The BBC really has given up all semblance of balance and impartiality on the EU as it bombards us with ‘news’ and interprets it as showing Brexit as a risk and fails somehow to be equally alert to the dangers of staying and being engulfed in a Euro state that is surely on the cards. The slow down in employment we are told has many causes but the one the BBC likes the best is the looming referendum….never mind that Osborne’s ‘living wage’ was predicted to cost over 60,0000 jobs and oh yes…employment in the US is also slowing…hadn’t realised they were holding a referendum on EU membership as well. Alternatively they slip in programmes that are supposedly a history of the EU and yet seem always to show us how wonderful the EU is and how badly off we would all be if it had never existed.
Today we had an allegorical tale of Rome and the Pax Romana, which of course we are supposed to look upon in wonder and think if only we had a similar empire where everyone was the same and lived under one rule, with one set of laws and one currency. Apparently the Barbarians all wanted to be civilised Romans and cooperated willingly in their own subjugation. It was one big happy family as people lived across Europe with multiple identities and yet rubbed along famously together.
Lesson to take from that? Submit to Pax Europa and you may give up a few freedoms but you’ll be happy in your servitude…after all what didn’t the Romans do for us?
Next week more of the same as the BBC heads off to Estonia to show what being outside on the fringes of Europe could be like...’How a tiny nation has lived with conquest and constant tension on Europe’s edge’…..no doubt it won’t be good…but you know what….Europe and open borders bring such joy….Join Europe and you can forget about your woes, your conquests, your constant tensions……and you will find out in this impartial and balanced programme ‘why Europeans are such an extraordinary mix of languages, cultures, and migrations.’ In other words it’s the usual BBC anti-nation state spiel that insists there is no such thing as a unique British or English or Scottish identity…you’re all really just European…so stay in the EU.
I guess that’s why we have a large statue of Boadicea and celebrate her battles against the loveable Romans…..she too just wanted to be a Roman….just didn’t know how to express it very well.
As a teacher I’m glad the spelling, punctuation and grammar test had to be scrapped this year. We need to stop colluding with this damaging system… There’s little room for deep and meaningful learning, politicians are far too busy ensuring that we are counting.
Listening to the BBC and you might think that the SATs school tests were a new form of enhanced interrogation method one step up from waterboarding and that pupils are throwing themselves under buses up and down the country in response to the intolerable stresses and strains placed upon their delicate and still forming minds.
This morning we had a less than subtle, politically motivated, anti-SATs programme from Marr that told us that today’s Victorian era industrialised learning, designed to churn out unthinking wage slaves to run the Empire, was outdated and unfit for purpose…what was proposed was that pupils were left to their own devices to learn for themselves, being put in challenging situations to force them to learn on the job so to speak, learning through group cooperation without teachers, carried aloft by a natural enthusiasm for learning that is presently stifled by the rigour and strait jacket of formal education in today’s schools….a sort of Lord of the Flies scenario is the preferred outcome I believe. Marr espoused that today’s education system was brutalising and terrifying the kids and not providing them with the necessary skills to handle today’s world…for instance actually having knowledge readily to hand in your head is so much wasted time and effort to learn when you have the internet instantly on tap to answer any question that may arise…why ‘know things’ if Google is but a click away? Goodbye Mr Chips, hullo Micro Chip. Marr, that old lefty, also manages to shoe-horn in ‘class and fairness’ in education throughout the programme. Political? Not a bit of it.
Listening to the BBC you’d have no idea that the ‘pupils’ strike’ was something in all likelihood organised and supported by the teaching unions as a political action rather than out of any concern for the pupils. The response to SATs has been driven by ideological dogma not genuine, intellectual, coherent critique of the tests and the reasons behind them.
Today there are questions over whether the so-called ‘kids’ strike’ is part of a wider political campaign after possible ties with trade unions emerged – and children were seen waving teaching union flags and clutching anti-Government placards.
Max Hyde, of the NUT executive, said: ‘At best SATs are detrimental and skew the curriculum. At worst, and particularly for our most vulnerable children, they are perilously close to child abuse.’
Starting with the end of the year, the Michael Rosen meeting last Monday was a real highlight. There was a good turn out of members and non-members, and the debate and discussion left nobody in any doubt that SATs are damaging to all in our education system, and must be stopped. It was a great start to our local anti-SATs campaign.
‘We are not against assessment. What we want is assessment that is meaningful, assessment that is more accurate, and assessment that focuses on what children can do, rather than stigmatising them as failures for the things they can’t do.’
Many parents’ lack of knowledge of the tests, their misperceptions of what the national curriculum involves and for some, their own political persuasions, will have been exploited by the unions to generate an atmosphere of alarm, fear and concern that is at odds with what is really going on.
The main campaigning group is all too professional to be anything but a union front…The ‘Let Our Kids Be Kids’ group for instance says that the SATs boycott was “a show of support to heads and teachers everywhere that they will have overwhelming parental enthusiasm for a boycott of Sats and a return to a curriculum based on the joy and wonder of learning”. They have a nice website…and a Facebook page. Not to mention a 38 Degrees page. Who runs all that?
We started this campaign as Year 2 parents against Year 2 SATs… then Year 6 parents came on board to say they’ve had enough. Now a third horseman of the education apocalypse has reared it’s head as a massive concern for ALL parents.
Making schools into academies means privatising schools… our school buildings and the land they sit on are then assets in their businesses… our children are no longer going to go to a comprehensive school supported by parent governors… academies can have their own agendas… appoint their own teaching staff and leadership teams. Who knows what this will lead to for our children’s childhoods!?
All very, very political and little to do with educational achievement. A union front? More than likely.
Let me summarise them….Don’t forget to sparkle kids, you’re all amazing, unique and special. The people who set these tests are so stupid and don’t know that you are all geniuses in your own right. The tests are a meaningless bore, a chore to be completed…but have no fear, success or failure is mere fool’s play, make-believe and mumming, you’ve been fretting over these tests for over a year as we’ve been instilling the fear of god into you about them for months but not to worry, they, and the knowledge and abilities they test, are so much wastrous piffle. Have some ice cream and sweeties, washed down with copious amounts of frothy cola and self-indulgence and enjoy the hot weather as you occasionally glance out of the window in a moments distraction from the TV or flipping burgers at Macky D’s….better get used to that kids because that’s your life when you leave school because all you will be taught by this iniquitous national curriculum is some life-enchancing knowledge that would enable you to get a good job and make the most of your life…but hey, we, the teachers, don’t want to fuck you up by making you work towards that and stop you having fun, we don’t want to place any pressure on you to succeed, failure is an option…you can succeed at failure…go for it!!! Sparkle!!! F**k the national curriculum! Oh, yes…you are special and unique. Really.
And of course what is really needed is a stress coping strategy for the kids taking the tests….I’m sure there will be a test for that.
We hear a lot about the terrors of these tests but how much is true? Allegedly the tests are far too hard and reduce kids to tears….but the reality is that the tests are set to test a range of abilities and that some questions are designed to stretch only those with higher abilites…teachers can withdraw pupils who they think won’t be able to do those questions at any stage. However all pupils will have the option to take all the papers if they want to unlike in previous years.
Teachers have been teaching to the test and forming their curriculum around it is one of the major claims and issues….but the Department of Education specifically states that the tests are not designed to be used as a framework or guide as to what or how to teach…the teachers should follow the national curriculum. Teaching to the test is clearly very limiting even supposing the teachers knew what was in the test. If you are teaching to the curriculum the pupils should have the knowledge to attain a good score in the tests by default having the breadth of knowledge to cope with most random questions, if not always the academic ability….and the tests don’t just test knowledge but also reasoning and a grasp of concepts and comprehension…the ability to think
Are the tests so much harder? We’ve already noted that the questions meant for more able pupils are now included in the test as a norm, available for all to answer, and that not all pupils are expected to answer these, but in many ways the tests are made simpler…there is no mental maths test, no mind-bending contextualised questions and no English writing test. There will be more focus on grammar, punctuation and spelling and more arithmatic with the knowledge of basic times-tables encouraged.
The BBC tells us that..
Up until last year, Sats tests were graded on levels – for example Level 4 was the expected level for children finishing primary school. But these national curriculum levels have now been scrapped.
Instead parents will be given their child’s raw score (the actual number of marks they get) and whether they have reached the national average.
The raw scores are not the relevant mark….the raw scores have to be processed by ‘scaling’ them….a raw score one year may seem to indicate a better performance than the same score the year before but the tests may be have been harder the previous year…..the converted, scaled, score is designed to allow comparison of the tests across the years taking into account the differing difficulty of each year’s tests. The raw scores themselves do not allow this and would be misleading without an indication of the level of difficulty of each year’s tests.
The BBC has not provided the public with an informed debate in this subject preferring sensation to fact, highlighting the alarmist and politically motivated complaints rather than hold a reasoned and sensible debate. We get campaigners who are more than likely connected to the unions but unattributed by the BBC, we get tales of depressed and stressed out pupils, tears, fears and sleepless nights…but little in the way of genuine information about the tests. If we had that information we could judge for oursleves whether these tests are really so gruelling and traumatic…or this is all about left wing unions doing what they always do…oppose anything that shines a light on the qualtiy of their teaching and their own performance…I suspect not a lot to do with the pupils at the end of the day.
Sparkle kids……
‘Children need learning that matters, that can steer their lot and influence their futures. We need to give them opportunity to improve the world, time to create and craft beautiful work; immerse them in the delights (and the despairs) of the real world. They are ready to show what they know, what they can do, and what they can dream up. But none of it will show up on a test score.’
The practice exam question for Year 2 pupils was shared on Twitter by Louise Bloxham amid the ongoing debate about the benefits of primary school tests.
It received dozens of replies from users debating the answer after she wrote: “If you think the answer is 65, you would be wrong.”
Ms Bloxham explained the question was posted on a ‘Parents against Primary Testing’ Facebook group where a member insisted the answer, according to the mark scheme, was 46.
However, no evidence has been provided to back up this claim.
Here’s another parent testing the limits of logic…..
Derek Black…Surely the first stop is where passengers get on. Driver goes first at depot, goes to first stop, picks up passengers. Can’t have 19 off at the first stop as no passengers on the train yet
Jeremy Paxman had some negative things to say about the EU in an article in the Radio Times…he has been forced to withdraw it in light of the BBC’s determination to remain absolutely neutral in the EU referendum debate, no, really.
Never mind that Nick Robinson recruited Churchill for the Remain campaign and was allowed to falsely claim that Churchill was the father of the EU or that we have been relentlessly drip fed pro-EU material by the BBC. Do they really think an article by Paxo in the Radio Times will swing the vote? They obviously have little faith in their own arguments.
Jeremy Paxman has withdrawn an article criticising the EU from the next issue of the Radio Times under pressure from the BBC, it has been claimed.
It is understood the outspoken journalist and presenter’s views raised concerns with broadcast bosses ahead of a documentary set to air later this month.
He will appear on Paxman in Brussels on May 19, described by the BBC as ‘an impartial look at the fundamentals of what actually goes on between the UK and the EU’.
Although the article is not thought to have called for Britain to leave Brussels, the organisation fears his words will damage his neutrality, according to The Sunday Times.
The paper claims the article sees the former Newsnight presenter ‘express doubts’ about the EU, its procedures and the loss of British sovereignty, and that the 65-year-old was ‘unhappy’ with proposed changes to his work asked for by a senior BBC executive.
The BBC said….
‘Our coverage of the EU referendum is fair and balanced so that across the campaign period audiences are given clear and impartial information about both sides of the argument.’
But that’s just not true…from very inaccurate reports of what Cameron ‘achieved’ in his negotiations with the EU to highly misleading reports on trade and tariffs in coutnires such as Norway, Canada and Switzerland…and we are constantly treated to little snippets of pro-EU comment casually slipped into the mix…such as Brexit being risky for the economy…but no similar comments at all about the risk of staying inside the EU.
Sadiq Khan is ‘Looking forward to being a mayor of the great city of London’….His priority he says, as that Muslim Mayor of London, will be to take on the Islamist extremists. He staged his coronation in the Christian Southwark Cathedral….the BBC interpets that as a show of unity and tolerance…you could also interpret it as a display of Muslim dominance … ala Hagia Sofia or Temple Mount.
The BBC thinks that asking questions about Khan’s promise to tackle extremism in light of his close associations with said extremists is racist.
The BBC is uncritically peddling Labour’s, and the Emir of London’s, narrative…..Labour was caught being anti-Semitic so now they try to paint the Tories as Islamophobic…and the BBC is there to put the smear in for them.
Just one suggested topic for the open thread…I’m sure there are many, many more….the floor is yours…..
Trumpy McTrumpface…The man who gets so many of the public’s votes and yet the Establishment won’t let him win…they hope. The BBC certainly does its level best to undermine him in the eyes of whom-ever reads or watches their schmutter.
On Wednesday we had Peter Allen leading the anti-Trump mocking and jeering, lots of laughter and eye-rolling all round at the mention of his name. Just odd how Trump gets castigated for his policy of controlling US borders and ‘torturing’ terrorists for information and yet someone like Corbyn with his cabal of fellow plotters and schemers can hold extremely toxic and violent views and associate with people who fully intend to kill every Jew they can lay their hands on and yet not just be almost ignored by the BBC but actively defended by them, and the terrorists who the BBC doesn’t want to see tortured, are also defended and excused despite wanting to murder as many people as possible to further their polictical aims….Ken Livingstone has only recently defended the 7/7 terrorists and ISIS as merely ‘angry’ young men pushed to fight the hated Western enemy.
Trump is the problem for the BBC. Trump is the enemy not the anti-Semitic Marxists in league with the Islamists and terrorists.
Here Mark Mardell, in his measured show of BBC impartiality, thinks Trump might have a chance of winning..or does he really? Is this not just another chance to sneer and libel Trump? Mardell starts his piece with a tale of Trump’s ‘racism’ and stupidity as Trump dared to question the sainted Obama’s birthplace…as Obama refused to reveal his birth certificate for a long time and much of his past is so murky perhaps it is only natural to question such things….you can’t get into the US now if you don’t have a biometric passport even of your own passport is otherwise entirely legal….and yet Mardell thinks no one should question whether Obama fulfills the strict criteria to be President of the US itself? Marell’s conclusion?..
The high roller, the booster, the snake oil salesman is the trickster of US national myth and there is a not-so-sneaking admiration for a flash clever clown who pulls down the establishment’s pants.
It was the sort of toxic stew of conspiracy theory and casual racism of which any sensible politician would steer well clear.
Trump, by his first political act, declared himself not a sensible politician, deliberately courting controversy by staging a hit-and-run on the facts.
Or it could have been a legitimate question that you can be sure Mardell would be asking about Trump if the same circumstances arose.
Mardell coninues his drawn out sneer..
The high roller, the booster, the snake oil salesman is the trickster of US national myth and there is a not-so-sneaking admiration for a flash clever clown who pulls down the establishment’s pants.
Fairly obvious what the Obama poodle Mardell thinks of Trump….which he repeats to be sure you get the message….odd how the BBC though is otherwise pretty unconcerned about Clinton who gets a pass from Mardell….
The assumption is that, faced with a clear choice, the US people will plump for one who is not a clown.
That may be the case. But Hillary Clinton has a battle on her hands, not against a man, but a mood.
It’s not just Mardell muck-spreading the anti-Trump poison….no prizes for guessing who another offender is….Justin Webb, who slips the leash and takes the hated Mail’s tainted gold ala Mehdi Hasan, in order to be able to say what he likes about Trump without let or hindrance from the BBC’s rather loose rules on impartiality…loose unless you are doing a programme on the Met. Office.
Webb tells us that it looks like Clinton has sealed the deal…
Come the November presidential poll, she will face a man so barmy, so extreme, so utterly unpresidential, that she can’t lose. A dunce who is not even amiable. Donald Trump is going to gift Hillary Clinton the White House.
Of course the whole premise of the piece is supposedly to run by us the possibility that Trump might over-turn the political wisdom and the Liberal’s deepest wishes and win the Presidency…but Webb manages to slot in a good number of insults on route…which you might suspect was the real reason to do the piece.
Webb tells us…
Let’s be blunt about the task Trump faces. He is massively unpopular. A Washington Post/ABC News poll last month found 67 per cent of likely voters had an unfavourable opinion of him.
What he doesn’t say is that Clinton is nearly as unpopular…he does say…
And in certain key groups, Hispanics, women, the young, he is off the scale — properly detested, even feared.
Again that is somewhat exaggerated…Trump won a resounding victory in Nevada despite it having a high percentage of Latinos…many who voted for Trump…the Left of course hated that victory and have spent much time and effort to try and explain that away. Webb just ignores it. As for women and the young….Clinton is ahead with women but they are neck and neck with the young….so not sure how Webb comes up with this final effort to do down Trump…the same casual and blatantly false smear they used against UKIP…
Perhaps the greatest oddness of Trump is that his core supporters are a fading and old-fashioned constituency — angry white people — but his politics are uber-modern.
Webb slips in Cameron’s insult…
David Cameron will have to work hard to patch things up with Trump after saying the tycoon’s suggested ban on Muslims was ‘divisive, stupid and wrong’ — and that if Trump ‘came to visit our country he’d unite us all against him’.
Webb also comes up with this..
And Trump, with his hugely resourced campaign and outrageous populist pledges, could swing them his way.
‘Hugely resourced campaign’? Trump funds his own campaign at the moment with added small donations from supporters not other billionaires…he has, and these are BBC figures, so Webb should know, $25 million, whilst Clinton has $125 million. Spot the difference? And yet Webb is suggesting Trump is buying the election with a river of money and oh yes, those ‘outrageous popular pledges’....outrageous? To Webb and his ilk maybe.
How about this ‘outrageous’ smear?…
Add a dash of Trump’s xenophobia and he’s in business.
Trump isn’t racist….he hasn’t based his policies upon race but on numbers and security.
And if he won?
But if he won, what then?
Again, the conventional wisdom might well be wrong. He is portrayed as a dictator. A megalomaniac. A man who has taken over a political party for his own crazed purposes.
All of which might be true.
Ah yes…all those insults might be true suggests Webb….but where is his, or Mardell’s, similar character assassination of Clintn? Conspicuous by its abscence.
The BBC and the Guardian et al have rather short memories. They have smeared Zac Goldsmith as having run a racist campaign, never mind that his complaint was addressing Khan’s association with extremists, nowt to do with ‘race’, and yet as soon as Khan is elected the first thing the BBC tells us that is noteworthy about Khan’s new found elevation is that…
Mr Khan is the city’s first Muslim mayor
Why is that now so important and yet just hours before they were attacking Goldsmith for being ‘racist’ for questioning Khan’s links to Islamist extremists? As always the Muslim extremist gets a bye from the BBC in the alleged interests of community cohesion.
Khan himself thought his religion was an important factor that needed to be addressed….
The very fact of a Muslim being in this high office could do more to combat radicalisation than any number of government strategies
Experience tells us the opposite and when Khan has demonstrated a pattern of behaviour that links him inextricably to people who have views that are dangerously close to the Islamist and terrorist narrative you have to ask questions…unfortunately the BBC and Guardian think not and would prefer to brush it all under the carpet and play the race card to silence the critics and win the election for a ‘Muslim’.
In short, Sadiq Khan’s extravagant recent claim that “I have spent my whole life fighting extremism” is entirely false. On the contrary, he has supported extremists, he has aligned with extremists, he has shared their platforms, he has circulated petitions advancing their arguments and interests, he has euphemised their blood-curdling incitement as mere “flowery words”, and he has repeatedly used his position as a human rights advocate and an MP to lend extremists’ arguments a spurious legitimacy.
I assume Khan and Brown are racists for having raised the matter of his religion as a factor in this election?
What else has the good Muslim Mr Khan said that might be of interest to the BBC’s ever-vigilant thought police?
The BBC somehow managed to avoid altogether Khan’s labelling of Muslims who don’t adhere to the terrorist narrative about foreign policy and Western culture as ‘uncle toms’….imagine if that had been a UKIP potential Mayor of London…or even a complete unknown Ukipper from some backwater who said the word ‘negro’…..well you don’t have to imagine because we know exactly what the BBC would do…hang them out to dry and set them up for a campaign of vitriloic smears and insults for months on end. If you’re the Labour, Muslim, candidate to be mayor of London though, you get a free pass on highly offensive, toxic, racist and dangerous language.
Whilst the BBC failed to hold Khan to account for calling moderate Muslims ‘uncle toms’ LBC tackled the problem…or did they?…
Yes. its Newsnight’s appendage, James O’Brien, he of the kangaroo court and Nigel Farage, not so much a journalist as a lying, sensationalist spinner of smears and malevolent mischief. Note how he doesn’t actually take Khan to task about his hate speech but instead sympathises and suggests this is an attack on Khan just like all those other dog-whistle racist attacks on Khan that highlight his association with people with very unpleasant views and ideas.
O’Brien, as good a journalist as ever, the honesty, integrity and professionalism shines through. Just what is it that attracts the Guardian’s Katz to this piece of work?
And what of Mr Suliman Ghani, one of Khan’s platform sharing Islamist cronies? The man the BBC and the Guardian insist is a Tory?
Congratulations to newly elected leader of Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. Brilliant victory * “Things can and will change”
A ‘brilliant victory’ for one Jeremy Corbyn? Not the words of a Tory voter I might suggest, though the BBC has been convinced, quite easily I imagine, by his lies…
Those ‘links’ are entirely spurious and inconsequential. The photo with Goldsmith is obviously a meeting in the street and not evidence of indepth collaboration between the two…unlike with Khan who repeatedly joined forces with Ghani on the same campaigns.
Ghani puts this forward as evidence of his association with the Tories and that he supposedly campaigned for Dan Watkins in the general election….unfortunately the event was in November 2015 and Ghani, as noted above, had already expressed his admiration for Jeremy Corbyn in September….and of course the election was in May. I guess he is lying about his ‘Tory’ proclivities.
However…we can see what many would describe as evidence of his anti-Semitism…….
Is it anti-Semitic to ask whether Israel has the right to exist? http://ow.ly/4np4Fm
Why would a Pakistani Muslim be against Jewish Israel and yet have no similar thoughts about the legitimacy of a Muslim state built on land stolen from India by Muslims after having driven out millions of Sikhs and Hindus from their land? Right of return anyone?
He is in very good company in the Labour Party just now.
Shame the BBC doesn’t do its job and rather than exposing people with dangerous and unpleasant naratives that have a damaging influence on society the BBC covers up for them and instead attacks those who would dare to expose them such as Goldsmith.
As suggested many times on this site it is the BBC that is one of the great dangers to democracy and civil society, it is the BBC that is extremist…the BBC that advocates open borders and the destruction of the nation state, the BBC that cheerleads mass, uncontrolled immigration regardless of the real consequences, the BBC that supports and excuses terrorism and cheers on ISIS as they destroy the national borders, the BBC that excuses and hides sexual abuse and rape by Muslims, the BBC that excuses and hides Muslim attempts to subvert society and impose their religion upon it as with the MCB’s Trojan Horse plot, the BBC that works to delegitimise Israel and helps to spread anti-Semitism around the world and even excuses murder of Jews because of what Israel did in Gaza.
The BBC is unfit for purpose, a law unto itself with no-one able to control its extremist impulses. It does more harm than good spreading division, hatred and war in its wake.
It’s amazing, or not…..Labour’s mayoral candidate for London, Sadiq Khan, has called Muslims who don’t agree with conservative or extremist Muslim views ‘Uncle Toms’….and the BBC has ignored this massive ‘racist’ insult that Khan seems to think that ‘moderate Muslims’ are more like hated native informers than anything else….though the BBC does spend a good deal of time not only defending Khan but also his less than moderate sidekick...Suliman Ghani…..in light of the recent murder of an Ahmadi shopkeeper this might be of interest…
Ahmadi shopkeepers face financial ruin after clerics demanded a boycott of their shops.
Imam Suliman Gani, of the TIC, admitted he personally pleaded with the owner of the Lahore Halal Meat in Tooting not to sell his business to an Ahmadi man.
He said: “Since the Qadianis are routinely deceptive about their religion, there was a potential risk of Muslims being offered meat that wasn’t necessarily halal.
In his first interview about the hate campaign being waged against the Ahmadiyya community in south London, Tooting MP and shadow Justice Secretary, Sadiq Khan, talks to Omar Oakes about what has happened and what he is doing to stop it escalating.
Is there a hate campaign going on against the Ahmadiyya community?
“If you read the [Ahmadiyya’s allegations of hate crime] dossier, it’s not just in Wandsworth, but in Walsall, in Birmingham, in other parts of the country, there is clearly a campaign to incite hatred against this group of people. Whether that crosses the criminal threshold, that is for the police.”
That’s why Khan is so happy to share a platform so many times with Suliman Ghani?!!??
Khan….a two-faced, lying, dishonest little weasel?…..does seem so.
‘Uncle Tom’ and ‘House Muslim’ are not racist labels – they are political ones. Only an Uncle Tom would say otherwise.
Not a word from the BBC about a senior Labour politician attacking Muslims who may want to support the government in their fight against radicalisation and terrorism. Kind of raises a few questions about Mr Khan, his loyalties and what he really believes doesn’t it? Then again it was the same with Warsi…at least she had the grace to resign….ironically Khan thought she was right to resign….so very principled…Sayeeda Warsi was right to resign over Gaza.…which again must raise a few questions, this time about his position on Israel, Jews and anti-Semitism….even more ironically in the first part of the video interview above he tells us of his concern that extremists will exploit the war in Gaza and use it to say there is a war on Muslims…..and then he goes on to do just that himself in his support for Warsi…..’ David Cameron has been silent while the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza have led to death, suffering and hardship. His and other ministers’ failure to criticise Israel directly is startling.’
Khan though really is in good company, not just with Warsi but with the Guardian as well, as today it has set out deliberately and with determination to undermine the Government’s anti-terrorist/radicalisation programme and conversely aims to incite Muslims to become radicalised and join the ranks of the terrorists. Not sure how the editor of the Guardian stays out of prison.
The Guardian reports with great excitement and indignation that the government produced films and material to counter radical Muslims’ propaganda that the Olympic Games in 2012 were unIslamic because they occurred during Ramadan. You might think that was a sensible proactive measure to counter the terrorists’ message that was intended to drive a wedge between Muslims and the UK but the Guardian thinks otherwise and its use of language, imagery and provocative tone and narrative is intended to not only draw attention to, but to counter the government’s message, a message that the Guardian labels as sinsiter ‘black propaganda’, butthe Guardian also intends to create anger and dissent amongst Muslims who read the story…and then of course pass it on to other Muslims.
The Guardian has not one, but three reports on this….here’s another two..
As titles go, the Research Information and Communication Unit (Ricu) seems bland enough to go unnoticed and innocuous not to raise alarm should it come to attention. The truth, however, seems less benign.
Revelations by the Guardian indicate that the Ricu, the Home Office’s “strategic communications” agency, has been involved in covertly supporting grassroots Muslim organisations in order to propagate “counter-narratives” designed to combat extremism.
So ‘less benign’……just sinister then?
The Guardian adopts the Muslism extremist narrative to counter Prevent and all it entails…
Revelations that the British government has been engaging in a substantial propaganda campaign aimed at influencing the “hearts and minds” of British Muslims and the wider public is of serious concern, as is the disturbing news that deception is involved. The unit’s covert support of ostensibly independent grassroots Muslim organisations and information campaigns is a classic example of so-called black propaganda, whereby greater persuasiveness is sought by disguising the source of a message which, if known, may damage its credibility.
And the Guardian continues down that route pushing the usual terrorist narrative, as does the BBC, about foreign affairs, the Jews, Iraq being the caue of radicalisation…no mention of the real cause….Muslims wanting to impose Islam upon the world….
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.
The UK government has embarked on a series of clandestine propaganda campaigns intended to bring about “attitudinal and behavioural change” among young British Muslims as part of a counter-radicalisation programme.
In a sign of mounting anxiety across Whitehall over the persuasiveness of Islamic State’s online propaganda, a secretive Home Office unit has developed a discreet multimillion pound counter-messaging operation that it says privately is running at “industrial pace and scale”.
[This] will dismay some Muslims and may undermine confidence in the Prevent counter-radicalisation programme, which already faces widespread criticism.
You have to ask why a government message that counters the propaganda put out by extremist Muslims should be ‘“ highly unlikely to have any credibility among these [Muslim] audiences” and that disclosure of the government’s role would have a “negative impact on the narrative.”
Why would young Muslims be opposed to a message that preaches non-violence and cohesion?
Why is it that any Muslim group that joins in with the government is seen as Khan’s ‘Uncle Toms’…
The programme risked undermining, rather than amplifying, the work of Muslim civil society if it appeared that groups had been co-opted to a government agenda.
She said: “The community groups are in a double bind; if they don’t disclose government support and it’s revealed, they lose trust. If they do disclose it, they lose trust.
I’m sorry…we have to rely on the ‘work of Muslim civil society’ to counter Islamic extremism on its own! Total rubbish…..That’ll be the mainstream Muslim community that reinforces the radicals’ message about Muslims under siege, marginalised and discriminated against…as of course does the BBC. How on earth are they in any shape or form countering, or even showing the slightest interest in countering, the ‘extremists’ message?
The Guardian has set out to not only sabotage the government programme but to create anger, dissent and radicalisation as a counter to it.
The Guardian is fueling the fire and doing what it can to recruit Muslims to the Islamist terrorist cause.
I would suggest lifting Rusbridger [who started all this] and Viner, stick them in the back of a Chinook and drop them off in the Syrian desert from where they can make their own way home with the help of their many friends out there. Maybe that will open their eyes and make them realise this isn’t a fun little game.
John McDonnell having a nice chat with now infamously immoderate Suliman Ghani…boasting how he, McDonnell, set up mosques and a campaign to boycott Israeli goods…..amused to hear from him that local Muslim councillors represent everybody. LOL…via Guido…..Suspended Labour councillor Shah Hussain has been on the Daily Politics to defend comparing a Jewish footballer to Hitler. Apparently he is the victim of a “witch-hunt”: “I’m a Muslim councillor and therefore my comments have been taken out of context”.
Livingstone and Khan in very good company…will McDonnell out, out, out himself from the Party?
The BBC seems determined to play down the role Corbyn has in the entry of people with extreme views into positions of power in the Labour Party and his lack of enthusiasm for tackling the anti-Semites.
The BBC has finally caught up with events as Labour suspends various members, all Muslim, for their views about Israel but although finally printing the story it gives excuse upon excuse for Corbyn.
The first line in this report is this quote from an MP which is interpreted as evidence of a plot against Corbyn…. the headline of the report gives away the BBC’s approach...’Anti-Semitism row bolsters Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour foes’.…
“There is a lot more in this anti-Semitism issue – a lot more. And the people we will take out are all close to Corbyn.”
Is that a plot or the justified reaction of Labour MPs to people making extremely racist comments with the expectation that they will be removed from the Party…given that Corbyn himself, and McDonnell, have said as much?
The BBC confirm’s their interpretation of this as a plot to get rid of Corbyn..
There is no suggestion that this particular MP was involved – and equally no suggestion that the shock felt by long standing Labour Party members at anti-Semitic comments by newer recruits is synthetic.
But for those opposed to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, the week could hardly have gone better.
No suggestion this MP was involved? Involved in what? Clearly the BBC is suggesting a coup is under way…exploiting anti-Semitism as a lever.
The BBC continues its defence of Corbyn telling us it’s not really much of a problem and that’s why Corbyn is just a bit slow to react…..
There is a consensus that anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is not widespread.
That contributed to Jeremy Corbyn’s unfortunate “crisis? What crisis?,” comments which suggested to some that he wasn’t serious enough about tackling a small but highly toxic problem before it became a big and highly toxic problem.
Ken Livingstone’s remarks on Hitler and Zionism were a bonus.
So much like Islamic terrorism…the beliefs and values that drive anti-Semitism are just held by a tiny minority of people who pervert the real ideology…trouble is that’s not true…as Nick Cohen points out…
The Labour party does not have a “problem with antisemitism” it can isolate and treat, like a patient asking a doctor for a course of antibiotics. The party and much of the wider liberal-left have a chronic condition.
It just appears to me that they face interlocking difficulties that are close to insoluble.
They must first pay the political price of confronting supporters from immigrant communities, which Labour MPs from all wings of the party have failed to do for decades.
While Ken Livingstone was forcing startled historians to explain that Adolf Hitler was not a Zionist, I was in Naz Shah’s Bradford. A politician who wants to win there cannot afford to be reasonable, I discovered. He or she cannot deplore the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and say that the Israelis and Palestinians should have their own states. They have to engage in extremist rhetoric of the “sweep all the Jews out” variety or risk their opponents denouncing them as “Zionists”.
The BBC astonishingly but not unusually prints this nonsense…
‘Not about religion’
Mr Aziz said politicians needed to be careful when commenting on the Middle East, but added: “The thing you have got to try and appreciate is that if a particular government – whether it’s the Israeli government, whether it’s the British government – if the government is actually doing something wrong they should be criticised.
“But not the population itself, it’s got nothing to do with them, it’s got nothing to do with the religion.”
Trouble is it’s all about religion. Why is it that a Pakistani living in the UK is at all concerned about what goes on in the far off Middle East? The only reason is because he is a Muslim and the people he is criticising are Jews…if they were Muslim he wouldn’t give a damn what they did or why they were there….what are his views on Jordan, or Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, or Qatar or Brunei or Malaysia or even Pakistan? Curiously he doesn’t seem to have any views.
Shame the BBC continues to hide the truth. Once again the Guardian asks that difficult question that should be on everyone’s lips…
Hidden among the current controversy on antisemitism is an issue so big and so difficult that it is barely addressed.
How, in diverse societies, is it possible to live peacefully alongside minorities whose views and political commitments we disagree with?
Naturally this being the Guardian the real problem is the Jews, sorry, Zionists…whilst Muslims are ‘too often left to be condemned by prejudiced treatment.’
But this is the big question that needs to be asked. Just don’t expect the BBC to ask it, it’s what they’ve spent years covering up and trying to avoid talking about..hence we get Muslim driving schools and cake bakers to show just ‘how like us’ they all are when the truth is far, far from that in reality….as Nick Cohen told us.
Here’s the kicker…the BBC knows Corbyn’s a wrong’un and yet continues to smooth things over for him…
Pressure is also likely to mount on Jeremy Corbyn to distance himself not just from Ken Livingstone but from his own views.
The BBC itself is very reluctant to tackle Corbyn of his views and his ‘friendship’s’ with terrorists, his employment by the Isamist Iranian Press TV and his gathering together of all the looney-lefties he can drag out of the gutter to form his own little cabal of like-minded fellow travellers around himself.
Some of the things Corbyn is accused of are, to paraphrase George Orwell, still concerning even if the Daily Mail says so. For one thing, he is the chair of an organisation which a decade ago effectively supported attacks on British troops…. “by whatever means they find necessary, to secure such ends”.
Then there is Corbyn’s apparent proximity to antisemitism. While I genuinely believe that Corbyn does not have an antisemitic bone in his body, he does have a proclivity for sharing platforms with individuals who do; and his excuses for doing so do not stand up.
I believe [this] shows that the Labour party – and the left more generally – no longer takes antisemitism seriously.
The man helping to lead Labour’s inquiry into antisemitism is a named supporter of a group which has dismissed allegations of Jew-hatred in the party as “baseless and disingenuous”.
Prof Feldman is a signatory to Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), a group of Jewish academics who are critical of British Jewish communal institutions.
On Sunday, IJV released a statement which expressed concern “at the proliferation in recent weeks of sweeping allegations of pervasive antisemitism within the Labour Party.”
It added: “Some of these allegations against individuals are, in our view, baseless and disingenuous; in other cases, ill-chosen language has been employed.”
IJV continued: “We are equally concerned, however, by the way in which such accusations are deployed politically – whether by the press, the Conservative Party, opponents of Corbyn’s leadership within Labour, or by those seeking to counter criticism of the actions of the Israeli government. The current climate is quickly coming to resemble a witch-hunt, in which statements and associations, some going back years, are being put under the microscope.”
IJV went on to express “dismay” that “anti-Arab racism or Islamophobia” were not receiving the same attention.
Doesn’t really fill you with confidence that the inquiry will be at all rigorous in taking Labour to task. Someone needs to, but it won’t be the BBC until someone like Guido does the spade work and forces the BBC to start reporting the bad news. Why is it that it is a relatively small blog on the internet that is making the running with the news and not the massively resourced BBC? Could it be that the BBC just isn’t interested in finding out about what’s in Corbyn’s closet? This is the BBC that trawls social media to find the ‘dirt’ on Israel or video of racists abusing blacks or Muslims but when it comes to anti-Semites they suddenly are not interested. How odd.
As millions of people with beliefs, values and ideologies that are incompatible with a liberal, freedom loving, secular, Christian based, Western Europe, invade that Europe bringing with them all the problems and attitudes that they allege they are escaping from, what does the BBC see as the problem? Is it the war launched by Islamists against the West? Is it the social, economic, infrastructure and criminal problems brought by the mass immigration of people with very alien ideas? Or is it something else?
A ripple of concern shivered across Europe this week in establishment circles after a right-wing populist candidate stormed to pole position in the first round of Austria’s presidential election.
Many European countries are witnessing electoral gains for far-right and nationalist parties, though they span a wide political spectrum.
The migrant crisis has fuelled a backlash against the political establishment, but the wave of discontent also taps into long-standing fears about globalisation and a dilution of national identity.
How is this right-wing backlash reshaping Europe’s political landscape?
So there is a ‘ripple of concern’ sweeping across Europe at the rise of Far Right parties. No such concern at the rise of Far Left Parties such as the most recent incarnation of the Labour Party in the UK? No such concern about the rise of Islamist terrorists…the BBC more often excusing and cheerleading for them instead.
And what of those Far Right parties ‘challenging Europe’? Surely the BBC means challenging the imperialist EU and the boot it places on the Peoples’ neck?
And what of immigration? I apologise, I was mistaken, the BBC do take it seriously….the problem you see children, is you...you just don’t love and appreciate the millions of alien immigrants who have forced their way into Europe expecting handouts and a life of ease, or at least easy women…….and have no intention of returning to their own countries….
“I think that many Germans don’t want to deal with the whole thing, let alone to help those that need it, be it in general or in the street. They just close their mind,” says 75-year-old Vera Hufer.
“It is important to reach out to foreigners and ask them ‘may I help you?’ … If we all put a little effort into it, then it will work.”
The rise of the Far Right? The rise of the Far Right gives the BBC the shivers. But who is to blame for the rise of the Far Right? Who gave the EU and in the UK, the Labour Party, uncritical coverage and support for their immigration policies? Who is it that has cheerled and spent vast amounts of time, effort and money advocating for open borders and the free movement of people from around the world? Who is it that did not hold to account and challenge their lies about immigration? Who is it that has worked assiduously to suppress and quash all criticism of such policies and allowed the real racists, the anti-White, anti-British, anti-Western extremists both of the Left and from the Islamic camp, to shape the political narrative and enable them to scare off anyone from engaging in debate for fear of being labelled racist or Islamophobic? Who then has given rise to the rise of the Right as people find the only way to get their voice heard is to vote for the only people willing to stick their head above the parapet…the Far Right?
The answer of course is the BBC itself. Now so concerned about the rise of the Far Right and yet it is its own actions to suppress democracy and free speech that has led to that rise….just as the BBC’s lies about the ‘war on terror’, its support for terrorsim and radical Islam, its targeted pressure on politicians to make them have qualms about taking military action for fear of the BBC et als’ reaction, has led to what is happening in Syria, all of which was unnecessary as Assad could have been forced to the negotiation table years ago and the war stopped by large scale military action….whereas now Assad is pretty much secure and unmoveable and the refugee flow out of Syria set to continue unabated as he bombs their cities and towns and villages back to the stone age. That’s in no small part to the BBC and its like-minded do-gooders.
Far from being a force for good, the BBC is a dangerous and out of control organisation whose highly politicised interference in world events ends in vast numbers of dead and an endless stream of refugees made homeless and without hope due to actions in Syria and beyond in effect sanctioned by the BBC which looks on and professes horror but then does all it can to prevent any effective solution to the events unfolding so dramatically before us.
The same can be said for the rise of anti-Semitism…the BBC has played a huge role in recreating that monster with its endless demonisations of Israel, the claims that Gaza is an open prison, that Israelis are war criminals, that Israelis are nazis who deserve to be shot, that Israel itself cannot last and is not a legitimate state, that Palestinians are being murdered by the Israeli state…all these things and more have been peddled by the BBC and the effect is the rise of the anti-Semitic movement that dresses itself up as anti-Zionist…and yet ignores all the other countries that are far, far worse than Israel.
The rise of anti-Semitism, the rise of mass immigration, the securing of Assad’s position, the rise of Islamic radicalisation and terror, the rise of the Far Right….just how much can be layed at the BBC’s door? The BBC certainly doesn’t want us to know…which is why it spent huge sums of money preventing the public release of the Balen Report which set out just how the BBC’s reporting of events in the Middle East had such a damaging effect on events there and in places like the UK where its anti-Israeli reporting became reflected in the rise of anti-Semitism dressed up in a light disguise as being anti-Israeli. In light of what is happening today the BBC should be forced to release that report and admit that it has played a highly dangerous role in encouraging the anti-Israel movement, anti-semitism and the rise of violent Islamists.
If the BBC were closed down would the world in fact be a safer place as speech became free again and open debate shaped politics instead of an immensely poweful left-wing agenda force upon politicians by a far too powerful media giant…a media giant that as we speak is still trying to close down its ideological and commercial rivals in order to dominate the news agenda even more than it does already with the connivance of the Labour Party which thought that the left-leaning BBC shouldn’t be subject to the same restrictions on ownership as other media/news organisations?
The world certainly would be a safer place without the BBC. It certainly would be more honest.
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