Author Archives: Alan

A glimpse of the future……Ed Miliband issues his new set of pledges that he promises to implement in government

Ed Miliband on the Today programme yesterday told us that ‘Trust is a huge issue’…so much so he set out his promises to the nation literally carved in stone…and has constantly attacked David Cameron as someone who can’t be trusted to fulfill his election pledges.

Such a massive emphasis on his determination to carry out his own promises must surely mean any deviation from that would be headline news….trust in politicians apparently being the big, raging question on everyone’s lips if you believe the BBC.

How then when in a BBC interview Miliband’s chief political strategist tells us this….

‘I don’t think anyone is suggesting that the fact that he’s carved them in stone means he’s absolutely not going to break them or anything like that’

…..does the BBC essentially ignore that ‘bombshell’ comment when they spent days wittering in about Cameron’s ‘brainfade’ and yesterday filled the airwaves with the mutterings of a loose-lipped LibDem who told us the shattering news that Cameron may think he won’t get a full majority?

You have to look fairly hard to find the story about this on the website…not on the frontpage, not on the UK page, but it is tucked away on the Election page…..what is on the frontpage is this…a story from 1892 no less….

How a gingerbread biscuit took out the prime minister

Nick Robinson fails to mention the comment in this piece in which he says ‘So, what is obsessing politicians of all parties behind-the-scenes is the debate about what a legitimate government would look like. ‘…...you might think a man who wants to be PM who makes promises, and promises to keep those promises, might not seem legitimate should he take office with votes he received on the basis of those promises…so why does Robinson not raise the issue?…..after all he has Tweeted cynically on the comments…

This cheered me up. @LucyMPowell on Edstone – fact promises “carved into stone” doesn’t mean “absolutely not going to break them”. Really?!!

— Nick Robinson (@bbcnickrobinson) May 5, 2015

Meet the Edstones from the town of Edrock.

Fair do’s to Humphrys, he tried his best to challenge Miliband on Labour borrowing….Miliband absolutely refused to admit that Labour borrowed too much, despite, as Humphrys stated, that Miliband must be ‘the last person standing who believes that to be the case’…..except of course Robert Peston who backs Miliband.   Miliband also tried to pass the buck for the lack of regulation of the banks…admitting such a lack led to the Banks running rampant but not linking it to Labour.

Miliband’s refusal to admit any blame is in direct conflict with his pronouncement that ‘trust is a huge issue’….the Question Time audience made that quite clear and the major trust issue was on the economy and Labour’s record….which Miliband refuses to admit….bizarre…..he can’t think on his feet and has a long list of pat answers to any question that he reels off regardless of the actual content of the question.

Whilst Miliband thinks ‘Trust is a huge issue’, one that merits his policies being literally set in stone, Robert Peston thinks not…or at least not if you’re a Tory as he explains in this blatant anti-Tory tract…..Should Tories put the chancellor in straitjacket?.    As always with Peston’s reports the article concentrates almosty completely on the Tories with a very small comment on Labour.

Humphrys did a good job this morning…I’m sure Twitter will be ablaze with claims of the ‘Right Wing BBC’.

A fresh open thread for a new week…..the election draws near….will the restraints come off at the BBC?

Of those two images the BBC knows which is the ‘extremist’ one…..Naughtie has just described the exhibition as an ‘anti-Islamic event’….actually Jim it’s about freedom of speech…the right to say something without being killed.

Today told us that two people who shot at and hit a security guard at an exhibition of Muhammed images were killed by police officers…the BBC’s response….it was a ‘provocative’ exhibition run by an anti-Muslim hate group (so labelled by an organisation that tracks extremists in America the BBC tells us),  the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which ran anti-Muslim adverts and was attended by the ‘Far Right’ politician Geert Wilders.

Not sure that Wilders is ‘Far Right’ just because he opposes mass immigration and the Islamisation of Europe.

Jihad Watch predicted the response….

The freedom of speech is under violent attack. It now remains to be seen whether American authorities will defend it, or will blame the victims and the targets and kowtow yet again to violent intimidation.

We’re told the motivation isn’t known…however others aren’t so coy….

And of course the BBC are quick to blame ‘anti-Muslim’ sentiment as the ‘provocation’ that led to this shooting.

Who is that group that ‘tracks extremists in America’? The Southern Poverty Law Center….that’ll be the group that have been removed from an FBI list of ‘advisors’ because it itself spreads hate.…

‘In the fall of 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins, armed with a loaded semi-automatic pistol and 100 rounds of ammunition, entered FRC headquarters not far from FBI headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C. Corkins shot the front desk security guard and tried to gain entrance to the upper floors where he intended to kill FRC employees…. Corkins said he got the idea of killing FRC employees from reading the SPLC hate list and made use of a map of the FRC office found on the SPLC website.’

Perhaps the BBC should be more circumspect in who it uses to back up its own pro-Muslim prejudices….

‘A 2013 article in Foreign Policy concluded that SPLC exaggerates the hate crimes threat, saying SPLC is not an “objective purveyor of data,” instead calling them “anti-hate activists” and suggesting that their reports need to be “weighed more carefully by news outlets that cover their pronouncements.”’

The SPLC’s definition of an extremist is interesting….

‘The SPLC defines hate groups as those that “… have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” The SPLC states: “Hate group activities can include criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing” but that “Listing here does not imply a group advocates or engages in violence or other criminal activity”‘

Surely that should include many religions…..in their actual form not as defined by their defenders.  The SPLC is itself a ‘Far Left’ campaign group that uses its influence to distort American politics….

‘A critical analysis published recently by Professor George Yancey of North Texas University concluded that SPLC targets only those groups its leaders disagree with politically while leaving liberal groups who use extreme language alone.’

The BBC of course ignores all  that but then it has always had an odd way of looking at life…..if a Muslim doesn’t have a job, or has a job he feels is below him, or is prevented from ‘living’ his religion to its full extent and therefore feels ‘oppressed’, he is excused by the BBC for mass murder…..express a view that an ideology might be regressive, backward and deeply unpleasant, to channel Mishal Husain, and the BBC vilifies you as a racist and a fascist……say all Jewish settlers are Nazis and should be killed and the BBC will laugh it off and continue to employ the person who said that…argue against Islamic terrorism and once again you are are spreading ‘hate’…..as these adverts obviously are……

Sky has trumped the BBC and Peston is peeved….

Some idle amusement on the bank holiday for you….

Good idea of the week….

Is this the real idea…..Red Ed rebuilds the Berlin Wall?…

Perhaps he should try Hadrians wall.

Better idea of the week….. what the SNP are announcing they intend to set in stone once in government on both sides of the border….The Miliband surrender….

A bit ironic this report from the BBC, The WW1 poet kids are taught to dislike, in which we are told of the prejudices and cultural values that teachers impose upon their pupils, not teaching them facts but attitudes, using the ‘facts’ as propaganda to sell the pupils a particular narrative.  The teachers approach WWI as an event in history that was unremittingly appalling and anyone who supported the troops and the fight against the Germans should be condemned as jingoistic warmongers, the teachers using such people merely to contrast with the views of those ‘good people’ who opposed or who expressed cynicism about the war which naturally the teachers believe is the correct approach to viewing the war…..never mind that poets and writers are not perhaps the most inclined to be warlike or keen to fight and so may produce a rather jaundiced view of things whilst many people were up for the fight and had a ‘good war’.

It is all a bit ironic for the BBC to report critically on the teacher’s attitude when the BBC is probably the single most powerful purveyor of such an attitude towards War, the Empire, British colonies, British society and its influence in the world…all of which are apparently bad….no wonder any immigrant who comes here is disinclined to sign up to the institution of ‘Britishness’ when he’s told everything British is tainted by our history.

One part of Britain’s anachronistic history is still with us, John Humphrys, still treasured by the BBC which has let him off the leash to supplement his meagre BBC stipend with an article in the Telegraph,  John Humphrys: Where did this general election go so wrong?, that is entirely negative and, whilst making little mention of political parties, is almost entirely weighted against the present government in its bleak view of life in modern Britain.

He tells us this has been a passionless, ‘bloodless’, election with little conflict or argument….can’t really see how he can say that when everyone else is saying this is an election that is breaking the mould, the end of two party politics (ignoring of course the fact we have had a coalition for the last five years…and several in the previous century), not to mention the rise of UKIP, the SNP, and Miliband turning ever redder if not tartan, and the TV debates certainly being examples of a great deal of passionate debate from the polticians.

Curiouslyy he tells us that in the most recent debate  the audience was ‘angry’and ‘bad tempered’ [Peston thinks they were ‘irrational’…that is…anti-Miliband!]…..not exactly bloodless then.

Here he gives us a very narrow, and I don’t believe at all a representative view, of the public’s take on things…

It remains to be seen how representative of the national mood that bad-tempered audience really was. With Today’s little jaunts around the country, we wanted to get cossetted presenters out of the studio for a few days and try to find out what real people are thinking about the election, as opposed to what the politicians and experts tell us they are thinking. Often – too often, perhaps – the answer this election campaign has been not very much at all. Sometimes, it has been absolutely nothing.

I imagine the views expressed in that debate are exactly what the majority of people feel rather than ‘absolutely nothing’. By way of example Humphrys tells us of his talk with a woman in a car wash who wanted him to tell her what was going on in the election…

‘I struggled in the car wash was that she wanted me to tell her what, exactly, was going on. To which there was only one honest answer: damned if I know.’

Humphrys is ‘damned if he knows‘ what is going on in the election…..this is one of the BBC’s senior political reporters from their premier current affairs programme and he doesn’t know what is going on?  Some might say that’s not a surprise.

Humphrys moves onto the economy and our lack of productivity…or supposed lack….again a Labour theme now that thye have lost the growth and living standards arguments.

‘This is the sort of business that Britain needs to succeed if we are ever to get our productivity out of the slow lane, and it has big ambitions to expand. Should things go to plan over the next few years, it will be the biggest technology park of its kind in Europe. That means plenty of jobs – the right kind of jobs – and a serious boost to the economy.’

He goes on to dismiss the jobs created in the UK as the equivalent of ‘mere’ hairdressers….a habit that most BBC reporters have of dismissing the new jobs as worthless and demeaning….

‘….the economy could not really be said to be improving if the jobs being created simply amounted to more and more people cutting each others’ hair. It’s not that I have anything against hairdressers – that’s what my mother did – but those jobs don’t create real wealth by boosting productivity.’

Never mind that Employment in Creative Industries grows five times the rate of the wider UK economy and that ‘the Creative Industries contribute more than £8m per hour to the UK economy, and generate more than £70bn a year, and is outperforming all other sectors of UK.’

No real wealth then from the ‘creatives’…which includes the Media of course.

Then we had another Labour narrative…Europe, we must stay in…because the big bosses tell us we must….Ed Miliband…the ‘voice of the People’!!….

‘Europe. Dr George Gillespie, the chief executive of MIRA, had just returned from a trip to China. One of the big bosses he’d been trying to impress there asked him if it was true that Britain was leaving the EU, because if it was, he couldn’t see much future in investing here. Clarity on whether Britain is staying in Europe or leaving matters to Britain’s bosses.’

Humphrys trundles off to Lowestoft and makes a comment completely untrammelled by the inconvenient fact that the very Europe he has just been praising is responsible for the death of the UK fishing industry…

‘The fishing industry is dying on its feet and there’s little to replace it. ‘

Then we get the idea that Ed Miliband’s ‘everyday folk’ have been ignored…another Labour narrative…

‘….walk ten minutes from the 21st century centre and you’re back in the grim days of derelict factories when Birmingham stopped being the manufacturing heart of Britain.’

Never mind that the Midlands is powering back to industrial health….and Birmingham is in there fighting its corner...Birmingham is top regional ‘hotspot’ for businesses going for growth

Then it’s on to housing and then university with that old lie about ‘debts’…

‘ for their sixth-form children, the worry of accumulating their own debts if they manage to get to university. ‘

Does he not know that more of these ‘children’ have been applying to university than ever before, and from the poorest backgrounds?

He finishes on a whimsical note…

‘The laws of physics dictate that when a moving object achieves a precise momentum, it will proceed on its set course because its weight is balanced against the curve and the gradient. Something like that. It struck me later that political leaders would have us believe in such a happy state. Set the course, press the accelerator and the country will cruise merrily along. Dream on.’

Of course that is not the Tory narrative that we can carry on as before by pressing the accelerator and spending our way out of trouble…that’s a Labour one.

Intentional or not Humphrys is peddling a pro-Labour narrative, one that is entirely negative not to mention mistaken in its perceptions of how people think about the election and events surrounding it.

I suspect they know a great deal about the political options on offer and the various scenarios that may occur should votes go one way or the other.

Humphrys paints a picture of the election and of Britain that is distinctly jaundiced…perhaps he has been listening to the news on the BBC from his own colleagues and swallowing their nonsense whole for too long.

.

Oh dear, you have to laugh…..I did say it was amazing Miliband could get up Brand’s stairs without tripping….Perhaps there were several takes for that glorious video judging by his fancy footwork tonight.

On Question Time Dimbleby gave Cameron a harder time than he did Miliband, often asking some daft questions but the audience, however the numbers actually balanced out, managed to ask difficult questions to all the leaders so in the end what came across was a reasonable interrogation for each of them….one point though is that Cameron went first and Miliband and Clegg were able to hear his answers which I think gave them an edge in their own sessions as they were able to react to what Cameron had said….Miliband making a joke about ‘the other guy’ and trying  to turn what Cameron said to his own advantage.

Fraser Nelson points out that it is easy for Miliband to swan in and bluff his way...which is why Dimbleby should have been more on the ball to tackle him harder….

Fraser Nelson: Being cheered and whistled on the way out of that strange wee stage was perhaps the best part of that for David Cameron. He looked like a winner (for a short while). But it was a reminder about why the PM is always at a disadvantage: he has to spend his time defending his record, taking fire for every mistake his government made over five years. The others just talk about what they would do, about their hopes and theories: it’s far easier for them.  And also all the audience hears about is Cameron’s problems, not his strengths. I can see why Cameron wanted to avoid this trial-by-television.

 

Miliband I thought had the easier ride from Dimbleby whose main barb was to ask about Labour’s rising debt before the crash…shame the BBC hasn’t been asking such questions for the last 5 years.

Miliband tried to swat such questions away with suggestions that such spending had been good…on hospitals and schools….might have thought Dimbleby would have been ready to ask about PFIs the huge costs of which are undermining so many NHS Trusts and hospitals now….the audience reacted with an outburst but Dimbleby didn’t challenge Miliband on that.

On Europe Miliband wasn’t challenged on the hypocrisy of his claim to represent ‘The People’ against ‘Big Business’ and vested interests….how can that be when his whole approach to Europe was based upon Big Business saying to leave Europe wouldn’t be good for their businesses?  Miliband ruled out a referendum because Big Business doesn’t want one.  The audience asked about the lack of democracy with Miliband deciding the issue all by himself on our behalf but I thought Dimbleby should have further challenged Miliband on that hypocrisy….which is blatantly obvious.

Miliband made a big play of saying he wanted to be the first PM to underpromise and overdeliver…..again why did Dimbleby not step in with the obvious question about the NHS and Labour’s promise to ‘Do whatever it takes to keep the NHS running’?  Miliband was criticising Cameron for making unfunded promises and yet Labour’s promise is even more amorphous and pie in the sky.

Miliband categorically ruled out any coaliton and any deals at all with the SNP…now the maths would suggest that, if we have a Labour government, it will have to deal with the SNP to get legislation through…Dimbleby did press Miliband on his statement that there would be no Labour government if he had to rely on the SNP but Miliband was let off the hook on that major issue and not pressed nearly hard enough as to what will happen if Labour managed to form a minority government….especially as he seemed to rule out any coaliton with anybody at all saying he wouldn’t ‘barter away his manisfesto’.

Miliband was also allowed to make the usual Labour claim that welfare spending was going up becasue the economy was tanking….but the truth is that welfare spending is increasing because, in the main, pensions were increased and we have an increasing pensioner population and pensions make up the vast bulk of welfare payments.  Not only that but spending is actually lower than in previous recessions and that is despite this being the worst recession in one hundred years.  Not only were pensions increased but also spending on tax credits due to uprating…but also more spending on housing as private sector rentals increased, though if the government had to provide social housing the rents would have been lower but there would have been a hidden subsidy as well to keep those rents low….and who would fund the house building?

Many people think benefit spending is high because this country spends a lot on unemployed people and others who should ideally be in jobs. In fact, spending on pensions (£83 billion) is 20 times as high as spending on Jobseekeer’s Allowance (£4 billion).

The largest contribution was from the uprating of state pensions as inflation outstripped growth in earnings and GDP. Spending on tax credits and housing benefit also increased significantly, the former reflecting generous  discretionary uprating (especially of the child element) and the latter reflecting growth in the number of renters and rent inflation outstripping earnings growth.

 

All in all not too bad a Question Time, the audience able to interrogate the leaders to the same degree….Dimbleby, in my opinion, letting Miliband off with an easier ride than Cameron…but not a great deal in it at the end.

Cameron came across fairly well…Miliband with his talk of equality and fairness, Big Business and ‘The People’ was just too naive and facile…making easy, feel good, crowd pleasing pledges that say little in the end and were more suited to the student union…..and a very obvious tactic of asking people’s names…too staged….but what to expect from someone who sought a bit of Brand’s star dust but also wanted the headlines that came, courtesy of the BBC….Ed ‘Miliband tells Russell Brand he’s ‘wrong’ on politics‘….very tough!

Should be an interesting day next Friday.

Now though we really get to see if there’s any BBC bias with their post mortems…will they spin it for Miliband?….not looking too good so far…..

Nick Robinson has his own take….Miliband again gets off lightly but Cameron is damned….

With David Cameron looking confident the Tories and the Tory press will claim that this was the night the election turned.

But – and it is a big but – the prime minister’s performance relied on either ignoring or dodging the hostile questioning he faced about welfare cuts, the bedroom tax, food banks and the morality of his policies.

Firstly the Tories have been on the up for a while now so this wouldn’t be ‘the night the election turned’ and Cameron didn’t dodge the questions…..he certainly answered on the ‘morality’ of his policies saying it was the moral thing to do to get people into work.  As for the bedroom tax and food banks….standard attacks from the Left which neglect the realities and the facts….what about all those families who have to squeeze into tiny homes whilst single people live in homes too large for their needs? Food banks?….a Trussell Trust political game in the main….most recipients are in fact only in very occasional need when their beneifts have been stopped or delayed….not a result of economic failure….though I will admit Cameron waffled on welfare.

We asked why the BBC totally ignored a caller to LBC who castigated Labour and Miliband for having failed to provide a good NHS service…..On Monday Nicky Campbell may have provided a reason as to why the BBC cannot bring itself to publicise such criticism of Miliband and Labour……Campbell told us that another member of the Public had given a Labour politician a severe ear bashing but he couldn’t tell us what that person had said because of course the BBC is politically neutral.….work that out if you can.

Later Victoria Derbyshire had a bit of ‘brain fade’ telling us that we had had a Conservative-Labour Coalition government for the last 5 years……or was it Conservative -West Ham?  Will the BBC be ‘laughing’ endlessly at such a foolish mistake for days on end?  Perhaps they could bring in a psychologist as they did to discuss Cameron’s little faux pas?

It did seem like the BBC was pushing Labour’s agenda on Monday…with quite a bit of SNP thrown into the mix…..the BBC frequently seems to assume we will have a Labour government and discusses an SNP pact with Labour as if that was the most likely scenario…and as so often we had a look at the ‘puzzle’ of productivity, or the lack of….a Labour theme now that employment is always going up and they need to find another angle to attack the Coalition somehow.

Then we had the aforementioned Campbell who was talking about housing….yet again a Labour theme.  Then Victoria Derbyshire talking about mental health…again a subject Labour, and the LibDems (for some reason) thinks it has the Tories up against the ropes on.

Then we had the Evan Davis ‘Leaders’ Interview’, this time with Nicola Sturgeon.  I was going to watch it but Craig at Is the BBC biased? has done sterling work and provided us with a run down of how it went…..not bad at all from Sturgeon’s point of view….all that was missing was a glass of wine and some candlelight….a completely different ‘tone’ to the aggressive and sanctimoniously disapproving lecture Nigel Farage received.

Have to say the BBC’s coverage of the SNP gets ever more like a glorification….Wednesday seemed to be a coronation of Sturgeon by the BBC with much trumpeting if her as a ‘breath of fresh air’ and a ‘straight talker’…..both of which are complete nonsense…she’s a politician the same as all the rest…..in private she says she thinks Miliband is unfit to be PM and she’d prefer a Tory government but says something different in public and no comment from the BBC about her repeated claim to really respect ‘democracy’…the woman who wants to keep having referendums until she gets the answer she wants on independence.

Then we have Cardiff University’s run down of news coverage of the election…apparently, again h/t Craig, the Tories are way out in front in receiving airtime from the various news broadcasters….though that doesn’t say whether it is positive or negative coverage…so hardly an informative study….here is how they went about that study…

The Cardiff University study examined bulletins on Channel 5 at 5pm, Channel 4 at 7pm and at 10pm on BBC, ITV and Sky News.

Not exactly comprehensive….but they have noticed that the BBC gives more time to Miliband…

The BBC was an outlier, giving more time to Miliband, who made up 24.3% of time leaders were speaking on screen, compared to 21.9% of time for Cameron.

Now anyone who has listened to the BBC radio output or read the website will know that Labour has the lion’s share of the headlines…hardly a day goes by when ‘Labour announces……’  doesn’t get top billing and as on Monday the latest Labour policy ‘discussed’ repeatedly on the BBC.  The BBC takes the risk that the policy will get mauled but keeping Labour in the headlines and the Tories out seems to be the BBC modus operandi….unless it is unmistakeably bad news for Labour, such as callers on the NHS blasting Miliband, which is completely absent from the BBC, or bad news for Cameron such as the ridiculous story about ‘brain fade’ which will be discussed endlessly.  If a Tory policy does make it to the headline it is not long before it is replaced with the Labour response rubbishing it.

It is as we have always suspected with these ‘studies’ that they are extremely limited in scope and only examine a very small part of any broadcaster’s output…far less than you and  I can hear as we go though the day listening to various BBC programmes and getting a real feel for the output as whole over the day.

Just as Labour are saying they will seek to control the Media, except the BBC, the BBC continues its campaign to dominate the world as its commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, buys up the opposition and begins product placement…

BBC to introduce product placement on world news channel

The BBC will turn to product placement on its global news channel for the first time as it seeks new ways to fund its worldwide news operations.

The move is likely to be controversial a year after the BBC was criticised by MPs and the National Union of Journalists for taking advertising and sponsorship on the World Service for the first time.

BBC World News will feature product placement on programmes such as technology, sport and travel documentaries, but not on its core news and current affairs output.

And…

BBC Worldwide takes 25% stake in producer Curve Media

BBC Worldwide has taken a stake in Claimed and Shamed producers Curve Media after chief executive Tim Davie said he had “re-engaged the engines” on investing in production companies.

The BBC’s commercial wing will “make more of these sort of investments” said Davie, who said Worldwide is “pushing through a number of deals”.

 

On another note have to say was highly amused by MiliBrand….at least he made it up the stairs without falling over.  And what’s with the accent?  Also interested to hear his views on the over powerful effect of one man’s, Rupert Murdoch’s, media empire….no hypocrisy in that Miliband was grovelling to one man, Russell Brand, in the hope that a bit of his star dust might rub off on himself….in other words Brand’s apparent popularity with the ‘youth’ was something be exploited by a mainstream politician….Brand himself might want to think about that…but it is hypocrisy for Miliband to criticise the power of Murdoch, and to attack politicians for meeting Murdoch, when he himself is blatantly seeking ‘street cred’ and votes from the Brand effect….Brand who is part of the unelected powerful, millionaire elite who have exploited the disenfranchised and dispossessed as the transfer of money from the poorest to the richest continues unabated.

Why does Brand have a shower in his kitchen?