https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhXTRsTYdwc

The BBC has an agenda that is highly evident when it comes to reporting anything to do with race or indeed religion, one religion in particular of course.

When white people are filmed being racially abusive to non-whites on public transport the BBC will rapidly broadcast the videos with profound expressions of shocked sensibilities.  You see no such videos ffrom the BBC of black people abusing whites.  When a white police officer shoots a black man in America the BBC’s default position is that the shooting was a result of racial prejudice. The BBC will trawl the archives for anything remotely similar, or even not similar at all.  A black man dies of cancer or in a road accident and the deaths are all gathered together, conflated along with the shootings to create the narrative that somehow black lives are worth less than white ones and that all black deaths are somehow a result of racism whether overt or hidden….victims of a society that doesn’t care about them.

Yesterday we posted a look at the BBC’s latest such effort that was a very long piece of race baiting from the BBC designed to do what we’ve just stated, to merge together all black deaths of any cause into one bloated, censorious accusation against American Society, the white bit of society that is.

It is a typical piece of race hustling that we’ve come to expect from the racism industry and unfortunately from the ‘impartial’ BBC as well.  Institutions we are told can be racist, systems can be racist, even buildings can apparently be racist not meeting the specific needs of the black citizens, whatever those specific needs might be, and of course if they can’t find anything current to complain about there is always the legacy of history from which all black people are obviously suffering, whether they know it or not, and let’s not forget the innate racism of white people who, even if they never display any signs of racism, can never throw off the prejudices so natural to their race and indeed not being racist is a sure sign of being racist in its condesending patronising display of white supremacy…..the neo-colonialism of the do-gooder still ‘helping out’, civilising, the black man.

Amongst all of the BBC’s vast number of highly emotive reports about police killing black people in the US are there any that mention white people being killed in a similar manner by police?  Because it’s bound to be happening…and indeed here’s one such killing that the BBC seems to have somehow missed….

The Independent reports the controversy…..

Zachary Hammond death: Shooting of unarmed white teenager by police officer sparks debate over ‘lack of outrage’ in America

The Guardian reports it…..

Zachary Hammond autopsy challenges police account of fatal shooting

The BBC hasn’t shown the slightest interest in a white man, unarmed, killed, shot in the back, by police in America.

If he’d been black his death might have merited some interest, considerable interest, and a whole narrative of police brutality and of a racist America spun and hung off of it.

The Independent reports…’The Hammond family’s lawyer has said it is because it was a “white on white” killing.  Eric Bland told the newspaper: “It’s sad but I think the reason is, unfortunately, the media and our government officials have treated the death of an unarmed white teenager differently than they would have if this were a death of an unarmed black teen. “The hypocrisy that has been shown toward this is really disconcerting.  The issue should never be ‘what is the colour of the victim?’  “The issue should be: ‘why was an unarmed teen gunned down in a situation where deadly force was not even justified?”’

Something for the BBC to consider before it once again exploits black deaths for its own, what is, racist, anti-white, agenda…..

“The issue should never be ‘what is the colour of the victim?   The issue should be: ‘why was an unarmed teen gunned down in a situation where deadly force was not even justified?”’

The BBC’s reporting on these issues is entirely worthless without the context of how many white people are also killed by police in America in similar circumstances.  Without that statistic it is impossible to judge whether there is any link between race and the police’s actions.  That doesn’t stop the BBC from making wild and dangerous accusations that ramp up the anger and ill-will not just towards the police but towards white people.  So much for the BBC ‘maintaining civil society and citizenship’. It seems more intent on inciting riots and race wars.

Perhaps once the BBC wakes up they will make a film about the young white man’s killing just as they are doing for the death of a black man, one who was armed and presumably willing to use the weapon against somebody…

Actors Wanted For Drama Doc For BBC

This is a really interesting 60 minute drama doc for BBC 1 about the incident that started the riots in 2011.

MARK DUGGAN (Male)

29-year-old Tottenham resident, was shot and killed by police in Tottenham, North London, England, on 4 August 2011. The Metropolitan Police stated that officers were attempting to arrest Duggan on suspicion of planning an attack, and that he was in possession of a handgun. Mark Duggan was not the notorious gunman the press have portrayed him to be; neither was he, as his family readily accept, “an angel”. In this film we will try to find the man behind the gangster stereotype and understand the challenges he faced as a young black man from Tottenham’s Broadwater Farm Estate, an area which has lived in a state of semi permanent siege since the murder of PC Keith Blakelock in 1985.

The BBC trying to paint Duggan as a victim of the police regardless of the verdict of the inquiry into his death andfailing that are clearly trying to persuade us that Duggan was a victim of society, not responsible for his own actions, forced into them by a racist and uncaring white majority society.  Such deaths never occur in Jamaica then?

Why is the BBC so obsessed with US police ‘brutality’, white police that is, when other police forces around the world are so much worse…this video claims that Jamaican police are the most violent in the world killing hundreds of people every year in a population that is one hundredth that of America?  Why hardly a glimmer of interest from the BBC?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncRGoqNUb1w

Most Black youths in America, and in the UK, that are killed, are killed by other Black youths.

The BBC doesn’t want to know about that, their sole concern is the black men killed by white police officers or the callous disregard of society for black lives…and the BBC isn’t too interested in the whys and wherefores, just in portraying the issues in a stark black and white way that strips the debate of any real meaning.  The police officer in the video is right…why is there a sudden lack of concern about those black men killed by other black men from the people who shout and scream about the deaths of people like Michael Brown in Ferguson?  Why do they suddenly go MIA?  Do they not think all black lives matter, or is it only those black lives that have been ‘snuffed out’ by white police officers that they think will get them on the news?

In 2013 of 2,491 black Americans murdered only 189 were killed by a white killer.  Hardly seems like there is a race war going on ouot there.

The BBC chose a US journalist, Jessica Lussenhop, to write a piece on black youths being shot by police knowing that she is highly partisan on this and that she has a history of critical reports on the police.

This is in essence her view of what happens to black people on the streets of America at the hands of the brutal police….

‘More than you ever wanted to know about the police attitude to feral Blacks and how they kill them. When federal agents are picking them off from helicopters, there’s obviously more at stake than just nuisance. Between the millions of dollars in damage and the idea of the Blackman as an ‘invasive species,’ I was shocked by the serious problem (and solution) posed by these animals, who are smart but ugly, therefore fair game for mass eradication in police eyes.  This is, to me, a classic, successful alt-weekly story — take something that’s under the snout of normal people, zoom in, examine. ‘Some species just don’t play nice with others.’

No, no of course she didn’t really write that about the police, it’s been slightly edited, but it is pretty representative of the undertone and narrative that the BBC  seeks to present but in a slightly more measured way about supposed police attitudes with a not so subtle subtext that suggests they really do think white police officers are trying to eradicate Black youths…because it’s in their white genes.

As an example of that Lussenhop brings us a long list of Black deaths that ‘prove’ either that the Police are racist killers or that they and the rest of society just don’t care that black lives are being lost….though Lussenhop is coy about the racial identity of the killers other than when it is a police officer.

Here’s her piece……..Ferguson: The other young black lives laid to rest in Michael Brown’s cemetery..

It is an enormously long denouncement of American police whilst ignoring the real cause of most deaths.  She starts off with a complete fabrication and continues in that vein.

Michael Brown, remember him….That extremely large and threatening Black thug who attacked a police officer by punching him in the face whilst he was in his police car, then tried to take his gun and who was subsequently shot as he refused to surrender and instead charged at the police officer?

This is Lussenhop’s description...’One year ago this August, former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot Brown, who was unarmed, six times.’  You get the idea.

She admits that there might be some doubt about the version that claims Brown was a completely innocent victim of police brutality but she dismisses this with the suggestion that the police officer, Darren Wilson, was subconsciously influenced in how he reacted to Brown by the racist culture of the Police…

Supporters of Wilson referenced the security footage of Brown pilfering some cigarillos at a convenience store and manhandling the clerk just prior to the incident. Opponents pointed out shoplifting is not an offence worthy of execution.  [er what?  Why include that?  He wasn’t ‘executed’ and he wasn’t shot for shoplifting but for asaaulting and further threratening to assault a police officer]

After two separate inquiries, the officer who shot Brown was found to be acting within the law. A St Louis grand jury declined to bring charges and a US justice department investigation concluded “Darren Wilson’s actions do not constitute prosecutable violations”. They cited “no credible evidence” that Brown had his hands up, and in fact found evidence of a struggle between the two.

But another justice department report found that Wilson was working within a system plagued by inequity and unfair practices. The citizens of Ferguson, where the average per capita income is $21,000 (£13,500), were routinely and repeatedly stopped and fined for minor transgressions that filled the city coffers – and though African Americans made up 67% of the population, they constituted 93% of the traffic stops…. It painted a portrait of a city populace straining under the weight of racial bias and classism.’

She goes on to describe another young Black life lost...’Directly across from Brown’s grave is another that, according to the small stone marker, belongs to Jarris Brown. Michael and Jarris are not related. However, some quick arithmetic reveals that Jarris, like Michael, also died young, at just 16 years old. ‘

But hang on…Jarris Brown was shot by his own friend as Lussenhop admits…and many more of the deaths she is trying to exploit in an attempt to conjure up a picture of a community under some sort of siege are in fact from car accidents, suicide or ill health…she tells us the majority are shot but not who shot them…other Black youths shot them that’s who.

We get the sad statistics of Black victims…but no statistics for who shot them….

As homicide rates rise around the country, the vast majority of the victims are young black men. Blacks in St Louis are 12 times more likely to be murdered than whites. So far in 2015, there have been 116 homicides, which is at least 50% higher than it was at the same time of year in 2014.

The number of victims jumped from 120 murders in 2013 to 159 in 2014. While that may be new for the city, what has been true for years is that the state of Missouri has the worst rate of black homicide victimisation in the country – twice the national rate for black victims and seven times the overall national rate.

‘The state of Missouri has the worst rate of black homicide victimisation ‘…. What the hell does she mean by that highly misleading phrase…..‘victimisation’…by who?  Who is doing the shooting, that ‘victimising’? 

Nor do we get the statistics for white victims…either shot by police or killed by black youths.

We hear that black people are more likley to be poorer but then gives us a long story about ‘OJ’ who actually comes from a very respectable family but who turns out to have been a drug dealer with a very nice car…

OJ is shot by ‘three masked men charging up the driveway towards her [OJ’s mother]. When they demanded to know where OJ was, Jennifer feigned ignorance. But his distinctive car gave him away.

“Where is the money?” she remembers them screaming as they pushed her towards the basement door. When they threatened to kill her, OJ opened the door to his room and the basement exploded in gunfire.’

Why is this story relevant?  Lussenhop is claiming the Police don’t bother with black deaths and don’t try to find the killers and yet they spent years trying to find ‘OJ’s’ killers as she admits…‘St Louis County Police investigated OJ’s murder, but after several years and several pushes in the local media for information with thousands of dollars in reward money available, no one has ever been caught. A letter from a tipster in jail led to nothing. OJ’s case eventually got reassigned to a different detective and Jennifer stopped calling to check on the progress.’

So a young black man, probably owing money to a drug gang, shot by that drug gang, and the police spent years trying to solve the case. and she admits that ‘the police have cleared at least three times as many cases with black victims as with white.’  So what exactly is Lussenhop’s point?

She quotes this…“This is systemic. This idea that black people are ‘less’ – that it suffuses everything in our culture in America,” says Jesamyn Ward’.  Guess that’s how they got a black president.

We get to the meat of the matter at the end when you realise the police can’t win…“When people were saying, ‘black lives matter’, one of the things that made that appealing is the fact it was ambiguous. It could be related to police brutality, but it could also relate to the callous indifference with which we regard the abysmal homicide numbers,” says the New Yorker’s Cobb.

Either the police are ‘brutal’ or they are indifferent.  No other choices available.  Guilty of something. Guilty by virtue of being white.

Oh but hang on….Lussenhop slips this in as well….”The narrative in which someone’s morality and stereotypical ideas around morality can be deployed to invalidate their humanity or right to equal treatment – we’re very familiar with that,” says Jelani Cobb, a staff writer for the New Yorker who has written extensively about these issues. “Don’t be surprised if black people, too, don’t think those dudes’ lives matter who died in these types of ways.”

So do black lives, the lives of black criminals, not matter to black people?  Seems maybe not so much.  So a criminal gets killed and nobody, black or white, cares too much…they probably think he deserved it.  And yet that’s not an attitude that gets reported on the BBC and in this case it goes against the stream of Lussenhop’s whole narrative…..and yet a whole campaign, a barrage of accusatory rhetoric, is aimed at white people because of that narrative, one that the BBC keeps on playing up, a narrative that is ultimately hugely dangerous in the way it whips up racial tensions using exaggerated and false claims to incite black anger at white people.

The BBC plays with fire.

Relax.

How times change…or not.

Dennis Potter laid into the BBC in 1993 in a vitriolic and bile filled rant against the predations of John Birt whilst also, naturally, raging against Thatcher and Murdoch.

What’s interesting is the BBC’s defence of itself when it was under review as it is today…….

“Broadcasting is at the heart of British Society. The structure and the competition of the broadcasting industry, the purpose and motivation of broadcasters and the programmes and services they offer are vital factors in reflecting and shaping that society.”

Pretty much the Hall line today.

Potter launches into a tirade against ‘management’ and commercialisation as he saw it that was tearing the heart out of the BBC…..curious that the BBC seems to have not only survived but thrived since those supposed threats to its existence were highlighted…..could it be that the BBC once again comes out of any review with a renewed vigour, sense of purpose, a flourishing success despite all the doom-laden predictions?  Note Potter suggests a smaller, more nimble BBC, maybe other broadcasters also taking on the remit of ‘Public Service Broadcasting’.  No doubt he would be horrified to find he was thinking on the same lines that the current review is at least contemplating.

Here’s some choice cuts from Potter’s rage against the machine…..

Our television has been ripped apart and falteringly re-assembled by politicians who believe that value is a monetary term only, and that a cost-accountant is thereby the most suitable adjudicator of what we can and cannot see on our screens. And these accountants or their near clones are employed by new kinds of Media Owners who try to gobble up everything in their path.

The cry of Yuppie to Yuppie sounded in the land, as chilling as any call from the carnivores in swamp or forest. And the deep hatred of any other claim, any other way of seeing, of anything other than the forces of law and order in the public domain, was always going to be arrowed with poison-dipped barb at the slow, decent, stumbling and puzzled giant run from Broadcasting House.

We must protect ourselves and our democracy, first by properly exercising the cross-ownership provisions currently in place, and then by erecting further checks and balances against dangerous concentrations of the media power which plays such a large part in our lives. No individual, group or company should be allowed to own more than one daily, one evening and one weekly newspaper. No newspaper should be allowed to own a television station, and vice-versa. A simple act of public hygiene, tempering abuse, widening choice, and maybe even returning broadcasting to its makers.

As a writer who needs to clutch his pen as though it were a lifebelt, I have to admit that I have nevertheless improved many a shining hour with a probably untransmittable little playlet about one of the more intriguing encounters of our time. I was not there when Fortnum met Mason, Laurel met Hardy, or Murdoch met Mephistopheles but I would have given my old Thesaurus or my new sequence of Readers Digest Prize Draw Numbers to have been a hornet on the wall at that surely entrancing fascination and maybe even comical occasion when dear old Marmaduke first met dear young John and each of them sort of half-discussed what was sort of half-wrong with the greatest broadcasting organisation the world has ever seen.

Where, I wonder, did they meet? Who was the first to smile – lethally? Who said, um, “structural walk-through” as he ordered the mineral water? And did the waiter say “Pardon?” Was the table well laden and did it groan when the un-advertised post of the twelfth and not thirteenth Director Generalship was finally settled?

I fear the time is near when we must not save the BBC from itself, but public service broadcasting from the BBC. The old Titan should spawn smaller and more nimble offspring if its present controllers cannot be removed. Why not think about it anyway?

Why not separate Radio from Television? Why not let BBC2 be a separate public service broadcaster? Let us begin to consider afresh how the thousands of millions of pounds of licence money could be apportioned between two, three or four successors to the currently misled Corporation. One of the successors could certainly be a publishing or commissioning authority on the model of Channel 4.

Indeed, Channel 4, if freed from its advertisements, could continue to evolve out of its original, ever precious remit into a passably good model of the kinds of television some of us seek. Michael Grade is becoming, by default, the new Director General, and the ironies if not the comedy of such an unexpected grace remind me that it is time to wind down before I exhaust myself with my own restraint.

The dynamic duo are back, the climate change tag team of Richard Black and Roger Harrabin return for, hopefully, one performance only.

Black is harrumphing loudly, in the Guardian, about Quentin Lett’s asking ‘What is the Point of the Met. Office?’

This is heresy and a damnable breach of BBC protocol. Damnit!

Harrabin joins in and expresses his displeasure with a sneering tweet…

• roger harrabin ‏@RHarrabin Aug 5

  #Climate sceptics have demanded “their” programme. They just got it. Radio 4. 09.00. @QuentinLetts_ on @metoffice. @ECIU_UK @CarbonBrief

Harrabin must have a short memory having himself asked a similar question….

The trouble is that we simply don’t know how much to trust the Met Office.

How often does it get the weather right and wrong. And we don’t know how it compares with other, independent forecasters.

Can we rely on them if we are planning a garden party at the weekend? Or want to know if we should take a brolly with us tomorrow? Or planning a holiday next week?

In a few year’s time hopefully we’ll all have a better idea of whom to trust. By then the Met Office might have recovered enough confidence to share with us its winter prediction of whether to buy a plane ticket or a toboggan.

Hope the tag team doesn’t fall out over that one.  Harrabin is not shy when it comes to a punch up with those who disagree with him such as Delingpole or was it Booker? ….

“I’m not sure whether I should shake your hand. I want to punch you.” He sounded jolly cross indeed – and ranted that I was utterly irresponsible and had disseminated lots of lies – though he later apologized to me saying he was jet-lagged and had confused me with Christopher Booker. Hmm.

Black tries to dismiss the claims of those on the programme as rubbish…

Mr Stringer is allowed to claim without challenge that there is “no scientific evidence” linking the 2013/4 winter floods, to climate change, which is untrue; it’s not a simple link, but it does exist. [Possibly only in his own little head]

Unfortunately it’s Black who is being ‘untrue’ as even the Met. Office [ah, I’ve found a use for it…rubbishing old Blackie] says there was no link between the floods and climate change…

Prime Minister climate change opinion not backed up by science, says Met Office
Nicola Maxey from the Met Office said the Prime Minister failed to draw the crucial distinction between weather and climate change.
“What happened at the end of December and at the beginning of January is weather,” she said.
“Climate change happens on a global scale, and weather happens at a local scale. Climate scientists have been saying that for quite a while.
“It’s impossible to say that these storms are more intense because of climate change.”
She added: “In real terms we had a low depression over the Atlantic which deepened, which caused the swell, and that combined with the spring tide caused the coastal waves.”

or….em…

Paul Davis, chief meteorologist for the Met Office said that very strong winds much of the UK experienced which was caused by jet stream.
“December has been the windiest spell since 1969, but unprecedented perhaps not. It probably feels unusual because the last few winters have been fairly settled and cold and we haven’t had the story conditions that just experienced.”

or…em….

Direct from the Met. Office:   There’s currently no evidence to suggest that the UK is increasing in storminess

The Guardian keeps pumping out the pro-BBC stuff.  Here’s BBC executive Jane Tranter telling us how fabulous the BBC is…and yet not only is she jumping ship for the commercial world she also puts a whacking great hole in the BBC’s main line of defence…that it is the central prop of the creative industries in the UK which would whither and die without BBC support.

The Guardian says…

As Jane Tranter prepares to head her own UK production company, she talks about Doctor Who, her fears for the BBC – and why Wales is like New York.

It quotes Tranter saying this in response to the government’s review and the suggestion that the BBC should be smaller and do less…..

‘The BBC should mean something to all people, it should be the people’s broadcaster. To think the BBC should be made for a cultural elite with a more narrowcast is patronising.’

But the BBC is made for a cultural elite, made by them, for them.  They have zero interest in your views on immigration, Europe, Islam or austerity.

Tranter goes on….

“One thing that really strikes me is how much time politicians have got to tell the BBC what programmes they should be making. You wouldn’t get Barack Obama doing that over here.”

Apart from the obligatory mention of the sainted Obama does she say anything of note here?  Is she right? Should politicians keep out of BBC business?  If not politicians who?  The BBC itself?  Why should that small coterie of culturally elite, metropolitan media types, have the monopoly on what the BBC produces and the values and views it propagates?

The BBC has a very self-serving view of its place and role in society.  In its own eyes it is a unique stand alone organisation beholden to no-one.  An organisation that has a very religious view of itself in that it is untouchable, beyond criticism and reproach and yet has the right to pass moral judgement on society and dictate the shape and behaviour of that society. Much like Jesus it believes itself to be the product of a virgin birth unsullied by association with mankind, sent to save us from ourselves…and claims it is being sacrificed, crucified, because of its beliefs and values.

Unfortunately far from springing from nowhere in an immaculate conception the BBC’s first incarnation was as a commercial enterprise before being nationalised by those dreadful politicians…it is the love child of politicians and commercial companies, and even those companies had their broadcasts shaped by government.  When the BBC was nationalised as a public service, which the BBC seems to forget, it was still shaped by the government and owes its initial success to toeing the government line on the General Strike.

The BBC is a creation of the politicians in its present form….it owes pretty much everything to its unique status gifted to it by those politicians who set out its mission in the Charter.

To claim that politicians should have no role in deciding the size, shape and role of the BBC is absurd….it is their creature to start with…..and it is curious that when the likes of Harriet Harman, or Tories like Lords Fowler and Patten, speak up for the BBC then the BBC is happy to be the subject of their benevolent scrutiny and quote their warm words extensively.

The BBC is in any case far from independent of politics.  Its charter obliges it to maintain civil society and citizenship….a very political charge on it.  That’s an obligation given to it by parliament…politicians.  They therefore have an interest in the BBC to ensure that it is carrying out its duty…one they generally neglect which is why this site exists.

The BBC, a public service, should not be left to decide what a ‘civil society’ or ‘citizenship’ looks like.  That is surely for a democratic Parliament to decide not a small group of culturally, socially and financially elite people who happen to have got jobs at the BBC and then recruited like-minded people to work with them….the result of which we see today as they try to impose their very particular notion of what society should look like…and if you disagree they use all the resources of the BBC to either lock you out of the debate or to attack and destroy you as with Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson.

Politicians have an important role in deciding what such a society should look like and to require the BBC to work towards promoting and ‘maintaining’ that vision.  The BBC’s independence comes in only in its decisions on how to carry out that obligation, but certainly not in deciding what that obligation should be.

That is of course if you believe the BBC should have such a role in engineering what a society should look like…which I doubt it should…being too open to manipulation by its own employees….

Tranter goes on to say [Funny how she allows herself to have ‘very strong views’ about the BBC’s shape]….

“I have got very strong views about BBC Studios and they may not be the BBC’s,” says Tranter. “What they need to look at is why was it once the most exciting place in the industry to work in and why is it not now.

“I always felt the BBC was a really cool place to work, where you could make the kind of programmes you couldn’t necessarily get your hands on anywhere else. For me it was just really exciting and energising and challenging and they need to put that feeling back.”

That’s interesting isn’t it?  The BBC insists that it is the lynchpin that the whole creative industry swings around and that the British economy would lose out if the BBC were somehow ‘diminished’ and yet here we have a BBC executive telling us the BBC maybe past it having lost its energy, its excitement and its challenge.

She tells us that she believes her new commercial enterprise will itself be a ‘lynchpin’ for the creative industries bringing huge benefits to the economy……

It is forecast the new company could bring in as much as £100m to the Welsh economy over the next 10 years.

Tranter said Wales could be a “world leader” within the decade.

“TV has changed beyond all recognition in the past decade. Huge international productions made on movie scale budgets have put British TV at the forefront of this revolution,” she said. “Bad Wolf has the potential to be a game changer for the creative economy in Wales.”

So now we know, the commercial sector is not only growing but bursting out and generating other businesses and creative opportunities…..as the Times tells us when it reported on the ‘Top Gear’ Amazon deal….with a sub-story headlined “Big money digital media are biggest threat to the BBC”.

The Guardian has noticed the huge success and massive investment that commercial media is putting into production…..

Such changes are happening fast. BT, with turnover of £18bn plus, is buying giant packages of TV sport. Sky, with revenues of just over £11bn, is fighting as seldom before. Netflix has billions to spend. American giants are expanding everywhere: Liberty on the point of buying another chunk of ITV, NBCUniversal to invest $250m in Buzzfeed. The temptation at takeover time – when, say, Nikkei pays £844m for the FT – is to see these deals in isolation. In fact, the information and entertainment world is solidifying.

However they still want to paint a picture of a world blighted  by a ‘diminished’ BBC….

“Small” doesn’t mean beautiful; it may mean peripheral. Some critics know this well. They want a nobbled BBC. Some politicians are less savvy. They don’t understand the blight that threatens Britain’s creative sector. There’s a warning for the BBC here. Why concentrate on digital news at the expense of drama and entertainment? The royal charter writers must see a world queuing up to buy BBC content. Why turn it away, failing to understand what may be lost?”

The BBC’s Steve Hewlett, masquerading as an impartial observer, also notes the success of the commercial sector but tries to use it to deny the claim that the BBC’s licence to print money is a huge advantage over the private companies….

BBC’s rivals aren’t feeling the pinch as much as green paper suggests

What about its [The BBC’s] impact in the heartland arena of TV – where the big money is spent?

Conveniently, last week offered a chance to look at exactly how the BBC’s commercial rivals are spending that money, and how well they are doing at generating a return. And what a week they had – profits galore! Commercial television is on quite a roll.

Taken together the numbers make the idea mooted in the green paper – that the BBC is “crowding out” or in any way impeding its commercial rivals, in TV at least – seems almost absurd.

Indeed if there’s any cause for concern it might be something nearer the opposite: in other words that, after round after round of cutbacks (and in fairness an ongoing struggle too with its own inefficiency), the BBC could be in danger of being left behind.

 

So once again we hear of hugely successful commercial media companies that are ‘splurging’ money on investments in the industry and yet we keep hearing that without the BBC the industry might wither and die, or at least be reduced to a shadow of its former self.

Doesn’t seem like that is going to happen.  The majority of hugely popular and successful TV is produced by commercial companies, even the BBC’s productions are more often than not done as joint productions with outside companies or totally produced by outsiders and bought in….The Voice is one example, produced by a Dutch company…now owned by ITV ironically.

The BBC’s own production facilities have been put on a commercial basis so it’s hardly a relevant argument anymore that the BBC is the backbone of the creative industries when clearly there is massive money flowing in from the commercial companies.

That’s not to say that the BBC shouldn’t do pretty much what it does now, less the bias, but claims of being the creative industries’ bankroller and mentor are shown to be an argument that doesn’t have much weight or credibility as a reason to keep the BBC as it is.  The BBC is that comfortable fit, one that most people grow up with and enjoy its familiarity…and as Stalin said ‘Quantity has a quality all of its own’…the BBC is everywhere, nationwide, and provides a familiar backrop to whatever you are doing, wherever you are.  Shame to destroy that in the quest for that elusive target driven efficiency that will never result in quality….and its not the amount of money we pay the BBC that is the problem, it is the way it is extorted from us under great duress.  Subscription [not per programme] or a charge on income tax [not council tax] are the only two sensible funding options.  It costs over £100 million to collect the licence fee at present…what a waste of that money.

As the Telegraph says the licence fee has been made redundant…

The news that Amazon, which recently entered the content market with Prime Instant Video, has signed up Jeremy Clarkson and his crew is another seminal moment in the demise of the old TV structures. The programme will air in 2016 and take on the BBC’s new Top Gear show presented by Chris Evans. Next year’s launch could be remembered as the tipping point – the moment a new generation of content producers finally dethroned the old TV incumbents, and the BBC in particular.

Even the BBC admitted that when discussing the Amazon deal on the radio last week…and reminding us that there are no adverts on Amazon.

And the Telegraph backs up the argument that the BBC isn’t needed as the industry prop…..

All of this is a major blow for the BBC’s model and rationale. Supporters of the current taxpayer-financed set-up argue that without public service broadcasting we would see a race to the bottom – but that is not what the investments that are increasingly being made by US entrants into the market would suggest.

Thanks to new technology, it is now possible to produce cutting-edge content that is both extremely upmarket and commercially viable. It is also possible to produce water cooler, mainstream TV that was once the preserve of terrestrial players.

The BBC’s licence fee needs to go, for two related reasons. It is unfair and a horrendous distortion of the market, allowing vast amounts of taxpayer-financed content to be dumped for free on its website. Streaming services, national and regional newspaper websites and commercial TV all suffer.

The BBC classes the BJP as a right wing party and therefore it is open season on anything and everything they do.  Whilst Obama continues on his saintly progress reverentially recorded for posterity by BBC scribes, the BJP’s Narendra Modi is the subject of extremely aggressive and negative attacks that seem intended purely to mock and deride him and his party and to paint them in the worst possible light.

The BBC has already this week tried to claim that Modi is presiding over a vicious sectarian nationalist party that is set to wipe out all other religions, today it publishes what is nothing less than a extreme, negative, hatchet job on the BJP’s record in government after one year asking ‘Has India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi lost the plot?’

It paints a picture of a government out of control which is inept and incompetent.  Whilst the BBC presented a picture of Obama at the mercy of Republican diehards who blocked his enlightened, progressive legislation, Modi is a victim of his own fumbling, inept mismanagement of Parliament.

The BBC tells us that the Congress party is involved in a principled stand as it blocks legislation,  claiming that this is because they want certain allegedly corrupt BJP ministers removed from office.

Hoswever whilst they may want that the truth is that Congress are happy to use any excuse to block as much as they can and to disrupt the BJP’s policies.……‘The parliamentary stand-off in the monsoon session reached a new low on Monday with Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan suspending 25 Congress MPs for five days for “persistently, wilfully obstructing” the House.’

.and there is a reason they were kicked out of government and the BJP won a landslide….something the BBC seems to forget.

This BBC report almost gloats on the failure of Modi to push through some of his legislation…but isn’t that the point of a parliamentary democracy?…that legislation is put in front of Parliament for consideration and then voted on, or moderated as a response to public concern.  The BBC seems to prefer a dictatorship.

They quote a commentator saying Modi was guilty of “spineless populism” when he backed down on some policy…presumably they’d prefer he totally ignore the People’s voice?  In contrast how pleased was the BBC when our government backed down on the sale of forests after a ‘public outcry’, not ‘spineless populism’ but a correct response on a measure that as Miliband said ‘“Virtually every person in the country could see selling off our forests was a foolish and short-sighted policy”.  Imagine the outcry if Cameron had ignored them and sold off the forests.

The BBC gives a very simplistic view of tax reforms by Modi whilst others have a more rounded approach to reporting this…

 Mr Jaitley [BJP] published a Facebook post pointing out that Congress had been an initial advocate and consistent supporter of the GST.

He accused the party, which suffered its most humiliating defeat in last year’s national elections, of disrupting parliament for “political reasons”, or because they were “upset with the electorate for their 2014 verdict”.

“Should its [Congress’s] obstructionist tendencies inflict an economic injury on the country?” Mr Jaitley asked.

Why no mention of this though from the BBC?…

BJP government’s first year is one of the best years of Indian economic reform: US Expert

The first year of the new BJP government is one of the best years for India in terms of liberalisation and economic reforms, a top US expert has said.

“While we cannot claim this has been a perfect year in terms of liberalising the economy, it has been one of the best years on record. Certainly well ahead of the first year of either the Vajpayee or the Singh governments,” said Rick Rossow, senior fellow and Wadhwani Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies – a prominent think-tank

Rossow argued so far he believes the Modi government has done an excellent job of quickly opening new sectors to foreign investment and making other policy changes that will positively impact foreign investors.

Or why not report a different take on Modi’s ‘failures’?  That it is all a cunning ploy…he’s not really interested in these policies, they’re a side show as he plots to run India as a one party state and crush his opponents forever…

You know, it is wrong to say that Narendra Modi has done little in his year-plus as prime minister. This impression is common among those distracted by his casual and incoherent approach to economic reform, which was never his interest or his priority. Mr Modi is, in fact, settling in for the long haul. He is solidly and intelligently putting into place the structures that will change the nature of India’s liberal democracy forever, and make it something that he, his organisation, and many of his voters will be more comfortable with.

Which could just go to show that much of the criticism of Modi is from highly partisan sources…ones which the BBC is liberally quoting as reliable.

The BBC though has more dirt to dish as it tells us ‘That’s not all’…

This week’s hasty and inept decision to block access to internet porn and almost immediately lift the ban made the government the butt of social media jokes.

Sounds very simple doesn’t it?….the BJP wanted to block porn sites and then backed down completely.  Not true.

Acutely aware of the response in the mainstream media, the government too backtracked and said the ban applies only to websites projecting child porn.

So it was the likes of the Indian liberal press that forced a backtrack, a partial backtrack…it still intends to block child porn.  Curious that the BBC should gloat about a failure to control such porn due to media pressure..how ironic.   One of the problems is that the ISPs are complaining..

Internet service providers (ISPs) have refused to follow the government’s directive to allow adult websites that do not carry child pornography, saying the order is “vague and un-implementable.”

“ISPs have no way or mechanism to filter out child pornography from URLs, and the further unlimited sub-links,” Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) said.

Nothing new in governments finding such bans are more difficult than they hoped.

And that the sweeping measure caught up many innocent sites…

In its hurry to implement the order, the telecom department had even blocked sites hosting jokes, memes and other humorous content. A day later, it realized the mistake and decided to lift the ban on such websites.

The Guardian goes for outright lies as it claims the Indian Supreme Court passed a judgement that a ban on porn site was illegal and unwanted…..

The BJP’s ban on ‘porn’ sites mocks India’s democratic pretensions

But like all the BJP’s bans, what may initially seem amusing hides a darker truth. Vaswani first took his petition to the supreme court. Last month the court rejected his petition, and refused to block access to online porn. The chief justice of India, HL Dattu, called a ban on porn a “violation of Article 21” on the right to personal liberty. He said adults had a right to watch porn “within the four walls” of their home.

Vaswani then approached Pinky Anand, a lawyer who was appointed additional solicitor general by the Modi government, and the ban quickly came into force. In other words, the Indian government went against an institution of the state to side with a man whose personal beliefs happen to match theirs.

The BJP’s violation of the supreme court decision is the loudest warning yet that the Indian government is dismissive of due process. Surely leaders who think they are above the highest court in the land must also think they are above the laws of the land?

However that is complete rubbish, a complete lie in fact…even the BBC itself earlier reported the opposite….

In July, the Supreme Court expressed its unhappiness over the government’s inability to block sites, especially those featuring child pornography.

Straight from India itself….

Declining a plea to pass an interim order to block porn websites in India, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said it cannot stop an adult from exercising his fundamental right to personal liberty to watch porn within the privacy of his room.

“Such interim orders cannot be passed by this court. Somebody may come to the court and say look I am above 18 and how can you stop me from watching it within the four walls of my room. It is a violation of Article 21 [right to personal liberty],” Chief Justice H.L. Dattu observed orally.

Though denying immediate relief, the Chief Justice’s Bench acknowledged the seriousness of the issue.

“The issue is definitely serious and some steps need to be taken. The Centre [The Government] is expected to take a stand…let us see what stand the Centre will take,” Chief Justice Dattu observed, directing the government to reply in four weeks.

In one of the previous hearings on the PIL in August 2014, the Supreme Court had termed Internet porn “hydra-headed,” while the Centre had acknowledged that websites were getting too unwieldy to handle and were affecting ordinary households.

The court stated that it didn’t have the power to ban the sites not that such sites shouldn’t be banned…indeed it was pressing the government to ban them…which it subsequently did due to that pressure…….as these headlines show….

India Cracks Down on Internet Porn After Supreme Court Decision

Supreme Court’s observations prompt Centre to block 857 porn sites

The BBC’s reporting of Modi and the BJP is clearly very one-sided and partisan with an extremely negative approach to whatever the BJP government does. It seems to have no such qualms about left-wing dictators though such as Castro or any other South American fellow traveller….Guantanamo Bay was for the BBC an illegal hellhole and yet a few miles down the road the Cubans had a prison packed with political prisoners…oddly not a peep from all those lefties and human rights lawyers that raised such a stink on behalf of Islamist terrorists.

Calais migrants: British anarchists infiltrate camps to provoke trouble, police warn

This is being encouraged not by human traffickers, who wish to remain discreet, but by extreme Left elements here to manipulate the migrants in the name of their ideal of imposing a country without borders or police.”

“Among these activists are quite a few Britons,” he added. “For now they have been allowed to act with total impunity. It’s time for a return to the rule of law: they need to be identified and arrested.

Identify and arrest?….Perhaps they should look no further than the BBC’s extremist open borders incitement to immigrants and while they’re at it why not check out the BBC’s coverage of the Middle East when its correspondents gloat about the ISIS onslaught that cuts across so many borders which the BBC thinks were the result of  Imperial arrogance and ignorance ‘carved out by the British and French’...when the truth is far, far more complex….perhaps those correspondents could also have their collars felt….as this fellow has had…

Anjem Choudary charged with supporting a terror organisation

Anjem Choudary, the radical cleric, has been charged with supporting the banned terror group, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

The 48-year-old, from Ilford, was charged along with Mohammed Rahman, 32 with inviting support for a proscribed terrorist organisation, namely Isil,

 

The BBC is a cheerleader for mass immigration and terrorism….and yet it thinks politicians shouldn’t interfere in its business.  If not politicians then it’ll have to be the police.

A job for one of us I think…

Do you want to be a part of the public debate about the BBC’s future at a critical moment in the Corporation’s history? A rare opportunity has come up to play a key role at the BBC Trust – the governing body of the BBC which represents the interests of licence fee payers.

The Trust is currently recruiting for a Head of Communications, on a fifteen month contract basis. You will help ensure both our work and ambitions for the BBC are clearly communicated across traditional and digital media, so that they are understood by the public, Government and the rest of the industry.

As the principal communications advisor to the Chairman and Trustees, you will oversee and manage proactive and reactive communications and will develop and protect the Trust’s corporate reputation and brand.

 

The BBC Trust’s new head of communications will also be capable of devising “a programme of proactive engagement encompassing the full communications mix”, someone who demonstrates “imagination, creativity and divergent thinking and encourages it in others”, and who “manages personal effectiveness by controlling emotions in the face of pressure, setbacks or when dealing with provocative situations” and who “Is able to present complex information and arguments in a coherent and accessible format to senior management.”  Well that would help as head of communications.

Just remember…‘The BBC exists to serve the public, and its mission is to inform, educate and entertain. The BBC Trust is the governing body of the BBC, and we make sure the BBC delivers that mission.’

Not so far.

No idea what the pay is, sure to be good though.

Alternatively you could go for…

Celebrity Manager, BBC Children in Need

BBC Children in Need’s vision is that every child in the UK has a safe, happy and secure childhood and the chance to reach their potential. The Charity funds 2,500 projects across the UK working with disadvantaged children and young people. We are looking for a Celebrity Manager to join our team who has excellent experience, knowledge and contacts within the entertainment industry. 

As Celebrity Manager you will manage our portfolio of high profile supporters to ensure that the Charity’s key objectives are met. Central to this will be your ability to utilise Talent in innovative and creative ways, to raise awareness of the Charity and the work that it does.

Strategically manage the Charity’s celebrity portfolio to ensure it is reflective of key audiences.

Or you could have a job with Aunty as Big Brother.…gathering data and information on individual audience members and use it to target them as part of the BBC’s ‘social campaigning’….

Social Campaign Executive (myBBC)

myBBC is a programme exploring the opportunities for the BBC to fulfil its mission better by knowing, at an individual level, who its audiences are.

As more consumption of BBC content takes place on connected platforms, we can inform, educate and entertain our audiences in new ways; unlike with traditional broadcasting, we are able to identify people individually, learn about them and deliver richer experiences and deeper engagement. To deliver this, the BBC must invest in three areas: Insight for creative people. Tools that allow creative, marketing and online teams to understand and learn from individual audience member’s behaviours. These additional insights, combined with a new culture of rapid experimentation and testing will lead to more rapid development of new content and product ideas Personalised online experiences. Capabilities that allow the BBC to deliver unique, personally relevant experiences to every user of its online services.

Tools that allow the BBC to deepen its relationship with its audience through direct communication and relationship marketing programmes. Deeper relationships will allow us to shape our content and creative ideas around our audiences and give us new, personal ways to introduce new content to people. The myBBC programme has been created to deliver this capability.

Oh and …‘There is a requirement, however, for all staff to work flexibly across all media and genres.’  which is why a BBC executive should know that ‘Photoshop skills desirable’ for the job.  Best know how to work the hoover as well in these straitened times.

The BBC’s Roger Harrabin, he who has been campaigning on behalf of the climate change lobby for 20 years, is always very vocal about the funding, or supposed funding, that those who are critical of the climate extremist lobby gets.  He of course fails to mention the enormous funding that those climate extremists themselves get…and let’s not forget the £15,000 Harrabin’s CMEP propaganda unit received from a climate change lobby group in order ‘to shut down’ journalism that didn’t toe the line….and what of the funding for Harrabin’s project that came from the Labour government...the same Labour government that was introducing draconian climate change legislation?

MEP Daniel Hannan has put together a video that shows just how much money the EU ploughs into various NGOs that strangely enough all support membership of the EU…one he misses off the list is the BBC itself which has received millions from the EU...a source of funding that the pro-EU BBC was very, very reluctant to admit.

Here’s the video (via Bishop Hill):

Bishop Hill also states this about the BBC’s coverage of the government’s decision to cut renewable’s funding:

Today’s top news: greens write a letter

Listening to the Today programme this morning (08:07:40) and you can hear Harrabin’s campaign for the renewable industry continue as he ‘reported’ on Obama’s climate change politicking but used it as a launch pad to attack the British government’s renewable’s policy…which ‘controversially’ imposed a tax on wind and solar power and Harrabin demanded to know why renewables were deemed unaffordable in the UK but not so in the US.  Here’s the answer.…

Officials admitted that so-called “green” energy schemes will require a staggering £9 billion a year in subsidies – paid for by customers – by 2020. This is £1.5 billion more than the maximum limit the coalition had originally planned.

This was nothing less than outright propaganda from Harrabin and had zero connection with the Obama policy announcement.

Remarkable that Harrabin seems to have not the slightest concern for the people who have to pay the energy bills, he is quite happy to see them gouged by the renewable industry for every penny if it means getting his pet project off the ground….how different when it comes to welfare spending cuts when ‘heat or eat’ is the loudest mantra mouthed by the BBC to villify the government….and now the government cuts fuel bills and the BBC is up in arms!

It was noticeable that when Ecotricity green tycoon Dale Vincent was in the news as his ex-wife tried to get some back dated ‘alimony’ she believed he owed her the BBC in its interviews with him never asked how it was that an ex-hippy running a green energy business could amass a personal fortune of over £100 million….and never of course raised any issues about morality and equality.

Curious that the BBC didn’t press him on that, after all it’s not shy about pressing other business leaders on their salaries…what is it about Vincent that makes him untouchable?

Could it be that if you are in the hallowed environs of the Green movement anything you do can be seen as a ‘necessary evil’ if it achieves the aims that the likes of Harrabin wish to achieve?

Who is paying for Vincent’s astonishingly large bank balance?  The poor old customer who has to find the money to pay the exorbitant bills with their added green taxes that make up the subsidies that go into the pockets of ‘green tycoons’ like Vincent.

But let’s not mention that…let’s attack the bankers and other ‘big business’ fatcats who deserve our approbrium.

Harrabin should be removed from his job.  He is clearly unift to be graced with the title of ‘journalist’ when his every word seems more intended to promote a cause….that’s not journalism, it’s propaganda.

Richard Black abruptly vanished from the BBC, was he pushed for his blatant pro-climate change ‘reporting’ or did he jump first?  The BBC should take a closer look at Harrabin’s clearly prejudiced and partial reporting and either rein him in or allow him to leave and go and work, officially, for Green Peace or whatever NGO thinks he would be an asset to their cause.

Not as if Harrabin isn’t open to suggestions on how his reporting could be changed for the better...here’s his response to a green blogger who wanted him to change his report…

Harrabin: “Have a look in 10 minutes and tell me you are happier. We have changed headline and more.”

The Now Show ploughs on in its pinko commie furrow, bringing us comedy through a hazy miasma of liberal good intentions supposedly the work of the comedy collective, the salt of the earth ploughmen, and wimmin, of comedy who till the fertile soil from which springs its virile and feculant offspring…the left-wing joke.

Apparently right-wing jokes just can’t exist in the rarefied atmosphere of the BBC….the hardy right-winger, having to be fed on a diet of truth and commonsense, just cannot survive on the naivety, high hopes, self-delusion and large quantities of pious, sanctimonious, smug, self-regarding morality/bullshit that the left-wing joke grows so vigourously in.

It’s true…the Now Show has given up pretending and admitted it is unremittingly and unapologetically left-wing (16 mins 50 secs).  There are no right-wing jokes, it’s impossble to come up with any.  They’ve strained their little minds and, no, no, the muse just doesn’t do jokes about the blessed Obama, the welfare state, immigration or the NHS…..evil bankers, Tescos and the Daily Mail not a problem.

The problem is compassion and humanity…the Right just doesn’t possess such virtues, allegedly, the Left of course claims to have them in spades….and they are vital ingredients in the nurturing of fine, organic, wholesome, worthy comedy.  It is, we are told, just easier to express left-wing beliefs in the medium of comedy…presumably because they are so comic.

The end of the skit by Nish Kumar was a big hurrah for Jezza Corbyn along with the obligatory rant about capitalism, foodbanks and real banks.  No wonder even Nish’s mum thinks he’s a boring little twat, derivative, unoriginal and cliched.  I couldn’t possibly comment.

I can see why Kumar couldn’t find any material…the panic and horror as the realisation sets in at Labour HQ at the rise and rise of Corbyn after being promoted by Labour’s ‘morons’ has not the slightest comedy value, the likelihood of us heading back to the 70’s with the streets full of mountains of rubbish and dead bodies, with factories more often shut down by strike action than not, with 3 day weeks as the lights go out….no, nothing to make any satirical comments on there.

No comedy in the fact that people are fighting to get into capitalist Europe whilst they were fighting to get out of the left-wing paradise of the socialist Soviet Union?

No comedy in Labour’s attack on the government’s handling of immigration when it was Labour that opened the floodgates after lying through its teeth that only 13,000 immigrants would trickle across the border and millions turned up?  No satire when Labour attack Cameron for using the word ‘swarm’ instead of having a coherent immigration policy of their own…no satire in the infamous lack of trust in politicians when the public sees such opportunistic gameplaying on a serious subject?

No comedy in Labour’s once Shadow-Chancellor now saying the Labour election economic policy was rubbish and unworkable? No comedy in just about every Labour politician denouncing Miliband and his manifesto after having backed it every inch of the way before?

No comedy in the fact that left-wing compassion for the poorest and under-privileged is a fallacy, a useful political illusion cynically employed to gull the most vulnerable in society when in fact all they are is cannon-fodder for the socialist elite, the Poor being a socialist petting zoo that makes the champagne socialists feel good about themselves and provides a jusitification for their own wealth and privilege…..look at what we do for you with all our wealth!….an ironic comedy construct in its own right…a socialist elite.

No comedy in the fact that it is the hated Right that in fact provides for the poorest by generating the jobs and wealth that gives them self-respect, money in their pockets and opportunity to fulfill their aspirations whilst the Left, that cares so much about the poor, prefers to keep them on a tight welfare leash, clients of the welfare state, ever dependent, grateful and grovelling for the handouts so generously provided by their socialist masters?

Here’s what that other favourite of the BBC, Stewart Lee, thinks about Right-wing comedy.…they shouldn’t do it…the Right has already won the world and comedy is for the under-privileged to use as a weapon against the powerful…

The African-American stand-up Chris Rock maintained that stand-up comedy should always be punching upwards. It’s a heroic little struggle. You can’t be a right-wing clown without some character caveat, some vulnerability, some obvious flaw. You’re on the right. You’ve already won. You have no tragedy. You’re punching down. You can be a right-wing comedy columnist, away from the public eye, a disembodied, authoritarian presence that doesn’t need to show doubt. Who could be on a stage, crowing about their victory and ridiculing those less fortunate than them without any sense of irony, shame or self-knowledge? That’s not a stand-up comedian. That’s just a cunt.

That’s the problem…people like Lee just see comedy as another tool in the Gramscian tool box to undermine and smash society and rebuild it into the Marxist utopia that they know can be achieved if only they can just get it right, this time.  Maybe only a few million dead this time, higher walls, quicker firing machine guns, bigger gulags and a programme of road building in Siberia ought to do the trick.

The Socialist Paradise awaits.  It’s a funny old world.