From Our Own Correspondent rolls on in its own inimical style.

FOOC had a little report on the Holocaust and education in Israel…it started off as if it was just a human interest story bringing us the lives of Israelis and the meaning perhaps of the Holocaust and how it still touches their lives….much as the BBC brings us the  heartwarming or heartstring plucking tales from Palestinians or asylum seekers.

You soon realised that was not to be here…as soon as the BBC stated that there was a ‘row’ over the Holocaust education you knew what had attracted the BBC’s attention to this story.

The BBC gleefully tells  us that Holocaust education in Israel is traumatising children.

Those Jews eh!

But hold the frontpage…..there is actually, for once, a good news story on the BBC about Israel….

Start-up nation

Rory Cellan-Jones on Israel’s new wave of tech innovators

I’m in Israel for four days, visiting what’s been called the “start-up nation” to film a piece which will be shown on BBC World in mid February. But along the way I’m going to give some random first impressions of what I’ve seen on my travels.

Will be interesting to see the overall tone of the finished programme.

And finally from FOOC we have Chris Bockman in Toulouse who discovers that the municipal bathhouse has become a virtual community centre.

Bockman manages to slip in a ‘fact’ that it is now the ‘working poor’ who use the public showers now as they are too poor to own a home.

I’m sure France is awash with ‘working poor’ living in their cars as he suggests…but then that would be the result of Hollande’s economic policies….as recommended by our very own Ed Miliband.

No coincidence this littlesnippet reminding us of the plight of the poverty stricken working poor came in the week that Jonathan Freedland was banging away about it on his programme on Tuesday and then surprise surprise Miliband raises the subject in PMQs.

Nothing like keeping a narrative running however under the radar the ‘nudges’ might be.

Here’s the BBC’s take on the economy:

We’ve got some really good growth….but it’s based on Services….which means ‘consumer spending’ the BBC tells us…which, as consumers have no money (cost of living crisis!) and no savings, must be funded by borrowing…which is unsustainable…therefore the recovery is built on sand….it’s the wrong sort of growth!

Trouble is…’Services’ doesn’t just consist of Retail…Services are an industry in their own right…We were told they don’t produce anything today by a BBC ‘expert’ journo….which of course is bollocks….what would you call software (Microsoft), art, music, media, education, mechanics, designers, architects….even journalists?  They all produce a product….and apart from that, ‘Services’ must service something…presumably at the request of somebody who needs them…..like ‘Industry’ which produces the physical products….which might suggest those industries are also picking up.

And as for ‘Retail’…well it has to sell something…therefore it has to have a product…one made in a factory, designed by someone, transported by a man in a lorry, put on the shelves by shop staff…and as for the money to buy it…who says it comes from borrowing?…where is the BBC’s proof?  So far it seems just a statement of ‘fact’ based purely on wishful thinking (on Mickey Clark’s part) and speculation.

Never mind that retail isn’t booming to any great extent….we heard that people are still being very careful with their money and doing their research for the best prices before buying…doesn’t sound like an irresponsible rush to bankruptcy does it?

Curiously the BBC (and Labour) ignore the businesses that say, and have been saying for a longtime now, that in fact they are doing very well thankyou and they think the future looks bright.

Phone in after phone in on the BBC businesses say they are doing well….I haven’t heard a  negative one yet.

And what of that great employment puzzle that the BBC always raised to cast doubt on the ever rising employment figures (as well as dismissing them as part time, temporary, or low grade)?  You know, the BBC says….it is just inexplicable that employment is going up in a such a terrible recession.

They did speculate momentarily that it could be that the economy was in fact doing much better than the figures suggested…but they laughed that off.

The answer they decided was that industry was unproductive, underperforming.

But that raises the question, yes employers might want to keep on skilled staff on lower wages (which of course means they are still productive…as costs go down), but why would they employ more if they were already so unproductive with underemployed staff?

The answer of course, if the BBC had cared to ask, is that many businesses were doing well and so not only kept on staff but employed more…and new businesses started up also employing more people.

Today we heard of a website design company that started up in 2009, right at the heart of the bust…..it initially employed 4 people…so that’s 4 to start with…it now employs 13.

How many more of these small companies stared up and succeeded…must be many out there providing those ‘mysterious’ jobs?

The BBC didn’t bother seeking out the answer because it didn’t suit the narrative that the employment figures, and the economic success that suggested was all smoke and mirrors about to collapse as Plan A and Austerity ‘kills the patient’ as Evan Davis (amongst others at the BBC) kept telling us it would.

What really amuses me is that Micky Clark on Wake Up To Money bangs on relentlessly that this is a recovery based on low interest rates and easy credit funding an unsustainable consumer boom and a housing bubble….which he tells us  ‘is what led to the recession in the first place’….you can question his analysis of the present growth but he ain’t wrong about the cause of Labour’s ‘Great Recession’….and it wasn’t the fabled Cable’s ‘Casino Investment Banks’…it was retail banks (like RSB and Northern Rock) lending out too much money and doling out cheap mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them, here and in the US, who laid the foundations for the bust.

…the truth is out there then……but strange he never mentions who was responsible for all that cheap credit and slack regulation of the financial services.

Yesterday the BBC, in the shape of Victoria Derbyshire, was plugging the Mumsnet campaign for compulsory sex education in schools….targeting Free Schools and Academies…which immediately raises some suspicions as to what is really behind this….no mention of Labour…just a ‘group of campaigners’.

Justine Roberts, founder of Mumsnet, was leading the charge.  Here is Justine Roberts, with Labour’s Yvette Cooper in September last year co-ordinating Labour’s childcare policies:

At this Resolution Foundation and Mumsnet event Yvette Cooper MP (Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Minister for Women and Equality) discussed the Labour agenda for the future of childcare. Vidhya Alakeson (Resolution Foundation), Anand Shukla (Family and Childcare Trust) and Justine Roberts (Mumsnet) responded, providing insights into the potential policy responses Labour might choose to pursue. Yvonne Roberts (The Observer) chaired this event.

Today we find out about this:

Labour: ‘Make sex and relationships education compulsory in schools and update teaching guidance’

   By Yvette Cooper, MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford

7:00AM GMT 28 Jan 2014

Co-ordinating with Mumsnet?  Note the date of Cooper’s meeting with Justine Roberts….

The future of childcare with Yvette Cooper MP

Date: 23 September 2013

Then look at this announcement

Yvette Cooper: Labour would update sex education to include ‘zero tolerance’ of violence in relationships

2:59PM BST 25 Sep 2013

Yesterday Justine Roberts is kicking off her campaign and today Labour are on board.

Not a coincidence I’d suggest.

Nice of the BBC to provide a platform for a Labour policy announcement, though forgetting to announce that it is a Labour Party policy.

And yesterday we also had a Labour front ‘think tank’, the Centre for Cities’, given priority in the news for its misleading story of ‘unbalanced’ growth as London booms and the regions bump along….this morning strangely enough the BBC was looking at how the regions are doing economically.

No doubt we can expect a Labour policy announcement on regional development and growth shortly.

Rainbows only come out in the rain…UKIP maybe onto something:

Evan Davis played this, admittedly very funny, spoof of a shipping forecast (from about 1:26):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVOX_U3s8lQ

Andrew Neil, God bless his little heart, allowed Farage a response…also very funny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nmXFY8XZtI

This morning the BBC were trumpeting on the radio some research by a think tank called ‘Centre For Cities’ that said London was growing much faster than other UK cities as the much vaunted ‘Recovery’ left them behind as economic also-rans…presumably hinting they were being ignored or abandoned by the Government.

The BBC said it was an independent think tank, but admitted that it had been set up by Labour peer Lord Sainsbury…the man who donated nearly £20 million to Labour.

Apparently…. Centre for Cities was launched in March 2005 as part of IPPR and became independent in November 2007.

So independent of the IPPR now…Labour’s very own think tank?

The Chief Executive of Centre for Cities is……

Alexandra Jones

Chief Executive

Alexandra worked as a private secretary for the Permanent Secretary at the former Department for Education and Skills and as a researcher at the Institute for Public Policy Research.

What’s odd, apart from the ‘independent’ label is that after trumpeting this ‘research’ early on in the day, it being the lead story on the news bulletins, it suddenly vanished….almost as if someone responsible had come on shift and pulled the story as  headline news….due to it being a Labour Party stunt?

There is no doubt London is massive compared to other regions but this story has been knocking around for a long time now….so why is it being pushed once again…the thought that the Coalition’s ‘Recovery’ is leaving other regions behind?  Will Miliband be announcing a new policy on cities in the next few days?

Who knows…at least it seems to have been pulled by the BBC as a lead story…or as a story at all in fact on the radio….after being bombarding us with it early on it vanished.

The story seems to ignore some other truths about ‘the Regions’…the streets may not be paved with  gold but things are moving:

Record growth for business activity

Business activity rose at a record rate in the West Midlands in December according to the latest purchasing managers report for Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking. West Midlands private sector companies reported increases for the eighth month in a row with the rate of expansion the strongest in the 16-year-old survey’s history.

This is from Manchester which they tell us is doomed:

It’s double joy for regional growth

10 Jan 2014 05:59

So why is the Centre for Cities claiming, and the BBC reporting this:

Manchester ‘underperforming’

The Now Show was a proper lefty rightwing-bashfest on Saturday laying into the rich and privileged:

Council house comic buys £2m mansion… but John Bishop says: ‘I will never forget where I am from’

You have to laugh.

Toby Young at the Telegraph spotted this and wasn’t impressed:

BBC comedian says Cameron ‘wants your kids to die’

Perhaps Hound is trying to compete with his fellow NHAP member Marcus Chown who is :

NHA Party executive member is the most influential tweeter about David Cameron

Our own executive committee member Marcus Chown has been named  the “most influential tweeter about David Cameron” by academics at Imperial College who’ve created a new  index for  ranking tweeters.

“I am just pleased to be getting the message out that David Cameron is dismantling our NHS while lying that he isn’t.”

Rufus compounds the alarmist language with a bit of incitement to violent revolution….

Interesting that Hound opts for the National Health Action Party…..a single issue party that ensures he doesn’t have to think very much and come up with any tricky policies for all those other issues…such as the economy, or education, or welfare….which is why the money can’t all be spent on the NHS…despite the vast, vast sums that are already.

Seems that Rufus has some way to go before competing fully with Chown in the Twittersphere as others are also less than impressed with Rufus:

Oh dear…still not top billing even though shit always floats to the top apparently….that’s a joke Rufus….smile…

Ta

Rufus Hound, less better known as Robert James Blair Simpson…educated by the £5,930 a-term Frensham Heights……the same school that Domino Harvey, Bounty Hunter, went to….

She gets my vote..and yes that’s a real photo not a pseud actor/comedian…Rufus not so much.

Ruf likes to think of himself as one of the ‘people’…. not a privately educated, self indulgent, over privileged, over paid, loudmouth playing at politics ….he’s just a chav really…no really…him an’ Owen hang out all the time…baby….

As said ‘The 100 Worst People on Twitter’ aren’t fans……

‘….the grand posturing, ill-judged and out-of-sync opinions, doing a corporate gig to present an award to G4S, deciding to call out the members of a fucking forum, proudly declaring his Lib Dem voting intentions in 2010, getting booed by Keith Lemon – it all adds up to what should’ve been seen as a string of embarrassing failures by a deeply unlikable man, even by comedian standards. As it is, he’ll collect a bigger pay cheque to present something even more low-brow, whilst turning up for an overacted bit-part in the occasional drama to soothe his ego, and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. If we get the television presenters we deserve, then the rapture is fully underway.’

These are not of course the opinions of management.

Rufus has delusions of grandeur…

Trouble is Henry V isn’t what the People need, it’s the BBC, the Voice of the People….but it’s failed them in their hour of need….some are very concerned it has abandoned their cause…apparently…..

Marcus Chown being a supporter of, a worker for, the NHAP….their ‘Twitter Lead’…whatever that is…presumably twitter propagandist.

It’s that right wing, Tory supporting BBC again….good of them to allow so many left wing comedians to dominate the airwaves though.

Via ‘Is the BBC biased’:

BBC  Dressing to the Left

In my 12 years with BBC News, I worked for many of the people who, for the past quarter century, have decided what the BBC broadcasts. Three of them went on to become Director-General. Almost without exception, they were decent, honest and fair, thoroughly convinced of their own political even-handedness. So why have they apparently been incapable of recognising, let alone addressing, the corporation’s rampant left-wing bias?

Unless the Right can think of ways of making the BBC’s feedback loops work effectively, or the BBC spontaneously recognises its responsibilities to license-fee payers who don’t share its equalitarian instincts, Europe’s most significant left-liberal broadcaster will continue – shamelessly – to dress to the left.

That last paragraph gets to the crux of the problem….it’s OK if they’re left wing as long as there are processes in place that prevent that from colouring the BBC’s output with a pinkish tinge…unfortunately any such processes which the BBC might have in place are completely inadequate and ineffective, probably because those overseeing the processes are themselves of the same mindset…..the output is irrevocably left wing, Labour supporting.

You only had to look at Justin Webb’s reaction to criticism of the BBC recently to realise the problem…..they just don’t accept that they are doing anything wrong.

It doesn’t help of course that the BBC Trust is on the inside and sees its job more to protect the BBC than to scrutinise, check and moderate any such tendencies.

As mentioned before we are often told that there is no such thing as the ‘British Identity’…no such thing formed by 2000 years of history, of culture, of traditions, language, industrial and scientific innovation as well as the new political ideas that spring from all that…such as liberty, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of association, democracy…never mind the humour and way of looking at the world.

The elusive search for Britishness

In the course of the debate about what British identity is, the multicultural argument has been championed particularly vocally and been given prominence, especially by the BBC. The multiculturalist position is one that essentially wishes to reduce British identity to being, by definition, diversity. In other words, that multiculturalism is the very essence of Britishness.

Under this view British identity becomes simply the sum total of a cacophony of a vast host of other often divergent cultures from around the world.

“It always strikes me that the BBC’s output has disproportionate coverage of the cultures and national identities of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

“The one aspect of our national story that people seem to be scared of is a discussion of England and Englishness.

“I think it is born out of a misplaced paranoia and a desire not to offend.

With that in mind here is one to watch from the British Broadcasting Corporation, starts tomorrow:

Liberty

Bettany Hughes examines changing ideas of liberty by allowing a neuroscientist to take control of her brain and by perusing the pornography of the French Revolution.

The Ideas That Make Us is a Radio 4 series which reveals the history of the most influential ideas in the story of civilisation, ideas which continue to affect us all today.

In this ‘archaeology of philosophy’, the award-winning historian and broadcaster Bettany Hughes begins each programme with the first, extant evidence of a single word-idea in Ancient Greek culture and travels both forwards and backwards in time, investigating how these ideas have been moulded by history and have shaped the human experience. In the first programme of this series, Bettany examines changing ideas of liberty with neuroscientist Professor Patrick Haggard, classicist Professor Paul Cartledge, historian Dr. Stephen Pigney and Ruth Porter from the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Other ideas examined in this series are comedy, hospitality, wisdom and peace.

The BBC is so anti-capitalist  it is trying to wipe  out private companies…by taking over the world once more….

From the Telegraph:

Classic FM claims BBC Radio 3 ‘apes’ its output for more listeners

Classic FM claims its rival, BBC Radio 3, has ‘aped’ its successful programmes to help build its audiences

The accusations have been made in written submissions to a Culture, Media and Sport Committee review into the “future of the BBC”, ahead of the government reconsidering the licence fee in 2016.

The commercial station is supported by its parent company Global Radio, which has used a separate submission to claim the BBC has “abandoned” its distinctiveness in order to focus on gaining peak-time audiences, making it “poor value for money”.