Monthly Archives: January 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7uuoDpwygo

A sample of the BBC’s latest dignified, thoughtful and impartial examination of Brexit [H/T Craig at Is the BBC biased?]…

Since the Brexit vote, Europeans suspect endearing eccentricity has morphed into unpredictable irrationality. The UK has become the tipsy, tweedy uncle, who after too much Christmas sherry has tipped over into drunkenly abusive bore.

BBC Newswatch…The BBC holding itself to account…or not….of course.

The above video is of Katy Searl, editor of BBC Political News, defending the BBC’s coverage of Brexit as she is keenly and rigorously challenged by Samira Ahmed…or not. Sure Ahmed asks some basic questions but then allows Searl to bat them away with trite answers that go unexamined and unchallenged…where is Andrew Neil when you need him?

Searl tells us it is the BBC’s job to ask questions and in particular, it seems, they have decided that May is not giving enough detail on Brexit and thus it is the BBC’s job to keep demanding she give more and more of that detail about what the negotiations will look like and the way the government will be negotiating….Searl pompously tells us that it is the BBC’s job to give clarity where there is none from government…never mind that there is perfect clarity on what Brexit means, no freedom of movement, no Single Market, and that it is impossible to define how any negotiation will turn out in every detail.  But the BBC is insisting in asking for that detail.

That of course is the Remainders’ narrative and one designed to block Brexit with endless questions and challenges to every one of those details as they arise…in the ‘name of democracy…’ when in fact it is the very opposite of that, shaped to stymie democracy and the result of the referendum….it is in fact the BBC and the Remainders continuing to fight the referendum and refusing to accept the result.  You have to ask why the BBC coninues to promote scenarios that paint Brexit as an economic armageddon…the only reason can be that they hope a continued barrage of manufactured bad news will scare the voters into demanding a second referendum….perhaps the BBC and the Remainders should take the BBC’s own advice…

Many Germans now want to just work out a solution that does the least amount of harm to the European economy. Hence the irritation in Germany when British politicians keep rehashing the pre-referendum debate.

“It was frustrating to hear the same old arguments from the referendum campaign,” one business leader told me when I asked him what he had thought about Saturday’s discussion.

Germany has moved on, he said. Maybe Britain should too.

It is astonishing, a BBC journalist’s complete lack of self-awareness of what his own news organisation is doing…continually re-running the referendum trotting out the same old arguments again and again and again…maybe the BBC and the Remainders should move on and work towards making Brexit a success instead of trying to sabotage it.

There seems to be no recognition from the BBC that there can be no detail, no minute by minute running commentary from the government on the negotiations and what the exact outcome they are looking for is.  May gave the broad outline of what Brexit will look like, outside the Single Market, outside the Custom’s Union as is, no more freedom of movement….what the final outcome will be is subject to the negotiations and clearly that is impossible to define….and yet the BBC keeps demanding to know as it continues to press the Remainders’ line about the ‘detail’ without questioning if that is something that it should be asking the government to reveal.

When asked if the BBC should have a more balanced representation of voices rather than the usual weasel voices of Farron, Clegg, Sturgeon or Soubry for instance, all ardently pro-EU and anti-the referendum result, Searl again asserted that it was the BBC’s job to ask questions….the same questions put by those Remainders.

Indeed it is…however it is also the BBC’s job not just to question what the government is doing but also to challenge the Remainders’ narrative especially when they talk of a ‘soft Brexit’ as such a thing does not exist and is purely a rhetorical device  manufactured to fool the public into thinking it is still some sort of Brexit when it is in fact just a continuation of what we have now…ie remaining in the EU.  The BBC never questions the Remainders’ narrative on that.  Nor do they challenge the sheer effrontery of the undemocratic bluster from Sturgeon  as she tries to bluff her way to independence with a flurry of outraged indignation and warped logic as she tells us Scotland voted to remain in the EU and therefore if the government is to take us out Scotland must have independence.

You may have thought the BBC would point out the blatantly obvious fact that the referendum was a ‘British’ referendum and not national nor indeed regional and therefore it is irrelevant what the predominant vote was in individual areas of the UK….and  as Scotland voted previously convincingly to remain within ‘Britain’ the Brexit referendum has to be framed within that context….’Scotland’ did not vote to remain in the EU as it was individual Britons voting and not ‘Scots’.  It would be an absurdity to grant Sturgeon any credibilty on this…such a policy would mean any town or city that ‘voted to remain’ could then cede from Britain and remain in Europe…clearly unworkable and ridiculous…you’d think.  But the BBC allows Sturgeon to peddle such tosh unchallenged and when she talks of ‘democracy’ why not ask her why she is undemocratically attempting a coup d’etat by effectively ignoring and overturning the independence vote?  Dictator Idi Amin lives on…last King of Scotland?

As Brendan O’Neil states…

The truly disturbing thing about 2016 is not the rage of the masses against the establishment, but the rage of the elites against democracy.

The BBC of course has not noticed the dangerous and enraged anti-democracy tone of the likes of Farron, Soubry and Sturgeon preferring instead to present their arguments as reasoned and credible rather than a ‘return to the 1930’s’ that the BBC does like to say about Brexit itself.

Remarkably when asked if the BBC was getting the tone right Searl told us that this was a vital part of any broadcast and that they think very carefully about this, constantly checking their scripts and ensuring they don’t reflect just the views of one side or the other.  The BBC continues to be committed to impartiality.  LOL.

Searl thought that the BBC’s Reality Check was an excellent tool that answered those unanswered questions….hmmm…anyone who read the Reality Check during the referendum would know that it was more a tool of the Remain camp just as it it peddled pro-immigration stats its economic coverage was just as one-sided…forensically exposing what they thought were Leave failures whilst glossing over Remain’s blatant exaggerations and misinformation.

Happily Searl left us with the thought that the BBC will be trying to find some good news out of the Brexit disaster and will examine every event to determine if it is good news or bad.  I look forward to that from a BBC that instead of choosing to report that year on year retail sales for December had increased by 4.3% chose to report a 1.9% fall from November 2016 to December 2016 and to conclude that this was down to Brexit rather than to high sales in November because of Black Friday.

A guest post by David Sedgwick, courtesy of www.davidsedgwick.co.uk.

If you thought you had seen the worst of BBC petulance and spite in its coverage of the US election, then you’d be very wrong. On the day Donald Trump officially became the 45th President of the United States, the state-funded broadcaster went into some kind of psychotic meltdown.

Denial has finally given way to rage. Until Trump delivered his inauguration acceptance speech the Liberal media had been deluding themselves into believing that the Trump administration would do as administrations are expected to do: follow the Liberal line.

That the Trump administration intend to implement the policies they successfully campaigned on has taken the Liberal media somewhat by surprise. And who can blame them? In the western world Liberalism reigns supreme. Sure, you vote left or right, Labour or Tory, but ultimately what you get is Liberal. And that’s just the way they like it.

BBC Two’s nightly Newsnight is one of many such programmes serving up a daily diet of anti-Trump propaganda. As reality sinks in – that the Liberal elite are not actually going to continue getting their way – the bitterness, bile and hatred has increased to levels bordering on paranoia and hysteria.

Wait a minute, isn’t the BBC compelled by its Royal Charter to be impartial? So what about the unremitting flow of negativity towards the incoming administration? Ah, impartiality…

In order to propagate their favoured ‘narrative’ while appearing to remain impartial, the crafty devils at the BBC employ a range of tricks to stack the odds in favour of their preferred ‘narrative.’

Often this entails simply stacking the cards against an opponent in terms of sheer weight of numbers. Thus, for every guest supporting say Brexit or Trump there will always be at least two guests propagating an anti-Brexit or anti-Trump message. Pretty transparent, but a perennial favourite at the BBC.

Further, whenever they can, BBC producers will ensure they engage the weakest Brexit or Trump proponent they can possibly find. Yet another transparent tactic the aim of which is to allow those propagating the BBC narrative the minimum of opposition.

During the run up to the US presidential election the BBC hit gold when they located a Trump-supporting Republican who seemed to be in a state of perpetual shock. Faced with carefully selected and very hostile audiences in programmes like Question Time, the poor man – hardly the most eloquent speaker at the best of times – soon crumbled.

The good old Beeb would never dare have engaged the services of a strong Trump supporter such as an Ann Coulter or a Kellyanne Conway, articulate, intelligent women neither of whom would fit the BBC’s ‘Trump hates women’ ‘narrative’ and moreover a couple of women certainly capable of giving as good as they get.

Observers of the organisation’s coverage of the EU referendum would have noticed pretty much the same tactics in use on a daily basis. Strong, articulate Brexit supporters such as George Galloway were purposely marginalised while soft Brexiteers such as (Guardian columnist!) Giles Fraser and the rather limp, ineffectual Chris Grayling MP were given air time a-plenty.

Interesting then to observe last night’s edition of Newsnight which, amid the anguish and drama-queen antics of its presenter Emily Maitlis, featured a debate between a pro-Trump and an anti-Trump commentator.

Perhaps Ms Maitlis had simply not expected the spirited defence of the Trump administration as outlined by Michelle Malkin. Where is that docile Republican when he’s needed? It certainly might help to explain why Maitlis – the impartial referee, note – jumped to the defence of the anti-Trump Danielle Allen at every opportunity.

Two against one. BBC ‘impartiality’ had lasted all of 30 seconds…

As the debate went on it became apparent that the BBC had uncovered, albeit inadvertently, a ferociously pro-Trump advocate. And female to boot! This could not be allowed to go on – people might actually start to work things out for themselves without the benefit of a BBC ‘narrative’ to guide them. What to do?
Simple.

When Maitlis introduced the next segment of the programme, while Allen remained in situ, Ms Malkin was conspicuous by her absence. Having refused to be bullied and intimidated a la BBC-style, the broadcaster had simply got rid of this irritant.

Gone. Absent. Airbrushed away. And best of all, nobody even noticed.

Dissenting voices outlawed, Maitlis and Allen were later joined by Ben Smith of Buzzfeed – the disseminator of the fake Russian dossier – as well as Michael Wolff contributor to the virulently anti-Trump USA Today.

The Liberal Echo chamber was once again up and running. Only four more years to go.

In the mean-time I wonder if one of our elected representatives would care to inform licence fee payers just exactly how the state-funded hate campaign of our state-funded broadcaster will actually enhance US-UK relations?
​
We’re waiting.

I was interested to hear from a BBC presenter that Russian hacking and fake news played an important part in Trump’s election…fact.  Also Trump was smeared by the BBC’s sly comment that he was endorsd by the KKK.  Well he may have been but so was Hillary Clinton…and indeed Ronald Reagan.

Curiously the BBC for some reason doesn’t tell us that Clinton was so endorsed….

The Independent in November 2016 tells us that Trump has not disowned the KKK…

Trump is unlikely to be fervently tweeting about this endorsement but has also yet to reject it.

Ronal Reagan previously renounced the KKK’s support, saying: “Those of us in public life can only resent the use of our names by those who seek political recognition for the repugnant doctrines of hate they espouse.”

Asked in July whether he would vote against former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who has also backed Trump and is running for Senate, Trump said: “I guess.”

Odd how The Independent could miss the numerous rejections of the KKK by Trump as the below video from March 2016 shows…but as they can’t spell Ronald Reagan’s name correctly what can we expect from the Independent?…

So fake news about Trump from the BBC and the Independent as they try every tactic to smear him with any lie and slander.

The BBC as a gold standard for the news industry?  LOL.

You may remember the BBC almost totally ignored the remarkable recent PMI figures which suggested industry was on the up when previously, as the PMI dipped below the magic figure of 50, it loudly and repeatedly broadcast that fact and how terrible it was for the economy throughout the day.  Similarly the BBC has been gleefully trumpeting the ‘fact’ that December’s retail sales have been less than November’s this year…

UK retail sales fall sharply in December

Retail sales in December dropped 1.9% from the previous month, according to official figures.

Sales across all main retail sectors declined, with the heaviest falls coming at non-food stores, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

It was the biggest monthly fall for more than four and a half years.

This was at first reported as possibly having something to do with Black Friday but another possible cause was Brexit and the falling pound.  Literally five minutes after I heard that assessment we had a news bulletin from the same BBC economics expert telling us that it was almost definitely due to Brexit because that is the  ‘mainstream’ feeling.

Really?  Surely the ONS is ‘mainstream’ and indeed is the source of the figures…it says….

Average store prices have risen in recent months for all retailing, primarily as a result of price rises at petrol stations.

But what is the ONS’ headline?

• Estimates of the quantity bought in retail sales increased by 4.3% compared with December 2015 and fell by 1.9% compared with November 2016.

• The underlying trend remains one of growth with the 3 month on 3 month movement in the quantity bought increasing by 1.2%.

Hang on….retail sales December to December increased by 4.3%…and yet I didn’t hear that figure given at all by the BBC on their news bulletins…the only figure they gave was the November to December 2016 figure which showed a fall…nor did I hear them tell us that the underlying trend was one of growth.

The BBC pushes hard the ‘disaster’ that is the falling pound…

‘Tough 2017’

Retailers had a “disastrous December… much worse than expected,” said Alan Clarke of Scotiabank.

Inflation figures earlier this week showed prices rose more than expected in December, “and now we also know that sales volumes fell”, Mr Clarke said.

“This is likely to be the theme for the rest of the year – higher prices will reduce disposable income and hurt consumer spending growth,” he added.

Martin Beck, senior economic adviser to the EY Item Club, said “the squeeze on households’ real incomes is gradually tightening, implying a tough 2017 for retailers”.

Only way down the page in a single line does the BBC mention this…

However, when compared with a year ago, retail sales were up 4.3% in December.

Why is that not the headline figure?  Surely a rise of 4.3% is of more significance than a fall of 1.9%, a fall due to high sales on Black Friday?

The BBC is telling us lies, hiding the truth and presenting a distorted reality in order to keep up the anti-Brexit narrative that Brexit is leading to economic armageddon.

When will the politicians start to notice that the national broadcaster is so corrupt and dishonest?

On the same day that the BBC glorifies the terrorist murderer who was a commander in the IRA as it killed men, women and children, Martin McGuinness, and who is still proud and unrepentant for all that he did, it asks you if you are appalled and disgusted by Donald Trump. #BBCvalues.

A new open thread for the weekend…all yours….

“This is a dark moment in American history.”

The torrent of abuse, contemptuous mockery and sanctimonious lies continues to flood out of the BBC’s finest…including one senior ‘journalist’ who retweeted a joke about assassinating Trump.

Even Trump’s abstinence from alcohol becomes a vehicle for the BBC to attack him…the chosen headline photo being of another President…Nixon….despite Nixon not being teetotal…

We hear that….’ Mr Trump has eschewed alcohol his whole life, making him a first among modern US presidents. ..His approach to alcohol is also a window into a personality that appears to crave control over others. Mr Trump ordered his children to follow his example. Every day he would drum the message into them: No drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes. “I’ve been very tough on my children with respect to drink,” he said.’

Seriously?  Cheap shot, no pun intended….and bizarre…what father wants his kids to be drug addicts, alcoholics or die of lung cancer…what a bastard that he wants to stop that.

But why did the BBC include Nixon?  Nixon is the ‘evil’ President….but look at what the BBC want to put in your mind as they try to manufacture an association between Trump and Nixon…

‘The most disturbing picture of presidential drinking is provided by Richard Nixon, a man prone to morose self-pity who medicated his moods with booze.  According to his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s trouble was that a small amount of drink would set him off and late-night threats of military action were made when the president was the worse for wear.  When North Korea shot down a US spy plane in April 1969, an enraged Nixon allegedly ordered a tactical nuclear strike and told the joint chiefs to recommend targets.’

Richard Nixon was a warning to future presidents on the danger of mixing hubris with drink. He is a reminder too of the awesome executive power a US president has when it comes to conducting foreign affairs.

With no previous political or military experience, Donald Trump is unlike any incoming president. His hubris is clear to all and his (sober) stream of excitable tweets prove an impetuous temperament.

That is a shockingly pompous and sanctimonious piece of drivel that sets out to describe Trump by its obvious attempt at a comparison with a drunken Nixon as some sort of out of control lunatic who will cause a nuclear war in an article supposedly about Trump’s teetotalness….so why compare him to a man whose worst acts may have been conducted under the influence of drink?…it looks like the BBC just invented a narrative in order to do another hatchet job on Trump…once again another bizarre BBC ‘report’ on Trump that goes beyond reason and informed comment and drops decidedly into the realms of the gutter press.

Still just one of many, many BBC pieces that have been spewing out of the fake news factory that is the BBC.  There’s lots, lots more…get yourself a brew and pull up a sandbag.

Yesterday I heard Emma Barnett having a nice chat with Vince Cable and the subject of Gove’s initerview with Trump came up…Barnett wanted to know if it was wrong of Gove to have done that interview.  Sounded an awful lot like sour grapes from a BBC that would have loved to have that interview…jealousy and of course an opportunity to slip the knife into Brexiteer Gove.

Oddly enough I wasn’t the only one who noticed the BBC’s angst about the Gove interview.  Heatstreet has a look at the BBC’s Pravda-like attacks on Trump...The BBC’s Coverage Of Donald Trump’s Rise To Power Has Been Disgraceful

They note, amongst many other deplorable BBC sins…

Such is the skewed mentality that the Conservative MP Michael Gove was attacked for his questions when interviewing Trump for The Times of London. Gove’s questions were pretty straightforward, broadly neutral and covered the main issues that would be of concern to a British readership. But Jo Coburn of the BBC Daily Politics programme felt that Gove should have taken the chance to go on the attack. He was effectively taken to task for not having done so.

They also note Trump’s sober policies and administration…

Trump has assembled a serious team with a serious programme of policies to implement. The BBC should stop emoting and instead offer some sober, rigorous and balanced considerations about the prospects for the free world with its new leader.

The BBC never bothered reporting the many serious interviews about policy that Trump had during the election preferring instead to just go into histrionics about Trump being a racist because of his comments about Mexicans and Muslim immigrants.  This approach to reporting Trump still predominates at the BBC as evidenced above and in comments I have heard today and everyday with the inevitable charge of racism being levied at him.

David Keighley at Conservative Woman also notes the BBC’s appalling anti-Trump propaganda…Panorama’s hatchet job on Trump completes its fall from grace.

We have a series of programmes called Trump: The Presidential Precedents which looks at how former Presidents got elected and how they acted in office…I haven’t listened to it but judging by other programmes I can only think the BBC will pick out the bad characters, the disasters and the way ‘vulnerable voters’ were conned and tricked into voting for such Presidents on false promises…and then link all the bad to Trump and use it as a Mystic Meg prediction of what Trump’s Presidency will look like and what its legacy will be….all filtered through the BBC’s own hatred of Trump of course.

There is also a series that brings us the insights and thoughts of US writers on Trump and the future…America Rewritten...so no guesses there as to what we get…a torrid serving of anti-Trump gruel from some angry, bitter and disappointed Lefties….you may or may not be amazed at the vitriol and anger they express towards trump.

The presenter, Robert McCrum, gives us a clue as to what you will hear…

A focus for the opposition to Trump and the challenge of the new administration might be the integrity, candour and good humour of the American mind at its best …and....[there is] great cultural and ideological resilience to defend America’s values with the mobilisation of writers and intellectuals [against Trump]

We heard that Obama was so perfect, so in tune with lefty writer’s values that they didn’t have anything to write about…that has now changed as the world is in peril…how familiar….when Labour was in power the court lap-dogs didn’t bark either.

Oh and just a sample of the new ‘truth’ that we get from the BBC as we were told the conservatives in America have been sidelining Blacks whilst welcoming other races and that there are no more black mayors…hmmm…really? [Never mind the Black President]…

The newly launched African American Mayors Association (AAMA) was established to represent over 500 African American mayors and their 48 million constituents across the United States.

No mayors, 500 mayors.  The truth is out there somewhere…which is why the BBC  hates the internet.

Fairly obvious the BBC has ferried in a load of left-wing anti-Trump writers to attack him and present him as not only a danger to ‘American values’ but to the world.

Personally I’d have thought Trump exemplified American values, brash, loud, non-PC, independent and not ashamed to be successful…a man who wants to make America great again….American values and character that we know the BBC has always looked down upon.

5Live has also been dragging in the anti-Trump brigade, in this case one they wouldn’t normally touch with a barge pole…the right-wing shock jock Glenn Beck…he doesn’t like Obama but he also hates Trump and paints him as a reckless danger to the world and a racist to  boot.  All based on what exactly?  Nothing.  But hang on there’s more.  5Live wanted to know what Beck thought of Brexit….call the cops, MI5 and the SAS….Brexit is an East-Eurasian conspiracy…the Russians have been flooding the UK with money and buying our votes, stealing our democracy…..Leave was nothing less than the useful idiot of Putin who has been controlling our minds and actions for decades now…we all love the EU really.

Not sure that was a winner interview for the BBC.

Unemployment down, wages rising at 2.7%…but the BBC told us that that was ‘nothing to celebrate’…the jobs are all rubbish, low-skilled and low paid, part-time jobs[em…no they’re not] and wage inequality is a huge problem…that’ll be despite the ONS telling us the other day that wage inequality was continually reducing and was back to the levels of the 1980’s. [BBC ignores fact that the Rich are paying huge sums in tax now and that the tax allowance rise has taken millions out of tax altogether and that there has been a rise in the minimum wage, or the living wage, whatever.]

The BBC is also trying to encourage a movement for a general election telling us May has set out her ‘manifesto’ for Brexit and therefore it should be voted on.  Trouble is she has a mandate for that Brexit ‘manifesto’ already…it’s that thing the BBC and the Remainders like to ignore…the Referendum to which Parliament ceded sovereignty and gave the government its mandate to act on the result…which is to leave the EU.  A general election would in essence be a second referendum but with the added complication that not all the votes would be because of Brexit but for a myriad of other reasons.  The BBC knows this and hopes Labour will win, or take enough seats to remove the Tory majority and thus be enabled to block Brexit by claiming no mandate in the country.  Once again the BBC is interfering in the politics of Britain trying to rig an election and block Brexit.

Funny how before the referendum the BBC was telling us that the uncertainty was killing business [no, no it wasn’t] but now they are agitating for not only another ‘referendum’ but a general election which would, they hope, throw into question Brexit…thus causing even more uncertainty and instability in the economy…odd how that is apparently OK now as they peddle the same line as Labour and the LibDems.

Anyway, another open thread to name and shame…….all yours….

It just wasn’t supposed to be like this….for the last few days we’ve been assured by the BBC that when May makes her big Brexit speech the Pound will crash.  Well it hasn’t…it’s gone up.  How long before we hear of the first business to stop trading because of the high pound caused by, em, Brexit?

Farron…what a prick, to be blunt….the guy is utterly, utterly delusional…..the only ones who want to cut the ‘People’ out of Brexit is Farron himself and the Remainders who want to overturn the most historic and democratic vote this country has had for a long, long time….

The PM’s speech was about an “extreme version of Brexit” says the Liberal Democrat leader.

Interesting video from 1990…

Remember during the referendum campaign when Boris ran through the reasons people had suggested as to why Obama might not be a fan of the British,one reason being his Kenyan ancestry and that his grandfather was allegedly tortured by the British.  The BBC et al rounded on him shouting ‘racist’….and yet the BBC, the Guardian and senior diplomats had all said the same thing before.  As always with the BBC the ‘truth’ is a flexible thing…changing and adapting to better target the enemy…in this case a Brexiteer.

The video pretty much confirms, in Obama’s own words, the feeling that he might have some antipathy towards Whites and colonialisation and that this could influence his attitude towards Britain.  So Boris was right, as we already knew…and the BBC helped ceate and exploit a ‘racism storm’ for its own political purposes.

Also of note is Obama’s observation that having educated the people in Kenya or other black countries, if there are no jobs then ‘things could explode at any point’ and mass civil disturbances break out.  So in 1990 Obama predicts what just happened in the US as a political and social earthquake hits the liberal world and Trump gets elected because the workers were dumped on the scrapheap.  Perhaps Obama should have listened to his younger self and applied it to America just as much as to ‘black’ countries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_NGpbzi5qw

Why is it always Andrew Neil, and only Andrew Neil?

Guido has been revealing the darker secrets of the cabal in charge of Impress, however in two Today investigations of the issues that I have heard, including one with Max Mosley himself, none of the startling revelations that might suggest there should be serious concerns about Impress were aired at all despite them being prominently on display at Guido’s.

Good job there is at least one conscientious journalist on the BBC’s books.