Will in the comments notes this from the Telegraph:

Anyone heard of ‘Ovo Energy’?

Probably not.

Which raises the question why would the BBC give them a nice little spot on its UK News page and ‘report’ their comments without challenge?

In this post I noted that energy minister, Ed Davey, had said:

‘Rising gas prices have been the cause of rising energy bills at the moment.’

Thoughtful in the comments linked to a BBC ‘report’ saying:

Wholesale energy prices ‘not going up’, says Ovo Energy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24606614

Stephen Fitzpatrick, MD and founder of Ovo Energy, said he had not seen wholesale prices rise for about two years.

“If they’re buying more expensive gas, more expensive electricity, in a large part we think this is because they’re selling it to themselves”.

The BBC’s write up is short and based purely on what ‘Ovo’ said.

However in the actual interview the BBC interviewer stated that ‘independent sources say that wholesale prices have gone up 8%.’

Question….Why is that counter point not in the write up?

Ofgem…the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets…so presumably they know what they are talking about, said this:

Facts about wholesale costs

• Wholesale costs are the biggest component of the average bill, as shown in the pie chart above.
• Over the last ten years, wholesale electricity costs have risen by around 140 per cent and gas costs by 240 per cent.
• In the last year, wholesale costs have risen by around £10 to £610 of an average annual dual fuel household bill.
• The wholesale price of gas for use this winter is 8 per cent higher than the price of gas for use last winter.
• The wholesale price of electricity for use this winter is 13 per cent higher than the price of electricity for use last winter.

Gas 8% higher than last year.

Electricity 13% higher than last year.

And yet the BBC allow Ovo to claim there has been no rise in 2 years.

Which is odd really because a quick perusal of their own website tells us this:

Now I don’t know about you but as I read that it tells me that wholesale prices for both gas and electricity have gone up in the last twelve months.

So when Stephen Fitzpatrick, MD and founder of Ovo Energy, said he had not seen wholesale prices rise for about two years he was lying.

Perhaps he forgot his company’s little boast:

‘We try our best to be open and honest with our customers, so we thought you may be interested to see what the prices actually are on the wholesale market.’

The cost of gas has risen by 240 per cent over the last ten years, according to Ofgem, acting as the main driver of rising energy bills.

This graph shows that in 2011 prices were under 60 and are now nearer 70 pence per therm:

So just why did the BBC, despite knowing wholesale prices have gone up allow him to get away with that and give his company a prime spot on their website?

As the company claims it is ‘greener’ than most, using more renewable energy, is it possible that the BBC were giving it a little nudge in the Public’s consciousness?…maybe the BBC pension plan has invested in this little company…who knows.

It certainly fits in with the BBC’s own agenda…helping out the ‘little guy’ against Big Business and it can’t hurt that Ovo is just that little bit greener.

This from the Energy and Climate Change Committee might also help judge why prices have risen…..

The main driver behind energy price rises has been wholesale gas and electricity costs, but
network charges, energy and climate change policies, and company costs and profits also
contribute. In future, DECC estimates that its energy and climate change policies will add 33% to the average electricity price paid by UK households in 2020, in addition to any potential wholesale price rises.

DECC suggested that the main drivers of recent increases are: wholesale energy costs,
estimated to have contributed at least 60% of the increase in household energy bills between 2010-2012; network costs, supplier operating costs and profit margins, estimated to have contributed around 25% of the increase; and the costs of energy and climate change policies, estimated to have contributed around 15% of the increase.11 Energy supply companies argued that the majority of the costs which had contributed to energy price rises are outside their control.

In its recent report, Estimated impacts of energy and climate change policies on energy
prices and bills bills, DECC reported that the average gas prices paid by UK households in 2012/13 were 5% higher due to Government energy efficiency policies such as the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) (see table 10 10). They claimed that the estimated impact of  policies on household gas prices was expected to remain broadly unchanged to 2020.

The average electricity price paid by UK households in 2012/13 were 17% higher due to Government energy efficiency policies and the added cost of  supporting renewable energy.

In the future, DECC estimated that the impact of these policies on the electricity price could increase to 33% in 2020 (in addition 20 to any potential wholesale price rises).

Bit of a sea change at the BBC…at least in parts.

There must have been an official memo come down from on high that demanded a more honest and open exploration of the issues surrounding immigration.

The BBC has had a few looks at David Goodhart’s book ‘The British Dream’, we have had a programme from Victoria Derbyshire that didn’t seek to hide the true reasons for many immigrants coming to the UK specifically, and now Stephanie Flanders has kicked over the traces and really undermined the long cherished shibboleths of the pro-immigration lobby.

Undoubtedly hearts and minds in the BBC won’t change no matter what directives they receive from the bosses…and so the question is can this open and honest approach filter through to the shop floor and not just be limited to specific programmes?….if presenters still label those who want to control and limit immigration as ‘racist’ and allow guests such as Diane Abbot to come on shouting ‘xenophobia’ then the effect of any official BBC approach is negated.

Start The Week  had on Paul Collier who has written a book, ‘Exodus’,  examining the effects of immigration, not just on Britain but on the countries from which the immigrants come, and neither country seems to benefit long term from mass immigration.

The points he makes are all ones that have been obvious for a long time now and which have been made again and again by those who were critical of mass, uncontrolled immigration….it is essentially a massive experiment which has failed…..and one which politicians, with the help of a compliant Media (The BBC), have forced upon the British population regardless of their concerns and beliefs.

Some of the major points raised by Paul Collier:

1.  The least integrated an immigrant community is with the host nation the more immigrants it attracts…because they realise they will feel ‘at home’ ….getting all the benefits of the civilised, wealthy host nation whilst not having to integrate and compromise on language, culture or religion…in other words you get a mini-Pakistan or mini-Somalia.

2. It is not just an economic issue as the pro-immigration lobby try to claim….for a start the economic benefits are disputed, and are at best minimally beneficial…and any such benefit is short term and trivial.

It is the long term effects that are important, the effects on society itself…..too much diversity is dangerous….it lowers trust, there’s a lack of co-operation between groups, and no mutual regard….as well as other costs such as overcrowding, crime, housing, access to schools and the NHS.

And the result is conflict.

3.  As more and more immigrants enter the country it is turned upside down and the things that made the country attractive to the immigrants are lost…..eventually the economy breaks down as well as the social fabric as the shared sense of nation and mutual regard are broken down.

4. If you have open borders you can’t have a welfare state.

5.  Using net migration figures is a politician’s, and the BBC’s, favourite and misleading con trick….a net migration figure of zero means only that the same number of people have left a nation as entered…the sum total of the population might still be the same…but the identity of the population could completely have altered.

6.  A sense of Nation is the glue that holds it all together.

7.  Students and asylum seekers should go back to their homelands as soon as their studies or the conflict they escaped from is over…to help rebuild their own country.

8.  It is usually the more educated and wealthier who escape from conflicts…and therefore this drains a country of the innovative and clever people it needs to rebuild.

9.  The politicians have been deliberately failing to address the obvious problems and are completely out of touch with the Public’s concerns.

As said above it is all very well for the BBC to do the occasional programme like this one that examines and admits the most difficult problems about immigration but will there be a follow up to see if these ‘truths’ are reflected in reporting or in the way that presenters deal with the subject on their own programmes?

If not is it just a tick box exercise designed to say ‘Look we’ve done X amount of programmes on immigration…therefore we’re balanced and impartial’?

If the culture, the hearts and minds, the overall Institutional pro-immigration stance, remains unchanged, that wouldn’t be true.

Couple of interesting comments that went completely unremarked…and considering the huge political fuss about energy companies raising prices you might have thought they were somewhat noteworthy.

Ed Davey, energy minister, on Today (08:16) stated that:

‘Rising gas prices have been the cause of rising energy bills at the moment.’

Cameron when talking about the nuclear power station deal and pricing said that it was cheaper than all other non-carbon sources……ie wind farms and solar. (No link)

So….rising bills are in fact caused by wholesale prices and not greedy energy firms…according to the energy minister (and Ofgem confirmed prices have risen 8%)

…and for all the fuss over the price of the nuclear power in 2023 it is still cheaper than wind or solar.

As I said….might just have been two very relevant statements…but the BBC seems to have completely missed them.

Yet another religious wind bag (apologies to anyone who actually likes religious windbaggery).

Even a Labour man looks askance at the new Archbishop of Canterbury as he does a bit of pious grandstanding on behalf of the Labour Party (and is always given a headline or two on the Beeb)….without any solutions to the problems he raises it might be added.

Dan Hodges cocks a snook:

The C of E used to be the Tory party at prayer. Now Justin Welby is Polly Toynbee in a cassock

Amid all the excitement of over the cull of the Blairites and the promotion of this week’s Next Leader of the Labour Party, Tristram Hunt, one major shadow cabinet appointment was overlooked: the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Justin Welby is the new shadow minister for Moral Indignation. And it’s a wide-ranging brief. Over the weekend he intervened on energy policy, attacking the Big Six power companies. “Having spent years on a low income as a clergyman I know what it is like when your household budget is blown apart by a significant extra fuel bill and your anxiety levels become very high,” he said.

Can someone explain to me exactly what it is that the BBC finds so compelling about Mehdi Hasan?

Because the more you see of the real Mehdi Hasan, the Islamic preacherman, the less there is that could surely justify the BBC’s elevation of him to the position of authoritative, credible and ethical spokesman for Muslims.

We looked a while back at the two sides of Mehdi Hasan, his slick Western suited, self proclaimed secular,  progressive side…and his Muslim, and presumably real, side….but there’s more…

Trending Central has dug up yet another piece of evidence that suggests the BBC Mehdi Hasan isn’t being honest with us:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flcFiBA1hmo

Hasan is having a rant, and it is a rant, about a Caliph who has apparently transgressed against Islam…he is a homosexual, a dog lover and a music lover…..

‘….but the fact is, and this is important, Yazid was not simply a Fasiq (transgressor) he was an out and out Kafir!’

A homosexual, a dog lover and a music lover…all apparently fail to get Hasan’s approval.

The BBC would almost shut down without a mix of those three.

But what about the Kafir eh?

There’s a ‘transgressor‘…and then, according to Hasan there’s ‘an out and out Kafir’

Kind of tells you all you want to know, if you didn’t know already, exactly what Hasan thinks of the non-Muslim….the lowest of the low…..why is that not considered hate speech just because it  has its origin in a religious text?

And yet the BBC court’s him and gives him pride of place on their programmes.

When he propagates hate and division, sanctifying it as the word of God, is he in reality any different to Nick Griffin?…what if Griffin wrapped up his racism with words from the Bible…would he suddenly find himself on the speed dial?

Perhaps the BBC should look a bit more closely at the ‘sainted’ Mehdi Hasan.

Is the BBC biased? draws this to our attention:

From the Independent:

The British public has such “poor religious literacy” that a modern audience would be baffled by the Monty Python film The Life of Brian – because it would not understand the Biblical references, a senior BBC figure has claimed.  

Aaqil Ahmed, the BBC’s head of religion and ethics, told The Independent that failings in religious education over two generations were undermining public understanding of contemporary national and international issues.

This is probably his scariest comment:

“You had generations that missed out. We have poor religious literacy in this country and we have to do something about it,” he said.

Scary because you just know exactly what he intends….though we are told:

“I’m not saying for one second that everybody has to understand religion and therefore become religious,”

Yeah…right.

This is probably his most laugh out loud absolute hogwash of a statement…because we all know the real reason few people make jokes about Muhammed:

Ahmed also claimed that a key reason that Islam is not the subject of more humorous discussion is that the life of the Prophet Muhammad is poorly understood by large sections of the British public. “How can anybody tell a joke about Muhammad when they don’t even know how to spell his name, let alone anything about his life? The day we have people standing up and telling detailed jokes about Muhammad and have the audience understanding that humour, then we will have come a long way in society and we will have a lot more religious literacy about a major world figure.

Let’s give that a go…..here’s a satirical cartoon based upon most people’s understanding of Muhammed and his legacy….most people know what the Koran says about killing the infidel, the House of Islam and the House of war, and they know what is done in the name of Islam by some, many, Muslims, hence they think this cartoon represents a true picture of what Islam means to them:

That is their understanding of Islam and Muhammed…..I imagine that is not what Ahmed requires them to think….and he’d want to censor that….for the likes of Ahmed there is only one way to ‘understand’ Islam…..and it’s not the medieval warlord using religion to excuse the  plundering and killing of the non-believer….as historian Tom Holland tells us happened.

Ahmed is right in way of course….not as he intends….because it is the fact that some people, the BBC for instance,  refuse to accept that image of Islam, that definition of Islam,  because they refuse to accept such an ‘understanding,’ they see no problem with the Islamic ideology and therefore cannot see the need for a ‘cure’, for reform, as Tommy Robinson and Tariq Ramadan both urge, no need to think hard about the effects a growing Islamic influence is having on society and politics….but they are all too ready to blame the ‘West’ instead…its foreign policy or alleged discrimination at home ‘alienating’ and radicalising Muslims.

Melanie Phillips says:

Until our leaders admit the true nature of Islamic extremism, we will never defeat it

If politicians refuse to acknowledge the true nature of this extremism, they will never counter it effectively.

They see only good in the Koran and refuse to accept that it can lead to a great deal of harm….because to accept that would mean they would have to do something about it…and that is the last thing they want to do.

On Christianity the BBC are a lot harsher….on Thursday Melvyn Bragg had a reverential look at the Book of Common Prayer….but reverential though he was he still managed to openly admit that it was a book that ‘split the nation’, that it was ‘poisonous’ in its effect….and that was a book that didn’t insist you kill anyone if they didn’t believe the same as you. (and Bragg tells us that the English Civil War cost more lives per capita than the First World War…something to chew on)

Ex-nun, Karen Armstrong, has called the Bible a ‘toxic arsenal that fuels hatred and sterile polemic’…..about time we had some honest debate about what’s in the Koran as well.

When the likes of the BBC admit that the Koran is not a ‘good’ read then we will have come a long way in society and we will have a lot more religious literacy about a major world figure.

Boris Johnson of course already understands:

To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia – fear of Islam – seems a natural reaction, and, indeed, exactly what that text is intended to provoke. Judged purely on its scripture – to say nothing of what is preached in the mosques – it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its heartlessness towards unbelievers. As the killer of Theo Van Gogh told his victim’s mother this week in a Dutch courtroom, he could not care for her, could not sympathise, because she was not a Muslim.

The trouble with this disgusting arrogance and condescension is that it is widely supported in Koranic texts, and we look in vain for the enlightened Islamic teachers and preachers who will begin the process of reform. What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s medieval ass?

Janet Daley in the telegraph suggests that the frequent claims that the American political system is broken are without merit:

The power of the people is being stolen

How strong should central government be, and how much of our money should it spend?

The first is that the American democratic system is now so damaged that the country’s ability to govern itself effectively is in unprecedented peril. In fact, what has been impaired is the temporary credibility of the federal government, which has relatively little effect on the lives of most Americans. It is state governments that run the affairs that govern most civic and economic activity.

Hardly a day passes when one of the BBC’s political commentators does not indeed spout that smug assumption.

The likelihood being that they do so because if they claim the system is broken then there must be someone who broke it….and that’s, sure as eggs is eggs, going to be the Republicans, the Tea Party to narrow that down.

Many a BBC journo has wistfully announced that perhaps the ‘decisive’ Chinese method of government would be the ideal….and it was John Humphrys who, visiting Tibet, cheerfully applauded the Chinese invasion and talked in awe of the wonders that the Chinese railway was bringing to the Tibetans…along with the hundreds of thousands of Chinese ‘immigrants’…or occupiers as some might call them…not Humphrys though…and never mind the ‘cultural genocide’.

Democracy is so yesterday.

Or as Evan Davis says …the Americans are asking how politics can be reformed to avoid partisan showdowns of a kind that brought government to a standstill…yes Evan, let’s see what Obama wants…and then vote ‘Yes’.  We can’t have any ugly dissent can we.

Davis goes on to claim that:

‘There’s one special and distinctive feature of American politics…gerrymandering….drawing boundaries of congressional seats to suit political ends… to wipe out rivals or to create safe seats for your party.’

Yep….that would never happen here, it’s certainly a distinctive and special feature of US politics alone.

Britain’s electoral system unfairly gerrymandered in favour of Labour

In his piece on David Cameron’s road to Number 10, Iain Martin touches on a crucial issue: “The geography and the electoral map are against the Tories: they need a 10-point lead on polling day to get an overall majority of one seat”. He cites research from YouGov pollster Peter Kellner showing that if Labour and the Tories were to gain an equal share of the vote at the next election, Labour would get 80 more seats. 

Good old BBC tunnel vision…only seeing what it wants to see as long as it supports its narrative…US politics are broken…broken by Republicans…the Republicans need to be ‘fixed’.

Last week Thursday seemed to be a 24 hour Labour Party political broadcast on the BBC.

The BBC attacked the Tories on all fronts blaming them and the dreaded Capitalism for the ills of Society..a veritable Pearl Harbour attack launched at dawn on the Today programme:

Wonga pay day loans

Energy prices

Free schools (asking ‘Is there something rotten within the Free school system?)

Miliband’s ‘Predistribution’…now renamed ‘The Living wage’. (Alan Milburn…back to his Labour roots as he promotes Miliband’s policy under the guise of a ‘report’)

Pensioners who live the ‘high life’ whilst the young are abandoned.

Not a bad agenda for a single day.

When you consider what ex BBC journo Robin Aitken in the Telegraph has to say you may consider that the BBC’s innate affinity with Labour politics is a problem:

The BBC can pretty much dictate terms when it comes to the national debate – and it’s a power it exercises in full measure.

This underlines a truth not sufficiently acknowledged – that all journalism is a matter of selection. The running order of the BBC’s main bulletins is not ordained by some higher authority; instead, it is merely the preference of BBC editors. And to understand why the BBC chooses as it does, you have to understand who makes those selections.

BBC selection boards naturally enough tend to go for candidates made in their own image and likeness. Like other organisations, the BBC chooses people who they feel are “right for us”. In this way, the system becomes self-reinforcing. Aspiring young BBC journalists know that they will be expected to show an interest in a particular type of story. So an internal culture is constructed, recruit by recruit, which reinforces an established world view.

The way the day is structured in the BBC’s main news centre encourages an insidious orthodoxy. Each morning, the senior editors meet to discuss the day’s agenda. A consensus emerges, and because the corporation is fiercely hierarchical, the juniors – nurturing their promising careers – take their cue from their elders and betters. Which is why from morning to midnight, from Today to the Ten O’Clock News and right on down the chain to local radio, the same stories lead the bulletins.

This amplification effect is what gives BBC news output such enormous clout. More than 90 per cent of us listen or watch the BBC every week. For many people, the BBC is their constant companion – from dawn to dusk it is the background soundtrack in the lives of millions.

That is why, uniquely among media organisations, the BBC performs the role of gatekeeper to the national debate.

If the BBC doesn’t run with a story then, arguably, it isn’t a story at all.

Impartiality is not an optional extra for the BBC – it is at the heart of its contract with the licence-fee payers.

The BBC used to inspire near-universal trust: it can no longer take that for granted.

The Mail tells us that:

Dyke’s all-white panel comes under fire from black FA chief for lack of ethnic diversity

And the Mail goes on to explore the story more fully, unlike the BBC’s sport’s editor, David Bond, who does a hatchet job on Dyke and fails to report the fact that Dyke did try and bring non-white people onto the FA commission: