The  Parliamentary Education Committee released a report on the inquiries into the Trojan Horse plot.

The BBC reported this…

MPs have criticised a “worrying lack of coordination” between five overlapping official inquiries into the so-called Trojan Horse affair.

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.

 

That last line is a complete lie.

The BBC has always attempted to portray the Trojan Horse letter as a hoax ( The MCB also takes that line…“a malicious fabrication and completely untrue”), Phil Mackie claiming it was a result of paranoia, racism and Islamophobia, with Mark Easton trying to claim that Islamists taking over and running a school was no different to Catholics running a Faith School and that the parents welcomed such eventualities.

The BBC wants you to believe that there is no threat to your way of life, culture and society from Muslim activists imposing their religion upon you and yours….and the BBC is prepared to tell you lies in order to reassure you that there is nothing to worry about.

The man at the centre of the Trojan Horse plot, Tahir Alam, was also the Muslim Council of Britain official who produced a document in 2007 with a similar intent to the Trojan Horse plot, that is the imposition of Islamic values upon non-Islamic schools.  The BBC has never published or linked to this document since the Trojan Horse scandal broke despite its high relevance to the credibility of the Trojan Horse letter’s contents.  The fact that the 2007 document provides evidence of intent along similar lines to the Trojan Horse plot and was produced by the same man completely undermines the BBC line, which is why they don’t mention it.

Curious when it seems  so relevant…

Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, said: “Mr Alam … has been planning this for 15 years. He goes around making these schools religious by manipulating governors, and bringing in certain teachers. He was able to hone the [tactics] in Birmingham that he drafted in this report.”

Pretty damning no?  Not for the BBC.

And what of that claim in the latest BBC report that ‘A series of official investigations found the claims to be groundless.’?

Now that’s just not true…even the BBC itself has admitted the reports slammed the schools…

There is “disturbing” evidence that people with a “shared ideology” were trying to gain control of governing bodies in Birmingham, says Education Secretary Nicky Morgan.

She was responding to the Trojan horse report from former counter-terror chief Peter Clarke into allegations of a hardline Muslim take-over of schools.

Mr Clarke found evidence of an “aggressive Islamist agenda”.

Ms Morgan highlighted “intolerant” messages between school staff.

 

Here is what Peter Clarke’s report said….

Firstly were claims of extremists trying to take over schools ‘groundless’? No….

The very clear evidence that young people are being encouraged to accept unquestioningly a particular hardline strand of Sunni Islam raises concerns about their vulnerability to radicalisation in the future. I have heard evidence to the effect that there are real fears that their current experiences will make it harder for them to question or challenge radical influences.

Secondly…did it matter if the letter was a hoax? (and there’s no proof it is…quite the opposite in fact)  No…the BBC is trying to distract you…

At the beginning of my investigation, I decided that it was not a priority to establish who wrote the letter or whether it was what it purported to be. It has been suggested that the letter is a hoax or a fake and the content therefore is irrelevant. This approach misses the point. The important issue is not who wrote it or whether it is a genuine extract from a letter between conspirators, but whether the events and behaviours described have actually happened.

 

Clarke goes on to say that it was evident that events as claimed in the Trojan Horse letter were known by the Council before the letter’s publication…..

It quickly became apparent to me that although there are some factual inaccuracies in the letter, there is also a great deal that is true, some of which had not previously been in the public domain.

 

There is incontrovertible evidence that both senior officers and elected members of Birmingham City Council were aware of concerns about activities that bear a striking resemblance to those described in the ‘Trojan Horse’ letter, many months before it surfaced.

 

As a result of the evidence gathered by my investigation, I can conclude that senior officers were aware of practices subsequently referred to in the ‘Trojan Horse’ letter as early as the end of 2012, and discussions on this issue took place between officers and elected members in May 2013. This is some six months prior to the ‘Trojan Horse’ letter being received by the Leader of the Council.

Thirdly…just to emphasise and confirm the evidence of extremist takeover of schools….

There is a disconcerting pattern reaching across a number of the schools I have looked at. This includes the following: the effective take-over of the governing body by like-minded people;  nepotism in staff appointments and appointments to the governing body; individuals associated with each other holding teaching posts or being members of the governing body (or both) at a small number of local schools;   rapid advancement of new or inexperienced governors to the role of chair; bullying and intimidation of senior teaching staff, and in particular headteachers; previously highly regarded headteachers made subject to criticism and complaint by governing bodies;  interference by the governing body in the curriculum and the day-to-day running of the school;   the reinforcement of Muslim identity to the exclusion or disparagement of others; the introduction of conservative Islamic practices into school life;   a strategy of harassment to oust the headteacher;   financial mismanagement; and inappropriate recruitment and promotion procedures for favoured staff.

 

 

There is ample evidence that individuals who hold or have held key positions in the schools have a shared ideological basis to their faith. During the investigation I took possession of the contents of a social media discussion between a group of teachers at Park View School that for much of 2013 was called the ‘Park View Brotherhood’. It was initiated and administered by Mr Monzoor Hussain, the Acting Principal, and was joined by influential teachers within the school. The evidence from more than 3,000 messages spread over 130 pages of transcript shows that this group either promoted or failed to challenge views that are grossly intolerant of beliefs and practices other than their own. The all-male group discussions include explicit homophobia; highly offensive comments about British service personnel; a stated ambition to increase segregation in the school; disparagement of strands of Islam; scepticism about the truth of reports of the murder of Lee Rigby and the Boston bombings; and a constant undercurrent of anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment. Some postings were challenged by the administrator, Mr Hussain, but generally only where criticism was made of other Muslim groups. The numerous endorsements of hyperlinks to extremist speakers betray a collective mind-set that can fairly be described as an intolerant Islamist approach that denies the validity of alternative beliefs, lifestyles and value systems, including within Islam itself.

 

 

 

 

Conclusions

I neither specifically looked for nor found evidence of terrorism, radicalisation or violent extremism in the schools of concern in Birmingham. However, by reference to the definition of extremism in the Prevent strand of the Government’s counter terrorist strategy, CONTEST, and the spectrum of extremism described by the Prime Minister in his Munich speech in February 2011, I found clear evidence that there are a number of people, associated with each other and in positions of influence in schools and governing bodies, who espouse, endorse or fail to challenge extremist views.

Finally do all the parents welcome the Islamisation of schools if they get good results as claimed by Easton?  No…..

It has been suggested to me that the ambition of those involved was only to create high achieving schools reflecting the communities they serve, following the wishes of the majority of parents. I do not agree. On the contrary, while the majority of parents welcome the good academic results that some of these schools produce, they do not demand that their children adhere to conservative religious behaviour at school. Indeed, I received evidence that this would be supported by only a minority of parents. I was told how some of those who claimed most loudly that they were acting for the community either protest alone or co-opt relatives to protest with them. I was also told by many witnesses that the majority do not have the confidence to argue against the articulate and forceful activists who seek to impose their views, for fear of being branded as disloyal to their faith or their community.

Once again the BBC cannot be trusted to report on Muslim issues with any integrity and honesty.

The BBC, Mark Easton in particular, likes to dispel any idea that British people are British, that there is any such thing as a British identity….they tell us that we are a nation of immigrants…because of course it suits their narrative on immigration now, somehow, not sure how though, even if we were a nation of immigrants how could the UK carry on absorbing 300,000 new immigrants every year? The basic logistical difficulties alone would crush the country never mind the social and cultural problems that would ensue….are  ensuing.

The BBC takes an entirely different slant on a DNA study of the population of Britain to that taken by the Telegraph…

Here is the relevant part of the Telegraph’s report…

Geneticist Professor Sir Walter Bodmer of Oxford University said: “What it shows is the extraordinary stability of the British population. Britain hasn’t changed much since 600AD.

“When we plotted the genetics on a map we got this fantastic parallel between areas and genetic similarity.

“It was an extraordinary result, one which was much more than I expected. We see areas like Devon and Cornwall where the difference lies directly on the boundary.”

Professor Mark Robinson, of Oxford University’s department of archaeology added: “The genetic make-up we see is really one of perhaps 1400 years ago.”

 

Here is the Telegraph’s line on the Celts…

The findings also showed that there is not a single ‘Celtic’ genetic group. In fact the Celtic parts of the UK (Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Cornwall) are among the most different from each other genetically.

That was it…literally a line whereas the BBC decided that that was to be the main thrust of their report…

DNA study shows Celts are not a unique genetic group

 

The BBC constantly tries to rewrite history and wipe out 1400 years of your cultural and social heritage, your national identity, in pursuit of their own multi-cultural and diversity based, pro-immigration agenda….which is one reason when they report on the cultural vandalism, the destruction of the Assyrian history by ISIS, which they tell us is so crucially important to the local’s identity, I always laugh at the BBC’s hypocrisy.  Labour’s attempt to ethnically cleanse Britain of its native population doesn’t bother the BBC at all.

Funny how the BBC has lost interest in the Israeli election now that the Left has been crushed….oh..not quite lost interest…this is the story on the front page…

US concern over Israel poll rhetoric

The White House expresses “deep concern” over “divisive rhetoric” in Israel’s election, and reiterates US support for Palestinian statehood.

Those terrible ‘Nazi’ Israelis….and can’t go without a mention of the Palestinians.

And elsewhere…from before the election result was known…..Jeremy Bowen obviously doesn’t think that the BBC provides him with a suitably big enough audience for his talents…and so he peddles his genius at the New Statesman as well…

As Israel heads to the polls, peace in the region seems more distant than ever

 

The piece is as negative about Israel as you could be without doing a Mel Gibson and puts the blame for any and every breakdown in peace negotiations at Israel’s door.

Bowen paints Netanyahu as the nearest thing to a Nazi as you can get, relying on far right religious fanatics and racist Jews for his mandate….no doubt Bowen is kept up to date on the issues by his leftwing Israeli friends….

When I woke on the morning after the election [1996] everything had changed. The exit polls were wrong. Some of my leftist Israeli friends grumbled that they had gone to bed with Peres and woken up with Netanyahu.

 

Bowen’s leftist friends must have woken up with yet another grumble this morning.

Bowen’s article seems to be just one long attack on Israel trawling through history for any point, however small, that can be used to criticise Israel and portray them as the aggressors and Palestinians as the eternal victims.

Here is a map Bowen kindly provides us with…not bothering to mention why changes to areas of control have changed…such as a 70 year war against Israel by the Muslim countries that surround it resulting in Israel ‘winning’ those areas..whose fault is that?

Bowen uses a curious phrase…….

During the 1948 war that led to Israel’s independence…during Israel’s independence war (the Palestinians’ Naqba, or “catastrophe”)

 

Israel’s ‘war of independence’?  That sounds like Israel launched a war doesn’t it?  As I understand it, and I think the history books show, the Muslim countries surrounding Israel launched the war against Israel not the other way round….and then they did it again, and again, and again….and maintain support for the Palestinian war of terror against Israel.

Why would Bowen like to portray Israel as the war monger?  And why mention the so-called ‘Naqba’,  a Palestinian term that is designed to be highly loaded politically?

Bowen likes to think Israel is ‘merely shipping’…..that it will disappear back into the sands of the Middle East as it did once before…

In 1997, just before the state of Israel celebrated its 50th anniversary, I asked two elderly Palestinian men in Jerusalem for their view of the past half-century. They shrugged. Israel was strong. But look back at history, one of them said. The Crusaders were strong, too, and controlled Jerusalem for more than a century. But, he said, we got rid of them.

 

Shame the BBC doesn’t itself admit that that is the real aim of the Palestinians…the ethnic cleansing of the Jews from Israel.

The BBC on the news and on its web report refer to Bosnians killed at Sebrenica as ‘Muslims’.

Serbian police have arrested seven men accused of taking part in the slaughter of over 1,000 Muslims at a warehouse on the outskirts of Srebrenica.

The seven are among the first to be arrested by Serbia for carrying out the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995, Serbian and Bosnian prosecutors say.

 

Curious how eager the BBC is to mention the fact that the victims were Muslim.  More often than not the BBC goes to great lengths to avoid mentioning the fact that people are Muslim or any link to Islam…if they have committed a crime or terrorist act.

When Muslims are victims the BBC emphasises the religion despite it having nothing to do with the issue in this case….the people were killed not because they were Muslim but because they were Bosnian and not Serbian.

They were ‘Bosnians’.  Their religion was irrelevant.

The BBC yet again dances to the Muslim extremist’s tune by reporting this in a way that suggests the victims were killed because of their Muslim religion, a narratve that the extremists use to recruit more Muslims to their Cause.

The fact that the report later uses ‘Bosnian’ as the identifying description indicates the irrelevance of the ‘Muslim’ label.

About 8,000 Bosnian men and boys were killed in Srebrenica over three days, the worst atrocity on European soil since the Holocaust.

Here is something of interest from the now departed Stephanie Flanders in 2010 in one of her more impartial moments when she wasn’t urging Osborne to borrow and spend more as ‘interest rates are at a record low’ and pressing the virtues of ‘Plan B’ upon him….why do we have so much debt?…one reason is that Labour increased government spending [but not income] by 26% in 6 years……and to add insult to injury the borrowed money ‘went out the door’…it was squandered by inefficiency….

Spending cuts: Molehill and mountain

Are we all making too much fuss about the Spending Review? Nick Clegg thinks so. He likes to point out that, even with all the cuts we will see unveiled tomorrow by the chancellor, total public spending in 2014-15 will only be back to where it was, as a share of the economy, in 2006-7. At the end of the Parliament, the government will be spending £41bn more, in cash terms, than it is today.

That doesn’t sound so bad. How, you might ask, can it possibly take the deepest and most prolonged spending cuts since World War II, simply to take government spending back to where it was four years ago?

The answer, as a certain meerkat would say, is “simples”. All you need is the largest, most sustained increase in public spending for over 50 years, the deepest recession in more than 70 years, and the first decline in Britain’s nominal GDP since records began.

Pressure on government spending since WWII has been relentlessly upward.  As we get richer, we demand more of the kinds of things that government provides, and the cost of those things often rises faster than the economy.

It takes a very determined government – taking some very tough decisions – to fight that upward pressure for any length of time. You’ll note that the Thatcher era barely registers on the chart [of government spending].

Why did spending rise so fast? About half of it was due to the recession. But, as Tim Morgan points out in a paper for the Centre for Policy Studies, spending in 2006-7 was already 26% higher, in real terms, than it had been in 1999-2000. That was Labour’s promised investment in public services.

Maybe public services did not feel 26% better. But all that means is that it was spent inefficiently, and/or prices and wages in the public sector rose much faster than the economy overall (which they surely did). The money definitely went out the door.

Then the recession came, with a real decline in GDP of 6% between the spring of 2008 and the autumn of 2009. We have had recessions before, of course, but few that deep, and none, in modern times, that was accompanied by an annual decline in the cash value of GDP.

If the government follows through on this spending review, public spending in 2014-15 will be 4% lower, in real terms than it is today – but account for roughly the same share of the economy as it was spending in 2005-6.

It is about reversing a small-ish part of the relentless upward march in government spending since WWII. The fact that it should take such a gargantuan effort to achieve even this merely demonstrates quite how relentless that upward march can be, in a rich but now ageing modern economy.

 

The BBC doesn’t seem to do ‘history’ anymore…at least where Labour’s part in wrecking the economy lies.  If any Tory politician raises the matter of Labour’s responsibility for the economy and the subsequent austerity measures to put it back on track they are quickly slapped down by the BBC presenter who tells them that they have been in power for 5 years and can’t blame Labour anymore as if the consequences of one of the deepest and longest recessions can suddenly vanish after a set date.

Even Labour friendly voices admit Labour’s role in the crash….last week on 5Live one (can’t remember who) frightened the presenter by saying Labour had helped cause the recession by failing to regulate the banks and financial institutions….how often, if ever, do you hear a BBC presenter referring to Brown’s ill-judged light touch regulatory regime in a similar tone?

Didn’t hold out much hope for a balanced view of the budget from Pienaar when he said this last night…

‘They don’t come any craftier than Osborne’

 

A fairly derogatory way of describing Osborne from the BBC’s finest… just a touch ‘loaded’.

Pienaar has consistently claimed that Osborne is the most ‘political’ of Chancellor’s…..on what basis I don’t know as all Chancellors are political. Even today after the budget Pienaar was still making that claim…and yet Osborne is a politician, his job is to be ‘political’…politics is after all about providing what the ‘People’ want and getting their vote to implement those policies.

It is disengenuous to try to fault Osborne for being political when that is the job.

Having said that just how political was the ‘crafty’Osborne?  He had around £6 billion extra to play with and yet he refused to use it to make short term ‘political’ pre-election give-aways. Listening to one business leader he claimed that Osborne’s budget was good for business and highly responsible in not using that £6bn on such populist give-aways.

Osborne has after all presided over the hugely unpopular and difficult Austerity and made the very controversial move to lower the higher rate of tax as well as huge welfare cuts amongst other ‘controversial’ savings in government spending……hardly policies designed to win easy votes….Osborne adopted policies that he knew would cause a measure of uproar.

Pienaar is totally wrong about Osborne creating a Budget for purely political purposes, and in fact, Osborne has put the interests of the country ahead of his Party and its election chances when you consider the economic measures he has implemented over the last 5 years.

Pienaar has always had a soft spot for Miliband and rarely has a critical word to say about him or his policies, Pienaar often claiming it is Miliband leading the way and forcing the narrative.

The BBC is still pushing the ‘government spending will be back to the 1930’s level’ spin that we heard last year when Norman Smith claimed that the Tory spending levels looked ‘utterly terrifying’, taking us back to conditions like those written about by Orwell in his book ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’

The BBC tells us this today….

In 2019/20 spending will grow in line with the growth of the economy – bringing state spending as a share of national income to the same level as in 2000, the chancellor told MPs.

The BBC’s Robert Peston said this was a move aimed at neutralising Labour’s claim that the Conservatives would cut spending to 1930s levels.

 

No attempt to put the figures into context…such as GDP being far higher now, so  the same percentage of GDP actually means far more money.

Peston looks like he is trying to claim Osborne’s statement was pure spin aimed at neutralisng Labour’s claim….it is of course based on fact, Labour’s spending was as near as damn it to that level in 1999-2000….

Labour’s spending as a proportion of GDP in 1999-2000?  36%

The Coalition’s projected spending in 2019-20?        35.2%

 

Son of a Labour peer, Peston prefers to spin this by claiming Osborne is spinning, just as Pienaar does, and with Norman ‘utterly terrifying’ Smith on the same bandwagon Miliband is getting plenty of BBC subsidised propaganda handed to him on a plate.

Well then, I am sure you will have noticed the BBC have been desperately hoping for the defeat of Benjamin Netanyahu in the Israel elections. Up until the very last moment, those such as Jeremy Bowen were spinning like mad for his opponents and in a sense this was in synch with the international liberal elite, from Obama down, who ALL wanted to see BiBi fall. But hush – oh no – he has WON! Cue black armbands and solemn music and …surprise...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party has won a surprise victory in Israel’s election.

Exit polls had forecast a dead heat but with almost all votes counted, results give Likud a clear lead over its main rival, the centre-left Zionist Union.

The outcome gives Mr Netanyahu a strong chance of forming a right-wing coalition government. It puts the incumbent on course to clinch a fourth term and become Israel’s longest-serving prime minster.

You could tell this morning that the BBC were in mourning. They had soooo wanted Netanyahu to fall and their “surprise” reminds of the quote many decades ago from New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael : “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.” Through the anti Netanyahu prism of the BBC that surprise is understandable, but still a disgrace.

Well then, yesterday was St Patrick’s Day and didn’t you know it if you have the misfortune to watch or listen to BBC Northern Ireland. They spent yesterday assiduously pushing the laughable line that St Patrick’s Day in Northern Ireland is a wonderful beacon for “cross community” co-operation and multicultural tolerance of all people and traditions. Here is an image of some lovely Irish fans in Belfast yesterday showing their love of the British tradition. For some reason, the world class talent at the BBC seem to have missed it. Oh well, look the other way and start singing when Irish eyes are smiling…

Well, it’s Budget Day and I noticed the BBC telling us that Osborne will use this for electoral purposes, targeting key groups of voters. Gosh. How fortunate that Brown and Darling never played such low politics during THEIR Budgets. Anyway, here’s a new much needed Open Thread for your completion.