It is remarkable that a document, Meeting the needs of Muslim pupils in state schools (save to open), written by someone now central to the claims about a ‘Muslim Trojan Horse’ plot to Islamise schools is now ignored by the BBC….the document proves that this person had the intent to Islamise schools….and yet the BBC instead prefers to suggest another document professing the same Islamising agenda is fake in an attempt to undermine the credibility of the reports.

To report on the 2007 document would just confirm the Trojan Horse allegations are true and that a so-called moderate body, the MCB,  that represents the Muslim community in the UK, and a frequent guest on the BBC, was at the heart of that operation.

That might suggest that the MCB is not so ‘moderate’ nor to be trusted….. and it might then be difficult for the BBC to pass off Islam as a ‘moderate religion’ if schools adopting  its basic practices are dubbed victims of an extremist, Islamist plot.

Best not to report it then…..as ‘Is the BBC biased’ says….the BBC’s coverage of the same story can appear to come from somewhere unique to the BBC. Somewhere strange.

We had a look at this earlier:

Trojan Horse, Spartan Facts

Now Andrew Gilligan in the Telegraph has a look at the 2007 MCB document:

Guide to school Islamisation, by ‘ringleader’ of Trojan Horse plot

School governor who is alleged ringleader of the Trojan Horse plot in Birmingham wrote 72-page document on manipulating teachers and curriculum

Just a reminder of what a small world it is, a very incestuous world where Politics and the Media mix and are increasingly hard to tell apart.

Sue Inglish is the BBC’s  Head of Political Programmes, Analysis and Research

This is from BBC journo Nick Jones who is keen to see the licence fee retained and ‘to explore the factors that led executives to detach themselves from the ethos of a public service financed by a compulsory licence fee,‘ but has some other interesting thoughts on the BBC:

How did the BBC end up being controlled by so many selfish and incompetent executives? For me the starting point has to be the challenge the Corporation faced in adjusting to the rapid expansion of radio and TV services during Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. Opening up the airwaves to competition and loosening the stranglehold of the BBC-ITV duopoly were steps which helped to create and then sustain the vitality of the vibrant broadcasting industry we have today. But the well-ordered structures of Auntie could not always cope with the repercussions of a Thatcherite free-for-all; new services came and went as ratings and market forces eroded the hitherto certainties of the BBC and a commercial TV monopoly that had originally been dubbed a “licence to print money”.

Rather than proclaim openly and publicly what the BBC required from licence fee negotiations, Birt and his acolytes preferred to deal directly but privately with the government of the day, adviser to adviser, strategist to strategist – a process that accelerated once Tony Blair was elected prime minister and their appointees became part of a revolving and self-perpetuating web of advisers, lobbyists and the like.

Perhaps a final word should go to Margaret Hodge, chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, who has urged Hall and Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, to redouble their efforts to establish clearer lines of accountability. She had her own explanation for the National Audit Office’s calculation that in the three years to 2012 the BBC gave severance payments to 150 senior members totalling £25m, half the budget of Radio 4:

“They failed to understand they were dealing with licence fee payers’ money. There was a culture at the top where people had known each other for years and years. They probably came in together as graduate trainees and it seemed right they should look after each other when they lost their jobs, giving out lots of public money in unacceptably high pay offs”

A perspective on Israeli military action that you won’t hear from Al Beeb (From Tom Gross):

Video dispatch 21: Al-Jazeera: Why can’t Arab armies be more humane like Israel’s?

“Why don’t they learn from the Israeli army which tries, through great efforts, to avoid shelling areas populated by civilians in Lebanon and Palestine?

I attach a remarkable new video from Al-Jazeera (the Arabic version of al-Jazeera) in which the presenter, Faisal Al-Qaseem, asks his audience why Arab armies (and in particular the Iranian proxy organization Hizbullah) can’t act in a more humane way to civilians, like the Israeli and French militaries do. The discussion took place on one of the channel’s flagship live discussion shows, The Opposite Direction. (The guest in the video on the right, Mr Muhammed, also agrees with him.)

Among the questions posed on air:

“Why don’t they learn from the Israeli army which tries, through great efforts, to avoid shelling areas populated by civilians in Lebanon and Palestine? Didn’t Hezbollah take shelter in areas populated by civilians because it knows that Israeli air force doesn’t bomb those areas? Why doesn’t the Syrian army respect premises of universities, schools or inhabited neighborhoods? Why does it shell even the areas of its supporters? …

“I will also give you the example of France. All Syrians remember that the French forces, when they occupied Syria tried to avoid, when rebels entered mosques or schools, they stopped. The people would prefer that France come back! For god’s sake, if a referendum were to be held… if people were to be asked, who would you prefer the current regime or the French, I swear by God they would have preferred the French.”

“The Israeli army, if it wanted to break up a demonstration, would have used water cannons or rubber bullets, not rockets or explosive barrels as happens in Aleppo today.

“You mustn’t compare the Syrian army with French or Israeli… The Israeli army didn’t shell Aleppo University and students there. They didn’t shell the university with rockets killing dozens of students… The Israelis or the French didn’t kill their people. Please tell me how many of their people did the French army kill?”

***

You can watch the video below. One wonders when Western news outlets, such as The Guardian and BBC, which day after day single out Israel for denigration, will be as honest as this al-Jazeera anchor and studio guest?

You might have thought it strange that the independent BBC is a member of the CBI….but it was, still is in fact for now:

Thanks to #88 who draw my attention to the snakelike Andy Burnham….who lives by the motto that in every disaster there is opportunity.

Burnham, he who ducks and dives when questioned about Stafford Hospital, has suddenly found the time to be ‘outraged’ about something…the altering of the Hillsborough Wikipedia page….and the BBC are happy to give him plenty of …er…rope you might call it……..

In fact the BBC joins in with his mad conspiracy theories about this as he suggests it goes all the way to the top.

The BBC presenter asks ‘Given the location of the computer just how damaging do you think this is?’

Talk about a leading question….how damaging to whom exactly?  The present government? Why is this damaging to government at all…it’s just some herbert with time on his hand and a grievance…..it’s not MI5.

Burnham tells us that this is coming from ‘the heart of government….who’d have thought the authorities could stoop so low in their treatment of Hillsborough victims and survivors…sickening and appalling that someone within government could aim this type of abuse at them….and it shows what I have been up against from government and the Establishment…it may have been a rogue individual but perhaps it is more than that….but it shows just how high up those attitudes went!’

The man is barking…the same man who blocked a public inquiry into Stafford Hospital now complains about the ‘Establishment’ conspiring to silence him.

Here’s the BBC giving credence to his madness:

The BBC is employing that old trick of hyping and hyping a very dubious allegation and making loose associations with whomsoever it is targeting, in this case the present government, knowing that mud sticks whatever the final outcome….perhaps it was merely a cleaner in a government office but the BBC, and Burnham, would no doubt be happy if David Cameron is dragged into this in whatever capacity and have his name suddenly mentioned alongside such allegations smearing him however tenuous the link.

Today the BBC announced that a report that someone, from 2009 to 2012, using a government computer, had altered the Hillsborough tragedy’s Wikipedia page  adding insults to it, was the BBC’s lead story.

Indeed it did seem to be so with a not inconsiderable amount of coverage for what might seem a small story in the scale of things…though naturally distressing to the families….. though the abuse was removed almost immediately from the page when posted.

The Liverpool Echo broke the story:

Exclusive: Shocking Hillsborough insults added on Wikipedia from Government computers

A series of sickening revisions to the site began on the 20th anniversary of the 1989 tragedy, when “Blame Liverpool fans” was anonymously added to the Hillsborough section of the encyclopedia site.

Computers on Whitehall’s secure intranet were used again in 2012 to change the phrase “You’ll never walk alone” to “You’ll never walk again” and later “You’ll never w*** alone.”

The words “nothing for the victims of the Heysel stadium disaster” were also added to a description of the Hillsborough memorial at the Reds’ stadium.

The BBC, as said, has been highlighting this all day.  This is its web page:

Hillsborough Wikipedia posts: Government pledges ‘urgent inquiries’

I have heard only a single mention of Heysel…in a text message read out on 5 Live suggesting we don’t forget it….that suggestion didn’t spark any interest in the presenter and was indeed instantly forgotten.  It was rare to hear a mention at all during the BBC’s coverage of Hillsborough recently.

Hillsborough seems to have caught the BBC’s imagination….no doubt who was in government at the time, the police mistakes and coverup, and Murdoch Sun’s infamous frontpage all contributing to it being so keen to keep this one running.

No headlines or lead story from the BBC about this…not hard to find the culprit…or which ‘government office’ seems to find it OK:

Or how about the BBC’s own involvement in a ‘disrespectful’ insult….remember ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is dead’ chart manipulation after Mrs Thatcher’s death?……..

“The BBC finds this campaign distasteful, but does not believe the record should be banned.

BBC director general Tony Hall said: “I understand the concerns about this campaign. I personally believe it is distasteful and inappropriate.

“However, I do believe it would be wrong to ban the song outright as free speech is an important principle and a ban would only give it more publicity.”

However even the Guardian thinks it may have gone too far in some of its coverage of Hillsborough:

Mix and Match of the Day turns tragedy to cliche

Adam Curtis did a brilliant piece on Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe on BBC4 last week about “Oh Dearism”, the trend for television news to show shocking events about which we can do nothing but feel helpless and sad, and to which the only possible reaction is “Oh dear”.

I wonder if anybody in BBC Sport saw it. I only ask because Saturday’s Football Focus and Match Of The Day used the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster to indulge in the kind of crass grief tourism that has become a media staple since Princess Diana’s death.

Had the coverage dealt with this issue, there might have been some point to it, but interviews with the parents of two teenage girls who died on the terraces were there merely to fill our eyes with pointless tears. It is a kind of pornography. Anybody who knows anybody who has lost a child to sudden death or can imagine what it might be like to lose one’s own knows how unspeakably sad it must be. But what can you do, other than say, “Oh dear?”

At Heysel in Belgium in 1985 (May 29) Liverpool fans caused 39 deaths and around 600 injuries…so just a reminder to put things in perspective:

Just a few days earlier on May 11 Bradford City’s stadium burst into flames…in the 5 minutes one stand took to burn to the ground 56 people died and 250 were injured despite the best efforts of police officers to rescue many stricken fans putting themselves at great risk to do so.

Bradford fire: forgotten tragedy of the Eighties

“All of a sudden, a sheet of flame went up to the roof and along the entire length of the stand. Within five minutes of it starting, the whole stand was burnt down. In fact, I think it was timed at 4min 35sec. The strong wind was fanning it from the end where the blaze had started.

“It didn’t receive much comment at the time, but the roof was bitumen, with slats, and as the flames ran along the top of the stand the bitumen started melting and falling on the people below. People were coming out of there with their hair and clothes singed and big drops of bitumen all over them.

The tragedy lacked both the global reach of Heysel – a European Cup final, between Liverpool and Juventus – and the outrage and sense of injustice that came with the Hillsborough disaster. Bradford was commonly regarded as a product of widespread ignorance about general safety at football grounds, and the lethal combustibility of wooden seats (there was an echo here, in wider society, with the King’s Cross fire -itself blamed on the presence of wooden escalators on the London Underground).

With Bradford there was no stampede by drunk and belligerent fans (Heysel), and no policing or stewarding issues of the sort that keeps the Hillsborough Campaign in sad and grinding motion to this day. Put the three calamities side by side and you wonder how football ever emerged from the Eighties. With so many dead in four short years, our national game had become a killing field. The Popplewell and Taylor reports into Bradford and Hillsborough, respectively, were among the most important social documents of our times.

A low key look by the BBC’s Gavin Hewitt at probably one of the most important and interesting questions in politics at the moment:

Europe braces for first EU-wide vote since 2008 crash

In many countries this will be a referendum on the European project.

Many voters will have the chance to support parties disenchanted with Brussels and all its powers. The last few years have seen the rise of anti-establishment parties both from the left and right, some nationalist, some extreme and most of them drawing their support from being Eurosceptic and anti-immigration.

So the battle will be fought less over the minutiae of policy but in broad strokes about Europe itself.

The elections matter and not just because of the growing power of the parliament. The vote touches on deeper questions about the health of democracy, such as whether the governing elites are perceived as on the side of the people or their own political ideas. Is there a decline in political trust between the governed and those in power?

Despite a couple of slights against UKIP and the Front National and some praise for the EU such as this….

The European Parliament, although often derided, is a much more important institution than it used to be. Only last week it was taking important steps towards banking union, voting on greater transparency for lobbyists and setting up a new European Fisheries Fund.

….the article raises that important question about the EU’s democratic legitimacy and how accountable it is to the voters.

However it only does so in a general way with fairly abstract suggestions of concerns about democracy or identity….or ‘the fears of the workers’.

The question is how much further down this line of inquiry will the BBC go? 

Here it raises those questions:

For the disillusioned this is not just a chance to cast an angry cross or tick against austerity. For many it goes much deeper. It is about insecurity and identity….ordinary workers are not just wary of further immigration but suspicious of an elite that does not address their fears.

…..but will it do the usual and dismiss them as just that, unjustified ‘fears’…. fuelled by extremist tub thumping politicians whipping up public anger and discontent?

Or, will it give credence to people’s concerns and accept them as legitimate rather than dismissing concerns about immigration as racist, or  people who might want to control the sovereignty of their own country are ‘little Englanders’ dreaming of a mythical lost past in a non-existent ‘golden age’ of Britishness?

Naturally no mention of the BBC as a large and important part of that ‘elite’ providing the propaganda that props up the privileged and unaccountable EU cabal.

The usually reliable Sheila Fogarty yesterday makes you doubt the BBC will ever change.

Talking about UKIP and its posters she asked (12:25) a UKIP spokeswoman if she didn’t see that there could be,  not saying there is, Fogarty assures us, a correlation between posters like that and racist attacks…and if not could she explain why she thought not.

So the default position is that UKIP generates racist attacks….and UKIP must defend/explain itself.

Fogarty had previously had on some ‘Brits’ to talk about their ‘fears’ on immigration. It was the usual BBC trick of only asking white working class people to comment and therefore limiting the concerns about immigration to a small ‘suspect’ group….and they are ‘suspect’ in the BBC’s eyes…often portrayed as prejudiced and racist due to their ignorance and, well, horrible whiteness..all white people are inherently racist.  Thus such concerns can be dismissed as the result of prejudice and ignorance.

The one immigrant they brought in was a Romanian, of course, who ran a building business apparently..and ‘had never claimed benefits in her life’…..Of course we just have to take such claims on trust….and judging by the BBC’s past record that’s not a good idea.

Trouble is….she is far from typical…how that one immigrant can be presented to us as typical and representative of the 4 millon who have come here in the last decade is hard to imagine.

Where are the unemployed, where are the unskilled, where are the workers undercutting British workers, where are the criminals who fill our prisons, where are the people crowding the schools and NHS, where are those who do claim benefits?

The BBC didn’t see fit to make an example of those immigrants.

Fogarty didn’t let us down, or rather she did…asking later ‘are the people who complain about immigration are necessarily right?’

The BBC is always on hand to ‘prove’ just how wrong you are on immigration.

A couple of Tweets from Roger that shed new light on ‘science’ and certainty:

So Roger thinks ‘expert groups’ may be lying to us about just how certain they are about their projections…due to the politics…and Roger himself objects to claims of ‘certainty’ or over confidence in ‘the numbers’….though not when economist Stern tells us we are all going to die in 100 months or so….. but when ‘maverick’ Professor Tol (the green’s new hate figure) Tweets some ‘green’ figures about the costs of global warming suddenly certainty is a questionable virtue.

So the next time the climate lobby tell us global warming may not be scientifically proven beyond all doubt but the risks of not doing anything are just too great to ignore it…..think on…..they’re probably lying.

Sorry about the title but I think I can’t really take much more of his low brow, lightweight,  twaddle….considering the job he is supposed to do.

Thanks to Dave S who pointed out this from Robinson:

UKIP immigration policy – the wife test

On a day when Nigel Farage launched a nationwide poster campaign warning that millions of Europeans were waiting to take your job, I asked him why he employed a German as his secretary….to my amazement the UKIP leader told me “nobody else could do that job”.

But is that because she is German?

Robinson take a cheap shot at Farage:

NR: No British person could work for you as your secretary?

NF: Not at the moment.

NR: You don’t think anyone’s capable of doing that job?

NF: What, of marrying me?

NR: No. Of doing the job of your secretary.

NF: I don’t know anyone who would work those hours, no.

NR: So that’s it. It’s clear – UKIP do not believe that any British person is capable of being the secretary of their leader?

NF: That’s nonsense and you know it.

NR: You just said it!

The problem with Robinson’s line of questioning and his conclusion, that Farage says no British person could be his secretary, is its complete facetiousness.

What Farage is saying is that no one but his wife could do the job because of the hours worked….his wife just happens to be German…married to that well known xenophobe Nigel Farage.

What Farage  is not saying is that no British person could do that job….so when Robinson concludes….

NR: So that’s it. It’s clear – UKIP do not believe that any British person is capable of being the secretary of their leader?

NF: That’s nonsense and you know it.

NR: You just said it!

…he is, the BBC’s top political journo mind you, making shit up.

When asking Farage how many immigrants could be a fair number to let in Robinson reports this:

So, what numbers would be acceptable? Mr Farage was reluctant to say but eventually suggested that between 30,000 and 50,000 immigrants a year might be the right figure (compared with well over 100,000 net migration now).

Another little trick….’net’ migration or not?  Is Farage saying 50,000 net or gross?  Big difference.  Sure the BBC’s top political journo isn’t trying to pull the wool over our eyes…again?

Robinson states that ‘As for immigration – the key issue of his election campaign – Mr Farage is calling for a “sensible, open immigration policy” in which Britain would “re-claim control of her borders”.’

In other words Farage is not demanding zero immigration but ‘a sensible, managed immigration system’.

In other words Robinson is trying to use the fact he employs his ‘German’ wife against him and claim it is evidence of hypocrisy is highly misleading by Robinson.

Here Robinson tries to write off Farage as someone not to be taken seriously (though the intensive attempts to malign and undermine him might indicate he is a serious threat to ‘their’ world):

His point, apparently, was that only his wife Kirsten – who as he often reminds us is German – would be prepared to work unsociable hours, seven days a week, helping him at “midnight, one o’clock, two o’clock”.

As so often, the UKIP leader was trying to make me and all those listening smile along with him. He’s an amusing and likeable guy and often I’ve done just that, but on this occasion I was determined to press on.

Farage explained exactly why he employs his wife and why it would be difficult for anyone else to do the job other than his wife…Robinson decides that’s a joke….but being the professional, hardnosed reporter that he is he determines to press on and get the real story.

Thank God for BBC investigative journalism  at  its best bringing us the dirt they don’t want us to see!

Robinson’s conclusion is that:

Mr Farage’s decision to employ his wife at public expense highlights two important questions he and his party now face – about what their immigration policy means in practice and their attitude to public money.

Really?  In what way does employing his German wife highlight anything about his immigration policy except in Robinson’s own little concoction of a story trying to nail Farage for something, anything…..it’ll be passive smoking from Farage’s cigarettes poisoning next door’s ‘immigrant’ children next.

And what does this mean?

You employ a German woman to work in your office. She happens to be your wife. She happens to spend many hundreds of thousands of British taxpayers’ money. How do you justify that?

Perhaps Robinson might like to explain that fabrication.

We’ve also had Robinson’s sycophantic interview with Miliband.

We’ve had Robinson’s less than informative report on the Farage-Clegg debate….Farage v Clegg – the verdict.

Is there any point to Nick Robinson?    I suppose we learn a lot from the BBC’s decision to employ him at public expense which highlights two important questions he and the BBC must now face – what do any of Robinson’s reports actually tell us in practice, if anything, about the world of politics, and the BBC’s attitude to public money as they squander it on him.