Author Archives: Alan

Here’s an interesting question says the interesting Evan Davis to Vincent Tchenguiz who was arrested for fraud but released later  as innocent….

‘Let’s suppose you were a white, English born, public school educated, er, toff with a Sir in front of your first name…do you think the Serious Fraud Office would have had any interest in your case?’

Vincent shoots down Davis saying that race or class had no impact on the way the case was conducted.

But nice to know that Davis is promulgating class stereotypes and plays along with the Labour game to whip up class warfare…because you know Cameron and Osborne are Toffs.

Wonder if Davis would be upset if I asked if he just got his job on the Today programme because he is gay…filling the diversity quota?  Because the more I hear him the less impressed I become with his work.

5Live’s Nicky Campbell also came up with another fine example of casual stereotyping…‘What you’re saying is that women’s football wasn’t good enough 10 years ago to attract the attention of the likes of Murdoch who always smells where the money is?’

Keep on battering away…they’ll get him in the end.

However that small comment does beg the question…. where were the BBC then in covering such a sport and helping to develop its presence and profile with the viewers?  Isn’t that precisely what a publicly funded broadcast organisation is set up to do…the subjects that commercial companies can’t afford to cover?

Today on the BBC David Goodheart, Director of Demos, said this:

‘Labour’s immigration policy was ‘easily the most significant aspect of labour’s period in power.’

Despite the overwhelming significance of that immigration policy thanks to the BBC this policy went entirely unremarked and without challenge for a decade denying the British Public a voice in one of the most controversial and contentious issues this country has had to face.

I’ll qualify that comment….not ‘unremarked’ but rather given the full and weighty support of the BBC whose employees were fully convinced of the benefits of the Labour immigration project…and ensured that that was the narrative we, the Public, received.

This is how Mark Thompson explained the BBC’s position….Sensitive or ‘taboo’ subjects such as immigration were avoided by the BBC for fear of being too right-wing.

Mark Thompson conceded that the broadcaster had been ‘anxious’ in the past about playing into what it may have perceived to be a Right-wing political agenda…but he claimed it had now changed its position and was responsible for raising the topic of immigration during the 2010 general election….claiming that ‘We’ve got a duty, even if issues are sensitive and difficult to get right, to confront what the public want. I don’t like the idea of topics that are taboo.’

Fine words but they were not backed by any serious intentions to reform the BBC machine.

The BBC has continued promoting the virtues and benefits of immigration whilst smearing critics of the policy as racist.

Today the BBC indulged in an exercise in news management, fixing the facts to support Miliband’s claims over Labour’s immigration policy.

Neither Mark Thompson’s nor Miliband’s statements are of any consequence. Neither one is intended to engender any subsequent action to remedy the perceived faults but are rather intended to deceive the listener…. for the BBC they wish you to believe that they recognise their failure to cover the subject of immigration in a fair and adequate manner and that this has been rectified, and for Labour to impress upon a credulous public that the Labour Party also recognises its ‘mistakes’ and now seeks to re-establish its working class credentials and work to win the blue collar vote.

Both narratives are clearly based on a false assumption…that any of that is true.

The BBC has been actively involved in a huge public deception instigated by the Labour Party around the subject of immigration giving us a highly dishonest and distorted portrayal of Labour’s actions and the subsequent consequences of mass immigration.

The Today programme team and others are involved in the corrupting and political compromise of a BBC that should be the standard bearer leading the world when it comes to clear and honest reporting that upholds the values once so famously instilled in it by Lord Reith. Now the BBC has been reduced to an institution that would be worthy of any Communist State so thoroughly shot through is it with the values and practises of news manipulation and propaganda in the service of political masters.

This is an organisation that is no longer ‘fit for purpose’ under the cynical leadership of Mark Thompson….allowing the most serious breaches of the BBC charter that amount to a betrayal not only of the BBC and its reputation for impartial news but of the viewer, listener or reader who look to the BBC as the one honest guiding light in the troubling and dangerous times we live in.

Thompson has allowed a culture to flourish in which it is acceptable to bully and demean those who have different views to those deemed appropriate by the BBC…a culture in which it is Ok to deride the white working class and conversely the ‘privileged’ upper classes along with Tories, UKIP, Christians, Climate change sceptics, any one who works for Murdoch or reads the Daily Mail and of course Israelis and Jews.

Far from embodying an ‘all inclusive’ society the BBC has become the cheer leader for multicultural division, class, ethnic and religious conflict.

The conclusion is that “If at all relevant times, Mark Thompson did not take steps to become fully informed about how his Corporation reported immigration, that he turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindness to what was going on in his Corporation and publications and failed to fully control, oversee and moderate what was being said on the subject of immigration in his organisation then this culture of untrammelled pro-immigration cheer leading and derision of critics can be considered to have permeated from the top throughout the organisation and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at the BBC.

One could conclude therefore that Mark Thompson is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international news organisation and that there have been huge failings of corporate governance and, throughout, it has been the BBC’s instinct to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing and bring to account the perpetrators of political corruption and abuse of power.”

That failure to govern the BBC properly is still continuing.

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Today Ed Miliband pronounced, to great fanfare, his and the Labour Party’s ‘mea culpa’ over immigration….and there was a great deal of coverage of the speech but as for indepth analysis of what Miliband really meant or an examination of Labour’s real intentions when they opened the borders to mass immigration there was no discussion.

The most egregious and obvious omission was the voice of Andrew Neather, the Labour Party advisor who openly admitted that Labour’s intentions were to swamp this country with immigrants and force multiculturalism upon Britain, to ‘rub the Right’s nose’ in it. He also revealed explosively that labour knew that the effect of this immigration was that the working class in this country would suffer from competition for jobs and housing but that they, the Labour Party, did not care.

‘It didn’t just happen: the deliberate policy of ministers from late 2000 until at least February last year, when the Government introduced a points-based system, was to open up the UK to mass migration.

But the earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural..

Ministers were very nervous about the whole thing. For despite Roche’s keenness to make her big speech and to be upfront, there was a reluctance elsewhere in government to discuss what increased immigration would mean, above all for Labour’s core white working-class vote.

This shone through even in the published report: the “social outcomes” it talks about are solely those for immigrants.

Part by accident, part by design, the Government had created its longed-for immigration boom.

But ministers wouldn’t talk about it. In part they probably realised the conservatism of their core voters: while ministers might have been passionately in favour of a more diverse society, it wasn’t necessarily a debate they wanted to have in working men’s clubs in Sheffield or Sunderland.’

It is clear why the BBC are afraid to report that…it is a bombshell that when originally published would have destroyed Labour…and so even now, years later, the BBC refuse to tell the Public the real reasons and that Labour knew that the working class would be the people to suffer the most……a class of people that the Labour Party was originally set up to protect and support but who have now been abandoned by the sharp suited, metropolitan elitists of New Labour.

When you read Neather’s words you realise that Miliband’s claim that this was all a ‘mistake’ is an outright lie…Labour knew exactly what it was doing and knew the consequences of it. The suggestion that they only believed 13,000 immigrants a year would come to Britain is another pure falsehood…they clearly expected and wanted far more.

What it also reveals is that Labour politicians engaged in a campaign of deception and subterfuge, one that was maintained by a friendly BBC covering up for them and broadcasting to the public that immigration was necessary for a successful economy and would create a vibrant, diverse and cosmopolitan nation.　

Listening to the radio this morning starting with the Today programme there were no voices to be heard other than Labour Party ones pushing their own Party line. It took until 12.39 pm when the Coalition immigration minister, Damian Green, came onto 5live to give his thoughts on the matter, that we heard any voice that wasn’t in some way connected to Labour or pro immigration.

Towards the end of the Today programme we had two Labour Party voices…

Matthew Taylor, who worked with Tony Blair in number 10, and Labour MP John McDonnell to discuss Labour’s immigration policies….both of whom support immigration and claimed that numbers were not an issue…the problem was more to do with coping with the influx, the transitional measures adopted to manage it…to get immigrants housed and into work without seeming to be displacing the locals. The BBC’s Evan Davis, who has an immigrant French partner, as usual promoted immigration as a good thing…central to our economy and culture.

Laughably and lamentably unopposed by Evans was the assertion that Mrs Thatcher was to blame for the problems that Labour’s immigration policy resulted in…selling off council homes and restricting the Union power which meant Unions couldn’t fight for higher wages….which meant immigrants could come here and undercut the locals in labour costs.

Also claimed unchallenged was that Britons were completely unconcerned about immigration and rather were only concerned about jobs, housing and wages….they were not bothered about quality of life or the destruction of their own culture and society.

There was very little effort to ensure that there was a measured, informative and truthful debate about immigration.

The BBC’s coverage of Ed Miliband’s speech in which he purported to apologise for Labour’s failure to control immigration has shown that nothing has changed at the BBC….there is still a culture where immigration is a taboo subject and that people who want controls and limits on immigration are still subtly labelled racist.

Miliband has conducted a most cynical political repositioning…an apparent u-turn of oil tanker proportions…or you might think so….but in fact he is not saying what most people expect him to say…that immigration is too high….it is a charade and not the ‘brave recognition’ as Labour’s Hazel Blears called it of Labour’s failure to address the public’s concerns.

And yet there were no sceptical voices at the BBC….Where were the BBC questions demanding an explanation of why labour deliberately and knowingly implemented this policy of opening the borders. What were the intentions and intended consequences?

Also unmentioned was the ‘coincidence’ that Miliband’s speech came at the same time that the UN’s chief of immigration made this statement:

‘EU should ‘undermine national homogeneity’ says UN migration chief’

The EU should “do its best to undermine” the “homogeneity” of its member states, the UN’s special representative for migration has said….Peter Sutherland told peers the future prosperity of many EU states depended on them becoming multicultural.’

Call me cynical but is it possible that a half hearted, disingenuous and politically convenient admission of guilt by Miliband was intended to be ‘offset’ by a statement that endorsed immigration from the respected and august body of the UN.

The BBC programmes looking at Miliband’s speech were shallow and superficial….they gave the impression of intense scrutiny but yielded little enlightenment. The seeming intention was to support Miliband in his repositioning without too much in the way of difficult questions whilst still suggesting that immigration is vital to the country’s interests.

Consider that today is also the day that Anders Breivik’s trial came to an end. For the first part of Victoria Derbyshire’s show she ‘discussed’ Miliband’s speech and then went on to look at the Breivik trial. There was no suggestion at all that there might be some link between the two stories.

Breivik killed Norwegian Labour Party members because mass immigration was changing his country…and no one had asked the Norwegians if they wanted that…they had no voice. Breivik’s actions were the direct result of politicians refusing to allow the Public a say in their own future and imposing unwanted policies upon them….precisely the same scenario that we have here in Britain.

The BBC deliberately chose to ignore the connection between the two stories…it refuses to admit the cause and effect, the consequences of ‘multiculturalism’ imposed without consultation by an out of touch political and social ‘elite’.

Why does the BBC refuse to openly discuss the true consequences of immigration?…it is happy to claim immigration brings great benefits but is reluctant to look at the darker, less palatable outcomes that mass, uncontrolled immigration brings with it.

The BBC editorial policy is guided by two premises…firstly that immigration is of benefit and desirable to our society, secondly that any talk of the harmful consequences of immigration will lead to demonisation of immigrants and attacks upon them.

Naturally this leads to a very one sided discussion and a completely false and dishonest portrayal of the real effects of immigration upon a society. The negative effects are easy to see and have enormous impact upon many segments of society.

Housing, welfare costs, access to the NHS and schools, availability of jobs and the downward spiral of wages are all obvious negative consequences…but there is also the great unspoken one…that of crime.

When Labour opened up the borders it allowed in literally millions of people, unknown and uncontrolled. With them naturally came a number of criminally intentioned people….our prisons now bulge with an extra 12% consisting of foreign prisoners. Murders, rapes, car theft, crime gangs, drug farms, prostitution, fraud , industrial scale shop lifting and pickpocketing were imported into this country by Labour. It is pertinent to ask just how many people have been killed, raped or mugged or otherwise criminally disadvantaged as a result of Labour’s reckless gamble to impose multiculturalism upon us.

The BBC do not ask such questions.

Labour’s immigration policy was intended to be a strange kind of ethnic cleansing of a Britain that was, in the words of Greg Dykes, too ‘hideously white’. The natives were not to be driven out but to be genetically ‘re-engineered’, their ethnic makeup diluted by the introduction of non -white genes into the ‘breeding’ pool…at the very least the enforced mixing of different races and cultures was supposed to engender a new attitude of tolerance and possibly celebration of diversity….failing even that the natives would just have to ‘lump it’. Labour was intent on destroying the national identity of this nation and even its very own biological identity regardless of the cost and suffering.

Such a policy amounts to a ‘coup’, a revolutionary act by a small clique of people who have ignored the democratic process and the rights of the people, instigating a process that involved the demonisation and smearing of critics as racists and the deliberate closing down of debate so that the policies could be enforced without opposition.　

The BBC were complicit in all of this, colluding in the deception and the silencing of opposing voices.

The other political parties and indeed media were all cowed by the onslaught of the pro immigration lobby and lived in fear of being labelled ‘racist’. This is why the independence and complete impartiality and honesty of a public news organisation is vital in order to challenge the vested interests and to support those whose voices are otherwise suppressed….remember what Thompson himself said…”We’ve got a duty, even if issues are sensitive and difficult to get right, to confront what the public want. I don’t like the idea of topics that are taboo.”

It is the BBC’s duty to deal with difficult and contentious subjects…it is an organisation that has enormous respect and weight in society that should be used to say things and investigate otherwise ‘taboo’ subjects in a measured, coherent and intelligent manner that neither inflames nor crushes debate.

Labour should not be able to shrug its shoulders and just say ‘sorry’ we made a mistake when their actions were the result of deliberate and malign intentions and were conducted under cover of a BBC whose ‘wilful blindness’ allowed one of the most destabilising and dangerous policies this country has had to suffer  to be introduced without challenge.

Both the BBC and the Labour Party should be subject to a judicial inquiry that examines their role and intentions in the implementation of Labour’s immigration policy and which has the power to sanction both parties on the likely conclusion that they were both knowing and deliberate actors in actions which could be construed as not only a failure to conduct themselves according to their stated corporate values but who have acted in ways that are a literal betrayal of the trust that is bestowed upon them by virtue of their position in society and the Establishment.

Someone really needs to be in jail.

Another Open Thread…but I’ve started it off for you…..

I haven’t had time to take a longer look at this but it pretty much speaks for itself…and you know the BBC reaction…this will be one of those ‘benchmark’ quotes that will now be kept in a high state of readiness to blow away anyone who dare suggest  that perhaps mass immigration and a ‘nation’ of strangers is not conducive to peaceful co-existence….and note no sign of any opposing views in the piece.

EU should ‘undermine national homogeneity’ says UN migration chief

By Brian Wheeler Political reporter, BBC News

The EU should “do its best to undermine” the “homogeneity” of its member states, the UN’s special representative for migration has said.

Peter Sutherland told peers the future prosperity of many EU states depended on them becoming multicultural.

He also suggested the UK government’s immigration policy had no basis in international law.

Some of you must have seen this from 2010 but I somehow missed it….however it is so good on so many levels that it is worth refreshing the memory…especially at a time when the BBC is ‘on the stump’ with Labour attacking Coalition ‘cuts’ and job losses in the Public Sector in the name of efficiency and productivity.

Ken Loach is so far Left that he makes Ken Livingstone look Thatcherite…which is why it is all the more enjoyable to see that when his own interests are threatened by waste and ineffective workers he demands they are sacked…so much for ‘solidarity of the workers’!

The BBC is bloated with “time-serving” middle managers who are killing creativity in television, according to the veteran director Ken Loach.

He wished “good riddance” to executives recently made redundant and said more should follow.

However, the BBC is now a very different place, stuffed with executives who rule by committee and stifle all original ideas, according to the director. He welcomed this week’s announcement of job losses for Sharon Baylay, the £281,000-a-year marketing chief, and deputy director Mark Byford, who leaves his £475,000-a-year post with a £3.7 million pension pot and a pay-off of almost £1 million.

“I’m pleased to see – we all are – that people are going to lose their jobs, albeit that they need a £1 million handshake to get out the door. Great, good riddance, maybe a few more will join them. But let’s start cutting further down,” Loach said.

“To think that our television is in the hands of these time-servers who should be got rid of is nothing less than a tragedy, because television began with such high hopes. It was going to be the National Theatre of the air, a place where society could have a national discourse. They have reduced it to a grotesque reality game and I think we have to fight that with all the strength we have.”

There is a religious war going on in Nigeria right now…long denied by the BBC who preferred to categorize Christians killed by Muslims or churches burnt down and congregations slaughtered or Muslims killed by Christians as ‘tribal’ or ‘ethnic’ conflicts or disputes over land.

The BBC has been forced to admit that perhaps this is a ‘religious’ conflict driven by Muslims intending to impose Islam across the whole of Nigeria.

‘Nigerians – both Muslims and Christians – take their religions very seriously

Pastor Oritsejafor said his members would do “whatever it takes” to defend themselves from the pattern of killings which suggested “systematic ethnic and religious cleansing”.’

This is what Boko Haram said….“The Nigerian state and Christians are our enemies and we will be launching attacks on the Nigerian state and its security apparatus as well as churches until we achieve our goal of establishing an Islamic state in place of the secular state”

But old habits die hard and the sting in the tail is that of course the Muslim ‘insurgents’ are not representative of the majority of Muslims….and in fact the Muslims are the real victims here….targeted by Boko Haram and the Christians….says the BBC’s (presumably Muslim?) Abdullahi Tasiu Abubakar ……but its all really wonderful as Muslims and Christians are, as well as kicking the hell out of each other,  simultaneously living in harmonious peace….

‘Christians and Muslims, northerners and southerners, are marching side by side in the ongoing national strike against the removal of a fuel subsidy.

During the protests in some cities this week, Christians have formed human shields while Muslim prayed – and Muslims have responded in kind.

Professor Kyari Mohammed of Modibbo Adama University in Yola admits that the current situation represents a “very dangerous trend”

However, he says, the key difference is that Boko Haram is a fringe group fighting both the government and mainstream Muslims in northern Nigeria.

“The major problem is that there is a huge deficit in the understanding of the situation, particularly by the government, leading to its inability to address the problem,” he notes.

“For an average northerner it is a double jeopardy. He is targeted [in the north] by the Boko Haram that does not believe in his version of Islam, and in the south by the people who feel that the attack by Boko Haram is an attack by Muslims.”

Boko Haram are opposed to all things Western, especially Western education and are just as likely to attack Muslims who oppose them as they will attack Christians.  However much like the IRA or indeed the Nazis there is always a large ‘unspoken’ support for groups such as these and the more successful they become the more that support will openly show itself…..as one Muslim said ‘I’m not against Sharia because I’m a Muslim, but why must they force people to embrace their view.’….if Boko Haram take power does it sound like this man would really oppose them?  

Just as Hitler had the support of German industrialists who believed his ideology could bring stability and prosperity back to Germany there are well funded, influential people who are arming and providng finance to Boko Haram…..’The sect  is now terrorizing the people of the state and is believed to be sponsored by highly placed politicians in the country.’

Their agenda is presumably to impose Sharia upon Nigeria.

Power can come very quickly especially if you are clever and ruthless….

‘In 1928, the Nazis had only 12 seats in the Reichstag; by July 1932 they had 230 seats and were the largest party.’

The BBC needs to wake up to the dangers these ‘fringe’ groups pose to any country they try to impose themselves upon.  A fanatic with a gun, which he is prepared to use, will defeat or subdue any number of people who are not prepared to defend their own lives or lifestyles.

And it should stop pretending that when push comes to shove Muslims will not support ‘radical’ Islamists….just look at Egypt where the conventional wisdom of the BBC and its ilk was that the Islamists had very little support….guess they have had to rethink that one.

Jimmy Carr earns £3million before tax, and earns nearly £3 million after tax.

 Jimmy Carr has been caught red handed and is now very red faced …because he was caught.

Remarkable how the Celebrity World rallies round and gives voice in his support. How strange when not so very long ago they were baying for, not just Banker’s blood, but that of highly successful businessmen who received bonuses.

5Live today began the Carr’s damage limitation with Victoria Derbyshire raising the question ‘Is it now open season for celebrities’….she then slipped in …’and politicians?’

The BBC seemed entirely unconcerned about Carr ‘avoiding’ tax and seem solely intent on diverting attention onto Cameron and his statement that Carr was ‘morally wrong’….and the prospect of delving into politician’s tax affairs…because of course we all know those rich Tory Toffs have all sorts of highly questionable financial arrangements designed to keep the poor people poor.

Apparently Cameron had ‘shamed’ Carr….Carr’s name dragged through the mud and unfairly targeted.

Richard Bacon also raised that question today on his show…the question isn’t now about Carr’s tax dodge but about Cameron questioning his morality….is it fair or right that a politician should talk of morality?

The emphasis has change completely to suit the usual BBC narrative and desired outcome…that of pillorying the Tories.

Funny how they take the same line as the Labour leader Ed Miliband who claimed…”I’m not in favour of tax avoidance obviously, but I don’t think it is for politicians to lecture people about morality.”

The BBC were quite happy to allow Miliband his moment of basking in his lack of morality but made an effort to drag out something Cameron had said a few weeks ago which was barely relevant but was held to be significant by the BBC allegedly proving Cameron’s untrustworthiness. (unfortunately I can’t remember what that was).

However the BBC were not so diligent in asking just how true was Miliband’s statement….after all he was the man who said

‘it was “clearly wrong” for former Royal Bank of Scotland chief Fred Goodwin to be knighted.’

“It’s right that it should be revoked.”

The same Miliband who launched a ‘witch hunt’ against bankers…..”I think the whole culture has got to change,” he told Sky News. “We need restraint right across the board in our banking industry and I think business and Government should lead that change.”

‘The boss of Royal Bank of Scotland should not get a bonus this year, Ed Miliband has said, as his party seeks to intensify pressure on the issue.  The Labour leader told the BBC that, “if responsibility means anything”, Stephen Hester should not get a payout.’

or the man who called for a ‘new morality’ in business and public life.

The BBC are attacking Cameron from another angle…he condemned Carr but has refused to comment specifically about Gary Barlow.

I wonder why the BBC take this approach…maybe they get their cue from the Labour Party as usual:

‘The Labour MP said: “The prime minister rushed to the TV studios to condemn the tax avoidance scheme used by Jimmy Carr but he did not take the opportunity to condemn as morally repugnant the tax avoidance scheme used by Conservative supporter Gary Barlow, who’s given a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Take That’. ‘

Was it just me or was there definitely an impression given by the BBC (certainly on 5Live) that the unemployment figures going down by 52,000 was possibly a bad thing……as one reporter suggested…it was only a good thing ‘on the face of it….you have to ask how is it possible (to have falling unemployment) when we are mired in a double dip recession’. ….and the figures only give ‘mixed messages’.

Perhaps, as one analyst opined…the GDP figures were underestimating the strength of the economy? 

Perhaps the reporter was more persuaded by Labour’s interpretation…..

‘Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne said that while the latest figures were “a ray of good news…but when you take a step back and you look at those trends there are some real worrying signs about the long-term damage that is being done to the British economy from the government’s failure to get people back to work fast enough.”‘

Long term damaging trends? Hmmm…hasn’t unemployment fallen consistently….the private sector more than taking up the slack caused by job losses in the Public Sector?

And how’s that private/public sector ding dong doing? Those hard done by public sector workers need your sympathy….or do they?

Average public sector pay  now stands at £477 per week, higher than private sector earnings at £459.
Bonus pay fell sharply in the private sector in the three months to February, falling 5.4 per cent compared with last year, although it rose 2.9 per cent in the public sector.

The BBC…never knowingly upbeat about anything ‘Tory’.

Here is a slightly deeper look at ‘38 Degrees’ mentioned in a previous post. It is the campaigning group that seems to embody every value that the BBC itself likes to promote….and is attempting to influence who gets the BBC Director General’s job when Mark Thompson goes, as well as trying to influence the outcome of the BSkyB bid.

Its campaign’s page looks as if it is the schedule for any number of Victoria Derbyshire shows….NHS, Climate Change, tax dodging, the disabled, human rights, poverty and more.

Not surprising really when you look at the CVs of its Board members…from Obama’s campaign team, Greens, charity bigwigs and assorted political activists.

It does have though some surprising ideas on the meaning of ‘independence’ and ‘diversity’ or ‘plurality’ of media ownership.

Here  is one of its boasts about its influence over the BBC whilst at the same time demanding independence for the BBC…..

‘Over the next few days, the BBC Board of Trustees could be deciding who to appoint as the next Director General – one of broadcasting’s most important jobs.

38 Degrees members have said that one of the most valuable things about the BBC is its independence.

It’s vital the right person ends up in the job – and that means someone who understands that the BBC’s independence must never be compromised.

We know that 38 Degrees members can influence the BBC’s decisions. Two years ago we helped save 6Music by convincing bosses to drop their plans to close the station.’

As mentioned in the previous post  this is what it thinks of media plurality….

’38 Degrees members have been defending the BBC ever since James Murdoch’s attack on it in August 2009. The reports that the government was pushing the BBC to accept “a license fee raid” triggered adiscussion about what we should do on our facebook page, and thousands of 38 Degrees members quickly contacted their MPs speaking out against these deep cuts being forced through behind closed doors.

Many members believed that this decision to raid the BBC was influenced by Rupert Murdoch.

We will also need to keep up the pressure on Vince Cable to call a review of Rupert Murdoch’s plans to seize full control of BSkyB.

Rupert Murdoch has his sights set on gaining complete control of BSkyB* and increasing his stranglehold on a free and independent media in the UK. He currently owns 40% of the company but wants to increase his stake to 100%.

This would be a disaster. It would give Murdoch even more political influence and it could open the door to biased, right-wing news like Fox News in the US.

A free and diverse media is a huge part of what makes democracy work.’

Clearly their idea of a healthy and diverse media environment does not actually include those sources of information or entertainment that do not meet their own critical or ethical standards…because of course they have the uncanny ability, being endowed with a superior intelligence and moral sense, to divine what is ‘fit and proper’ media for the Public to consume.

The, what you can safely call a pressure group, 38 Degrees organisation, has a membership of 750,000 lost souls apparently…..

‘There are currently over 750,000 38 Degrees members working for change throughout the UK, and we’re still growing fast.

It’s 38 Degrees members that provide the leadership of the organisation, by suggesting campaigns, taking the team to task, and, most importantly, taking action in their thousands. It’s thanks to them that we’ve become a such a powerful progressive voice in the UK.’

I don’t know about you but I find that somewhat disturbing…..the group boasts of having great influence and that would seem open to abuse, manipulation and corruption if somebody were so inclined.

The BBC is always on the look out for ‘right leaning’ pressure groups whilst more often than not failing to similarly identify ‘left leaning’ ones.

At a time when there is a huge hue and cry about the ‘undue’ influence of Murdoch isn’t it odd that groups like 38 Degrees slip under the radar whilst having the potential to be as destabilising and corrupting of Democracy as any Newspaper Baron?

‘Reed’ in the ‘Open Thread’ brings to our attention the welcome news that the BBC is to be included in formal reviews of media ownership by OFCOM:

Google, the BBC and Facebook should be included in reviews of media ownership, regulator Ofcom has ruled.

The BBC has an internet news audience of 57% of the total number of people who go online for news in the UK.

The regulator said it did not want to formally limit ownership, but if there were concerns that an individual or company had amassed too great a market share of newspapers, television and online, then Parliament could set further guidelines.

It said: ‘Ofcom does not believe a prohibition on market share is currently advisable. Instead, in the interests of flexibility, plurality concerns brought about by high-market share should be addressed through a periodic plurality review.’

Ofcom added that the BBC needed to be included in future reviews and highlighted that the corporation’s news content was consumed by 81 per cent of Britons each week.

Research compiled for Ofcom found that Britons use at least two different media to get information, with television cited as the most important source. Some 30 per cent of adults access their daily news from newspapers, 29 per cent from the internet, while 41 per cent cite radio and 88 per cent from television.

BBC1 and Radio 4 were named the most used news services in broadcasting, while BBC News Online, Facebook and Google were voted the most used news sources on the internet.

 
All these viewing/listening figures are well known and demonstrate the significant dominance of the BBC as a news provider which makes it all the more surprising that the BBC was not considered in the remit of the Leveson Inquiry.

It does look more and more likely that Leveson was nothing more than a kangaroo court that was manouveured into lynching Murdoch….to the benefit of the BBC both commercially and from a political ideological standpoint.

Consider this from ’38 Degrees’, ‘friends’ of the BBC, who seem to have a powerful and influential campaigning ability…note that whilst they notionally applaud ‘plurality‘ in the media that doesn‘t extend to allowing ‘rightwing‘ broadcasters onto the airwaves or into print:

38 Degrees members have been defending the BBC ever since James Murdoch’s attack on it in August 2009. The reports that the government was pushing the BBC to accept “a license fee raid” triggered adiscussion about what we should do on our facebook page, and thousands of 38 Degrees members quickly contacted their MPs speaking out against these deep cuts being forced through behind closed doors.

Many members believed that this decision to raid the BBC was influenced by Rupert Murdoch.

We will also need to keep up the pressure on Vince Cable to call a review of Rupert Murdoch’s plans to seize full control of BSkyB.

Rupert Murdoch has his sights set on gaining complete control of BSkyB* and increasing his stranglehold on a free and independent media in the UK. He currently owns 40% of the company but wants to increase his stake to 100%.

This would be a disaster. It would give Murdoch even more political influence and it could open the door to biased, right-wing news like Fox News in the US.

A free and diverse media is a huge part of what makes democracy work.

Can’t have those troublesome rightwingers passing off their unwholesome ideas and views to the vulnerable British Public…..that’s the job of the BBC!