Author Archives: Alan

Check out the BBC video…it claims Trump ‘inexplicably’ told the Russians the source of the intelligence….even the Washington Post has not claimed that….claiming only that it was the nature of the intel that could have revealed sources and methods…but offers no proof of course as to what was said….

“Our story says that the nature of the information provided would have allowed the Russians to ‘reverse engineer’ to discover the sources and methods. He said so much that they could figure it out.”

A while back we posted this comment on the BBC’s interpretation of what Trump meant when he said he had the right to share information with the Russians…

The BBC implies Trump’s assertion of his right to share facts with the Russians as an indication of guilt whereas of course all it indicates is that he shared facts about the terrorist threat….it says zilch about what those facts were or their security classification…

The BBC has suddenly added this qualification to their report in an update….

Mr Trump tweeted: “As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety.

“Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against [IS] & terrorism.”

It is not clear if Mr Trump was acknowledging having shared intelligence secrets with the Russian officials, thus contradicting White House statements, or whether he was simply trying to explain what had been discussed.

So now not so sure he was admitting guilt….BBC is so eager to trash Trump they don’t get the facts right first time…happy to peddle anti-Trump fake news just to spin an aura of incompetence and recklessness around his Presidency.

Previous version of the BBC report here on Newssniffer.

The previous version…

In his tweet early on Tuesday, Mr Trump said: “As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety.

“Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against [IS] & terrorism.”    

A report in the Washington Post said Mr Trump had confided top secret information relating to an IS plot thought to centre on the use of laptop computers on aircraft.   

How is it that the BBC opts to paint this as a negative for Brexit negotiations whilst everyone else, the Remain backing FT included, interpret it as a positive for Britain?

Listening to the radio in the car and I hear from the BBC that a recent ECJ ruling concerning an EU-Singapore trade deal means that any deal between the UK and the EU will need ratification by all EU member states and many regional parliaments as well….this will of course, the BBC tells us, be bad for Brexit and will mean we are mired in negotiations for years.

Thought I’d check…just because….here’s the BBC web report…

An EU-Singapore free trade deal cannot take effect fully unless parliaments in all 28 member states approve it, the EU’s top court has decided.

The legal opinion at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) could delay progress towards a UK free trade deal with the EU during the Brexit negotiations.

Indirect “portfolio” investments and commercial arbitration are issues that need national approval, the ruling said.

The verdict makes it more likely that any UK-EU free trade deal will have to be ratified by national and regional parliaments in the EU.

Note that last line…because it is rubbish, false, fake.

The FT tells us…

The Institute of Directors, one of Britain’s leading business organisations, welcomed the decision. “This ruling will probably make it easier for the EU to conclude trade deals without fear of as many hold-ups from national and sub-national legislatures,” said Allie Renison, head of EU and trade policy.

Er…isn’t that the exact opposite of what the BBC is peddling?

And as for all states and parliaments having to ratify…only two issues would need that….

In its widely awaited decision, the ECJ ruled that the EU had exclusive competence in all but two aspects of the Singapore agreement. Only for issues in those two areas — portfolio investments and a dispute-settlement regime for investments — would a deal require unanimous backing by member states.

The Telegraph reports…

Boost for Brexit free trade deal chances after landmark EU court ruling

Britain’s ambition to sign a quick Free Trade Agreement with the European Union after Brexit has received a significant boost after a landmark ruling by the European Court of Justice handed expanded trade negotiation powers to Brussels.

The much-anticipated decision from the court in Luxembourg surprised experts by ruling that on key areas – including financial services and transport – the European Union does not need to seek ratification of a trade deal by the EU’s 38 national and local parliaments.

Trade experts said the ECJ ruling could substantially reduce the risk of any future EU-UK free trade agreement getting bogged down in the EU national parliaments, opening the way for an FTA to be agreed by a qualified majority vote of EU member states.

“The Court of justice says all services – even transport – can be ratified by a qualified majority vote, which is potentially quite a big opening for the UK,” said Steve Peers, professor of EU law at Essex University. “It could certainly make things easier.”

Never, ever, take the BBC’s word for anything.

The BBC went out of its way to hunt down Leave voters who may be having doubts, all part of the Remain spin campaign to suggest Brexit was ‘stolen’ by people who didn’t undertsand what they were voting for and when they found out regretted it….except that’s baloney…the truth is it is Remain voters who have turned and expect Brexit to be implemented in due course as efficiently as possible…but oddly you don’t see the BBC rushing to report and highlight this story..

New poll suggests more than two thirds of people ‘now support Brexit’

A total of 68 per cent of respondents would like to see Britain withdraw from the EU, the latest YouGov figures show. 

Some 45 per cent said they were Eurosceptics, while 22 per cent said they wanted the Government to ignore June’s election result. 

A total of 23 per cent – described as “Re-Leavers” – said that they voted Remain last year, but now believe the government has a duty to carry out the will of the British people.

Nor is there a rush to report this…a report that tells of a Democrat insider leaking DNC emails….just why would the BBC not want to make that well known?  Could it be because it might just sow seeds of doubt about just who hacked the DNC’s and Clinton’s emails?…….

Seth Rich, Murdered DNC Staffer, ‘Leaked Thousands of Internal Emails to WikiLeaks’

Murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich “leaked thousands of internal [DNC] emails to WikiLeaks” and that the FBI is in possession of their correspondence.

Oddly whilst not wanting to promote any story that might be a positive for Trump the BBC is still pumping out what is at present completely unfounded claims, from a paper that is infamously anti-Trump, as fact.  The BBC have doubled up on their previous claims last night and have backed them up with absolutely no evidence but just a lot more speculation..otherwise known as gossip.

The BBC implies Trump’s assertion of his right to share facts with the Russians as an indication of guilt whereas of course all it indicates is that he shared facts about the terrorist threat….it says zilch about what those facts were or their security classification…

Trump defends ‘absolute right’ to share ‘facts’ with Russia

The BBC links two items together suggesting an association…

In his tweet early on Tuesday, Mr Trump said: “As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety.

“Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against [IS] & terrorism.”

A report in the Washington Post said Mr Trump had confided top secret information relating to an IS plot thought to centre on the use of laptop computers on aircraft.

Mr Trump’s move is not illegal, as the US president has the authority to declassify information.

Nice touch that last line….suggesting he did ‘declassify’ sensitive information that perhaps he shouldn’t have.

How about this…

The BBC’s Anthony Zurcher in Washington says this was a carefully constructed defence of the meeting, in which President Trump frames any revelation of intelligence information as a calculated move to advance US national security priorities.

A ‘carefully constructed defence’?  LOL…he just tweeted what happened….Zurcher is the one trying to construct a case against Trump implying that Trump is guilty but trying to get out if it by his ‘carefully constructed defence‘….and of course the meeting would have been precisely to advance US national security priorities…Zurcher frames this as if it was merely some kind of excuse by Trump when it was very obviously the background to the meeting.

Then once again we get the BBC’s conviction that Trump is guilty…

What happened in the Oval Office?

The intelligence disclosed came from a US ally and was considered too sensitive to share with other US allies, the paper reported.

Others at the meeting realised the mistake and scrambled to “contain the damage” by informing the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA), says the Post.

The Washington Post carefully constructs its own defence as it acknowledges it is reporting junk news…

“Our story says that the nature of the information provided would have allowed the Russians to ‘reverse engineer’ to discover the sources and methods. He said so much that they could figure it out.”

Hmmm…that could apply to absolutely any intel….as said in previous post everyone knew that laptops were to be banned on aircraft….Trump told the Russkies exactly that according to his staff….we could work out why and that this must be due to intelligence received…and that must have come from inside ISIS….if the Press knew then how is it suddenly a security breach to reveal the same limited intel to the Russians who could have read it on the BBC website?

Zurcher knows this story is junk…..he admits it is political…

After all, the controversy that swirled around the White House on Monday night was never legal, it was political.

And yet he still reports it as if the claims are true.

The BBC have even called up the old fraud Frank Gardner to add his weight to the claims…where is his evidence that anyone called the NSA and the CIA after the meeting and if they did, where’s the evidence of what they talked about?  Perhaps, and most likely, it was a courtesy call to update them on a meeting that the President had just had with the Russians….something the CIA and NSA would want to be kept up-to-date with.

Gardner has no evidence at all and yet talks as if this is all fact…but note the careful get-out word…’reportedly’…

Golden rule: Frank Gardner, BBC security correspondent

Despite the denials issued by the White House that any actual intelligence sources were revealed to the Russians, whatever was said in that Oval Office meeting was enough to alarm certain officials and, reportedly, to alert the CIA and NSA.

They in turn will have needed to warn the country that supplied the intelligence. There is a golden rule in the world of espionage that when one government supplies intelligence to another it must not be passed on to a third party without permission of the original supplier. The reason is simple: it could put the lives of their human informants at risk.

So despite there being absolutely no evidence that Trump compromised any intelligence or that anyone contacted the CIA or the NSA to ‘alert’ them to the ‘danger’ the BBC is reporting this as fact with a few weasel get-out words that they can point to if challenged about their peddling of politically motivated gossip as news.

This is a mud flinging exercise on a grand scale intended to discredit Trump, paint him as reckless, dangerous and untrustworthy with intelligence and high office…labelling him as unfit to be in Office…the BBC doesn’t care about the truth, it just flings the mud and knows that whatever the truth is that mud will stick and will add to all the other slurs they chuck at Trump in the hope that the American people will say enough is enough.

The BBC is hoping for, and working to engineer, regime change.  So very Russian nyet?

Yesterday, on the same day- I had meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the FM of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin.#LetsMakePeace! pic.twitter.com/SPiIrJqI6G

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2017

The Left-Wing media weaponises fake news to attack Trump and the BBC is a willing ally.

The BBC reports a Washington Post ‘fake news’ story that Trump revealed secret intelligence to the Russians as real…never mind that the Post is radically opposed to Trump and is doing everything in its power to bring him down….and never mind the statements from those at the meeting, that this story is so much bunkum, that the BBC reports but subsequently completely ignores…

Trump ‘shared classified information with Russia’

President Donald Trump revealed highly classified information about so-called Islamic State (IS) to Russia’s foreign minister, officials have told US media.

The information came from a partner of the US which had not given the US permission to share it with Russia, says the Washington Post.

It happened when Mr Trump met Sergei Lavrov in the Oval Office last week, says the paper.

But a senior security official has said the report is not true.

“This story is false,” said Dina Powell, deputy national security adviser for strategy, who was in the meeting. “The president only discussed the common threats that both countries faced.”

Mr Trump’s National Security Advisor, Gen HR McMaster, also said the story was false.

So people who were present at the meeting say this story is completely false….in response the BBC reports that the Washington Post says…

The Washington Post, which broke the story, said the McMaster statement did not amount to a denial of their story.

Really?   lotta lotta laughs.

The BBC is sure it happened despite the statements from those present…

What actually happened?

In a conversation with the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, in the Oval Office, the president revealed details that could lead to the exposure of a source of information, officials told the Washington Post and the New York Times.

The discussion was about an IS plot and the intelligence disclosed came from a US ally, information considered too sensitive to share with other US allies, the papers report.

Others present realised the mistake and scrambled to “contain the damage” by informing the CIA and the National Security Agency, says the Post.

But did it ‘actually happen’?  Those who were there say not…so why does the BBC claim it did happen?  Because it’s yet more mud to fling at the enemy, mud which they hope will stick if they keep flinging enough…

The fallout from this story could be enormous and not just because there is a boundless trove of Republican quotes over the past year – directed at Mrs Clinton – about the utmost importance of protecting top-secret information.

There is the Russian connection, of course.

Then there is the question of whether US allies will be more reluctant to share sensitive intelligence information with the US, lest the president put sources at risk.

This will only stoke accusations by Trump critics that the president is undisciplined and inexperienced in the delicacies of foreign policy, where his shoot-from-the hip style presents an ongoing danger.

The Washington Post tells us that it knows of the details in the intel…

The Post is withholding most plot details, including the name of the city, at the urging of officials who warned that revealing them would jeopardize important intelligence capabilities.

So its ‘source’ revealed this supposedly top secret intel to the Washington Post whilst spinning a tale that claims that Trump revealed it to the Russians?  Oh and never mind that this ‘source’ is trying to undermine the President of the US whilst working for him…attacking US democracy and the electoral system….so Russian huh?  And yet the Post is happy to collude in this treachery.

And what was the intel about?  The Telegraph says it was about a laptop plot to bomb a aircraft….

 So is this just more anti-Trump spin taking a real fact and re-inventing it as an alternate, anti-Trump, fact?

Consider that the US and UK recently announced they wanted to ban laptops from aircraft….kind of suggests they had intel of a plot and that the plot was about laptops.  I could be wrong in that intepretation…lol.  So you and I know, with no help from Trump, that there is probably an ISIS plot to bomb an aircraft.  There must be a source for that intel.  A source inside ISIS. [Sssshhhh…don’t tell the Russians]

The story of the ban was in the newspapers…and on the BBC…

US and UK ban cabin laptops on some inbound flights

And again just a few days ago…

US to discuss with EU possible laptop ban on flights

So is the BBC in collusion with the Russkies, is the BBC’s reckless loose-lips handing top secret intel to the Russians?

Or is there in fact no ‘secret’ to this and the threat was discussed by Trump with the Russians as Powell and McMaster state without revealing any sensitive information?

So why is the BBC claiming beyond doubt that it did happen based on a story from a famously anti-Trump paper?

Not as if the anti-Trump brigade aren’t prepared to perjure themselves…..

The Democrats should be ashamed. This is a disgrace!#DrainTheSwamp pic.twitter.com/UfbKEECm2V

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2017

Michael Fallon was quizzed by Marr on Army numbers, Marr saying a promise in the 2015 manifesto to keep regular army numbers above 82,000 has been broken…the BBC’s Reality Check agrees….

The Ministry of Defence publishes monthly figures for the size of the armed forces, the most recent of which are for March this year.

It has fallen gradually in the two years since then, so that it now stands at 78,432.

The actual pledge from the manifesto was: “We will maintain the size of the regular armed services and not reduce the army to below 82,000.”

But is that true?  The BBC seem very selective in their choice of figures…The MOD report quoted by the BBC actually says…..

As at 1 March 2017, the Tri-Service Full-time Trained Strength was 142,720. A Service breakdown is shown below in Table 3. Comparisons prior to October 2016 are not available for the Army because it is not possible to identify a split between Phase 1 and Phase 2 training prior to that.

Don’t know about you but a figure of 82,390 is higher than 82,000….isn’t it?

Or another figure from the same MOD publication…bearing in mind there are differences in how regulars are categorised in these reports…as to phase of training and trades and the inclusion of reservists who work and are contracted as regulars….

So again a figure for the regular army of more than 82,000….83,310 in fact…..

The BBC has chosen to quote this figure alone, 78,430……which is the figure only for fully trade trained soldiers…there are raw recruits, then those who have qualified as soldiers and then those who go on to do their specialist trade training….the figure here is of that last unique group and does not include those with no trade training and those still in basic training……

As at 1 March 2017, the FTTS (RN/RM & RAF) and FTTTS (Army) is 138,760, a decrease of 1.3 per cent (1,800 personnel) since 1 March 2016. Of this, the FTTS for the RN/RM is 29,480 , 30,850 for the RAF and the FTTTS [full time trade trained service]  is 78,430 for the Army.

The BBC has not taken into account the regular recruits still in training, trade or basic, and just uses the one figure that suits them to ‘prove’ the Tories failed to deliver on their manifesto and inteprets the manifesto comment in a similar vein.

The BBC’s fact check is deliberately misleading not making clear the differences between trained, trade trained and those in training and not including the figures for the total number of regulars including those still in training.

It tells us that….

  [The Army strength] currently stands at nearly 78,500 so that pledge has been broken.

Fake news.

Deep joy…

As a Harvard Law Student, Barack Obama Said Becoming Donald Trump Was The American Dream

In 1991, Obama, a 29-year-old soon-to-be Harvard Law School grad, wrote a paper with a friend, Robert Fisher, called “Race and Rights Rhetoric.” Obama summed up the average American’s mindset with the following sentence:

“[Americans have] a continuing normative commitment to the ideals of individual freedom and mobility, values that extend far beyond the issue of race in the American mind. The depth of this commitment may be summarily dismissed as the unfounded optimism of the average American—I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I don’t make it, my children will.”

 

Privatisation has been a huge success….playing a critical and successful role in the economy.

The network is a victim of its own success.

Britain’s railways are the most improved in Europe

It was found to deliver good value for money.

We have the safest and fastest-growing railway in Europe.

According to a Eurobarometer poll, satisfaction with rail of UK respondents is the second highest in the EU, behind Finland. The poll found that average UK satisfaction over four different areas was 78%, ahead of France (74%), Germany (51%) and Italy (39%)

 

The BBC seems pretty keen on the re-nationalisation of the railways and far from taking a critical look at Corbyn’s claims actually tells us they are quite attractive and could possibly work well.

Trouble is…the rail system never was really privatised as such…the government pulled a fast one and kept control whilst generously allowing private companies to pay for the privilege of running a rail franchise and also having to invest heavily in it.  Corbyn however proposes we, the tax-payer, pay for everything.  Some moan about the paradox that companies owned by foreign governments are running British railways so why can’t the British government run them?  Hmmm…nice to have the French subsidise our railways no?  Corbyn has invented a ‘problem’ the answer to which only he has the key….but the ‘problem’ is just that, an invention.

Naturally everyone has forgotten or never knew what the old British Rail was like….and they don’t actually know what the privatised system is like…we just get fed tales of misery and failure which do not represent the truth in any way…consider that passenger numbers have leapt enormously…..a service so unpopular people just can’t stop using it?

‘Since privatisation began, passenger numbers have doubled to an average of 4.5 million per day.’

What’s the truth about the privatised rail network?

This is what Labour’s Lord Adonis said in 2009 when discussing the East Coast line [which ‘failed’ due to the recession…Labour’s recession] and the rail system as a whole….

Today’s events do not represent the failure of the system, but the failure of one company. The rail franchising system was examined by the National Audit Office last year. It was found to deliver good value for money.

In respect of rail services at large, they are steadily improving. Passenger numbers are at their highest levels since the 1940s, punctuality is over 90 per cent and overall passenger satisfaction is rising, as shown in the latest independent National Passenger Survey, published yesterday. Moreover, the revenue from rail franchises is enabling us to make record investment in upgrading the network and services on it.

So the franchise system is good value for money, services are improving with high passenger satisfaction and record investment.

What did the European Union say?

What did the Guardian say?

Forget the nostalgia for British Rail – our trains are better than ever

Passengers may be grumbling about the planned fare increases, but on balance rail privatisation has been a huge success.

As so often, conventional wisdom is wrong. For all the defects of a rushed privatisation, rail has evolved into a privately run public transport system playing a critical and successful role in the economy. The reality could hardly be more different to perception: passenger numbers booming, productivity rising, the number of services soaring, and customer satisfaction at near-record highs. Even those hated fare rises are not all they seem.

The Independent?

Britain’s railways doing well despite privatisation

As calls grow for renationalisation, 20 years on, our Travel Correspondent Simon Calder argues that the network is a victim of its own success.

It is easy to see why Jeremy Corbyn’s pledge to renationalise the railways has wide support, including from some Conservative voters.

Yet there is an intellectual disconnect between delays, overcrowding and fares. If enough passengers regarded tickets as punitively expensive and insufficiently reliable, they would switch to other modes of transport or simply stay at home. In fact, the main problem facing train operators is one that other industries would love to have: too many customers.

Since privatisation began, passenger numbers have doubled to an average of 4.5 million per day.

Mark Smith was station manager for the key London commuter stations of Charing Cross, London Bridge and Cannon Street in the early 1990s. “BR would make cutbacks to meet budgetary targets even if this reduced revenue and lost money overall,” he recalls.

Today, Mr Smith runs the seat61.com international rail website, and observes Britain performing significantly ahead of the European pack:

“We have the safest and fastest-growing railway in Europe. We’re re-opening stations and branch lines whilst France and others contemplate closures and cuts. We are revitalising our Caledonian and Cornish sleeper services whilst the Germans prepare to surrender all of theirs at the end of this year.

And the case for a bogus ‘nationalisation’ is?  This is political grandstanding of the highest order by Corbyn, an industrial-sized smoke and mirrors operation to buy votes….the ‘privatised’ railways are very successful and get high passenger satisfaction rates…and is not in reality ‘privatised’ anyway….so what benefit is there in carrying out a paper exercise of ‘re-nationalisation’ other than to fool and con the public into thinking there is a problem that Corbyn, with a bit of help from Marx, can solve?

BBC fact-checkers?  Where are you?

Consider this from Corbyn’s manifesto…

Labour will halt the NHS “Sustainability and Transformation Plans” which are looking at closing health services across England and ask local health groups to redraw the plans with a focus on patient need rather than available finances.

Corbyn is suggesting there will be absolutely no limit to spending on the NHS.  Any criticism from the BBC for that completely fanciful, not to mention dishonest and misleading, promise?  No.  A statement entirely in line with Labour’s philosophy…spend, spend, spend to buy votes regardless of the cost and the fact there is no money and that future generations will be paying for this largesse one way or the other…through higher taxes or austerity….been there, still doing that, due to the last Labour mis-government.

Ever get the impression that the BBC is playing  down Corbyn’s radical politics, his links to terrorism and anti-Semitism and the ruinous reality of his manifesto which seems to get a by from the BBC’s fact-checkers and is presented as if there was nothing at all really controversial in there….many of its promises actually getting promoted as being quite a good thing in fact and a rear-guard action seems to be being mounted to defend Corbyn and undermine attacks on him.

We are told that claims Corbyn will drag us back to the 70’s is so much nonsense from the right-wing Press and the Tory Party…and you know what, weren’t the 70’s in fact glorious, culturally inventive and significant…wasn’t it the period of civil disobedience when the People took power? [Hint hint….oh…er…not you nasty populist Brexiteers…you can bugger off!  Violent Occupiers, terrorists and radicals only thankyou]…and it was so much better.  This romancing of the 70’s, on the Today programme, was undoubtedly meant to illustrate that not only would going back to the 70’s be harmless but Commissar Corbyn would actually lead a people’s revolution, not only tranforming and energising the economy, politics and society but the Arts and the cultural world as well…brilliant!

The News Quiz curiously also came up with a similar line [any institutional editorial direction going on?] and then went on to blatantly provide what was a party political broadcast on behalf of Labour cheerleading Corbyn’s policies whilst slagging off the Tories.

May has come in for mass criticism and mocking for her ‘soft’ interview on the One Show and yet that was a BBC interview…so whose fault is it if there was little rigour…in fact there were some probing, political questions….the critics just chose to ignore them, and that was not the purpose of the interview anyway…it was a ‘get to know the person’ job.  We constantly hear that May is ducking questions and yet she will face the Public on Question Time and there will be many ‘hard’ interviews in the course of the next few weeks.  Having Corbyn and May lob questions at each other serves little purpose other than what would be a circus entertainment.  May would proobably wipe the floor with Corbyn anyway.

Emma Barnett brought on Harry Fletcher who once worked on Corbyn’s campaign team…she introduced him as having left that team because of the chaos it was in.  You may have thought you’d be getting an expose of the Corbyn chaos….but not a bit of it because this was not at all true.  Fletcher told us he left because he was working as an unpaid volunteer and he was offered a paid job elsewhere.  He went on to say that Corbyn’s policies were pretty good and that he would be voting for him.  So yet more pro-Corbyn cheerleading slipped in under the radar.  Barnett then read out [to prove how much of a fearless journo she is] an email she’d received from a pro-Corbyn supporter who complained of  BBC ‘bias’ putting on such a critic of Corbyn.  Barnett said it was a good day when she was attacked by both sides….she then knew she was doing something right.  Well no, not really…this was a very obvious pro-Corbyn piece, policies great, will vote for him… so just because a Corbynista claims bias where there is none [none that is anti-Corbyn that is] doesn’t mean she has it right…it just means the Corbynista is an idiot or is part of the Corbynista’s campaign to intimidate the BBC with a barrage of complaints….a useful idiot.

What about the railways and renationalisation?  The BBC is actually pretty keen and sees little problem…

Renationalising actually happens from time to time anyway. The East Coast Main Line spent several years in public ownership after it was handed back to the government by National Express in 2009, before being privatised again in 2015.

It performed pretty well in public hands. It paid nearly £1bn in fees to the government and still managed to make a profit for the Treasury, while carrying more passengers and getting good passenger satisfaction scores. So there is some evidence that repeating that exercise each time a current rail franchise expires could work.

However all is definitely not what we are being told….the past is buried, the present is not understood and the future is a political football.  But more of that in the next post as this post is long enough.

This is the view of the BBC on Muslims in the UK…

Male, Muslim and marginalised

Mahtab Hussain’s photographic portraits of Muslim men in the UK explore complex themes of identity and marginalisation.

He says Muslim men in Britain have had a “plethora of labels” thrown on them, from terrorist to sexual groomer, and that they are struggling to find their place in society.

The problem, as the BBC sees it, is the way we look at them.…but the reality is that the problem is the way they look at us…through the distorting prism of the Koran.

The BBC though at least is admitting there is a problem with Muslim integration, they just refuse to admit the real cause…..and the real consequences of that…Douglas Murray is more honest and open…however even he won’t admit that the answer is a hardcore non-immigration policy…we recently looked at Murray’s latest book,  The Strange Death of Europe,  here...

What has been one of the major news stories today, one that the BBC has been giving priority to throughout the day?

BBC cameraman run down by Corbyn perhaps?  Well nothing that exciting.  Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has been in the Guardian revealing the bombshell news that Labour might get beaten in the coming election..and beaten by a landslide.  What’s new, what’s news, about that?  Nothing.  However the BBC has been giving his words almost top billing all day so far telling us that ‘Tom Watson has warned of a Tory landslide’.

The BBC’s choice of word is interesting…’warned’…why did the BBC choose that loaded word instead of saying Tom Watson claims or states or predicts that the Tories will win by a landslide?  ‘Warned’ is alarmist, it says a Tory ‘landslide’ is a bad thing…something that needs to be warned of.

And why is the BBC giving such a nothing story such a  high profile?  Watson is clearly giving out a message here and it’s not at all subtle or missable…he’s ‘warning’ of a Tory landslide in the hope that disenchanted Labour voters will put aside their dislike of Corbyn and rally to the Party’s aid if not to win then at least to reduce the Tory majority.

The BBC must know that…so you have to ask why they have been pumping out what is obvious Labour propaganda all day?

And if you think that’s a very cynical and suspicious view of the BBC then listen to what Nick Robinson said this morning [yes he’s still around if not on the election team]…

‘Now you might think predicting Labour can’t win is a bit of Right-wing propaganda but of course this morning we’ve been reminded that some in the Labour Party, not least the deputy leader, Tom Watson, want to get that message out because they think warnings of a Tory landslide are the best way to bring their voters back home.’ [to Labour]

Nick Robinson dobs in his own side….caught red-handed filling the airwaves with Labour spin.  Let’s get that message out luvvies…champers on ice for the big win!!!!