John Pienaar was on the side of the Big Battalions this morning asking the Government’s Business Minister, Matthew Hancock, how he could justify a referendum on Europe when so many Big Business leaders were against it.

Curious irony there…now we must listen to Big Business when it suits the BBC’s pro-Eu agenda…however when Labour want to bring the Big Business ‘predators’ to heel it’s a different matter….they’re the tax dodging devils incarnate.

The pandering to Big Business and the sidelining of a democratic vote on Europe aside there is always one major question that doesn’t get asked.  So Cameron gets his reforms of the European system and the UK stays within the EU fold should the reforms be enough to persuade the voters to play safe and vote to keep the status quo…but then what?……here is Alan Greenspan in a BBC report on the inevitability of a Grexit…

“The problem is that there there is no way that I can conceive of the euro of continuing, unless and until all of the members of eurozone become politically integrated – actually even just fiscally integrated won’t do it.”

Note that well….the Euro, in his opinion, and many other’s, can only continue if it adopts complete fiscal and political integration.

In other words the EU becomes one country, a federation like the US.

The UK could not still remain attached but distant as now not adopting the Euro and so on.  The UK would have to choose…in or out, part of the EU currency, political and taxation regime or not.

The UK would be forced to join the EU and lose its sovereignty completely if it wanted to remain ‘in’ Europe.

The EU can only work as one, integrated union with a central government freely taxing and redistributing those taxes as it sees fit around the EU to countries that are economically stagnant and setting policies to ensure that happens…and that means, more than likely, a permanent drain of resources from the UK and Germany and other successful economies to the laggard nations in the form of welfare subsidies and infrastructure spending…more roads to nowhere and white elephants.

Can the UK stand more money being syphoned off to fund the Grand Project?  It already struggles to fund its own welfare…..the South had to suffer the hijacking of its revenues to fund Labour’s Northern heartlands as Brown and Co tried to buy votes up North.  Imagine how much more income will vanish into the self-serving EU politicians’ pockets as they try to buy votes in Spain or Greece or Lithuania etc etc etc.

Money that should go on the NHS, or housing or welfare or schools will disappear into the EU blackhole, lost in yet more grand projects, Spanish pensions, non-existent Italian vineyards and vast corruption.

So the question the BBC should be asking Cameron and Miliband is what are they going to do when the EU decides to integrate and form one big political and fiscal union with one government, one taxation system, one legal system and one welfare system?

Join or not?

It’s a question the BBC probably won’t ask and Cameron won’t answer, can’t answer, anyway because it makes a mockery of his EU reforms charade….after all what is the point of these reforms if it is inevitable that the EU forms a totally integrated union of which you can’t be an associate member and the UK becomes subsumed into the EU machine and the UK Parliament becomes totally irrelevant?

Such a question would totally change the narrative on Europe and possibly make it more likely that people would opt to get out of Europe when voting in an EU referendum if they thought staying in now would be the slippery slope to a total takeover of the UK by Brussels.

Can’t see the BBC wanting to make too much noise about that.

Listened to 5Live’s film review on Friday(23 mins 40)  and they were talking about ‘American Sniper’, a film set in Iraq about an American sniper killing Jihadis…apparently it is a ‘problematic’ film.

Mark Kermode’s thoughts on the film…technically no doubt good but problematic in that it is very one-sided.

Pretty much sums up the BBC mindset…there is always two sides to every story and no such thing as good/bad, right/wrong…unless of course you are a climate sceptic…..moral relativity is the only principle they abide by….the only conviction being that they should have no convictions.

No doubt Kermode would think that all those films about WWII are somewhat too one-sided for his liking…..The Dam Busters or The Great Escape….or Schindler’s List. Yep, there’s two sides to every story and though the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews and many other unfortunates they must have had a jolly good reason…only fair to give them a hearing eh Mark?  Never mind that ‘American Sniper’ is the personal story of one man and his view of the conflict.  It is not a political film just a film telling a story of one man’s war.  His story not history.

However when a film is political then a more nuanced and rounded approach should be taken and the various arguments aired otherwise the film is nothing more than a propagandist polemic.

And talking of Climate Sceptics and polemical propaganda….the same programme had a pop at the sceptics back in December when reviewing the pro-alarmist film ‘Merchants of Doubt’.

Apparently the sceptics are conjuring up, out of thin air, the appearance on doubt in regard to the science of climate change using snake oil salesman tactics and sleight of hand.  Not sure just how much of the IPCC’s ramblings Mark Kermode has read but judging by his claims on this programme not much.

Kermode tells us that after watching the film he was enraged by the subject and the level of filibustering by the sceptics who are in the pay of big companies with vested interests…..apparently they are all flat earthers.

So no position taking there then by a BBC chappie…all based on his indepth and learned scientific knowlege of the science of climate change..or at least his having read something about it….or not…in reality he’s just a victim of what is patently a very one sided propaganda film by the Green industry….is there no two sides to this story then?

Firstly of course much of the climate scepticism, and the most sucessful, comes from people who have absolutely no backing from any industry, many of them scientists themselves….and all of it based upon study, analysis and critique of the published science…..and a very small part played by this site in exploring the BBC’s failure to report the inconsistencies in the scientific claims about climate and their lead environmental journalist’s own admission that he has been campaigning on the issue for 20 years...’We Think, Therefore It Is’

The BBC’s Roger Harrabin admitted he was a climate change campaigner:

I have spent much of the last two decades of my journalistic life warning about the potential dangers of climate change.

 

Second Kermode fails to mention the backing for the Greens from enormously rich business propagandists, such as Grantham…not to mention governments who pay billions into the climate change campaigner’s fighting fund…and not forgetting the BBC itself which provides invaluable and almost pricelss pro-climate change propaganda for the cause.

Nor does he mention the often violent opposition to any hint of criticism of the Green pathology.

Kermode vividly demonstrates what we suspect is the ingrained BBC attitude towards what it reports….everything is relative and there are no rights and wrongs in issues that the BBC supports…until we come up against a subject that the BBC is institutionally against such as immigration control, criticism of Islam, at least by white, working class people who haven’t checked their privilege, and the aforementioned climate change.

That sort of atttude, where the BBC will only let you voice your opinion if you are deemed to have the correct credentials, and it is the BBC who judges whether you have or not, is starkly illustrated by this exchange that Sue from ‘Is the BBC Biased?‘ had with a TV reviewer from the Sunday Times in 2007……

Rant about right rant

 

In 2007 I  [Sue] wrote to the then TV editor of the Sunday Times to question a headline in that paper’s preview of an upcoming programme. The headline was: “Right Rant.” It was about Richard Littlejohn’s programme on C 4 about antisemitism in the UK.  The War on Britain’s Jews, broadcast in July 2007.

I was surprised that the editor responded promptly, and at length…..

“Hopefully, you have now seen the programme and can understand why our critics dismissed Littlejohn’s programme as an incoherent rant from an extreme right-wing perspective. He had some valuable facts, but was shoehorning his tired old polemic on top of an argument that raised disturbing matters about which every sane person in the country should be alarmed. Should we really blame the left-wingers for the BNP painting swastikas on synagogues?

 Simply put, Littlejohn does not have the credibility or authority to convince in a television programme arguing against violence towards one community when he himself has been guilty of prejudice towards other communities (have you ever read some of the things he has said about the Roma people, for example?). A serious journalist would have been able to put up an argument that was not simple bias riddled with holes. That’s not Littlejohn, though, is it?

 I, too, deplore the rising incidence of attacks on Britain’s Jews, and on any other community, but none of our critics wanted to be accused of siding with Littlejohn. The fact is, in the television section, it is our jobs to rate the programmes as such, not to support or attack their polemics. Littlejohn’s record as a television and radio presenter is pretty atrocious, I think it was obvious for all to see why last night. What might pass for intellectual debate in the pages of the Mail or Sun does not necessarily pass muster over an hour on Channel 4.

  I look forward to a serious film about the alarming growth of intolerance and prejudice in Britain, and I hope it is made by serious and responsible reporters. 

Yours sincerely,

A fascinating reaction from the Times….in black and white the ‘left wing’ visceral hatred of anyone who disagrees with them and the refusal to even register someone like Littlejohn has an argument…..the refusal to admit the Left are guilty of whipping up anti-Semitism and of siding with Islamists….which is more than proved by the evidence…and lots of it.

I thought the film entirely measured and well researched….the main voices in support were actually all left wing, Wilby, Cohen and Mann…and the chief constable of course said some damning things….and apart from the images of orthodox Jews the speaking heads were pretty normal people…’for Jews’!

The Times’ reaction was based upon it being Littlejohn and the nature of those he said were to blame for the anti-semitism….a statement that anti-semitism was said to be endemic in the Muslim community (recently backed up by Medhi Hasan…That ‘dirty little secret‘), the NUJ were slated for supporting the boycott of Israel and the Left were damned for joining forces with at least radical Islamists and at worst terrorists like Hizbollah.

The programme was no more a ‘right wing rant’ than Panorama’s recent investigation into ‘Islam in Britain’ and regardless of Littlejohn’s reputation amongst the chattering classes, who of course all secretly lap up what he says in their Daily Mails which they read assiduously and on the quiet, the programme was a worthy attempt at investigating the issues….dismissing it because of the ‘messenger’ smacks of the usual attempt to ignore those issues…the now famous culture of denial and political correctness that hides the inconvenient truths and pervades organisations like the BBC and others dominated by progressive leftwingers.

Having looked a bit further this might be of interest...Littlejohn in 2006:

He said:

‘None of it is particularly revolutionary. Anyone with half a brain could see that New Labour’s obsession with multi-culturalism, unlimited immigration and ‘human rights’ was destined to end in tears. And that the burgeoning health and safety bureaucracy was doing tremendous damage, not just to businesses, but to our way of life.

Yet we were dismissed, scorned and smeared as heartless, knee-jerk, Neanderthal Nazis. So you might think that after the amazing about-turn of the past week, we have the right to feel vindicated.

You have to understand that even though we were right all along, we were the ‘wrong’ kind of people, therefore our opinions were odious and illegitimate.’

 

‘The wrong kind of people’ reporting, dismissed conveniently as Neanderthal Nazis whose opinions were odious and illegitimate…how right he was…and how very Stalinist those who decried him.

But there’s more of great interest in his article…ala Farage and the Romanians…what did the Labour government say in 2006 about the expected influx of Romanians and Bulgarians?….

This from a BBC report  … they knew, even as they recently maligned Farage for his Romanian comments, that Labour had expressed the same concerns back in 2006….

‘Government departments have been told to draw up emergency plans to deal with pressure on public services from an expected “step change” in immigration levels when Romania and Bulgaria join the EU next year.
The document, entitled Migration from Eastern Europe: Impact on Public Services and Community Cohesion, was written by junior Home Office Minister Joan Ryan and leaked to the Mail on Sunday.
In the leaked report, Ms Ryan argues that many more English teachers will be needed to deal with a big rise in the number of eastern European children unable to speak the language.
Hospital beds are being “blocked” by east European patients because they cannot claim social care and benefits if they leave.
And towns and cities where large numbers of new immigrants have settled are now calling for millions of pounds of extra funding to cope, the report says.
The report, which is marked “restricted” and dated 19 July, came the day after Ms Ryan put out another document saying that 45,000 “undesirable” criminal migrants from Romania and Bulgaria could settle in the UK next year.’

 

 

45,000 ‘undesirables’…wouldn’t want them as neighbours? Racist to say so.

Farage was right then.

Or Labour is racist.

James O’Brien?  He’ll be ramping up the kangaroo court once again and no doubt putting all those Labour politicians in the dock…..and Newsnight will once again embrace him as one of their own.

Don’t hold your breath.

Curious how things all come together sometimes….such as Rotherham, JK Rowling and the BBC’s  hatred for the Middle Classes….especially the white variety.

A potent mix at election time.

First of course we had a devastating report on Rotherham Council‘s response, the lack of, in regard to the sex abuse scandal….it’s culture of denial and misplaced political correctness.

Now you could make the easy comparison with the BBC there…how the Media played its part in Rotherham allowing the crimes to go under the radar, allowing the authorities, the Establishment, to look the other way, as the Media refused to report them…..a Media also in denial due to its own misplaced political correctness….a Media not fit for purpose.

The problem is this still goes on, even in regard to Rotherham, as the BBC struggles with the concept of racially or religiously targeted attacks…at least by an ethnic minority….and of course it makes no mention of the Media’s role in helping to perpetuate the crimes by not reporting them.

But it isn’t just Rotherham and the sex abuse scandal, the BBC adopted precisely the same attitude towards the ‘Trojan Horse’ plot which it at first ignored, then tried to dismiss as a hoax and a paranoia based upon prejudice, Islamophobia and racism.  Even now it claims the letter outlining the plot was a hoax…and has never reported that the Muslim Council of Britain published its own ‘Trojan Horse’ type guide for education authorities in 2007…the author being the same man at the centre of the current Trojan Horse plot.  You might think that was highly relevant and damning piece of evidence…but the BBC prefers to ignore it….as it would confirm that the Trojan Horse plot was true whilst they would always like to maintain an element of doubt.

And Birmingham Council was similarly in denial about the plot absolutely refusing to admit there was a problem…so is Birmingham Council ‘fit for purpose’?

In contrast the BBC has no problem attacking the white, Middle Class ‘crimes’ of being successful, responsible and ambitious…..

The New Statesman tells us….

After Question Time on 5 February the BBC aired a new TV ad for their flagship radio current affairs programme, Today:

It features the voice of the artist Grayson Perry, punchily taking on male privilege: “The Great White Male – white, middle-class men – probably only make up about 10 per cent of the population, and yet 70 per cent of government, I don’t know, 80 per cent of boardroom directors, 90 per cent of Hollywood film directors are male. The middle-class male thinks he has the monopoly on objectivity.”

John Humphrys: “Positive discrimination, that’s what’s got to happen.”

Perry: “Yeah, and anyone who complains about it, that’s because their privilege is being ripped out of their claws.”

It ends with the slogan: To see the world clearly, listen to the Today programme.

That’ll be the same John Humphrys who decries the ‘stranglehold’ that the Middle Classes apparently have on education….I’d say it was the Middle Classes embracing education…..if others don’t see the value of it that’s their look out.

All of which plays into the BBC’s next great project to undermine the white Middle Classes….who obviously all vote Tory…

BBC accused of political bias in adaptation of JK Rowling drama The Casual Vacancy just weeks before Election

The BBC has come under fire over its adaptation of J K Rowling’s novel The Casual Vacancy just weeks before the General Election.

The broadcaster has been accused of ramping up Left-wing issues in the book – by adding scenes which do not even appear in the novel.

Tory MP and former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind said the timing of the broadcast struck him as being ‘very odd at least’.

He said: ‘In the run-up to a General Election, the Government quite rightly has to go into purdah and refrain from doing anything provocative. I think the BBC should have to apply the same criteria.’

The drama does not mention any political parties but critics say the battle over Sweetlove House is a thinly disguised attack on the Government’s welfare cuts, which will be one of the crucial issues for the May 7 Election.

In an interview in The Mail on Sunday, Rowling defended herself against accusations that her novel was a Left-wing attack on the middle classes.

She said: ‘I’m not anti-middle class in the slightest.’

Broadcaster Melvyn Bragg defended the BBC’s right to adapt the work of a novelist who he insisted was partisan and political in the same way as Dickens.

The Labour peer said: ‘This is a political novel in the sense that it is addressing what happens when society cuts off those people who they think are inadequate.’

Yes…a political novel being televised just before an election in which the BBC’s favoured Party has based much of its campaign on the very same issues raised in the series.

‘Biased BBC’ had a look at much of this way back in 2012…

‘It seems to be JK Rowling week on the BBC.’

A whole class of people has been betrayed and abandoned…to protect the authorities from claims of racism but also the ethnic communities that the sex gangs come from…especially as it turns out that it was particularly white girls being picked on as the Muslims didn’t want to attack girls of their own faith.

The BBC (and other media) must have also played its part in hiding the truth…there must have been complicity with the police and social workers in agreeing what would and would not be reported.

It is remarkable that any of those journalists who ducked the issue and agreed to censorship can now hold their heads up without any shame or remorse.

Their behaviour is of course in stark contrast to that normally at the BBC where working class ‘victims’ of government cuts and inaction are meat’n’veg to BBC anti-cuts agitators with always a ready welcome in a warm BBC studio if you have a tale to tell that paints a doom laden scenario of how ‘cuts’ are affecting you.

 

Have a look at this, an interview with J.K. Rowling about her new book ‘Casual Vacancy’….dealing with class warfare, drugs and teen sex.

Rowling states that the book is essentially about a girl named Krystal…and it is asking ‘What are we going to do about Krystal?’ (and girls like her).

Clearly ‘Krystal’ is from the same sort of background as the real victims in Rotherham and the book raises all sorts of questions about ‘society’ and of course Middle Class attitudes.

The BBC laps it up….apparently the Guardian and the BBC were given privileged access to the book…so work that out.

However, apart from the interviewer, James Runcie, being a good friend of Rowling, he is pretty keen to bring out all these social issues and start insinuating blame.

Funny how caring the BBC can be about the white, working class drug addled girls whose knickers, in the eyes of the BBC and its ilk, are kept up purely by the power of their elastic when it suits the BBC’s own agenda.

But the really interesting point was made by Rowling in which she said she was fed up with the point scoring and soundbite culture of modern politics…which she blamed on the ‘beauty parade’ that is democracy.

But who is really to blame?

The media…it is the media that sets the agenda…it decides who gets airtime, how much airtime and on which subject…it then decides the questions, and decides the answers…in the editing suite…if it’s live they can interrupt and cut you off or bring in another guest to quash your point or to take up time.

Politicians have very little say in what they can get over to the public especially in the face of a hostile interview…however subtle that hostility is.

 

So in one post from 2012 we have a very neat summation of what is happening now….the politically correct denial, the BBC’s fascination with poor white girls only when it suits their political agenda, it’s anti-Middle Class take on life,  and the Media’s role in distorting not just the political narrative but in hiding crimes due to political correctness.

The BBC is dangerously biased and is intent on manipulating the election result.

Purple Heart to Be Awarded to Victims at Fort Hood

“An appropriate recognition of their service and sacrifice.”

Until Friday, officials referred to the shooting at the base as “workplace violence,” not terrorism.

“In essence, what we have now is a recognition from the Pentagon of what the whole world knew right away, that this was an act of terror,” said Neal Sher, a lawyer for dozens of the victims. “I consider this event to be a major victory. I think it finally puts to rest the insulting and disingenuous insinuation that this was an incident of workplace violence.”

 

The victims of an Islamically inspired terror attack are finally recognised as casualties of the war of terror being waged against the West.

All it needs now is for the BBC to admit there is a war going on and not some ‘senseless tragedy’….

Mark Mardell famously denied that Major Nidal Hassan murdered 13 fellow soldiers in the name of Islam,  that the murders were rather a  ‘senseless tragedy’…

‘The alleged murderer was clearly a Muslim, but there is very little to suggest that he adhered to a hard-line interpretation of his religion or that he had political or religious motives.

Still, searching for patterns and for answers is part of what it is to be human. I loathe cliche, but perhaps, for once, this is a “senseless tragedy”, devoid of deeper meaning.’

Gorgeous has practically been waterboarded by the BBC.  I am shocked.

The pro-Zionist BBC (no really!) has stitched up the much set upon and traduced George Galloway by allowing people to actually ask him questions on Question Time….

The controversy centred around a question that one audience member asked about a rise in antisemitism in the UK.

But the question also included a reference to the MP for Bradford West bearing some responsibility for this rise, an inclusion he said that had not been agreed beforehand.

 

Gorgeous says of the impudent question, and I quote……..

“It is defamatory and worse and it was not the question that was asked. The question that was tabled and agreed was not the question that was asked.

“He added his own words and David Dimbleby should have stopped and re-shot that question, as it’s not a live show.

“To accuse a parliamentarian of 27 years of being responsible for a spike in antisemitism is totally ludicrous.”

 

Well, yes, absolutely.  A man who fawns at the feet of anti-Semitic dictators, is in the pay of a regime dedicated to the destruction of Israel and is a person who wanted to ban Israelis from Bradford, a man who will demean himself in anyway conceivable to garner a few votes is a man who must surely be innocent of such slurs on his honest and upright character.

Pseudo Muslim Galloway, somewhat surprisingly,  invokes the spirit of ‘JesuisCharlie’ and Charlie Hebdo to demand the right to free speech whilst at the same time demanding a Jew can’t be allowed to ask him any questions he doesn’t approve of.

Not the first time of course that Gorgeous has had to make a principled stand in the face of outrageous attempts to set him up and get him to answer questions he is entirely unprepared to answer for some reason..

‘I don’t debate with Israelis. I have been misled.’  He then got up to leave. ‘I don’t recognise Israel and I don’t debate with Israelis,’ Galloway said as he exited the room.

 

Have to say I’m just a little surprised that Question Time defines and agrees the questions to be asked…brings to mind Chomsky…

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

I would have thought that such a question about the rise of anti-Semitism and whether Galloway’s rhetoric might have played a part in it was a fair and necessary question.  Not sure why Dimbleby apologised to Gorgeous for allowing the question.

Of course Gorgeous has a habit of lying when questioned….

George Galloway Says Israel Gave Al-Qaeda Chemical Weapons To Use In Syria

“If there has been a use of chemical weapons it was al-Qaeda who used chemical weapons. Who gave al-Qaeda chemical weapons? Here’s my theory: Israel gave them the chemical weapons”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPzvy808pr8

When questioned in Parliament about this he denied having said it…“I said no such thing.”

Anti-Zionist British MP George Galloway Caught Lying During House of Commons Debate

The Zionist BBC said of Question Time …

“We are satisfied the programme was conducted appropriately and fairly.”

 

 

The BBC are very, very selective in reporting critical comments about Party leaders.

Today they have relentlessly been ‘reporting’ the words of Sir Richard Shirreff about Cameron….

Downing Street has rejected claims by a former senior army officer that the UK has become “irrelevant” in attempts to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.

Sir Richard Shirreff, until last year a top Nato commander in Europe, suggested the UK was a “bit player” in Europe’s “most serious crisis” for 50 years.

 

Curious that when Miliband is criticised in just as dramatic tones by a major business leader the BBC didn’t bother reporting that at all on the radio, I heard not a word…and buried what they couldn’t justifiably ignore in another completely different report…..

General election 2015: Labour promises ‘no PM pictures’

 

The Telegraph trumpets the story though…

Boots boss: Ed Miliband would be a ‘catastrophe’ for Britain

A Labour government under Ed Miliband would be a “catastrophe” for Britain, the head of one of the UK’s biggest businesses warns.

In a significant blow to Labour’s general election campaign, Stefano Pessina, the boss of Boots, says Mr Miliband’s plan for power is “not helpful for business, not helpful for the country and in the end it probably won’t be helpful for them”.

Under Mr Miliband’s leadership, Labour has pledged a series of reforms that have prompted accusations that it is “anti-business”. The party has campaigned against high levels of executive pay, described capitalists as “predatory”, announced plans to restore the 50p top rate of income tax, pledged a “mansion tax” on homes worth more than £2 million and promised to freeze energy companies’ prices for 20 months.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Pessina said: “If they acted as they speak, it would be a catastrophe.”

 

 

Andy Burnham…the new Messiah

• Overall public satisfaction with the NHS increased to 65 per cent in 2014 – the second highest level since the British Social Attitudes survey began in 1983. Dissatisfaction with the service fell to an all-time low of 15 per cent.

You’d never guess would you if you listened to the BBC…the NHS is a disaster according to them…and remember this is the BBC that failed to report that the NHS was voted the best in the world for its service….

Did you hear of this on the BBC last June?… I must have missed the enormous fanfare announcing the good news:

NHS pushes UK’s healthcare to top of the league table out of 11 western countries, with US coming last

You’d never know that though if you only listened to the BBC……and A&E is a disaster as well…today they are harping on about missed targets and have their ‘tracker’ back on the frontpage and yet….

For accident and emergency (A&E) services, satisfaction increased from 53 to 58 per cent between 2013 and 2014, after fluctuating in previous years.

But what does the BBC prefer to highlight?……

The King’s Fund has lobbed a high explosive grenade into the path of the Tory election parade….and the BBC has been uncritically reporting their conclusions all day…

NHS reorganisation was disastrous, says King’s Fund

Radical changes to the way the NHS in England is organised have been “disastrous” and “distracted” from patient care, leading analysts say.

The evaluation by the King’s Fund think tank says the coalition government’s changes had wasted three years, failed patients, caused financial distress and left a strategic vacuum.

Labour has called for a personal apology from David Cameron.

But Labour itself is accused of “crying wolf” over privatisation.

 

 

During the day I heard only one mention of a response from the Government on this,  the BBC preferring to highlight the extremely damaging comments from the King’s Fund instead….without any analysis or critique of the claims.

You have to wonder at the timing and tone of the King’s Fund claims…..seemingly carefully timed to do as much damage as possible without being so close to the election to seem ‘political’…however the King’s Fund admits it seeks to ‘inform the debate’….

Our assessment of performance over the period since 2010 – published next month – will set out in detail what the balance sheet looks like to help inform debate on the public service that matters most to the public.

They will be releasing more, probably ‘inflammatory’ conclusions, in March now that they have opened that debate….an election in May…go figure.

What else has Ham been saying recently?…from the Guardian last week…

Chris Ham, chief executive of the King’s Fund: “Andy Burnham has set out an ambitious and wide-ranging vision for the NHS and social care. It throws down the gauntlet to the other parties to set out their plans ahead of the general election. Burnham is right to put integrated care at the heart of this vision. This echoes the prescription for a single budget and single commissioner for health and social care set out by the Barker commission. His emphasis on mental health was also very welcome.

What did Ham say in 2013?

Responding to the Shadow Secretary of State’s speech launching the Labour Party’s health and care policy review, Chris Ham, Chief Executive of The King’s Fund, said:

‘Andy Burnham’s diagnosis of why the NHS and social care needs to change is the right one. The demands of an ageing population, changing burden of disease and rising patient expectations mean that fundamental change is needed.

‘His prescription for change is ambitious and his vision of delivering integrated care, co-ordinated around the needs of the individual, will be widely welcomed.

 

I’m guessing he is quite along term fan of Burnham and Labour…but then Ham was an advisor to Labour on NHS reform from 2000 to 2004 when he was seconded to the Department of Health, where he was Director of the Strategy Unit, working with ministers on NHS reform.

In 2006 the FT tells us that NHS productivity under Labour……

‘…has fallen by between 4 and 8 per cent in every year between 1997 and 2003.’

 

The article leads with this statement from Ham….

The Treasury was right to focus on National Health Service productivity and on big variations in the cost of treatment, length of stay, and how intensively hospital resources were used, Chris Ham, professor of health services management at Birmingham University, said yesterday……there is a need “to drive higher productivity and efficiency through the system”.

 

 

So Labour may have been struggling but they were on course and doing good work….Good that Ham thinks productivity is so important…as apparently it has improved under the Coalition..

….productivity has increased at a faster rate than in recent years.

Let’s see what the BBC could have hghlighted from the King’s Fund….

• Overall public satisfaction with the NHS increased to 65 per cent in 2014 – the second highest level since the British Social Attitudes survey began in 1983. Dissatisfaction with the service fell to an all-time low of 15 per cent.
• GP services remain the most popular NHS service in terms of satisfaction, with 71 per cent satisfied in 2014.
• Outpatient services experienced an all-time high in satisfaction levels of 69 per cent in 2014, almost rivalling general practice as the most popular NHS service.
• Inpatient services showed little change with a satisfaction rating of 59 per cent.
• For accident and emergency (A&E) services, satisfaction increased from 53 to 58 per cent between 2013 and 2014, after fluctuating in previous years.

What we’ve had instead is a relentless barrage of claims from the King’s Fund on the BBC without any critical challenge to those claims and hardly a word from government or anyone else in opposition to those claims……Perhaps Newsnight has shaken the tree a bit on this?…I haven’t watched it…but a day long BBC pro-Labour narrative almost completely without challenge on one of the most important and contentious issues in the lead up to the election is not an approach to news that one could say was balanced and impartial.

Been a busy few days so here’s the new OPEN Thread to see us off into the wide blue yonder of the weekend!

Last week Labour Brent councillor Zaffar Van Kawala was found guilty of dangerous driving and ABH after he drove his car at a female fellow councillor.

Today UKIP councillor Robert Ray admitted drink driving after police found him behind the wheel of his car in a hotel car park.

Guess which of the above stories is the only one you’ll find on the BBC’s website?

Yup.

Incidentally – 266 words from the BBC on the UKIP councillor, but only 107 to report the fact that 20 men were today charged with rape and child prostitution in the North East. (The list of names of those charged may give an indication why the BBC isn’t making a big deal about it.)

And while I’m on the subject, spot the only mention of “Labour” in this report about the scandals in Labour-led Rotherham council. 36th paragraph, and then only in an oblique way. Imagine if a similar scandal emerged under a UKIP-led council – the BBC report would be littered with the party name from headline to final sentence.

Listened this morning to Mishal Husain interview (08:44) Rabbi Arnold Saunders on the subject of anti-Semitism in the UK.

Was left wandering who it was committing all those anti-Semitic acts….other than the Rabbi mentioning ‘Morons’ it was left unsaid.

Now the Rabbi might be shy about broaching the subject especially with a Msulim interviewer (Why did the editor choose Mishal Husain for the interview?  Perhaps Tim Wilcox should have done the interview) but surely a hardened journalist with fearless integrity could ask just who might be the worst offenders?….is it white neo-Nazis, Muslims or maybe it’s very left-wing anti-Israeli Jews?

Who knows.  None of us do after the less than enlightening interview.