Monthly Archives: April 2017

Earlier this month we noted that the BBC was giving the views of ex-British ambassador, and pro-Assad mouth-piece, Peter Ford, complete credibility…The BBC…doing Russia’s dirty work for it.

The BBC interviewed him and then proceeded to use quotes from him throughout the day to promote the idea that the chemical attack in Syria may well have been a false flag operation by the rebels…in every news bulletin that I listened to the BBC did not inform us that Ford was in any way a supporter of the Assad regime, introducing him solely as ‘former British ambassador’.

The Telegraph reports Ford has indeed got very close links to Assad…

Revealed: How Britain’s former Syria ambassador appeared on BBC to defend Assad… after quietly taking a job with dictator’s father-in-law

A former British ambassador to Syria who appeared on the BBC to defend the Assad regime had already become a director of a lobby group run by the dictator’s father in law.

Peter Ford, 59, courted controversy this month by claiming that President Bashar al-Assad would not have carried out the chemical gas attack on his own people.

Now the Telegraph can reveal that just weeks before the April 4 attack  Mr Ford had become a director of the controversial British Syrian Society.

This was founded by Fawaz Akhras, a London-based cardiologist whose daughter Asma is married to President Assad, and is closely linked to the regime, frequently accused of acting as its mouthpiece in the west.

The BBC’s response was to claim…

The BBC yesterday defended its use of Mr Ford as a commentator on events in Syria.

A spokesperson for the broadcaster said: “When Peter Ford has appeared on various BBC outlets this year his particular viewpoint has been signposted in the introduction in terms the audience will understand, for example he has been variously described as a ‘long term critic of Western Policy’, or part of ‘a dwindling group who still think Bashar al-Assad is the solution to Syria’.”

Now that’s just untrue, certainly on the day in question.  The BBC was spreading doubt and pro-Assad messages purely to try and undermine Trump and his missile attack on Assad.

The BBC so hates Trump they are prepared to do anything to do him down….including supporting a man who has bombed, tortured and attacked his own people with chemical weapons.

Did the BBC splice together video from one event and add comment about another to make it sound as if Trump supporters were attacking loveable Liberals?…Seems as if the BBC did indeed do that…

The election is on and the manifesto’s are being forged as we wait breathlessly……Nick Robinson has been dissecting the media response, the Tory supporting media response that is and found that the Daily Mail is abandoning its principles and supporting May regardless….but is that true?…here’s what reliable old Nick says…..

‘Striking the leeway a Tory paper like the Daily Mail is willing to give to her…they hate that pledge on aid and yet nowhere is it on the front page and you have to turn to page 6 to find a fond headline…Theresa bites the bullet….as if she is doing precisely what the paper asked instead of exactly the opposite.’

Trouble is that is a load of old twaddle…the Daily Mail in no-way gives May complete unquestioning support over ‘aid’…and the headline was not just on aid but on two other possible manifesto issues…

Theresa bites the bullet: Mrs May risks upsetting Tory supporters saying she will KEEP the 0.7% foreign aid law, DUMP the ‘no tax rise’ pledge and may DROP their commitment to the pension triple lock

And note none of those other issues were ‘on the front page’ either….so Robinson’s focus on aid alone is misleading in itself.

And does the Mail not mention that it thinks the aid budget is bonkers?…[note that the print edition which Robinson is talking about also states that the Mail itself opposed her aid plans]…..

Meanwhile, Theresa May confirmed the Government will stick to its controversial commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on foreign aid, quashing growing speculation it would be scraped.

Speaking in her home town of Maidenhead, Mrs May said the party will stick to its controversial foreign aid commitment which last year equated to more than £13billion of taxpayers’ money.

And this in the same report…

Theresa May insists she will KEEP controversial target on foreign aid spending

Theresa May has said she will she will keep the controversial target for minimum spending of billions on foreign aid at her latest campaign stop today.

The Prime Minister said it was important to ensure the money – equivalent to 0.7 per cent of national income and more than £13billion last year – is spent properly.

But as she returned home to Maidenhead for the first time since calling a snap general election, Mrs May ended speculation she would dump the controversial policy.

 

The Mail makes it quite plain that the aid budget is controversial and that the Mail opposed it [in the print edition].

Robinson just seems to make it up to suit his own agenda…that the Mail is supinely cheerleading for May regardless of what she says.

  Pat Marie The BBC is the propaganda arm of the Tory Party. Watch Newsnight 19th April. Constant bashing and negative comments about Jeremy Corbyn. Not one single voice from the other side. The BBC is a bloody joke.

Oh…and have to laugh at this after Robinson warned his colleagues about badmouthing Corbyn…

BBC journalist Nick Robinson sparked an impartiality row as he appeared to criticise Jeremy Corbyn after his first major campaign speech. 

The Radio 4 Today programme presenter faced a barrage of criticism after posting a tweet in which he accused Labour’s leader of being “long on passion and short on details”.

“No-one should be surprised that @jeremycorbyn is running v the “Establishment” & is long on passion & short on details. Story of his life,” Mr Robinson’s tweet said.

I hadn’t realised he was talking about Corbyn….thought he was actually referring to the BBC…long  on compassion, short on details…and truth.

Oh dear. Merely meant that people should expect Jeremy to do now what done his whole life – ie give passionate anti establishment speech.

— Nick Robinson (@bbcnickrobinson) April 20, 2017

Gina Miller always insisted that she wasn’t trying to stop Brexit, merely interested in the proper democratic process…hence she is now trying to buy up that democratic process and rig the election in order to get anti-Brexit placemen shoehorned into Parliament so that they can vote for her pet project…stopping Brexit.  At least one BBC journo, Andrew Neil of course, called her out on it…

A question Neil didn’t ask was where is all her money came from originally…a type of question that the BBC is often very keen to ask….such as when Leave put that famous wording on the side of their bus….

A stupid mistake to make…how could they not foresee being hung out to dry for such a claim?  However having been taken to task by the BBC in a relentless witch-hunt over this claim in a way that the BBC does not do for Remain’s highly alarmist and exaggerated claims, the BBC then does exactly the same….and claims money coming back to the UK is ‘from the EU’.

Even this morning the BBC were at it as they discussed farming subsidies…Sarah Montague told us, several times, that farming only exists now in the way it does because of the money that the EU sends us, the £3 billion that comes from the EU.

So now the BBC tells us that we do send money to the EU and it becomes the EU’s money, even though we get it back…whereas when the BBC wants to undermine the Leave campaign Leave are lying when they say we give the EU the money…because we get it back…so the BBC tells us it cannot be counted as money we have given to the EU….unless it suits the BBC agenda…in this case farming will collapse without the benevolent EU handouts.

If Leave were misleading people before the BBC is just as guilty of doing exactly the same here.

It’s perfectly obvious that the Conservatives led by Theresa May are going to record a historic victory in June. The only question is just how big will the majority be? This is bad news for the BBC and in typical form it will now spend the next six weeks trying to undermine May and prop up the useless Corbyn and Farron. I note that Laura Kuenssberg has already been sneering about May’s “broken promises” and assuring us that the polls “will narrow” before Election Day. The one thing that is certain is that if you look to the BBC for fair and balanced media coverage of the Election you won’t get it. I REALLY wish that Theresa May would include an election pledge to remove the BBC License Tax. That would surely be a vote winner!

Friday and the weekend approaches! Time for a new Open Thread on which to detail the daily putrid bias of the BBC.

So, another Islamist attack in Paris. One Police officer dead, others injured. How will the BBC cover this given that France prepares to go to the polls? Well, I listened to BBC Radio 4 Today this morning and they were speculating that this terror attack might well bring extra votes to…..Francois Fillon! Yup, despite the fact he is just another part of the bland cowered French establishment the goold old BBC reckons voters may flock to him rather than…Marine Le Pen!!! Incredible bias. They can barely say her name without blurting out “far-right” – and I caught a profile of her the other evening on the BBC News and they used – yup – footage of Hitler. Ken Livingstone would be proud of them.

Trump, Farage, Le Pen etc have all been dismissed by the BBC as ‘populist’ politicians…a contemptuous sneer that says not only are their policies not serious or worthy of consideration but that anyone who votes for them is somewhat stupid and driven by emotion and feelings rather than reason and good sense.

Oddly one politician who goes for the exact same rhetoric and style, Jeremy Corbyn, is not labelled in the same way  by the BBC, they treat him with the utmost respect despite him using the same language of raging against the Establishment…the People vs Power, the People Vs the Establishment, the People Vs the Media and Big Business…..he’s fighting against a ‘rigged system’ and not playing by the ‘rules’.

Remember how Gove was ridiculed by the BBC for saying the ‘experts’ were not always so expert?  What has Corbyn said?…

In his first major general election speech, he said 8 June’s poll was not a “foregone conclusion” and Labour could defy the “Establishment experts”.

No outpourings of ridicule and derision from the BBC here.  Indeed very little in the way of analysis of his speech and its contents…we have been mostly treated to the BBC asking random members of the public what they think of the speech…a tactic which naturally isn’t likely to produce much indepth comment and is designed to avoid any real discussion or criticism of the speech.

There is a difference of course between Trump and Corbyn, Trump wants to bring jobs back to America, he wants to rebuild the manufacturing base and encourage business, he wants to make money for America.  Corbyn wants to take money and destroy the economic base of the country, the same old Labour….welfare not jobs, handouts not a handup.

The other difference is that Trump wants to deal with immigration, to control the levels and who it is that is allowed into the US…Corbyn not so much.  The BBC sees Trump as a racist but looks the other way when people accuse Corbyn of being an anti-Semite and certainly of overseeing a party that seems run-through with anti-Semites.

Any doubt that if Corbyn was Right-Wing he’d be on the BBC rack?  And yet he’s not.  Bias?  Think so.

And oh yes?  Fighting the Establishment and entrenched privilege?  Really?…

John Redwood has realised the BBC isn’t there to report the news but to shape the news….

You can hear a perfect example of that last point, that BBC journalists don’t accept the truth when told to them as Adrian Chiles ploughs on regardless [1 hr 11 m 25 secs] insisting that Dominic Raab is just spouting a Tory ‘line’….no such criticism of the Labour or SNP politicians on the show…

Well-done to the man who called in to Nicky Campbell and won his bet as he suggested that Theresa May, a vicar’s daughter, would not like to see mass debating on TV….cue dirty snigger and a non-plussed Campbell who moved rapidly on.

That was the comedic, and possibly intellectual, highlight of the day on the Beeb.

Campbell on form as usual as he asked a Tory MP ‘What lies will you be peddling today?’, almost on a  par with Eddie Mair who extraordinarily compared May calling an election with the ruthless Islamo-Fascist Erdogan who locks up all his critics, if not kills them, and who quite possibly set up a fake coup d’etat, and who rigged his own recent election in Turkey.

The BBC has got into its stride now and settled on a few attack themes, and it does seem to be ‘attack’ themes as it relentlessly targets May for criticism for calling the election.

The major one at present is that she has u-turned after saying she did not want to call an election…which of course is true but then so what?  Hardly a major concern that merits endless BBC dissection.  But the BBC has an agenda…this u-turn it tells us proves May cannot be trusted…funnily enough this is a line that Labour takes….

#Yvette2017 Underway: “We Can’t Believe A Single Word May Says”

[Have to say Labour must force Corbyn to resign immediately and slot in Cooper as leader…only real chance of saving the situation….the Telegraph explains why Corbyn cannot be ousted...so he must resign ‘voluntarily’]

Despite such claims MPs backed May’s call for an election with only 13 voting against and the disgraceful SNP playing their usual games and abstaining….clearly these  MPs also think an election is a good and fitting idea not merely some cunning and devious plan by May…whatever contrasting things they may say in the TV studios for political advantage.  Billy Connolly said in the film ‘Mrs Brown’ that there are two seasons in Scotland, June and Winter…clearly for the SNP June will be the winter of their discontent.

The BBC is also peddling the idea that May is afraid to debate, again a Labour narrative….so afraid to debate that she is holding an election when she doesn’t have to and putting her case to the country.   Hardly afraid of debate and challenge.

Campbell came up with the thought that May called an election because she knew the economy, under her guidance, was going to crash and plunge us into recession by 2020 and thus having an election now avoided that problem which would not play well at a later election….a ‘good move’ he suggested sarcastically. When challenged that he was just recycling John McDonnell’s words from earlier in the day Campbell huffed that these were his own thoughts based upon expert anaysis by respected economists….presumably those who provide Labour with its lines to take…so once again the BBC is peddling a Labour narrative…we’re beginning to see a theme here aren’t we?

May is a political opportunist?  A Labour theme.

The voters did not vote to leave the Single Market.  Labour again, and the LibDems….never mind they voted to leave the EU which entails leaving the Single Market….but you won’t hear a BBC presenter questioning the narrative.

The polls show, the BBC keeps telling us, that the Public support Labour policies…it’s just Corbyn they don’t like…er…so how did the Tories get elected in 2015 with a majority when Miliband was leader?  Just the BBC peddling a pro-Labour line that’s pure nonsense.  And wasn’t it the BBC’s finest political pundits who told us in no uncertain terms that the era of a single party taking power was over for good?

And when we’re told that the ‘48%’ have no voice and are being ignored but just how would we accomodate them and their demands to stay in the EU?  The vote was to leave the EU so in what way could we then leave the EU but not leave the EU in order to keep the Remainders happy?  It’s impossible…but you won’t hear the BBC challenge the notion that the 48% must have their views and wishes catered for.

A less than ‘balanced’ day on the BBC…Lord Hall Hall must be ecstatic as he munches on his dinner and contemplates an EU sinecure and a retirement with, not just a gold plated BBC pension, but quite possibly a nice little earner on his retirement within the portals of the EU itself as a reward for services rendered should Brexit be derailed.