Monthly Archives: February 2016

It seems the BBC has shut up shop, it has burnt itself out reporting so enthusiastically about the letter (written by No10) from a group of businessmen cheerleading for the EU and another from some military types who hold the same views.

Odd, if we are supposed to vaue the opinions of such people, that the BBC ignores views from similarly statuesque figures on the Brexit side of things…such as the ex-Governor of the Bank of England whose opinion on the EU seemed to be of absolutely no interest to the BBC at all despite making the somewhat important judgement that the Eurozone is doomed.

Today we have Maj Gen Julian Thompson who expresses yet more critical thinking about the value of the EU…and again no sign of any BBC interest in his views… the one about Obama being a lameduck president no doubted grated somewhat…

Today, membership of the EU weakens our national defence in very dangerous times. Why? Clear-sighted understanding is obscured by four common myths.

Myth One is that the EU has kept the peace in Europe since 1945.

Myth Two is that the Americans want us to stay in the EU.

Myth Three is that if Britain takes back control of her own destiny it will help Putin.

Myth Four is that the EU helps us defeat Islamist terrorism.

Finally, some say: “stay in to rescue others as the EU founders.” I say we’ll do that better from a seaworthy lifeboat than shackled to a sinking deck.

I know from my lifetime’s experience in the service of my country that delusions about what actually keeps us safe, threaten us all. So let us put an end for good to these myths about the EU helping security. The facts show the very opposite.

Both Mervyn King and Julian Thompson have important things to say, things that undermine ‘Project Fear’ and give  support to Brexit…..and yet the BBC doesn’t give them the prominence it gives to the voices of Project Fear, if any coverage at all.

Here you go, a new Open Thread to start the week and end the month! BBC bias bothering you? Detail it here please.

Jude Law’s security team was attacked and mugged by migrants when the cameras stopped after the Hollywood star left the jungle camp in Calais

Security guards hired to protect Jude Law when he visited the ‘Jungle’ migrant camp were reportedly targeted by rock-pelting migrants just moments after the actor boarded the coach home.

But moments after the celebrities had boarded the production team coach back to Britain, their security team was ambushed, according to the Sunday People.

The attackers reportedly hurled stones at the men before stealing their mobile phones. 

A source told the newspaper: ‘We were shocked to see some of the migrants acting like football hooligans. The security team had stones thrown at them and two had phones smashed and stolen.’

Let ’em all in…they can squat at Jude’s place…places…or Mark Easton’s.

A nice gaff in Malibu or how about the £14 million one in Highgate?……

‘I am struggling a bit to see where the crisis is.’ 

John Humphrys in his own interview on the BBC’s nursing shortage ‘crisis’ in the NHS

The BBC has been headlining with the news that there is a shortage of nurses in the NHS and foreign nurses are having to be recruited, at great expense, by the shipload.

Trouble is, much like its claim that Jeremy Hunt was misleading us on the figures for deaths at the weekends, this is a story generated, it seems, only in the minds of the BBC itself for its own reasons and purposes.

Here is their web report….a report which misses out the absolutely crucial information that we only found out on the Today programme….trouble is, it seems the BBC only found out at the same time, found out that their story is complete bunk….hence John Humphrys’ reaction….’I’m struggling a bit to see where the crisis is?’  Yeah…that’s because there isn’t one.  Clearly either the BBC reporters did not research the story properly or they didn’t care that it was wrong and went ahead anyway in the hope that it was a ‘scoop’.

The whole piece began at 08:13:32 where we heard that patients were getting the care they needed with the help of agency staff, but John Humphrys interviewed Ian Cummings (08:19), chief executive of Health Education England who gave the lie to the BBC narrative.

The reason there is a ‘shortage’ of nurses?  Not because there is a lack of recruits, not because nurses are fleeing the profession but because……because the government is looking to recruit far more nurses, 24,000 more, in response to Mid-Staffs and other quality failings that have been found.  The ‘shortage’ is man-made if you like…in fact it is a ‘shortage’ in part generated by the BBC which has campaigned relentlessly for more nurses.

Are we recruiting more overseas nurses now as a response?  No…in fact we had more foreign nurses here in 2004/05 than we do now…and the level of overseas recruitment has been dropping.  Is there a shortage of applicants to be nurses?  No…there are 20,000 training places and 60,000 applicants.  Will patients suffer (as John Humphrys asked numerous times)..No.

It was at this time (08:22) Humphrys gave up and said he was struggling to see where the crisis was.  That’s because there isn’t one.  The NHS is coping until the new recruits filter through…the timescale is that it takes 3 to 4 years to recruit and train a nurse…hence by 2019-2020 the NHS should have all the homegrown staff it needs…and until then it will employ agency and overseas staff.

This is a non-story about a crisis that isn’t a crisis…a shortage of nurses that is only a shortage because the government is looking to recruit 24,000 more nurses in order to improve the quality of service.

The BBC should be applauding, instead it fabricates an entirely ficticious, negative tale about a crisis.  Why?

Thanks to Notafanofpoliticians for this:

Shame Rotten wasn’t as full of principles as he suggests…

Elsewhere…Paul Merton denies a transcript of him abusing Savile is real…..

Here’s the transcript….put up not by its writers but by someone else….who got the HIGNFY teams wrong….Savile did appear on the show but with Hislop.

The real writers admit to it being a hoax.

So who wrote it and why?

Comedian Richard Herring, who knows most things, told me it was some people calling themselves SOTCAA and, indeed, it was. Two of them.

Around 2005, when they were writing on the Cookd and Bombd forum, they were calling themselves ‘Alan Strang’ and ‘Emergency Lalla Ward Ten’.

Now I’m told I should call them Joseph Champniss and Mike Scott.

“At the time this all took place,” Joseph Champniss told me yesterday, “SOTCAA was hosted by NotBBC.

“Sometime in 1999, we started pondering on how affected stories get attached to ‘classic’ shows and films over the years which go down well in pub conversations but also blur any kind of factual coverage – stuff like the rushes of The Wicker Man being buried under the M4 motorway and so on.

“Faking some Have I Got News For You out-takes was originally going to be part of that initial plan. We probably decided on it after watching the Unbroadcastable Have I Got News video, which itself features rushes material… but mainly because we enjoy the idea of rushes per se.

“The original idea was to stick the page on the site in Hidden Archive and see if anyone noticed/cared. Emergency Lalla Ward went off and wrote the actual page – based on a tape of the broadcast itself. If you watch the show in tandem with the fakery you’ll note that he’s specifically ‘filled in’ stuff where there was an obvious edit-point. However, this was really only ever a first draft. Something to build on and re-write later in a less obvious/explosive fashion.

‘I saw that letter from business leaders this week saying we should stay in. Some of them are the same people who said Britain should adopt the euro. Why on earth should we listen to them?’  Mervyn King

So the world will implode if Britain leaves the EU.

Funny that the Deutsche Börse doesn’t think so…

London Stock Exchange in merger talks with Deutsche Börse

The London Stock Exchange is in talks to merge with Germany’s Deutsche Börse in a £21bn deal that would seal an alliance first discussed at the turn of the millennium.

The LSE said on Tuesday it was in detailed discussions with its German rival about an all-share merger. Under the proposed structure, the balance of ownership favours Frankfurt, with Deutsche Börse shareholders owning 54.4% of the combined company and LSE shareholders holding 45.6%. However, the merged company’s board will have equal numbers of members from each business.

The UK exchange said: “The boards believe that the potential merger would represent a compelling opportunity for both companies to strengthen each other in an industry-defining combination, creating a leading European-based global markets infrastructure group.”

Nor of course did HSBC as it decided to remain in the UK rather than flee to the Far East.

What of that ‘leap in the dark’ that Cameron and Osborne’s ‘Project Fear’ warns us of?  One moment Osborne is telling us how well the UK economy is doing and how it will be in surplus in no time at all…the next he’s warning us that it is about to go into intensive care…of course this has more to do with the referendum than anything else…we must stay in the EU or chaos will ensue.  But the real leap in the dark might be becoming ever closer tied to an imploding European Union.

The BBC presumably doesn’t want you to think there is any problem with the EU…look at this anodyne report on the thoughts of the ex-Bank of England Governor Mervyn King…..‘New crisis without reform’ warns ex-Bank of England boss..

The former Bank of England boss has warned in a new book that another financial crisis is “certain”, and may come “sooner rather than later”.

Mervyn King, who stood down in 2013, says reform of monetary and banking systems may help prevent the crisis.

But he says that failure “to tackle the disequilibrium in the world economy makes it likely that it [a crisis] will come sooner rather than later”

But what were his thoughts on Europe?  The BBC makes no mention of that for some reason….perhaps this is why….He says in essence that the Euro Zone is finished…..as the Telegraph headlines it…Mervyn King: the eurozone is doomed…..

With different political histories and traditions, a move to political union is unlikely to be achieved quickly through popular support. Put bluntly, monetary union has created a conflict between a centralised elite on the one hand, and the forces of democracy at the national level on the other. This is extraordinarily dangerous.

In 2015, the Presidents of the European Commission, the Euro Summit, the Eurogroup, the European Central Bank and the European Parliament (the existence of five presidents is testimony to the bureaucratic skills of the elite) published a report arguing for fiscal union in which “decisions will increasingly need to be made collectively” and implicitly supporting the idea of a single finance minister for the euro area. This approach of creeping transfer of sovereignty to an unelected centre is deeply flawed and will meet popular resistance.

In pursuit of peace, the elites in Europe, the United States and international organisations such as the IMF, have, by pushing bailouts and a move to a transfer union as the solution to crises, simply sowed the seeds of divisions in Europe and created support for what were previously seen as extreme political parties and candidates.

It will lead to not only an economic but a political crisis.

European Monetary Union (EMU) is the most ambitious project undertaken in monetary history. EMU has not proved to be an easy marriage, with the enterprise trying to navigate a safe passage between the Scylla of political ideals and the Charybdis of economic arithmetic.

How long this marriage will last is something known only to the partners themselves; outsiders cannot easily judge the state of the relationship.

The basic problem with a monetary union among differing nation states is strikingly simple. Starting with differences in expected inflation rates – the result of a long history of differences in actual inflation – a single interest rate leads inexorably to divergences in competitiveness. 

Some countries entered European Monetary Union with a higher rate of wage and cost inflation than others.

Instead of being able to use differing interest rates to bring inflation to the same level, some countries found their divergences were exacerbated by the single rate. 

The resulting loss of competitiveness among the southern members of the union against Germany is large, even allowing for some overvaluation of the Deutschmark when it was subsumed into the euro.

It is evident, as it has been for a very long while, that the only way forward for Greece is to default on (or be forgiven) a substantial proportion of its debt burden and to devalue its currency so that exports and the substitution of domestic products for imports can compensate for the depressing effects of the fiscal contraction imposed to date.

The inevitability of restructuring Greek debt means that taxpayers in Germany and elsewhere will have to absorb substantial losses.

Germany faces a terrible choice. Should it support the weaker brethren in the euro area at great and unending cost to its taxpayers, or should it call a halt to the project of monetary union across the whole of Europe? The attempt to find a middle course is not working. One day, German voters may rebel against the losses imposed on them by the need to support their weaker brethren, and undoubtedly the easiest way to divide the euro area would be for Germany itself to exit. 

But the more likely cause of a break- up of the euro area is that voters in the south will tire of the grinding and relentless burden of mass unemployment and the emigration of talented young people. The counter-argument – that exit from the euro area would lead to chaos, falls in living standards and continuing uncertainty about the survival of the currency union – has real weight…. leaving the euro area may be the only way to plot a route back to economic growth and full employment. The long-term benefits outweigh the short-term costs. Outsiders cannot make that choice, but they can encourage Germany, and the rest of the euro area, to face up to it.

One can only wonder what goes on in the mind of Lord Hall Hall.  He runs an organisation which has dishonesty running through its very core as it deceives the British Public on Europe, on Islam, on immigration, on the economy and yet he has sacked Tony Blackburn for apparently giving evidence to Dame Janet Smith that “…fell short of the standards of evidence that such an inquiry demanded.”

This is the BBC that won’t publish the Balen Report because it reveals (we must assume) just how anti-Israeli its reporters have been, this is the BBC which refused to publish the names of the people who attended its climate change seminars and changed the BBC’s stance to one in which it now pumps out relentless pro-Climate change propaganda…Lord Hall Hall of course was the man who approved these seminars, this is the BBC which joined the witch-hunt against Murdoch and News International rather than remain an impartial reporter of the Leveson Inquiry, this is the BBC which organised a letter from the ‘luvvies’ which was supposedly a genuine plea from the heart and turned out to be a cynical, corporate BBC trick.

And of course this is Lord Hall Hall who, rather than give evidence that might ‘fall short of the standards required‘ decided not to appear before a committee of MPs…

BBC chief Lord Hall locked in stand-off with the Commons after refusing to answer questions from MPs ‘because he is a peer’

The BBC is locked in a stand-off with MPs over its coverage of Europe.

Furious MPs accused director-general Tony Hall of putting the BBC ‘above accountability’ by refusing to answer questions from the Commons European scrutiny committee about the corporation’s alleged bias on the issue.

Lord Hall was accused of ‘hiding’ behind historic rules that mean members of the House of Lords cannot be summoned to answer questions in the Commons.

David Cameron today urged Lord Hall to back down, saying that as a ‘general rule’ BBC executives should be willing to answer questions from MPs.

‘The BBC needs to be, and is, publicly accountable,’ he said.

Tory MPs said the stand-off raised questions about whether peers should be allowed to run major public bodies.

Whatever Tony Blackburn’s memory lapses may have been they can’t possibly be anything compared to the cynical, dishonest and dangerous deceptions that the BBC employs to con the British Public.

The BBC digging out the smallest pro-EU story and ignoring the massive bombshell on immigration.

Oddly enough the Daily Mail is often the source of BBC stories and on Saturday the Today programme (08:52) highlighted an important issue using a story from the Mail.  Apparently we would never have had the children’s book ‘The Gruffalo’ if it hadn’t been for the EU…..

Oh look, the agitprop jihadis must be gutted…turns out that the murderer of Imam Jalal Uddin in Rochdale, or the ‘sex grooming town’ as the Times described it, was not a Far-Right, white Islamophobe……unless he was called ‘Mohammed Hussain Syeedy’ ,who has been charged with the murder.  Maybe, ala Hugh Sykes, he was conned into committing the murder by a sinister Right-Wing conspiracy?

No links on the BBC page to its former stories on this murder where they gave prominence to warnings from ‘concerned’ Muslim groups that this might be a racist, Islamophobic attack…but of course no one knows and do remain calm.  No ‘ratcheting up of tension’ there by the obvious suggestion that this just might be an anti-Muslim attack whilst pretending to be calming things down.

The BBC was happy to publish an attack by the police on the rival Times for its headline of which we were told the cops (who failed abysmally to protect the white girls of Rochdale) said…

“Your headline and its irrelevance to this case has the potential to cause community tensions.

“It is also offensive to the thousands of peaceful law-abiding Muslims and non-Muslims in Rochdale who are shocked by this murder.”

The police added…

“I would hope in the circumstances you issue an immediate apology and provide a response.”

Well, yeah, let’s have a grovelling apology to the 1400 girls raped and abused as the police stood by.

And let’s have an apology to the white or non-Muslim people of Rochdale who were offensively labelled Racist Islamophobes who at any moment might attack the Muslim community….

The mosque’s social media post said: “It is with deep sadness we inform you that our dear Qari Jalal Uddin Saab passed away last night.

“The cause of his death is yet to be confirmed, we recommend that you do not speculate but rather wait for the facts to be established by the police.”

Dobir Miah, chief officer for the Rochdale Council of Mosques, promised to “offer any assistance” to Greater Manchester Police.

“We would like to urge people to please remain calm and be reassured that everything possible is being done to find out what has happened,” he said.

“Nothing has been said that suggests there is an immediate threat to people doing their day-to-day activities.”

But of course every Muslim community leader knows that most people will take away an entirely different idea from such warnings.  Muslim community leaders are always pressing those buttons trying to build up an impression that the Muslim community is under siege and attack….trying to stop any negative stories about Muslims appearing in the Media by saying these make Muslims angry and isolated which leads to radicalisation.  It’s a tactic to silence anyone who dares to criticise Islam and those who want to impose ‘conservative Islam’ upon the UK…..which, as the influential MCB is one of those organisations and represents the vast bulk of Muslms in this country, you have to realise what not being able to criticise the likes of the MCB will lead to as it was deeply involved in the Trojan Horse scandal.

The Police were happy to add their two penneth worth raising the possibility that it might be a race attack whilst at the same time declaring they just don’t know…..

She said that while detectives were looking at the possibility of the incident being racially motivated, “at the moment we just cannot say one way or the other”.

They are also looking at the possibility that it was a drug deal gone wrong, or a suicide, or a Martian spaceship flew by, he tripped as he looked up and fell hitting his head as he went down.  Just looking at the possibility.

Let’s not raise tensions by subtly suggesting there are grounds for thinking this may be a race attack.

Originally I was going to say this video about the EU funding highly political oganisations such as Oxfam was purely one posted for interest which had nothing to do with the BBC but on reflection it has everything to do with the BBC.

The BBC, as we know, itself receives fairly large sums of cash from the EU...£20,152,022 (€24,435,906) to be precise. That is the sum dispersed to the BBC from EU funds between 2007-2012 inclusive.

Astonishingly Oxfam has received over €326 million from the EU between 2007 and 2013….last year it received €82.8 million.  Oxfam doesn’t just use this to feed or educate the needy it uses it to lobby and pressurise governments to adopt policies that Oxfam wants them to adopt.  Oxfam is highly political as you can see here…

Europe is facing unacceptable levels of poverty and inequality. Instead of putting people first, policy decision making is increasingly influenced by wealthy elites who bend the rules to their advantage, worsening poverty and economic inequality, while steadily and significantly eroding democratic institutions. Austerity measures and unfair tax systems across Europe are skewed in favour of powerful vested interests. It is time to reverse the course of poverty and inequality in Europe, putting people first. 

Ironically Oxfam discards all thoughts of European security and stability when on another hobby horse...Oxfam Position Paper for EU-Africa Migration..

With the latest figures showing that over the last 15 years at least 31,000 people have died or gone missing while trying to reach Europe, the EU must let human rights be the focus at Valletta and not prioritize the EU’s own agenda of tightened borders and increased state security.

Oxfam is calling for greater commitment to human security and human rights, sustainable development and prevention of violent conflict. Increased securitization of border control, and greater criminalization of irregular migration, will only increase human suffering and the risks to people’s safety. 

As  with the BBC’s finest Oxfam buries its head in the sand when it comes to assessing the impact mass migration of very different cultures into Europe will have.  It talks of security, poverty and inequality in Europe in one breath and then tells us we must allow in unlimited numbers of immigrants in another.

Oxfam’s, and the BBC’s, naivity and wilful blindness are not only ironic but highly dangerous.  A Europe that ends up destabilised and torn apart by immigration makes the whole world less safe because Europe is in the end the source of liberal values that speak of freedom of speech, of human rights, of equality and law.  If Europe as a set of cultures, not a political construct, collapses all those living in poverty and inequality in the rest of the world will have absolutely no chance.  Oxfam’s fine rhetoric takes no account of the reality of mass migration and its consequences that will only lead to conflict and even more refugees and more misery worldwide.

The BBC is no different.  It also of course receives a government grant, one that comes not direct from the British government but via the licence fee system which, due to its compulsory nature, is in fact a government gift given at arms length.  The BBC uses this money as it likes, more often than not to broadcast its propaganda slipped in under the radar into its children’s programmes, comedy, drama and soaps….and to pressurise the government on foreign policy and austerity.

The audience isn’t informed, educated and indeed rarely entertained as it has no choice as to what it hears….the debates are not rounded, balanced or honest.  The BBC pumps out one view on Islam, one view on Europe, one view on Climate Change, one view on the economy and if your views differs you are either mocked, ridiculed and scorned or shut out of the debate.

This is the direct opposite of what the BBC was intended to be as it now is nothing less than a propaganda machine that brooks no opposition and is in reality, despite appearances to the opposite, pretty much in the pay of government when it comes to issues like Islam, attacking the EDL and the ‘Far- Right’ as bidden by the Home Office, and climate, and now of course Europe as the government has adopted a pro-European Union position.

The BBC and the Left launched furious attacks on Murdoch because they told us he was buying influence and forcing politics to go the way he wanted….why the silence about the likes of Oxfam which rakes in a billion Euros a year and uses a lot of that to lobby governments and institutions on highly political matters?  Seems like one law for a ‘right-wing’ media mogul in competition wth the BBC and another for left-wing NGO’s, and the BBC itself, that support mass migration and massive spending programmes.