The BBC is biased…in favour of the United Kingdom……

Nationalists brand BBC’s Nick Robinson ‘a liar’ as thousands protest at corporation’s ‘biased’ coverage on referendum

Why?  Because the BBC’s Nick Robinson actually did his job and asked an awkward question…one that Alex Salmond avoided answering…….the spineless Robinson then fell into line and meekly stated that Salmond had answered the question about tax…and note, Robinson has not since gone on to investigate the claims made by Salmond…which is a shame as they bear only a passing resemblance to the truth..but Salmond has Robinson on the run it seems…..

Nick Robinson @bbcnickrobinson  ·  Sep 11

To all tweeting about me saying that @AlexSalmond did not answer me : He DID answer re RBS but did NOT re why trust him not company bosses

In fact Salmond’s ‘answer’ was a masterclass in evasion, bluster and bluff redirecting attention away from the issue and onto Salmond’s favourite subject…the persecution of the poor wee SNP by the bullying English in Westminster….playing the victim card to perfection.

If you watch the video near the end Robinson has to demand the answer again to the question about tax revenues and RBS…so clearly at that time he felt Salmond had not answered the question…..

And Robert Peston wonders why Salmond is making such a fuss:

And, to be clear, for all the outrage of Alex Salmond at what he sees as the politically motivated leaking by the Treasury of this migration south, he has known these were the banks’ respective intentions for months (because RBS, for one, told him).

The BBC has responded in its usual way…nothing to see here…in this case there isn’t…except for Robinson’s craven surrender to the SNP bullying…..

We received complaints from viewers who felt Nick Robinson’s report on the Scottish First Minister’s press conference implied that Alex Salmond had not answered a question put to him

The BBC’s Political Editor Nick Robinson asked Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond two questions at his press conference on Thursday 11th September. The first question centred on the tax implications of RBS moving its legal headquarters to London; the second on why voters should trust a politician rather than businessmen.

Nick Robinson’s report showed the second question on trust, with a script line noting that Mr Salmond had not answered that point.

The BBC considers that the questions were valid and the overall report balanced and impartial, in line with our editorial guidelines.

Robinson asked if Salmond still believed there were no consequences resulting from businesses such as RBS moving to London, or did Salmond accept that tax revenues would go to London?

Salmond replied that corporation tax depends on economic activity not where your registered office is claiming that RBS’s and Lloyd’s registered office’s were merely brass plaques with no significance.

But that’s not true.  The brass plaques represent the legal entity of the company.

The Banks are moving their legal entities from Scotland to England…..and as such would likely be under English tax jurisdiction….and Lloyds does have its head office in London but it is a Scottish company legally…and its subsidairy, The Bank of Scotland, has its HQ in Edinburgh…so that will move also…disengenuous of Salmond to dodge that….

The move will end more than 100 years of heritage for the Edinburgh based Bank of Scotland, which has its head office in St Andrew Square.

From City AM:

Lloyds Banking Group will move its official headquarters out of Scotland if the country votes for independence in next week’s referendum.

The banking group which owns Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland largely operate from its London headquarters, however the bank’s registered offices are in Edinburgh.

RBS statement:

As part of such contingency planning, RBS believes that it would be necessary to re-domicile the Bank’s holding company and its primary rated operating entity (The Royal Bank of Scotland plc) to England.

The Guardian looks at businesses moving their head offices…although RBS and Lloyds aren’t moving for tax purposes such effects could happen by default…..

Corporate inversion – moving the head office for tax purposes

A corporate inversion occurs when a multinational group moves its notional head office, often for tax purposes, from its home jurisdiction to an overseas territory. The impact on operations is often minimal, with manufacturing activities and the markets in which it operates remaining unchanged.

However, combined with a web of crossborder transactions between companies owned by the same group, such inversions can play an important role in shifting profits within an international business to low-tax jurisdictions, boosting returns for shareholders.

Peston says he doesn’t know exactly what will happen tax wise and he is still trying to find out…so Salmond must have been blustering….

Does the Anglicisation of banks matter?

From the BBC’s Peston….

In a globalised world of multinationals, working out where tax is paid – if it is paid – is ferociously complicated.

Here the BBC delves deeper telling us the banks want to move their ‘tax homes’ to England:

Scotland: Why would banks shift tax headquarters south?

Banks and financial services firms have said they will move their tax headquarters, and in some cases part of their operations, to England in the event of a vote for Scottish independence.

Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group said they would “re-domicile” their main groups south of the border if there were a Yes vote.

Tesco Bank would also “re-domicile” in England, Clydesdale Bank would re-register as English, and TSB would also “re-domicile” parts of its business.

But what does that actually mean?

According to Patrick Stevens, tax policy director at the Chartered Institute of Taxation, large companies typically “re-domicile” to take advantage of perks offered by a particular country’s tax regime.

It’s helpful to think of a company having to have a “home” for tax purposes. To move that “home”, multinationals make a holding company tax resident in a particular country.

Like the outcome of the referendum itself, it’s very difficult to see what the eventual tax outcome will be.

However, one thing is certain: banks want to move their tax “homes” south as a backstop in the event of Scottish independence.

Salmond tried to mock Robinson by saying someone from the BBC should know that Lloyds has their head office in London…..but that’s semantics….the registered office is the one that pays the taxes.

Peston the day before the little spat made clear what was what:

Lloyds would relocate its registered office to where it currently has its head office – which is also London (naturally).

Salmond smirked and laughed off any suggestion that he couldn’t be sure about how much oil was in the Clair Field, and the SNP has been insistent in BBC interviews that it was enormous and would guarantee a massive windfall without the BBC challenging that assertion……

The SNP’s business mouthpiece, Business for Scotland, tells us:

Off the West coast of Shetland is the Clair Ridge field. It contains an estimated 8 billion barrels of oil, with an estimated 120,000 barrels per day production at peak levels.

 

However whilst there are estimates of 8 billion barrels of oil in the field BP says that in reality only 640 million are recoverable:

The development will produce about 640m barrels of oil over 40 years.

What does Salmond say one day later after the Robinson interview?

Is there a massive unreported oil field off Shetland under the Clair Ridge?

“There is a lot of suggestion.”

Is it credible suggestion?

“Oh yes, it’s credible. But can I confirm it? No. What I can tell you is many of my constituents believe this to be true.”

Are they misguided?

“Well, I don’t know. I can’t say for definite.”

Salmond claimed there must be a conspiracy between No10 and the businesses as they’d all had a chat with Cameron recently….unfortunately Salmond then went on to admit the company announcements weren’t news at all to the Scots, they’d known all along…indeed these businesses had announced these plans and commented on the consequences of Independence months earlier.

Finally Salmond refused to answer the question about the trustworthiness of politicians….he himself has his doubts….

This argument’s been won,” he carries on, “for the following reason: that the overwhelming majority of people want to keep the pound, and secondly they don’t believe the Westminster politicians.”

So all in all, Salmond gave an ‘answer’ but he didn’t say anything that could be relied upon.  Many taxes will go to England as a result of the registered offices moving, The BBC did know that Lloyds had its head office in London.  The oil field is big but nowhere near as productive as the Yes campaign claim….and Salmond now admits he can’t be sure at all.  And of course politicians aren’t trusted anywhere…..all of which are the opposite of what Salmond claimed.

So no, Salmond didn’t answer either question and if Robinson had a bit more backbone he’d have tackled Salmond again, and again.

Much of this is revealed in an interview Salmond did with the Herald newspaper the day after the Robinson session:

Is the BBC’s referendum coverage biased?

“Yes, absolutely,” he says. “Of course it is. The problem with Nick … I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like these folk, but they don’t realise they’re biased. It’s the unconscious bias which is the most ­extraordinary thing of all. If the BBC were covering, in my estimation, any referendum, in any democracy, anywhere in the world, they would cover it impeccably, in a balanced fashion.

“What they don’t understand is they’re players in this.”

He says BBC journalists from London are reporting old news as fresh out of ignorance.

This argument’s been won [of the currency debate],” he carries on, “for the following reason: that the overwhelming majority of people want to keep the pound, and secondly they don’t believe the Westminster politicians.”

Is there a massive unreported oil field off Shetland under the Clair Ridge?

“There is a lot of suggestion.”

Is it credible suggestion?

“Oh yes, it’s credible. But can I confirm it? No. What I can tell you is many of my constituents believe this to be true.”

Are they misguided?

“Well, I don’t know. I can’t say for definite

He’s always said the result would be a Yes. What about the scale of the victory?

“I’d be absolutely delighted with 50.1%. I do have something [greater] in mind but I’m going to leave it to the people.”

I  wonder if he will be so accepting of a 50.1% No vote?  Keep that statement in mind.

The Telegraph reports curbs will be imposed on the Muslim Brotherhood due to its ties with armed groups and extremists…one of which of course is Hamas….

Britain to curb Muslim Brotherhood operations in London

Britain set to curtail Muslim Brotherhood activities and block activists coming to London after report finds ties with armed groups and extremists in Middle East and elsewhere

Has Katz & Co ever been in a pub?  Maybe he was thinking wine bar….

From the Telegraph:

Evan Davis has now been appointed to the newsnight role, to assemble what Katz has called the “smartest, most interesting (and entertaining) group of people”.

He hinted Russell Brand could play a future role in the programme, though not as a presenter, after Paxman’s interview with him became one of the most talked-about moments in Newsnight history.

When asked what he had planned for Newsnight, as Davis joins a new era of presenters, Katz added: “In a complicated, messy world where we are all bombarded with news, I think Newsnight should be the group of clever friends you want to sit down with in the pub at the end of a long day and make sense of what is going on in the world.”

Jeremy Paxman did not wish to comment.

Jeremy Paxman did not wish to comment.  Says it all really.

And at least we know what to expect from the highbrow party animals….more hyping immigration……

Former DUP leader Ian Paisley has died aged 88

Listening to 5Live, Dominic Laurie I think, the most pressing issue was to ask, and keep asking, if the ‘intransigent’ Ian Paisley prevented the peace process from being successfully implemented much earlier….was it his fault the conflict kept going?

Might of course have had something to do with the IRA….I don’t know, but it’s possible.

Women are born and raised to hate men.  It’s basic misandry and there has to be a zero tolerance of it says Lord Ahmed speaking to Victoria Derbyshire….we ignore this problem at our peril!  It stems from the Christian religion and the Genesis story which enshrines the myth of masculine evil as a justification for male oppression.

Actually, no.  The BBC never broadcast any such thing.  Except it did.  Sort of.

All men hate women.

In May there was a great deal of attention being paid to women being abused, attacked and otherwise oppressed around the world.  The BBC investigated this issue using several high profile cases as proof of their contention that men just hate women.

Yes, all these cases have a common theme…’Male hatred of women’…not just individual instances of disturbed or criminal men but all men, all men hate women, it’s innate, bred into them, their brains are hardwired that way, they learn it in church or on their mother’s knee….so look out….

‘The whole process of becoming masculine is at risk in the little boy from the date of his birth on; his still-to-be-created masculinity is endangered by the primary, profound, primeval oneness with the mother.’

It is only by setting woman apart as Other, by resisting intimacy with her, by treating her with contempt and aggression, that men assert their own independent and fragile masculinity.

Contrast that sweeping accusation, that men hate women,  with the BBC’s concerted effort to separate the Muslim community from the actions of fundamentalist Muslims done in the name of Islam….the BBC makes huge efforts to put a firewall between them and the ‘Religion of Peace’. These fundamentalists are mad, bad and certainly not Muslim we are assured.

The BBC doesn’t just make the claim that all men hate women but exploit it as an entry point to weave an amazing web of intrigue,  tying together many different strands and narratives that reflect and highlight the BBC’s own ‘bête noire’ and concerns.

The issues that keep the BBC awake at night?

Firstly of course, the knowledge that ‘all men hate women’. The world must awake to this intractable and ever-present problem.

Then there is British aid money….so often the target of ’Daily Mail’ types who want the money spent on the poor and needy at home…the BBC’s contention is that such aid is vital in helping various communities around the world, educating them about an array of issues…in this case of course it is educating men about women’s rights…and we know Cameron chatted to the BBC’s James Harding about the BBC’s presentation of European issues…what else did they discuss?  Perhaps Cameron’s own pet project of maintaining foreign aid…and perhaps the BBC would like to help out by highlighting just how brilliant and worthy and successful it all is.

Then we have Islam, at the time of writing the issue was Boko Haram and it‘s kidnapping of Nigerian school girls….again this was presented by the BBC as an issue of men hating women rather than having a political motivation or just being plain old desire for women…and the BBC uses this to also declare that Boko Haram is most certainly not really an ‘Islamic jihadist group’ as such but merely a reaction against Western colonisation…er…in 1903.

Of course Boko Haram is not the only example of women being abused in Islamic lands.  Large numbers of women are being killed or abused in such countries…but the BBC is keen to promote the idea that such treatment of women has nothing to do with the teachings of the Koran……the BBC presenting it as merely ‘misogyny’….again…merely as a hatred of women.

Many of the reports come from those Islamic countries and the BBC is concerned of the image that that creates about Islam…that it oppresses women and generates hate towards them.

The BBC has a natural inclination to try and downplay anything that might be construed as ‘evil’ about Islam and to find another way to explain the events…such as they maybe merely cultural or pure Misogyny, or a result of some external pressures on the society….therefore it has settled on an overarching explanation of all such events as one of men hating women.

The BBC illustrates it’s theory that men hate women with various examples.

• First we have Boko Haram kidnapping hundreds of girls…and converting them to Islam.

• Then the rape and murder of two girls in India.

• Then the death sentence pronounced on a Christian woman in Somalia for ‘apostasy’.

• Then they latch onto the teenager in America who apparently went on a hate filled rampage against all women.

The problem is…not one of those events is actually based upon a hatred of women….not even the Elliot Rodgers’ killing spree in the US.

Boko Haram’s motives must be manifold….all derived from their intent to impose an Islamic state upon Nigeria…..other than the actual Islamic teachings that make women second class citizens, which the BBC doesn’t refer to, there is nothing in this that indicates Boko Haram hates women….they are after all happily slaughtering hundreds of men as well…the girls are political pawns and sex slaves.  They don’t hate them, they just use them.

The rape of two girls in India?…is that hate or just sexual gratification and a covering up of the crime by killing the ‘witnesses’…is it a class issue?

The woman sentenced to death in Somalia?  That was based upon her being a Christian not on her gender…if she had been male the sentence would have been the same…

He reminded the world that Meriam was not abused because she was a woman or from a minority. She suffered persecution because of her faith.

The BBC even admits it elsewhere: Sudan woman faces death for apostasy

Elliot Rodgers in America?   What the BBC doesn’t admit is that he actually killed more men than women…and that he was mentally ill.  Rodgers problem was that he loved women but they didn’t love him, he thought they hated him….“All of those beautiful girls I’ve desired so much in my life, but can never have because they despise and loathe me, I will destroy.”   So not really an inborn hatred of women on his part….and he killed more men than women…

Authorities now know Elliot Rodger’s killing spree across Isla Vista began before he even left home.
The 22-year-old former Santa Barbara City College student fatally stabbed three young men in his own apartment — George Chen, 19, Cheng Yuan Hong, 20, and Weihan Wang, 20.
Chen and Hong were the attacker’s roommates.

And consider this: Elliot Rodger was mentally ill. That conversation needs to take place.

Not on the BBC it doesn’t…he’s a man, therefore he hates women.

And of course then there is Rochdale…..another case of ‘men hating women’ apparently…and nothing to do with Islam or race or criminal abuse and exploitation.

It is highly dishonest of the BBC to conflate all these cases and to present them as examples of how women are treated terribly because men ‘hate’ them.

None of them illustrate that at all.

The BBC dragged in the ‘Defender of the Faith‘, Baroness Warsi to comment.  She of course did all she could to deflect any blame for her religion, Islam….it’s that usual suspect Misogyny…..

Baroness Warsi: ‘We have to name and shame’ misogyny

The recent brutality against women in Pakistan, India and Sudan is due to “basic misogyny”, said Baroness Warsi, Foreign Office Minister and Conservative Peer.

Lady Warsi said a “zero tolerance approach to everyday sexism” is needed.

Here is some of the interview, paraphrased for brevity….

Victoria Derbyshire asks Warsi…..

VD:  Why are some women being treated like this in some parts of the world?  Why are women still 2nd class citizens in many parts of the world?

Warsi deliberates…..‘It comes down to basic misogyny…..There is a view that women do not have the right to make choices or have the same opportunities as men…economic, financial and social decision making……‘

Derbyshire feeds her a line, making th claim that it is about misogyny and to allow Warsi to claim there is no particular religion or place that is particularly prone to it…..

VD:  The cases are not unique to Pakistan or Somlia or India….the killings in the US were done by a student who hated women…so it would appear to be basic misogyny right across the world.

Warsi…Yes….this is not restricted to a particular culture or part of world  religion to which this behaviour is unique.   We’re using aid in these places to make sure women have rights, championing them…focus on education of girls international development….fight only successful when women have tools to raise their own voices and make their own choices.

Derbyshire pushing the aid theme….

VD:   How much impact does British aid have?

Warsi:  Huge impact….real changes happen because of it.

VD:   In end it is men in power however much women are educated.

Warsi:  There must be a zero tolerance approach to everyday sexism to reduce misogyny.  We have to make sure women play a full role and have their voices heard…..raise our sons to respect women, bring them up right…we must call out when you see something wrong.
Child exploitation trials in Rochdale…that was misogyny…not Islam.

The BBC Doesn’t miss a trick and promotes this book about Misogyny….

Joan Smith’s Misogynies
Duration: 45 minutes First broadcast: Thursday 05 June 2014
It’s been 25 years since the first publication of Joan Smith’s book Misogynies. In 1989, this collection of essays created shock waves with its analyses of everything from Page 3, violence in films, women in the clergy and the bungled Yorkshire Ripper murder investigation. But how much have things really moved on in the past quarter century? Jenni talks to crime writer Val McDermid about the culture Misogynies sprang from and to Alex Clark about current feminist literature. Martin Daubney and Dr Claire Hardaker discuss the impact that online pornography and trolling have on society and we talk to a group of men about joining the fight against misogyny.

Even the BBC’s Paul Mason (Gone but not forgotten) is draughted in to make the case:

Is there a tech solution for hatred of women?

If it’s a social problem and not a technological one, what is the root of it? Ms Norton, believes it is stark:
“The social problem is that men are raised to hate women and technology is not going to fix that.”
You can already feel cyberspace divided into a world that hates women and one that does not. Fortunately the former is small, but incredibly powerful – and underestimated at its peril.

Some extra reading on the subject…..
New details emerge about California killer and his victims
The rampage started with his roommates
Authorities now know Elliot Rodger’s killing spree across Isla Vista began before he even left home.
The 22-year-old former Santa Barbara City College student fatally stabbed three young men in his own apartment — George Chen, 19, Cheng Yuan Hong, 20, and Weihan Wang, 20.
Chen and Hong were the attacker’s roommates.
A friend of Rodger’s family said Rodger recently had a feud with his roommates, complaining to his landlord that his roommates were too noisy and played lots of video games.
The assailant himself outlined his plan to kill two roommates in a 137-page manifesto he left behind.
“I’d even enjoy stabbing them both to death while they slept,” Rodger wrote.

Rodger’s history of mental health issues was no secret to his family, and the young man was seeing at least two therapists prior to his death.
He had been seeing therapists on and off since he was 8, family friend Simon Astaire said. When he went to high school in Van Nuys, California, he met with a therapist “pretty much every day,” Astaire said.

In “My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger,” the writer said he bought his first handgun in 2012 in preparation for a possible “Day of Retribution.”

On Friday, minutes before he shot three young women in front of a sorority house and killed a young man at a nearby deli, Rodger e-mailed his writings to two dozen people, including his parents and at least one of his therapists.
“My orchestration of the Day of Retribution is my attempt to do everything, in my power, to destroy everything I cannot have,” Rodger wrote.
“All of those beautiful girls I’ve desired so much in my life, but can never have because they despise and loathe me, I will destroy. All of those popular people who live hedonistic lives of pleasure, I will destroy, because they never accepted me as one of them. I will kill them all and make them suffer, just as they have made me suffer. It is only fair.”

Elliot Rodger was mentally ill. That conversation needs to take place.

Rodger wrote that the “first phase” of his massacre plan would be to stab his two male roommates to death.
“These were the biggest nerds I had ever seen, and they were both very ugly with annoying voices,” he wrote. “If they were pleasant to live with, I would regret having to kill them, but due to their behavior I now had no regrets about such a prospect. In fact, I’d even enjoy stabbing them both to death while they slept.”
“After that, I will start luring people into my apartment, knock them out with a hammer, and slit their throats. I will torture some of the good looking people before I kill them, assuming that the good looking ones had the best sex lives. All of that pleasure they had in life, I will punish by bringing them pain and suffering. I have lived a life of pain and suffering, and it was time to bring that pain to people who actually deserve it.”

Somalis grow fearful of Islamists

Public anger at the recent stoning of a 13-year-old girl in Somalia shows the growing resentment towards radical Islamists who have gained control of much of the south and centre of the country.
Her 62-year-old aunt told the BBC that the teenager had in fact been raped by three armed men – and she took Asha to the police station to report it.
Several days later, after two suspects had been arrested, she was asked to return to the station with her niece.
To her surprise the girl was taken into custody too.
“I tried to speak to the police but they said they were not talking,” she said.
Three days later, after Asha had been tried in an Islamist court, she was stoned to death.
“They said that the girl had chatted up these men and had confessed to adultery,” she said.
But the aunt said the authorities clearly failed to notice her age, how mentally disturbed she was by her experience, or her history of mental illness.
“She was only 13 years old. I have got her card from Hagarder refugee camp which has her age on it.

Not Islamic

The rather desperate counter argument in light of the fact that Rodgers killed more men….

Elliot Rodger hated men because he hated women.

Misogyny kills men, too.
Rodger hated women, that much was clear.
But men who loved women also incurred Rodger’s wrath. “I will destroy all women,” Rodger wrote. “I will make them all suffer for rejecting me. I will arm myself with deadly weapons and wage a war against all women and the men they are attracted to.” Rodger viewed women as objects, and he resented other men for hoarding what he viewed as his property. “If I can’t have them,” he wrote, “no one will.”
Elliot Rodger targeted women out of entitlement, their male partners out of jealousy, and unrelated male bystanders out of expedience.

Why Men Hate Women

It is only by setting woman apart as Other, by resisting intimacy with her, by treating her with contempt and aggression, that men assert their own independent and fragile masculinity.
Germaine Greer once commented that ‘women have very little idea of how much men hate them’. For it is painful to confront the extent of men’s hatred.

You have probably all seen those old war films set in the Stalag Lufts where the POWs set up a fight to distract the guards whilst others dig their way to freedom.

The thought entered my mind, cynic that I am, that the fisticuffs between Jean-Claude Juncker in the EU’s corner and David Cameron in the UKIP-lite corner were similarly somewhat staged, in this case for the benefit of British Eurosceptics in order to make it look like Cameron was ‘tough on Europe’, especially as he negotiates reforms….something we are supposed to take note of ahead of the referendum as stated by…

former Conservative minister Bernard Jenkin who said Mr Cameron had “demonstrated that he is going to be a very tough negotiator” when it came to reform talks.

“He’s not going to be a pushover. And that will have an effect. That will strengthen his credibility with our European partners.”

More importantly it was also meant to strengthen his crediblity at home with the voters.

Even though we know Cameron is desperate to stay in Europe it is undoubtedly all complete nonsense, wild conspiracy and over active imagination on my part….

Still, the thought entered my mind again when I heard that Juncker had made an appointment that surprised everyone:

The UK could get some of what it wants in Europe – and it’s thanks to Jean-Claude Juncker

The City’s expectations that the UK would be given a standalone financial services brief were so low that it by and large opposed the job’s split from the Internal Market Portfolio. The shock in Brussels when it was announced that Lord Hill would be given this responsibility reverberated all the way to London.

Dealing with financial services isn’t the total of Lord Hill’s duties, either. He will also have to deliver Juncker’s grand aim of creating a ‘Capital Markets Union’. The implications for this are two-fold: Firstly, the UK will have significant scope to deepen the Single Market and unlock its full growth potential – which happens to be one of its key priorities for EU reform. Secondly, Britain’s Commissioner will have an enormous role to play in implementing the banking union as well as building on it.

This will go some way to mollifying concerns that the UK will be sidelined and disadvantaged by the deepening of Eurozone integration. Instead, through the work of Lord Hill, it will be central to these discussions.

Britain will be ‘central to the discussions’ on the deepening of Eurozone integration?

Hardly sounds like the UK has been sidelined or that Cameron had genuinely upset the EU bureaucrats does it?  And ‘deepening Eurozone integration’?  Isn’t that the complete opposite of what Cameron claimed he was fighting for?

And so far from the BBC headlines of June:

Cameron denies being ‘humiliated’ over EC Juncker vote

David Cameron has suffered “utter humiliation” over the nomination of Jean-Claude Juncker as European Commission president, Ed Miliband has claimed.

The Labour leader told MPs the PM’s renegotiation strategy for the UK in Europe was now “in tatters”.

But the prime minister insisted he would work with Mr Juncker despite his opposition to him.

The BBC chattering heads were full of talk and laughter about Cameron’s defeat and humiliation, how it would isolate the UK and leave us without influence.  Endless, endless, debate about how badly Cameron had dealt with this issue and just what the fall out would be.

The exact same arguments were made when Cameron vetoed the financial regulations in 2011 and strangely enough as soon as the dust settled Angela Merkel was in the headlines saying how close a relationship Germany and the EU had with the UK and how important it all was.

Once again the UK miraculously was still in the fight….indeed even as Juncker triumphed the Germans again made it clear what they thought…….

Wolfgang Schauble said his country would do everything in its power to keep Britain in the union

“Clearly, we have in many economic questions and regulatory questions a broad consensus,” he said.

“Historically, politically, democratically, culturally, Great Britain is entirely indispensable for Europe.”

It is curious that events in the real world are so often so very far from those forecast by the conclusions of endless BBC analysis and discussions.  So much hot air, so much clever opinion, so much witless speculation by those with their fingers supposedly on the pulse filling the air waves with their expert insights, almost as if that’s all it was…purely something to fill the airwaves until events, dear boy, events take over and catch up, and of course, all that analysis is quietly set aside and they start again.

Would we miss BBC ‘political analysis’, such as it is?  I doubt it.

Sack Peston, sack Robinsosn, sack Pienaar, sack the lot.

Online beer and more Top Gear, that’s what we want.

The BBC reports….

Arab states back US push against Islamic state

Look though I may I can find no mention of the obvious….such support from so many ‘Arab’ countries must surely mean the ‘foreign policy’ must be kosher and will not result in ‘angry’ Muslims on home soil.

Considering how constant and prominent the BBC’s warnings are that those angry Muslims will be on the march if we dare to even think about military action in the Middle East you might have thought the opposite may also merit such a high profile comment., but no, not even in their segment ‘Analysis: BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus‘.

It must be confusing though…as the ‘radicals’ are the ones we are now fighting in Iraq and Syria…and yet the BBC et al say we must adapt our foreign policy to suit them…and their followers back home.

And yet here we are, with a solidly Muslim group of countries backing an attack on those angry Muslim radicals who are angry apparently because of Western interference.

The truth is…the ‘radical’ Muslim’s first priority is the ‘Caliphate Project’, always has been, always will be, and until the BBC et al start being honest about that things at home will be forever dangerous as the Government is forced to kowtow to these ‘radicals’ under pressure from the Media, politicians with dubious mandates and others with vested interests and powerful voices keen to keep to the mantra that this has nothing to do with Islam.

Surely it is a major concern as to how Muslims on home turf will respond to this initiative as it is, as it is said, ‘radicalised’ Muslims who are going to fight for ISIS, so we are told, because of that very foreign policy of intervention in Muslim countries.

Worth a moments ‘analysis’ surely?  Or is it only when the narrative goes in the right direction, anti-war, pro-Muslim, that the BBC indulges itself?

For those with delicate sensibilities be aware that this post contains some robust language.

The BBC have followed the fortunes of the small but growing sporting business of Insane Championship Wrestling….

Insane Fight Club

A group of friends have created a brand new subculture that is taking over the streets of Glasgow. They’ve established their very own fight club, but this is no ordinary wrestling event – this is brutal, riotous chaos. Fights don’t always stay inside the ring, people are bounced off the side of buses and thrown off balconies in pubs. They now plan the biggest show of their lives. The stakes are high, will it bring them the fame and recognition they need to survive?

It’s a great film but once it’s over what does the BBC do when the cameras are packed away and they move onto the next bit of schedule filling entertainment?

Let’s face it the BBC aren’t interested in the political, cultural and social views of the people who fill this film….working class, white, male….and just as intelligent, thinking, humane and creative as any number of Will Self talking heads that normally populate the BBC.

They’re happy to exploit them for a film, and it’s a good film, but when will the BBC take an interest in their views on immigration, Europe and Islam, anything the BBC thinks ‘populist’.

The last time the BBC paid any heed it was only to call such views ‘poisonous’…’polluting’ decent people’s views of the world.

Vice has a film looking at Britsh wrestling…it opens with this raw statement from Mark Dallas, the promoter of Insane Championship Wrestling, and his views on the Media……

“What’s going on in Hollywood?  Well who gives a fuck what’s going on.  Who drank what, who slapped whose arse, who fucking cares? You represent every journalist who puts a fucking story out about Jordan or some cunt like that on the front page of your fucking paper when there are cunts dying in the world you represent everything that’s wrong.  And you know that was all fine, that was fucking fine when there were other options, when there was shit for me to watch and shit for me to be entertained by, but now there’s not. There’s fuck all for me. I’m not meant to have an option. So I created my own fucking option. It’s called Insane Championship Wrestling.”

There’s fuck all for me!!

Damn right!

We seem to be down a mid-week open thread so here’s one to keep things humming along…..

This Morning Robert Peston on the Today show (08:10) made a highly political statement on behalf of the Yes campaign in Scotland….and considering the fact that Peston admits that not having a currency union would be ‘the greatest blow to Mr Salmond’s separatist ambitions‘ you have to wonder at the careless, or not  so careless choice of phrase.

He told us that the reason RBS and Lloyds might relocate their HQs to England was simply because  of the refusal of the Westminster politicians to countenance a currency union.….it all flows from that refusal to countenance that union he told us.

John Swinney, the SNP’s finance minister, in a following interview, immediately leapt upon that claim saying the uncertainty was there because of the Westminster politicians…‘as Robert Peston said’.

But the truth is that the uncertainty is created by the SNP’s refusal to countenance an independent Scotland with its own currency and the SNP’s continual and blinkered claim that upon a yes vote there will be a currency union.  The SNP has consistently refused to discuss the currency issue candidly and has no ‘Plan B’ should there be no currency union.

The phrasing of Peston’s claim makes it sound as if the position of the three parties, which he keeps referring to as ‘Westminster’ or ‘London politicians’, all good SNP language, was one of pure intransigence and not based on economic and political realities.

The reality is, as the Governor of the Bank of England has just stated, that it is not possible….as this report from the BBC a mere 9 minutes ago states:

Bank of England governor Mark Carney has told trade unions that currency union in the event of Scottish independence would be “incompatible with sovereignty”. 

Mr Carney told the TUC conference that a currency required a centralised bank and shared banking regulations.  Common taxation and spending were also needed, he said.

Why would an independent Scotland want to then have its finances under another country’s governance and why would that other country take on the risks of another country’s debt?

The European Union shows why the currency union wouldn’t work.  The EU has a currency union but no overriding political and financial union, it is made up of sovereign states all making their own decisions with economies of vastly differing sizes and efficiencies.

Peston himself admits it doesn’t work in his book How Do We Fix This Mess?: The Economic Price of Having it all:

A gamble on the prosperity of an entire continent…devastating consequences for the prosperity of Europe…..wonder what the message is there about currency union without political and full financial union…taxing, spending and borrowing determined centrally?

Here Peston again suggests that their position is one based on mere stubbornness and ill-will…..suggesting they were ‘thrilled’ when they later discovered their intransigent, and apparently ‘hypocritical and inconsistent’, position was actually based on real economics and constitutional politics:

BBC economics editor Robert Peston said that the coalition parties and Labour feared that an independent Scotland in a currency union could “live dangerously beyond its means and borrow on a scale that degraded sterling”.

He added: “There was no way that the Tories, Labour and LibDems could allow full budget-making freedom to Scotland even as part of the UK, because to do so would make their argument against monetary union with an independent Scotland look inconsistent and hypocritical.

“They were therefore thrilled today when the governor of the Bank of England agreed with them that a currency union would be incompatible with Scotland being an independent sovereign state,” he said.

Looking through some of Peston’s articles it is a stance and language he has adopted consistently:

It is this refusal of the political establishment in London to countenance formal monetary union with Scotland which is seen by many to have dealt the greatest blow to Mr Salmond’s separatist ambitions.

If anything, Standard Life may have reinforced the intransigent stance of Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems against forming a partnership with an independent Scotland on stewardship of money and finance.

…their seemingly implacable opposition to monetary union.   Though, for what it’s worth, I do not see any sign of government, civil service, Labour or Bank of England lessening their opposition to currency union by even a scintilla.

It looks like Peston works in a similar fashion to the SNP….having all the facts at their finger tips, knowing and understanding the issues, and yet their final conclusions are at total odds with those facts when they come to sum it all up.

Peston frequently explains the issues and the reasons for not having a currency union and for businesses to flee South…and yet he still portrays the decision not to have a currency union as intransigence, implaccable stubbornness, hypocrisy and inconsistency.

In March Robert Peston told us this: EU law may force RBS and Lloyds to become English

If Scotland were to vote for independence, both Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds may be forced to move their registered offices or legal homes to London under European Union law, I have learned.

What matters is that the Treasury – and the cross party troika of George Osborne, Danny Alexander and Ed Balls – have cited these apparently unaffordable potential bail-out costs when explaining why they reject the demand of the Scottish government for a formal monetary union between an autonomous Scotland and the rest of the UK.

They say that it would be to trample on the interests of taxpayers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to enter into a monetary pact with Scotland, which left these taxpayers implicitly exposed to the risks of rescuing two big banks, when regulators in London would not have been in a position to keep them prudent and healthy.

And it is this refusal of the political establishment in London to countenance formal monetary union with Scotland which is seen by many to have dealt the greatest blow to Mr Salmond’s separatist ambitions.

Here Peston tells us Standard Life would relocate because of the risks of a Scottish economy too heavily reliant on the financial sector and exposed to the consequent risks….he goes on to explain why RBS and Lloyds would leave..because most of their customers in are not in Scotland….

This about Standard Life’s reasons for relocating:

Our initial observation is that the Scottish financial sector is unusually large, with total assets estimated at 12.5x GDP [or more than 12 times Scotland’s annual output].

“We would therefore likely view the financial sector as a significant contingent risk to the state. At the same time, a large part of this activity could be re-domiciled to the UK.”

Or to put it another way, S&P thinks there is a pretty good chance that Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland, both of which have their legal homes in Scotland, would also relocate to England.

Why?

In the case of the big banks, it would be even more complicated and potentially nerve-racking for their customers, than for Standard Life’s, if their regulator after independence was a yet-to-be created Scottish financial authority, rather than London’s Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority.

How so?

Well, like Standard Life, the vast majority of their millions of UK customers are in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, not Scotland.

Here again he points out that uncertainty is an issue…But it is uncertainty created by the SNP…The UK stance of no currency union is certain…it is the SNP’s ‘intransigent’ refusal to accept reality that creates the uncertainty…..

The point is that lenders to banks, including ordinary depositors, have a choice about where to place their money. And many of them will take the view that there is no point leaving cash in RBS when there is a greater than average degree of uncertainty about that bank’s long term prospects.

It is not that independence would definitely be bad for RBS. It is simply that creditors don’t like uncertainty.

So RBS will knock that uncertainty on the head by turning itself into a rest-of-UK financial institution rather than a Scottish one.

And here he points out that Scotland wouldn’t be able to bail out all the customers of its financial institutions….

Would English savers fear that the Scottish government and state might not have deep enough pockets to underwrite an effective insurance scheme for their savings?

To be clear, in an independent Scotland, English, Welsh and Northern Irish customers would be the equivalent of English customers of the Swedish bank Handelsbanken.

This statement on Handelsbanken UK’s website probably says all you need to know (it says Handelsbanken’s UK customers are protected by the Swedish deposit protection scheme, not the UK’s).

On independence it would be the Scottish government’s responsibility to protect deposits of foreign investors and depositors….and they haven’t got the deep pockets, or a big enough sporran, to do that.

So ‘all the facts’ point to currency union being a non-starter for good economic and constitutional reasons….why then does Peston insist on wording that makes it seem that currency union is possible if only it weren’t for the intransigent and unreasonable stance taken by the hated ‘Westminster’?

That’s a very, very political claim to keep making especially days from the referendum vote.