Author Archives: Alan

You may have noticed recently that the BBC frequently refers to the Daily Mail apology to the Mahmood family for a Katie Hopkins’ article that suggested the reason they were prevented from travelling to the US was not an outrageous case of Islamophobia but perhaps there were sufficient grounds for doing so.  Not sure why the Mail surrendered so easily and not only apologised but coughed up a large amount of money as well….Hopkins was only reporting the facts as she understood them, if in a rather strident manner.  If she is wrong then so is CBS, LBC and of course the US Homeland Security…

One of the brothers was stopped from entering Israel and was detained for 8 days along with a group of other Muslim youths, and Homeland Security found that there was a Facebook page apparently originating from the Mahmood’s home address that linked to Islamist extremists.

Not proof of anything but enough to raise suspicions and all Hopkins was doing was countering the wave of media reporting that failed to report the whole truth…

My opponents can carry on with their lazy labels. Call me racist (Islam is not a race). Report me for my tweets. (You can’t prosecute the truth) and threaten my life. (Nothing new from the peace-loving liberal left.)

But it will not stop me from giving balance to the total mis-telling of a story about this lovely British family off to Disneyland to make dreams come true. 

Who was it though that stirred the pot and encouraged a claim against the Mail?  Our old friend from the Muslim Council of Britain [That extreme group] Miqdaad Versi whom the BBC is currently eulogising…

The man correcting stories about Muslims

Miqdaad Versi sits in front of a rather geeky-looking spreadsheet at the offices of the Muslim Council of Britain in east London.

He is the organisation’s assistant secretary general, but the task in front of him is a personal project.

The spreadsheet has on it every story published concerning Muslims and Islam that day in the British media – and he is going through them looking for inaccuracies.

Trouble is Versi has a rather narrow targeting range…seemingly consisting only of ‘right-wing’ media.

His complaints are trivial, mendacious and intended to silence the media if only by making their lives very difficult by forcing them into court whether they are right or wrong…such as in the Hopkins’ case where you might think the Mail had a good defence.

We’ve had a look at one of his previous efforts…and once again it seems that he is using Muslim lawfare to muzzle the Press with the BBC backing him all the way.

Ah the power of this blog…no sooner had I posted this last night…’Women march against Trump and the BBC looks on with tears in its eyes but this is the same BBC that deliberately hid what it knew was going on in Rochdale and Rotherham as 1,400 white girls were raped and abused by mostly Pakistani heritage men, the same BBC that told us that what happened in Cologne was a right-wing conspiracy, the same BBC that ignores what is happening across Europe which makes Norway the rape capital of Europe with Sweden not far behind.  Guess the BBC is only interested in women’s rights if they are black or vote Democrat.’….and this morning Nicky Campbell is talking about women’s rights….one of the guest speakers suggesting it is odd that we[not me] march against Trump when the real danger to women is happening on our own doorstep, specifically within certain communities.

One stand-out comment from Campbell made me laugh…he told us that his daughter loves a book by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, you know, the anti-Muslim extremism battler who was driven out of Europe by the liberal defenders of the indefensible which includes institutionally imposed misogyny.  [Hirsi Ali thinks Sharia law might be bad for women, gays, Jews, Christians etc etc].  Shame Campbell doesn’t follow in his daughter’s footsteps…he prefers to get his Islamic education from the likes of Mo Ansar….which explains an awful lot.

Odd that the BBC should downplay the role that the Koran plays in fostering hatred of women, its GCSE Bitesize site told us that Christianity didn’t much respect women but Islam did.  Islam we were told, believed men and women were equal but that they had different roles and this explains the different way women are treated in Islam…different but equally respected the BBC assured us.

The Bible gets a completely different treatment from the BBC’s Jo Fidgin….

‘The Bible teaches our children to hate women before they can think’

A few months ago, a friend told me that she’d been reading fairy tales to her two year old, and had been appalled to realise what messages they send. The girls in them are rewarded for being passive, long suffering and, most of all, for being beautiful. Her rather gorgeous daughter had started to fret that she didn’t have the requisite blue eyes and talked about wanting to scratch them out.

That conversation prompted the Misogyny Book Club, going out on Radio 4 this week. I started to wonder what other books that are widely read and loved say about women, and whether they may have helped make hatred or contempt of women part of our culture; part of ‘the air that we breathe’, as one contributor to the series puts it.

We started with the Bible, and the figure of Eve. Whether or not you believe she was the first woman, there’s no getting away from her. Her name has become shorthand for duplicitous, malleable, irresponsible Woman.

In Genesis, chapter 3, Eve is beguiled by the serpent into taking fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Many have said that Eve’s real sin was to be curious. Curious to know things she shouldn’t. Curious to experience good and evil. Curious about sex.

Can you ever imagine a time when the BBC would tell us that the Koran teaches Muslim men to hate women?  The same BBC that actively sought to supppress the truth about Muslim demographics in Europe but was keen to tell us that Christians were using the womb ‘as a weapon’.

Jo Fidgin of course the seeker of truth and facts who listed all the faults of the Leave campaign, denounced Trump, blamed the Iraq War and climate change ‘denial’ on fake news  but neglected somehow to do the same for the Remain one or left wing causes.

This series by Fidgin, The Misogyny Bookclub, shines an educational light upon BBC’s world view, its commissioning process and editorial standards.

Here’s a women, Fidgin, who suddenly had an idea, that books are teaching men to hate women, and she trots along to the BBC and instantly gets the green light.  So one person with her own prejudices and a singular idea is given a platform to hawk those prejudices worldwide on the BBC as ‘fact’….and they are presented as ‘fact’  This from a woman who is so interested in true truths and true facts, apparently.

What Fidgin fails to understand or admit is that the Bible is an ancient text written to take account of the political and social conditions of the time and which today, the average person, the Establishment, and even the Church, do not take literally.  They may take it seriously as a symbolic representation of values [like Royalty] but the values have changed and the ‘bad’ values have been quietly and gradually forgotten and put aside, Hellfire and Brimstone replaced with tea and scones with the vicar.  This is not the case with Islam and the Koran which is still taken as the literal word of God and its every utterance taken as the true path to be followed to the letter.

Does anyone today come away from reading the Bible with the thought that they must hate women?

Black is the new Black.

Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize because he was black, he has since dropped somewhere near 30,000 bombs from drones in the last year alone, killing countless civilians along the way. Trump was given the bum’s rush for speaking inconvenient truths.

We were told Trump ‘attacked civil rights icon’ John Lewis, black, when the reality is Trump was responding to Lewis’ attack on him.  Lewis is applauded and feted, Trump maligned and slandered.

Women march against Trump and the BBC looks on with tears in its eyes but this is the same BBC that deliberately hid what it knew was going on in Rochdale and Rotherham as 1,400 white girls were raped and abused by mostly Pakistani heritage men, the same BBC that told us that what happened in Cologne was a right-wing conspiracy, the same BBC that ignores what is happening across Europe which makes Norway the rape capital of Europe with Sweden not far behind.  Guess the BBC is only interested in women’s rights if they are black or vote Democrat.

And of course if you have a brown skin or a ‘non-white’ religion you have a licence to bomb and shoot white people and the BBC will find excuses for you and make sure people ‘understand’ the grievances that drove you to this violence….you are a victim twice over.

Another open thread for a new week and a new dawn….

What the BBC isn’t telling you as it glorifies the women marching against Trump…..from the New York Times…‘What is the link between one of Hillary Clinton’s largest donors and the Women’s March? Turns out, it’s quite significant’…written by a liberal female Muslim who voted for Trump!!!….

Billionaire George Soros has ties to more than 50 ‘partners’ of the Women’s March on Washington

 The Guardian has touted the “Women’s March on Washington” as a “spontaneous” action for women’s rights. Another liberal media outlet, Vox, talks about the “huge, spontaneous groundswell” behind the march. On its website, organizers of the march are promoting their work as “a grassroots effort” with “independent” organizers. Even my local yoga studio, Beloved Yoga, is renting a bus and offering seats for $35. The march’s manifesto says magnificently, “The Rise of the Woman = The Rise of the Nation.”

It’s an idea that I, a liberal feminist, would embrace. But I know — and most of America knows — that the organizers of the march haven’t put into their manifesto: the march really isn’t a “women’s march.” It’s a march for women who are anti-Trump.

Funny how left-wing ‘populism’ is OK with the BBC.  No cries of a ‘return to Stalinism and the goulags’ here whereas a populism that gives rise to Brexit or Trump is a ‘return to the 1930’s and Hitler’.

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Two hundred years on from the Battle of Waterloo and Britain finds itself once again in the frontline defending the independence of Europe from the imperial designs of a dictatorship that is aided and abetted by enemies within.

Reading a book, ‘Of Living Valour: The Story of the Soldiers of Waterloo’, and the similarities to today are striking.  The British people in revolt against an elitist tyranny that rules over them, soldiers on the street who object to being used to defend ‘might against right‘, and a European Empire looming threateningly over them.

Here’s a quote that could make you laugh or think…

‘Apart from smarting at being used as an instrument of this affluence, both officers and men also objected to the fact that quite a few of the beau monde retained considerable sympathy for Napoleon and what he stood for…alongside the butchery and destruction he had brought, those who could afford the luxury of such whims applauded much of what they assumed he stood for.’

Rings a bell doesn’t it as the ‘elite’ in Britain today seek to sell us out to the EU…..ably assisted by the BBC’s  propaganda.

Apparently a popular army song of the time from soldiers of whom the majority were ‘decent, honest and ambitious and proud to be free-born Britons…with a genuine hatred of what Napoleon had done to Europe and a fear of what a British version of the French Revolution would do to their country’…

Britons strike home!  Avenge your country’s cause,   Protect your King, your liberties and your laws!

 

Perhaps what we need is an “epistocracy”, where “votes are in some way weighted according to basic political knowledge”, says Brennan. In short, let’s have IQ tests and give greater power to the clever over the dumb.

Educated?  What does that mean?

The BBC’s assertion is that those who voted for Brexit and for Trump are uneducated, we’ll ignore the other smears about them being racists and bigots, let’s just ask what the BBC means by  ‘uneducated’.

We are told that such voters do not have university degrees and thus are ‘uneducated’ and by extension they also lack the progressive values that come from such an education, apparently…the humane values that underpin the progressives’ obsession with open borders, mass migration, extravagantly indulgent human rights and toleration of the intolerant to the dangerous detriment of the very progressive society that they supposedly represent.

But, a reasonable person might ask, is a degree in maths, sociology or english say ,the only indicator of a mind that is ‘educated’, one that is open to the world, one that understands not only what is happening but can draw rational, intelligent and informed conclusions, or indeed an indicator at all?  A mechanic or a dustman or a plumber are just as capable of assessing economic, political and social events as someone with a university degree.  They  have families, they need to earn a living, they need a home, they need schools and hospitals, they need safe streets and stability, they need to know the future is working for them.  They very definitely take an interest in what is happening.  It is the ultimate lazy journalism to stereotype them as ignorant, ill-informed and stupid people.  They live in the real world where the decisions of politicians have real consequences for their lives.  They do not live in some theoretical utopian dreamland where the BBC seems to live its life, where mass migration has no consequences other than to be a huge benefit, where Islam is a religion of peace, where money grows on trees and the EU is a generous benefactor doling out love and largesse to one and all and takes a kind interest in your views.

The real education is that gained by people living their lives, qualified by experience.  They can see the GP surgery waiting rooms full of migrants, they can see that their kids can’t get the school of choice because of the huge numbers of migrant children, they can see the houses their children can’t get because of the surge in migration, they can see their wages slashed as they are undercut by cheap imported labour, they can see their own culture and society beng maligned and undermined by an aggressive intolerant minority aided and abetted by the ‘elite’, they can see themselves being portrayed as racists and bigots, stupid and uneducated neanderthals abused,vilified and criminalised for being white.

How long before they are made to wear badges just as the Jews were made to wear?  Perhaps little union flags as badges of shame, indicators of their stupidity, ignorance, racism and unacceptable views.  Think it won’t happen?  Think again…the BBC of course already operates such a policy in effect as it constantly labels such voters in such a way…but it’s not just the BBC that wants to label them and curtail their freedom of expression and indeed their democratic rights…

It was ridiculous to ask “ignoramuses” to decide on the future of the EU, said famed atheist Richard Dawkins. The public, being ignorant of “the highly complex economic and social issues facing our country”, should “have no say on our EU membership”, he said.

Leading philosopher AC Grayling denounced the politics of the “crowd”. “Rule by crowd acclamation is a very poor method of government”, he said, since most members of the crowd, dim-witted specks in the mass, are susceptible to “misinformation, distortion, false promises [and] tabloid urgings”.

That is, our minds are easily fried by demagogues and lying newspapers; we’re controlled more by sentiment than reason.

“Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant”, says a headline in Foreign Policy magazine. The piece, written by Jason Brennan, American professor and author of the The Case Against Democracy, says Trump owes his victory to “the uninformed”.

But this goes beyond Trump, says Brennan. The general public’s stupidity calls into question the whole idea of making decisions democratically. Perhaps what we need is an “epistocracy”, where “votes are in some way weighted according to basic political knowledge”, says Brennan. In short, let’s have IQ tests and give greater power to the clever over the dumb.

This isn’t an extreme view anymore. Being anti-democratic has become positively fashionable among the chattering classes.

We are no longer successfully “keeping the mob from the gates”, says Matthew Parris in the Spectator. It’s been a while since observers openly talked about “the mob”. Trump’s victory calls into question the wisdom of having “government by the people”, Parris says. So who should govern? Kings? Priests? Parris?

We have become “too democratic”, says Andrew Sullivan. The “passions of the mob” have become too great a player in political life. We need a better “elitist sorting mechanism” to prevent people’s “untrammelled emotions” from dominating political discourse.

The BBC goes  on and on about hate crimes linking them to Brexit and yet studiously ignores such hate speech that seeks to ‘ethnically cleanse’ Britain of white people and their culture, that seeks to introduce a McCarthyist approach to race and politics that makes certain races and political and social views unacceptable and makes being white a crime.

If this goes on much longer Brexit and Trump are just the beginning.  Europe will burn and the BBC as the chief propagandist will be top of the funeral pyre.

A sample of the BBC’s latest dignified, thoughtful and impartial examination of Brexit [H/T Craig at Is the BBC biased?]…

Since the Brexit vote, Europeans suspect endearing eccentricity has morphed into unpredictable irrationality. The UK has become the tipsy, tweedy uncle, who after too much Christmas sherry has tipped over into drunkenly abusive bore.

BBC Newswatch…The BBC holding itself to account…or not….of course.

The above video is of Katy Searl, editor of BBC Political News, defending the BBC’s coverage of Brexit as she is keenly and rigorously challenged by Samira Ahmed…or not. Sure Ahmed asks some basic questions but then allows Searl to bat them away with trite answers that go unexamined and unchallenged…where is Andrew Neil when you need him?

Searl tells us it is the BBC’s job to ask questions and in particular, it seems, they have decided that May is not giving enough detail on Brexit and thus it is the BBC’s job to keep demanding she give more and more of that detail about what the negotiations will look like and the way the government will be negotiating….Searl pompously tells us that it is the BBC’s job to give clarity where there is none from government…never mind that there is perfect clarity on what Brexit means, no freedom of movement, no Single Market, and that it is impossible to define how any negotiation will turn out in every detail.  But the BBC is insisting in asking for that detail.

That of course is the Remainders’ narrative and one designed to block Brexit with endless questions and challenges to every one of those details as they arise…in the ‘name of democracy…’ when in fact it is the very opposite of that, shaped to stymie democracy and the result of the referendum….it is in fact the BBC and the Remainders continuing to fight the referendum and refusing to accept the result.  You have to ask why the BBC coninues to promote scenarios that paint Brexit as an economic armageddon…the only reason can be that they hope a continued barrage of manufactured bad news will scare the voters into demanding a second referendum….perhaps the BBC and the Remainders should take the BBC’s own advice…

Many Germans now want to just work out a solution that does the least amount of harm to the European economy. Hence the irritation in Germany when British politicians keep rehashing the pre-referendum debate.

“It was frustrating to hear the same old arguments from the referendum campaign,” one business leader told me when I asked him what he had thought about Saturday’s discussion.

Germany has moved on, he said. Maybe Britain should too.

It is astonishing, a BBC journalist’s complete lack of self-awareness of what his own news organisation is doing…continually re-running the referendum trotting out the same old arguments again and again and again…maybe the BBC and the Remainders should move on and work towards making Brexit a success instead of trying to sabotage it.

There seems to be no recognition from the BBC that there can be no detail, no minute by minute running commentary from the government on the negotiations and what the exact outcome they are looking for is.  May gave the broad outline of what Brexit will look like, outside the Single Market, outside the Custom’s Union as is, no more freedom of movement….what the final outcome will be is subject to the negotiations and clearly that is impossible to define….and yet the BBC keeps demanding to know as it continues to press the Remainders’ line about the ‘detail’ without questioning if that is something that it should be asking the government to reveal.

When asked if the BBC should have a more balanced representation of voices rather than the usual weasel voices of Farron, Clegg, Sturgeon or Soubry for instance, all ardently pro-EU and anti-the referendum result, Searl again asserted that it was the BBC’s job to ask questions….the same questions put by those Remainders.

Indeed it is…however it is also the BBC’s job not just to question what the government is doing but also to challenge the Remainders’ narrative especially when they talk of a ‘soft Brexit’ as such a thing does not exist and is purely a rhetorical device  manufactured to fool the public into thinking it is still some sort of Brexit when it is in fact just a continuation of what we have now…ie remaining in the EU.  The BBC never questions the Remainders’ narrative on that.  Nor do they challenge the sheer effrontery of the undemocratic bluster from Sturgeon  as she tries to bluff her way to independence with a flurry of outraged indignation and warped logic as she tells us Scotland voted to remain in the EU and therefore if the government is to take us out Scotland must have independence.

You may have thought the BBC would point out the blatantly obvious fact that the referendum was a ‘British’ referendum and not national nor indeed regional and therefore it is irrelevant what the predominant vote was in individual areas of the UK….and  as Scotland voted previously convincingly to remain within ‘Britain’ the Brexit referendum has to be framed within that context….’Scotland’ did not vote to remain in the EU as it was individual Britons voting and not ‘Scots’.  It would be an absurdity to grant Sturgeon any credibilty on this…such a policy would mean any town or city that ‘voted to remain’ could then cede from Britain and remain in Europe…clearly unworkable and ridiculous…you’d think.  But the BBC allows Sturgeon to peddle such tosh unchallenged and when she talks of ‘democracy’ why not ask her why she is undemocratically attempting a coup d’etat by effectively ignoring and overturning the independence vote?  Dictator Idi Amin lives on…last King of Scotland?

As Brendan O’Neil states…

The truly disturbing thing about 2016 is not the rage of the masses against the establishment, but the rage of the elites against democracy.

The BBC of course has not noticed the dangerous and enraged anti-democracy tone of the likes of Farron, Soubry and Sturgeon preferring instead to present their arguments as reasoned and credible rather than a ‘return to the 1930’s’ that the BBC does like to say about Brexit itself.

Remarkably when asked if the BBC was getting the tone right Searl told us that this was a vital part of any broadcast and that they think very carefully about this, constantly checking their scripts and ensuring they don’t reflect just the views of one side or the other.  The BBC continues to be committed to impartiality.  LOL.

Searl thought that the BBC’s Reality Check was an excellent tool that answered those unanswered questions….hmmm…anyone who read the Reality Check during the referendum would know that it was more a tool of the Remain camp just as it it peddled pro-immigration stats its economic coverage was just as one-sided…forensically exposing what they thought were Leave failures whilst glossing over Remain’s blatant exaggerations and misinformation.

Happily Searl left us with the thought that the BBC will be trying to find some good news out of the Brexit disaster and will examine every event to determine if it is good news or bad.  I look forward to that from a BBC that instead of choosing to report that year on year retail sales for December had increased by 4.3% chose to report a 1.9% fall from November 2016 to December 2016 and to conclude that this was down to Brexit rather than to high sales in November because of Black Friday.

I was interested to hear from a BBC presenter that Russian hacking and fake news played an important part in Trump’s election…fact.  Also Trump was smeared by the BBC’s sly comment that he was endorsd by the KKK.  Well he may have been but so was Hillary Clinton…and indeed Ronald Reagan.

Curiously the BBC for some reason doesn’t tell us that Clinton was so endorsed….

The Independent in November 2016 tells us that Trump has not disowned the KKK…

Trump is unlikely to be fervently tweeting about this endorsement but has also yet to reject it.

Ronal Reagan previously renounced the KKK’s support, saying: “Those of us in public life can only resent the use of our names by those who seek political recognition for the repugnant doctrines of hate they espouse.”

Asked in July whether he would vote against former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who has also backed Trump and is running for Senate, Trump said: “I guess.”

Odd how The Independent could miss the numerous rejections of the KKK by Trump as the below video from March 2016 shows…but as they can’t spell Ronald Reagan’s name correctly what can we expect from the Independent?…

So fake news about Trump from the BBC and the Independent as they try every tactic to smear him with any lie and slander.

The BBC as a gold standard for the news industry?  LOL.

You may remember the BBC almost totally ignored the remarkable recent PMI figures which suggested industry was on the up when previously, as the PMI dipped below the magic figure of 50, it loudly and repeatedly broadcast that fact and how terrible it was for the economy throughout the day.  Similarly the BBC has been gleefully trumpeting the ‘fact’ that December’s retail sales have been less than November’s this year…

UK retail sales fall sharply in December

Retail sales in December dropped 1.9% from the previous month, according to official figures.

Sales across all main retail sectors declined, with the heaviest falls coming at non-food stores, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

It was the biggest monthly fall for more than four and a half years.

This was at first reported as possibly having something to do with Black Friday but another possible cause was Brexit and the falling pound.  Literally five minutes after I heard that assessment we had a news bulletin from the same BBC economics expert telling us that it was almost definitely due to Brexit because that is the  ‘mainstream’ feeling.

Really?  Surely the ONS is ‘mainstream’ and indeed is the source of the figures…it says….

Average store prices have risen in recent months for all retailing, primarily as a result of price rises at petrol stations.

But what is the ONS’ headline?

• Estimates of the quantity bought in retail sales increased by 4.3% compared with December 2015 and fell by 1.9% compared with November 2016.

• The underlying trend remains one of growth with the 3 month on 3 month movement in the quantity bought increasing by 1.2%.

Hang on….retail sales December to December increased by 4.3%…and yet I didn’t hear that figure given at all by the BBC on their news bulletins…the only figure they gave was the November to December 2016 figure which showed a fall…nor did I hear them tell us that the underlying trend was one of growth.

The BBC pushes hard the ‘disaster’ that is the falling pound…

‘Tough 2017’

Retailers had a “disastrous December… much worse than expected,” said Alan Clarke of Scotiabank.

Inflation figures earlier this week showed prices rose more than expected in December, “and now we also know that sales volumes fell”, Mr Clarke said.

“This is likely to be the theme for the rest of the year – higher prices will reduce disposable income and hurt consumer spending growth,” he added.

Martin Beck, senior economic adviser to the EY Item Club, said “the squeeze on households’ real incomes is gradually tightening, implying a tough 2017 for retailers”.

Only way down the page in a single line does the BBC mention this…

However, when compared with a year ago, retail sales were up 4.3% in December.

Why is that not the headline figure?  Surely a rise of 4.3% is of more significance than a fall of 1.9%, a fall due to high sales on Black Friday?

The BBC is telling us lies, hiding the truth and presenting a distorted reality in order to keep up the anti-Brexit narrative that Brexit is leading to economic armageddon.

When will the politicians start to notice that the national broadcaster is so corrupt and dishonest?

On the same day that the BBC glorifies the terrorist murderer who was a commander in the IRA as it killed men, women and children, Martin McGuinness, and who is still proud and unrepentant for all that he did, it asks you if you are appalled and disgusted by Donald Trump. #BBCvalues.

A new open thread for the weekend…all yours….