Most polls indicate that Cameron emerged as the winner in the Channel 4/Sky debate last evening. But at 6.30am this morning and then subsequently across its news channel, the BBC handed the victory to Miliband. Remarkable.

Here you go, it’s Friday and this is timely! Detail the bias here!

The rising employment figures have always been a mystery, and an issue, for the BBC, they have never been able to accept that they must be a sign that something, somewhere is going right in the economy and the BBC has always sought to find something negative to say on the subject trying deliberately to undermine the perceived success of the economy….a central plank of the Tories’ election strategy.

Self-employment has been rising and this has often been portrayed by the BBC as a negative…dismissing the jobs as of low value and low status and therefore not a sign of a recovering economy but a sign of desperation by people forced out of work by government Austerity.

However that’s not usually true…most interviews with self-employed people go against the presenter’s narrative that the self-employed were forced into that line of work and are living in a miserable penury….the self-employed more often than not claim to love their work and are enjoying a good measure of success.

An example came up yesterday after the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the RSA released a study into self-employment.  Not sure why they decided to do this study at this time just before an election in which jobs are an issue …especially as in 2003 the JRF released a study that said pretty much exactly the same things about self-employment.

They do admit that self-employment is in 2015…

  ….a trend that predates the crash: self-employment grew in nearly every year since the turn of the century. The implication is that self-employment has as much to do with long-term structural trends in our economy – new technologies, changing mindsets and shifting demographics – as with a short-term cyclical blip.

 

So not really a result of the economic crash or Coalition austerity policies but an increasing and already present trend…and one encouraged by Labour as noted by the JRF in 2003…

Policies to encourage entry into self-employment are increasingly linked to measures to combat social exclusion.

Listening to the BBC’s ‘Wake Up To Money’ and you get the idea that self-employment is a form of Coalition government imposed torture.  An interview with one business woman, Carla, (21 mins) painted a picture of a person held over a barrel, forced to carry on working even at death’s door…. Adam Parson’s exclaiming ‘Wow! …a pretty extreme example of the pressures to keep working.’  when Carla described how she battled on after having a car crash.

By coincidence I heard the same woman being interviewed later on by Peter Allen (10:41) in an interview that had an altogether different tone and painted an entirely different picture of her life and business….Allen asked her ‘How’s it been?’ [Her self-employed life]  She replied ‘Great!’

Allen asked ‘Has it made life better?’ [Being self-employed] She replied ‘Oh yes….I love what I do…it’s so much fun…the creativity you get to enjoy everyday is amazing!’

Sounds like she is enjoying self-employment despite the obvious pressures.

One good thing about Allen is that he often starts from the standard BBC world view but is happy to adjust his views when presented with facts that disprove it…..as when he was ‘shocked’ to hear that the richest in society actually pay a vast amount of tax…and a rising amount contrary to what we are often led to believe.

The ‘WUTM’ crew in contrast are averse to any change in narrative and plough on regardless of the facts or of what their expert guest commentators reveal when it goes against the doom and gloom line the comic duo of Clark and Parsons relentlessly peddle on the BBC…..such as low inflation apparently being a disaster waiting to happen or people starting to borrow more is a sign of desperation as they run out of money…rather than a sign of confidence in the future economy and rising wages.

Adam Parsons unfortunately doesn’t restrict himself to the death watch on WUTM but frequently pops up on other programmes giving us the benefit of his unique take on the world.

Today’s interviews with ‘Carla’ shows though how different things can be made to look by some in the Media when they have an axe to grind.

Tariq Ramadan…the Muslim voice of reason, reform and renaissance, in the BBC’s, the Guardian’s and the Government’s eyes.

Where is Tariq Ramadan?  There has been a tragic plane crash in whihc 150 people have died and the news has been absolutely dominated by reports about this story.

When Muslim terrorists slaughtered cartoonists, Jews and police officers in Paris Ramadan and his ilk told us that it was ‘terrible’, no, really, but…and there’s always a but….Ramadan wanted to know why we were spending so much time on reporting such a trivial event…after all Muslims were being killed around the world and, he claimed, nobody cared…..

We condemn the violent extremism that is targeting westerners. But it is not only westerners. We are reacting emotionally because 12 people were killed in Paris, but there are hundreds being killed day in, day out in Syria and Iraq, and still we send more bombs. We have to look at the big picture. Lives matter, but it is important to be clear that the lives of Muslims in Muslim majority countries have as much value as our own lives in the west.

 

It seems that when the interests of European Muslims are not at stake, and the furtherance of Islam is not an issue, Ramadan is not concerned about what the Media reports and how much coverage they give to particular events.

If the plane’s pilot had been a Muslim with concerns about ‘Western’ foreign policy you can be certain Ramadan and Co would have mobilised and been filling the airwaves with assurances this had nothing to do with Islam and that more people die in Syria everyday…so what’s the problem with a little bit  of ‘terror’ in Europe?

The killings in Paris were important because they were not the ‘mere’ murder of a handful of people but represented a significant attack on the cultural  values , the whole society, of the West.  Ramadan and his other Muslim apologists who cried their crocodile tears over Charlie Hebdo are engaged in a war, a war of words, intent on undermining the West and imposing Islam.  Those who think Ramadan is a reformer are mistaken.

In Canada Ramadan was one of the founders of the Muslim organisation ‘Muslim Presence’…..it has some interesting views on Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons in 2012….

It is a declaration of war… a war of religion that no free expression in the world may be proud of.
No Charlie
If offending is the expression of your freedom, then admit that violence will be the expression of their freedom! It is a trade of bad practices.
No, do not say ‘but’! Assume [your choices]…

Question Time this week comes from the Labour stronghold of Bolton in Greater Manchester. Dimbo will be joined by ‘Conservative’ Education Secretary Nicky Morgan MP, Scottish Labour Leader Jim Murphy MP, Plaid Cymru Leader Leanne Wood, Ukip MEP Steven Woolfe MEP and Janet Street-Porter. What feast for the senses that should be! Join us for the fun at 10:45 or before if you’re really keen.

Here’s the log. We had 10 people in tonight, more would be welcome!

I was listening to the BBC just after 6.30am this morning, to the Today programme. The news item being reported was this;

The SNP would block a minority Conservative government by voting down its Queen’s Speech if it held the post-election balance of power, its former leader Alex Salmond has said. Mr Salmond said the move could bring down the government if Labour joined in, with David Cameron “locked out”.

This is the latest instance of anti-English bellicosity from Salmond but what irritated me was the relative insouciance this was reported by the BBC “analyst”. I can but imagine the BBC response to UKIP declaring it would “lock out” Labour from government. As we go through this election campaign I believe we will see the BBC contining to fawn over the SNP and Labour, whilst demonising UKIP and any vestige of authentic Conservatism from Mr Cameron’s party.

Greg from Not Another Teaching Blog   sends this article for your consideration.

“How you see the BBC’s decision to remove the phenomenally popular presenter of its flagship worldwide show could very well depend on your view of the man in question. Those who support Clarkson see him as the last of dying breed of English TV personalities, the stubborn, old-school and humorous gentlemen who simply enjoys being himself while his detractors see him as obnoxious, offensive and unpleasant.

But let’s be clear: this was not a moral decision by the BBC management. To believe it was is to believe that a racial slur “slope” or a minor physical scuffle are greater crimes against humanity than covering up the sexual abuse of children committed by Jimmy Saville, for which nobody at the Beeb has been punished. The BBC’s firing of Clarkson was – or at least should have been – a business decision. That they have made the wrong one is a matter of delight for me, as it should be for anyone who admires Clarkson or appreciates a quality, politically neutral media service. Continue reading →

Here you go, a new Open Thread to detail the bias!

After the ‘Ted Talk’ mentioned in the last post I heard a trail for Thursdays ‘Crossing Continents’ in which we were told that we would hear the story of Gaza’s last remaining piano, the only one to survive ‘the bombing’ and which was being used to help traumatized Palestinian children….so it looked like Israel was in the frame again.

Curiously on looking at the actual blurb for the programme it gives a different slant altogether..

Sunday night and the BBC brought us the ‘TED Radio Hour’ which had some thought provoking thoughts.

Let’s hope someone at the BBC was listening…here’s the concluding remarks (46 mins 20 secs)…

‘The fact is that some of the biggest catastrophes we have seen rarely come from information that is secret or hidden.  It comes from information that is freely available and ‘out there’ but we which are wilfullly blind to because we don’t want to handle, can’t handle,  the conflict that it provokes….but when we dare to break that silence, when we dare to see and we create conflict we enable ourselves and the people around us to do our very best thinking.

Open information is fantastic, open networks are esssential but the truth won’t set us free until we develop the skills, the habits and the talent and the moral courage to use it.

Openness isn’t the end, it’s the beginning.’

 

Today we were told that Islamism has no connection with the beautiful religion of Islam. We saw Nigel Farage and his family hounded because of his views on immigration.  We are not allowed to criticise that other religion called Climate Change.

All taboos or attitudes cheerfully backed by the BBC.

When will the BBC find that ‘moral courage’ to do the right thing and start to openly debate what the Koran really says, what 300,000 immigrants flocking to the UK each year really means, the possibility that in tackling CO2 we may be ‘curing’ the wrong thing?

The BBC has been wilfully blind, it has sought to avoid conflict that would arise when certain truths are spoken, it has sought to silence those who would dare to break that silence.

The BBC and its good intentions may be putting us on the road to Hell.

BBC ‘bias’ hinders immigration crackdown, says report

The BBC’s bias in favour of immigration has been a key block on the Government’s ability to tighten control on Britain’s borders, a report has claimed.