Author Archives: Alan

Ever wondered why the BBC seemed so keen to take down Rupert Murdoch and News International?    Just part of the License Fund bargaining ploy…….

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said:

“The upshot of the Leveson revelations of the Murdoch influence and stranglehold on the UK’s political process is a desperate need for a re-evaluation of the BBC licence deal. This was made behind closed doors and under what we know to be Murdoch-driven pressure.”
The NUJ is campaigning against the 20 per cent cuts to the BBC which it claims are a result of the secret deal between Mark Thompson, the out-going director general, and Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, to freeze the BBC licence until 2017.

However perhaps we shouldn’t believe all we heard…never mind all the truth that we didn’t hear from Brown and Co..at the Leveson Inquiry…

Simon Kelner in the Guardian:

“Rarely in the field of public inquisition has there been such a knowledge gap between the investigators and the investigated. The Leveson inquiry has devoted huge amounts of time – and public money – to establish facts that were obvious to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the way newspapers work.”

Nick Robinson happy to tweet about coughs and football but misses the funny one when Labour’s Shadow Education Minister Kevin Brennan gets his numbers wrong:

‘Only 3 in 10 pupils, that’s 60% as I know the Secretary for State’s not very good at maths, got a good GCSE in 1997.’

However the BBC ever comprehensive in their approach to reporting the full story buried that gem in this half hour Parliamentary drone.

@bbcnickrobinson via Twitter

Bring back O levels, attack Jimmy Carr’s tax avoidance, defend the Falklands – attempt to reverse damage of omni shambles perchance?

O Levels….leaked by someone (libDem?) to Daily Mail.

Carr’s tax….brought up by the Times.

Falklands…Think that was the Argies making the running on that one.

So all in all poor show and rubbish analysis.

Bit of a ‘omnishambles’ of a tweet perchance?

Daphne Anson in the ‘Open Thread’ has brought this to our attention and reminds us of the highly selective narrative that the BBC adopts in relation to the Israeli struggle for survival….no doubt made all the harder with the election of a Muslim Brotherhood member as President of Egypt…who claims he will protect Christians and women (from whom?) but no mention of the Jewish neighbours.

The BBC “got it wrong” by not giving prominence to the massacre of the Fogel family by Palestinians in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, the outgoing director-general has admitted.

Mark Thompson was quizzed by Conservative MP Louise Mensch, who made various complaints to the BBC about the coverage, at a Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee hearing on Tuesday. Mrs Mensch said the BBC’s decision not to include the story as part of its rolling news coverage generated “the most reaction I have ever had in all my time in politics.”

“News editors were under a lot of pressure,”

‘

Israel Today agrees with Mr. Edelstein and the Fogel family that it is time for the world to see just how brutal is the threat that the Jews of Israel face, and to then realize which side is truly under siege.’

And this…..perhaps if the Jewish community had had the services of ‘38 Degrees’ they might have got some results…..

BBC head of north-west programming Aziz Rashid has apologised for snubbing Jewish leaders with a standardised reply to their complaint over the scrapping of the Jewish programme on Radio Manchester.

Mr Baigel had written to request a meeting “at which I am sure some understanding could be reached”. He complained that despite BBC consultation over its shake-up of local programming, at “no time was there any contact between Radio Manchester and any official of the Jewish community”.

Quite a few comments recently on the ‘Fast and Furious’ debacle in the US. I haven’t been following the BBC’s coverage of it too closely but having had a quick look here are some thoughts.

The BBC as a whole has reported the story, the latest being on the 20th June, both unattributed as to the author:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18524414

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18528798

However as noted in the comments the BBC’s U.S correspondents seem unusually quiet on the subject despite Mardell’s banner headline on his blog:

Come here for America in all its glory – my take on the twist and turns of the presidency, electoral races and life beyond Washington

Looking back a couple of months and there is still nothing.

Ironically when I googled ‘Mark Mardell Fast and Furious’ the latest result came from..yes..Biased BBC!

Here are the latest stories of note apparently: 

@BBCMarkMardell via TwitterRomney fails to answer his own question about illegal immigration

(Nothing on Obama failing to reveal documents on gun running to drug cartels) 

@BBCMarkMardell via TwitterThe Real Story Of Barack Obama http://t.co/js5ccLbl 

@BBCMarkMardell via TwitterAll the President’s women – fantastic piece on four women caught up in Watergate, in their own words http://t.co/11d9IACr

 And Katty Kay doesn’t do any better looking at football and women’s issues:

@KattyKayBBC via TwitterThe best bit of ESPN’s #Euro2012 coverage of the #GER #GRE game is when they switch to the shot of Merkel watching.

Astonishing really when you consider not only the highly sensitive nature of the subject with the U.S arming the highly violent and murderous Mexican drug cartels however ‘inadvertently but also the possible political fall out…and all with an election coming.

Not on the scale of the ‘Iran-Contra’ scandal but along similar lines….and the American Press seem to think the story merits some attention…calling it the next ‘Watergate’.

Perhaps Mardell is too busy polishing the Liberal Progressive narrative of Obama…. 

Obama supports same-sex marriage

President Barack Obama has been forced out of the closet. Few doubted that he was in favour of gay marriage but “don’t ask, don’t tell” had worked well enough up until now.

The media didn’t ask him. And he certainly wasn’t going to tell

One thing looks certain Mardell isn’t going to ask and Obama doesn’t want to tell.　

This is interesting though…a link that Mardell puts on his blog…presumably he only read the headline…It isn’t too flattering for Obama revealing him to be a man who invented his background in order to polish his credentials as a victim of the ‘Establishment’ and racism to pull in votes….

The Real Story Of Barack Obama

A new biography finally challenges Obama’s famous memoir.And the truth might not be quite as interesting as the president, and his enemies, have imagined.

The two strands of falsehood run together, in that they often serve the same narrative goal: To tell a familiar, simple, and ultimately optimistic story about race and identity in the 20th Century. The false notes in Obama’s family lore include his mother’s claimed experience of racism in Kansas, and incidents of colonial brutality toward his Kenyan grandfather and Indonesian step-grandfather. Obama’s deliberate distortions more clearly serve a single narrative: Race. Obama presents himself through the book as “blacker and more disaffected” than he really was, Maraniss writes, and the narrative “accentuates characters drawn from black acquaintances who played lesser roles his real life but could be used to advance a line of thought, while leaving out or distorting the actions of friends who happened to be white.”

His memoir evokes an angry, misspent youth; a deep and lifelong obsession with race; foreign and strongly Muslim heritage; and roots in the 20th Century’s self-consciously leftist anti-colonial struggle.

The New York Times’s Serge Kovaleski reported dryly in February of 2008, speculating that Obama had “added some writerly touches in his memoir to make the challenges he overcame seem more dramatic.”

Race, central to Obama’s later thought and included in the subtitle of his memoir, wasn’t a central factor in his Hawaii youth or the existential struggles of his young adulthood. And he concludes that attempts, which Obama encouraged in his memoir, to view him through the prism of race “can lead to a misinterpretation” of the sense of “outsiderness” that Maraniss puts at the core of Obama’s identity and ambition.

Across the ocean, the family story that Hussein Onyango, Obama’s paternal grandfather, had been whipped and tortured by the British is “unlikely”: “five people who had close connections to Hussein Onyango said they doubted the story or were certain that it did not happen,” Maraniss writes. The memory that the father of his Indonesian stepfather, Soewarno Martodihardjo, was killed by Dutch soldiers in the fight for independence is “a concocted myth in almost all respects.” In fact, Martodihardjo “fell off a chair at his home while trying to hang drapes, presumable suffering a heart attack.”

Dick Opar, a distant Obama relative who served as a senior Kenyan police official, and who was among the sources dismissing legends of anti-colonial heroism, put it more bluntly.

“People make up stories,” he told Maraniss.

I imagine that Mardell thought that the piece would draw the sting from the Obama critics if it was revealed Obama was an entirely unremarkable person in his youth….however it is what he has grown up into that most are interested in…and part of him is quite prepared to rewrite history for political gain…..’Hope and Change’?  He hoped you wouldn’t notice the changes to his life story!

A new Open Thread for a new week….same old subject!

When Richard Black or Roger Harrabin deride climate sceptics as ignorant non-scientists ask yourself exactly what qualifications do they have for the job as chief environmental journalists at the BBC?

Roger Harrabin  might find a little difficulty when formulating an answer……but interesting that he had already developed a dislike for fox hunters and right wing politics….so that’s a couple of ticks in the box at the BBC job interview….the final requirement might be an ability to ignore tricky questions…and it looks like he can do that too….

I enjoyed reading English, particularly in my first summer term, which was spent reading Shakespeare and punting. What class of degree did I get? I’ve just told my wife I would ignore that question.

I didn’t go to lectures after my first term as I thought you would get more credit for thinking for yourself than for being told what to  think. I worked for three hours in the mornings and that was it.

I was more interested in student politics on a college than a university level and was elected President of the JCR. Previously the Junior Common Room had appeared to be captured by factions interested in supporting Nicaragua or promoting foxhunting.

If you could have a non-partisan, technocratic JCR, you would do much more to support the lot of ordinary undergraduates. We were incredibly privileged but some unpleasantnesses could have been ironed out.

I started a college magazine which I edited for a time.  I realized then what you could do with the printed word.

We did exert a very substantial pressure.

But of course Harrabin does not need to know anything because he has a, em, guiding hand when draughting his reports..…Jo Abbess

False theories about climate change abound. Most people get their views from the mainstream media, and the problem of poor public communications on science and technology will not be resolved any time soon – because journalists and commentators often lack basic science training. Their views don’t count – but they are unaware of that. Their balanced assessments are often worthless. They cannot be the arbiters of truth, for they know not where to pitch their fulcrum. 

Climate Change policy is decided by people who are similarly often lacking scientific and engineering backgrounds. How can they be expected to make the best decisions when they cannot separate in their minds industrial lobbying spin from fact ? They cannot know how ridiculous their pronouncements on energy and climate change sound to those who are genuine experts.

Discussing environmental journalism with some green friends, the name Roger Harrabin is mentioned, and views about whether he is “on side” or not.

Opinions are voiced that journalists are trained to be too relativist in their outlook and so cannot be trusted to be accurate about science.

I come to peace. I encounter God amongst the houseplants in the corner of the Meeting Room at the Quaker House in Square Ambiorix in Brussels, Belgium.

Emails are “leaked” and I become villified and scorned around the world for questioning Roger Harrabin about the framing and headline of an article he has written.

The new zero-carbon, zero-propaganda, zero-warfare, economy needs to flourish.

It is time to take back intellectual rigour and integrity and tell the truth about climate change and global warming.

This is a call to activism. Whatever peaceful means and methods you can employ to further the truth, I believe you should consider whether you feel the imperative to do so.

I am Public Friend Number One, but that doesn’t stop me being the target of a stream of vicious invective.

I am only rarely paranoid – after all, I know exactly who and what I’m opposing – inaccuracies as pernicious as racism, and as embedded as violence against women and minors.

I did not choose this role, but I have been obliged by circumstance to conduct a “war on error”.

Three eyecatching items from the Sunday Times (pay ‘apartheid’ wall in place).

First Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamic extremist relates how Islam is developing in this country…and it may surprise those in the BBC Bubble who like to say the fundamentalists are a fringe minority…..all other Muslims are moderates.

‘At one time all south Asians – Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus – used to go to each other’s weddings, but in recent years even Muslim-only weddings have changed. They were great cultural extravaganzas but the norm now is that music is non-existent, there’s no dance, there’s often a curtain separating men from women, sometimes even bodyguards policing the segregation…..the trickle down impact of Islamic radicalism on moderate Muslim communities has come as a shocking intrusion.’

Nawaz now tours various venues such as mosques and universities, around the world trying to defuse radicalism and turn potential recruits away from that path. He has been all around the world visiting likely danger ‘hotspots’ such as Quetta and Peshawar in Pakistan…whilst wearing a flak jacket.

But…there is only one university that he has been unable to speak at…in Birmingham, UK, where security advised that they had had serious threats against him and so his lecture was cancelled.

As he says…’That tells you something.’

But only if you are listening.

The second Sunday Times nugget is that Justin Webb, along with other well known people took an 11 plus exam.

Justin Webb, the ‘razor sharp’ Today journalist attained a modest score of 58%….coming last.

That tells you something.

The third Sunday Times drubbing for Lefties was a review by A.A Gill in which he sheds light on a subject many people have often wondered about…that of Left wing dominance of the airwaves……

‘I asked an audience at a documentary festival why is documentary-making such a left wing occupation? A documentarian pointed out rather curtly that, obviously, it was because the rest of television was right wing: reality shows, popular entertainment, gameshows…..an interesting assumption that any pap for the masses without a ‘message’ is the product of the conservative status quo.’

He goes on…‘I asked David Hare why all plays are were left wing. He looked askance at me and said: ‘What about all the musicals that fill the theatres?’

‘I asked if the National Front should be allowed to broadcast a documentary? To which one woman replied: ‘Never! I devoted my whole academic life to keeping those scum off the streets!’

The trouble with the left is that Lefties only want to be exposed to things that confirm their politics. Even looking at the Daily Mail is to condone global warming, forced repatriation and breast implants; we should only view the websites and blogs of fellow travellers. This means the Left’s conversation is a selection of mutually agreed received opinions that become ever narrower, and the subjects documentaries tackle become more repetitive: films on global warming and the Middle East….and people trafficking.’

What was he reviewing…the BBC’s ‘The Men Who Made Us Fat’……‘presenting an argument that was simplistic to the point of idiocy…a show trial on selective evidence and a pre written judgement…as with so many left leaning documentaries. This series is badly made, barely researched and boringly presented.’

A fair comment I think and accurate portrayal of the Left wing dominance of TV and their thought processes.

Ed Miliband made his speech on immigration and said nothing that would commit him to anything at all, and the apology was a touch insincere as he had no problem with the numbers of immigrants ‘flocking’ here.

The BBC was naturally delighted…Labour coming out fighting in a passive aggressive way defending mass immigration whilst at the same time apologising for it…..A fair chunk of air time was given over to this exercise in smoke and mirrors.

However, of course, despite Mark Thompson’s admittance of BBC failure to handle the topic of immigration in a balanced and comprehensive manner old habits die hard in the bunkers of Broadcasting House.

We had the Today programme, Victoria Derbyshire and then Sheila Fogarty not so much poking a stick into the dangerous viper’s nest of immigration but gently prodding it with a hesitant toe reluctant to delve into the realities of what the vast majority of people in this country consider one of their major concerns.

Sheila Fogarty I thought was going to make a brave attempt to break out of the rhetoric and abuse and implied suggestions of racism towards anyone that wants a curb on immigration but she almost instantly fell back into the BBC comfort zone of denial and accusation even before Government immigration minister, Damian Green, had opened his mouth.

At around 41 minutes she picks out an email to read to Green…now I would suggest the BBC has received thousands of emails on this subject on that morning, most of them perhaps reasoned and ‘mildly’ expressed disapproval of mass immigration. Which one do you think she read out as an opening gambit to Green?

She chose ‘Rich the Sparky’s’ email which said…he would like ‘a blanket ban on anyone coming to the UK who was unskilled…most of my mates are pretty racist and I think people are broadly tribal and like people similar to themselves…I don’t think there are any positives to a multicultural society.’

Tone of voice was all when Fogarty then asked Green for ‘Your thoughts on that’.

It could be reasonably argued that that choice of email out of the thousands they received sums up succinctly the BBC attitude to the subject. Firstly they believe that all those not in favour of mass immigration are by definition racist in an evil, nasty sense, second that the Tories are similarly racist and are dancing to the Rightwing fanatics racist tune by acting to limit immigration.

This little game that Fogarty played was pure politics attempting to ‘smear’ Green, the Tories and any curb on immigration with the racist tag by association….we all remember that game from the Breivik case where ‘rightwing’ journalist and bloggers were all branded racists and the ultimate inciters of Breivik’s murderous actions.

However it seems when that game is played with them the Left don’t like it….after Miliband’s speech…..‘Mischievous messages of support came from Ukip’s Nigel Farage and even the BNP’s Nick Griffin, the latter gleefully retweeted by Miliband’s critics on the left, as if to suggest that the leader had taken the first step on the grimy slope towards fascism. But such guilt-by-association is not really defensible. Ed Miliband cannot stay off awkward topics just because a thug like Griffin will try to exploit it if he does.’

Owen Jones ‏@OwenJones84 22 Jun‘This has been tweeted by BNP’s Nick Griffin: “Miliband joins ranks of BNP recruiting sergeants. Legitimation of our message by party . . .”‘

　However is the BBC correct in denouncing people who express ‘racist’ views?…is ‘Rich the Sparky’ not right in reality? Is it not a fact of life that any ‘stranger’ regardless of colour, is likely to be met with suspicion and dislike especially if he doesn’t conform to the standards of the community he has moved into?

What does the semi God of the ‘Climate Change’ debate, James Lovelock, have to say on the subject?….

‘Our political system works because they tend to self-correct each other. What you’ve got to avoid at all costs is ideologues.

The problem with ideologues from Marx onwards is that they tend to imagine that human nature is very different from what it actually is. We’re still animals and we behave like animals and it doesn’t take much to knock our “civilisation” away. People are very, very sensitive about territory and if you move a new lot of people into their territory, they don’t like it one bit. Politicians are very stupid if they think they can get away with that sort of thing.

It’s not that people are racist per se. We’re naturally racist, you can’t get away from it. We try to curb it and be sensible. People are very rarely individually racist, but they don’t want a large culture dumped on them. I don’t know anyone personally who would be nasty to someone because of their colour or because they come from a different country. It’s not in our style in these islands.’

The BBC and its employees should take a less utopian view of the world and human nature and realise that what they call racism is a naturally occurring phenomenon that is an essential part of developing and sustaining any culture and society…it has serious downsides if taken to extremes but they need to recognise it is part of us…all of us, Black, White, Scousers and Mancs, and yes, even BBC employees.

Any doubts?  Take note of the below presumably posted by a ‘Scouser’, a rather downbeat description of a ‘Manc’…..

The BBC’s very own Mark Easton has made the big time, his habit of trashing anything Tory whilst putting up a stiff defence of anything Labour has been noticed by the MSM….

Labour’s latest star performer

The Labour Party is a bit short of top-rank performers to wheel on to the Today programme, so it must be relieved to have found someone expert at skewering Coalition policies. Last week, in a three-way conversation with Tory housing minister Grant Shapps and John Humphrys, the new star poured scorn on government plans to build affordable housing. He was also withering about the Conservatives’ failure to implement the Dilnot proposals for adult social care. Plus, his blog highlights European criticism of British cuts. I’d suggest that Ed Miliband gives him a job, but I suspect Mark Easton is perfectly happy in his post as home affairs editor of the BBC.