‘….a country that cannot tell its own stories; a land so debilitated by anxiety and stupefied by relativism…’

We had a quick look at the BBC’s ‘Dateline’ before [H/T Is the BBC biased?] and its denouncements that any investigation into the Trojan Horse schools is divisive and Islamophobic.  Gavin Esler made no attempt at impartial adjudication, his mind already made up that there is no such thing as ‘British values’…however he declared that to promote such values would be at the expense of Muslim values….so figure the logic of that if you can.

One comment did stand out, from American commentator Jef McAllister, who claimed that ethnic minorities all lived together in Britain because they were afraid of the native’s racism.

No…they live together because that’s where the work is, where the cheap accomodation is and because they want to be amongst their own kind.  So if there is any ‘racism’ surely it must be their own, wanting to live with ‘their own kind’….if that is ‘racism’.

That aside the attitude of see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing concerning the Trojan Horse scandal is something that has been around a long time and in fact is what allows such events to happen as the ‘Liberal Establishment’ looks away and refuses to condemn such behaviour if it possibly can.

In 2008 Nick Cohen wrote this:

Self-Censorship And The BBC

It looked at those very same attitudes that silently endorsed extremism in our midst:

• It makes no sense until you understand the moral contortions of the postmodern liberal establishment. In the past few years, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the West Midlands Police, the liberal press, the Liberal Democrats, the Metropolitan Police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Lord Chief Justice and the Archbishop of Canterbury have all either supported ultra-reactionary doctrines or made libellous accusations against the critics of radical Islam. All have sought to prove their liberal tolerance by supporting the most illiberal and intolerant wing of British Islam, and by blocking out the voices of its Muslim and non-Muslim critics as they do it.
• As the sorry history of The London Bombers shows, they have left us a country that cannot tell its own stories; a land so debilitated by anxiety and stupefied by relativism that it dare not meet the eyes of the face that stares back at it from the mirror.

Cohen’s article was based upon a film the BBC commissioned but never made, one about ‘The London Bombers’ of 7/7…..not made because it was deemed ‘Islamophobic’.

• The reporters convinced the families of three of the four bombers to cooperate. By the end, they agreed that the BBC’s account of their sons and brothers’ lives and deaths was accurate. Cafolla submitted five versions of the script. He was working up to a final draft when the BBC abandoned the project.
• The official reason is that the drama didn’t make the grade. The script is circulating in Samizdat form, which is how it reached Standpoint, and every writer and director who has read it disagrees. The journalists, however, say that BBC managers told them they were stopping because it was “Islamophobic”.

But there is one more important revelation that the BBC would not want to gain general acceptance…..that ‘radicalisation’ is not due to foreign policy as is so often claimed on the BBC, but is a result of other influences:

• The London Bombers, one of the most thoroughly researched and politically important drama-documentaries commissioned by British television. A team of journalists, at least one of whom was a British Muslim, reported to Terry Cafolla, a fine writer who won many awards for his dramatisation of the religious hatred which engulfed the Holy Cross school in Belfast.

• The reporters spent months in Beeston, the Leeds slum where three of the four 7/7 bombers – Sidique Khan, Hasib Hussein and Shehzad Tanweer – grew up. Unusually for journalists working within BBC groupthink, they didn’t find that the “root cause” of murderous rage was justifiable anger at the “humiliation” America, Israel, Britain and Denmark and her tactless cartoonists had inflicted on Muslims.

• Instead, they inadvertently confirmed the ideas of Ernest Gellner, the late and unjustly neglected professor of anthropology at Cambridge. In Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (1992), Gellner asked why a puritanical version of Islam was in the ascendant when godlessness was flourishing everywhere else. His answer was that Wahhabism and its ever more zealous theocratic variants could appear as modern as secular humanism. They represented the pure religion of scholars and the city, which would free Muslims from their peasant parents’ embarrassingly superstitious faith. Accepting fanaticism was a mark of superiority: a visible sign of upward mobility from rural idiocy to urban sophistication.

So perhaps it was the attraction of a pure, fundamentalist Islam that was in the eyes of its proponents an ideology as compelling and progressive as the ‘Enlightenment’ is for the sockless, loafer wearing chatteratti of the BBC (unless that is it clashes with ‘Muslim values’).

Not foreign policy then?  Bit awkward for the BBC to put that forward….no Bush to blame, no empire and colonialism to blame, no alienation or disenfranchisement, just a powerful wish to identify with their own values, which happen to be polar opposites to Western ones.

Many Muslims became ‘radicalised’ long before 2001 0r 2003…hence of course 9/11….but it should be noted that after 9/11 many British Muslims suddenly became ‘devout’ and practising Muslims, identifying not with Britain, or British values, but with Islam and its values…..Islamist Salma Yaqoob admitted that 9/11 turned her into an ‘activist’ for Islamic issues.

9/11 was intended to do exactly that, to recruit Muslims around the world to ‘the cause’, not necessarily to be violent but ‘awakening’ them and ‘radicalising’ them to give them the confidence that whilst in small enclaves in ‘foreign countries’ they were not alone…the ‘Umma’ was out there and waiting for them to join.  ‘Rise up’ and demand your Islamic rights was the message.

9/11 was a battle cry.

Lawrence of Arabia said of the Arabs:

• Such people demanded a war-cry and banner from outside to combine them, and a stranger to lead them, one whose supremacy should be based on an idea: illogical, undeniable, discriminant: which instinct might accept and reason find no rational basis to reject or approve.  This was the binding assumption of the Arab movement; it was this which gave it an effective, if imbecile unanimity.

Exactly what Osama Bin Laden with his ‘big idea’ provided Muslims with.

Shame the BBC is in full-on denial mode about the truth.

The Sunday Times says that tomorrow the BBC is going to announce its initiative to give all British Primary School children access to classical music.

It will send ‘ambassadors’ to promote the music in schools, its orchestras will visit schools, composers will talk to children and the BBC will make a documentary specifically to be played in schools.

This was first announced in October last year in Tony Hall’s ‘vision’ speech about how he saw the BBC inspiring the nation….

And then there are the Arts. You would expect me to care deeply about the Arts and you would be right.

We’ll launch a nationwide initiative to inspire school children with classical music, using our orchestras to bring the music to life.

It all sounds lovely and worthy but there are a couple of points which you could raise:

This is a Tony Hall project essentially inspired by his own interests, as admitted above, in the Arts.  Nice that the licence fee providers are funding his own passion.  What if he liked football or Hip Hop, would the BBC be touring the country promoting those activities and interests?

The BBC is supposed to educate, inform and entertain but surely through its broadcasting and not by sending out ‘missionaries’ to preach the message….isn’t this a bit of mission creep by the BBC and a misuse perhaps of its funding however ‘worthy’?

Hall says that classical music’s future is at risk unless more children from all walks of life have the opportunity to learn about it, music must not be for an elite or a minority.

All very poignant you might think at a time when schools are being hijacked by Muslim extremists, which the BBC refuses to recognise as a problem, and in fact does everything it can to downplay the threat posed by such activities.

The BBC obviously doesn’t value democracy, liberty, freedom of speech, freedom to leave a religion, women’s and gay rights…never mind the whole panoply of Western culure and civilisation, including music, so often banned by Muslims….or doesn’t value them enough to send squads around schools promoting such values.

Instead its journalists promote those Muslim ‘extremists’ and suggest perhaps, if that’s what the parents want,  that’s what we should let them do.

‘Dateline’ from BBC London [H/T Craig at Is the BBC Biased? who has an excellent write up of the programme] is a perfect demonstration of the BBC rewriting the facts….there is a vast amount of evidence to back up the claims made about the ‘Trojan Horse’ plot, indeed the BBC even reports them at times, however the BBC when it comes to commenting on and analysing the claims it remarkably finds ‘nothing to see here’…..and drives home the age old narrative that investigating such claims alienates Muslims and radicalises them…therefore we should turn a blind eye to what the BBC declares wasn’t happening anyway.

From ‘Is the BBC biased?’:

In typical Dateline fashion, everyone agreed that Michael Gove was wrong and that his call risks hurting Muslim feelings in the UK.

Gavin Esler had started this off right at the start with his eyes-rolling-at-the-thought-of-it introductory tone, but it got worse, much worse…

The Daily Mail/Independent, ultra-liberal-Conservative guest [Ian Birrell] said it was “absurd”, “futile” and “puerile”, calling it “wedge politics”, then praising diversity and denouncing “Islamophobia”. “I think people should remember”, he said, “as studies have shown, the most patriotic people in this country are Islamic immigrants from Pakistan”. [Ian is surely the BBC’s dream Daily Mail writer. If they were all like Ian they’d love the Daily Mail].

The BBC Turkish correspondent [Safak Timur] worried about “the alienation of Muslim people in Britain” and praised diversity.

The pro-Saudi guest [Mina] agreed it risks “alienating certain people” and can be “very dangerous”.

The liberal American [Jef] called it “dog whistle” politics.

The denunciations of Michael Gove and the defences of Islam went on and on and on, and Gavin Esler didn’t make any effort to counter his guests’ opinions, instead goad them on, often backing them up, occasionally laughing at Michael Gove – though, in fairness, he very briefly remembered his duties to impartiality later and asked one question [ever so mildly] about extremism [of some unspecified kind].

I think you might agree that facts were few and far between and what the BBC is broadcasting is nothing more than Liberal chatterati angst and guilt mixed in with Muslim’s promoting their own religious and community interests.

There is a separation between what the BBC news has reported and what the BBC then feeds us as its ‘interpretation’ of that news…that interpretation filtered through their own anxieties about not admitting anything that might portray Islam negatively and hence generate concern amongst non-Muslims who will demand ‘action’.

It’s not just the BBC that plays this dangerous game of brushing uncomfortable truths under the carpet…the ‘Establishment’ all play the same game from politicians in power for only a few years and who therefore refuse to do anything that might cause a ‘riot’ on their watch, to police officers such as those who refused to tackle the Rochdale sex abusers due to their race or religion.

The Times  reports that there is a ‘riot alert’ as ‘Trojan Horse anger grows….Birmingham is braced for a backlash’

It reports a ‘Whitehall source’ saying ‘We want to make sure right-wing groups aren’t going to exploit the situation.’

There doesn’t seem to be a problem with Muslim groups exploiting the situation.

It can’t be long before politicians are loosening the purse strings and doling out yet more money to ‘deprived’ communities in order to assuage the ‘hurt feelings’ and prevent the angry youth being radicalised by nasty non-Muslim white people demonising the religion of peace.

In the Telegraph Andrew Gilligan tell us in a powerful and revealing article:

‘The Truth Catches Up With The Trojan Horse Plot’

Not on the BBC it doesn’t if ‘Dateline’ is anything to go by.

Here is the BBC’s most recent verdict from Gavin Esler on the Trojan Horse claims :

‘The education secretary Michael Gove has reacted to the row about alleged Muslim extremist infiltration of schools in Birmingham, allegations so far unproved.’

‘The allegations are so far unproved.‘??????

No…they have been proved and the evidence is vast and telling.

The BBC is deliberately misleading the public on this issue, an issue of enormous importance and impact upon the future of this country.

Once again it’s good we are funding not only Tony Hall’s pet projects but his ‘journalists’ prejudices and Pravda-like attitude towards the truth.

This is from Labour Uncut…..I leave it to you to fathom out/enlighten the rest of us what is going on with the BBC, Labour in Wales and Julian Ruck:

UNCUT: Letter from Wales: Arts Council of Wales referred to Welsh Audit Office

by Julian Ruck

BBC Wales, whilst usually being keen to report on the minutiae of its director, Rhodri Talfan Davies’ day, is apparently not so enthusiastic about broadcasting the culture of endemic greed that seethes through its nationalist hallowed corridors at Head Office, Llandaff.

On Monday, I attended the press conference at the Senate and not being inclined to exercise the habitual mealy-mouthed and pretty syntax of Welsh media sycophancy and deferential hero-worship, I well and truly went for it.

Naming and shaming BBC Wales presenters and staffers was the name of the game, exposing their taxpayer bungs and making sure certain matters were finally rubbed in to the Welsh political scene was the intention, and not to mention openly exposing all those Dick ap Turpins of artistic impersonation and poetic delusion at the Arts Council of Wales.

Mission accomplished.

Welsh politicos have already filed a report on the Arts Council of Wales with the Wales Audit Office, and if there is no satisfaction here I’m told, a Public Accounts Committee may well be the next step.

About time too!

And did any of the spineless Welsh media platforms report any of this? Like hell they did. What? Bring the Crachach into disrepute, can’t have that now can we? We’ve all got season tickets on the Taffia Express gravy train too!

So much for democratic accountability.

So much for democratic scrutiny.

This is Wales.

Wake up Ed, for God’s sake wake up and see what Welsh Labour is doing.

This is an interesting film from one of the dark corners of the BBC:

Iran’s Secret Army

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arabic/multimedia/2014/02/140219_close_up_eng_irans_secret_army_new.shtml

A map marked with crude chinagraph-pencil in the second decade of the 20th Century shows the ambition – and folly – of the 100-year old British-French plan that helped create the modern-day Middle East.  Courtesy of the BBC

Note that areas of direct control are relatively small and that the Arabian peninsular is not controlled or under the influence of either party.

The BBC, most recently in the shape of Mardell and Bowen, disregard history and context at will in order to push a particular narrative of events in the Middle East.  They should realise that the ISIS blitz is an echo from the past…a modern day recreation of the first Islamic conquests by Muhammed…..the difference being that ISIS are unlikely to succeed long term considering the number and power of its opponents should they have the will to combat them….something lacking at present in the US regime.

The reality is that what is going on now is merely a continuation of ancient internescine fighting amongst the Arabs on top of which there is the equally historic Sunni/Shia divide and conflict.

Whilst the BBC acknowledges the role that the failures of the Shia dominated Iraqi government played in creating the crisis in Iraq the BBC’s predominant narrative is that of historic British ‘folly’ being to blame for all the problems now apparent in the Middle East, compounded by the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

However things aren’t as simple as the partisan BBC’s world view of might suggest.

Bowen knows who is to blame for the ISIS attacks in Iraq:

[The Allied] invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 helped create and strengthen jihadist groups.

The trouble with that is that in 1990 Osama Bin Laden pronounced that Al Qaeda would invade Iraq and take down Saddam Hussein…..so he already had strong Jihadist forces and the intention to attack Iraq…..long before 2003.

And it is really the Arab Spring that has given the opportunity and impetus to the Jihadis to  wage such open warfare as an army rather than as terrorists riding on the back of the democratic protestors, especially in Syria….the same democratic protestors who instead of wanting to break up the nation states created by the Sykes Picot agreement want to enhance them by introducing democracy, liberty and equality.

And how does Bowen explain the Shia uprisings in Saudi Arabia?  A nation that is not a product of Sykes Picot.

Here Mark Mardell has raced to defend his fallen hero’s reputation…paradoxically firstly claiming that ‘the problem’ is ‘our’ fault, then claiming it would have happened anyway without the 2003 invasion…..which is true, Saddam after all couldn’t last forever and when he went…..:

Is Obama right over Iraq?

This is the case for the defence – although it is one that the leader of the “indispensable nation” cannot state.

US and Western intervention is unlikely to actually do much good. In fact, it created the problem in the first place.

After the first world war the imperial powers of France and Great Britain, greedy for oil, carved up the Ottoman Empire between them and created the French dominated state of Syria and the British dominated one of Iraq. The two men redrawing the map, Sykes and Picot, had little regard for what anybody on the ground felt or thought about nationality or tribe or religion.

The countries now “falling apart” were stuck together in the first place by outside powers.

Of course the Ottoman Empire had great consideration for the various ethnicities, tribes and religions, didn’t it?…..and a pan Arab empire that Mardell seems to think would have been a suitable replacement would have been similarly considerate of difference wouldn’t it?  Saudi Arabia suggests not. Mardell’s simplistic finger wagging is just lazy anti-Western rhetoric…as is his little slur ‘Greedy for oil’.….a deliberately malicious charge from Mardell that is meant to feed into the anti-Western flow of the BBC’s narrative blaming the West for everything wrong in the world….and there’s no evidence that oil was the prime motivation for the Sykes-Picot agreement.

And what of that ‘falling apart’ of countries ‘stuck together by outside powers’?

What if they hadn’t been ‘stuck together’?

What is going on now would have happened post WWI with the different tribes, ethnicities and religions left to their own devices all fighting for dominance and continuing probably until some outside force came in to bring some order and knock heads together…..under the Sykes Picot agreement we have had 90 years of nation states that held such forces in check….as Mardell admits in his own biased way:

George W Bush and Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq toppled a terrible dictator. But Saddam Hussein was a secular terrible dictator keeping a lid on forces that, unlike him, were a real threat to the US and its allies.

The BBC wants to have it all ways…and every way seems to blame the West….if they create nation states and some sort of conflict breaks out it is the fault of those who created those nation states…if they had left the Arabs to it they would have been also blamed for the subsequent conflicts that would inevitably have broken out.

And who ironically is at the centre of the terrorist surge across the world?  The one nation state that was left to control its own destiny…that which became Saudi Arabia….the main source of ideology and funding for Islamist groups around the world including here in the UK.

‘Saudi Arabia’ has long been one of the dominant forces in the Middle East as a result of firstly its own empire building and then the discovery of oil and the wealth that has funded Jihad across the world …..as well as the spread of the ideology into our own schools, universities and into the social and political minds of our own rulers as they bow down before the power of Saudi oil and increasingly close relationships with the Saudi Royal family as well as other Gulf States such as Qatar and Oman.

Almost immediately after the first World War the independent Arabs began to attack Iraq, Transjordan and Kuwait in an attempt to spread Sunni Wahhabism…sound familiar?

Here is Robert Fisk….this time he is right about one thing:

Iraq crisis: Sunni caliphate has been bankrolled by Saudi Arabia

From Aleppo in northern Syria almost to the Iraqi-Iranian border, the jihadists of Isis and sundry other groupuscules paid by the Saudi Wahhabis – and by Kuwaiti oligarchs – now rule thousands of square miles.

Of course Fisk being Fisk he has his own agenda…

We will all be told to regard the new armed “caliphate” as a “terror nation”. Abu Mohamed al-Adnani, the Isis spokesman, is intelligent, warning against arrogance, talking of an advance on Baghdad when he may be thinking of Damascus. Isis is largely leaving the civilians of Mosul unharmed.

Just as Jeremy Bowen ignores the realities of the Muslim Brotherhood Fisk finds much to like about ISIS.

As you can see blaming Britain for the Sunni/Shia conflict is utter rubbish……once again we are forced to have the news filtered through the left wing view of history where the British are responsible for all the ills of the world.

Even Boko Haram is billed by the BBC as an inevitable consequence of British colonialism (in 1903):

The word’s evolution is bound up with colonialism. In 1903 the Sokoto caliphate, which ruled parts of what is now northern Nigeria, Niger and southern Cameroon, fell under British control. It led to anger among Muslims at the imposition of a non-Islamic education system.

And here’s Mardell’s paradoxical change in attitude towards the Iraq War and the subsequent insurgency…it would have happened Iraq War or no Iraq War:

The pressure from below would have probably blown the lid off by now, perhaps with similar results to Syria.

Turmoil was coming anyway, and the Iraq war brought it a little sooner and laid the responsibility at Western doors, creating more resentment in the Islamic world, and fuelling extremism.

Remember this view doesn’t get much of a hearing – many journalists and think tankers are liberal interventionists and believe something must be done – whatever it is.

So Bush and Blair were right to invade….so says Mardell……at least with 200,000 troops on the ground they could eventually stabilise Iraq, as they did.  The mistake was to leave.  Which was Obama’s decision.

For the BBC to paint the ISIS crisis as purely the result of British or American interference in the region is dishonest, and politically motivated.  Islam, radical or not, imposed itself upon the world centuries ago before Britain and the USA were themselves genuine nation states, the Wahhabis are just a continuation of that Islamic colonisation having joined forces with the Al Saud family to conquer Arabia:

‘This alliance formed in the 18th century provided the ideological impetus to Saudi expansion and remains the basis of Saudi Arabian dynastic rule today.’

So Saudi ‘expansion’ began in the 18th century and continues today both by military force using proxy groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS and by funding Mosques, schools, universities and Islamic communal institutions around the world…including in the UK.

This is a long fought battle not the result of British or US foreign policy…certainly they play a part but not the part Bowen et al like to tell us.

As for Obama not wanting to get involved in Iraq until a political agreement is made in order to provide a stable and acceptable government to all parties…that ain’t going to happen…and whilst Obama is waiting ISIS will quite possibly take control of even more of Iraq and getting it back will be long, hard and bloody….even if possible.

To turn their backs on Iraq now will not be forgotten.  The invasion did not create this crisis…the Sunni tribes were on board politically and the insurgency was crushed…but the subsequent retreat by Obama did….along with the failures of the Maliki government to keep the Sunnis on side.

Obama either has to admit he is abandoning Iraq or he puts troops back on the ground.  If not Turkey, the Kurds and Iran will move in, the Kurds have already taken Kirkuk, Iran has its troops in Syria and Iraq on the quiet…and Saudi Arabia will be in there also.  The whole region could erupt in total war….with the not inconsiderable problems that that will be created due to oil production slowing or stopping.  The BBC will proclaim horror that oil is a consideration…but try getting your next meal from Waitrose when the delivery lorry hasn’t any fuel…then you might realise the importance of oil.

The BBC’s North America editor Mark Mardell says Mr Obama made it clear the US would not be dragged into another conflict in Iraq.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague also confirmed that the UK was not planning a British military intervention.

The price of Brent crude spiked on Friday over concerns about the ongoing violence.

The BBC’s Alan Yentob obviously didn’t get the memo…no one is supposed to know that the Mirror also hacked phones……the proper line to take is that it was Rupert Murdoch who personally hacked all the phones and more than likely did away with young Milly Dowler.

Alan Yentob takes Sunday Mirror to court over alleged phone hacking

Senior BBC executive Alan Yentob is taking the Sunday Mirror to court over alleged phone hacking.

The veteran BBC creative director, who also presents BBC1’s Imagine arts documentary strand, has lodged his compensation suit in the high court and will have a first hearing before Mr Justice Mann at 2pm on Wednesday, it has been confirmed.

It is understood that his case relates to alleged hacking between 2002 and 2004.

Yentob decided to take the action against Sunday Mirror owner Trinity Mirror after being contacted by detectives working on Operation Golding, an investigation spun off from Operation Weeting, the Metropolitan police investigation into hacking at the News of the World.

Yentob’s action is not the first civil case mounted against the Sunday Mirror.

The BBC said it was a private law suit taken by Yentob and had no further comment to make. “The BBC is not involved in this,” said a spokeswoman.

I have already mentioned that it looked like Emily Maitlis was having a dig at Gove in her report on snap Oftsed inspections but had the rug pulled from under her by a BBC reporter with a more professional approach….and the facts of course.

Guido has highlighted her tweet about Gove’s apparent little problem:

As the allegations made in the interview were total rubbish and have now been withdrawn dubbing the interview a ‘killer interview’ might be seen as a bit of wishful thinking and might make you suspect that some at the BBC are more concerned either with getting Gove and/or with getting a heavyweight political scalp on their CV rather than informing the viewers in a measured and accurate manner of the facts.

Newsnight more showbizz and eye catching stunts than considered journalism?

According to research Britain’s under 30’s are more inclined to lean to the right politically…the BBC in its radio trailer for a programme on this thought this might be a bit of a problem and have set out to investigate.

Generation Right

It’s a commonplace thought that the young start their lives as idealistic left-wingers, only to become more conservative with age. But are today’s twenty-somethings going to debunk that as a myth? Extensive polling shows that in many respects, young people now are to the political right of their parents and grandparents when they were young. Their attitudes often appear characterised by a buccaneering individualism, a suspicion of collectivism and a greater scepticism towards the state.

Declan Harvey of Newsbeat and a team of young journalists examine the implications and ask what it might mean for the welfare state, social institutions and the political landscape in the future.

The programme is just an excuse to target all the favourite bête noires of the left…individualism, the consumer society, the right wing media…oh and thinks that the decline in ‘collectivist norms’ may also be to blame…since when has communism been the ‘norm’ here?….’here’ being outside the BBC bubble.

‘It looks at the possible suggested causes, from the impact of policies which have reduced the level of support young people receive from the state, media coverage of the benefits system, the general decline in collectivist norms since the late 1970s, the rise of the consumer culture, to the role of social media which put the life and social interactions of the individual at the centre of everything.’

The BBC is worried about the rise of what is obviously the next Hitler Youth who will abandon the vulnerable and workless to heartless payday loan companies, who will throw them out of social housing to live on the  mean streets of London now lined with spikes to fend of the verminous homeless and it’ll be a toss up whether granny dies from lack of food or by freezing to death under this callous, uncaring, uncharitable regime.

Yes the BBC is concerned that the youth will vote for the ‘nasty’ Tories….who can doubt we will now see a raft of programming targeted at such ‘youth’ with the aim of re-educating them, with rebalancing their obviously juvenile and immature prejudices and encouraging them to look on life in a more humane, understanding and compassionate, left wing way.

In all seriousness the BBC has completely lost the plot.  This is a highly political programme that insults, denigrates and maligns those with right wing views, treating them as if they are a problem.

What editor thought this might be a good idea in the run up to an election to be pumping out what amounts to left wing propaganda berating these young people for not taking the same line as the sanctimonious and self-righteous worthies of the BBC?

The Independent has this interesting look at Sky as it positions itself to take on the BBC’s news service:

The BBC was impervious to the launch of Sky News. Now they have to take notice

Twenty-five years after the rolling news channel went on air, its editor is in buoyant mood and ready to take some pot shots of his own at rivals in the TV news game.

In 30 years in the business, Ryley has worked for all three of these broadcasters, with the past 19 at Sky. He was a BBC trainee when Rupert Murdoch and his cohorts launched the channel in 1989. “The attitude in the BBC at the time wasn’t even dismissive,” he recalls. “It was that it didn’t really matter and would have very little impact on British television news.”

The BBC News division – which is facing £20m budget cuts and the loss of up to 500 journalists – cannot afford to be complacent about Sky News now. Ryley knows that it’s a good time to strike – with Newsnight in a period of transition after its recent traumatic history

Whilst it’s good to see Sky News prosper and grow we do still need an independent, impartial public broadcaster which will tackle big and difficult subjects without fear or favour such as immigration or the possible Islamification of Europe, never mind challenging all political parties with equal vigour and a relentless search for the truth even when confronted by a supposed consensus.

Of course that is perhaps just a pipedream at the moment, the BBC being irrefutably left wing and still prepared to mobilise against the likes of UKIP when so moved.

For the BBC to choose to reduce its journalistic output, even if decidedly leftleaning, would be a mistake that would have serious impact on its services.

Why choose to reduce what is its core responsibility and yet keep on the Asian network or its digital channels for example which don’t have anywhere near the significance of the news gathering and reporting ability of the BBC as of now?

Whilst the BBC needs to sort out its problems with impartiality, the lack thereof, I agree with the Independent that (the Mason comment aside)…..

We need a BBC with plenty of bite

Ahead of Charter Renewal negotiations, the BBC must not pull in its journalistic teeth. The signs of late have not been great, as troublemakers Jeremy Paxman and Panorama editor Tom Giles have stepped down. The BBC has already lost cage-rattling reporters such as Michael Crick and Paul Mason.

Editorial mistakes could be damaging at this delicate stage of the BBC’s history, but the organisation must avoid becoming risk averse. It must support its investigative teams in the face of powerful subjects – from heads of corporations to leaders of big charities – who might try to undermine their work by going over the heads of journalists in private appeals to BBC executives.

There is real concern in the newsroom of a chilling effect, as emerged after the Hutton crisis in 2004. We need the BBC to be bold.

‘Thoughtful’ has castigated me for not understanding that the extremist hijackers of Birmingham schools are in fact just Muslims merely following their religion….I had thought that such a narrative had been the central theme of the oft repeated posts on this site that examined and disputed the BBC’s , and the ‘Establishment’s’, own interpretation of Islam, that it is the ‘religion of peace’, that those who follow a fundamentalist belief in Islam are distorting or perverting it, and all the time happily ignoring the conflicting values of ‘everyday’, allegedly moderate Islam with those of a democratic, secular, progressive society.

How many times have I quoted Mark Steyn saying that the problem with the ‘extremists’ is not that they are extreme but that they are following the divine directives of their religion?….that’s why they are ‘fundamentalists’…they adhere to the fundamental laws.

This from the Guardian is the classic BBC position on Islam:

Failure to distinguish adequately between Islam and Islamism, and between Islamists and ordinary Muslims, has important consequences. It plays into the hands of Islamists by accepting their own narrative that their politicised understanding of Islam represents the “true” Islam. It can also lead non-Muslims to assume that all Muslims harbour – perhaps secretly – the totalitarian aspirations of Islamism.

Steyn, and ‘Thoughtful’,  are of course correct about ‘extremists’ and the above attitude is wrong….Islam is political and always has been…’Islamism’ wasn’t invented by Tariq Ramadan’s grandpa in the ’30’s, a response to Western colonialism, as we are so often told,  it was invented by Mohammed 1400 years ago.

The surprising fact is the BBC has now started to raise the question of that conflict of values, the ‘clash of cultures’ that has long been denied.

Here they say that the Trojan Horse allegations have altered the narrative that we can’t question Islamic values…‘a defining moment in multi-cultural Britain‘ (at least for now)….

Seven years ago, the future Education Secretary Michael Gove wrote that “there is something rather un-British about seeking to define Britishness“.

He argued that Britishness was something best demonstrated through action rather than described in abstract terms.

And that’s why the state of a small number of predominantly Muslim schools in Birmingham, and how the government and other bodies propose to change them, may turn out to be one of the defining moments in modern multicultural Britain.

An example of that change in direction is one taken by the BBC itself perhaps.  On the Today programme last Saturday (08:33) the über Liberal Justin Webb rather astounded me by raising the question of cultural values (08:36:50) and asks where do you draw the line when deciding when ‘cultural conservatism’ is to be considered ‘extreme’…in other words when does ‘meeting the needs of Muslims’ start becoming toleration of extreme religious views…extreme in relation to British values, culture and law.

Labour’s Tristram Hunt stated clearly that Islamic education was not acceptable in British schools.  Webb said it was a minefield…one the BBC has long avoided I might add.

The problem with Islam is that there is no separation of church and state or indeed of any sphere of personal life…there is no line to draw….a Muslim therefore always looks to try and reshape the world to fit in with his beliefs…whether it is in schools, food or the work place or indeed foreign policy…..and hence will always be in some level of conflict with the non-believer.

Hopefully the attitude to discussing Islam is changing in the UK and a discussion about ‘Islam’ and whether it is compatible or not with Western secular, democratic values can begin without the attempts to avoid the difficult questions and the resultant answers and the usual denouncements of anyone who criticises Islam as racist and islamophobic.

The discussion is important and urgent…..can a social democratic Europe survive a mass population transformation as Muslims migrate here in increasing numbers and assume political power?

Steyn says if you want immigrants to integrate you have to have something to assimilate to…British culture has to be sufficiently confident to impose itself, to believe in itself…but how do you do that as a population has a rising number of Muslims who may not want to conform to the norm?

“A big chunk of Western civilization, consciously or otherwise, has given the impression that it’s dying to surrender to somebody, anybody. Reasonably enough, Islam figures: Hey, why not us?”

Norman Tebbit agrees with the BBC assertion that the Trojan Horse affair maybe ‘one of the defining moments in modern multicultural Britain’…saying the ‘elephant of multiculturalism is out of its corner.’

Tebbit makes some powerful and uncomfortable, for some, comments about immigration and the likelihood of rival societies, ‘mini-Pakistans’,  being established in the UK:

The unmannerly squabble between Theresa May and Micheal Gove is bad enough in itself, but it has now brought the elephant of multiculturalism  out of the corner  and on to centre stage. 

No one should have been surprised at what was going on in schools in Birmingham. It is precisely what I was talking about over 20 years ago and Enoch Powell was warning against long before that. We have imported far too many immigrants who have come here not to live in our society, but to replicate here the society of their homelands.

This is not a tirade against migration from the EU, which we are largely unable to control, but from the rest of the world, which we could have controlled if we had had the will to do so. However, even if suddenly the inward flow of those unwilling to adapt their society to ours were to be entirely cut off, it might  already be too late to prevent the establishment of enclaves in which our values are treated with contempt, while foreign values and even laws are promoted.

It is certainly true that nature abhors a vacuum and with the decline of Christianity leaving the structure of our values system with no foundation there is now a great emptiness in our society. The doctrine of multiculturalism is a nonsense. A society is defined by its culture, and rival cultures are bound to create rival societies within the same territory. That is what has now been forced into public view in Birmingham.

Of course a tolerant dominant culture has no problem in tolerating minority groups. Neither Judaism nor Buddhism are a threat to Christianity in Britain, but if our society loses confidence in its value system, it will not long remain dominant.

For all the shouting and finger-pointing at Westminster, particularly that from the Labour Party – which bears responsibility for destabilising British society by its policy of unlimited, unrestricted, uncounted immigration fanned by unlimited welfare spending – I do not see any evidence yet that the scale of the problem is recognised, let alone that there is a realistic plan to deal with it

And what would be my advice?  Well I feel like the Irishman asked by a stranger the best way to Dublin: “I wouldn’t start from here if I were you.”