the four walls of my room. It is a violation of Article 21 [right to personal liberty],” Chief Justice H.L. Dattu observed orally.

Though denying immediate relief, the Chief Justice’s Bench acknowledged the seriousness of the issue.

“The issue is definitely serious and some steps need to be taken. The Centre [The Government] is expected to take a stand…let us see what stand the Centre will take,” Chief Justice Dattu observed, directing the government to reply in four weeks.

In one of the previous hearings on the PIL in August 2014, the Supreme Court had termed Internet porn “hydra-headed,” while the Centre had acknowledged that websites were getting too unwieldy to handle and were affecting ordinary households.

The court stated that it didn’t have the power to ban the sites not that such sites shouldn’t be banned…indeed it was pressing the government to ban them…which it subsequently did due to that pressure…….as these headlines show….

India Cracks Down on Internet Porn After Supreme Court Decision

Supreme Court’s observations prompt Centre to block 857 porn sites

The BBC’s reporting of Modi and the BJP is clearly very one-sided and partisan with an extremely negative approach to whatever the BJP government does. It seems to have no such qualms about left-wing dictators though such as Castro or any other South American fellow traveller….Guantanamo Bay was for the BBC an illegal hellhole and yet a few miles down the road the Cubans had a prison packed with political prisoners…oddly not a peep from all those lefties and human rights lawyers that raised such a stink on behalf of Islamist terrorists.

Calais migrants: British anarchists infiltrate camps to provoke trouble, police warn

This is being encouraged not by human traffickers, who wish to remain discreet, but by extreme Left elements here to manipulate the migrants in the name of their ideal of imposing a country without borders or police.”

“Among these activists are quite a few Britons,” he added. “For now they have been allowed to act with total impunity. It’s time for a return to the rule of law: they need to be identified and arrested.

Identify and arrest?….Perhaps they should look no further than the BBC’s extremist open borders incitement to immigrants and while they’re at it why not check out the BBC’s coverage of the Middle East when its correspondents gloat about the ISIS onslaught that cuts across so many borders which the BBC thinks were the result of  Imperial arrogance and ignorance ‘carved out by the British and French’...when the truth is far, far more complex….perhaps those correspondents could also have their collars felt….as this fellow has had…

Anjem Choudary charged with supporting a terror organisation

Anjem Choudary, the radical cleric, has been charged with supporting the banned terror group, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

The 48-year-old, from Ilford, was charged along with Mohammed Rahman, 32 with inviting support for a proscribed terrorist organisation, namely Isil,

 

The BBC is a cheerleader for mass immigration and terrorism….and yet it thinks politicians shouldn’t interfere in its business.  If not politicians then it’ll have to be the police.

Well, despite the best efforts of Alan Yentob, it looks like Camilla Batmanghelidjh’s “Kid’s Company” is going down. This “charity” has received £30m from Government – so it’s another fake charity – and now the noose is tightening. The BBC report on it here. Naturally they spin it in favour of poor old Camilla and the “abandoned” children.

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.