I’d seen this  in the Guardian the other day and was musing on how to work it into a post on BBC Bias….I could have used the usual ‘tenuous’ link of it being an ‘illustration of the BBC mindset’…..but to be fair the Guardian ‘proper’, and not CIF, does lay into the BBC at times whilst still retaining its lefty credentials (much like the Miliband brothers )

Fortuitously rather than consign it to the ‘interesting but with vague connections to BBC Bias’ file I read this in the Telegraph:

Meet Grace Petrie, a folk singer from Leicester. According to her website, “rage and despair” at the “heartbreaking” general election result (2010) turned her political. Here’s a sample:

And we’ve got a recession to beat/Let’s put more money into the monarchy and the millionaire in Downing Street/Someone’s got to foot the bill/Let’s start with the disabled and the mentally ill (from “Farewell to Welfare”).

Right on! Composer James MacMillan was so moved that he sent Grace a message, tongue in cheek, accusing her of mocking Leftie songwriters with a cruel send-up. She replied in classic feminist I’m-sorry-that’s-not-funny mode. A proper Spartist, in other words. How long before the BBC declares her a national treasure?

Well not so long as they have the perky little fellow Billy Bragg, a much loved, by the BBC, ‘street’ poet and protest songster ever ready to give us a Marxian twist to the latest political personality or policy that the ‘Right On’ have gone right off.

The BBC however,  will be happy to know that a whole new generation is being manufactured…yes that’s right, protest singers aren’t born they’re made and here’s the proof from the Guardian’s  ‘Educational Resources ( a bit of corporate sponsorship for those anti corporate protestors):

Amnesty International’s The Power of Our Voices is a cross-curricular set of resources designed for English, music, citizenship and PSHE lessons targeted at 11- to 16-year-olds.

Students can explore protest music through the ages in lesson one and a fascinating set of case studies

Guided by the poet and rapper Kate Tempest, students learn how to write their own protest lyrics in lesson three – and find out about Amnesty’s national protest song competition. Teachers can order the entire interactive The Power of our Voices pack for free from Amnesty International.

Martin Powell’s stirring poetry provides a real wake-up call for students, who are likely to respond to his accessible, in-your-face lyrics. Write for Human Rights gets straight to the point (see Martin performing the poem here) and the simplicity of Affirmations has the power to move mountains. His poetic quotes will add fuel to the fire of any student protest or demonstration

Poetry lessons made easy is a series of lesson plans for use in primary and secondary schools. My Shiny Shoes looks at truth and lies through the poetry of Margot Henderson. Raman Mundair’s poem An Elegy for Two Boys and related teaching ideas explores bullying and racism in response to the murders of Stephen Lawrence and Ricky Reel. John Berkavitch’s A Short List of the People I Hate explores list poetry and writing poems for performance. You can see all the Apples and Snakes poetry lessons made easy here.

I shouldn’t bother following many or any of the links to see examples of the work….Bob Dylan they’re not.

Still it’s nice to know the kids are learning something at school if not reading, riting and rithmetic. 

They can protest about not getting a proper education…’I know a song about that!’

Oh and kids reading this…note that ‘a wake up call to students!’…get out there, you’ve seen the adverts on the BBC, 21st November on the streets of London….The Student Protest against the Coalition and what have you……be there or be square….‘set an agenda for the next general election.’

Victoria Derbyshire will be there handing out tea, sandwiches and sympathy in return for soundbites slagging off the Coalition.

Remember:

“You’ve got a lot to be angry about.

“You’ve had your education systematically attacked across the board by the coalition. And even if you get to the other end, what have you got to look forward to?

“Youth unemployment is at an all-time high, getting on the property ladder is next to impossible and we don’t even have the safety net of pensions to look forward to any more.

“In a year in which there are no votes in Parliament and no legislation coming before politicians, it’s about time we started setting the agenda.”

Radical man radical…now where’s the bloody bar?

“The power of the television networks does not lie in their economic power but in their ability to manipulate opinion. The degree of concentration in television is an attack on democracy. It gives them enormous power to extort.”

A more dishonest appraisal of Europe would be hard to find in an astonishingly partisan piece about a European Referendum on Today with Evan Davis interviewing Peter Kellner…as Davis tells us ‘from the polling group ‘YouGov’.

Kellner told us that although there was a majority in the country for a referendum on Europe and for some form of cutting ties with ‘Europe’ he says we can ignore this…although people say Europe is a major concern…you know what….he thought it wasn’t really…if you ask them what was a major concern in their personal lives it wasn’t Europe.

Well no, if I have tooth ache it’s going to be tooth ache I’m concerned about immediately or the kid’s school etc…but I would still be able to drag myself down to the polling booth and vote on Europe oddly enough.

So he tells us, no one is really all that bothered about Europe…and when they start to really consider what  damage would be done to Britain if we withdrew then they all start to be more positive about Europe…Kellner putting words in people’s mouths…doing what the ‘elite’ do best…thinking for us because we’re too ignorant or prejudiced to have considered, well informed views ourselves!

Just as Stalin airbrushed out of history those he fell out with, Kellner and the BBC airbrush out your concerns…‘they’re not real, you don’t really think that…now go away and let us get on with the important work running the country for  you but in our own way.’…in fact they don’t just airbrush your concerns they airbrush you as a person, they show utter contempt for you firstly by arranging this charade on Today to try and fool us and then to contemptuously dismiss your views as the thoughts of children…mere whimsy or flights of fancy not grounded in reality at all….based on ‘trying to keep the world at bay’ as Kellner said…what he really meant was you’re all racist, xenophobic Little Englanders.

And all happily endorsed or encouraged by the Labour leaning Evan Davis.

You have to ask why Davis didn’t ask all this of John Humphrys of course…who is part owner of and commentator for YouGov.

What Davis doesn’t tell us is that Kellner is a Labour man through and through….and!!! as pointed out by ‘John in Cheshire’ in the comments…. ‘Mr Kellner is married to that stalwart of the EU nightmare, Cathy Ashton.’…and of course she is a Labour politician.

You couldn’t make this up….failure to disclose such information by Today is, what, it’s just corrupt….the BBC engaging in manipulating opinion and votes by a totally and shockingly dishonest portrayal of  someone they present as an ‘honest Broker’, someone completely impartial.  And it’s all lies.

What  are some of Kellner’s personal views?… a read of this…in the Guardian naturally, soon tells you he may not be all that impartial when it comes to Europe or immigration or how to run the economy.

Here are truths that I (Kellner) believe Labour needs to recognise:

The European Union is  good for Britain. Again, Labour should not be cowed by the euroscepticism that YouGov and other pollsters repeatedly portray.(Just ignore the people)

Keynes was right.  Governments must support the economy and boost demand when growth has stalled. I agree with Ed Balls when he says that the priority must be jobs rather than pay. Labour should be arguing for job-intensive government spending over the next year or two, such as house-building and road-mending, rather than tax cuts.

Immigration is overwhelmingly a blessing. It brings to these shores new ideas, new enthusiasm and entrepreneurial talent. Those who say immigration does harm, or imply that there is a problem by setting artificial curbs on the numbers coming to Britain are wrong – historically, culturally, economically and morally. But Labour will never win votes by compromising on immigration – the right will always outbid us.

Note that ‘us’ on the end there…’us ‘ as in ‘us in the Labour Party’.

This kind of deception matters hugely…here the BBC have brought in  a ‘ringer’, someone who is intent on fixing the game so that the scorecard is always in their favour.

Jimmy Carr was avoiding taxes, here the BBC are avoiding and sidelining Democracy.  Its blatant lies, little deceits and omissions are all designed to ‘nudge’ us into quiet acceptance of the European Union or whatever other pet project such as immigration, the BBC supports.

They hope you won’t notice…but who cares if you do? …what are you going to do about it?…complaining will get you nowhere and MPs are too afraid to move against the ‘family favourite’ that is Aunty Beeb.

“The power of the television networks does not lie in their economic power but in their ability to manipulate opinion. The degree of concentration in television is an attack on democracy. It gives them enormous power to extort.”

Normally that small but emotive phrase is used to honour and remember those who have either been prepared to sacrifice their lives or indeed have made that final sacrifice in order that the rest of us can live lives safe from tyranny, poverty and corruption.

Today I use it in another sense…Lest we forget just who lead us to the barren future that awaits us, that sacrificed all our futures and our children’s for their own socialist dreams. 

When Ed Miliband states: 

….does he include his old boss, Gordon brown, amongst the criminals to be investigated?……

In  his June 2007 Mansion House speech, with credit markets already in ragged retreat, Mr Brown hailed “an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London. And I believe it will be said of this age, the first decades of the 21st century, that out of the greatest restructuring of the global economy, perhaps even greater than the industrial revolution, a new world order was created.” 

“I will be honest with you, many who advised me, including not a few newspapers, favoured a regulatory crackdown….I believe we were right not to go down that road … and we were right to build upon our light touch system….fair, proportionate and increasingly risk based”.

Back in 2005, he said that the better model for financial regulation was “not just a light touch, but a limited touch. We should not only apply the concept of risk to enforcement of regulation, but to…the decision as to whether to regulate at all”.

Lest We Forget….

Mrs Thatcher….”The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

The latest strategy from the pro-Euro lobby has been put into operation….

BBC: If the Eurozone creates a banking union we’re going to be isolated and frozen out aren’t we, without influence?

Expert: Yes, we’re going to be hugely disadvantaged as Frankfurt or Berlin crushes the British financial industry and we are on the outside looking in as the new European empire led by Germany takes on the might of the USA and China..

BBC: Anybody got any other ideas?  Oh, funny, there’s no one here….but no of course not, Europe it is then!

This has always been the position of the critics of the British position on Europe. When Cameron refused to sign up to the last financial treaty he was roundly criticised for leaving us isolated and away from the negotiating table where we couldn’t influence anything.

However not long after Germany was banging on our door to negotiate….why? because Britain has one of the biggest economies in the world…..hard to isolate that, especially when Europe sells around 40% of its goods to us….and they want to buy 40% of our exports.

And what of Germany? Merkel has consistently refused to sign up to a fiscal union or even to allow the ECB to issue Eurobonds…no cries of ‘you’re isolated and powerless’ in her case.

Just how much of this vaunted ‘influence’ would Britain have in a European parliament in a political and fiscal union? Not much. Whereas now we could in theory run our own affairs under British parliamentary sovereignty (in practise of course Europe makes 80% of our laws), sign up to the German Empire and we would have around 72 seats out of a total of 754….and if Europe increases in size of course we have even less voting power as more MEPs come in from, say, Turkey.

And bare in mind the European Commission, that is, the Euro government, is completely unelected by the people.

So we would have around 10% of the vote….whereas now we have 100% of the vote in our own country. Were we to fully subsume our democracy under the European yoke we would be run by the vested interests of smaller countries ganging up to vote themselves big pay rises in Euro subsidies….and there would be little we could do about it.

The BBC seems to love a Euro Empire solution….because it is the solution to all our problems…simple, a walk over…at least by Germany, & that worked out well before:

‘

The economic and financial solutions to the eurozone crisis are actually surprisingly straightforward.

How so?

Easy.

Just ask how the exact same problems have been solved by the members of that other large (and much better functioning) single currency area – the United States of America.

In the long-run, a US-style federal budget may be needed to cover the cost of recessions, so that individual governments don’t risk going bust when their national economies get into trouble.’

Problem with that? Many States in the US are bust…California, despite the undoubted(?) benefits of massive immigration of cheap labour from Mexico, have gone broke. The BBC’s solution…massive injection of funds from central government.

How about Wisonsin? What was their solution? Cut budgets, re-negotiate pay awards and demand efficiencies….put the budget on a sound footing…and then get re-elected. Simple. But not in the BBC play book.  What’s that word?  Oh Yeah…Austerity…and financial responsibility!  Simple.  Easy.

Did you know that…..‘The new French President Francois Hollande was elected on a platform demanding a “growth pact” in Europe – a set of reforms designed to boost European economies.’

I thought he was elected by the French people to run the French economy.

Another BBC plan….Plan B in fact…spend, spend, spend…don’t ask where the money comes from or how this way of working worked out for Gordon Brown…or indeed the hospitals now staggering under the bills for PFI new builds.

‘The eurozone may need to pay for large-scale investment in infrastructure, particularly in southern Europe, much in the way that West Germany invested in rebuilding East German after reunification in 1990.‘

Such spending nearly crippled Germany and now the BBC wants them to fund the rest of Europe rather than Europe sorting its own economy out and making it cost effective and productive.

However strangely the BBC also recognises the need for fiscal responsibility…short term pain for long term gain….and yet fail to mention that to Ed Balls when he pops up with his plan to splurge cash on ‘infrastructure’…no cries of ‘you’re being short term and reckless’ then.

‘All Europeans (and especially southerners) are having to implement structural reforms that will increase their long-term growth and strengthen government finances (although at the risk of hurting growth in the short-term). These include removing restrictions on market competition, raising the retirement age, laying off (over many years) a lot of state employees, and making it much easier to hire and fire employees.’

and look…….‘Mr Hollande has resisted many of these reforms in France.’ All the talk about the grand new plan for growth lead by Hollande is just short term rhetoric….eventually the austerity will hit….and be all the harder when it does.

And finally……actually the problem in Europe is too much efficiency….German efficiency that is…the answer….bleed Germany dry and dole out enormous dollops of german cash to Southern European countries…that’s a pretty long term solution isn’t it?….in fact isn’t that the BBC’s answer to world ‘problems’….sandbag the Western economies and hand out huge payments to 3rd world countries….sounds like a recipe for no one making a profit….and no industry, no schools, no medicine, no progress and no better lives for the 3rd world at all….and isn’t that the ‘new’ or at least openly admitted objective of the climate change lobby as signed up to at Rio+20? It really is all about Marx.

Here’s how the BBC explains it all:

‘To make a full banking, fiscal and monetary union work, the eurozone governments would need to hand power to a central authority (the European Commission) that can pay for and supervise all of the above

Most of the above reforms involve Germany sharing its wealth with the rest of Europe (and all European nations handing power to Brussels).

“Rebalancing” means solving the big underlying competitiveness problem faced by southern Europeans that led to their economies racking up so much debt in the first place.

The eurozone’s root problem is that the southern European economies have become fundamentally uncompetitive

The ECB and German government may need to stimulate high wage inflation in Germany for several years in order to eliminate the country’s current massive competitive trade advantage over southern Europe.’

Ah yes that old problem…too much efficiency…an anthema to anyone who gets paid from the Public Purse….is that the tea trolley I hear rattling down the corridor?

‘It’s A Worry’….you may have noticed now and again that the good people of the BBC often, inadvertently perhaps, come out with this phrase when the discussion gets around to the EDL presence on our streets.

It’s not a worry that we have Islamic terrorists or terrorist ‘sympathisers’ walking the same streets…that’s  celebrating diversity or some such nonsense from the idotic chattering classes that populate the corridors of the BBC.

What is a real worry might be this story……　

This is a story that would be a parent’s worst nightmare…a story that you would believe could only have come out of Stalinist Russia or North Korea. But it is happening here in the UK.

This is a story that the BBC can feel proud of itself for having succeeded in whipping up an atmosphere of fear, ignorance, intolerance, bigotry and prejudice against a certain set of people who hold views that the BBC find inimical to their own and therefore are to be crushed,proscribed and silenced.

Ironically this is the BBC that is ever willing to relate how appalling McCarthyism was in the U.S, but who has worked hard, amongst others, to demonise the English Defence League and paint them as racist, violent thugs no better than the BNP and whose ideology is not far off Nazism….and by virtue of that every member of the EDL in a similar light…….some certainly are…..but as with ‘radical’ Muslims, do they represent the majority?

The real truth is that the EDL’s campaign is based on a belief that Islam is a divisive, violent, homophobic, misogynist and intolerant ideology….one that has spread more violence and misery around the world than any other ideology other than Socialism….one that has held back every country that has been wrapped in its dead embrace for centuries.

The EDL’s beliefs have nothing to do with race…considering that Muslims are from all races on earth near enough.

This story concerns a mother, Toni McLeod, a member of the EDL who has admitted to having been violent on demonstrations, though the full context is missing for that, and has had her 3 children removed from her care and has the prospect of her next baby also being removed by social workers.

A major factor in that decision was her membership of the EDL…..her children have been snatched from her by social workers on the basis that they might grow up influenced by her allegedly ‘unacceptable’ views….as the social workers state: “Toni clearly needs to break away from the inappropriate friendships she has through either the EDL or break-off group in order that she can model and display appropriate positive relationships to the baby as he/she grows and develops. Toni has been a prominent member of the EDL. They claim they are a peaceful group, however, they have strong associations with violence and racism.”

‘Social workers fear [her] child would become radicalised with EDL views and want it put up for adoption immediately.’

That might raise a cynical smile or two…social workers taking children into their tender care who then end up on the streets and possibly preyed upon by Muslim men whose own ideology says that these girls are white trash and easy meat. Curious one that. A rather vicious irony….an EDL mother whose children could fall victim to Muslim gangs when taken into ‘protective custody’.

A paradox perhaps that up and down the country in Mosques, madrassas, faith schools and ‘Islamic institutes’ an ideology of hate and apartheid is preached day in day out. And yet there is no move to take these children into care. Wouldn’t it be entirely appropriate that such teachings and the forced ‘conscription’ into the Muslim faith of children who have no choice should be considered child abuse?

One of the things  that bothers Toni McLeod most is that the decision to take her future child into care is based less on what McLeod has actually done than on what she might do in the future: ‘There doesn’t need to be any actual proof of anything. It can all be based on possible risk in the future… Like in my case, it’s the likelihood of emotional abuse through radicalisation. The baby’s not even born!’

Her cause has been taken up by Lib Dem MP John Hemming who, despite his loathing for the EDL, raised it in the Commons. He contrasts her treatment with that of the extremist Islamic cleric Abu Qatada, who was allowed to remain with his ­children when he was briefly remanded on bail earlier this year as the Government tries to deport him.

“It raises a curious question as to why Abu Qatada is allowed to radicalise his children but the state won’t take the chance of allowing Toni McLeod to look after her baby in case she says something social workers won’t like.

“I am very strongly opposed to the EDL, which I believe to be a racist organisation, but I do not think we should remove all of the children of the people who go on their demonstrations, however misguided they may be.”

Mrs McLeod has posted racist abuse on social networking sites but denies being racist. She claims she is no longer active with the EDL and has never been charged with violence against children.

Social workers have told her husband Martyn he would be unable to care for his child because he is a full-time soldier just back from Afghanistan.

Mr Hemming, who chairs the Justice For Families campaign group, said yesterday: “This case is one where the ‘thought police’ have decided to remove her baby at birth because of what she might say to the baby. I wonder what the baby’s father is thinking when he fights for a country which won’t allow him to have a child because of what the child’s mother might say.

“Toni now accepts she was wrong to have gone on EDL demonstrations but freedom of speech means nothing if people are not allowed to say things that are thought to be wrong.”

Yes Toni McLeod probably does have racist views but that is not a reason to take her children away…as said in that case all Muslim children would be removed from their parents care based on their teaching Islamic values to them….‘Believers (Muslims), take neither Jews or the Christians for your friends.’….‘Believers, make war on the infidels who live around you!’  Exortations that are constantly repeated throughout the Koran….perhaps not something that should be drummed into young minds and then expect them to ‘integrate’ into the wider community. 

A major  point is that it has been the campaign to demonise the EDL that has allowed the social workers to dream up this excuse to take her children and it has been the BBC that has played a major role in promoting that anti-EDL agenda.

Regardless of what you think of the EDL this is a very slippery path down which these social workers are taking us if they are deciding which political views we can hold.

Perhaps the BBC should stick to reporting the news instead of making it.

In the good old days of the Cold War in America you could always find a party, in Soviet Russia the Party would always find you.

Guess we better start dusting off the old jokes.

Importing Poverty  

In 2007 the Sunday Times had a story entitled ‘Despair of 3,000 Poles sleeping rough in UK’.

It related how the homeless charity ‘The Passage’ had to stop its ‘open door’ policy and turn immigrants away because the numbers were unmanageable…‘the queue never got any shorter’ even after 18 months.

(However like all Left wing organisations they don’t see the contradiction in their position…they close their doors when they run out of money but complain when the government shuts up shop for the same reason…need a Plan B obviously)

Not quite the rosy picture of immigration that the BBC likes to present with Mark Easton sat on the comfortable BBC sofa getting out his charts and showing us all the economic benefits and the fabulous cosmopolitan nature of London…unless you’re in the vicinity of the Somali or Turkish or Iraqi gangs roaming the streets….but no, we don’t mention the crime….there’s always some fringe elements who don’t represent the majority.

In 2007 the BBC did report this from a Croydon homeless charity telling us about the essential work being done to rescue poverty stricken immigrants:

Thirty years on, the charity is finding its workload has grown substantially. Over the last decade, its client group is being continually increased by those suffering from poverty.

“We’re appalled and of course there’s tremendous pressure on our resources … we set up as a homeless organisation …. what we’re now operating as, is a maintenance organisation to help people who are in extreme poverty”, laments Jad Adams the charity’s chairperson.

However the BBC doesn’t seem too keen to report what the Nightwatch charity now says  as it is less than enthusiastic about mass, uncontrolled immigration and its effect in taking away resources from the poor who are native to the country:

Homeless charity ‘swamped’ by eurozone migrants

A homelessness charity has called on the Government to restrict immigration, saying it is being “swamped” with destitute people fleeing the eurozone’s troubled economies.

The Nightwatch charity in Croydon say it has seen a huge rise in jobless and homeless Europeans.

Chairman Jad Adams said the charity could collapse if the Government did not stem the flow of immigration as the Eurozone crisis deepens.

He said the charity, which receives grants from including the National Lottery and Croydon Council, cannot increase its capacity “endlessly” and its finances are now under strain.

The right of free movement between members states of the European Union agreed under treaties is being abused, it claims.

“I fear that many people we see as clients are not exercising their treaty rights to come to look for work, but it is simply more attractive to be poor in this country than in some others.

“The free movement of poverty is putting unacceptable strains on charitable work.”

“Indigent arrivals from other countries would put an unacceptable strain on ourselves and other charities dealing with the poorest people in society.”

Labour was told about the likely failure of NHS PFI schemes even before they were signed up to and completely ignored the warnings…..something you might think would peek the BBC’s interest considering that the PFI agreements are now bringing the NHS to its knees in many hospitals.

Apparently not.

Good job we still have other sources of news to rely on:

Don’t sign, hospitals warned before PFI deal

‘An NHS hospital trust was officially warned not to sign the £500 million PFI deal that left it on the brink of bankruptcy, an independent report discloses.

Peterborough and Stamford NHS Foundation Trust should never have agreed a deal to obtain funding from private companies in 2007, it says.

Monitor, the hospital regulator, warned that there was “significant doubt” that the deal was affordable before the former Labour government approved the private funding. The trust, which runs two hospitals, is now saddled with huge interest payments.

The regulator raised its concerns in January 2007, copying in the Department of Health under Andy Burnham, now the shadow health secretary.

“We believe the long-term affordability of the proposal to be in significant doubt,” it said at the time.

It reiterated this view in even stronger terms in April of the same year, when it raised “significant concerns as to the scheme’s affordability”.

But the deal was signed in June 2007 and the trust’s finances went downhill.’

Labour are demanding that bankers be prosecuted under criminal law for their actions…..unfortunately because of a failure to impose and implement sufficiently rigorous regulations on banks by Ed Balls when he was in charge of this sector the banks cannot be charged under criminal law….because the laws don’t exist, as admitted by one of Labour’s very own Lord’s…..and, as yet, completely ignored by the BBC.

The BBC does ask:

‘Who was responsible?’  for the Banks actions.  The answer……

Mr Cameron said “the whole management team have got some serious questions to answer. Let them answer those questions first.

“Who was responsible? Who was going to take responsibility? How are they being held accountable?”

Labour party leader, Ed Miliband, said: “This cannot be about a slap on the wrist.

“The people that have done the wrong thing in this case should face the full force of the law… including criminal prosecutions.”

No sign of this part of the story  on the BBC for some reason:

Barclays Libor scandal: Ed Balls ‘failed to regulate banks’

Ed Balls has been accused of failing to regulate banks effectively at the time of the Barclays rate rigging scandal as a senior Labour politician admitted: “It’s our fault”.

In the House of Lords, Labour’s deputy chief whip, Lord Tunnicliffe, admitted his party was responsible for gaps in the law.

Lord Tunnicliffe said: “Criminal sanctions are extraordinarily difficult to bring about because of the burden of criminal law.

“It is fair to say though that you can’t find them in the current legislation. And, yes, OK, it’s our fault.” He added quickly: “I hope my leaders don’t hear me say that.”

The BBC’s reporting of the latest bank scandal concerning Barclays, probably only the first bank in the firing line, misses out a major question and uses language that is immoderate and unusual for the BBC.

The BBC is freely using ‘lied’ or ‘liars’ in relation to how Barclays carried out its business. In truth of course this is an appropriate description but the normal practise is to infer they lied using more restrained language…‘they manipulated the market and misled others about their financial stability’ etc.

For the BBC ‘Lied’ is ‘unparliamnetary’ language and I would suggest that this was a deliberate editorial decision to adopt such language in order to inflame opinion against the banks in general and to raise the stakes. (Should that be needed…unlikely as it maybe) Peston or whoever is unlikely to be using that word without approval from above.

The second point is one made by the Telegraph…where were the Regulators?…such market manipulation must have been obvious…and if not then a question has to be asked why such an important financial system was so easily manipulated?

The BBC have not gone down that avenue but I would have thought that it was one of the major questions that need answering.

The BBC highlights calls for Bob Diamond to be sacked ….yet this was the BBC that gave immense support to get the ‘not such an economic genius’ Gordon Brown re-elected in 2010 and even now aids and abets Brown’s two henchmen, Ed Miliband and Ed Balls.

Remember this was the Labour Government that stole £100 Billion from private pensions schemes to fund its election campaigns by spending that money on ‘vote catching’ schemes for its core supporters, the Labour Government that robbed southern council tax payers and channelled their money to what they hoped would be Labour voters in the North. This was the Labour Government that imported millions of immigrants in the hope they would vote Labour and when it comes to a referendum on Europe will, due to their lack of deep connections to Britain, be pro-European Union. I could go on.

And yet no BBC examination of such a corrupt, tawdry history….but when someone suggests that Barclays were ‘systematically dishonest’ on the Today programme almost instantly it was the headline on the BBC Frontpage.

As often said 13 years of Labour corruption and dishonesty have been wiped from the BBC archives.

You can only hope that a new Director General will be someone of substance and integrity who respects the traditions, responsibilities and trust invested in the BBC and begins to demand the BBC and its journalists start to fulfil the promises laid out in its Charter.

On his own of course that could be a tall order which is why the responsibility for overseeing the BBC’s compliance with its charter should be stripped from the BBC Trust and given to a completely new body,  independent of the BBC and Government.

Until both things happen I don’t think that anyone can have confidence in the impartiality and accuracy of the BBC nor in its requirement to handle complaints in an appropriate manner.

An excellent spot by ‘Tommy Atkins’ in the comments:

Spotlight falls on Televisa, Mexico’s all-powerful TV station

Critics accuse Televisa of manipulating politicians and viewers and threatening democracy.

For decades Televisa‘s logo – a golden human eye gazing at the world through a television screen – captured the company’s success at controlling and dominating what Mexicans watched.

The media firm, the biggest in Latin America, produced soap operas, quiz shows, films and news bulletins that reflected and reinforced the country’s concentration of economic and political power.

The company’s alleged use – abuse, say critics – of programming for political and commercial ends has become an explosive issue in Sunday’s election.

“The power of the television networks does not lie in their economic power but in their ability to manipulate opinion. About 98% of homes have a television, and it is on between four to six hours a day in around 60% of homes,” said Purificación Carpinteyro, a former under-secretary of communications.

“The degree of concentration in television is an attack on democracy. It gives them enormous power to extort. The [networks] have the political class under control because nobody wants to be insulted or rubbed out or exhibited on TV. The television calling somebody corrupt is tantamount to a judgment from the supreme court.”

Any thing starting to sound familiar?  And I’m not talking Murdoch.