Author Archives: Alan

 

The National Union of Miner’s own website says:
Throughout the 1960s, with a Labour Government in office from 1964, the pit closure programme accelerated; it decimated the industry. During this period, nearly 300 more pits were closed, and the total workforce slumped from over 750,000 in the late 1950s down to 320,000 by 1968. In many parts of Britain, miners now became known as industrial gypsies as pit closures forced them to move from coalfield to coalfield in search of secure jobs.

They were victims of madhouse economics.

The BBC has been putting its weight behind Labour’s campaign to initiate an inquiry into the events at Orgreave in 1984…..I did hear a BBC reporter claiming that the whole thing, that campaign, was actually started by the BBC itself.  That whole thing of course is highly political with Labour’s real target being Maggie Thatcher in an attempt to keep up the myth that Thatcher destroyed the mines….a myth that is easily discredited should anyone be interested in the truth….not the BBC unfortunately.

On Friday Humphrys did a report on Orgreave (08:50) and the demand for an inquiry.  One guest was Alan Billings…introduced merely as a Police and Crime Commissioner.  Billings was shocked that the IPCC had decided not to investigate what happened in 1984 and demanded an inquiry.

What Humphrys failed to inform us was that Billings is a Labour Party man and was pushing a party line on this….something you might think was of significance in the debate.

Even in the web report the BBC fails to mention his true colours…

South Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Alan Billings described the decision as a missed opportunity that did “disservice” to former miners, police and the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).

The BBC’s whole approach to Orgreave is one that leans towards sympathy for the miners and a rewriting of history to favour their narrative of ‘police brutality’.

Here the BBC puts the boot into the police…..

‘There was violence from both sides.

The debate goes on about who acted first, but police horses were sent to charge the crowd up the field and officers followed to make arrests. Many miners and police officers were injured.

The pictures of miners and police officers fighting shocked TV viewers.

The number of officers was unprecedented. The use of dogs, horses and riot gear in an industrial dispute was almost unheard of. Some of the tactics were learned from the police in Northern Ireland and Hong Kong who had experience dealing with violent disorder.

During the subsequent court case a police manual was uncovered which set out the latest plans to deal with pickets and protests.

… the moment the police strategy switched from defensive – protecting collieries, coking plants and working miners – to offensive, actively breaking up crowds and making large numbers of arrests. In many mining communities faith in the police was destroyed, a legacy that lasts to this day. 

The thrust of that is to paint the police as the real instigators of the violence….note the lack of a similarly extensive list of what the miners did that may have caused the police reaction….we are led to believe that the police actions were unprovoked and brutal.

The BBC goes on…

The miners felt they had been set up.

They believed the intention that day was to beat them and make arrests, a show of force that would convince them they were not going to win.

That left a bitter legacy of hatred and distrust of the police in many mining communities.

The police said they were just doing their job in the face of violence from striking miners. The strike lasted until March 1985.

You see quite clearly where the BBC’s sympathies lie.

Such sympathies are on display again in this travesty of a ‘news report’…

There was violence on both sides, but when police horses charged the crowd the violence escalated and many officers and miners were injured.

Once again that message that it was the police who are to really blame.

There’s more…

Dave Smith, a former miner and former president of Dinnington NUM was at Orgreave on 18 June 1984.

He said it was a hot day and they had been playing football, but the police arrived and all “hell let loose.”

“Horses came out, short shields came out; we tried to defend ourselves as best we could.

“Most of us were running like hell. We finished up down embankments, on to railway lines with dogs chasing us.

“People were seriously injured and I mean seriously injured, and left by the police.

“That’s not helping, that’s attacking, and we were attacked.”

Innocents out playing soccer.  Yeah, right.  Not a bunch of thugs trying to intimidate and bully other workers who needed police protection just to go to work and whose homes were often attacked by those peaceable soccer loving fellas.

Why not look back at the news reports from the time to see that the miners were the ones instigating the violence….throwing rocks at police and beating up working miners….600 police injured and 200 miners since the strike began at one point….which tells a tale that the BBC isn’t telling…..

Let’s have some salient facts…

The NUM was funded by their ‘Soviet comrades’.

The strike was illegal and the miners had voted not to strike…Scargill ignored the ballot and forced miners out on strike….either in ‘solidarity’ or because they knew what happened to ‘scabs’.

Labour closed more pits than the Tories and the redundancy terms on offer to the miners were far higher than to any other industry.

And how about the words of an ex-miner, and then a Tory minister, Patrick McLoughlin, commenting on the myths being propagated and buttressed by the likes of the BBC.…and yet the BBC ignored him.

‘“As a cabinet minister now and a miner in the 1980s, I have been listening to the debate about Baroness Thatcher with particular interest.

The reality is that the violence was always initiated by the miners and that Scargill used them as cannon fodder for his own political games not caring one jot about them, their jobs and their families.

Seems that the BBC has conveniently forgotten all that as it pillories the police and romanticises and glorifies the miners.

‘Almost one in three of England’s primary school children is from an ethnic minority – the highest level yet.  One pupil in five speaks English as a second language.’

‘The UK’s population has increased by around 5 million since 2001.’

There is an enormous and growing pressure on schools as they struggle to cope with the influx of new pupils who turn up on their doorsteps expecting a free British education.

That ‘free’ British education of course costs money…a lot of money….the government having to pump in at least £12 billion extra to try and cope….the Unions saying that amount will only cover 40-60% of the funding actually needed.

Immigrants of course, the BBC tells us, are highly beneficial for the economy, EU immigrants, the BBC insists, paying more in tax then they take out of the system….never mind that the majority of jobs they take are low pay ones that in no way pay for child care, housing and education and health.

On Saturday Mishal Husain did a piece on the crisis in schools (08:40)…remarkably she managed to do the whole report without once mentioning immigration herself despite the two guests both saying that immigration was the main cause of the crisis.

How is it possible to completely avoid the cause of overcrowding in schools, the ‘blackhole’, the’ breaking point’, when talking about this subject, especially as the BBC were so keen to pillory the Tories for having failed to reach their target in limiting immigration in the run up to the election?

Husain was though, eager to suggest that the government was failing in its approach telling us that ‘the situation is far from ideal……it doesn’t sound as if it is enough [funding]….it’s not the way you’d want the education system to work’.

Husain, an immigrant herself, and one having history on this subject, does the usual BBC thing and dodges the real story, the uncomfortable truth that immigration is causing enormous problems throughout the UK.  The BBC is only interested in telling us the ‘good news’, even if it has to make that up (ie how much tax they pay), the BBC is extremely reluctant to highlight the negative sides to mass immigration.  The BBC is once again more concerned with attempting to ‘social engineer’ our perceptions and subsequent actions than actually delivering the News.

You may have heard that Mo Farah’s coach and training mate were outed by the BBC in an alleged ‘doping scandal’...

‘One of the world’s best known athletics coaches is at the centre of doping allegations, according to a BBC investigation.

Alberto Salazar has been accused of violating anti-doping rules, including claims he was involved in doping US record holder Galen Rupp, in 2002.

Rupp and GB Olympic gold medallist Mo Farah are part of Salazar’s US stable, the Nike Oregon Project.

However we can be reassured that despite his coach and stable mate being accused no suspicion falls on Mo……as the BBC repeatedly, endlessly, tells us…..

There is no suggestion Farah has broken any rules.

There is no suggestion that Farah himself has been involved in doping.

Undoubtedly Mo is entirely free of drug use but just how hard did the BBC look?  Mo is the Left’s Muslim immigrant poster boy after all.  Are the BBC avoiding asking awkward questions  due to Mo’s special status?  Not as if the BBC hasn’t turned a blind eye before….Rochdale and other towns spring to mind, never mind the ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal, and Lutfur Rahman whose activities the BBC did its best to downplay for years, and when he was booted out as Mayor of Tower Hamlets for fraud and electoral corruption the BBC hid the story on the England page….a major news story….nary a mention of the role racial and religious intimidation played in the fraud either.

Looks like a new open thread is well behind time……so here’s a fresh one….

The Daily Mail has an indepth look at the case of a white woman who pretended that she was black in America and has numerous photographs to show just how white the woman really is…….blond, blue eyed and whiter than white….

The BBC, which reduced the story to a BBC Trending ‘man bites dog’ story, comes up with this…

I met Rachel Dolezal – and never doubted her black roots

When I met Rachel Dolezal, I found it easy to accept her description of her ethnicity. Along with BBC correspondent Jonny Dymond, I talked to Dolezal in 2011 in a coffee shop in Spokane, Washington, while producing a BBC World Service documentary on a surge in extremist militia activity in America. She told us that she was of mixed racial heritage but that she primarily identified with her black ancestors. She matter-of-factly listed the abuse she says she received at the hands of racists, including threats, break-ins, and nooses being left at her workplace.

At no time during our hour-long interview, or during a number of phone and email conversations before and after, did Dolezal give any cause to doubt her heritage.

Note how the Beeboid gets in the ‘extremist militias’ and tales of racism before anything else.  Distinct lack any real attempt to ‘out’ the woman as a fraud…..tending towards excusing her actions is the impression I get….perhaps because the BBC man is somewhat professionally embarrassed at being fooled by her…..quick to tell us that Jonny Dymond was there with him.

Whilst reporting that ‘Many African-American activists were outraged’  we then get this ‘Others compared Dolezal’s story with the discussion around transgender issues, especially the example of Caitlyn – formerly Bruce – Jenner. Soon the hashtag #transracial was trending. Some were using it for jokes and satire, but others were making serious points.’

Everything is relative in BBC World…no black and white you might say….when it suits of course.

Just have to wonder how many Beeboids think they are ‘Black’ and would love to ‘identify’ as such.

The Guardian indulges itself with a long, cerebral and somewhat overthought piece on why Miliband crashed and burned….The undoing of Ed Miliband – and how Labour lost the election.

No need for such tortured introspection….Miliband was ‘weird’, too intellectual, he was ‘Red Ed’, a chip off the Old Bloc of his Marxist father, the voters didn’t like him nor his failure to come clean about Labour’s part in the economic crash and its immigration policies.  He wasn’t Statesman-like enough…..even today his reappearance in Parliament was about Himself…being ‘famous once’….a mistake he continuously made in the election campaign.  Miliband also had pick’n’mix policies designed to catch eyes and headlines with no real central theme that grabbed the voter and convinced them Labour was a solid bet….mostly Miliband seemed to want to soak the rich and give handouts to selected groups of the poorest….presumably the most telegenic.

One passage did stand out in the Guardian piece.  Miliband forgot to mention the deficit and immigration in his conference speech in September 2014.  The two most explosive issues for Labour and ones he had to address if he was to convince voters that Labour could be trusted.  The Guardian looks in depth at the failure to mention the deficit….Curiously the Guardian forgets that Miliband also forgot to mention immigration.

Here is the standout passage…….

Miliband knew the story of his “forgetting the deficit” would prove devastating. “He was really upset,” the speech writer recalled. “He pushes himself very hard – he was very, very angry with himself even before he knew it was going to be the main story out of the speech. We tried to cheer him up, but even then he was too upset. He did not come to the celebratory party, he just did not want to come out of his room.”

Miliband was so distraught that he shut himself in his hotel room, where a series of people, including his wife, Justine, joined him and tried to offer some reassurance – pointing out that the omission had not featured prominently in the BBC political editor Nick Robinson’s report on the Six O’Clock News.

Miliband ‘forgets’ to mention the deficit, a subject absolutely central to Labour’s election campaign and the BBC barely mentions the omission?  How unusual for the BBC to ‘misplace’ a crucial piece of information that undermines Labour’s credibility.  Still good to know that the BBC’s coverage is ‘reassuring’ for Labour here.

One other main talking point for the Guardian is the SNP/Labour double act that was likely to occur if Miliband headed a minority government which seemed the most likely prospect for many….the BBC allowing the Polls to lead the news, a decision perhaps more often based upon wishful thinking than solid evidence by the BBC….the ‘evidence’ conveniently matching the outcome that the BBC wanted…so why rock the boat by questioning the polls or taking a more independent and detached approach to events?  The BBC’s Director of News admitted that this was a failure on the part of the BBC….‘we and all other media organisations allowed the poll numbers to infect our thinking: there was too much ‘coalitionology’ as a result.’

Labour complained about the BBC’s massive amount of airtime it gave to the prospect of such an alliance however that worked, either as a formal coalition (denied by Miliband) or as an issue by issue set of agreements but seems to have forgotten that most on the Left had resigned themselves to the prospect of a minority Labour government.

‘Biased BBC’ noted the BBC’s fascination with this and divined it as a pro-Labour stance by the BBC….the BBC presenting the possibility of a Labour government as almost de facto and therefore possibly altering how people might vote….perhaps they would be convinced to vote Labour if they thought Labour were now going to win, even if as a minority government, when previously they may have thought a vote for a Labour Party that was going to lose was a waste and therefore would vote tactically to suit another agenda.

Labour didn’t see it in this way.  Here is an email they sent to the BBC…

Labour was so desperate that on 22 April, Lucy Powell, the campaign chair, wrote to the BBC’s director of news, James Harding, to complain about the broadcaster’s coverage. In an email obtained by the Guardian, she alleged:

“Your bulletins and output have become disproportionately focused on the SNP and Tory claims that Labour would enter into a deal which would damage the rest of the UK … We strongly object not only to the scale of your coverage but also the apparent abandonment of any basic news values, with so much reporting now becoming extremely repetitive.

“The BBC’s relentless focus on Scotland is potentially of huge political benefit not only to the SNP but also to the Conservative party. Indeed, it is becoming apparent that this has become the main Tory message in this election and you have regularly shown images from their posters and advertising designed to reinforce this attack. But the BBC has a responsibility not only to reflect what the Conservatives are saying but also to reflect on it.

“For instance, if the BBC has ever asked David Cameron and his colleagues why they are spending most of the energy talking up the SNP, I have missed it … The BBC includes growing amounts of commentary in its news bulletins. But you have barely ever reflected our view – and that of many commentators from across the political spectrum – that the Conservatives want the SNP to win seats from Labour in Scotland because that represents their best chance of remaining in Downing Street.”

The BBC certainly did spent a vastly disproportionate amount of time on a Labour/SNP partnership but as said this was a pro-Labour narrative that fed the voters the lie that Labour had the election in the bag.

As for the BBC not noting the idea that the Tories would benefit from a Labour wipeout in Scotland….“For instance, if the BBC has ever asked David Cameron and his colleagues why they are spending most of the energy talking up the SNP, I have missed it’ …that’s nonsense…it was a prospect repeatedly mentioned….here is one quote on the BBC from Labour’s Scottish Party Leader…

Mr Murphy said Mr Cameron was “desperate” for the SNP to beat Labour so that his party would have a chance of clinging on to power.

Speaking from the Scottish Gas training academy where he was visiting apprenticeships, Mr Murphy explained: “In every election, going way back to 1924, the biggest party has gone on to form the government.

“So David Cameron is desperate for the SNP to beat Labour and he’s talking up the SNP in the hope that Scots go out and vote for them, to reduce the size of the Labour party in parliament so that he can cling on to power.”

And more of the same here.

It’s not as if no one else on the Left was talking of Labour as a minority government…Labour itself expected such an outcome so can hardly complain that the BBC also concentrated on that possibility.

Here the New Statesman explains…

For a majority, Labour and the Tories will need to look elsewhere: to the SNP, the Northern Irish DUP and, in extremis, Ukip.

It is this foreboding arithmetic that explains why Britain is increasingly likely to be led by a minority government after the election. To their principled objections to another coalition, Tory backbenchers can now add a pragmatic one: it wouldn’t give them the numbers anyway.

Most of Labour’s shadow cabinet have long believed minority government is preferable if the party falls short of a majority. It is also the option privately favoured by Ed Miliband.

So Labour would run as a minority government and not as a coalition….it would then rely on doing deals with the other parties….the biggest of which, Tories aside, would be the SNP in which case you might ask, as the Guardian did…‘Will the SNP run Britain under a minority Labour government?’

So not just the BBC investigating an SNP/Labour bloc…the right wing Guardian, and the fascist New Statesman, were also subverting democracy by pushing a Tory narrative.

Labour likes to paint the BBC as right wing but the BBC’s election coverage proved that it was absolutely the Left’s most willing fellow traveller.

James Harding has made a resignation speech, or rather if the contents of the speech are a true reflection of what he actually thinks then he should perhaps consider it a resignation speech and walk the plank.

Alternatively the speech could be a sign that he has given up the arduous task of thinking for himself and has merely resigned himself to the groupthink inherent in working for the BBC…..living in the Bubble in total denial about what the BBC does, completely divorced from reality, detached from the real world….for instance the small quote at the head of this post is one Harding thinks worthy of highlighting on the webpage….and yet it is totally at odds with how most people see the BBC and indeed the experience of anyone who has the temerity to actually complain to the BBC and receives a swift kick to the crown jewels.

The speech is long and packed full of Harding’s thoughts on many subjects based around the BBC’s election coverage….most of which are highly questionable claims by Harding.  As I say there is a lot of information to wade through but this quote stands out as the most egregious claim from Harding, one that demonstrates how the BBC just doesn’t understand what is going on…

‘I think we delivered against our own editorial ambitions. Forgive me, but I think we put on the television event of the campaign – arguably, the event of the campaign – namely the Question Time in Leeds. It was one of a series of events at the BBC, which, like no other news organisation, gave voice to the voter.’

The Leeds Question Time where Miliband got his backside handed to him on a plate…certainly that was a major event of the campaign but it had absolutely nothing to do with the BBC other than they were in the lucky position to be filming it. Harding’s claim also neglects the fact that most Question Time audiences are jam packed with left wing activists and more often than not the BBC fails to give that prized ‘voice’ to the real voters.

The Leeds audience was the star of the show and not the BBC.  What we heard when Miliband was hung, drawn and quartered on the deficit by that audience was what the BBC has failed, deliberately failed many would say, to do.  The BBC has spent the last 5 years effectively dodging giving Labour a hard time about its economic record in office and the real causes of the economic crash.

To now claim that the BBC was central to a major election event putting a Labour politician’s feet to the fire is laughable.

Anyway, back to the main body of the speech now that we’ve cherry picked the most outrageous, well there is more, a lot more outrageous, stuff.

Harding starts with this….‘A few weeks on from polling day, what can we say of the BBC’s coverage of the General Election of 2015?  Let’s start, not by patting ourselves on the back, but by taking a look at our election coverage with a critical eye.’

Already he’s in denial…the speech is one huge puff piece for the BBC and an attack on the politicians….as for that ‘critical eye’.…do I even have to say anything?

Harding blames the pollsters for misleading everyone…‘A serious critique of the coverage must address the problem with the pollsters. ‘

Well yes they got it wrong, but it wasn’t the polls that steered the BBC’s coverage which for 5 years has been blatantly critical of the Coalition and supportive of Labour’s policies, it wasn’t the polls that made the BBC put Labour policy announcements as headline news day in day out whilst Tory policy news headlines quickly disappeared to be replaced by ‘Labour says Tory policies are rubbish’ which gives the lie to another Harding claim…’Also, we have to ask ourselves whether we did enough to hold in check the political machines of each party.’  The BBC put itself at the service of the Labour Party.

He tells us that ‘And, of course, the polls were central to the politicians’ campaigns, too, so it would have been impossible to ignore them. ‘  As I understand it both the Tories and Labour’s own internal polls gave an entirely different picture to that presented by the polling companies.

Harding gets one thing right…‘We and all other media organisations allowed the poll numbers to infect our thinking: there was too much ‘coalitionology’ as a result.’  The BBC gave the impression that we were heading for a Labour led government in some sort of coalition with the SNP….to the BBC it was a done deal and spent endless hours discussing the ‘likely’ scenarios.

Here Harding again demonstrates how out of touch he is with how people see the BBC and what it is really like…the first sentence is interesting though…..very unBBC..

‘To be clear, I’m not one of the people who subscribes to the view that if you’re getting criticised from all sides you must be getting it broadly right. In fact, part of my job is to listen and assess the merit of each complaint, each request, each argument. And the fact is that a fiercely fought election generated a lot of strong feelings: Labour was angry about the focus on the SNP, the Tories regularly questioned our running orders and editorial decisions, the Lib Dems felt they weren’t getting sufficient airtime, the Greens complained about being treated like a protest movement not a party, UKIP railed against what they saw as an establishment shut-out, the DUP felt Northern Ireland parties were being treated as second class citizens, the SNP questioned what they saw as metropolitan London bias at the BBC. And the list goes on.’

Harding lists the complaints from the various Parties….and dismisses them…..yet reading them you realise every one rings true.

Then we get to the real gist of Harding’s own über whinge…

‘But there’s criticism of the BBC’s newsrooms that is unfair and unfounded. Take, for example, the fabled left-wing bias. I find this increasingly hard to take seriously. In the light of the Conservative victory, what’s the argument? That the BBC’s subtle, sophisticated left-wing message was so very subtle, so very sophisticated that it simply passed the British people by?’

So the BBC can’t be biased to the left because the Tory Party won the election…..childishly daft reasoning, if reason it can be said to be.  The Tories are in power despite the BBC throwing everything at them including the kitchen sink…..not a city sink estate has been left untrawled for single mothers, destitute and broken by Tory welfare reforms, not a hospital A&E department has been allowed to go to work without a BBC number cruncher counting the daily ‘catastrophic crises’, not a foodbank has gone unvisited so that we learn of the desperate plight of those left behind by the Coalition’s heartless policies that leave the poor to starve.

The reality is that the Tories are in power because, as the Leeds audience showed, in the real world Labour was recognised as the party that would heap yet more economic misery and ruin upon us, led by a man whose incompetence knew no bounds and who inspired absolutely no confidence in people….I suspect Miliband was possibly the real reason Scots voted for the SNP in droves and nothing to do with their policies.

The BBC utterly failed to report Miliband’s disconnect with the voters.  It was the BBC that held Miliband up as a new kind of politician who was shaping the political narrative about a new world order, a new form of politics, a new form of society, a new form of economic system.  Unfortunately Miliband was none of those things. There was no real substance to his politics, each policy announcement was carefully weighted and crafted to please the crowd and catch the next news headline, the BBC being very obliging on this, but as soon as they were put under the slightest scrutiny, not something the BBC was prone to do, they melted away like the lightweight airhead policies they were.

The BBC entirely misjudged the mood of the country and Labour’s politics believing them to be at the forefront of the ‘inequality’ Zeitgeist apparently sweeping the world.

Harding goes on to tell a complete lie by connecting two of Nigel Farage’s statements and reporting one as a consequence of the other…

‘I’ve been asked whether politicians made the link between the BBC’s election coverage and the future funding of the BBC? Mostly, not. But, along the way, there were people from all parties who made the connection between their dissatisfaction with the election coverage and the fact that the next government will set the licence fee and the terms of the Royal Charter. Some did so explicitly. Nigel Farage, for example, said he was unhappy at UKIP’s treatment on the BBC and proposed cutting the licence fee by two thirds.

Fargae made no such statement about cutting the BBC funding due to its biased audiences in the debates.

Here is what Farage said about restructuring the BBC…

“I would like to see the BBC cut back to the bone to be purely a public service broadcaster with its international reach and I think it could do that with a licence fee that is a third of what it currently is.”

Even the BBC’s own report on his statement makes no claim that it is linked to BBC bias despite noting that he thought one BBC audience had been biased.

So no Farage did not ‘explicitly’, or even implicitly, threaten the BBC with a cut in licence fee funding in retaliation for its bias.  Harding is mistaken.

Finally I’ll end on this from Harding...’In the months ahead and the political contests to come, politicians may not always like our news judgments. But we’re not here for them, we’re here for the public.’

That’s just not true.  The ‘Public and their views are the absolute last concern of the BBC.  The BBC was there for the Labour Party year in year out for the last 5 years and in everything the BBC has done over those years it has sought to challenge the Public mood, the Public’s own values and beliefs whether on immigration, climate, the EU or Islam.  The BBC has a world view that is at odds with the majority of the people of this country and represents not ‘The Public’ but a very small group of likeminded people, the liberal, metropolitan elite, who want to maintain their grip on power that the Media bestows upon them and is happy to abuse that power to keep themselves in those positions of influence.

That’s why they hate the internet and the Blogger.  The internet democratises information and stops uncomfortable truths from disappearing and history being rewritten.

The BBC does not give a voice to the People, only very select, approved people, it does have that ‘fabled left wing bias’, it isn’t ‘alive to its critics’ as Harding proves in his speech, it is defiantly unself-critical and is utterly and implausibly living in the very rarified atmosphere of its own little elitist bubble.

It is an irony that an organisation like the BBC with its enormous resources for news gathering and analysis could so badly misunderstand the world.  The reason for that is because it is institutionally left wing and any recruits soon learn to toe the line….the famous groupthink that Harding denies exists.  Never mind making efforts to employ disabled weather presenters, how about employing a lot more ‘right wing’ minded journalists…..so many that group think towards the left becomes unnecessary as people with right wing views do not feel isolated and under pressure to conform, left and right balancing each other and working as checks on each others work….after all that is the supposed essence of the BBC, providing a balanced, impartial news service not becoming some sort of social service providng jobs for life’s waifs and strays.

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

‘Under the Conservative and then Labour governments, radical preachers toured Britain trying to rally and isolate Muslim youth. They said that to be a Muslim you had to sympathise with your Muslim ‘brothers’ anywhere in the world. What you should not do was to feel any of that gratitude or desire to assimilate which had existed in their parents’ generation.

Everywhere, this madness was allowed to spread. Religiously segregated areas were accepted, separate values were allowed to thrive and, eventually, even separate rules of law tolerated and encouraged. All the time, we pretended to ourselves that this was simply ‘diversity’.

Many Muslims came to this country precisely to leave their religion’s medievalists behind. It would be a tragedy if we stood by while their children — British children to whom we have a duty of care — were indoctrinated by a reconstituted version of that medievalism here.’

Douglas Murray in the Spectator

The Islamist advance  upon our society continues unabated, storming ahead ever faster as people in the Media, politics, academia and the Institutions cower before the Islamic blitz, the ‘soft jihad’ launched against them in a battle of ideologies that the Islamists are winning as they either silence the media or force them to adopt the Islamist narrative….the BBC itself ‘groomed’ and recruited to the cause.

The BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet has won the Sandford St Martin trustees’ award for her work in raising the profile of religion in the media.

The BBC director of news and current affairs, James Harding, said: “This award recognises the profound influence of religion on the world we live in and Lyse has fearlessly brought us greater understanding of religion from some of the most perilous places on the planet.”

Anyone who has any experience of the BBC’s approach to reporting anything about Islam the religion, or anything connected to it, knows that ‘fearless’ is not a word that would commonly be associated with their reporting.  To suggest that the BBC brings a greater understanding of Islam to the British people is laughable….the BBC knows that such understanding would lead to extreme and justifiable concerns about a religion that is so intolerant that it preaches unbelievers should be killed.

The BBC boasts of its accurate and trustworthy journalism...’ “In times of crisis and in countries lacking media freedom, people around the world turn to the BBC for trusted and accurate information,” said Fran Unsworth, director of the BBC World Service group.’

Let’s have a look at just how trustworthy and accurate some of that is in regard to religious issues that the BBC so  ‘fearlessly’ explores……

We’ve had a Muslim presenter on the Today programme telling us that the Protestant DUP have views that are ‘deeply unpleasant and backward’.…would the BBC allow such sentiments to be expressed about Islam? Probably not as the presenter, when she joined the Today programme, said that she intended to use the programme as a platform to improve people’s perceptions of Islam and we know that the BBC has held secret talks with Muslim activists to shape the news so that Islam and Muslims are presented in a favourable light.

Then on Friday we had John Humphrys on the Today programme (08:49) doing the Jihadist’s work for them as he declared that a questionnaire sent out by Waltham Council to primary schools as part of its programme to build an integrated community was racist…..saying ‘It was racist wasn’t it?’  So little doubt he believed that.

Humphrys was shocked that such a questionnaire could be sent to primary school children and that they could be ‘tested on how extreme they were’ as he claimed.

This us what the council intended…

What is the BRIT project?

Being and Belonging’ is a free education resource for primary schools designed to equip teaching staff with the means to discuss the complex issues of multiple identities and social exclusion. It encourages children to reflect on themselves, the communities in which they live and any challenges or grievances they may be experiencing.

Whilst these topics may feel far removed from your day to day classroom conversations, the consequences of social exclusion are far reaching and are apparent in today’s society in many forms. Whilst action itself is often limited to a small minority of individuals, the effects are felt by everyone in the community – including our children and young people.

Education is seen as key by various stakeholders in tackling these social problems and we believe this package goes some way in addressing this within your school setting.

Waltham is in East London and one of those celebrated diverse and multi-cultural communities and clearly there are issues that need addressing especially in areas that are less well off than others.  The council’s actions seem reasonably sensible and inline with action recommended by others.

Of course Humphrys never mentions why he thinks the questionnaire is racist…..it is because many of the pupils are Muslim…..note to Humphrys…Islam is not a race….it’s an ideology that has some serious problems….were the BBC and Ofsted ‘racist’ when they raised a similar issue with schools?…..if not why  is Waltham ‘racist’?….

Pupils at private Muslim school in east London did not know difference between Sharia and British law, Ofsted says http://bbc.in/1F7fync 

In 1999 the BBC  had no concerns about ‘racism’ when  examining the attitudes of white pupils…..not Christian, or Jewish or Buddhist but ‘White’….so clearly based upon race…..

Schools serving predominantly white communities are not responding adequately to the problems of racism, claim researchers.

In the week that the Stephen Lawrence inquiry report called for a greater awareness of ethnic diversity in schools, researchers from the Children’s Legal Centre charity at the University of Essex have claimed that teachers are failing to recognise the extent of racism in schools.

The researchers carried out a confidential survey of 15 secondary schools in East Anglia, all with a majority of white pupils, to see how racism was addressed in lessons and how it was tackled as a problem among pupils.

In conclusion the researchers say the schools “did not adequately prepare pupils for life in a multicultural society”.

In the report’s recommendations, they call for “guidance and support” for teachers to help them prevent racism in schools. This could involve the Commission for Racial Equality setting up a code for good practice in anti-racist education.

Other proposals call for training for teachers in multicultural awareness, the inspection by the Office for Standards in Education of school anti-racist policies and the involvement of representatives from local ethnic minority communities.

There is also a call for a European Union-wide project to encourage schools with a small number of ethnic minority pupils to do more to counter racism.

You can see there is a direct parallel between that 1999 survey and its intentions and Waltham’s, race or religion aside…..so why is Waltham ‘racist’?  Does it not also have to  “adequately prepare pupils for life in a multicultural society”?

Maybe if we had a look at who is making those claims of racism things will become a little clearer as to what is driving this ‘protest’.

John Humphrys doesn’t tell us who the complainants are, and indeed doesn’t tell us that it is the fact that the pupils are Muslim that is at the heart of the problem, but it doesn’t take any work at all to find out that it is the usual suspects from the ranks of the Islamist media storm troopers that are behind this….step forward one Mo Ansar….

Buxton Primary School, East London. Flushing out 7 yr old extremists. We DON’T want to get these wrong @rustyrockets!

 

And look who Ansar gets his information from….

Abu Hudhayfah….a very active Islamist who favours the BBC’s goto Islamist group…Cage....

And Asghar Bukhari...who is he?  He heads MPACUK….a very unpleasant Islamist group that encourages Muslims to become Mujahadeen and tells them that Islam demands they go on Jihad….. ‘for the Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “He who dies without having fought in the way of Allah or without having felt it to be his duty, will die having a trait of hypocrisy” ‘….and another Cage advocate…that’s him on the right with his mates from Cage….

   Asghar Bukhari ‏@AsgharBukhari May 22

Even the term #WesternValues to me is white supremacy dressed up as something moral #MuslimFreedom

And of course the Islamic Human Rights Commission expressed its outrage about the survey….the IHRC that is well known to be extremist and an Iranian front.

Other Muslim organisations also expressed their horror……

UK Muslim Pupils Survey Rejected as ‘Racist’

A ‘counter extremism’ survey by an East London borough council directed at Muslim young students has sparked criticism from British Muslims, accusing the local council of trying to profile Muslim children.

The questionnaire was “clearly racist and Islamophobic” and accused the local council of trying to profile Muslim children, Massoud Shadjareh, chair of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, told The Telegraph.

 

Curiously just a week before the same publication had no qualms at all about a survey that said British school pupils were Islamophobic….

What else has the BBC been misrepresenting?  The bombs that went off in Boston were another headache for the BBC….the obvious suspicion was that this was an Islamist attack but the BBC in a fit of wishful thinking declared that all the evidence pointed to it being a white supremacist attack…..as we all know now it was two Muslims who carried out the attacks but that doesn’t stop the BBC from trying to downplay the role of Islam in the attack.

Last week they invited on Masha Gessen to discuss her new book about the bombers...the BBC introduced her as  ‘Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist, author and activist.’

Gessen pronounced that the bombings had nothing to do with Islam, nothing to do with radicalisation, there is no such thing as radicalisation and no large international organisation (like Islam?) that attracts recruits….they killed because they were disenfranchised immigrants locked out of the American dream after being driven from their Russian homelands.

Apparently the terrorism was a rational decision by people who didn’t like US policies….but no mention of what policies and why they felt so particularly aggrieved.  Terrorism is a crime and not a war we also hear.

What the BBC doesn’t tell us is that Gessen’s whole narrative is really an attempt, not to downplay Islam’s part in the terrorism, but to implicate the Russian leader, Putin, as the catalyst for the bombers’ actions.  She is an ‘activist’ alright….an ardent anti-Putin one.

Gessen hates Putin and is trying to link him to, and blame him for, the rise of ‘Islamist’ terrorism….

   masha gessen ‏@mashagessen May 28

In which Putin = poison http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/putins-russia-dont-walk-dont-eat-and-dont-drink … via @newyorker

Then we have the Muhammed cartoon competition in the US.  The Today programme invited on Simon Schama to give us his two pennithworth (08:49)  about freedom of speech in the US.

So we must have great repsect for Islam’s great figure and its teachings…..Never mind that Muhammed himself destroyed all other religions’ idols and iconography, just as ISIS does today.

Why should a non-Muslim respect the ‘dignity’ and alleged sacred nature of religious symbols when Muhammed himself set the example of how to behave and the Koran teaches Muslims not to make friends with unwashed, dirty, ignorant non-Muslims and indeed such non-Muslims can be killed with impunity?

So we have had a story fed to us by Islamist activists courtesy of John Humphrys, we have had the Boston bomber’s history conveniently rewritten as an anti-Putin saga which had nothing to do with Islam and we’re left with the knowledge that if you don’t love and respect Islam you’re a detestable and loathsome bigot.

The BBC at its best bringing us that ‘trusted and accurate’ information we all crave.

The BBC is to set poverty stricken Pleb against poverty stricken Pleb in a vicious and exploitative TV entertainment that makes Benefits Street look like a heart-warming examination of the lives of the ‘poor’.

‘The BBC has defended a new TV reality show pitting unemployed and low-paid workers against each other for a cash prize, which has been accused of echoing film the Hunger Games, arguing it is a “serious social experiment”.

The show, called Britain’s Hardest Grafter, is seeking 25 of Britain’s poorest workers with applications limited to those who earn or receive benefits totalling less than £15,500 a year.’

Russell Crowe received $5,000,000 for his part in Gladiator, the winner of the BBC’s show, Britain’s Hardest Gladiator, wins a not insignificant £15,500.

Ironically, after all the fuss about Benefits Street, the guardian publishes this defence of the BBC and also one of Benefits Street in retrospect so as to bolster its defence of the BBC…

It’s a bit rich moaning about poverty porn

Even if exploitation is sometimes at play in these shows – and perhaps it is; happily, I can’t claim to have seen them all – this surely doesn’t discount the possibility that the BBC and Twenty Twenty can between them deliver a serious-minded series, one that provokes more than just the standard responses from left and right (in fact, it has been commissioned by current affairs, not entertainment, so the aspiration is there, if nothing else). The stories of the poor do need to be told, don’t they? Or are we saying that we would rather wipe them from our screens altogether?

Benefits Street was just a reality TV programme that revealed a few truths that the liberal do-gooders didn’t like to admit whilst the BBC’s latest effort will be truly exploitative and demeaning for the participants…the ‘winner’ hardly getting a prize worth the effort….the BBC no doubt anticipating any money made during filming being subtratced from their benefits giving the BBC a chance to show the ‘evils’ of the welfare system under the Tories.

‘Britain’s Hardest Worker’ is just ‘Gladiator’ repackaged for a modern age…the desperation of those in need exploited for entertainment purposes by the caring BBC which spent the last 5 years trying to shame the Coalition government over welfare reform…..the programme being commissioned by BBC Current Affairs…and blatantly being based upon the minimum wage rate….is Aunty being political whislt trying to hide that politicisation?

Why does the BBC never show us the uncomfortable truth like this?….extraordinarily from the Mirror….

Are these children victims of the Tory welfare cap or sheer parental stupidity?

It would take a harder heart than mine to see a sobbing 12-year-old being thrown out of her home and not care.

Autumn Parker was pictured being comforted by her dad Lee as their family were evicted after months struggling to pay their rent under the Tories’ benefit cap.

Lee lost his job, the council stopped paying their rent, their private landlord couldn’t take the losses, and along came the bailiffs.

So far, so bad luck – how many of us are only one or two pay cheques from needing the welfare safety net which Dave’s stormtroopers have been merrily slashing great holes in?

None of that is Autumn’s fault. And nor is the £500-worth of SLR Nikon camera slung around her neck in photographs of the eviction.

Because that’s her parents’ fault.

Lee and Katrina Parker appear to be not just irresponsible, but the kind of parents that make the rest of us despair.

Despite never once in their lives being in a position to afford it, they have seven children. The eldest, a daughter, was born in 1994 when Lee and Katrina were aged 19 and 21.

Just as the BBC kept Churchill off the airwaves in order that he wouldn’t upset the Fascists the BBC keeps the truth off the airwaves about Islamism so that Muslim sensibilities aren’t upset by suggestions that the Islamic State and its kind have any link to Islam and the link between the ideology and the violence that spreads around the world by people stating that they are fighting in the name of their religion, Islam.

The BBC publishes yet another piece of Muslim propaganda that is designed to create the impression that Muslims are victims and any criticism of activities by Muslims is based upon racism and Islamophobia, the hope being that the critics will be silenced.  Naturally the BBC does not make any attempt to challenge the assertions made in the article by a member of the Qatari royal family…that’ll be Qatar which, along with Saudi Arabia, is at the heart of the Islamist revival and all that that entails…….

Muslims ‘dehumanised’ warns Qatar’s Sheikha Moza

A senior member of the Qatar royal family has warned that Muslims are being “dehumanised” by the coverage of violent extremism in the Middle East.

“Why do Muslim lives seem to matter less than the lives of others?” asked Sheikha Moza bint Nasser in a speech at Oxford University on Tuesday.

The division between East and West was creating a “fear and suspicion of all things Islamic”, she said.

The failure of progressive politics in the Middle East was fuelling “distorted and perverted” interpretations of Islam, she added.

‘Muslim-phobia’

Speaking at the opening of a new building at the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College, Sheikha Moza warned that while there was an “intellectual curiosity” in the West about Islamic culture, individual “real, living Muslims” faced growing distrust.

She described this as being “Muslim-phobia”, as distinct from claims of “Islamophobia”.

And she questioned whether globalisation was really achieving more “pluralistic” societies.

“A Muslim is first and foremost identified as a Muslim, rather than simply a human being.

“Whether they are Pakistani, Malaysian, Senegalese, or even British born, their multiple identities are levelled under a constructed monolith of Islam,” she said.

This collective identity was seen as something “fearful and unknowable”, said Sheikha Moza, mother of the current emir of Qatar and wife of the previous ruler.

The consequence was “double standards” in the reaction to the casualties of conflict, said Sheikha Moza, a senior political figure in the oil and gas-rich Gulf state.

“Only silence follows when innocent Yemeni and Pakistani children and civilians,” are killed by drones, she said.

She challenged the increasing use of the word “medieval” to describe the actions of radicals in the Middle East.

“Global media, both Western and Arab, often claim that Islam does not believe in freedom of expression and is stuck in medieval times,” said Sheikha Moza.

Why does the BBC make no mention of the serious questions that Qatar’s support for Jihadis raise?

The revelation casts serious doubt on the Gulf state’s insistence that it does not support terrorists, including jihadists in Syria and Iraq.

It will also add to growing calls on the British Government to put pressure on Qatar to crack down on terrorist financiers following the murder of two British aid workers in Syria.

It is simple enough to ‘Fisk’ the article and demonstrate that it conforms to every jihadi propagandist template…so again why does the BBC not take issue with the piece?

Possibly because the BBC itself has been guilty of promoting the same terrorist narrative about foreign policy, Western ‘double standards’ and that ‘Muslim lives matter’, telling us that the Islamism and The Holy War is not Islam, telling us that this is a modern creation with no relevance to the religion, that there is no ‘Muslim community’ (except when ‘the Muslim Community’ is upset and angry about foreign policy…non-Muslim foreign policy that is…’racist’?).

The BBC feeds the terrorist grievance industry and enables the recruitment process (and all that time asking ‘What is it that causes our young British Muslims to bcome radicalised?’)  whilst closing down real debate on the issues.

The road to Hell is said to be paved with good intentions.  The BBC is dragging us allr apidly down that road whilst applauding its own ‘humanity’.