Author Archives: Alan

“What kind of tricks are they playing on us, and where are they dragging us?”

The BBC is biased. It has a left of centre, progressive prism through which it forces us to view the world.

It is in many respects unaccountable. Yes it may lose the odd Director General but it carries on in the same old way after what are really superficial, surface changes for public consumption, just enough to satisfy the politicians that some form of rethinking is on hand, enough to suggest the BBC recognises that things were going wrong and that action is needed, and is indeed being taken to remedy the situation.

But that’s not the case. This time next year, this time five years from now, the BBC will still be attacking government policies that seek to reel in welfare spending , reform the NHS or in any way conflict with the BBC’s own values.

How to make it accountable?

Perhaps some form of subscription is the only way ahead.

Is the license fee justifiable any longer?

Is there a workable alternative?

Is there the political will to force through such a change in the face of undoubted resistance?

At the moment you have no choice as to whether to pay for the BBC…if you don’t like its political stance you have no avenue of complaint…it carries on regardless.  Subscription might force the BBC to concentrate its mind on being impartial and presenting news that is far more balanced and representative of the population.

Why is the current method of funding attractive? It certainly works as a means of raking in money…it is fairly easy and efficient to operate.

More importantly perhaps, depending where you sit on the political spectrum, it makes the BBC unaccountable to a great extent to the people who actually use the service…or rather those who watch, listen and read what the BBC provides.

There may be other ‘users’ who go under the radar. The BBC is supposedly independent of government, it proudly reiterates this and boasts of its fierce defence of that independence against political interference.

But how much of that is true? Just how independent is the BBC?

First of all it has its own innate bias…a group think that naturally gravitates towards left wing issues and policies…and therefore towards the Labour and or LibDem position.

Then there is a remarkable revolving door between it and the Labour Party resulting in a frequent exchange of personnel…far more than for many other organisation…though many arrive via the Guardian as well.  Politicians from ‘opposing’ mindsets are of the ‘wet’ kind and are graciously allowed employment at the BBC because essentially they are ‘of the Left’….such as Portillo or Patten…no doubt Ken Clarke will have his hush puppies under a BBC desk soon enough.

It is almost certain that the BBC collaborates or liases with Government both national and local, police and other organisations such as from academia, when dealing with particular issues and deciding how to communicate a particular message,  a line to take.   The need to present a united front, a universal, overarching view of events so that any dissenting voices are discredited and isolated is critical to that message being successfully transmitted…in the interests of ‘social cohesion’ for example….or rather trying not to allow blame to be apportioned where it is due.

An obvious example is the intense and orchestrated response to any Islamic terrorism in the UK.

A bomb goes off or a similarly serious outbreak of violence ‘in the name of Islam’ and instantly across the whole spectrum of the ‘Establishment’ there is the same message….any violence by Muslims, done allegedly in the name of Islam, is denounced as criminal, probably done by someone insane…someone who is perverting the true nature of Islam….Islam is a tolerant and peaceful religion.

Most importantly this should not reflect upon all Muslims  nor the religion of Islam…the perpetrators are Islamists, political actors who use Islam to further their political ends. There is a vast difference between Islam and Islamism….or so the politicians et al tell us.

Seymour Martin Lipset writes in ‘Political Man’:

‘Inherent in all democratic systems is the constant threat that the group conflicts which are democracy’s life-blood may solidify to the point where they threaten to disintegrate the society. Hence conditions which serve to moderate the intensity of partisan battle are among the key requisites of democratic Government.’

The BBC is used to spread a particular message, to ‘moderate partisan battles’…in this case about Islam…it is a religion of peace, the bombers or whoever are criminals and not Muslim, they certainly do not represent the majority of Muslims in the country.

So the BBC is far from ‘’independent’ of government in many respects. The government needs the BBC to push its message both at home and abroad and uses a compliant BBC to do so.

All that means of course that the license fee is a convenient firewall between the BBC and the Public, enforced by government statute and the threat of court action against non-payers….and that the government will want to maintain that status quo for its own purposes.

It leaves the BBC unaccountable and unresponsive to concerns of bias and complaints about its output. Whilst the BBC has you by the short and curlies you have no way of effectively reining it in.

The government is unlikely to want to change that….the BBC may be pro-Labour and anti-Tory but they are still a useful and powerful tool in government hands to control the ‘masses’.

“Violence can conceal itself with nothing except lies, and the lies can be maintained only by violence. And violence lays its ponderous paw not every day and not on every shoulder. It demands from us only obedience to lies and daily participation in lies – all loyalty lies in that.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn on violence and lies
 

If you can’t stop the lies at least stop buying into them.

A subscription method of funding the BBC would free us of the obligation to pay for something we either do not use or do not agree with politically.

It wouldn’t perhaps change the BBC’s output but would at least give the satisfaction that they do not take our money as well as our freedoms of speech and thought.

Subscription or not, something needs to change and the BBC’s stranglehold on the democratic process broken….remember the Tory Party turned itself inside out to appease the BBC.

The otherwise good output from the BBC needs to be maintained…the national coverage, the freedom from commercial adverts, its place in the ‘national conversation and consciousness’. ..not to mention the wide variety of high quality programmes (if only free of political messages)…and the news website.

But if it continues to pump out a left wing agenda then it should no longer be in the privileged position of picking our pockets to pay for its political propaganda that works against the interests of what is probably the majority of this country whose voices on immigration, Europe, Islam and climate change are all too often suppressed and go unheard.

The BBC has come off the fence on grounds of decency and taste:

The Wizard of Oz song at the centre of an anti-Margaret Thatcher campaign will not be played in full on the Official Chart Show.

Instead a five-second clip of the 51-second song will be aired as part of a Newsbeat report, Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper said.

Sales of Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead have soared since the former Prime Minister’s death on Monday, aged 87.

Mr Cooper called the decision “a difficult compromise”.

However, to play the song as part of the Chart Show would have put the BBC in a more invidious position. 

It goes without saying that a similar situation on the death of Princess Diana or, in the future, Nelson Mandela, would have immediately resulted in a ban on any song which was manipulated into the charts for political purposes or purely for reasons of hatred of either person.

 The BBC is all too ready to censor when it suits.

The BBC recently forced a playwright to alter their script as the BBC believed it could potentially offend Muslims.

The BBC similarly took the film ‘Greenmantle’ out of the schedules…presumably because it related a tale of Muslims joining up with the Germans in WWI with a hope of forming a ‘Caliphate’….the BBC doesn’t want anyone to think that Islamic radicalism was around before the 1930’s….because then they can claim that Islam has nothing to do with religious extremism or political radicalism…it does  not originate from the Islamic tenets or scriptures.

Gary Glitter and Jimmy Savile have been to all intents and purposes erased from the BBC archives.

Today we hear that a Christian teacher is banned indefinitely from schools for revealing his views on homosexuality in reply to questions asked by students.

Ironically the judge explained:  ‘The policy was part of “modern British values of tolerance”‘

The furore over the song is all a bit of a storm in a tea cup but because the BBC is so ready to censor things which offend certain select groups or cultures and ideologies I think it is only right that they should not play the song.  To play it would indicate a definite bias against the Tories and Mrs Thatcher, a readiness to look the other way for Tories.  They would not deal  with a similar situation in the same way, as I say, on the death of Princess Diana or Nelson Mandela….an immediate ban would be in place.

There is also a very strong case for not playing it on grounds of taste and decency considering the responsibility the BBC bares in its position at the ‘heart of the Nation’ as it likes to remind us frequently and its own perception of itself as something above the rabble in the rest of the media, especially the Redtops….and as it seems, they have decided along those lines.

The BBC says: “It is a compromise and it is a difficult compromise to come to. You have very difficult and emotional arguments on both sides of the fence.

“Let’s not forget you also have a family that is grieving for a loved one who is yet to be buried.”

Toby Young in the Telegraph thinks that not playing the song is the end of free speech…but of course it isn’t at all….The case of the Christian teacher might be though.  The song is not a satirical comment nor a political tract…it is purely intended by the organisers to celebrate the death of Mrs Thatcher, after wishing it upon her for years…and so could be, and probably is, a ‘hate crime’…not playing it is therefore not the censoring of free speech but of hate speech.

Is it OK to wish death upon someone just because of their political views?  What’s the difference between that and wishing death upon someone because of their race?

When Ed Miliband and Co denounce the Tories for being ‘poshboys’ or ‘Toffs’ unable to do their job because of their ‘class’….is that not the same as racism?  And yet the BBC laughs it off as a big joke.  Isn’t it Miliband’s attitude that informs the attitude of those who think celebrating the death of Mrs Thatcher is a good idea…it is demonising, dehumanising the Tories, the ‘nasty party’, or ‘the Rich’, so that it becomes seemingly OK to wish death upon them.

Targeted ridicule, satire and rational, reasoned critiques have their place and are necessary to keep politician’s and other’s feet on the ground and to stop them believing their own hype but outright gratuitous abuse has no place under the banner of ‘Free Speech’ if the only object is to hurt the other person’s feelings, purely to insult or injure.

Amused by this from the Beeb in 2005 when they were looking at the ‘Thatcher Years In Graphics’

The first graphic that they use to sum up Thatcher’s legacy?

That’s right…Champagne sales to all those nouveau riche barrow boys who flashed the cash.

The BBC could I suppose have had a graph showing how many ‘plebs’ with the wrong school  tie were able to get jobs in the City when Thatcher broke the monopoly of the Old School Tie network that used to run the place…now ‘democratised’.

Or indeed how many Champagne bottles littered the corridors of Broadcasting House after the election of Labour to power in 1997.

I wasn’t going to comment any more on the BBC and Mrs Thatcher but unfortunately the first thing I heard on the radio this morning was the voice of Justin Webb….not a good start to any day.

When speaking to Conservative MP, Connor Burns, Webb said there was a trap here… that by eulogising her the Tories risked alienating those who didn’t like Mrs Thatcher. (8:58)

In that simple statement Webb sums up the whole BBC ethos….do not offend anyone even if it means surrendering your own principles and values…no matter what the provocation or likely end result you must not ‘fight’ or stand up for your own beliefs and interests.

‘Appeasement’ is another way of describing the Webb attitude….I may rename him ‘Justin Case’….do nothing, say nothing just in case it might offend.

The Telegraph tells us that the BBC Trust has released the new Director General’s contract of employment.:

 ‘Mr Hall to change the culture of the BBC by being open about its failings.

Mr Hall’s contract forbids him from making “any derogatory or unfavourable public remark or statement” about the BBC, either during his time in office or the two years afterwards.

He is also barred from writing or speaking about the BBC without its “prior written consent”, and from engaging in “any political activities”.

The BBC Trust said it disclosed the contract in “the interests of transparency”, marking a contrast to the steps it took with Mr Entwistle’s package which was only published after a Freedom of Information request.’

Now we know why Tony Hall said that the BBC was not left of centre…he couldn’t say the truth as the BBC really believes it isn’t…and therefore any such remark is ‘derogatory or unfavourable’.

Surely this, if typical of BBC contracts, would prevent BBC employees taking to Twitter and using the  ‘These ideas are all my own and are entirely separate from work’ type defense (Section 5.1):

You will not….engage in activities outside work which the BBC believes are likely to interfere, conflict (actual or potentially) or compete with the proper performance of your duties or the business of the BBC….whereby [the BBC is], in the opinion of the BBC, brought or is likely to be brought into disrepute or its reputation for impartiality is likely to be affected.

You shall not engage in any political activities. 

Also note that failure to adhere to the BBC editorial guidelines is a serious offence and could result in their employment being put at risk.

The BBC can access, intercept, read and monitor employees internet use (Section 8)……work related or not…under its ‘Acceptable Use’ policy.

Oddly they must disclose any and all ideas, works, inventions and designs created by an employee whether or not work related….and it becomes the property of the BBC. (Section 3.6)

I don’t know if this conflicts with the ‘gagging order’ on Tony Hall et al but the BBC Trust also says this as a ‘mission statement’:

The BBC exists to serve the public, and its mission is to inform, educate and entertain. The BBC Trust is the governing body of the BBC, and we make sure the BBC delivers that mission

We set the strategic objectives for the BBC. We have challenged the BBC to:

set new standards of openness and transparency

Of course the ‘new standards’ could just be a lower standard of openness and transparency…but that would just be a cynical thing to say.

 This will be the last from me on Mrs Thatcher and the BBC….her death has allowed them to air all the old canards about her ‘legacy’….from the Belgrano, the Miners, the cause of the 2008 crash, the apparent rise of greed and individualism/selfishness and the destruction of the manufacturing base.

The BBC has long kept such myths simmering away, a constant repetition no doubt bringing them to a new audience of  trusting young listeners and viewers. With the death of Mrs Thatcher clearly this is going to go into overdrive and bore everyone senseless….so I’ll make one last comment on their coverage of Mrs Thatcher and move on to other subjects.

Plenty of nonsense being spoken about Mrs Thatcher on the BBC, and no doubt elsewhere today…a lot of it by the BBC itself.

Ken Clarke fought hard against the tide of Leftwing historical revisionism presented as fact on the Today programme…..

Ken Clarke on the Today programme says that both Left and Right are building their myths about Mrs Thatcher….he suggests ‘someone will have to write a sensible history of her time in office’…but not by the BBC whose political correspondent Nick Robinson is continuing to write the myths and keep them going says Clarke.

The same Nick Robinson who said he ‘sensed’ that those out ‘celebrating’ the death of Mrs Thatcher were in fact merely protesting the ‘Thatcherite consensus’ in politics today.  That’ll explain the ‘Rejoice rejoice rejoice the Bitch is dead’ type slogans then.

The problem is that BBC presenters nod along in agreement with much of the nonsense as well as letting the most outrageous comments go unchallenged. There is a distinct lack of context to help judge the truth of many of the anti-Thatcher comments and which serves only to perpetuate the myths and legends that have built up, with not a little help from the BBC, over the years….for instance the Belgrano was not a ‘troop carrier’ but a fully armed battleship, and was sailing towards the Falklands…and even the Argies admit she was a legitimate target.

The first bit of nonsense comes from an ex BBC employee, Judith Stamper, who once interviewed Mrs Thatcher in 1983 for BBC North and accused her of running an ‘uncaring government’.

Stamper is now a political communications lecturer at Leeds University and spoke on 5Live ‘Morning Reports’ (17 mins 30 secs) where she ‘discusses how Margaret Thatcher brought advertising, marketing and public relations into politics and its impact on her campaigns and image.’ 

Stamper told us that Mrs Thatcher invented the photo  opportunity, the walk about, the selling of politics and that ‘spin doctoring’ started with her….she was a manufactured product….Labour’s spin doctoring was a response to that of Mrs Thatcher…er…by then long out of government.

Only problem with all of that is it’s baloney….the first political image making?  How about all those Emperors who had their faces on coins, or Elizabeth I who strictly controlled her own image and the paintings of her, or Churchill who used his fame as a soldier and war correspondent to get his foot in the door of politics…or Monty in the desert with his two cap badges…and who can forget Goebbels….or indeed Chamberlain and his ‘piece of paper’.  Walkabouts?  Try WWII again with the King and Queen touring the blitzed areas to raise morale….and to uphold their own image as people who care about the ‘ordinary people’. 

Spin doctoring, image control and self promotion have long been a feature of any political ‘regime’…..Thatcher certainly changed her image to suit her role but her policies were not ‘crowd pleasing’ ones moulded by focus groups…Ken Clarke saying she was a conviction politician who took no notice of polls or the newspapers, her politics were based on her ideology not just designed to stay in power …unlike Blair and Co who sold out their principles to take power and couldn’t make a move without checking with Murdoch first…as indeed Cameron sold out to appease the BBC.

Next bit of nonsense was Mickey Clark on Wake Up To Money….and blaming Mrs Thatcher for the Crash in 2008…’sowing the seeds of disaster’ with the ‘Big Bang’. (16 mins 30) and when a text comes in saying businesses closed in Scotland due to strikes Mickey asks ‘Is that fair?’. …preferring to blame Mrs Thatcher? and not the Unions  

The Big Bang being the cause of the Crash is a constant theme on the BBC…and completely unjustified….happening over 20 years before the Crash….and with the economy brought back under control and actually running a surplus rather than a deficit in 1998-2000 before Brown went for broke….clearly something else broke the banks…and that something was Brown’s much more extensive deregulation of the financial industry and the failure of his FSA creation.

The programme is worth listening to though as you get a far more reasoned and sensible analysis from the guests.

Another programme that came as a surprise, in my view, was from Andrew Neil, whom you might  have expected to be more balanced, in ‘The People’s Thatcher’ …but the programme painted a more negative picture of Mrs Thatcher than you might expect and slipped in a few barbed comments along the way….when talking about giving away council houses rather than selling them he quoted her as saying ‘That would do nothing for our people’…..meaning the middle class rather than the council house tenants who could benefit from getting a house cheaply….not such a ‘People’s Thatcher ‘ then?

Another quibble with BBC coverage, along with Thatcher’s Big Bang being the cause of the 2008 crash, is the great legend that the BBC help perpetuate  that Thatcher alone destroyed the mining industry with pit closures.

Rubbish…she closed uneconomic pits…but then so had previous governments for decades:

Pit closures in 1960s and 1980s….The loss of the collieries was devastating in such villages as Cwmparc, Clydach Vale and Blaencwm and it could be argued that these South Wales villages and many like them have not fully recovered from the colliery closures in the sixties.

The Fifties and Sixties 1950 to 1969….old ways had to be consigned to history. While oil refineries were opening at the mouth of the River Tees, the coalmines and railways were closing with huge consequences for the communities they supported.

What is interesting about the closures in Wales in the sixties is that they were sometimes caused by lack of available labour…the men didn’t want to work down the pits ….better paying jobs with better conditions were available in the factories.

Arthur Scargill in the eighties proclaimed that Thatcher was destroying jobs that belonged to the miner’s sons and daughters….but given a choice would they want to work down the pit?  Most of the evidence suggests not…it was a source of income first and foremost…and a dangerous one at that, dirty, hard work.  If they could get the same money elsewhere who would mine coal?

The BBC should do more to look at the history of coal mining and stop allowing the myth to be kept alive that Mrs Thatcher was the ‘Devil incarnate, a demon, an absolute devil’ as one miner called her on the Nolan show…going on to proclaim that the Jews celebrated the death of Hitler and he would celebrate the death of  Thatcher in the same way.

Whilst many of the guests invited on to various BBC programmes spend a deal of time giving fair and rational analysis of Mrs Thatcher’s policies and legacy it does seem the BBC presenters still can’t resist blaming her for everything….or not questioning the ‘received wisdom’ that she is to blame.

Look at one  last myth…We are constantly told that Thatcherism spread the blight of ‘individualism’ and promoted selfishness and greed, fragmenting society and destroying social cohesion.

As I understand it Christianity usually gets the credit, not the blame for ‘individualism’, and it was this that gave us the ‘Enlightenment’ and the enterprising individuals  who whilst seeking to improve their lives improved others along with it (along with the Protestant work ethic)….a feat not possible in societies suppressed and controlled by oppressive community values….and I believe ‘greed’ was mentioned in the Bible a couple of thousand years ago….so not Thatcher’s fault perhaps?

You can blame, in more recent times, the Sixties and all those anti-establishment types, in the Media and Arts especially, who ended the automatic respect for authority and the deference to ‘one’s betters’.

You can of course blame the Welfare State which broke communities and made people reliant on the State rather than helping each other…especially inside the Family.   The State has taken over the duties and role of the Family….people pay their taxes and abandon all further responsibilities for much that goes on in Society.

Human Rights laws and Health and Safety laws both kicked away the foundations of the civil society and encouraged a more antagonistic and aggressive and greedy society as people relied on State Law to settle disputes rather than common sense and mediation….they always see a profit now in any dispute.

And as for social cohesion…wasn’t it Labour that imported millions of immigrants who form their own societies within a Society unable to cope with such a large influx?

People, if not born with a silver spoon in their mouths, do get issued a ‘Ration Book’ of Rights that they can use to their own advantage…the one thing missing is a similar book demanding they fulfil their ‘obligations’ to Society and pay something back.

Shame the BBC does not do much at all to reflect such different perspectives on the causes of the perceived ills of our Society…..a start would be acknowledging that Thatcher inherited a broken economy and country….little mention is made of the conditions in the 1970’s which were the real causes of the gutting out of the manufacturing base.

They’re watching us now. Forget the petty definitions about Old Labour or New Labour, Blairite diehard or Miliband revolutionary.

Everyone on the Left is being scrutinised today. Does the compassion we claim to be our driving force extend to the passing of a frail 87-year-old woman?

Does the Labour movement’s dignity and discipline enable us to mark with appropriate solemnity the death of a former Prime Minister who successfully secured three independent mandates from the people?

Do we have the basic good grace and wisdom to set aside – for a short time – our political differences and acknowledge, however hard it may be, the achievements of the first women to hold the highest office in our land?

For all our sakes, I hope we do.

That was Dan Hodges in the Telegraph.

Baroness Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher, died yesterday.  Many announcements of her death were followed by the sentiment ‘R.I.P’.

Rest In Peace.

It seems many though, including the BBC, couldn’t allow her at least one day of dignity and grace.

In fact it took only minutes before BBC political commentators were performing the political autopsy…or ‘Tramping down the soil’ as George Galloway puts it so nicely….telling us Mrs Thatcher was divisive, highly polarising, highly controversial…..that her death will be celebrated…because she is so detested.

Tony Livesey ran a phone in…it began with the announcement that people in Brighton and Glasgow gathered to party and celebrate Mrs Thatcher’s death ..he wanted to know what our own views were of Mrs Thatcher…phone in, let him know, he said.  He knew full well that along with the tributes there would be many calls full of bile and hate….why stage a cheap, lurid, drama seeking phone-in on the actual day of Mrs Thatcher’s death?  It was a shabby stunt by the BBC to exploit any controversy and create interest in their programmes. 

The BBC is of course so much better than those lurid Redtops and the Daily Mail which seek sensation from people’s personal tragedy and miseries..isn’t it?

Some people do have feelings that run very high about Mrs Thatcher.  But we didn’t need to be told that on the day of her death.

One reason many feel like that is of course because the BBC has fed the legend itself….after 13 years of Labour we hear hardly a word about their disastrous time in Office….have you heard ‘Labour’ mentioned by the BBC in relation to HBOS when it has been frontpage news recently?  No, despite Gordon Brown engineering the ruinous merger of Lloyds and HBOS designed to ‘save’ HBOS.

Blair is only blamed for the Iraq War…indeed he was held up today as the equal of Mrs Thatcher.  Gordon Brown doesn’t merit a mention at all on the BBC, or it might just as well be so.  Which says a lot in itself.

However the name Mrs Thatcher is hardly off their lips…..she has been blamed again and again on the BBC for everything from ‘depression’ suffered now by the unemployed to the banking crash itself…despite the economy in 2000 being in credit with no deficit due to Tory policies….a legacy squandered by Gordon Brown with the usual profligacy of a Labour tax and spend government with the usual results….’B’ for Bust.

The genuinely ‘detestable’ Ken Livingstone is allowed a say on Mrs Thatcher….and comes up with something many in the BBC could have written themsleves:

‘Her legacy was all the great problems we face today. Her strategy was wrong. She destroyed the trade unions by allowing our manufacturing to collapse.’

Livingstone may be ungracious and politically opportunistic but is not quite as shameful and shameless as George Galloway:

‘Margaret Thatcher described Nelson Mandela as a “terrorist”. I was there. I saw her lips move. May she burn in the hellfires.’

They have every right to their views but I believe the BBC, of all News organisations, should have allowed a decent period of respect to have passed before airing such decidedly unpleasant opinions…all the more unpleasant for being based purely on political malice rather than a genuine analysis of her actions and legacy.

This of course is only the beginning.  The BBC now have endless years to pick away at Mrs Thatcher’s reputation and legacy. By the time the BBC have finished Mrs Thatcher will be cast as the worst Prime Minister of the Century…standing alongside the likes of Robert Mugabe or Saddam Hussein.

They come not to praise her but to bury her.

Dan Hodges knew he was onto a losing run with his plea.

He knows what we all know…the Left is a decidedly ‘Nasty piece of work.’

The BBC’s new Director General, Tony Hall, thinks the BBC is not left of centre.

If that is the case then what is the explanation for the atrociously one sided reporting that floods out of the BBC providing neither context, history or genuine analysis of any depth or originality? Are its journalists just bad or incompetent then?

What we get from the BBC is all too often what might be considered the verbatim reading of Labour Party press releases…BBC presenter’s insisting on mentioning the ‘bedroom tax’….now known as, after being called out on this, the ‘so called bedroom tax’ or the ‘bedroom tax as Labour calls it’. And yet they won’t call the Israeli ‘security barrier’ by that name…though they will call the NI walls ‘peace walls’….and they won’t call a terrorist a terrorist so as not to upset Palestinians.

The BBC will attack Osborne for parking in a disabled bay…despite the fact he wasn’t driving and knew nothing of it.

The BBC attack Osborne for raising the subject of Philpott and his lifestyle, though he didn’t connect it to the deaths of the children.

All things in perfect alignment with Labour attacks on Osborne….never mind the sweeping BBC attacks on any reform of the welfare system against which the BBC can muster an army of ‘victims’ and lobby groups all of which are allowed, indeed are encouraged, to give voice to their deepest hatred of any cuts and to raise the level of rhetoric to an astonishing height nearing insanity…one disabled rights campaigner suggesting Osborne didn’t like seeing disabled people and would like to make them ‘disappear’. When someone starts slipping in suggestions that Osborne is some kind of Nazi, a comment that went unchallenged by the BBC presenter, you know the debate has long ago lost any basis in reality or rationality.

This attitude has been encouraged by the BBC which has presented these ‘voices’ as if they were the ‘factual baseline’ from which to start any debate rather than highly strung opinions of vested interests…whilst the ‘voices’ went unquestioned, the answers were rigorously torn into and challenged.

The whole premise of the BBC is that it provides what the commercial sector cannot or will not….programmes that may not command vast audience figures but examine otherwise neglected or ignored parts of society, art, science and politics. Most importantly it has to provide news that is impartial, balanced in its reporting, favouring no political party or ideology.

The fact that it utterly fails in this regard, however Tony Hall deludes himself, should be raising ever more urgent questions about the funding of the BBC and possibly its continued existence in its privileged and oblivious state.

If I want left of centre, biased reporting there is the Guardian or the Independent. Which kind of begs the question ‘What is the BBC for? What does it do that is unique? Does it fulfil its obligations?’

The BBC is almost worthless if you measure it by the obligations and duties imposed upon it…for it fails to fulfil those in any way that would seem, to an impartial observer, fit and proper.

The BBC is no longer ‘Fit for Purpose’.

If the BBC is not ‘fit for purpose’, if it no longer does anything that is unique, if it distorts the democratic system by favouring one party or ideology, then why should the Public be obliged by Law to fund this overpowerful, unaccountable and unrepresentative organisation?

The BBC has a contract with the Public…we pay our license fee and the BBC will entertain, inform and educate…impartially and with a depth only possible with a source of funding that is assured and abundant.

The BBC has broken that contract….the most obvious and sinister breach being its innate support for the Labour Party and ‘progressive’ policies. Sinister because the BBC has sought to close down debate and done so by demonising, vilifying or ridiculing those who oppose such policies….UKIP is frequently mentioned in the same breath as the BNP or the Nazis, Tories presented as the nasty, uncaring Party….and going so far as to declare climate sceptics in need of psychological treatment whilst dismissing their views outright.

If you or I fail to pay the license fee we will soon get a knock on the door and threats of police visits and court action.

If the BBC favours one political party, if it incites riots, if it supports terrorists, if its biased reporting encourages attacks on British troops or Jews, if it undermines national identity and unity….

….there is nothing you can do.

The BBC is to all intents and purposes unaccountable. It may lose the odd DG now and again but it sails on regardless in the same old way, if anything even more determined to cement its position and impose its will upon the world and prove itself ‘right’.

Its non-political output becomes ever more political with nary an opportunity missed to slip in a ‘message’ of some kind into the ‘entertainment’….that’s if it can be bothered to make original material more often than not just filling the airwaves with repeats or programmes about houses, antiques and gardening.

The ultimate question must be ‘does the BBC do more harm than good?’

The answer can only be one possible….that the BBC has an enormously negative impact upon British society and its way of life constantly attacking not just the politics or the Establishment but even the very identity of the native population, their beliefs and way of life.

A news provider in the form of the BBC as originally intended, impartial and objective, is essential for any democracy…the flow of information and ideas being the basis for all democratic ideas and decisions…but if it no longer provides that service what good is it?

If it cannot be reformed then you have to ask why should people be forced to pay for what is essentially the Labour Party’s mouthpiece and one which they may not watch at all given the proliferation of alternative news or entertainment material now available.

The BBC has long ago broken its contract with the Nation, betrayed a trust that it has inherited, neglected its responsibilities and duties…or rather not neglected but deliberately trampled under foot, as it seeks to impose its view of the world upon us and mould us into the kind of people that the BBC thinks acceptable…if you don’t conform to that view you suddenly become an ‘outsider’, a dangerous alien to be hunted down and silenced one way or another.

The BBC cannot be reformed, it cannot be made impartial, it is too set in its ways, its mindset organically bound to the Labour Party and the Left’s world view.

It no longer provides the unique service that would warrant the imposition of a license fee to fund it.

It is time to set the BBC free….to stand on its own two feet in the commercial world. If it acts as any other commercial organisation not just in the ‘market place’ but by adopting a particular political stance then it should not be given the enormous advantage of a constant and assured source of funds.

It is time to stop the license fee obligation and allow people the freedom to choose what they pay to watch knowing full well the politics of any publication or broadcaster rather than being forced to pay for what is essentially an extended Labour Party political broadcast.

The BBC is Political, it forces upon us its own world view, it fails to provide the original and experimental material that its funding system allows to ‘fail’ and try again, it does little that the Commercial Sector doesn’t provide or cannot provide.

It does nothing that merits its license fee.

The BBC believes that the license fee gives it license to do as it likes…..it is time that ‘license’ was revoked and order reimposed upon this organisation that has grown too big and become too powerful and too unaccountable for its actions.

I don’t know if the BBC’s political correspondent, Carole Walker, has a dog which she walks in the park but if she does she should not be alarmed if some man sidles up to her and slips her a brown envelope full of cash.

That could well be a very grateful member of the Labour Party who has seen her latest report that provided apparent, and no doubt unintended, backing to Ed Balls’ malicious allegations against George Osborne.

This is what Osborne said about welfare and the Philpott case:’

“I think there is a question for government and for society about the welfare state, and the taxpayers who pay for the welfare state, subsidising lifestyles like that.

“And I think that debate needs to be had,” said Mr Osborne.

All perfectly reasonable and fair, you might think.

Not to Ed Balls who says:

“I believe George Osborne’s calculated decision to use the shocking and vile crimes of Mick Philpott to advance a political argument is the cynical act of a desperate chancellor. For the chancellor to link this wider debate to this shocking crime is nasty and divisive and demeans his office.”

Nothing cynical, nasty or desperate about our Shadow Chancellor.

However Osborne made no link between the deaths and the welfare system.  He specifically separated the issues…..his reference to welfare was solely linked to Philpott’s lifestyle and not linked to his crime.

The BBC’s Carole Walker has decided, against the quite clear evidence of Osborne’s actual statement, that he did make the link…her title for the report says exactly how she wants to play this…a cynical political gamble by Osborne……just as Balls claims in fact….

Analysis: George Osborne’s Philpott gamble

‘Chancellor George Osborne chose his words carefully when he was asked about Mick Philpott on an official visit to Derby.

But it was clear the Tories’ chief election strategist was happy to link the shocking case of a man convicted of killing six of his children with the need for far-reaching changes to the welfare system.’

A very clever and slippery sentence from Walker.

Note her use of ‘Torie’s chief election strategist’…why use that instead of’ ‘Chancellor‘ in which capacity he was speaking……because she wants to imply that his comments are merely an highly cynical ‘election ploy’.

Walker doesn’t directly say Osborne specifically named the welfare system as the cause of the deaths…but she makes sure that is the message you get from her words throwing in some emotive language to spice it up and manipulate your perceptions….‘happy to link…….shocking case….killing of children….need for far reaching changes to welfare system’.

Pretty clear what she intends you to think.

As Walker actually points out later in the report Labour are on the wrong side of this argument….it is in fact Balls who is using the death of these children as the most cynical and opportunist way of scoring some political points against Osborne.

Balls says:

“Chancellors have to think very carefully before they comment on the issues of the day. How they do so says a lot about the character of their chancellorship.’

The trouble is, even with the misplaced support of the BBC, Labour won’t win this one….the Public do want to see welfare reformed and they think cases like Philpott’s, where he led a lifestyle that most of them couldn’t afford, and yet were in fact paying for, are a prime example of what has gone wrong with the welfare system.

I think it says an awful lot about the character of Ed Balls that he makes poltical capital out of dead children whilst at the same time trying to prevent the necessary and urgent reform of the welfare system.

This report from Carole Walker says a lot about BBC reporting…either she doesn’t understand what Osborne said or she cynically ignored the intended meaning and went for a heading and interpretation that would paint Osborne in the worst light possible..that of a politician gambling with children’s lives for political gain.

She finishes off her report with this statement:’

‘The real test will come when voters come to terms with the changes on the daily lives – rather than hearing of the bizarre life and appalling crimes of one particular claimant.’

So once again linking welfare reform with Philpott’s crime and Osborne’s statement and policies.

Walker says Philpott’s life was ‘bizarre’…by that she presumably means unique and unusual…a lifestyle that is by no means everyday…and therefore shouldn’t be used to invoke changes to the welfare system.

I think Walker and the BBC are just out of touch with reality.  I would wager that most people reading this could name at least one family, if not many more, who have a similar lifestyle, not necessarily with a live in lover as well as the wife…but the multiple children being used to provide an income….along with numerous other examples of excessive state funded generosity…after all how many families can afford to keep three horses?  It seems not to be a problem for some unemployed families when the State is paying.

The welfare system is enormously generous for some things whilst being incredibly tightfisted over others…..the balance is wrong and needs to be sorted out to provide a fairer, more equal distribution of the pot…..Strange that the BBC and Labour, both fans of equality and fairness, seem unable to agree that this is needed.

Carole Walker is a professional journalist, she knows exactly the effect her words will have and she no doubt chose them carefully and fully considered what the reader might take from them.

Therefore you have to think that her report knowingly attacked Osborne and deliberately attempts to make it appear he links the children’s deaths with welfare reform.

 Conclusion…on the face of it you would say that she is doing Labour’s job for them.

Andrew Mitchell must be scratching his head in wonder.

Allegations that he called a police office a ‘pleb’ were headline news on the BBC…indeed the story is still on their frontpage today.

There was absolutely no proof he said anything of the kind.

Today we learn that Labour’s ‘Obama’ in waiting, the black MP Chuka Umunna, called Londoners enjoying a night out in the West End ‘Trash’…..

‘The former DJ, now Labour’s shadow business secretary, belongs to an exclusive online club for so-called ‘jetrosexuals’, where he asked for tips on the best nightspots to avoid the ‘trash and C-list wannabes’ of London’s West End.

‘

Not a peep out of the BBC.

Is it coz he’s Black…or Labour …or both?

Why haven’t you reported this story BBC?  If Mitchell was news then so is this.