Author Archives: Alan

May’s refusal to join the TV circus debate with the various other party leaders was the BBC’s top story for, well, forever just about.  It was big news.

Contrast the story that the BBC’s latest hero, Macron, has refused to do a Q&A because his thought processes are too complex…

“complex thought process lends itself badly to the game of question-and-answer with journalists”

Frontpage news on the BBC?…or not…how about ‘world news’….emm….nope….Europe?….aah yes……a small story tucked away on that page…. can you spot it…the fact that Junckers doesn’t own a mobile phone is bigger news….

What does hit the BBC frontpage?  The apparently favourable reaction to Macron’s official portrait…..it’s a ‘must see’….

The BBC gives it a favourable press…compare that with how it reported Trump and Melania’s portraits….sneering and carping nonsense…

For Prof Nicole Dahmen from the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication, “Melania Trump’s first official portrait embodies the excessive wealth and reality star celebrity of the Trump White House”.

She believes this photograph moves the administration “even further from the truth and substance of middle America”.

Many people have discussed the kinds of digital manipulation the image may have undergone.

“The obvious airbrushing in the photo can also be seen as a parallel to the Trump administration’s use of lies and ‘alternative facts’,” says Prof Dahmen.

“The portrait is a construction of reality – not actual reality.”

So the BBC says it has discovered documents that show Grenfell Tower’s proposed cladding was changed from Zinc to aluminium…the BBC are sensationalising this and hyping the suggestion that this caused the fire disaster at the tower because the aluminium cladding was less fire retardant than the zinc…or was it?

The BBC have given us three different versions of just how fire retardant the two claddings were…one is that the zinc cladding was more fire retardant…two, that they were in fact the same…and three no comment other than to say zinc was replaced by aluminium.

Documents show the zinc cladding originally proposed was replaced with an aluminium type, which was less fire resistant, saving nearly £300,000.

The cladding is thought to have contributed to the spread of the fire that killed at least 80 people.

Oh but hang on…..

Despite their differences, both types of cladding have the same official fire rating.

How can one be less fire resistant and yet have the same fire rating?  Anyone  who was going to use the panels would go by the fire rating….so they would judge there was no extra fire risk changing to aluminium…so there’s in fact no story here of ‘guilt’.

The zinc panels, if they come from the same people who make the aluminium panels, apparently ‘Reynobond’, would have a fire resistant core…

ZCM Only Available with FR Core The melting point for the titanium zinc alloy used in ZCM is 418 C (784 F). Therefore, ACM [sic…ZCM?] is only available with our “FR” fire-resistant core. This is necessary in order to pass ASTM E84 Steiner Tunnel Tests for flame spread and smoke generated. With the extra security of the FR Core, ZCM passes most common building code requirements.

What the BBC are insinuating is that the change was a piece of reckless money saving that was implemented regardless of risk…and yet that is pure supposition as they do not know the decision process nor how those who made the decision understood the fire standards….as the BBC admits the two panels have the same fire rating….how would someone making that decision know any different?

The BBC tells us, as it has for days, that the cladding has failed the recent government tests…

Police investigating the disaster have said the tower’s cladding has subsequently failed safety tests.

….but doesn’t tell us that the tests are more stringent than the ones that were necessary to pass building regulations…..which presumably the cladding did originally pass.

The BBC are being extremely irresponsible in hyping and sensationalising this story in the way it does knowing full well that its nuances, such as the fire ratings, will pass most people by, certainly those with an axe to grind, and that in such an emotive and angry atmosphere this could lead to that anger being exploited by the various hard-left groups hijacking this issue working to start riots and disturbances.

The blessed Frau Merkel has voted against same-sex marriage….but the BBC does not think she is backward and unpleasant as they do the DUP…in fact they think that ‘she will go down in history as the Chancellor who made it possible’ [to have same sex marriage]…despite voting against it.  Gotta love the BBC.

Oh look…the DUP are against abortion, as are Sinn Fein and indeed most of Ireland…..and yet it is the DUP who get the abuse…today Emma Barnett wanted to know how a Tory could contemplate an alliance with such party as the  DUP which is clearly beyond the civilised pale...and yet…

A 2008 parliamentary move to extend the 1967 act to Northern Ireland was blocked by then-Leader of the Commons Harriet Harman. At the time the government said it feared the existing UK abortion laws could have been threatened in the House of Lords as a result had the vote passed. But there was speculation that the Labour government had struck a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party to leave the abortion laws intact in return for their support for its plans to detain terrorism suspects without charge for 42 days.

Oh look again!!!…

Pope Francis calls abortion ‘horrendous crime’ and ‘very grave sin’

Often faulted by critics as not being sufficiently clear when it comes to the Church’s negative judgment on abortion, Pope Francis on Sunday couldn’t have been more firm in calling it a “very grave sin” and a “horrendous crime.”

“I was thinking on the attitude of sending the kids back before they’re born, this horrendous crime, they send them back because it’s better like that, because it’s more comfortable, it’s a great responsibility- a very grave sin,” Francis said.

And what about same-sex marriage Popey old fellow?

Pope Francis offers hope to divorced Catholics, says no to gay marriage

Whhhaaaat?  The Pope is against gay marriage and abortion and craps in the woods….no utter condemnation, vilification and demonisation from the BBC?

Just what is it about the Loyalist DUP that the BBC hates so much?  Maybe if they killed as many innocent men, women and children like Sinn Fein’s brothers in arms, the IRA, did the BBC would celebrate the DUP as they do the IRA or indeed Muslim terrorists [no doubt also against gay marriage and abortion] whom the BBC declare will one day, in that rewritten BBC history where Merkel is a gay marriage heroine, are to be thought of in the same light as Churchill, Mandela and Ghandi with their revolutionary thinking and courageous and bold stand against an oppressive western liberal mentality that er…forces them to accept gay marriage and abortions!

The BBC also targeted George Bush and Trump for their stance on abortion….kind of forming a pattern here…right-wing, conservative and you oppose abortion…evil, backward and unpleasant…..left-wing and oppose abortion?….you’re conflicted, you want to change but are trapped by custom, tradition and a system set against you…and whatever…you’re left-wing and we at the BBC will support you whatever.

The BBC loves this guy….despite his ‘social conservatism’……

‘I’d like to write a piece for the Mail making the left-wing case against abortion, or a piece on why marriage should be a Labour value, and not just a Conservative one. My own unabashed social conservatism on such issues derives from my Islamic faith.’

Islamic terrorism, radicalisation, extremism?  Nothing to do with Islam.  All to do with Western foreign policy and domestic issues such as Islamophobia, discrimination, marginalisation, joblessness, alienation and disaffection within the Muslim community.

Newsnight should know better as it uses a Muslim journalist to tell us her thoughts on why people join ISIS.  Funnily enough she tells us it has nothing to do with her religion, it is all to do with Western foreign policy and our society’s failure to make Muslims feel welcome.

Newsnight does not ask what it is about Western society that Muslims find difficulty in coping with…but it clearly insinuated that it is our, the non-Muslims’, fault.  So why does ‘foreign policy’ so upset Muslims?….Newsnight doesn’t ask because to do so would show that this radicalisation is based upon Muslim ‘racism’ and supremacy…ie Western countries are non-Muslim therefore Islam and Muslims are under attack if those Western countries intervene in ‘Muslim’ countries….Muslims are obliged by their religion to defend Islam…thus they are doing their religious duty by joining ISIS….thus it has all to do with Religion and ‘racism’ of Muslims who identify first as Muslim and, maybe, only later as ‘British’.   Their loyalty is to Islam…no wonder Newsnight avoids the issue.

Once again the BBC blames the West for what is a ‘Muslim’ issue created by a religious ideology that, as Mohammed said, wants to see Islam reign supreme.  Politicians and Media need to start waking up to that fact and that there are people out there who fully intend for that to happen whether by force of arms or force of demographics.

The BBC has spent the last 7 years chuntering on about the ‘productivity puzzle’…it just couldn’t work out why British firms were so unproductive despite the answer being fairly obvious as employment zoomed on ever upwards and wages stagnated.  The BBC’s attack on productivity was of course part of its campaign against austerity which it wanted to blame for what it saw as economic sloth.

so what is the basic reason for lack of productivity?  Mass immigration  of cheap labour into Britain that meant firms didn’t ave to invest in upskilling their workfore or in new technology.  Newsnight admits this…but manages to avoid the word immigration throughout a 5 minute interview…

Wages could be higher, productivity could be higher…and of course, unsaid, queues for housing, the NHS, schools and services could be much shorter….if we didn’t have so much immigration….

Odd how the BBC drools over Macron who roars out ‘Vive La Republique…Vive La France!!’  and yet scoff at and scorn Trump and his ‘Make America great again!’  Indeed odd that Macron himself had a dig at Trump’s call to arms.

I guess others aren’t so sanguine about Macron in France….

The BBC has set its hat at destroying Brexit and undermining the British side’s negotiations whilst promoting the EU’s but the BBC damages British interests and democracy in so many other ways, in particular by its arrogant presumption that it knows what is best for the country and that politicians must follow its prescriptions, or else.  Just one small example is how it treats the prospective Trump state visit to Britain…the BBC’s default position is that this is a bad thing, it shouldn’t happen…how many times have you heard a BBC presenter harangue a Tory minister demanding to know why Trump is being allowed into the country?

Now Trump has decided to head to France first, maybe instead of.

Who can blame him…and a bit of a triumph for Macron despite his differences with Trump.  Once again the BBC helps to pull us down.

John Simpson, the Liberator of Kabul, has had a bad year, the worst of his life he tells us.  Not sure why after all terrorism has been worse under the IRA, the economy is purring along nicely whatever the BBC tells us, industrial strife is limited despite Corbyn and Co’s attempts to bring the country to a grinding halt and their ‘day of rage’ turned out to be a couple of hundred useful idiots rather than the million the shadow chancellor wanted to  storm Downing Street with.  Trump’s in the White House but that could hardly impinge upon Simpson’s world to any great extent.  Maybe it’s that mortally wounded Prime Minister…is she?  That’s the BBC narrative as they want to see her deposed in order to trigger another election but she seemed pretty much in control during PMQs and who is there to replace her?  She may well survive however many times the BBC brings on Ken Clarke, Phillip Hammond or Michael Heseltine to undermine her…If I was May I’d sack Remainer Hammond and show who is boss and put the frighteners on the rest…he has consistently tried to stitch her up…maybe even his budget cock-up was deliberate and meant to embarrass her…how could he not know that the Tories had promised not to raise taxes?

Back to Simpson….so that leaves what?  Brexit?  If that is why he has had a bad year, the worst of his life, then we can safely assume he is a Remainer whatever he tries to spin.  Typically he portrays Brexit as a disaster, a leap in the dark…and yet he has no idea what tying ourselves to the EU would bring…it is as much a leap in the dark as Brexit as the EU economy and structure remain unstable, mass migration brings political and eventually military conflict, and internal differences within the EU cause potentially huge ruptures.

Simpson is disingenuous when he says…

I was taken completely by surprise at the end of last week when a comment I jotted down received thousands of Likes and retweets. “It’s a year since Jo Cox was murdered,” I wrote: “the worst year for Britain in my lifetime. We badly need a return to Jo’s concept of moderation now.”  Fairly anodyne, you would have thought, but it seems to have touched a nerve.

Simpson must know that ‘Jo Cox’ plus some worthy if pretty meaningless sentiments will grab attention and result in a flood of ‘Princess Di’ emoting.

He goes on…

If any further evidence of neuroticism is needed, there is the longing that people have to be enfolded in the arms of a comforting authority figure.

Only to say….

It’s a bad sign when countries feel that they need an individual to sort them out. It’s because of its system, based on openness, inclusiveness and the rule of law, that Britain has grown strong and wealthy. Jo Cox said in her maiden speech in June 2015: “While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.”

For someone who despises ‘cult figures’ rising up to save the nation he seems more than ready to hold up Jo Cox as the ‘mother of the nation’ whose every word, value and belief we must live by.  Let’s be honest, however nice she was, she was a left-wing MP whose politicial philosophy was made up of easy to say, emotive, lazy, liberal-crowd pleasing sentiments about immigrants, asylum seekers and war.  Hardly the stuff of legend….it’s the same stuff Corbyn has been peddling for decades and the BBC has filled the airwaves with.

Simpson tells us of his other worry…

There’s a newly hysterical tone in British society, which had always seemed so reassuringly reliable and sensible. The crowd that stormed Kensington Town Hall as though it were the Bastille or the Winter Palace mistook a man in a suit for a Tory councillor and beat him up. It transpired that he was an outside contractor who had spent much of the week helping the Grenfell Tower victims.

Above all, what was until recently the world’s fifth-largest economy has suddenly found itself on the edge of a trapdoor in the dark. “Back to the Thirties”, some people are saying.

Who has whipped up that ‘hysterical tone’?  The BBC has done all it can to portray Britain as broken and divided after Brexit, a nation that has become ‘nastier and more racist’ #duetobrexit, as well as promoting the splitting up of the UK with uncritical platforms given to Strugeon to spout her spiel about democracy and the will of the Scottish people…despite the SNP riding roughshod over democracy and the Brexit referendum not being regional but a British vote…and the Scots voted to stay in Britain.

Who else has helped to whip up that ‘hysterical tone’?  Corbyn and his stormtroopers…when the BBC talks about a return to the thirties it means the rise of the Far-Right but it is in fact the rise of Corbyn and his street thugs who most resemble a return to the thirties with both online abuse and intimidation and actual street violence and threats to Corbyn’s opponents…never mind the leader, the shadow Chancellor and the shadow Home Secretary all have records that would suggest they are unfit for Office in light of their willingness to cheerlead for murder and terrorism.  And we won’t mention the anti-Semitism.

Simpson ends with this..

We’ve never had more need of calmness than now.

I suggest he calm down and then have a word with his colleagues who seem to be doing all they can to destabilise and undermine May, cause another election and to thwart Brexit….the result of which might be far worse than whatever Simpson thinks Brexit might bring.  And another election with Corbyn possibly slipping into No10 would be something that Putin could only dream of.  No need to hack an election when you have the BBC doing the work for you.

The BBC is scaremongering hard about inflation and the dread ‘cost of living’ rise that we are supposedly suffering under #duetobrexit.

Trouble is inflation is not much above the average and it’s been much higher as a standard in the past…

The average rate of inflation has been 2.58% since 1989……

Consumer prices in the United Kingdom increased 2.9 percent year-on-year in May of 2017, higher than 2.7 percent in April and above market expectations of 2.7 percent. It is the biggest inflation rate since June of 2013, driven by cost of games, toys, holidays abroad, food, clothing and electricity. Inflation Rate in the United Kingdom averaged 2.58 percent from 1989 until 2017, reaching an all time high of 8.50 percent in April of 1991 and a record low of -0.10 percent in April of 2015.

So how is it now that the BBC is being so alarmist about inflation?….it is rising from a record and very unusual low to more the norm..and yet the BBC is claiming the economy is about to go into reverse as consumers panic and stop buying things due to the ‘high’ inflation.  This is pure anti-Brexit black propaganda from the BBC.

When inflation was falling to that low the BBC was telling us what a problem low inflation is….all change now…’high’ inflation is the problem.

The BBC paradoxically has for years been keen for interest rates to rise, always pressing their guests to say when they should happen.  There is nothing more likely to ruin the ‘consumer’s’ day than an interest rate rise as their mortage rates go up and they end up paying huge amounts more per month for what is essentially a central banker’s whim…and note….the consumer spending is optional, a mortgage rise is not…pay up or you’re homeless….if that isn’t just another form of inflation then what is?  Seems a daft way to curb consumer spending by making them penniless or even homeless….what’s better…spending on goods and services and enjoying those or just handing the money over to the bankers? Either way it is spending.

Gotta laugh at Corbyn.  May thought she would have a majority before the election, Corbyn thinks he has one after it and that he is actually the PM.

Corbyn caught out in another lie as he denies telling Glastonbury’s Michael Eavis that he would scrap Trident as soon as he was PM….can we trust a word this man says?  The same man who lied about shoot-to-kill and then lied to Peston in an interview about this whole episode claiming he was talking about the 1980s when it was clear he was saying shoot-to-kill would be a problem for him even in a Paris attack type situation.   The BBC Trust got that entirely wrong.

Emma Barnett did raise the issue when interviewing a Labour MP today but it seems to be missing from the BBC website…how can that be?  Surely a major issue for Labour and yet the BBC news website doesn’t report this latest twist especially as it ‘confirms’ suspicions about Corbyn’s likely position should he ever manage to get into No10.

If it had been May it would have been frontpage news just as all her ‘u-turns’ were…and just as Corbyn’s own massive u-turns on his principles that he had held for decades but suddenly ditched for the election went unmentioned.

Note how the BBC plays down McDonnell’s ‘Murder’ comment and in fact gives it credibility by constantly repeating his words without criticism whilst suggesting his narrative was correct.

Note also how the BBC makes nothing at all of the tide of abuse, intimidation , threats, fake news and misinformation flooding out from Corbyn supporters.  This is the BBC that was obsessed with unearthing ‘fake news’ and presented itself as the gold standard against which you could judge all other news or information….of course the fake news the BBC was intent on unearthing and exposing was  ‘right-wing’ fake news.  Corbyn’s supporters can rest easy in their beds, no BBC internet guardians will be reporting them to their bosses….despite having the number for Labour HQ.