What did Labour say in its 2010 manifesto, when Andy Burnham was still Health Minister?….

‘We will continue to press ahead with bold NHS reforms. All hospitals will become Foundation Trusts, with successful FTs given the support and incentives to take over those that are under-performing. Failing hospitals will have their management replaced. Foundation Trusts will be given the freedom to expand their provision into primary and community care, and to increase their private services – where these are consistent with NHS values, and provided they generate surpluses that are invested directly into the NHS.
We will support an active role for the independent sector working alongside the NHS in the provision of care, particularly where they bring innovation – such as in end-of-life care and cancer services, and increase capacity. ‘
Where changes are needed, we will be fair to NHS services and staff and give them a chance to improve, but where they fail to do so we will look to alternative provision.

Labour quite happy with privatising the NHS if the NHS cannot provide as good a service as outside providers.  Let’s not forget stuff like this from the BBC before we go on…the BBC headlining with a false Labour claim…

A third of NHS contracts awarded to private firms – report

The only clue (other than a lot of past experience) that the BBC might be misleading us was hearing Nick Clegg on PMQs responding to Labour’s claim, as above from the BBC, that 1/3 of NHS contracts had gone to private companies.

Clegg told us that a mere 6% of NHS spending had gone to private companies…a figure not dissimilar to Labour’s 5%.

Thanks to whomever [Mice Height] it was in the comments who reminded me that Old Holborn is still alive and kicking them up the arse.

Here’s 5 Live praising the audience for their passionate attack on the government’s NHS record….curiously it was only the other week that a 5 Live presenter suggested that the government was, ‘some would say’, running down the NHS so that it could be privatised…..

Government minister @Margot_James_MP was on the defensive about the #NHS from a passionate #bbcqt audience in Hereford.

Here's what you said… pic.twitter.com/BRxL2RVGTh

— BBC Radio 5 live (@bbc5live) January 19, 2018

Hang on…..Old Holborn has spotted something….the ‘passionate audience member’ is a Labour party plant….again and again the BBC fills the airwaves with Labour activists pretending they are merely concerned citizens…..

https://twitter.com/Holbornlolz/status/954649872266878976

Here being praised by a Labour MP….

Hats off to #bbcqt audience member @beccahampstead, challenging Govt on their NHS record last night, saying: "I wonder if the Conservative government that we have is ideologically making the NHS…under-funding it, so then they can make the argument for privatisation." Spot on. pic.twitter.com/L9wKtttOZl

— Laura Pidcock MP (@LauraPidcockMP) January 19, 2018

Rebecca Shirazi...on the far left of this picture….

Maybe the BBC can get a statement off her at this rally for the NHS tweeted by her…

In TWO weeks time | Help #SaveOurNHS – is the date in your diary? | Join the @pplsassembly march and rally on Saturday 3 February 2018 to #FundTheNHS to #FixTheNHS https://t.co/yf5kXaVK9b pic.twitter.com/RTA86Pw8Ed

— Unite the union (@unitetheunion) January 20, 2018

Ironic that an interview about women wanting equality with men should be conducted by a woman called ‘Newman’.  Cathy Newman possibly proving Jordan Peterson’s point that aggressiveness, being disagreeable and making a lot of noise will get you attention and promotion possibly to a level someway above your ability.  Then again it’s hardly a new thought…the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Channel 4’s response to the slagging [I use that word advisedly] that Newman has received for her abysmal performance is to, not admit the failure and poor performance, but to counter it with shouty accusations of misogyny and hate crimes….[Someone must have a sense of humour…they’ve just uploaded a video of a Peterson lecture….High-functioning depression & how to overcome misery….One for Newman to watch perhaps]…

Such is the scale of threat we @Channel4News are having to get security specialists in to carry out an analysis. I will not hesitate to get the police involved if necessary. What a terrible indictment of the times we live in.

— Ben de Pear (@bendepear) January 19, 2018

The Guardian has of course given Newman and C4 a platform [no comments allowed it seems] to squawk about it all, blaming the ‘alt-right’ [lol…just how do they know from the comments?  Apparently it’s de Bots again!] for the abuse…linking other journalists who criticised her to that abuse whilst denying they are doing that…kind of ironic that this is an article about abuse and yet they are clearly setting up Murray, Delingpole and Peterson himself for attacks by the rabid, genuinely misogynist, anti-semitic alt-left [or Corbyn’s Labour Party if you prefer]…..

Channel 4 News has called in security specialists to analyse threats made to presenter Cathy Newman following her interview with a controversial Canadian psychologist who has attracted a following among the “alt-right”.

The combative Channel 4 interview led to praise for Peterson and criticism for Newman on some right-leaning sites. James Delingpole, a Breitbart columnist, said the interview marked a “pivotal victory in the culture wars” and that the “weaknesses of the regressive left have never been more cruelly or damningly expose”. Douglas Murray in the Spectator said: “I don’t think I have ever witnessed an interview that is more catastrophic for the interviewer.”

Newman has faced a wave of abuse and threats online, including on Twitter. There is no suggestion that Peterson, Delingpole or Murray are behind the threats or instigated them.

Newman, rather than address the problems with her interview attacks Murray and hilariously claims to champion free speech….

Newman retweeted De Pear’s posts. In response to Murray’s column – in which he said Newman should get Channel 4 to remove the video from the internet because of how “catastrophic” it was – she said earlier in the week: “Always grateful for advice from Douglas Murray but I won’t be suing or taking out a super-injunction. I thoroughly enjoyed my bout with Jordan Peterson as did hundreds of thousands of our viewers. Viva feminism, viva free speech. Stay tuned Douglas.”

She says she won’t be suing or taking out a super-injunction….well no, because Murray is spot on and she’s over-paid and intellectually under-resourced for her job.  However she will be bringing in specialist security and maybe the police.  Watch out Douglas, the thought-police are being put on stand-by….free speech obviously only goes so far.

C4’s Ben de Pear [really?] suggest all this abuse is a ‘terrible indictment of the times we live in’…hmmm…well he should read some history and get a grip…it’s actually more an indictment of a pretty terrible interview…and as for that ‘such is the scale of threat’….really?  Please tell us more…please describe that threat….even the Guardian doesn’t come up with anything other than ‘a wave of abuse and threats online’….what threats exactly, how many and are they any more than the usual ranting exclamations that surface on many a Youtube video or Twitter?

There are over 42,000 comments on the Youtube video and trawling through a good many it is hard to find any that could be categorised as the all-out hate crimes that C4 claims…most are just laughing at Newman’s incompetence and praising Peterson.  Guess that sticks in Newman’s craw a bit…still, no need to call the police in eh?  There will of course be abuse but C4/Guardian is deliberately trying to inflate that into a huge story in order to distract from their failures and use it as a stick to beat and demonise right-leaning journalists into silence, smearing them by linking them to the abuse which had nothing to do with them at all.

The worse someone has come up with is ‘Bitch’….used 505 times….damn…snowflake territory…..wonder if the Guardian et al count the abusive comments that say a mention of Thatcher gets or even May, or female Labour MPs under attack from their ‘own party’?

Hey Mike! Does Cathys premeditated, unrelenting, emotional attack on Dr. Peterson count as critical analysis ?

— Thomas Price (@ThomasPrice18) January 18, 2018

Hmmmm…you can search the comments for that video using this site [and others]…

Search in YouTube comments

Certainly Newman is called ‘dumb cunt’, and variations of, many times [not in the hundreds though…and 2 million views of video], hardly unexpected nor unusual for any Youtube video…also searched ‘kill’….most comments seem to suggest they would like to kill themselves not Newman after the video.

We are asked how such abuse can count as ‘critical comment’, well of course it is in its own way, short, pithy and to the point,  but Newman and Co don’t seem to like the more polite, fully fleshed out and reasoned arguments against her interview either, such as it was…hence we get the shouty faux outrage about Newman being called names.

Snowflakery and attempts to censor and censure the right-leaning media.  Irony again?  The tough, aggressive, disagreeable Newman who wants to be a man’s equal canny take it.

Turkey is supposedly about to launch an offensive against Kurdish forces in Syria continuing its decades long assault on the Kurds, destroying hundreds of villages and killing 10’s of thousands of Kurds whom they consider terrorists.  It will be interesting and possibly instructive how the BBC reports further such assaults on the Kurds, will they adopt a strictly neutral approach reporting the facts or will they become emotionally involved, taking sides as they have done with the Palestinians.  The lack of outrage over the years towards Turkey’s actions in comparison to the reaction to Israeli ones is already instructive, not just the BBC’s of course but all those Kefiyah clad pro-Palestinian, or rather anti-Jewish, campaigners whose whole existence is wrapped up in wiping out the Jewish state ignoring the far greater crimes going on in so many other countries around the world…mostly Muslim.

You can see classic pro-Palestinian BBC bias in this piece brought to us by Sue at Is the BBC biased?...

Hotovely patiently sets out the case against UNRWA, even inventing a new word ‘registrated’ into the bargain. She explains that their (the Palestinians’) great grandparents started the war (of independence) and lost ….Willcox is not impressed. 

“Different versions of history of course…. different..” 

Hotovely Interrupts: ”No no no! There’s only one”

What’s also interesting here is the BBC claiming that there are ‘different versions of history’ or what you might call ‘alternate facts’…how they laughed and mocked when a Trump aide suggested such a thing…meaning naturally that the Media lies….but the BBC always dodged explaining that.  Wilcox of course is the man who suggested Jews are legitimate targets for terrorists in Europe because of what he considers are Israel’s criminal actions in Gaza.

Plenty of other BBC bias bubbling up all around ….list it all here….

Quite extraordinary.

You might think that Apple repatriating its huge overseas profits back to the USA and paying $38 billion in taxes, investing $350 billion over the next 5 years, employing an extra 20,000 and stating that Trump’s tax measures would increase employment and speed up the economy would make it onto the BBC news somewhere.  But no, the website is Apple free….oh hold on….there’s a new story about Apple buses being attacked by people angry at the gentrification of Silicon Valley…..damn Trump voting knuckle-dragging Rednecks!!!!

The BBC only prints negative stories about Trump it would seem…such as this latest effort….

Trump sows confusion as Republicans scramble to avert shutdown

President Donald Trump has appeared to undercut his party’s attempts to reach a budget deal with Democrats, on the eve of a possible government shutdown.

In a tweet, the Republican president criticised a sweetener added to the spending bill by congressional leaders to win Democratic lawmakers’ votes.

Another conservative lawmaker vented his frustration with Mr Trump.

“We don’t have a reliable partner at the White House to negotiate with,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, according to the Washington Post.

Hmmmm…..good old Rep. Senator Graham…who works hand in hand with the Dubious Democrat Durbin…and oh look…the Flake….funny how Breitbart can give a much more rounded picture of events than the BBC…a totally different perspective on events…..

Pro-amnesty GOP Senators are working hand-in-glove with Democrats to block a government budget until President Donald Trump agrees to break his campaign promise and his presidency by amnestying millions of wage-lowering illegal immigrants.

The hostage-taking is being fronted by a group of GOP legislators, led by Sen. Jeff Flake and Sen. Lindsey Graham, who announced Wednesday they would not allow 2018 funding for the Pentagon until Trump approves an amnesty.

And note….how familiar in the UK…..mass immigration is good for whom exactly….the workers or the fat cat bosses who support Remain?…..exactly the same problem in the US….

Because of the successful cheap-labor strategy, wages for men have remained flat since 1973, and a large percentage of the nation’s annual income has shifted to investors and away from employees.

Trump's map of the world. Latest update: pic.twitter.com/p4FuDXSkyv

— Have I Got News For You (@haveigotnews) January 12, 2018

Douglas Murray lays into C4s Cathy Newman for her inept interview with Jordan Peterson.

Although it is C4 the interview is pretty much symptomatic of so many interviews in the BBC…and C4 is just as lefty biased as the BBC anyway….we just aren’t forced to pay for it.

Newman comes with a preset agenda that bears little relationship to what Peterson says and she compounds that by not actually listening to what he says.  She constantly tells him what he has said and yet he just didn’t say it…such as equal pay will make women miserable….and despite Peterson explaining that he didn’t say that and what he actually said was women marrying men who refuse to grow up will make them miserable Newman continued to make the same claim amongst many others that were equally wrong and misquotes of what Peterson actually said…and he spoke quite clearly and coherently…so not hard to follow.

Pretty typical of so many BBC interviews, Emma Barnett is particularly guilty of this, where the interviewer just  doesn’t listen to what they are being told, and/or have their own agenda which they are so desperate to push they disregard anything that is inconvenient for their own narrative.

As mentioned before in previous posts it makes you wonder why the BBC clings on so desperately to ‘talent’ and is willing to pay through the nose to do so when quite clearly any half-competent person could be dragged in off the street to do the same job for vastly less, but still respectable, wages…I exaggerate but not much.

Laughed this morning as Sarah Montague got slapped down as she talked about French/British security relations.

Apparently Brexit is damaging as a whole and it is inevitable that it will bring problems for our relationship with France and damage our security.

The French spokeman said no, not true, you have to consider the facts and that it is not the relationship with the EU that is important but the ones between nations.  A double whammy there for the BBC’s anti-Brexit narrative.

And Brexit is not a catastrophe for the City…as if we ever thought it would be…

Christian Noyer, a former Bank of France governor, told the BBC that concerns about the impact on the City of Brexit had been overblown.

Mr Noyer was hired in 2016 by the French government to defend the country’s financial interests in the  Brexit negotiations.

He told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme: “Twenty years ago London was already the first financial centre and Paris was much more important.

“Many banks had concentrated their forces in London which had tens or sometimes hundreds of staff in Paris before.

“So if that goes back to where we were 20 years ago it is not a catastrophe for the City.”

This retweet from Sopel pretty much sums up his and the BBC’s world view….as usual Sopel picks one that is about him….most of his tweets seem to be about him and his love affair with The Donald….

Have read three amazing books so far this year. How to Stop Brexit @nick_clegg (insightful and hopeful), If only they didn’t speak English @BBCJonSopel (insightful and funny) and Collusion @lukeharding1968 (insightful and terrifying). Recommend all three. pic.twitter.com/l9mDLsQ6in

— Boris (@borispomroy) January 17, 2018

Sopel must be pretty gutted that Trump hardly knows who Sopel is, Sopel not making it to the Trump Fake News Awards. 

Interesting that Sopel retweets that ‘Boris” tweet…who is Boris?  A deeply involved Labour Party man, or one who was a member of the Brentford & Isleworth CLP….until now, when he has resigned due to Corbyn.  I have no idea why Sopel follows ‘Boris’, what their relationship is, but why does Sopel have no interest in his buddy quitting Labour #duetoCorbyn?   Not even a tweet from Sopel.  Guess only some tweets are of interest…those that support the Sopel/BBC world view and not those that show Corbyn in a bad light.

Today, after much thought and with great sadness I tendered my resignation of the Labour Party.

An increasingly disenfranchised and distrustful population is crying out for change. Craving a party and a leader with a positive vision for the future.

The sad reality is Labour and Jeremy Corbyn are unable and unwilling to provide this vision.

What we did get this morning on the Today show was Sopel blaming Trump for the disdain that the public hold the media in….and yet at least 54% of Democrats distrust the Media…so how is that Trump’s fault?  The reality is of course it has always been thus…journalists have always been thought of as dishonest scum…and often rightly so…and is Trump not right that the Media is now the enemy of the American people?  90% of the Media is against Trump and actively works to oppose him and has done so since his nomination to run if not before and will say and do anything to unseat him…to effect a coup d’etat.  The fabrication of stories about collusion with the Russians, collaboration with the intelligence services to attack Trump, the invention of faked-up dodgy dossiers, the very partisan reporting aimed at bringing down a President…..just why should the media be trusted?  And worst of all the BBC has been complicit in all of this.

Sopel admitted this morning that the Media has set itself up as the opposition, the enemy, but he blames Trump calling out their fake news for driving them to this stance….which kind of gets the cart before the horse….it was their fake news that led Trump to call them out…and they just don’t like that.  They want a President who does what they tell him to do and who is afraid of them and their power…..Trump just doesn’t care…and they hate that.

The BBC has not stood apart from the fray but joined in with relish as seen when Sopel himself backchatted with Trump rather than restrict himself to doing his job, instead grandstanding with some cleverdick comments.

The BBC spent the election running Trump down, calling him a racist, a sexist, an Islamophobe, a madman, a liar, a Russian stooge and a white supremacist…..and have continued with those slurs after his election.  All of it their own subjective intepretation of events or complete lies based upon no evidence whatsoever.

Any wonder Trump has so much disdain for the Media?  Look today and the BBC, and Sopel, are telling us that a Republican senator, Jeff Flake, is calling Trump ‘Stalinesque’ for saying the Media is the enemy of the people….the BBC not telling us Flake is a long time, vocal opponent of Trump and that the only people listening to his outburst were two Democrats.   If anything is Stalinist it is the reaction of Trump’s opponents who invent grand conspiracies and hold show trials…and of course use the classic Stalinist technique of labelling his opponents psychologically unfit…and then locking them up in the Gulags.

Sopel thinks it important to note Flake [well named] is a Republican….

Worth adding the person making this charge is a Republican Senator…. https://t.co/Ib70hGi49D

— Jon Sopel (@BBCJonSopel) January 17, 2018

Not so eager to admit that Flake is the enemy of Trump as are quite a few Republicans like McCain and Ryan who worked hard to oppose his nomination.  Not ‘worth adding’?

More BBC fake news about fake news intended to discredit Trump and make themselves the arbiters of what is true and what is not.

Just some perspective on the NHS crisis…..this all sounds very familiar…….and yet it’s in the US and not an apparently poverty stricken NHS…..patients in tents, store rooms, operations cancelled and ambulances unable to unload patients…..

California hospitals face a ‘war zone’ of flu patients — and are setting up tents to treat them

Libby Purves asks what we have been asking for years now….just why does the BBC employ people at such exhorbitant rates when they could easily get someone to do the same job, just as competently or better, as a Humphrys or Vine at a vastly lower salary?

The former Radio 4 presenter said that the corporation ‘clings on’ to stars including Graham Norton and Gary Lineker ‘like frightened toddlers to their teddies’ and fail to ‘hunt widely’ for alternative presenters.

She accused BBC bosses of shying away from telling the highest-paid stars that their salaries will shrink because they are concerned about them quitting.

Having said that she would like to see director-general Lord Hall making it clear that top stars are replaceable, she told Radio Times: ‘That this never happens is because of two things.

‘One is that managers like to talk of ‘handling multi-million-pound budgets’, because that makes their own inflated pay seem good value.

‘The other is a craven fear of losing ‘talent’, and a failure to hunt widely for more. They get fixed on the idea that there can only ever be one Norton or Winkleman or Feltz or Lineker.

‘They cling on, like frightened toddlers to their teddies. In fluffy showbiz it’s a bit understandable. But news and good documentaries aren’t showbiz.’

In the Guardian an anonymous and senior BBC woman gives the BBC a broadside for not paying women like her, highly educated, clever, talented and articulate, the same as men…note she also supports the idea that there is no need to pay for ‘talent’ as there is plenty of talent out there untapped that would work for far less…so no need for the BBC to be held hostage by the big stars of news….

Fear stalks the BBC, and women like me are being gaslighted and lied to

The group of BBC women I am a part of now numbers more than 200, including some of the most high-profile at the corporation. We are women who support our colleague Carrie Gracie in her public and eloquent pursuit of that principle of parity.

That I write this anonymously is a sign of both fear and anger among many BBC women, who, even after joining the group, stay silent. Fear that we might be seen as obstructive for speaking out, and anger because the reason for our speaking out is neither obstructive nor designed to make trouble. We just want to see an existing law enforced.

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” George Orwell’s words are embedded in the wall of the front of the building in which I work, next to his statue. And I believe in them.

But the BBC cannot trumpet its editorial independence in telling truth to power, only to expect its highly educated and talented employees to stay silent when they are lied to. And we have been lied to. Both in individual cases and collectively. You could argue that it is a form of gaslighting: continuing to tell women that there is no inequality and, over a period of time, they think they are imagining it. Knowledge is power.  If this is happening to a group of articulate, clever and highly educated women then it must surely be happening in many other industries. 

The leak of a private conversation between two senior broadcasters (John Humphrys and Jon Sopel) about Gracie, should be more than discomfiting. That the BBC management is said to be “deeply unimpressed” is good. But the private conversation isn’t just a sideshow, it is a symptom of a cultural malaise. It represents hardwired hostility and contempt towards women who demand what is right and legal. This can’t be shrugged off as “jocular exchange” or “banter” between old mates.

For a public service broadcaster, salaries of the top earners are indeed inflated. And if individuals bargain with the BBC and say they could earn more money elsewhere, perhaps the BBC should acquire the confidence to let them go. There are many, many talented people – and some of them are even women – who could step into their shoes. Given the BBC’s unique nature, in many cases there are no comparable programmes individuals could go to and still have the same platform they have at the BBC.

Have to say her attack on Humphrys is wrong really…he was joking but if he was having a moan doesn’t he have a right to?  It was not hostility nor contempt towards women.  After all he is having large amounts of money stripped from his salary at no fault of his own….this is down to the BBC which agreed the huge salary in the first place….and now are reneging on the deal because they have been found out rather than coughing up and levelling pay upwards.  Not Humphrys’ fault at all.