THE NEW VOICE ON TODAY…

Wonder what you make of this news?

“The BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson is to step down from his role after 10 years. He will replace Jim Naughtie on the presenting team of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Robinson will also report and present across television and radio for BBC News and Current Affairs.”

I’ll be glad to see the back of Naughtie, he identified so readily with the Left it was visceral. Robinson is an interesting character but Today is steeped in bias and it strikes me it will be very difficult to provide balance. Thoughts?

BUDGETING FOR BIAS…

Well, seeing as how Labour weren’t up to much of a response to the Osborne Budget, the BBC obviously felt that they needed to step up to the challenge. All day they have been running the following attack line…

Budget 2015: Squeeze to hit 13m families, says IFS

And below the headline this..

Thirteen million UK families will lose £260 a year on average because of the Budget’s tax and benefits changes, says the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

Well, the IFS is entitled it its opinion, of course, but it might be nice of the BBC to preface such with the qualification that the IFS swings to the Left. Furthermore, even the left-biased IFS caveat their claims with words like “could” but the BBC discard that when it come to headline generation and soundbites for their news bulletins.

Question Time Live Chat – Last in Series!!!

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David Dimbleby presents the last show in the series, from Sheffield, South Yorkshire. On the panel are UKIP MEP Louise Bours, Conservative (in name only) MP Ken Clarke, the SNP’s Tommy Sheppard MP (Yay!), Labour’s Chuka Umuna and journalist Rachel Johnson. I’m so glad to see that the huge demand for the SNP in England has not gone unheeded.

Kick off Thursday at 10.35 pm

Chat here

Register here if necessary.

Never Mind The Legend, Print the Truth

 

 

As the Egyptian intellectual Abd al-Munim Said once observed, “The biggest problem with conspiracy theories is that they keep us not only from the truth, but also from confronting our faults and problems.” They also make us look like loons. Can we give it a rest, please?

That’s a quote from a Mehdi Hasan article about conspiracy theories and why Muslims are so in thrall to them.  Which is pretty funny when you know Hasan’s record of whinging about the grand and terrible conspiracy against Muslims such as this in the Guardian by him…Misreporting Muslims, …and of course who can forget this massive whinge...Mehdi Hasan: sanctions for ‘dishonest, demonising press coverage’ of Muslims….and today we have another….Life for British Muslims since 7/7 – abuse, suspicion and constant apologies

Mehdi is starting to look like a loon…please can you give it a rest!?  Try confronting your faults and problems and stop blaming them on the immoral, stupid Kafir cattle.

Why examine the honourable Mehdi and his ranting?  Allison Pearson in the Telegraph tells us that:

We have failed the victims of 7/7

Ten years after the 7/7 bombings, the threat from terrorism is real and deadly – yet many Muslims still fail to accept our British liberal values, says Allison Pearson

Against that horrifying background, consider the complaint this week in the Guardian by the writer and editor, Mehdi Hasan. He says that since 7/7, British Muslims have met with discrimination – “subject to unprecedented scrutiny; tagged as a suspect community, the enemy within, a ‘fifth column’ (to quote Nigel Farage)”.

Well, yes. If substantial numbers of men from a certain group in society are presenting an unprecedented threat to a country, then scrutiny and suspicion do tend to be the result. As for discrimination, try lying on a beach in Tunisia and being shot dead for no reason other than not being Muslim.

I’m not sure that Hasan and commentators like him fully grasp the widespread dismay at the failure of many Muslims to accept the values of our society.

Indeed….what first peaked my interest was this in the New Statesman...the title annoyed me…

A decade after 7/7, our anti-terror efforts stopped attacks but lost the battle for hearts and minds

The writer of course means Muslim hearts and minds…but isn’t the truth that Muslims have lost the hearts and minds of the rest of the population, not just with the bombs that went off and the seemingly endless attempts to carry out more attacks but the relentless barrage of Muslim rhetoric, intimidation, threats and hectoring, the attempts to force Islam down everyones throat whilst crying out that they, the Muslims, are the real victims of 9/11 and 7/7?

Allison Pearson by coincidence has expressed exactly what I was thinking….and Hasan has popped up with the usual special pleading and claims of victimhood to confirm the thought.

The New Statesman article wasn’t what it initially seemed, yet another Hasan type litany of Muslim woes at the hands of the Kafir.  What we actually got was a condemnation of the government strategy but not in the way Hasan and his cronies might want…it says we must change the narrative and make more of our Western values and emphasising what Muslims have here that they won’t have even in a notional ‘Muslim’ state……

The government’s Prevent strategy has one overarching goal: dissuading young British Muslims from supporting terrorism against the UK. That approach seems reasonable but has been poorly calibrated.

The focus on achieving security at home left the jihadist campaigns abroad largely unaddressed. Moreover, some preachers in the UK were allowed to promote radical views, in the hope that this might act as a “safety valve” for otherwise angry men, dissipating and deflecting their energies.

Some of the most basic ideas that define our society and our whole way of life were never promoted with enough vigour or conviction. Freedom of speech, religious liberty and protections for minorities have all been secured only because of Britain’s secular values. This is what gives religious conservatives the opportunity and right to practise their faith as they see fit while allowing others to live in freedom and dignity, too. This has never been robustly explained by our government, let alone celebrated by it.

“Regardless of being born and bred in the west, the epitome of democracy, our Islam was not washed away,” the Mannans said in their statement from Syria. Yet it was secular Britain that allowed them to live as free Muslims, pursuing whatever version of Islam they saw fit. Will such religious pluralism be tolerated in their new land?

This of course is what the BBC should have been doing all along…after all it is charged with maintaining civil society and cohesion…instead of which it has served to widen the gap between Muslim and non-Muslim, pandering to the rhetoric of the radicals and peddling their propaganda whilst all the time variously condemning the West both as it is today and its history telling Muslims they have been victims not just through present day actions in the Middle East but throughout history at the hands of the West.

 

To finish I’ll just raise a few points about Hasan’s latest article in which he uses the most blatant images and rhetorical tricks to try and twist the narrative his way.

He says ‘How about the Muslim residents of the three areas in Birmingham that in 2010 were to be surrounded by a “ring of steel” of 218 “spy cameras” as part of a counter-terrorism operation?.

Now Muslims and their apologists often make a comparison with Northern Ireland, Nicky Campbell is especially guilty of this, and yet there is no comparison…NI was about land and politics not religion.  However Muslims often complain that no other group is treated as if they were terrorists….hmmm…have they not heard of NI?  If they want to know what real anti-terror policies look like try NI when it had its 30,000 strong security force, its watch towers, its SAS ambushes, its military patrols, its peace walls, and yes, its CCTV…..and why not have all that if it keeps the peace on our streets on the Mainland?  After all the good Giles Fraser suggests it might not be such a bad idea…in order to protect a ‘tolerant Islam’…

It might feel a little more convincingly like a Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, commissioned perhaps as a celebration of religious plurality, were it not for the seven tonnes of Russian-made BRDM-2 armoured personnel carrier stationed outside.

And maybe they are right to do all this. For Kazakhstan has, within its own set limits, developed a properly deserved reputation for religious toleration. For instance, a huge blue synagogue has been built on the outskirts of town, one of many. Forget all that rubbishy racist stuff about Borat and “The Running of the Jew” – this is a place of genuine diversity, where different faiths rub along remarkably well. Despite all the off-putting pomposity of the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, it’s not a totally unrealistic reflection of how things are here. Maybe there is something for that tank to protect.

 

Hasan tells us that ‘Depending on which poll you believe, a majority of Brits believe “Muslims create problems in the UK”, link “Islam with extremism” and would be “bothered” by the building of a big mosque in their neighbourhood.’

and Tweets this:

Trouble is there is this research from the Pew Foundation that suggests British Muslims are at odds with British society, if not supporting ISIS, or their methods….

Muslims Distrust Westerners More than Vice Versa

In particular, British Muslims stand apart from their coreligionists elsewhere in Europe. They receive the highest religious-cultural negativity score, indicating more negative attitudes.

Britain’s score, based on the perception of British Muslims of Western non-Muslims with regards to these  characteristics, was higher than other European Muslims, and in  fact, closer to the score (opinion) of Muslims in Muslim countries. British Muslims are more inclined to see a conflict between Islam and modernity; more likely to self-identify along religious lines than national lines; and more deeply concerned about the future of Muslims in Britain. When asked, “Is there a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a Modern society?”, almost half of British Muslims (49%) felt there was.

Sheesh!!!

Hasan trumpets this.. .’In 2007 a fresh-faced MP spent two days at the home of a Muslim family in Birmingham and then wrote boldly of how it wasn’t possible to “bully people into feeling British: we have to inspire them”; “you can’t even start to talk about a truly integrated society while people are suffering racist … abuse … on a daily basis”.’

Indeed…let’s change that narrative from Muslims as victims and start to highlight all the good things the West has done for Muslims both here and abroad…..the BBC should start the ‘presses rolling’ straight away.

 

Crocodile Tears For The Victims of 7/7 And Tunisia?

 

For the BBC there seems to be no ‘why’ for 7/7.

Or at least when listening to their coverage of the anniversary one thing is missing….the question asking what was the motivation for the attacks, why did 4 Muslims attack ‘The West’?

The BBC looks even to have put aside its normal infantile, dangerous and highly politicised reason…the Iraq War….The BBC knows this is a false message, a deliberate lie by the BBC intent on hiding the real reasons for ‘radicalisation’.

In its place there is a constant stream of remarks about ‘young British lads’, though not ‘Muslims’, and thoughts that we musn’t ‘demonise Muslims’. …repeatedly emphasising this quote from Baroness Manningham-Buller, ex-director-general of MI5:

“I think we’ve got to be very careful not to demonise the Muslim community, quote unquote – I’m not sure there is a Muslim community – there are a lot of British Muslims from all sorts of communities.

“From the time I was in the service successes often depended on British Muslims giving us information in confidence – often at risk to their lives – and Muslim members of staff helping us to understand these issues. And therefore I think labelling whole communities is not wise.”

[Always odd how it is always claimed that the Jihadists are not Muslims and yet the cause of radicalisation is Muslim anger….so at what point do ‘angry Muslims’ become ‘apostates’ and join the ranks of the infidels? Just where is that line when a Muslim becomes a non-Muslim?]

Is it demonisation to ask why the ‘Muslim community’, and it is ‘credible’, mainstream community leaders who push this message, consistently sends out a message about being angry about British foreign policy and that this is the cause of radicalisation….in effect reinforcing the message of the Jihadi recruiters with the same message…..the same Muslim community that thinks 9/11 and 7/7 were conspiracies by intelligence agencies, the Jews or this government….so much so that the BBC had to put out a film showing such beliefs about 7/7, spread by mainstream Muslim leaders, were completely wrong.

Here is an image from a BBC report into 7/7 many years ago titled ‘It starts here: Street campaigning and agitation, late 1990s’…..  ‘It’ of course being Muslim radicalisation…..

An Al Muhajiroun poster from the mid 1990s declaring "Muslims against western values"

The BBC knew the real reasons for radicalisation and yet, despite that report, still pushes the message about the Iraq War so the same questions that are asked of the Muslim communty can of course be asked of the BBC and its  message about the Iraq War, a ‘war against Islam’ and Britain’s, the West’s, ‘history of ancient wrongs’ against Muslims.

Fresh from blaming the Jews for making themselves targets it may be somewhat galling for people to see the BBC now fawning over the survivors and the families of victims of 7/7 when the BBC has done so much to promote the Jihadi cause, just as some people may have been surprised if not angered by having the BBC’s Phil Mackie sent to report on and sympathise with the relatives of those killed in Tunisia…the same Phil Mackie who made it his job to downplay the Trojan Horse plot and attempt to dismiss it as the work of racist, paranoid Islamophobes….

pm th…and who admitted that he tried to avoid using the words ‘extremist’or ‘Islamist’ in relation to the story…thus covering up the motivation behind the plot…and the fact that ‘conservative’ Islam,, ie Islam, is in relation to a Western democratic, secular society ‘extreme’.

Of course it wasn’t just Mackie but the BBC itself that tried to paint the plot as a hoax….the BBC coming up with this infamous lie…

It was alleged last year extremists had tried to take over several schools in Birmingham to advance radical interpretations of Islam.

A series of official investigations found the claims to be groundless.

Really?…….from yesterday….

Peter Clarke was head of the Counter Terrorism Command at Scotland Yard from 2002 until 2008

7/7 bombings: Why we can never stop tackling extremism

There can be no room for complacency.

Last year, I was asked to conduct the so-called Trojan Horse inquiry into allegations of infiltration of schools by Islamist extremists. The evidence was clear that there were people in positions of influence in some schools in Birmingham who held intolerant and extremist views.

Extraordinarily, the Commons education select committee published a report earlier this year saying that only one, isolated example of extremism had been found. This flew in the face of the evidence, and the Government has now firmly rejected the report, saying that it “downplays the seriousness of events in Birmingham and risks undermining our efforts to tackle extremism”.

The tragic irony is that this government rebuttal was issued on the day that 39 people were murdered on a Tunisian beach by a man whose route to terrorism may have started with someone telling him that intolerance of others’ beliefs and values is a virtue.

 

Despite that even yesterday’s BBC’s report of the Government reaction still plays the same game it played before…

The government has claimed MPs risked undermining efforts to tackle extremism by downplaying the seriousness of the “Trojan Horse” events in Birmingham.

Several inquiries and investigations were launched after an anonymous letter surfaced last March containing instructions for installing sympathetic school governors.

It has since been regarded as a hoax in some quarters and claims made about a number of schools named in the letter have been deemed groundless.

 

Perhaps the politicians are right and the BBC needs to pick a side…..the Jihadis or Western Society….many people might suggest the BBC already has picked a side…that of the Jihadis.

 

 

 

 

If You Want To Get Ahead….

A stull from a video showing HSBC bank workers repoertedly filming themselves staging a mock ISIL style beheading of an Asian colleague before posting the footage online

 

BBC ignoring this story so far which is in every other news outlet big and small since several hours ago…

HSBC employees sacked for ‘abhorrent’ mock Isil execution video

The bank has apologised after a video emerged online of staff dressed in jumpsuits apparently pretending to behead an Asian colleague

 

The Sun has the video here.

Most if not all the ‘colleagues’ seem to be ‘Asian’….This is a tale from Birmingham, home of the Trojan Horse.

Why would the BBC ignore a story about ‘Asians’ pretending to behead somebody?  If it was for some reason a Christian beheading a Muslim/Asian….you can imgaine the reaction.

The Guardian has just caught up….the BBC can’t be far behind.

Anyway…..here’s a Tweet from a while back that might be thought provoking and ironic in light of HSBC’s reaction…

Keep in mind that HSBC enabled 60,000 beheadings/murders in Mexico. Scots are right to want to see the back of them.

‘In Mexico, many of the drug war’s dead are innocents. In the six years of drug war that have ravaged the country, more than 60,000 are dead and more than 10,000 are missing. Because only 2 percent of cases are granted judicial review, families of the lost regularly become their own investigators. They find, too often, horrors tied to the authorities themselves.

This summer, a Senate investigation found that HSBC was complicit in allowing Mexican drug cartels to launder billions of dollars through its U.S. operations. The Senate report also says U.S. regulators knew that the bank had a poor system to defend against laundering, but did nothing to demand improvement. While US forces were training and arming the Mexican military to fight cartels, US bankers were cashing in on cartel profits.’

Back To The Future Perfect

 

 

Not really BBC bias other than an example of why the EU is so hopeless and yet the BBC still cheerleads relentlessly for it.

 

Doesn’t this from 2011 all look familiar…I had to keep checking the date to make sure I was reading it properly….

Eurozone: UK ready to back IMF bailouts

Nick Robinson | 23:43 UK time, Wednesday, 2 November 2011

Britain is standing by to give more money to the IMF so that it can, in turn, lend more money to Eurozone countries like Greece, Italy or Spain who are struggling to service their debts.

The government now believes, I’m told, that there are only three ways out of the current crisis – one they hope for, one they fear and a third they are ready to accept.

They are:

1. Eurozone leaders succeed in getting last week’s deal back on track despite Greece’s plan to use a referendum to secure a better deal

2. Greece leaves the euro

3. Enhanced IMF funding for the Eurozone’s struggling economies

So just how good is the EU at solving its problems?….4 years ago Greece was a basket case with exactly the same problems (or rather they had the same problem just less debt) and the EU kicked the can way down the road….and Greece is still a basket case.

Why didn’t the EU just grasp the nettle in 2011 and either cough up and take the losses or allow Greece to slide off back to the Drachma?  Instead they pumped in even more money for no gain….and which they look to lose either way.

Can’t really see the problem with letting Greece refinance its loans….the UK just paid off its debts from WWI last year…and we helped Germany and Japan retool after the war and become the economic powerhouses that ironically drove our own industries into the ground.

The price of an ‘EU’, that grand political project, will have to be paid if they want to keep the show on the road….this is surely what the EU was all about…the rich countries bailing out the poor…..reality is beginning to sink in about what the EU really means…..a redistribution of funds from the rich to the poor…even if the poor have beggared themselves.

 

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Janet Daley in the Telegraph should possibly have the last word……

What we are seeing now is not just a struggle about debt, or national power, or even democratic accountability. This is really the endgame for the great mythical beasts of the last century. First, there is post-war Europe’s fear of its own populations which no one has bothered to re-assess for 50 years. Then we have the last gasp of Marxist delusion which uses 19th century social conditions to understand the post-industrial world. Surely we should be able to move on. We don’t want another 100 years of this, do we?

 

Oh!

 

You’d have to be a completely heartless bastard to laugh.

The BBC has spent the last 5 years chastising the Coalition for its welfare reforms and in the run up to the election loudly demanded to know the details of the proposed £12 billion in savings from the welfare budget…and now we know, at least one bit….the BBC is going to pay a huge chunk of it itself!

Chancellor Osborne to hit BBC to fund welfare cuts – Sunday Times

Chancellor George Osborne plans to launch a 650 million pound raid on the BBC to help cover the country’s benefits bill, forcing the corporation to meet the cost of free television licences for the over-75s, the Sunday Times said.

It quoted senior government sources as saying a deal is close that will force the BBC to take on the cost of the 4.5 million licences — worth 145.50 pounds each — from the Department for Work and Pensions.

The move, it said, is part of a package of 12 billion pounds of welfare cuts, widely expected to be unveiled in a budget bill on Wednesday.

In return, the paper said, the BBC will be allowed to make up some of the lost revenue by charging for use of its iPlayer and other online catch-up services to try to stem the loss of licence fee revenue caused by people turning to the Internet and abandoning their televisions.

That will return at least 150 million pounds to BBC coffers, the paper added, but the 650 million pounds benefits bill represents the loss of around a fifth of the corporation’s annual 3.7 billion pounds licence fee income.

The details, including the timing of the change, are still under negotiation but it is likely to be phased in after 2017, when the number of over-75s claiming a free licence will have risen further, the paper said.

This was also proposed back in 2010 and presumably shelved under pressure from the LibDems or because, despite the amusement I greet it with, it is a bizarre concept….the BBC is after all supposed to be raising money from the licence fee not handing it out….it is the government that has decided that pensioners should get a free licence and not the BBC…I’m sure the BBC would be more than happy to lock up non-paying pensioners as well as the poverty stricken single mothers that it normally targets.

Does seem a bit daft….but apparently the BBC empire is getting too big…

Mr Osborne also said that the BBC’s website may be scaled back because it has become too “imperial”.

He said that the scale of the BBC’s online offering means that it is coming “the national newspaper as well as the national broadcaster”.

He said: “You wouldn’t want the BBC to completely crowd out national newspapers. And if you look at the BBC website, it’s a good product but it is becoming a bit more imperial in its ambitions.