Monthly Archives: June 2016

The Remain campaign have been countering Leave’s effective immigration blast with claims that this shows Leave have lost the argument on the economy.  Hold on….that wasn’t their argument anyway….immigration, red-tape, sovereignty and freedom from an unelected EU government are Leave’s main platforms.

This shows that Remain know they can’t win the argument on immigration…but did they win the ‘argument’ on the economy anyway?  Firstly this was their own ‘argument’, it was the ground they chose to fight on and the ground that the BBC ceded to them as it concentrated on reporting on economic issues and the EU and doing its best to avoid immigration, sovereignty and most important of all, what happens if we stay in the EU?  Will the EU steamroller be ratcheted up and ever-closer union be closer than ever and the UK dragged in with UK politicians collaborating to willingly bring the UK into the EU super-state?

Firstly of course the polls are pretty much neck and neck, the latest from ICM putting Leave ahead…in fact, you may not have noticed, but Leave has been ahead in many polls.  What is interesting is that the polls that put Remain ahead are mostly phone polls done by IPSOS Mori…most other polls which put Leave ahead or on a par, are online….where you might think a more considered answer might have been given and the questions mulled over longer than you would give a phone call….the tone of the questions on which would depend upon the pollster at the other end.

I haven’t heard the BBC giving much airtime to the fact the Leave seems to be doing far better than they are credited to be doing…as said, ahead or drawing in most polls.

So did Remain ‘win the economic argument’?  Certainly not with me…I suspect much will stay the same long term,  short term there may be a bit of a downturn perhaps but with things picking up and improving once free of the EU strait-jacket.

Tory MP Rishi Sunak lays out a credible case for Leave.

What else of significance?  Whilst pumping out anti-Brexit warnings from the OECD and the Dutch PM the BBC seems to have missed this significant revelation for some reason…..

Two thirds of people think Brexit would not leave them any poorer

Two-thirds of Britons believe that they would not be worse off in the event of a Brexit vote, in a blow to the assembled forces of “Project Fear”.

The findings came despite warnings issued by the Treasury, the Bank of England, the International Monetary Fund, and the OECD, all of which have cautioned on the economic repercussions of a Brexit vote to some degree, and suggest that most voters have been left unconvinced.

Some 58pc of the public believe that their living standards would stay the same in the five years after a UK withdrawal from the EU, according to an Ipsos Mori survey of more than 4,000 Britons. A further 11pc expect that their financial well being would actually improve if voters decided to leave the political bloc behind on June 23.

How can the BBC have missed that?  Kind of a bombshell for the Remain campaign…in fact Andrew Neil has retweeted the article…so maybe at least one at the BBC will be willing to tell the truth…

What else has the BBC failed to report?

Tusk blames ‘utopian’ EU elites for Eurosceptic revolt and Brexit crisis 

European Council president Donald Tusk has warned EU leaders in the bluntest terms that their “utopian” illusions are tearing Europe apart, and that any attempt to seize on Brexit to force through yet more integration would be a grave mistake.

In a passionate plea to Europe’s top conservatives, he accused the EU elites of living in a fool’s paradise and provoking the eurosceptic revolt now erupting in a string of countries.

“It is us who today are responsible,” he said, speaking at a conclave of Christian-Democrat and centre-right leaders in Luxembourg. “Obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe, do not share our Euro-enthusiasm.” 

Mr Tusk, alert to the patriotic revival in his native Poland, lambasted the EU establishment for pushing “a utopia of Europe without nation states” that goes against the grain of European history and has produced a deep cultural backlash that cannot be dismissed as illegitimate far-right populism.

Here’s a thoughtful reflection on the BBC’s recent adaption of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”…

A militaristic dictatorship replete with red and black insignia. Guards bearing uncanny resemblances to storm-troopers. A fascistic dictator who might just be a psychopath…
Welcome to the BBC’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Make sure you click the link and read the rest of this.

Here you go, a new Open Thread. Anyone catch former Labour MP and good pal of Sinn Fein Chris Mullins on the Today programme this morning insisting that relatives of those killed by the IRA in the Birmingham Pub bombings needed to “move on”? Charming. And no pro IRA bias, no way….

Remarkable…after all the BBC has done for him this is how Jeremy Corbyn responds (29 mins)….

“There is not one story on any election anywhere in the UK that the BBC will not spin into a problem for me. It’s obsessive beyond belief. They are obsessed with trying to damage the Labour Party, and unfortunately there are people in the Labour Party who play into that.”

It’s that right-wing BBC at work again.

This is the BBC that played down the anti-Semitism accusations, the BBC that has consistently seemed like the real opposition party when Labour was clearly failing to make headway under Miliband and as continued to provide that support as it pushes Labouresque arguments about the NHS or the economy, this is the BBC that seems reluctant to mention Corbyn’s huge U-turn on getting out of the EU…Tom Watson interviewed today…no challenge on Corbyn’s flip-flop despite the subject of Labour’s EU stance coming up, and this is the BBC that has failed to really challenge Corbyn on his core beliefs, his hard-left Marxist beliefs and the rabble of Trots and Marxists that he has gathered around him to run the Labour Party.

Nick Robinson warned BBC journos not to criticise Corbyn and they haven’t in any way that is effective or rigorous.  It was only when the Asian, Muslim, Sadiq Khan came on the scene as newly elected Mayor of London and started positioning himself as potential Labour leader that the BBC’s reporting took on a negative tone.  Whilst a Labour victory under any leader would have been good enough for the BBC an Asian Muslim would have been their wildest dreams coming true….the slow-witted Corbyn was always going to be merely the stand-in until someone better came along and for the BBC that man is Sadiq Khan…they hope.

I don’t think I have heard a single thing critical of Clinton on the BBC.  I’m sure there must be the odd piece here and there that takes a serious look at her and yet that’s not the thrust of the BBC coverage which I suspect, if you were counting, would be found to think Trump was the only candidate for President.  Trump has been treated with a massive contempt (not least by Cameron who has done a flip-flop and now loves Trump as well as the Islamist loving Sadiq Khan) and all we have heard is derision, scorn and mocking from the BBC’s finest.  Which makes the following BBC analysis of the presidential campaign something of a condemnation of their own prejudiced coverage and approach that has been so stridently based upon attacking Trump so far…..and yet Clinton is as controversial a figure as the BBC believes Trump is……but that is by no means reflected in their reporting on her and the way presenters, and the usual comedians, make comments in passing during their programmes…..

I spoke to a large number of the bikers before we set out on the ride. And something struck me – yes, there were Trump diehards who think he will prove to be the saviour of a fallen nation that has lost its way.

But many others were much more nuanced. Many people said to us that he would be the lesser of two evils, the clear implication being that Hillary Clinton was the bigger evil.

One person, when I asked what he thought of Secretary Clinton, said: “She’s trash, she should be in prison.”

Another man told me that his views were simply unbroadcastable on television.

The polls say that both Trump and Clinton suffer big negatives and low approval ratings.

This election might come down to a question of who voters loathe the least.

My totally unscientific, random, non-adjusted focus group at Rolling Thunder suggests that might well be the case.

In a country of 320 million people, how did it come down to such an unappetising menu choice?

Do you want the dish with the listeria or the salmonella?

That was written by Jon Sopel who seems to have reverted to type in his latest report in which he seems very affronted that Trump dares to criticise the sainted Media...this seems as much a defence of Sopel than anything else…

Spoiler alert – before you read this you should understand that I am almost certainly disgusting, invariably dishonest and an inveterate liar. Well, that seems to be the considered view of Donald Trump on journalists.

From the way the BBC has treated Trump maybe he has a point.

Sopel whinges on….

There’s the famous HL Mencken quote from decades ago when he said that the relationship between a journalist and a politician ought to be the same as a dog and a lamp post – and I have always hated it.

The presumption is that we are pure, and all politicians are venal and deserve the crap kicked out of them. Nearly all the politicians whom I have come to know have been motivated by a commitment to making the world a better place – yes, they may be ambitious, self-important people – but tell me one walk of life where you don’t find people like that.

It is our job to test our elected officials, to subject them to scrutiny, to ask the questions the public want answering and hopefully to be fearless in our pursuit of those questions. And to do so respectfully.

That is our job, and a free press able to do that is one of the cornerstones of a liberal democracy.

To rework the Mencken quote, Mr Trump seems to think that we are the lamp post.

Note this especially…’It is our job to test our elected officials, to subject them to scrutiny, to ask the questions the public want answering and hopefully to be fearless in our pursuit of those questions. And to do so respectfully.’   If that is the job description then Sopel and Co have failed miserably. Funny how thin skinned these journos are….they dish it out but can’t take it.

The BBC’s coverage and reporting from the Middle East, and closer to home on the subject of Islam, terrorism, radicalisation and the ‘clash of civilisations’, has been dishonest, deliberately misleading and dangerous.  The BBC has devoted its reporting to defending and supporting extremists, to hiding the truth of what Muslim intentions are in the West, hiding the true nature of Islam as an ideology, and hiding events across Europe that illustrate the nature of Islam and the incompatibility of Islam with a Western, secular, democratic and liberal society.  The BBC in contrast uses its enormous resources and influence to vilify and demonise Israel and gives a positive voice almost solely to the Palestinian narrative.  We know that the BBC has a report, the Balen Report, that supposedly investigated the BBC’s reporting of the Middle East, a report that the BBC spent over £300,000 to prevent being published.  Why?  Does it show ‘BBC News kills Jews’?  It wasn’t so long ago that a BBC reporter suggested that Jews in Europe were a justifiable target because of what Israel does in Gaza or the West Bank.

In fact we don’t need to see the Balen Report to uncover the BBC’s approved line in reporting on Islam and Israel.  We have our own eyes and ears which tell us all we need to know…but beyond that we have the words of one of the people who seems to have had a huge influence on, not just the BBC’s coverage, but perhaps coverage from journalists around the world, Roger Hardy, in an extraordinarily revealing expose of the  mindset of the BBC and how it approaches certain important and controversial subjects.

The most damning revelation by Hardy is that the BBC’s reporting on Israel is not led by journalistic integrity, a search for truth, a principled mission to ‘speak truth to power’, it is in fact led by what it perceives as public opinion.  The ‘independent’ BBC has allowed its reporting to be hijacked by the massive propaganda campaigns led by the pro-Palestinian Islamists in combination with the Hard Left that has altered public perceptions of Israel, and rather than maintain a neutral stance and report the facts, the BBC adopted that pro-Palestinian narrative and has been central to it’s coverage ever since.

Hardy also, in a second talk [videos below], reveals that he believes we must surrender Europe to Muslims…’they’ are here and so we must adapt our society to fit in with their demands else they become alienated, angry and radicalised.

‘One lesson well understood in both Stalin’s Russia and Nazi Germany was that propaganda is most effective when it is backed by terror’

By coincidence Sue at ‘Is the BBC biased? posted this video of Col. Richard Kemp talking about the Media’s portrayal of Israel and revealing the two most salient facts about the conflict between Israel and the Muslim/Left axis….That the Palestinian leadership has not, and never has had, any intention of agreeing to a two-state solution, they want to wipe Israel off the map, and secondly that there has been one of the most powerful smear campaigns in history directed against Israel …a campaign of course that the BBC has been central to.

In this talk Roger Hardy looks at the BBC’s role in reporting on politics and how it acts in the ‘national interest’.  He touches on Israel and Islam and he reveals that he is more sympathetic towards the Palestinians than the Israelis and , though originally not enamoured with Islam, since joining the BBC he has come to view it more positively and believes the problem is that the Media just doesn’t understand Islam and ‘we are paying a high price for our failure to understand it’…..when he says ‘understand’ he means be more sympathetic and make allowances for Muslim beliefs, concerns and grievances….so….terrorism, radicalisation…it’s the West’s fault.

Speaking Truth to Power: The BBC and the Middle East

In the videos below Hardy expands on what he sees as the Media’s failure to understand as it reports on Islam and the Muslim world and its interaction with the West.  He claims that ‘Palestinian issues are at the heart of global issues and Islamic radicalisation’.  So Israel is the problem not ‘Islam’.

Journalists just don’t understand Islam, Muslims and the Muslim world, they don’t understand the massive diversity of the Muslim world preferring easy stereotypes.  That from Hardy, a self-professed expert on Islam, is highly dishonest as he knows that the whole point of Islam is that it is one religion, one set of rules no matter what culture you live in, Islam is meant to be the same everywhere…and he ignores the close connection between Muslims worldwide….the ‘Ummah’.

He tells us we had better get this right [our understanding of Islam] for the sake of our own growing multi-cultural society with ever-increasing Muslim populations.

Revealingly, tellingly, and scarily, his attitude is that ‘there is no Islam and the rest…’they’ are here and we have to adapt our societies to fit in with Islam and the demands of that Muslim population’….in other words we must Islamise our society in order that Muslims feel they fit in and don’t feel alienated and hence go on to become radicalised…..which brings to mind the Mirror’s editorial about Muslim blackmail backed with threats of ‘terror’ by angry Muslim communities not allowed to create mini-Pakistans in the UK…

WE MUST NOT GIVE IN TO MUSLIM BLACKMAIL – – Mirror Online

Hardy tells us that if we fail to understand Islam it is no wonder we don’t understand Islamism…hmmm…trouble is most people do understand Islam and don’t like it…it’s just the BBC that refuses to admit the truth and continues to peddle a dangerous lie about the compatibility, and the desire to integrate, of Islam and ‘Islamists’ with the West.

As millions of Muslims force their way into Europe to join the many millions already here it is evident that people like Hardy are ready to surrender their own culture, beliefs and values and that the BBC is applying its resources to aid and abet in that capitulation. Despite that it is clear that many others in Europe are actively opposed to this abandonment of European society and culture and are working to bring this Islamisation to an end.

It is fairly obvious that this can have only one result in the end as Europe ‘awakens’…a huge religious war across Europe with the inevitable endgame that Muslims are forced out of Europe but not before we have massive bloodletting and destruction visited upon us as was the result of Partition and the creation of Pakistan…the last time Muslims decided they needed to Islamise a land.

The BBC’s attempts to downplay the consequences of mass Muslim migration into Europe has the opposite effect to that intended.   The BBC thinks that if it buries bad news this will keep the peace….but in the end it will result in far more savagery, death and destruction than may have happened had the mass migration been blocked originally and Islam ‘contained’.

The BBC’s utopian world is a dangerous and delusional dream.

Hardy starts at 5 mins 30secs in……and continues in part two….

What the Media Get Wrong