Is it game over for Brexit?

The BBC’s Rachel Burden, as do most BBC presenters, tried to push the notion that more and more people are against Brexit and certainly don’t want a ‘hard Brexit’…ie Brexit.   She stated that not only Remainers were against it but that there are many Leave voters who didn’t vote for all that is happening.  Naturally she didn’t mention that many Remain voters wanted less EU but voted to remain anyway…or that such a way of looking at things is a nonsense as she, and the BBC, don’t parse the voting after a general election and say ‘Well 4 million people voted for UKIP therefore the government must do what UKIP wants’ or that ‘Not all those who voted for the Tory government voted for every policy…therefore let’s have Labour running the government’.  The BBC doesn’t say that one party only got 52% therefore the party with 48% are the real winners as they do with Brexit [although of course Corbyn thinks he won the election…presumably going on figures supplied by the D’Abbottacus].  No sign from the BBC that the vote by the British people to leave the EU is being betrayed by the people elected to supposedly do their bidding.  Perhaps we need a clean out of Parliament of those who refuse to do their job properly…never mind the expenses scandal what about the democracy scandal?…the complete betrayal and contemptuous disregard for the democratic vote….backed of course by the EU’s propaganda mouthpiece in Britain…the BBC.

A poll released today should disabuse those in the BBC such as Burden….it shows nearly everyone wants to just get on with Brexit and do not want to see it abandoned as the BBC works towards trying to facilitate….

Just 12 Per Cent of Brits Would Abandon Brexit

Just 12 per cent of British voters want the government to “abandon Brexit completely” and keep the UK locked inside the European Union (EU), a new poll has revealed.

Even among those who voted to remain in the bloc, the proportion committed to blocking Brexit were a minority, with just 29 per cent wishing to abandon the divorce, according to the survey of 1,680 adults taken on the 10^th and 11^th of this month by YouGov.

In fact, in none of the demographic or political groupings surveyed did a majority want the Brexit vote “abandoned completely”.

Former UKIP leader and Member of the European Parliament Nigel Farage ironically urged opponents of Brexit to “look away” as he shared the poll results on social media.

Other options presented to respondents included “the government should continue with Brexit on its current negotiating terms,” with 45 per cent agreeing.

Ten per cent said “the government should reconsider its aims in Brexit negotiation, and seek a ‘softer’ Brexit” and 19 per cent thought leaders “should offer a second referendum to see if Britain still wants to go ahead with Brexit.”

**your regular twitter reality check**

% who want to abandon Brexit completely:

nationally: 15%
middle/upper class: 19%
18-24 yr olds: 21%
London: 21%
Labour: 24%
Remainers: 29%
Lib Dems: 37%

YouGov, Dec 10-11

— Matthew Goodwin (@GoodwinMJ) December 12, 2017

The BBC whines constantly that the DUP are disproportionately influential due to their alliance with the Tories.  Of course this is because the DUP in the main supports Brexit.  The BBC shows no such distaste for a small group of Tory rebels who betray their country and party and ally themselves to the Marxists of Labour in order to appease their foreign masters in the EU.  The BBC was also not concerned that the LibDems had too much influence in the coalition, nor that the SNP abused their position to malignly influence events in Parliament even on purely English matters.  Only the DUP gets the BBC’s thumbs down.

BBC bias…it’s out there…list it all here…..

Katty Kay, always worth a watch.  Today she reported on Republican Roy Moore and looked like someone had just shoved a pineapple up her backside and she was desperately trying not to let on as she tried to control the pained surprise with tightly shut eyes, puffed out cheeks,  a strangely immobile face, speaking through a mouth shut tight giving us her impression of a white person acting as an ‘inscrutable Oriental’.

After having done the obligatory pronouncement that Moore is basically guilty of historic sex abuse and then the obligatory link to Trump and the implication that he is also guilty of such things Kay then delved deeper to try and damn Moore for his personal opinions…he thinks homosexuality should be made illegal and that Muslims who refuse to accept the US constitution should not be allowed to serve in Congress.

A curious paradox…she, and her BBC anchor, railed against Moore and defended Muslims and yet most Muslims would have the same view on homosexuality as Moore….and of course see the Koran as a higher authority than any man-made law…such as the US constitution…so there is a question over where their loyalty would lie if it was a question of compromising their Islamic beliefs in order to comply with the Constitution.  You can see that same conflict here as even ‘moderate’ Muslims say they will of course comply with British law…as long as it doesn’t conflict with their beliefs.  The BBC of course saw little of concern when Tim Farron was pressured to leave the LibDem leadership due to being a religious ‘extremist’…or a Christian.  If he’d been Muslim?

Listening to the BBC news and you’d think a 0.1 rise in inflation was the great crash of 2008 all over again.  Ever get the feeling that the BBC is so desperate to do away with Brexit that it would be very happy to see the economy crash?  Odd that for all the warnings about the supposed effects of Brexit on the economy the BBC doesn’t get anywhere near as concerned about the prospect of a Corbyn government and the genuine and instantly catastrophic effects that would have.

The BBC has also managed to report another Labour Party ‘suicide squad’ member’s ‘self-sacrifice’ as an honourable and significant event in protest at the supposed lack of funding of the NHS.  Last week the BBC omitted to mention that Alan Milburn was a member of a group dedicated to the blocking of Brexit and that he was ‘resigned’ only after having been ‘sacked’ anyway [any coincidence that a report was launched by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on poverty at exactly the same time?  Labour has a way of timing its announcements and PMQ questions to coincide with such things and with BBC ‘investigations’] and similarly have failed to make it obvious that the latest such ‘principled’ resignation, Lord Kerslake’s, was also after having been told to consider his position…due to the fact he had massively mismanaged NHS funding, and that he is closely aligned to the Labour Party as told by Quentin Letts….

What the BBC DIDN’T tell you about Bungling Bob, the NHS boss who flounced out over funding

Yesterday morning’s BBC headlines brought the apparently shattering news that a certain Lord Kerslake had resigned as chairman of King’s College hospital in South London. 

Such was the gravity with which these tidings were imparted, it was surprising they were not accompanied by the tolling of a muffled bell and calls for a two-minute silence.

Flags to half mast! Cover your mirrors with black crepe!

We were told that this Kerslake was a former head of the Civil Service and therefore not only important but also impartial. Yes. That, above all else, was the message. Here was a rigorously non-biased elder of our public life, calling it the way he reluctantly saw it.

And he thought the Tories’ handling of the NHS was rotten. If such an objective figure — a man above suspicion of taint from low politics, we kept being as good as told — could decide that Government spending on the health service was unacceptably low, well, it must be true. Must it not?

I caught Radio 4’s early-morning gloop about Kerslake while piloting my little Renault along some skiddy lanes in snow-ridden Herefordshire. It was a good thing nothing was coming in the other direction. 

This projection of Bob Kerslake as some dispassionate Merlin made me laugh so much that the car started to wobble and near the bottom of Much Marcle ridge I nearly lost control of the back end.

There are two things worth knowing about the Rt Hon Baron Kerslake of Endcliffe. The first is that, although officially a non-aligned crossbench peer, he is currently working for the Labour Party. Let me re-type that in case, after hearing all those BBC’s reports about his political neutrality, you think I must be wrong. Kerslake is currently working for the Labour Party.

He was commissioned by the Shadow Chancellor, Marxist John McDonnell, to prepare a series of ‘implementation manuals’ for Jeremy Corbyn and Co as they (allegedly) prepare for Government. Mr McDonnell explained at the party’s conference that Kerslake would train Labour staff to face legislative challenges.

Colossus

Labour yesterday tried to say that he would be doing the work as ‘an independent’. From the parliamentary register of peers’ paid interests, it would appear he is doing it for no money. You rarely do that in politics unless you support the party involved.

The second thing to know about the 62-year-old Kerslake is that he is a total clunker. In three decades of covering Westminster’s select committees, I have seen officialdom put up a few no-hopers but Bob K was one of the worst. For us sketchwriters he was a collector’s item. He was so ineloquent, so foggy. When he gave evidence to MPs who scrutinised the Civil Service, they would peer at him in disbelief.

Could this meandering, wet, beardily indistinct plonker really be the head of our Civil Service? He earned the nickname ‘Bumbling Bob’. Mumbling, bumbling, bungler Bob Kerslake.

If Whitehall’s best was that bad, what were the lower ranks like? Yet the BBC was yesterday elevating this same Bob Kerslake to the status of a political colossus.

He was made head of the Civil Service in 2012 after a low-profile career. From the West Country, he had read maths at the University of Warwick and qualified as an accountant. And yet the circumstances of his departure as chairman of King’s suggests that financial management at the hospital was not everything it should have been.

What was not reported by the BBC yesterday morning was that Lord Kerslake jumped from his role at the hospital after being told that he could soon be fired. The NHS yesterday would only say that the financial performance at King’s was ‘unacceptable and continues to deteriorate’.

How did such a low-wattage specimen become head of the Civil Service? Well, it was an internal appointment and I understand just two candidates were in the reckoning.

Puppet

In best Yes Minister fashion, the Sir Humphreys wanted the job to go to someone they could control or ignore. And so they ensured Sir Bob (as he then was) was up against an even more useless candidate: the Home Office’s infamously weak Dame Helen Ghosh (who moved on to cause chaos as head of the National Trust).

Once Kerslake was in place, he was treated by Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood (aka ‘Sir Cover-Up’) pretty much as a puppet. The two men sometimes used to ride into work in the same taxi.

Few people in Whitehall were in any doubt which of them really ran the Civil Service — and it was not Bob Kerslake.

The more one looks at the King’s story and its prominence in yesterday’s broadcast news, the more odd it becomes. But perhaps other agendas were in play here. For Lord Kerslake is but one of several former senior civil servants who have had their snouts very much disjointed by recent political developments.

Brexit, and the disappearance of the Blairites, has sent many of them loopy. Take former Treasury permanent secretary Lord (Nicholas) McPherson, who was at or near the top of our national counting house for many years under many Chancellors. Since last year’s EU referendum, his Twitter feed has gone tonto, with almost daily posts about how the country is doomed.

This is not exactly party-political, in that it does not side openly with Labour over the Tories. The partisanship, rather, is towards the old regime, the status quo ante — i.e. the world of Centre-Left officialdom as it was before the scurvy electorate voted for us to leave Whitehall’s beloved EU.

Also in the House of Lords we find Lord (David) Hannay and Lord (John) Kerr, two former princelings of the Foreign Office who now lead resistance to Brexit in the Upper House. Barely a debate on the EU passes without one or both of these drawling diplomatists pronouncing dolefully on our country’s prospects.

If they can sling in a rude word about Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, all the better. How they love to do us all down. British patriotism means little to them if they and their caste — who so enthusiastically ran ‘Project Fear’ — are no longer running Britain.

In this same category of pooh-bahs we can place Lord (Gus) O’Donnell, a former Cabinet Secretary who has become an unofficial outrider for the Opposition, moaning and mewling his disapproval of various Government policies.

Or how about Sir Simon Fraser? A former head of the Foreign Office and one-time bag carrier to Peter Mandelson, he loves to belittle the May Government’s chances of reaching agreement on Europe.

Ditto Lord (Peter) Ricketts, another ex-Whitehall smoothie, who after Mrs May’s disagrements with Ulster Unionists last week, purred patronisingly on Radio 4 that ‘we’re used to Prime Ministers going to Brussels and having a row with the EU, but to have a row on your own side is inconvenient’. How withering! How clever!

Bluff

It was such an amusing put-down that Jeremy Corbyn reproduced it in the Commons. But it suffered the inconvenience of being shown to be wrong, as Theresa May was actually strengthened after the DUP’s intervention in the Brexit negotiations.

There are plenty more of these dry, droll doubters, these former magnificoes of impartiality, now happy to cast sneery comment against Mrs May and her ministers, both on Brexit and beyond.

In their London clubs, at their think-tank lunches, in the House of Lords and in their social media echo-chambers, they are clapped on the back and congratulated on their ‘bravery’.

No doubt that happened to bumbling Bob Kerslake yesterday. But the outside world just looks and them and thinks, like Mandy Rice-Davies at the Profumo trial: ‘They would say that, wouldn’t they?’

They used to run our country and they said it would all go horribly wrong if their order was overturned.

Overturned it duly was — and the economy is still growing, just as the sun is still rising.

Their bluff has been called. Their game is up. If only the BBC would wake up to this.

 

Apparently, according to the BBC, Nichola Sturgeon is very worried that some parts of the UK might be treated differently in any Brexit deal.  No, no BBC, she’s cock-a-hoop…she couldn’t wait to demand that Scotland be given special status when she heard that NI was to be ‘aligned’ with the EU.  Just the usual hopeless ‘analysis’ from the BBC which doesn’t want you to know that May’s stitch-up was ‘Brexit means FA’.  You can tell the extent to which Leave voters have been betrayed by the BBC’s, and Remainders’, delighted reaction to the deal…from constantly insisting a hopelessly weak and out of her depth May is about to be ejected from office they now tell us that ‘a lot of people think Theresa May has done a pretty good job today’…oh, and maybe we should stop seeing the EU as the enemy, it is after all seeking to help Brexit succeed and is facilitating this breakthrough…lol…the EU has done everything it can to obstruct Brexit and to make it impossible to succeed…and May has folded at their every demand….Emma Barnett wanted to know if Bertie Ahern was ‘concerned at what May will have compromised on to get the DUP on-board’!!!  Not at all concerned at what May has humiliatingly compromised on to get the EU to allow Britain to leave…well, leave  is not quite the term is it?  Note the Irish say ‘no deal means the UK stays in the EU’ not WTO rules and a buccaneering Britain…just a slave state paying through the nose for the ‘privilege’ of staying under the EU jackboot.

The BBC’s narrative is completely false and misleading…the EU is not out to help and May has totally undermined Britain’s position and has given away every advantage we had….agreeing in the end to that infamous ‘soft Brexit’…ie no Brexit.

Spot any more BBC bo**ocks….list it here….

Donald Trump’s Muslim ban is shameful and discriminatory. It stokes hatred and violates essential human rights. https://t.co/eb45gnbkdX

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) December 4, 2017

We noted the irony of the BBC warning us about fake news in reports that were themselves fake news. Here they are telling us that Trump tweeted out some fake videos as they report the BBC’s Orwellian propaganda drive in schools….

The issue surfaced again this month when the President retweeted three inflammatory videos from a British far-right group whose authenticity was subsequently challenged.

The videos were real and even the one that was supposedly not of an immigrant was in fact of the violent offspring of immigrants to Holland…so when they say he was ‘born in the Netherlands’, well yes, but not assimilated….which is the point.

.@JackieTeale is my first guest this morning on my @bbc5live programme. It’s her first broadcast interview about what it’s like when fake news is spread about you by popular forces…. https://t.co/aK6DxGiI4Y

— Emma Barnett (@Emmabarnett) December 7, 2017

Emma Barnett continues in this vein today as she spoke of Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ which as we know is not a ban on Muslims but on people from ‘countries of concern’ [as defined by the sainted Obama] which just happen to be Muslim.  [and why no concern about all those Muslim countries that ban Israelis and people wth Israeli stamps in their passports from travelling?]  She did this as she brought to our attention a story about fake news….it concerned, guess who….Trump, the Daily Mail, Katy Hopkins and the ‘victim’, Jackie Teale, a right-on teacher who ticks every box that you might expect.  Like the way she describes the Mail as ‘popular forces’….trying to create an idea that it is somehow rather sinister.  And as you will see what the Mail produced was not fake news but a mistaken belief….not a deliberate attempt to deceive people…unlike Barnett’s interpretation of events which is fake news…ironically.

Teale went on the march against Trump waving a placard which was produced in class by some of her pupils in lessons about propaganda and how to protest…she claims she in no way influenced how the children thought, and she did not take any children on the march with her.  Hopkins in the Mail apparently claimed she did and the Mail had to apologise and pay out.

Somehow I cannot imagine that Trump was not demonised by Teale and ideas placed in the kids’ heads judging by everything Teale says and does…though of course she denies it and Barnett did not challenge her at all on this.

Take a look at Hopkins’ article [post correction] about teachers brainwashing kids and see if there is a problem…think you might agree with her…but oddly the brainwashing of kids with ‘fake news’ wasn’t Barnett’s concern.  Attacking the Mail and Hopkins was…however was the Mail’s story ‘fake news’ or just an error as it mistakenly believed Teale took the kids on the march?  The BBC makes many ‘mistakes’ …are these to be categorised as ‘fake news’ each and very time?  Why no interest from Barnett?

Interesting explanation from the BBC of the BBC’s sinister and machiavellian attempt to brainwash schoolkids……note this is just another way to peddle the BBC’s own toxic messages about Trump whom they declare is falsely claiming the media is ‘fake news’ and is weaponising the term for his own illegitimate purposes, about ‘ fake news spikes around big news events, such as plebiscites that are too close to call.’.…ie Brexit and Trump’s election….

Nobody knows how big a problem fake news is, and many of those who talk about it have an incentive to inflate the threat.

As I’ve written before, for many people, fake news is a useful enemy. For Donald Trump, fake news is synonymous with a hostile media. By attacking the “fake news media”, Trump can motivate his base, obstruct scrutiny of his policies, and potentially undermine his opponents.

For ambitious politicians keen to flaunt their digital knowledge and boost their profile, the fake news phenomenon is a handy option.

For digital firms keen to display a social conscience, fake news provides an opportunity to clarify their purpose – “we’re technology companies, not media companies” – while showing that they do care, really, about democracy – even if their platforms are zones in which foreign autocrats interfere in domestic matters.

And for the mainstream media, which is suffering from a crisis of trust, seeing traditional business models turn into air, and completely failed to see the big stories of the past decade coming, the comparison with fake news is a way of making the case for professional journalists who go after the truth.

This is the context in which to see the BBC’s plans to tackle fake and false news through a new initiative, in which online mentoring and school visits (including from me) promote better judgement about misinformation online.

To resist them[the news fakers] requires knowledge (of the actual state of the world), intellectual tools (scrutiny to determine truth from falsehood), and courage (to call out liars).

This trinity, when combined, produces news literacy – and it is this, rather than fake news itself, that the BBC’s new initiative is aiming to promote.

Combating it requires an as yet unclear combination of action from governments, technology companies, and civil society more broadly.

It is within the last of these that this BBC initiative sits; and as the current trends in news accelerate, toward news that is more mobile, more social, and more partisan, I suspect the case for helping teenagers distinguish truth from falsehood will grow, even if – indeed especially if – believing there is such a thing as the truth becomes ever less fashionable.

It’s just a complete lie that ‘truth’ has become ever less fashionable…as if it ever was fashionable in the media.  You didn’t see the BBC complaining when the Sun and the Times were supporting Labour with stories planted by Labour spinners such as Campbell and Baldwin.  The idea that ‘echo chambers’ are new is total nonsense invented by the BBC to create alarm and fear about its biggest rival for news…the social media.  People have always been in echo chambers that reinforce their ‘prejudices’…..how many vote as their fathers voted, how many only read a certain paper and how many would only vote for one party come what may…just look at the BBC now….so desperate to get a Labour government that they are prepared to hold their noses and cheerlead for someone who is basically a terrorist  [ I make no distinction between those who support the use of violence and the ones who actually do it] and a marxist who would wreck the economy and create an incredibly violent and divided nation.  The BBC bubble is the biggest echo chamber around.

The BBC teaching school kids how to recognise fake news….well I guess they are the experts.

List the fake news you spot here……

To hear that the BBC will be sending teams of their own journalists into schools to teach children how to spot fake news is somewhat amusing if not just a little terrifying…it’s like sending Jimmy Savile into schools to teach the children how to spot a paedophile.

It’s not difficult kids…if it has ‘BBC’ on it then it’s a good chance of being fake news.

BBC to help students identify ‘fake news’

The BBC is launching a new scheme to help young people identify real news and filter out fake or false information.

The project is targeted at secondary schools and sixth forms across the UK.

From March, up to 1,000 schools will be offered mentoring in class and online to help them spot so-called fake news.

Ironically the BBC uses its announcement to spread fake, anti-Trump, news…

The term “fake news” was popularised by Donald Trump during his presidential election campaign last year.

He used the term to denigrate the output of the traditional news media, although it is also used to describe news stories that achieve significant traction despite being palpably false.

5 Live decided to explore the issue today and we had the intelligent, impartial, even-tempered Nihal to guide through the process.  LOL.  A man so unsuited to the job it is laughable.  For instance when a listener texted in that the BBC was as guilty of spreading fake news as anyone Nihal responded with derision and mockery in an aggressive and rude manner…he shouted out ‘bingo!’ as he received the message clearly indicating his attitude to criticism of the BBC. The texter said the BBC was the last place he would look for the truth and always used other media sources for his news.  Nihal snapped at him and told him ‘good luck with that…see how you get on’ as if no one can survive without the BBC feeding them its lies.

An irony that on a programme about fake news and echo chambers Nihal is unprepared to listen to other views and will only hear what he wants to hear.  But then that is Nihal, bigoted, racist and aggressively unpleasant….he likes to announce that Britain is a nastier and more racist place since Brexit….just one of the BBC’s favourite lies, along with ‘Islam is the religion of peace’, that they use to attack their opponents.  Nihal went on to tell us that ‘truth’ and ‘facts’ are not the same…there is a problem with ‘truth’.  No there is a problem with the BBC and its alternate facts.

Trump in no way invented nor popularised the term fake news…..it has been around for over a hundred years and the left-wing media used it extensively to attack Trump…Trump was not ‘denigrating’ news media but accurately describing their output. The BBC et al actually created the biggest bit of fake news….the myth of the ‘post-truth era’.  This is a deliberate attempt to shape the narrative in their own interest by claiming that only since Trump and Brexit has news become fake….see the title to the BBC video above….’Fake news and post-truth:  How th eworld changed in 2016′.  Except of course it didn’t change…or not at least in how it is reported….the media has always been completely untrustworthy.  What did change was Brexit and Trump….and the BBC hates that and shapes its news to paint both in as damaging a light as possible….ie fake news.

Look at the BBC video above when the BBC’s Allan Little claims there are now two Britains each with their own parallel truths as he shows the Boris Bus on screen and tells us that Leave promised us £350 million per week for the NHS.  This is post-truth politics he ridiculously claims…..however even if the bus did say what he claims, and it didn’t, politicians have been lying to us for, well, for ever.  That claim of a post-truth politics is fake news itself, an invented phantom bogeyman to scare people into doubting Brexit and Trump’s victorys were legitimate.  The BBC claims that this new ‘post-truth’ era is a danger to democracy…..the only danger to democracy is a massively powerful media organisation that is out of control and which is spreading misleading and false information about people and events it does not like.  Here you can see the BBC attacking Breitbart with false claims that it used a term, ‘Luegenpresse’ [lying press], that the BBC says was first used by the Nazis….unfortunately the term was coined long before the Nazis and is still in use in Germany today by the media there….including the left-wing media.  Just another classic attempt by the BBC to smear a political opponent with the ‘Nazi’ or Far-Right tag.

And the BBC can’t really claim that the term is not very apt in relation to its own output…Allan Little’s video above just one example of the lies and attempts to create the narrative that no one can be trusted except the BBC.

Lord Hall Hall says…

“By sharing our journalistic expertise, we want to give young people the skills and awareness they need to be confident about identifying the real news stories, and calling out the fakes.”

Get ’em young.  That’s the BBC plan…a somewhat sinister one that aims to position the BBC as the arbiter of truth and, in the eyes of a future generation, as the only trusted voice which they can rely upon for their news about the world.  This is not unlike the Nazis and Communists who always aimed to recruit and indoctrinate, brainwash, the young so that they would grow up into obedient and unthinking drones.

It is surprising that the government should allow the BBC to do this.  It is clearly an exercise in extending the BBC’s own influence and grip on the national consciousness and on the political discourse allowing it in future to have a powerful and dominant impact on what people see and hear in the news and thus potentially controlling how they perceive the world and then their reactions…such as how they vote.  This is a power grab by the BBC in a most sinister way, training, grooming, children to believe only one way of thinking is correct.

Here’s an interesting slip of the tongue from Buzzfeed:  Those Labour supporting media cheerleaders…like the BBC…

In short, Corbyn – like Donald Trump – needed his own media cheerleaders. Their rise has also resulted in a deep-seated distrust of supposedly Labour-supporting organisations such as the New Statesman – which was recently picketed over its anti-Corbyn stance – and the BBC, which until relatively recently was used to being under fire from the likes of the Daily Mail for being too left-wing.

No coincidence the NUJ was briefing Labour that the BBC needed its protection:

NUJ submission to the Labour Party consultation on fake news February 2017

Establish funding arrangements to ensure the future of the BBC as one of the world’s most respected and comprehensive news organisations

The role of the BBC as the bulwark that supports the UK’s broadcast media cannot be overstated. It is training academy, standard setter and commissioning hub for the industry, as well as being among the world’s most important media organisations and public service broadcasters. Tempting as many find it to find fault with aspects of its output, this should never detract from its importance, nor the need to ensure that it retains this vital role.

The BBC is also the UK’s most-trusted source of newsiv and is considered fair and impartial by the overwhelming majority of people in the UK. As such it is an exemplar of fair and balanced journalism (periodic issues notwithstanding).

Douglas Murray spots the BBC’s attempts to paint itself as the victim of fake news…

James O’Brien spreading ‘fake news’ via the BBC is a must-watch

The row about ‘fake news’ and the ‘crooked media’ appears to be ongoing.  And every time the BBC and other mainstream media mention it they present themselves solely as the victims of such phenomena.

As has John Redwood:

The BBC wants to change the news, not report it

The best way to spot fake  news is to look for the BBC logo….you can be pretty sure they are selling you something.

The BBC has stated in its news bulletins that the Manchester bomb attack could have been stopped.  In the web report they quote from a report saying that the attack coud have been stopped if… “the cards fallen differently.”

Could MI5 have stopped 2017’s attacks?

A major review of whether MI5 could have stopped any of 2017’s terrorism attacks has revealed details of opportunities that, had they been followed through, might have stopped two of them.

“MI5 … came by intelligence [on Abedi] in the months before the attack which, had its true significance been properly understood, would have caused an investigation into him to be opened.”

Those two pieces of undisclosed intelligence were thought to relate to crime, rather than terrorism.

Was this a missed opportunity? MI5 concluded that the intelligence was insufficient. But Mr Anderson’s review states: “It is conceivable that the Manchester attack… might have been averted had the cards fallen differently.”

Firstly that’s a totally meaningless statement…’if’ I had a time machine I could go back in time and fix everything with the knowledge I have now….if the cards had fallen differently is a nonsense statement…of course if things had been different…but they weren’t. Second the BBC misses out what was said before and after that claim.

Before we get to that let’s quote some more from the report, something of interest to do with the British people’s response….

The public response – like that of the police who reacted promptly to each attack – was impressive. Manchester came together in a moving demonstration of solidarity. The international headline which described London as “reeling” missed the mark: resilient, or resolute, would have been closer. Rather than divide the country, these shocking crimes united decent people of all races and religions in sympathy for the victims and condemnation for the attackers. Post-attack hate crimes, unacceptable though they are, cannot obscure this greater truth.

The BBC prefers to say that the British response was a wave of anti-Muslim hatred and a rising tide of ‘Islamophobic’ attacks.  I might suggest the people of this country have been incredibly tolerant and patient with the Muslim community considering what has happened over the last 25 years.

But back to ‘they could have stopped it’……

The report says…‘in a free society and against a worsening threat background, it is not realistic to expect everything to be stopped.’

And in relation to the Manchester attack in particular….

Salman Abedi (Manchester)
Abedi: summary
Like Khalid Masood (but 30 years younger), Salman Abedi was a closed SOI at the time of his attack, and so not under active investigation. MI5 nonetheless came by intelligence in the months before the attack which, had its true significance been properly understood, would have caused an investigation into him to be opened. It is unknowable whether such an investigation would have allowed Abedi’s plans to be pre-empted and thwarted: MI5 assesses that it would not.

So completely unknowable if the attack could have been stopped….if only things had been different…well yes.

That phrase ‘had the cards fallen differently‘ was in fact part of a paragraph praising MI5 and the police whose systems were working well….and is a rather strange and casual line as it suggests a perfect knowledge of things they didn’t know and is a throwaway comment based more on hope than fact….

Nor could it be said of the attacks under review, save in the case of Finsbury Park, that MI5 and the police were entirely blindsided. Khalid Masood (Westminster) and Salman Abedi (Manchester) had both been subjects of interest, and Khuram Butt (London Bridge) remained under active investigation. Substantial and appropriate coverage was in place around key individuals, and mechanisms designed to assess risk were working as intended. MI5 and CT Policing got a great deal right: particularly in the case of Manchester, they could have succeeded had the cards fallen differently.

The report goes on to admit that this is purely the opinion of one man using knowledge gained after the event against the judgement of MI5’s professional opinion….The author claims he ‘offers no view’ but then strangely suggests it is possible MI5 could have stopped the atatck but we can’t know because that is pure speculation based upon a high degree of inherent uncertainty…in other words he doesn’t have a clue but is hedging his bets with some mealy mouthed words…

In relation to the question of whether the Manchester attack could or should have been stopped (2.37 and 3.15 above), I offer no view on whether the re-opening of an investigation into Salman Abedi in early 2017 would, as MI5 concludes “on the clear balance of professional opinion”, have been unlikely to result in the pre-emption of the gathering plot. While that may be right, I prefer to emphasise my agreement with the other point made in this connection: that “there is a high degree of inherent uncertainty in speculating as to what might or might not have been discovered”.

We are also told how difficult MI5’s job is…and yet the report can claim maybe, possibly, if only, had things been different….the attack could have been stopped….

The Director General of MI5 recently described the work of his staff in the following terms:
“They are constantly making tough professional judgments based on fragments of intelligence: pin pricks of light against a dark and shifting canvas.”

After immersing myself in the minutiae of these investigations, that strikes me as an accurate description of MI5’s counter-terrorism work. The reason why the judgements can be “tough” is that they are made against a background of imperfect information, and yet frequently require staff to choose which of a number of current and potentially deadly threats is most deserving of scarce investigative resource.

So pretty much nonsense to  suggest the Manchester attack could have been stopped.  The BBC of course grabs the headline that makes the most sensation…entirely irresponsible as it creates anger amongst victims and their families and expectations that can never be fulfilled…..as the report says…

‘in a free society and against a worsening threat background, it is not realistic to expect everything to be stopped.’

Hitler could have been stopped ‘had the cards fallen differently’.…but they didn’t.  And of course the BBC played its part in that banning Churchill and his anti-Hitler speeches from the airwaves in case he ‘offended’ the Germans.  Sounds very familiar today.