“You can either wage Jihad by the tongue and by the mouth – that is ideological jihad – or by the hand and the sword. Those are the official categories of jihad…..And jihad by the hand and the sword can be done here in France [& the UK] with cars and knives.”  BBC

It is remarkable how politicians and the BBC launch outraged attacks on Google, Facebook and now WhatsApp, for apparently giving terrorists a place to hide…Politicians should perhaps be looking closer to home, such as towards Broadcasting House, for those who promote the terrorist and/or the ‘non-violent’ extremists’ narrative, the BBC of course is happy to divert attention from  its own activites and pose as the champion of democracy and free speech whilst steadily undermining them.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd resolutely announces that ‘Social media firms must join the war on terror’ and yet she ignores the very real danger that is presented by one of the world’s most powerful and influential broadcasting organisations that is spreading extremist propaganda.

She ignores the fact that there is a war being fought, and it’s not just with guns, bullets and bombs.  The Media, far from being prejudiced against Muslims, is the weapon of choice for those who seek to make Islam the dominant religioous and political force in Britain, and the BBC is at the forefront of the charge.  And, this is the important thing to note, those who are ‘fighting’ this media war are not the obvious ‘radicals’ like Anjem Choudray, they come dressed in western suits and talk of reform and tolerance but always blame Muslim ‘anger’ on British society, on that phantom menace ‘Islamophobia’.  Of course what is even more frightening is that these men, and women, have not just managed to position themselves as authorities on questions of Islam, its place in Western Society and ‘radicalisation’, as Media spokesmen of choice but have also inveigled their way into the heart of Government advising it on matters of religion and radicalisation.

It is the people with ideas, the talkers, the glib snake-oil salesmen, and saleswomen, who are so dangerous, it is they who feed the anger and inspire those who would take up arms…and yet the BBC gives a platform to an endless parade of these Muslim propagandists who encourage Muslims to desire to live ‘as Muslims’ and separate themselves from the societies they are in.  Anjem Choudary, a constant voice on the BBC, is a case in point and yet once he was jailed the BBC told us…

‘It wasn’t a game. The evidence now shows that Anjem Choudary is one of the most dangerous men in Britain. Not a bomb-maker. Not a facilitator. But an ideologue, a thinker, who encouraged others not to stop and think for themselves before they turned to violence to implement their shared worldview.’

Plenty of other examples, such as Cage, the MCB, MPACUK and various ‘independent’ voices such as Tariq Ramadan, all allowed unchallenged airtime on the BBC to peddle their ideas, their ideology.

Baroness Warsi is also a constant voice on the BBC pushing the Muslim narrative, she was on Marr on Sunday and on Start the Week today….

On Start the Week Amol Rajan talks to Sayeeda Warsi about how far Britain’s Muslim community is viewed as ‘the enemy within’.

Let’s remember just why she is a controversial and hardly  ‘moderate’ voice…..

From HurryupHarry....

Baroness Warsi is alleged by multiple sources in and out of government to have consistently resisted calls to develop a proper strategy on integration and tackling extremism at its roots, even though this is the Prime Minister’s policy and part of her job at the Communities and Local Government department. One source says: ‘Sayeeda made clear when she got the job at CLG that she didn’t agree with the Prime Minister and that she simply wasn’t going to do this bit of her job.’

Douglas Murray in the Spectator on those who try to undermine the Prevent programme, as Warsi does….

It is striking that in the past the people who have sought most publicly for the policy to be scrapped are those who quite simply do not want Britain to have a counter-radicalisation strategy because they themselves favour the radicals or are radicals themselves.

Warsi also argued that extremist groups such as Cage should be looked upon as representative voices of the Muslim community [which some might agree with ironically]….until it suited her to attack the BBC for giving them a platform….

Anjem who?

The Islamist Baroness Warsi was also shown up for the hypocrite and opportunist she really is.  She is a long term adversary of the anti-terrorist Prevent programme and not long ago was agitating for the government to engage with Msulim groups that were considered ‘beyond the pale’…presumably those such as Cage, MPACUK and the MCB.  She suggested that by not engaging with such groups the government was disengaged with the Muslim community….she was saying that these groups represent the Muslim community then?

Irony of ironies Warsi then attacked the BBC for giving Choudary airtime….

Criticising the BBC, Baroness Warsi, the former minister for faith and communities, said extremists should not be given platforms to express their damaging views.

Pity the BBC gives her so much airtime to peddle her own Islamist propaganda.

This is the same Warsi who wanted Israel to be disarmed and left defenceless whilst also demanding the terrorists of Hamas be given weapons.  The same Warsi who enjoyed the company of many a devout Muslim in the Muslim university society FOSIS, well known for being the breeding ground of extremists.  The same Warsi who made it her job to do whatever it took to undermine the anti-terrorist Prevent programme.  The same Warsi who argued for the inclusion of extremist organisations in the national debate about what should be called ‘extremist’ or ‘radical’ and what should be acceptable..arguing it is the refusal to accept the radicals’ agenda as ‘normal’ that makes them radical.

Andrew Gilligan in the Telegraph wrote this article denouncing her and the government’s foolish policies, Islamic ‘radicals’ at the heart of Whitehall, and in which he noted that ‘Baroness Warsi gave official roles to people with links to Islamist groups’.  She was also an outspoken critic of the anti-radicalisation ‘Prevent’ project and supporter of the Islamist student organisation Fosis.

Gilligan says..

For instance the infamous Islamist Tariq Ramadan sits on the Foreign Office Advisory Group on freedom of religion or belief which is intended to ‘advise FCO Ministers and staff on how to build on the active approach they already take to promoting and protecting the right to freedom of religion or belief worldwide.’ and was run by Warsi.

Warsi is still at it attempting to muddy the waters and spread the blame…Dog-whistle, nasty, toxic politics based on race and religion?

So I think pretty clear where Warsi’s loyalties really lie and what her intentions are as she tours the TV  studios and Media outlets.

She is of course given a warm welcome by the BBC…here [H/T Sue at Is the BBC biased? [hell yeah]] we can see how Marr fawns over her….

Andrew Marr’s introduction this morning:

Good morning A simple hire car. A knife – and they’re not hard to buy. And a deranged man who fits no easy pattern. Isn’t the truth that sometimes it is completely impossible to stop acts of terrorism, and we need to learn to live with that unhappy fact?

Sayeeda Warsi was on The Andrew Marr Show this morning arguing that the Westminster attack had nothing to do with Islam. People from all religions can carry out violent acts, she said, and Masood “was a violent Christian long before he was a violent Muslim”. She also condemned the government’s “obsessive focus” on “Islamic ideology” – a term she regards as “not factually correct” – and wants to see the present Prevent strategy replaced by a new strategy which will better engage with Muslims.

Now, you may have thought that her contribution was the usual, predictable guff from the baroness but Andrew Marr ended the interview by gushing:

‘A moment of calm and clever reflection. Sayeeda Warsi, for now, thank you very much indeed for talking to us.’

He’d already described her new book as “eloquent”. 

Her appearance on Start The Week was yet more pro-Muslim propaganda that suggested Muslims were the victims of prejudice and anti-Muslim hate.  She tells us ‘Islamophobia’ is the last bigotry blindspot in the UK and that it is socially acceptable, it passes the ‘dinner table test’ apparently. Of course it’s not prejudice but fact-based opinion that Islam is dangerous, unpleasant and backward….as David Goodhart says…unlikely that knowledge of Islam makes you want to like it…

Some claim that if people understood Islam more everything would be fine, they would be more tolerant, I think quite the contrary….the more they understand about it the more alien they would find it…authoritarian, collectivist, patriarchal, misogynist…..all sorts of things that Britain might have been 100 years ago but isn’t now.

And isn’t it more true to say that Muslim extremism has passed the ‘dinner table test’, the Muslim dinner table that is?  Isn’t it true that the ‘extremists’ ‘ narrative is one that is held by the majority of the Muslim community, the anger at Israel and British foreign policy?  They may not openly condone violence but they certainly exploit it, and use the threat of further community ‘anger’, to force politicians and the media to favour Muslims…..‘One lesson well understood in both Stalin’s Russia and Nazi Germany was that propaganda is most effective when it is backed by terror’

She fails to mention one fly in the ointment when she talks of ‘prejudice’ and Muslims as victims….as the slippery Islamist Mehdi Hasan admitted is all too common in Muslim communities…

It pains me to have to admit this but anti-Semitism isn’t just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it’s routine and commonplace. Any Muslims reading this article – if they are honest with themselves – will know instantly what I am referring to. It’s our dirty little secret. You could call it the banality of Muslim anti-Semitism.

And is Warsi’s contention that the ‘extremists’ are a fringe group, a ‘ring of criminals’, who don’t represent Muslims or Islam true?  That was a lie said about the Germans who backed Hitler so ardently….as stated by the the Guardian’s own Madeleine Bunting…..

‘He [the Pope at the time] acknowledged he was a “son of the German people” … “but not guilty on that account”; he then launched into a highly controversial claim that a “ring of criminals” were responsible for nazism and that the German people were as much their victims as anyone else. This is an argument that has long been discredited in Germany as utterly inadequate in explaining how millions supported the Nazis.’

Here is the Guardian again telling us how prevalent the ideology is within the Muslim community and puts the blame on ‘us’…

The entire emphasis on countering narratives and extremism eclipses the myriad reasons why so many Muslims are deeply critical of the government. The problem is defined solely in terms of “extremist narratives” and prevents critical reflection on what “we” might be doing and the political context. Anger over western foreign policy and recent wars, plus the ongoing Israel-Palestinian conflict, are major sources of discontent and dissent, and not only among British Muslims. Here, those involved in government strategy must consider whether they have sufficiently come to terms with the political context, and its role in creating the extremism and radicalisation now being targeted by the government.

And what of Warsi’s claim that Muslims are happily integrating……Trevor Phillips thinks not [No surprise that the BBC’s new MCB favourite spokesman, Miqdaad Versi, argues against him in the Guardian]…..

What it reveals is the unacknowledged creation of a nation within a nation, with its own geography, its own values and its own very separate future….Britain is nurturing communities with a complete set of alternate values.

Some of my journalist friends imagine that, with time, the Muslims will grow out of it.  They won’t….they really don’t want to adopt much of our decadent way of life.

Many of our elite political and media classes simply refuse to acknowledge the truth

Integrating Muslims will probably be the hardest task of all.  It will mean abandoning the milk-and-water multiculturalism still so beloved of many, and adopting a far more muscular approach to integration….deciding how to confront their thinking where it collides with our fundamental values.

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.

Just remind me again why the BBC gives so much time to Warsi but attacks Google et al for giving a platform to extremists?

Even some at the BBC itself have doubts about its own peddling of extremist propaganda…but it’s not just videos as he worries about…it’s those supposed voices of ‘moderation’ such as Warsi who are the real problem…

Are we helping ISIS by running its videos on the news?

Social media enable them to fight psychological warfare. The horrifying images of masked men, a faceless enemy, have helped these groups to intimidate the public.

Downloading social media content, mainstream news organisations have used pictures of mass executions, aimed at showing the barbaric actions such militant groups. But the use of these pictures to show how heartless and cruel the group is, in fact serves the interests of ISIS and similar organisations. Winning the hearts and minds of the public is hardly the aim of the extremists. Rather they want the media to show how a group of ‘devoted’ religious men has abandoned life’s luxuries to fight a ‘holy war’.

For this reason we need to reconsider how to deal with such images. I think the time has come to discuss new editorial guidelines on how to deal with organisations like ISIS and its clones.

On time and ready to go, a brand NEW Open Thread on which to detail the relentless hateful visceral bias from the BBC.

Ever since the Jihadist attack at Westminster, the BBC has been pushing two parallel narratives.

1. We have to get used to living with terrorism. This echoes the thoughts of Muslim Mayor Khan
2. We will never know what was the motivation by the Islamic killer.

Both spurious nonsense, of course, but the BBC (along with The Met, it appears) is determined to ensure that Islam is disconnected from Islamic terrorism.

Seen this?

“The BBC is embroiled in a fresh Brexit bias row after a study found that just one in six contributors to the Radio 4 Today programme’s business news slot in the six months after referendum saw the result as positive for Britain.

A report by News-watch into the BBC’s coverage on Brexit covering the six month period after the referendum vote found overwhelmingly negativity about Britain leaving the EU.  The findings suggest BBC has breached its own impartiality rules, the campaign group said. There were three times more pro-Remain contributors to the business new slot than Leave-supporting experts.”

Remember when Boris suggested attempts to unify Europe into one poltical union, as tried by the Romans, Napoleon and Hitler, were doomed to failure and he was savagely attacked by people who oviously hadn’t read what he wrote or didn’t care and just wanted to attack him?…

Rejecting Mr Johnson’s analysis, Hilary Benn said: “Leave campaigners have lost the economic argument and now they are losing their moral compass.

“To try and compare Hitler and the Nazis – the millions of people who died in the Second World War, the Holocaust – with the free democracies of Europe coming together to trade and co-operate, and in the process to help to bring peace to the continent of Europe after centuries of war, is frankly deeply offensive.”

Former Labour minister Yvette Cooper, who supports the Remain campaign, has accused Mr Johnson of a “shameful lack of judgement” and a willingness to play “the most divisive, cynical politics”.

Lord Bramall, a former head of the British army, said making a comparison between the EU and Nazi Germany was “absurd”.

“Hitler’s main aim was to create an empire in the East and violently subjugate Europeans. Any connection between that and the EU is simply laughable,” he said.

At a Remain event on Monday, Chancellor George Osborne was asked for his views on Mr Johnson’s comments. He made reference to Lord Bramall and said: “I think he said what needed to be said about Boris Johnson.”

Boris made no assertion that the EU was like the Nazi regime but that was how it was put about by his enemies…the BBC gleefully reporting it, digging out endless negative comments.

Curious then that when Michael Heseltine, a Remainder, actually suggests today’s Germany is the same as the Nazi Germany…nothing…the BBC isn’t outraged and nor is anyone else….or if they are the BBC hasn’t bothered to find them to ask….

The UK is handing control of Europe’s destiny to Germany by leaving the EU, Lord Heseltine has claimed.

The Tory peer, sacked as a government adviser after defying the whip over Brexit, said the Germans had lost World War Two but the UK was now giving them the “opportunity to win the peace”.

“For someone like myself, it was in 1933, the year of my birth, that Hitler was democratically elected in Germany. He unleashed the most horrendous war.

“This country played a unique role in securing his defeat. So Germany lost the war. We have just handed them the opportunity to win the peace.”

Maybe Heseltine hasn’t noticed…Hitler is dead, Germany is a democracy…and anyway….it already rules the EU…just ask Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and all those who have been adversely affected by Merkel’s unilateral decision to open, not just Germany’s borders, but the whole of the EU’s to millions of Muslims.

And on time, a new Open Thread for you to detail the bias as the weekend approaches…

Fake tube sign read out on BBC News and in Commons after Westminster attack

The Obligation of Jihad

“Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home). Unto all (in Faith) hath Allah promised good. But those who strive and fight hath He distinguished above those who sit (at home) by a special reward,” Quran Chapter 4: The Women, verse 95

Some quotes from the BBC’s ‘Muslims Like Us’….

Britishness…British values for me, colonialism, institutional racism, theft and genocide…and race.

-The race thing.  The majority of racist abuse I’ve ever taken in my life has been from other Muslims.

It is an irony that the BBC’s ‘Muslims like us’ programme, meant to reassure us that Muslim were just like us, in fact confirmed every ‘prejudice’ you might ever have held….only one true liberal among them, the rest soon reverted to fundamentalist attitudes and many revealed strong anti-British feelings…it reflected real society and showed how so-called ‘moderate Muslims’ weren’t really moderate and that a few determined ‘radicals’ could dominate a community….either by persuasion or force of personality or indeed of physical intimidation…the less radical in the end surrendering rather than argue their position….as in the TV show as in a real community…those prepared to use cultural ‘pressure’, blackmail, or even force, such as intimidating women into wearing the hijab or veil, will win….helped by the useful idiot non-Muslims…Muslims like us was commissioned by the woman, Fatima Salaria, who is now the BBC’s head of religious programming….a deliberate appointment by the BBC, after already appointing one Muslim to the post, to rub peoples’ noses in Islam.  Islamisation?  The BBC is there to help….the ‘Telephate’ cometh.   The BBC loves to humanise Muslim terrorists…lovely lads and lasses led astray or made angry by nasty Islamophobians…

Look at this story about “An extremist in the family”, which will pull on the heartstrings of those feeling sorry for the poor, delicate radical wannabe Islamic terrorists out there waging war, raping, torturing and butchering for fun.

We hear from Nicola Benyahia, painting her son, who has gone off to Syria, to be pure and angelic, all with a blasé, matter of fact approach to dumping your life and going off to fight for IS. As if to normalise the most deplorable of acts and point fingers at everyone else.

And look what the political editor of the New Statesman thinks…..the ‘Liberal’ media is bonkers and completely delusional…….

Thousands of Londoners turned out for a vigil for the dead and injured after the terrorist attack in a show of defiance and solidarity…it’s just a shame that they will be so badly betrayed by the politicians who are now making fine speeches about defending British values and the British way of life, and of course betrayed by the Media, the BBC in particular, as it starts the blame game, blaming failures in the security services, failures of the Prevent programme, failures of British society to accept and integrate Muslims, failure to ensure a foreign policy that meets the approval of Muslims, and of course the BBC’s exoneration of the killer as we find he is not really a Muslim, he has perverted the real religion, and that he has been a victim of British society’s antipathy towards Islam and Muslims….er…even though he isn’t a real Muslim.

Sadiq Khan said at the vigil…..

“Londoners will never be cowed by terrorism”.

Of course that’s nonsense as not just Londoners but the political establishment and the Media cower before and pander to the Muslim narrative of victimhood, the narrative of a ‘backlash’ against Muslims, a narrative that says radicalisation is only a result of discrimination and disaffection compounded by Islamophobia which only increases when terror strikes…thus the real victims are Muslims…and the Establishment does indeed cower before that ‘argument’ making Muslims the favoured group with special status….with evermore liberty to follow their religion…where will that lead?…You can see where devolution took us as the SNP get evermore confident and demanding…and you can see that the politicians will bow down before the onslaught of their demands as Gordon Brown’s proposals to give the SNP massively increased powers and freedoms illustrates.  How long before we have a Muslim ‘calipahte’ within our borders, a mini-Pakistan with its own laws and independent status?

The BBC is already providing that platform for Muslim activists to press that agenda as we were told by the Today show that Muslims feel unfairly picked on by the ‘prejudiced’…asking ‘Do Muslims fear an adverse impact on their community?‘[from a backlash from prejudiced, racist people]…such prejudice mustn’t be allowed to drive communities apart [Isn’t it Muslims themselves who segregate themselves and live in ghettoes?]…Muslims are the victims and government programmes like Prevent only add to that perception that they are being unfairly targeted…the Prevent programme is ‘rotten, toxic and counter-productive’.  [Believe it or not the man saying this was a Muslim from the government’s own ‘Hate crime advisory group’…any wonder things don’t work?]

Do you know what the answer is?  Let the Muslims run the de-radicalisation and security programmes themselves…no, really. Let’s have murderers, rapists and burglars all run the police, justice and prison service…I’m sure they feel unfairly targeted by the police and court system…surely only they have the knowledge and integrity to produce a system that really works….for them….just so long as they are not angry and disaffected eh?

But what are these British values and way of life that we defend?  The question is is it compatible with Islam…and the real answer is……no.  How can it possibly be….a 1400 year old doctrine that hasn’t changed, and cannot change, one that preaches hatred towards the ‘Kufaar’, hatred towards gays, that makes women second class citizens, that allows slavery and religious war until ‘Islam reigns supreme’, as opposed to a modern, progressive set of values that promote democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of thought and lifestyle, gay rights, feminist rights, anti-racism and a rich and varied lifestyle that encourages difference, innovation and individuality?

The politicians and media will never admit the truth about Islam because then what?  Shut down all the mosques and ban Islam?  Never happen, so they continue to bury their heads in the sand and bluff their way as they lie to the public as society is gradually Islamised by the self-same politicians who are too afraid to make a stand.  The Telegraph tells us of the truth…

People in MI5 tell me that denying the connection between Islamism and terrorism derives from the belief that if you accept it, there’s no hope for a multicultural society in Britain: we would just have to recognise that part of the population is permanently liable to become terrorists.

Churchill was also one who told the unvarnished truth..

“Mein Kampf…..The new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.”

Of Islam….

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”

Even Boris let slip the reality…

To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia – fear of Islam – seems a natural reaction, and, indeed, exactly what that text is intended to provoke. Judged purely on its scripture – to say nothing of what is preached in the mosques – it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its heartlessness towards unbelievers. As the killer of Theo Van Gogh told his victim’s mother this week in a Dutch courtroom, he could not care for her, could not sympathise, because she was not a Muslim.

The trouble with this disgusting arrogance and condescension is that it is widely supported in Koranic texts, and we look in vain for the enlightened Islamic teachers and preachers who will begin the process of reform. What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s medieval ass?

Will May get 18th century on Islam’s medieval ass or will she continue to peddle the lie that the terrorist attack had nothing to do with Islam?

Tom Holland: We must not deny the religious roots of Islamic State

Salafism today is probably the fastest-growing Islamic movement in the world. The interpretation that Isis applies to Muslim scripture may be exceptional for its savagery – but not for its literalism. Islamic State, in its conceit that it has trampled down the weeds and briars of tradition and penetrated to the truth of God’s dictates, is recognisably Salafist. When Islamic State fighters smash the statues of pagan gods, they are following the example of the Prophet; when they proclaim themselves the shock troops of a would-be global empire, they are following the example of the warriors of the original caliphate; when they execute enemy combatants, and impose discriminatory taxes on Christians, and take the women of defeated opponents as slaves, they are doing nothing that the first Muslims did not glory in.

Such behaviour is certainly not synonymous with Islam; but if not Islamic, then it is hard to know what else it is.

The London attacker has been named as Khalid Masood, the BBC tells us lots about him except of course his religion…they even tell us that he, presumably, posed as a teacher when hiring the vehicle that he used in the attack…no doubt the BBC would portray this as the cause of the attack..so disaffected was he by government ‘cuts’ to the education budget that it drove him to attack Parliament….pretty sure the BBC will find something in his life to explain away his terror attack and pass the blame onto ‘society’.

Still, the BBC is on a bit of a Jihad of its own against the government….did you notice that in the couple of weeks before the by-elections in Copeland and Stoke, in which Labour campaigned hard on the NHS, the BBC was pushing out lots of bad news stories about the NHS and its budget….just before the last PMQs before the by-election vote the BBC released its latest research…subsequently quoted in PMQs by Corbyn.  Was the BBC trying to support Labour in the by-election?  Similarly you may have noted the BBC going in hard on education….referring constantly to ‘budget cuts’ when in fact no cuts have been made, more money put in in fact…..as the NAO reports…‘government increased the schools budget by 7.7%‘.  What is different is pupil numbers…they have shot up…due to migrant mothers having so  many kids…another reason the NHS is under so much pressure.  The BBC didn’t once make that connection in my hearing during all the discussions that flooded the airwaves.

Yesterday the BBC released another piece of its research on education, again just in time for PMQs and funnily enough Corbyn’s subject was education.  Coincidence?

School governors have pointed to a “catastrophic” squeeze on budgets, as the government prepares to introduce a new funding formula for schools.

A snapshot survey of 4,000 governors by the BBC sheds light on the existing funding pressure in England’s schools.

National Governors Association head Emma Knights does however back the principle of the new funding formula.

Ministers say schools are funded at record levels and that the budgets rethink will end inconsistencies.

But the dramatic impact on already stretched budgets – even before the funding formula kicks in – has left ministers under pressure from Conservative backbenchers and head teachers in all areas of England.

Note nowhere does the BBC mention the actual cause of the ‘crisis’….

The difficulties being faced by schools across England were spelled out by the governors who responded to the BBC questionnaire.

“Diabolical”, “devastating” and “catastrophic” were among the words used to describe prospects for schools.

So…where exactly do the governors ‘spell out the difficulties faced by schools’?  The BBC  has merely produced a list of reactions not causes.  Where are the causes of these dramatic impacts, the funding pressures, the catastrophic squeeze on budgets?

Oh hang on is this the explanation?…

The underlying financial problems faced by state schools in England were highlighted in a National Audit Office report in December last year.

The spending watchdog said schools would have to find £3bn in savings by 2019-20, amounting to budget cuts of 8%.

No…nowhere do we get the root cause of the ‘underlying financial problems’ ….some of the so-called cuts are in response to higher wage, pension and NIC costs…the BBC misses off the last bit of the quote…‘by 2019-20 to counteract cumulative cost pressures, such as pay rises and higher employer contributions to national insurance and the teachers’ pension scheme.’...the budget isn’t cut, it’s costs going up that mean efficiencies have to be made…..the schools have to choose between these and pupils’ education…but the real cost is more pupils…note the BBC’s report fails to mention this quote from the NAO…

Mainstream schools have to make £3.0 billion in efficiency savings by 2019-20 against a background of growing pupil numbers and a real-terms reduction in funding per pupil.

The Department’s overall schools budget is protected in real terms but does not provide for funding per pupil to increase in line with inflation. In the 2015 Spending Review, the government increased the schools budget by 7.7% from £39.6 billion in 2015-16 to £42.6 billion in 2019-20. While this increase protects the total budget from forecast inflation, the Department estimates that the number of pupils will rise over the same period, by 3.9% (174,000) in primary schools and by 10.3% (284,000) in secondary schools. Therefore, funding per pupil will, on average, rise only from £5,447 in 2015-16 to £5,519 in 2019-20, a real-terms reduction once inflation is taken into account.

Only in the BBC’s ‘reality check’ do we get a mention of pupil numbers…and no mention of immigration as the cause…a ‘baby boom’ but whose ‘baby boom’?…..

Reality Check verdict: The absolute amount of money in the pot for schools in England is at record levels but once you factor in rising pupil numbers, inflation and running costs, schools will have to cut approximately 8% from budgets by 2020.

It is true that this is the biggest pot in cash terms, but, of course, how generous the pot is depends on how many pupils there are in the system.

There was a baby boom in the early 2000s, which has been hitting primary schools for several years and is now moving up through the secondary system.

Between 2009 and 2016, the school system expanded to take in an extra 470,000 pupils.

The Department for Education says that between 2016 and 2025 there will be a further increase in the state school system, up from about 7.4 million pupils to about 8.1 million.

So there is a crisis in school funding, despite record levels of spending….and the BBC is not keen to spell out the real cause…mass immigration…and its costs.  Immigration remember is beneficial and economically virtuous….as long as we ignore the extra billions we have to pump into the NHS, schools and housing, not to mention prisons, to keep the infrastructure going in order to cope with all these new people.

Record spending and wes till can’t cope…guess the answer must be more immigration as it’s so economically beneficial and pays for itself…no?

The secret to political success?  Lying with sincerity.  So says Mary Ann Sieghart, Chair of the centrist Social Market Foundation think tank, who has just done a programme shilling for the ‘centre ground’ of politics for the BBC called “Can The Centre Hold?”

Naturally she doesn’t actually say ‘lie’ but that is the basis of her plea…do what the Dutch Prime Minister did, make right-wing sounding noises in order to con the voters into voting for him….time of course will put an end to that, charade but too late, he’s in power for a good while yet.  She helpfully wrote her piece up in the Telegraph…

Embracing patriotism and identity could reinvent the liberal centre

Tacking to the right can help traditional conservative parties lure back voters from the fringes. That’s what Mark Rutte, the Dutch Prime Minister, did when he told immigrants that if they didn’t like Dutch liberal values, they could leave, and when he prevented Turkish ministers from attending rallies in The Netherlands.

Embrace patriotism and identity?  The BBC must have been choking on their lattes when they heard that….though somewhat relieved to hear it would all be a sham, a charade to once again fool the voter…as in the Netherlands and as with New Labour.

She goes on…denouncing the BBC and Remain’s attitude…the shrill screech that Leave voters are ignorant and wrong…..but also tackles the BBC narrative of just reporting Brexit as purely an economic issue and ignoring the real issues such as sovereignty and immigration and the subsequent issues of culture and identity….you can win by ‘crafting a message around a sense of nationhood. It’s not just “the economy, stupid.”‘…

Is it just a matter of explaining to voters in ever shriller tones why they are wrong? I don’t think so. For what centrist parties haven’t been good at acknowledging is that politics is as much about identity as about economics. You can argue all you like that GDP is boosted by immigration, but if people see their neighbourhood and their country changing in ways that make them feel uncomfortable, it’s no use telling them that they’re deluded.

Centrist parties need to reclaim the message of patriotism from the Right.

Yep, crafting a message about patriotism and identity…that was the secret to New Labour’s success…and all the time the ‘patriotic’ Blair was working to ethnically cleanse Britain, import millions of foreigners who would, he hoped, vote both for Labour and the EU in any subsequent vote, and to sell us out to the EU.

Believe.