BBC going large on thepro- immigration offensive….

Stacey Dooley will examine border control in the US in the final episode of her three-part series.
Every year, thousands of people risk their lives to get to the US from Mexico, facing 70 degree temperatures, rattlesnakes and a five-day trek across the Sonoran Desert.
Once they reach the US, in Texas, they come across border guards whose job it is to keep them out.
After looking into young men taking part in gay conversion therapy, Dooley meets people who are prepared to risk their lives for the American dream.
According to Amnesty International, migrants face shocking dangers to get to the US. Many are kidnapped, tortured and held hostage until their families in the US send money to release them.

The human rights group says six in ten female migrants are likely to be raped. In July, 2011, 41 people were killed in one day during attacks in Monterrey, north east Mexico.
In 2010, 72 potential illegal immigrants from Mexico were executed on a remote ranch 90 miles from the US border.
The drug gang that murdered them, Los Zetas, captured them as they made their way to the US and killed them when they refused to work for them.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues to deport Mexican nationals to Chihuahua, despite it being the deadliest city in the country in 2009.
During the BBC3 documentary, Dooley meets Maria, a 19-year-old who wants to get to the US to support her two young children. As a woman travelling alone, she is extremely vulnerable.
She also witnesses the rescue of a young Guatemalan girl you is seven months pregnant.
Finally, she meets Manuela and Jorge, a couple who borrowed thousands of dollars to get to the US. However, the smuggler taking them refuses to take them and they have few options for how to repay the money.
It is estimated that 12.7 million Mexican immigrants lived in the US in 2008, accounting for 32 per cent of all immigrants living there. Pew Research says 55 per cent of the Mexican immigrants are unauthorised.

Next week Stacey Dooley meets the family of Romanians who have moved into her house whilst she is working abroad.  Now that would be an interesting film….just how would a good liberal girl react to that?

There should be a law against it…oh yeah, there is…it is illegal for the BBC to take sides in any political debate….their own Charter also precludes it.

Never mind, rules are made for breaking…and if the Democratic process doesn’t get the result you want….well a little rule bending must be OK in the interest of the ‘common good’.

The BBC have gone for broke…and indeed broken just about every rule in the book today filling the airwaves with pro-Obama rhetoric.

Last week the BBC produced a poll that claimed the whole world, bar Pakistan, wanted Obama to be re-elected…..a poll almost certainly designed to give their hero a lift in the polls and boost his failing foreign policy credibility.

Today, the day of the election…and remember the BBC is listened to and watched all around the world as the BBC reminds us itself…..we have quite blatant pro-Obama electioneering and anti-Romney diatribes.

Can it be a coincidence that  on the day of the election the BBC start a programme looking at Alistair Cooke’s ‘Letters From America’ and they begin with the death of JFK?
No it’s not…and you realise that as you listen you are being softened up for ‘The Message’……..Alvin Hall is the mouthpiece for this political broadcast….the politics start about 10 minutes in…..

In Alistair Cooke’s Footsteps

Hall: ‘I recall everything that the death of John F Kennedy represented….as an African American I saw him as a person who could help lift the prejudice and bigotry in America…his death made all of us wonder what was going to happen….

Alistair Cooke: “They were victims of a huge disappointment…his death will especially be felt by the young for he’d become for them a symbol of what was possible….with intelligence and will.  Many thoughtful men were beginning to wonder if the President’s powers were not a mockery of his office as he can be thwarted  in getting any laws passed at all by being obstructed by a dozen chairmen of Congressional committees.
There is a deep feeling that our youth has been mocked and the vigour of America paralysed.”

Hall: I hear those words in terms of the promise we all felt about Barack Obama’s election four years ago.  What we saw was the same optimism that Alistair Cooke talks about…a new generation of people wanted things to change, they wanted there to be a new Hope.

Obama is bright, intelligent, articulate and persuasive.

Barack encountered people who no matter what he did, no matter how well he spoke, no matter how much he showed he was willing to compromise and work together with them ‘They’ were not going to work with him, and ‘They’ were determined ‘They’ were going to defeat him.

For me this election on this day is very much about America giving him a chance to realise that promise.’

Not much need to ‘Fisk’ that lot….quite clear what he is saying on the License Fee payer’s shilling.

Jim Naughtie complained earlier on ‘Today’ that the Republicans had taken against Obama personally….is he suggesting it is his skin colour they have ‘taken against’?

I don’t remember him complaining when Bush was the target of far worse abuse.

Jane Garvey, standing in for Jeremy Vine, went the other way, opting to allow on a woman who was supposed to be answering the question ‘Why should we in Britain care about the US election’ but strangely turned out to be a rabid anti-Republican (about 24 minutes in)….

Jeremy Vine Show

Which candidate would be best for Britain?

Some people question why we should care about the US election but here’s Cathy from Liverpool and you do care Cathy…tell us why….

Cathy:  “Yes, it’s an issue that the British media have entirely overlooked….Romney is supported by corporations and the GOP has been completely taken over by religious fundamentalists.  He’s a climate change denier…he laughed at Obama when he said he wanted to heal the planet and stop the rise of the oceans….the man wants to drill, he wants the Keystone Pipeline……….he does nothing for the planet…he’s a dangerous, dangerous man and he’s owned by oil.
He’s anti-women, he vetoes all bills in favour of women’s health, he’s against marriage equality…a lot of people are very scared about what will happen in America (under the Republicans)…. it is these people (Reps) who believe that rape is a legitimate form of conception.”

Jane Garvey:  “Thank you for expressing your passion on the subject….we appreciate it…..we welcome all opinions….but here’s Malcolm who wants an end to global capitalism and the nation state…….” ‘

Yep, I bet the BBC do appreciate it….or is it just luck how many pro-Obama, anti-Romney, Socialist callers manage to get through on the phone lines?

The BBC have long refused to talk about immigration to the UK and its downsides……they now do talk about immigration….but usually immigration in other countries.….where they cherry pick what they like as ‘proof’ that immigration is beneficial…and ipso facto will be to the UK.

The BBC of course sets the limits on the debate.…what can be talked about and indeed the way the debate is set up.

‘There is a complicated system of illusions and self deception that are the given framework for most discussion and debate.  And if you don’t happen to take part in this system of illusions and self-deception, what you say is incomprehensible.’

We had a discussion about immigration recently but it was Labour leader Ed Miliband’s guru, Prof  Sandel, who was wheeled on to bang the drum for immigration….sorry, to have an open debate about it….and we have this as a classic example of the BBC ‘fixing’ the way we perceive immigration…..they bring on a Mexican family, parents and all three kids, who have lived  illegally, …sorry, ‘undocumented’…in the US for 20 years.
Why do the BBC do this?….purely to make it all ‘personal’…..make an immigrant a ‘real person’ not just a statistic and the BBC think it’s going to be hard for someone to say they can’t come into the country….or if they do anyone listening to them will think they’re just plain old ‘nasty’ and ‘rightwing’…

‘Honest people will have to face the fact that they are morally responsible for the predictable human consequences of their acts.’

…..in other words  the BBC is fixing the debate so that it is hard for anyone to say anything the BBC disapproves of….or if they do they have to qualify it so much that it makes their statement worthless.

An interesting comment by the BBC presenter was that she thought that the illegal, sorry, undocumented, immigrants would be ideal Republicans…..with family and religion being at the centre of their values.

So Democrats don’t rate the Family and Religion then?  Which could account for a lot…..here in the UK as well.

Just adding to what David has already posted about Marr’s programme and the BBC’s coverage of the ‘Living Wage’.

All in all today on the BBC seemed like one extended Labour Party Political Broadcast.  We had Victoria Derbyshire giving an unopposed voice to the Fire Brigade Union who have a poster out now about The Cuts saying…. ‘They cut, You burn’.   Didn’t hear any voice to naysay their propaganda.

Then we get onto Ed Miliband’s latest wheeze…the Living Wage….a policy that seems in direct opposition to everything that Labour was meant to stand for….that the rich pay more and that money is redistributed to the less well off….in effect Big Business and the wealthy subsidise small business and the poorest.  The Living Wage, as said before, seems designed to end this relationship…..with Small Business  being forced to pay wages they can’t afford.

It may come as a surprise but we already have a living wage…it’s what you earn topped up by tax credits or any other allowances you might get .…..paid for by taxing the better off and big business….not to mention the NHS, schooling, the emergency services and any other service provided by the State…..pay for that lot yourself and the living wage would be have to be a bit higher than £7.45.

It was telling who the BBC brought on to prop up their propaganda on one show…..A Labour spokeswoman, Rachel Reeves, a TUC spokesman and the BBC’s own accountants, KPMG, who love the living wage.

As David has said not one critical voice was heard until ‘The World at One‘…Today did seem like a BBC show case for Labour’s exciting new policy.

Still no answer as to where the money comes from to pay for all this.

The BBC told us that ‘The Living Wage Foundation’ has announced that the Living Wage will rise across the nation…..you might have got the impression that this was a government body of some sort…rather than what it is…a campaigning pressure group for leftwing utopian dreams.

This, if anything, is a classic example of the power of the media….a pressure group working in tandem with a friendly media to push its own ideology…..and because the most powerful of the media give it their backing the politicians who might normally have doubts about it  all run scared and ‘sign up’ to it in the hope that the BBC et al won’t then make them look ‘nasty’ just because they ask a few questions such as ’where does the money come from and how many jobs will this cost?’…the BBC are happy to complacently assure us that the living wage would be ‘Lifting the poor out of poverty’ but refused to divulge who pays.

Andrew Marr’s show, ironically linked to the BBC’s ‘Free Thinking Festival’, was pure propaganda touching on just about every BBC sacred cause….Israel, immigration, climate change and a new world order…..and no ‘voices of dissent’ to challenge any of the BBC’s cherished sympathies.

The overall narrative was about how to change the political makeup of the West…they were talking about the lack of democracy in the West, carrying on the BBC’s seeming long term project  to challenge the legitimacy of Western democracy…..they spoke of the need for ‘consensus politics‘….but what that boils down to is a one party state where all Parties follow the same policies and the public don’t have a real choice…a dictatorship in essence….and because the main, most powerful media also are in on the ‘consensus’ there is absolutely no ‘opposition’….in other words the situation we have in Britain today where politicians force immigration, Europe, Islam and wind farms upon the people without allowing them a say.

This is of course an idea advanced by the BBC’s pet Marxist (aside from Mason), Martin Jacques, as posted about earlier…making the case for ‘benign’ dictatorship.

We are told by Marr and Co that everything is polarised now in the US…..political parties  don’t have the same policies as each other and that is terrible…. that’s a bad thing….I always thought that was kinda the way a democracy worked.

The problem is that America is too democratic….even Richard Black saw this as a problem……

THE US POLITICAL SYSTEM
Just about every other country involved in the UN talks has a single chain of command; when the president or prime minister speaks, he or she is able to make commitments for the entire government.
Not so the US. The president is not able to pledge anything that Congress will not support, and his inability to step up the US offer in Copenhagen was probably the single biggest impediment to other parties improving theirs.
Viewed internationally, the US effectively has two governments, each with power of veto over the other.
Doubtless the founding fathers had their reasons. But it makes the US a nation apart in these processes, often unable to state what its position is or to move that position – a nightmare for other countries’ negotiators.

Yes, Democracy is a bit of a nightmare unlike lovable old Chinese Communism.

Not only do we have polarisation of politics but we also have a polarisation of the media.…which is also dangerous….Fox News anyone?  Not the BBC or the Guardian of course.……we need to have a common reference that provides a common link to all…a Public Broadcasting Service that talks to everyone…..we absolutely need the BBC.

Unfortunately that is precisely what the BBC doesn’t do…and is the reason for this blog’s existence…the BBC speaks only for itself and its fellow travellers on the Left.  It not only refuses to allow discussion of the ‘Right’s’ issues but actively works to discredit anyone who dares to attempt to publish or broadcast such ideas and thoughts.

We were also told that we have no neighbourliness anymore….no doubt one of the evils of the consumer/capitalist/freethinking society…helping each other out is a new phenomenon….I’m not sure what planet they are living on but certainly where I live people are always swinging into action in the interests of that funny old thing called a ‘community’.

Here’s a thought though….should there be a lack of such communal empathy might that be a result of people having all responsibility for their own lives being taken over by the State?

We are also informed that we must have someone in charge who knows what it is to be poor or from an ethnic minority……how childish and simplistic….and merely parroting Miliband’s pathetic and discriminatory posturing……isn’t Miliband himself a ‘millionaire’?  Is Miliband black, or a woman, or gay, or Muslim or a Welsh hill farmer?  No?  then how can he speak for such people?   Surely he is ‘out of touch’.  A ridiculous notion and one the BBC should not be championing.

Then we had ‘Climate change‘…to tackle this we need a ‘Common Purpose’…we need to change course….that is, close down industry and build lots and lots of wind farms or else we will be inundated with 200m climate refugees by 2050….and storms like ‘Sandy’ which we all know was caused by man made global warming…..er except it  wasn’t.

Then we had….The Palestinians have a right to the land of Israel…presumably the Sikhs and Hindus kicked out of ‘Pakistan’ can have their lands back then?  No?  Oh and the  current Israeli government is wrong and dangerous…..it does not want a two state solution and that’s very worrying…the only Palestinians who don’t want it are fanatics and extremists.

No mention that Palestinians want to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth….and have been  trying to do so for at least 60 years…..with the help of their  Muslim  neighbours.

But at least we now know….only a government that has policies the BBC agrees with is valid and acceptable.

Marr is well named….’Marring’  …to spoil or impair….a suitable description of what he does to the reputation of the once great BBC now brought so low.

David beat me to the draw on our secret Marxist’s pro Chinese political system eulogy….I had been laughing so much since first reading it that I didn’t dare bash out a piece on it in case I choked on my own incredulity.

Others are not so credulous as our Mr Jacques:

China’s economic destiny in doubt after leadership shock

The forces of reaction and economic folly threaten to prevail in China. The long political arm of Jiang Zemin has reached out from the shadows to thwart reform, with huge implications for Asia and the world.

It is a bit remiss of the BBC not to mention Martin Jacques’ background….might seem kind of relevant when he is beating the drum for the world’s biggest Communist state.

I was particularly taken by a few comments of his that were exceptionally ill-founded:

In my first talk I explained that China is not primarily a nation-state but a civilisation-state. For the Chinese, what matters is civilisation. For Westerners it is nation.

Really….tell that to the Taiwanese…or the Japanese who are currently battling with China not over cultural ideals but some very concrete islands….for ‘national ownership’…or the Tibetans who are all ‘Chinese’ now.

Here he tells us:
Take the economy. China’s economic rise – an annual growth rate of 10% for more than 30 years – has been masterminded by the Chinese state.
It is the most remarkable economic transformation the world has seen since the modern era began with Britain’s industrial revolution in the late 18th Century.

Has he never heard of Japan, or Taiwan, or South Korea or Hong Kong or Brazil or India?   All countries that have turned from agricultural backwaters into booming industrial powers.

Here he tells us of the love of the Chinese people for their government…a family member….

‘The Chinese idea of the state could hardly be more different.
They see the state as an intimate, or, to be more precise, as a member of the family – the head of the family….What’s more, they perceive the state not as external to themselves but as an extension or representation of themselves.’

Presumably that ‘family member’ looking after them is ‘Big Brother’.

And there’s more:
‘The fact that the Chinese state enjoys such an exalted position in society lends it enormous authority, a remarkable ubiquity and great competence.’

Really?   I thought it was the massive number of Commissars and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army that, er, meant the State enjoyed such ‘respect and authority’.

As for ‘competence’ creating the Chinese economy….well yes…that of Western Businessmen who have moved their factories lock,  stock and barrel to China for the cheap labour…..the real reason the Western economies are in dire trouble is not the Banks…but the businessmen…and this is the reason we are seeing the ever increasing gap between the rich and the rest in the West……

“There are two systems in collision,” said Ralph Gomory, research professor at NYU’s Stern business school. “They have a state-guided form of capitalism, and we have a much freer former of capitalism.” What we have seen, he said, is “a massive shift in capability from the U.S. to China. What we have done is traded jobs for profit. The jobs have moved to China. The capability erodes in the U.S. and grows in China. That’s very destructive. That is a big reason why the U.S. is becoming more and more polarized between a small, very rich class and an eroding middle class. The people who get the profits are very different from the people who lost the wages.”

Not an analysis you hear too often, or at all, on the BBC….but one that is probably the most important truth about the Western economies.  The BBC are so intent on bashing bankers that they ignore the real story.

Here in another article he tells us that China is a religion of peace…..

I don’t think we should assume that China will throw its weight around militarily the way the US or the European nations have.

Tell that to Tibet, Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Africa.

Naturally he is following in the footsteps of many other BBC favourites…and not a few BBC staffers:

Mr. Soros even went so far as to say that at times China wields more power than the U.S. because of the political gridlock in Washington. “Today China has not only a more vigorous economy, but actually a better functioning government than the United States.”

“Sometimes you look at countries like China and you think, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to be an autocracy in times like these?'”    Matt Frei, Americana, September 20, 2009

The New York Times’s Thomas Friedman finally gets to where he’s been wanting to go all these years. Everything would be so much better if we could just submit to the benign rule of an enlightened elite:
‘One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.‘
And of course the ever quotable Andrew Marr:
“..the final answer, frankly, is the vigorous use of state power to coerce and repress. It may be my Presbyterian background, but I firmly believe that repression can be a great, civilising instrument for good. Stamp hard on certain ‘natural’ beliefs for long enough and you can almost kill them off.”

BBC climate change advocates seem particularly attracted to the imposition of dictatorial rule in order to plaster the landscape with wind turbines and close down business:

This recent radio broadcast by the BBC’s “Ethical Man” Justin Rowlatt and tell me whether you find it as scary as I do.
‘I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.‘
Here’s Rowlatt’s opening:
‘Climate change is a divisive issue. I believe that it is a
real threat and needs to be tackled. I know many people disagree. But
whatever you believe you should be concerned about how our society
responds to the issue because there is a growing view that mitigating
climate change means we have to change our view of democracy.’

And of course we couldn’t leave out the sadly no longer with us, Richard Black:
‘In a nutshell: does the way humanity governs itself need a series of tweaks or a complete overhaul, in order to meet the broadest ambitions of improving the lot of the planet’s poorest, safeguarding nature and making the global economy more sustainable? This might appear undemocratic; but …..‘

All in all I think Mr Jacques needs a regrade for his effort….he seems to have been given far too high a degree of respect from the BBC…..perhaps, looking into the crystal ball he should go for another line of work….for a time when China does become a democracy and allows people like him to say what they like on the national broadcaster’s platform.

Seems the BBC are keen to keep Richard Black in the loop:

Jo-Anne Pugh ‏@jbpugh

@enviroblack Hi Richard – Jo-Anne from BBC newsdesk. can you DM me ? I have an intriguing invitation for you!

Intriguing.

No danger of any green bias flowing from this intriguing invitation as Jo-Anne Pugh points out……

Home Desk Editor, BBC TV & Radio. I am paid to leave my opinions at home, obviously.

She does have an interesting home life….an 8 year old who listens to R4……a bit elitist for the egalitarian BBC….he should be listening to Radio 1 or the local underground pirate station  like the kids in the social housing ghetto…..talk about advantaged and privileged!

Jo-Anne Pugh ‏@jbpugh

My 8 year old listening to R4 yesterday: “Mum, how rude is the P word?” Me: “What P word?” “Pleb”

Oh…it’s OK…his mum can teach him not to bother having heros or respecting anyone as the Left have done since the 60’s…and it’s all worked out so well that lack of respect for authority of any kind……

Jo-Anne Pugh ‏@jbpugh

I don’t have heroes any more – they always have feet of clay. But I’m making an exception for J K Rowling

If you have been following the BBC’s coverage of the English exam marking saga you may be a little confused.

As I am.

I understood that the problem was that the exams in January were marked too generously…and therefore the June exams were marked more rigorously….i.e. to the proper standard.   This would mean that those students taking the exams in January have in fact received grades that they may not have merited…higher than deserved…but the story we get…and the story accepted without question by the BBC is that the students in June, who have been marked properly, have been treated unfairly and have lost countless jobs, apprenticeships and university places because of too harsh marking.

Maybe I’m wrong…and a little too hardnosed, but it seems that they got the marks they merited in June and those in January should pretend they took their exams in June….for a bit of credibility.

Nice though of the BBC to side unquestionably with the downtrodden students and the teachers.

Below is an interesting comparison of the BBC’s coverage and the Telegraph’s….which one do you think mentioned teachers ‘cheating’?

The BBC made absolutely no mention of it at all…no mention of the admissions by teachers to OFQUAL that the Telegraph lays out for us.

The BBC does however give us what must be just about every whinge and moan from the teachers and the Unions that are horrified at any suggestion that they may be to blame.

Teachers have hit out at claims they marked GCSE work too generously, as new data show the decline in pupils getting at least a C in English.

Glenn Smith, principal of Honiton Community College in Devon, told the BBC that teachers in his English department used “stringent” measures to ensure they were marking these assessments fairly and consistently.
“An awful lot of work goes into ensuring their marking is accurate – the pressure they live with is intense,” he said.
“To say they’ve marked up is outrageous.”

Philip Rush, deputy head teacher at St Peter’s High School, Gloucester, said: “The fiasco surrounding the unfairness of this summer’s grades is a political not an educational fiasco.
“St Peter’s High School deplores the slur made on the school’s teachers, and on all English teachers working in England,

Val Tyreman, a science teacher from Stockton-on-Tees, described Ofqual’s report as “appalling”.

John Townsley, executive principal of two academy schools in Leeds, said: “The problem is that Ofqual were asleep in the early part of the award.

Malcolm Trobe, deputy general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “For Ofqual to suggest that teachers and schools are to blame is outrageous and flies in the face of the evidence.
“The accountability measures do place tremendous pressure on teachers and schools, especially at GCSE grade C, but to say that teachers would compromise their integrity to the detriment of students is an insult.”
Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “It is a diversion to attempt to blame teachers for following the rules they were given.

Teachers’ anger over the marking fiasco was reflected in a survey in the Times Education Supplement.
The survey of 467 secondary schools in England found 93% had lost faith in Ofqual, with more than half saying they had no confidence in the regulator.
Responding to the survey schools described the watchdog as “underhand”, “incompetent”, “bullying and callous” and “a Gove puppet”.

Ofqual: ‘We have to cheat, nanny and fiddle’, teachers say
Teachers have admitted “fiddling” exam grades and cheating to keep up with rivals they distrust, a report by Ofqual claims, as one reveals: “We have to cheat because other schools will be doing so.”

The Telegraph’s slant on the affair:

In their own words: how teachers were pressured into bending the system

I’ve just read my school e-mail to find the instructions for getting the CA [controlled assesssment] folders together, and including the instruction ‘All folders must be at or above target grade.’ This is being done by either getting kids to rewrite CAs after they’ve been marked, or by fiddling the Speaking and Listening grades to make up for lost marks on the written work. When I’ve dared to suggest that the CAs should be done in exam conditions and that lots of schools are doing that, I’m told that that is rubbish, that CAs are really coursework, and that we have to cheat because other schools will be doing so, and we cannot afford to let our results slip at all.

The drive to achieve targets is definitely corrupting and I loathe being made to feel that I am not doing right by my students because I am not making them stay behind after school week after week to rewrite the bloody things.

The school felt that proper regulation of CA was well-nigh impossible and that controlled conditions were being interpreted very differently in different schools. This was creating suspicion and distrust between schools.

I feel I am being made to cheat. I’ve taught the kids and then let them do the tasks – we have to do them in the classrooms, except for those who need access arrangements, who are under the beady eye of external invigilators. I taught my kids, gave them the opportunity to make notes, and then did the damned things like an exam. Result? Lots of them underperformed against their targets. Not good enough. This work, I am told, is really coursework, and has to be at target grade, or they will not reach their targets at the end of the course. Others in the department have done marked drafts. I’m now feeling pressured to get some of mine to redo various pieces. I’ve voiced my objections, but have been told that the long and the short of it is that they have to be nannied through at every stage – there is disbelief when I say that some schools are doing the CAs as exams. I resent the implication that I am failing my kids, when actually what they produce is probably more accurate as an indication of their abilities than their target grades are. The sooner this nonsense is stopped and we go back to 100 per cent exams, the better.

Wide variety of methods for putting CA in place, such as students writing a first draft which was then given written comments by teacher. This being subsequently written up by a student. Doesn’t feel like a level playing field.”

The mark scheme is so vague you can drive a coach and horses through it.

However, the real problem is that no matter what syllabus we teach, we will still be expected to get students up to grades that are unrealistic and we will still be expected to ‘teach to the test’ to get them through. The pressure on teachers to get results is preventing us from doing any real teaching.

We have been asked to rework controlled assessments, mark them and give them back for improvement. In some cases we are virtually writing them for the students. This to me is no different to coursework and raises the issue of why coursework was replaced.

Interesting how the BBC were all over the police for rewriting their Hillsborough reports but are happy to look the other way when teachers are rewriting pupils exam work.

DACHAU  BUCHENWALD  AUSCHWITZ  TREBLINKA

BELSEN  MAIDANEK SOBIBOR

A special BBC investigation by the Panodrama team have uncovered an incredible relationship between Mrs Thatcher and the Nazi Holocaust….if you take the names of Nazi  concentration death camps and look at them closely you can find within them the very same letters that make up ‘Mrs Thatcher’…..and ‘Nazi’.

Labour’s Tom Watson states that he has no evidence what so ever confirming that link but he would like to think it was true…and has handed the file of evidence over to police and told every newspaper about the ‘breaking scandal’….his book will be out soon!

The definition of Insanity is “Doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.”

The BBC must by definition be insane.

This is an organisation that has been caught out neglecting its role to protect children and young people in its care and then going on to attempt to cover that up….and despite being caught covering up it continues remorselessly down that road.

Today we have several new developments, one of which epitomises that very attitude of closing ranks, hiding the dirty secrets and carrying on as if nothing has happened…in fact the BBC is acting much like the murderer who volunteers to help in the search for his very own victim and claims credit for doing so and appears on the local news saying how terrible it all  is.
Jonathan Dimbleby made an ill-judged intervention to defend the BBC…and the BBC slapped it on the front page…. Interesting use of ‘Broadcaster’…as if not actually anything to do with the BBC…depsite being its almost regal ‘senior statesman’…..

Broadcaster backs BBC against Jimmy Savile ‘witch-hunt’
There has been a “disturbing relish” in the way critics have laid into the BBC over the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal, Jonathan Dimbleby has said.
The broadcaster told the Times newspaper there has been a “witch-hunt” against the corporation, which had become “horribly out of proportion”.
“The real focus should be on what Savile did wrong,” Mr Dimbleby said.
It was “very distressing” that people at the BBC were being “hounded” in a way that was “unwarranted”, he added.

Dimbleby has done us a favour really….his remarks perfectly illustrate the arrogance, the patrician attitude and the closing of ranks that exist in the BBC.
His plea to ‘think of the victims’ is a bit of self-serving pious misdirection….attempting to make the critics of the BBC look bad for ‘ignoring the victims’ whilst it is only the BBC that really cares.

Unfortunately they didn’t seem to care about the victims when they were actually being abused…only now that fingers are being pointed and reputations teeter are they suddenly ‘thinking of the victims’….and remember this is the same news organisation that colluded for years in the cover up of abuse of white girls by Muslim men…..the BBC has ‘form’.

Dimbleby should perhaps remember this also from ‘Operation Ore’ in 2003:

The Director General of the National Crime Squad realises that people might think there is a witchhunt against paedophiles at the moment. “I know people are comparing us to McCarthyism. They think we’re thugs in blue uniforms, out to get thousands of men. That we’re hounding people who just flick through a few soft-focus images of scantily clad children, and that we’re spending crucial police time chasing ‘kiddy porn’ when we should be out getting burglars.

“But it’s just not true. For a start, we’re carrying out the law. And once you get involved in this area, some of the stuff you see is so disgusting that you do become passionate about it.”

Whilst Dimbleby has been wheeled on to provide the BBC with some ‘elder statesman’ credibility and reflected moral rectitude it has been engaged in a dirty, no punches pulled dog fight to try and drag the Tories, and especially Thatcher, into the same mire they are in.

This latest narrative of a ‘Thatcher era senior Conservative politician’ involved in child abuse began with Labour’s Tom Watson making some allegations, without any proof it might be added, about a politician who may or may not have had links to a convicted paedophile, Peter Righton….the Mirror’s headline next day was along the lines of ‘Paedophile ring in No10’.…no sense given that this was an historical accusation.   I mention the Mirror’s headline because it shows that there is a political agenda to this attack and solely aimed at the Tories.…and certainly nothing to do with ‘thinking of the victims’.

I can’t help thinking that perhaps the BBC may also be colluding with Watson and ‘swapping notes’.
After all how many times can you repeat ‘Thatcher era Conservative politician’ in relation to child abuse….quite a few it seems if you are the BBC…It even makes it onto the front page…..sexual abuse at the BBC was known about and ignored and went on on the BBC premises……a man working at No 10 who happens to be a paedophile hardly (so far) implicates the then government and certainly not Thatcher herself….but that is the link the BBC are trying to make.

Strangely what doesn’t make it anywhere onto the BBC news site is the serious allegations made in relation to Leonard Rossiter and BBC staff….those allegations being THREE BBC staff tried to rape a TV extra as screen legend Leonard Rossiter performed a sex act, it was claimed last night.

Oh hold on the BBC does mention this.…in its review of the newspapers:

A new name has been added to the list of former TV personalities accused of sexual offences against young people.
The Sun claims the actor Leonard Rossiter, who died in 1984, watched an 18-year-old extra in a BBC play being sexually assaulted in a rehearsal room.
Newspaper review: Allegations focus on Leonard Rossiter.

All day we have been treated to allegations against a ‘Leading Thatcher era Conservative politician’ and hardly a peep about someone having three BBC staff members attempt to rape him whilst Leonard Rossiter looks on.

Whether the allegations turn out to be true or not this is a highly politicised attack by the BBC on the Tories which rather pulls the rug from under the bumptious Dimbleby and his self righteous mutterings about The Victims..

The BBC’s cover up continues and it includes flinging copious amounts of mud at its favoured bête noires aiming to smear them with as much muck as possible in order to try and deflect attention and censure being heaped upon themselves and the sordid events that went on literally under their noses.

It is an organisation that has entirely failed to live up to its aspirations and stated ideals.  It  has failed utterly to admit fault and accept responsibility and is engaged in the mother of all denials…a starker contrast between the supposed image of the BBC as the ‘Auntie’ who selflessly guides us and protects us, defending the values we cherish and the insincere and corrupt organisation which it actually is would be hard to find.

Here’s something to wait up for….

 ‘Influence By Degree’  on BBC World Service next Tuesday (6th) at various times:

‘Is academic freedom at risk? Is academic integrity under threat? Across the developed world, government funding for universities is drying up. That means universities are having to seek finance elsewhere.
One such model can be found in USA. US universities have been raising money from their alumni for years. Princeton University is the master at this. With only 7500 students it has a staggering endowment of over $17billion. And well over half of Princeton’s alumni donate to their old college.

Rob Broomby has been to Princeton to talk to alumni and to observe how freshmen (first year undergraduates) are absorbed into the Princeton culture, and hears concerns about how donations are changing academic priorities.’

Fair enough question….only just how far will the BBC look….is it just academic freedom at risk or are there bigger, cultural, social and political issues at stake?  Is it only the BBC’s favourite target, ‘Big Business’,  that gets shaken down here?

…or….Will the BBC also investigate the flood of ‘Islamic’ money buying up universities, buying influence and the ability to spread its own brand of propaganda and, as Hitchens might say ‘poisoning’ young minds and Society…and if so does the BBC consider that influence harmful?

The BBC seems to have, er, ‘borrowed’ the title from this in 2009….‘A Degree Of Influence’

Hopefully they will also be looking at what it said:

‘Donors and foreign governments from around the world have in recent years
taken a huge interest in funding UK university studies. 

A Degree of Influence:  The funding of strategically important subjects in UK universities highlights the foreign money that is being injected into those subjects that are designated of  ‘strategic importance’  by the UK government,  and the ways in which the cash is being converted into influence at universities on a range of levels.
The largest donations are those funding Islamic and Arabic studies in the UK.
At a time when Islam is receiving an unprecedented amount of public attention,
it is more vital than ever before for universities to engage in free and open
research, all the while retaining their reputation as impartial, objective centres
of academic excellence. Yet the evidence uncovered by this report suggests
that universities are placing their objectivity at risk by accepting huge financial
donations without putting in place safeguards to ensure that they retain their
neutrality.‘

There are of course other ‘donors’ who might be of concern such as China but only one ideology so far is  reinforcing its message with extreme violence.

The BBC only presents an image of Islam that Islam itself wants to portray itself as having…but is the real image more like the one portrayed below as probably the majority of non-Muslims believe?

The BBC needs to open up the debate to include the uncomfortable and inconvenient truths about this ideology and how it is being propagated in the West, as well as pushing a dangerously and deliberately fraudulent and misleading version of the truth.

Christopher Hitchens, as posted before, reminds us what the BBC hides from us:

‘Now let’s not dance around, not all monotheisms are exactly the same at the moment. They’re all based on the same illusion, they’re all plagiarisms of each other, but there is one in particular that at the moment is proposing a serious menace not just to freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but to quite a lot of other freedoms too. And this is the religion that exhibits the horrible trio of self-hatred, self-righteousness and self-pity.

I am talking about militant Islam.

Globally it’s a gigantic power.

It controls an enormous amount of oil wealth, several large countries and states with an enormous fortune, it’s pumping the ideology of Wahhabism and Salafism around the world, poisoning societies where it goes, ruining the minds of children, stultifying the young and its madrassas, training people in violence, making a culture death and suicide and murder. That’s what it does globally, it’s quite strong.

In our society it poses as a cringing minority, who’s faith you might offend, which deserves all the protection that a small and vulnerable group might need.
Look anywhere you like in the world for the warrant for slavery, for the subjection of women as chattel, for the burning and flogging of homosexuals, for ethnic cleansing, for anti-Semitism, for all of this, you look no further than a famous book that’s on every pulpit in this city, and in every synagogue and in every mosque.
And then just see whether you can square the fact that the force of the main source of hatred is also the main caller for censorship.

And this from him also:

‘Tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism. We are wrong to talk as if the only subject was that of terrorism. As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind. Sometimes it will be calls for censorship of anything “offensive” to Islam. Sometimes it will be demands for sexual segregation in schools and swimming pools. The script is becoming a very familiar one. And those who make such demands are of course usually quite careful to avoid any association with violence. They merely hint that, if their demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a teeny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter …‘

I don’t think anyone can argue with what Hitchens said….which makes it all the more odd that when something is so obvious  the BBC, which goes out of its way to discredit organisations like the EDL or even UKIP and the Daily Mail….should sit back and not just say nothing but actually go out and actively promote Islam as a form of culture that can sit happily alongside any other in a Western Society.

Clearly it can’t……..and that debate needs to be had.

Let’s hope the BBC do include a close look at the Saudis et al pouring money into universities…..and then look at the madrassas and mosques and ‘educational’, cultural and social institutions the Saudis are funding and setting up in the West as well.

The BBC set would complain bitterly about a  McDonald’s or a Tesco Express arriving in their neighbourhood but extend the hand of welcome to religious extremists who build a mosque or a Muslim school….if it were US ‘Evangelical’ Christians you can guarantee the welcome would be entirely different.

As stated below ‘disclosure is your friend’ and may help to assure those who have concerns or even prejudices about Islam……

‘From a Western point of view, it does little to remove the fear of the unknown among regulators and politicians, and it feeds the antagonism of those who may already have pre-existing prejudices towards foreigners, in general, and Arabs, in particular.

In contrast, domestically, the lack of transparency has attracted relatively little attention. Though this is starting to change, with the partial exception of Kuwait, there has not been much sustained pressure for the SWFs to open their books and provide the body politic with a better understanding of what is being done with their money. This leads to suspicions that it is not being properly accounted for. In both the domestic and the international cases, greater transparency would be welcome and would likely undermine many of the suspicions of the cynical.

As the lawyers say, “Disclosure is your friend.”

Perhaps the BBC checked out this website as part of their research….‘Saudi Arabia spent one hundred billion dollars to spread Wahhabism in the West, the most anti-Semitic version of Islam (the Soviet Union during the Cold War invested much less for its propaganda.) Currently there are 17 federally funded centers on American campuses devoted to Middle Eastern studies: All of these support pro-Islamist and anti-Israel ideas ‘

Undoubtedly the BBC will be keen to unearth the truth and rigorously investigate such assertions.

Thanks to Alfie Pacino in the comments for pointing this out:

BBC left-wing political bias illustrated through UK political funding revelations

A freedom of information (FOI) response seen by The Commentator has revealed unjustifiable bias in the BBC’s approach to UK politcal parties.

The freedom of information request shows that over the past 10 years, the BBC has spent £335,000 with the Labour Party, £295,000 with the Liberal Democrats and just £96,000 with the Conservatives.

No comment needed really.

…er…perhaps I was wrong about no comment needed…at least one Tory politician has the right idea:

Boris for PM!