The National Union of Miner’s own website says:
Throughout the 1960s, with a Labour Government in office from 1964, the pit closure programme accelerated; it decimated the industry. During this period, nearly 300 more pits were closed, and the total workforce slumped from over 750,000 in the late 1950s down to 320,000 by 1968. In many parts of Britain, miners now became known as industrial gypsies as pit closures forced them to move from coalfield to coalfield in search of secure jobs.

They were victims of madhouse economics.

From what I’ve heard so far the BBC’s coverage of Orgreave is the usual one-sided affair that we’ve come to expect whenever the ‘Tories’ and the Police are involved…the BBC liking neither.

It’s been a day of tall tales about the police being a political army and of innocent miners who just wanted to work and the ‘enemy within’.

That of course is nonsense and the BBC should be challenging the miners who they bring on to say their piece rather than indulging their lies….and the ‘enemy within’ was Thatcher’s term, not for the miners, but for the NUM leadership which was to lead them to destruction….as much an enemy to the miners themselves as to the country.

Let’s be clear..there was no mandate for the strike.  Scargill forced it upon the miners after a ballot rejected the call to strike.

Scargill was using the miners as sacrificial pawns in his political battle to destroy the government…Scargill was ‘political’ not the police and miners suffered more from violence from other miners as they tried to intimidate them to stop work than they did from the police.  Scargill thought he should be running the country….helpfully part funded as the NUM was by the Soviets.

The labour movement had the best opportunity in 50 years to transform not merely an industrial situation and win an important battle for workers in struggle, but an opportunity to change the government of the day.        Arthur Scargill

Scargill led the miners into poverty and ruin for his own purposes which had nothing to do with keeping mines open.

As for jobs, firstly Labour closed more pits than the Tories, second there is no right to a job for life, and the miners were offered extremely generous redundancy terms, far better than other industries received, which they rejected.

I must tell you that what we have got is an attempt to substitute the rule of the mob for the rule of law, and it must not succeed. It must not succeed. There are those who are using violence and intimidation to impose their will on others who do not want it. The rule of law must prevail over the rule of the mob.

– The then Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

We’ve looked at this subject several times and the BBC always presents the miners as victims, not of Scargill and his manipulation and trickery but of the police and Thatcher.

Labour ‘Decimated’ The Coal Industry…says NUM

Not So Minor Miner Facts

Played In A Miner Key

Always interesting the BBC take on events…and it is a ‘take’ rather than actual news, the BBC’s version of most things being shaped by their own prejudices and bias.

Over the past weeks you may have noticed how the BBC has been hunting down Bradley Wiggins and how their reports on TUE’s in sport have concentrated on Sky and repeatedly insinuate and be very suggestive that Wiggins is guilty of drug abuse.

Sunday morning we had Gary Richardson interviewing one of the people investigating how TUEs are used and it was clear that Richardson was completely uninterested in how sport in general uses TUEs and was intent solely on targeting Sky and Wiggins.  Any thought that it maybe that Sky is of course a big rival to the BBC in sport [and the BBC consistently attacks Sky’s funding of the Premier League] and that their arch-nemesis and bête noir, Rupert Murdoch, is deeply involved with Sky?  Nah…just coincidence the BBC seem to be after Sky sporting interests.

Odd how when Mo Farrah’s coach was being investigated for using drugs the BBC announced loudly and often that of course Mo was entirely innocent and that there was absolutely no suggestion that he had taken any drugs….and yet the finger is being pointed at Wiggins very, very fast for using TUEs that are legal to use….and indeed Farrah has used them twice in his career as well...and yet…..silence about him.  Perhaps Brad should convert to Islam and black up.

In a similar vein interesting how the BBC reports on Clinton and Trump.

Trump may be, in the BBC’s opinion, too loud, rude, crude, brash, sexist, vulgar and has patted a few butts [naturally not one of these ‘girls’ welcomed the attention of a multi-millionaire who could further their career…no not at all Mrs Merton] but what he did was not whilst in a public office and had absolutely no bearing on national security or trust.

In contrast Clinton has been in public office at a senior level for many years and has proved herself entirely untrustworthy in many respects.  The BBC jumps up and down calling Trump racist [proof of that?] and yet ignores Clinton’s reported remarks such as ‘Fucking Jew’.  The BBC also glides over her attempts to cover up for Banger Bill by attempting to discredit the women claiming he assaulted them and if that failed by trying to intimidate and bully them into silence.

Which is worse?  Trump and his ‘laddish’ behaviour or someone who whilst in office carries on with huge disregard for national security, the law and protection of women?

Justin Webb on Saturday [08:32], in the belief that of course everybody thinks the same as he and his BBC chums do about Trump, was casually insulting and demonising him telling us that Trump was ‘uniquely ghastly’…really?  So much more so than Clinton?  He also said that it was a choice between a ‘racist, misogynist,, narcissistic thug’ and someone who was merely ‘secretive and dishonest about some emails’…it was ‘no contest’ thought Webb, completely ignoring the fact that Clinton’s failures must surely be a huge negative for someone wanting to be President whilst Trump’s are matters of taste and manners.

As David says in other posts the BBC is pushing the Democratic narrative and pointing the finger not at Clinton but at the FBI…Mardell on his programme today made no attempt to investigate the emails, talk to the FBI or any neutral commentator..instead he brought in a hard core Democrat to tell us how ill-judged, if not illegal, Comey’s actions were.  No inkling that Clinton’s aide had told the FBI previously that she had handed over all emails….and yet thousands more were on her personal laptop.

No thoughts from the BBC as to why Comey didn’t press ahead with any action against Clinton previously and yet there is evidence that within the FBI that was a highly controversial move…and you can see that the Government [ie the Democrats] ‘warned’ Comey not to go further.

The Mail has a completely different perspective in things…

‘He talks about the damage that he’s done to himself and the institution [of the FBI], and how he’s been shunned by the men and women who he admires and work for him. It’s taken a tremendous toll on him.

‘The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary,’ said the source, a close friend who has known Comey for nearly two decades, shares family outings with him, and accompanies him to Catholic mass every week.

‘Some people, including department heads, stopped talking to Jim, and even ignored his greetings when they passed him in the hall,’ said the source. ‘They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.’

Comey’s decision to reopen the case was more than an effort to heal the wound he inflicted on the FBI. 

He was also worried that after the presidential election, Republicans in Congress would mount a probe of how he had granted Hillary political favoritism.

So many at the FBI thought Comey had let Clinton off the hook…and he is worried it looks like political favouritism for Clinton…whereas the BBC are pushing hard that he is favouring Trump.

You can see why the BBC has steadfastly refused to concentrate on the email scandal throughout the campaign as Clinton’s lead vanishes on the latest revelations, the BBC preferring instead to traduce Trump rather than analyse the charges against Clinton.

Let’s recap. The FBI have apparently found 650,000 emails on the home computer shared by Clinton “close aide” Huma Abedin and her sex deviant husband Anthony Weiner. These may or may not contain classified information and some may relate to Hillary Clinton. The BBC are in a panic as it looks like their endorsed  candidate is about to take a spectacular fall from grace. So, what to do? How about parroting the bizarre accusation by that most crooked of Democrats, Harry Reid, that it is the FBI who “may” have “broken the law”.  I am sure Harry Reid is an authority on what constitutes breaking the law but are we seriously being asked to believe that the FBI needs to now investigate itself? Is he calling for the arrest of Jamey Comey? Is it now unlawful to investigate law breakers? I expect to now see the Clinton camp release an avalanche of any residual dirt they have on Trump but NOTHING and NO-ONE – and yes that includes the BBC – are going to stop Hillary Clinton going to the polls as the candidate under FBI investigation. Right across the BBC, and this sadly includes Andrew Neil – it is a universal wall of support for Clinton and the fact that she may end up in a penitentiary does not defect them – such is their visceral disregard for Trump.

A new week beckons as we see the last day of October out! Here is a new Open Thread – detail the bias here please.

The BBC are now pushing the Clinton narrative that the Director of the FBI, James Comey, is effectively the guilty party in the Email scandal. Quite incredible stuff.

The wheels just came off the Clinton campaign and the BBC doesn’t know what to do.

First, the FBI re-open their investigation of Hillary Clinton following the discovery of more of her emails on  mobile phone belonging to sex pervert Anthony Weiner. To do this at this time is massive news and means that the Democrat candidate for the White House in 2016 is under criminal investigation. The BBC ignores this and prefers to have it’s millionaire stars such as Graham Norton make sex jokes about Donald Trump.

Next, I see that Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, just deleted his entire Twitter account. BBC don’t report it. Not newsworthy you see.

Then, Loretta Lynch, Obama’s Attorney General, just pleaded the 5th over the issue of financial ransom payments to Iran. Again, met with a studied yawn.

Talk about corrupt. The BBC like the rest of the pro Clinton media have gone subdued, insisting that she is “confident” nothing will be found.

The BBC knows and yet chooses to ignore.

The BBC knows that Islam has a very dark side and yet all too often chooses to ignore that.  Instead it seeks to normalise the religion and pretend that it can exist in perfect harmony within Western society.  The BBC expends a great deal of effort in actually hiding what is being done by Muslims to further the influence and power of Islam within society…such as denying that the Trojan Horse plot was real or that events in Cologne actually happened or excusing terrorism as the result of mental illness or blaming it on British foreign policy…not the fault of Islam or Muslims at all you understand.

The BBC is happy to use people from controversial organisations such as the MCB, Cage, MPACUK and individuals such as Mehdi Hasan, Tariq Ramadan or Myriam Francois-Cerrah who are ardent Muslim activists to be the face of Islam on the BBC.  The BBC knows they are controversial but ignores that.

There are exceptions of course.  The everyday big faces of the BBC such as Campbell, Derbyshire, Chiles, well just about any presenter really, will not dare say anything to upset a Muslim interviewee or caller….only occasionally do we get a spark of genuine journalism and the spirit of investigation and some backbone.

John Ware on Panorama seems unafraid to say the wrong thing about Islam as is Andrew Neil on occasion.  Neil however shamefully sold out to the extremists when ex-EDL leader Tommy Robinson was interviewed on the Today programme but Muslim extremsist Mehdi Hasan protested that the interview was not challenging enough and so he provided a list of questions that he felt had to be asked of Robinson….Neil subsequently obliged and attempted a hatchet job on Robinson at the behest of Hasan as we’ve looked at previously.

Perhaps Neil was making up for things when he later in the year suggested that groups like the MCB weren’t doing enough to root out the extremists….kind of ironic when Neil does a voice over for Hasan.  In the course of his commentary he mentioned that one Muslim preacher, Shakeel Begg, had said that Jihad was the ‘greatest of deeds’….Begg subsequently sued and the judgement has just been passed…the BBC won its defence of the case the judge saying:

Mr Justice Haddon-Cave said four of his speeches showed he had promoted such violence and two that he had espoused extremist positions.

“Shakeel Begg, is something of a Jekyll and Hyde character,” he said.

“He appears to present one face to the general, local and inter-faith community and another to particular Muslim and other receptive audiences. The former face is benign, tolerant and ecumenical.

“The latter face is ideologically extreme and intolerant.”

“The various core extremist messages which emerge from the claimant’s speeches and utterances would, in my view, have been quite clear to the audiences.

“The claimant’s ostensible cloak of respectability is likely to have made his [extremist] message in these speeches all the more compelling and seductive. For this reason, therefore, his messages would have been all the more effective and dangerous.

“It is all too easy for someone in the claimant’s position of power and influence as an Imam to plant the seed of Islamic extremism in a young mind, which is then liable to be propagated on the internet.”

Trouble is of course what Begg said isn’t ‘extreme’…it’s just Islam as laid out in the Koran.

Begg’s career might make you roll your eyes as you see that he has been influential in many supposedly anti-extremist organisations…

He works closely with the police. Since 2007, he has been a member of the Independent Advisory Group to Lewisham Police which advises the police on local issues, especially those relating to the Muslim community. He represents the LIC in the Safer Neighbourhood Team and the Hate Crime Working Group which includes a cross-section of people from Lewisham, including a member of the LGBT community. On 21st October 2014 the Claimant participated in the LIC’s hosting of a visit by the Safer Neighbourhood Team from the Metropolitan Police Service, led by a police inspector. Since 2007, the Claimant has worked in gang mediation and mediated between the opposing ‘Shower Gang’ and ‘Anti-Shower Gang’. He was a member of the Lewisham Community Police Consultative Group (LCPCG) from 2005 until December 2009.

This is unfortunately the case up and down the country and throughout government and other institutions that employ such people as Begg in the belief, hope, that it promotes interfaith harmony and peace and will reduce radicalisation.

What’s interesting from the judgement is that it is clear that the BBC dug deep into the meaning of Islam and the ideology propagated by the likes of Begg as part of their defence….that extremism in Islam, that the BBC so ironically tells us  is the religion of peace, being their defence.

A shame of course that all that will be forgotten and shoved to one side in everyday discourse and debate on current events on the BBC whether it be actual terrorism or the problems associated with massive Muslim immigration into Europe. Islam will once again be the religion of peace and it will again be racist to raise concerns about Islamic doctrine and teachings and of course Muslim activists will be sitting in BBC studios peddling their lies once again and the BBC will once again choose to ignore that.

As always the BBC does have the outlier programmes that touch on sensitive subjects but the conclusions drawn and the information turned up by such programmes doesn’t filter through to the BBC in general and its everyday presenters continue to present an utterly false picture of the world as a result of a misguided sense that it is the right thing to do as they don’t want to ‘demonise’ certain segments of the population however ‘challenging’ their behaviour or words.

This is a general problem within the BBC and not just relating to Islam…there seems to be some structural or procedural failure that stops the flow of information from specialised programmes out to all the troops resulting in the presenters continuing on relying on their own resources and all too often prejudices to guide their presentations.  This is not the case with climate change where the BBC has a rigorously enforced and policed system to make sure the messaging is correct and that off-message programming is stopped in its tracks [ala Quentin Letts].  So the BBC can do it when it wants to…it just isn’t really interested in getting the facts right about Islam enough to run such controls…unless they are being sued it seems.

The reality of Muslim ‘moderate’ groups…

On January 16, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles sent a letter to more than 1,000 imams across Britain asking for their help in fighting extremism and rooting out those who are preaching hatred. He also asked them to explain to Muslims how Islam is compatible with being British. The letter said:

‘We must show our young people, who may be targeted, that extremists have nothing to offer them. We must show them that there are other ways to express disagreement: that their right to do so is dependent on the very freedoms that extremists seek to destroy. We must show them the multitude of statements of condemnation from British Muslims; show them these men of hate have no place in our mosques or any place of worship, and that they do not speak for Muslims in Britain or anywhere in the world.

You, as faith leaders, are in a unique position in our society. You have a precious opportunity, and an important responsibility: in explaining and demonstrating how faith in Islam can be part of British identity. We believe together we have an opportunity to demonstrate the true nature of British Islam today. There is a need to lay out more clearly than ever before what being a British Muslim means today: proud of your faith and proud of your country. We know that acts of extremism are not representative of Islam; but we need to show what is.’

Muslim groups responded by accusing the British government of stoking “Islamophobia.”

In an angry response to Pickles, the Chief Executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, Mohammed Shafiq, wrote:

I wish to express my dismay at the letter sent by the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles MP, this letter is patronising and factually incorrect and typical of the Government only looking at Muslims through the prism of terrorism and security.

We do not need to be patronised by a Government that claims it wants to give young Muslims an alternative to the extremist narrative and then refuse to discuss foreign policy.

In terms of British values, is Mr Pickles really suggesting as the far Right do that Muslims are detached from mainstream society? I hope the Minister clarifies his comments.

In an interview with Sky News, Talha Ahmad of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said:

The letter has all the hallmarks of very poor judgment which feeds into an Islamophobic narrative, which feeds into a narrative of us and them.

In a response to Pickles, the MCB wrote:

We do take issue with the implication that extremism takes place at mosques, and that Muslims have not done enough to challenge the terrorism that took place in our name.

This is why we responded to the media, and an assertion in some quarters, that you were somehow endorsing the idea that Muslims and Islam are inherently apart from British society. We reject such notions.

We also reject suggestions that Muslims must go out of their way to prove their loyalty to this country of ours.

The president of the Bradford Council for Mosques, Mohammed Rafiq Sehgal, said the letter was “highly objectionable on several grounds” and that it “blames and targets the Muslim community.” He added:

We ask Mr Pickles to publicly apologize to the Muslim community for bringing this peaceful section of the British society into disrepute. Blaming Muslims may win Mr Pickles and his party some support from the right wing voters but it does not help good community relations.

Listening to the news on 5Live and the top story was a court case, not the one in Northern Ireland where a judge struck down a claim that NI should have a veto over Brexit and  that Article 50 couldn’t be triggered by the government, no not that one, but the one about the Uber drivers who successfully claimed they were employed by the company.  Now that might be a story of import and interest but it is not by any stretch of the imagination as important as the decision in Northern Ireland on Brexit….given that it may give us an idea of how any other cases might go on the mainland as well.  The Brexit story didn’t even merit a mention in the news bulletin…quite extraordinary when you consider how the BBC forensically goes over all Brexit related news…just look how it is putting so many resources and time into trying to undermine the Nissan success story.

Checking the website and the Brexit story is not on the frontpage, nor amazingly on the UK page…Uber is top there.

I can in no way imagine the BBC so rapidly making the Brexit judgement into a non-story had the claim been successful and Brexit put on hold…..the fact that Brexit continues is just as important a story and yet….all has gone quiet at the BBC on the website and on the radio at least.

The court case result is a huge knock back for the Remain activists who refuse to accept the democratic decision and work to use every means to undermine the result.  The BBC seems to be hiding what is a big story.  One can only conclude that the result is not to the BBC’s liking and that it seeks to keep up the myth that Brexit is somehow illegitimate and that the only valid recourse is another referendum….which you might think was odd given that the BBC spent a lot of time and effort telling us how destabilising the uncertainty of the actual referendum was and how disruptive and destructive to the economy it was….proof positive you might think that the BBC in fact cares not one jot for the economy nor for the welfare of the workers, despite all its claims otherwise, but is solely intent on the Grand Project being implemented come what may and at whatever cost just as the EU itself is.

Top story in NI right now according to the BBC?

Man charged in teen webcam blackmail probe

I feel I must apologise on behalf of all taxi drivers everywhere as I am ashamed of the actions of this man who told Lily Allen to get stuffed, I’m sorry for what she had to suffer….

Lily Allen says taxi driver refused to drive her and told her to ‘find an immigrant’

Lily Allen said she has had a “glimpse of what it feels like to be discriminated against” after being shunned by a taxi driver.

The London-born pop star said she was turned away from a black cab after being told to “find an immigrant” to give her and her daughters a ride.

The alleged interaction between Allen and the unknown taxi driver comes after she apologised “on behalf of my country” after seeing the squalid conditions refugees had lived in at the Calais camp known as the Jungle.

Actually no…good on you mate.

This was a sad little nothing of a programme from the BBC…clearly the BBC has decided that a scattergun approach to Brexit is the best chance to counter it by spreading as much anti-Brexit shrapnel around as possible in the hope that some will hit the target…

Europeland

Cartoonist Gerald Scarfe introduces a Recycled special on the place that has obsessed us all summer long, so buckle up as we find out what is so different about Us and Them. With journeys to the continent and back to Westminster again combined with the powerful slicing of leading voices in the European debate – Tony Benn and Margaret Thatcher from 1975; Boris, Nigel and Dave from 2016. Plus the voices of leading historians, and comedians, attempting to make sense of the great European divide. Exhilarating radio you’ll not hear anywhere else.

As far as I could make out it was just a mishmash of nonsense that was almost entirely meaningless…but of course threaded through were little digs as the Brexiteers…the  finale bringing that all together in a highly amusing edit of clips of Boris and Co trying to make them look foolish and stupid.

BBC agenda or just how the cards fell?

I note with interest the producer of the programme is Miles Warde….Miles eh?  So BBC.  But shouldn’t that be ‘Kilometres’ Warde?  So much more continental.