Author Archives: David Vance

ON THAT ROYAL ENGAGEMENT….

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Interesting to see how the BBC treats the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton. In the prime time slot just after the 8am news on Today, the BBC invited Lady Antonio Fraser and Stephen Haseler on to discuss the event. Haseler sneered at the event in venomous republican style, thus speaking on behalf of the Corporation. Previous reports this morning zeroed in on the likely cost of the wedding in the age of austerity. Tell you what, how about the BBC donates the cost of the wedding of our future King and Queen from it’s lavish £3billion per annum license tax? In this age of austerity….

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SCUMBAG MILLIONAIRES

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I’ve already discussed this over on A Tangled Web but I wanted to focus on the BBC coverage with you. One could have anticipated the GLEE with which the BBC would exhibit on the news that the UK Government is to make payments “in the millions” to captured Jihadists held at Gitmo but now back in Blighty. However I feel that the entire coverage of this today is outrageously one-sided  with no one being allowed to argue that these people should NOT be getting any cash and that some of them should not even be in this country. At play today is the explicit BBC meme that these guys are all innocent, that the US (Bush) is to be blame for daring to lock them up, and that we should all hang our heads in shame because we dare to imprison these cor blimey Brits doing the Jihad ordinary Brits just won’t do. What a sickening dhimmified media.

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY WATCH

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Professor Mona Siddiqui
You can always rely on the BBC’s “Thought for the Day” slot to be made available for Mona Siddiqui, that most erudite and enlightened Professor of Islamic Studies and Public Understanding. Mona was on this morning informingg us that Christians have been in the Middle East for a longtime and in some cases have been in places before Muslims. She seemed to forget that Jews have been there even longer…in fact she forgot to mentionthem at all…remarkable in a ‘Thought for the Day’ about the Middle East andreligion! Still, I am sure Mona will be back again very shortly to share more of her wisdom with the BBC nation.

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ISRAEL – FASCIST CENTRAL

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Quite a few instances of deranged BBC bias today. Consider this dross from BBC correspondent Wyre Davies. You see it seems that the Israeli government has moved so far to the right that it is incapable of bringing peace. It’s all the fault of the Russians, apparently. Yes, the BBC have finally found some Russians that they don’t like – and they’re Jewish, of course. Quite a few mentions of the word fascism thrown around in this report – the BBC has no shame in trying to label the people who suffered the most grievous loss of life in the 20th century to fascism as fascists. There is a clear editorialising towards the end of this item that Israel is growing increasingly intolerant  and extreme. If ONLY it would move left, dismantle itself, and just jump in the sea. A spiteful item even by BBC base standards.

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LEADING WITH THE NEGATIVE!

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How about the BBC leading coverage of the Labour Party conference with the headline “Labour not Communists”? No? How about the BBC leading their coverage of Sinn Fein’s annual conference with the headline “Sinn Fein not terrorists”? No? Well, yesterday, MY party had its annual conference and the BBC headline? “TUV “not vote splitters”. Marvellous. We made speech after speech saying what we ARE, and the BBC pick up on a line saying what we are not. It’s in their genes.

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IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST…

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So, I’m back from the BBC. I was invited on to the William Crawley hosted “Sunday Sequence” show to discuss the issue of water-boarding. My opponent was the local Shamnesty International Supremo. Patrick Corrigan. I am on at 1hr 25mins. I took issue with how the debate was set up by the host and objected to the “so-called war on terror” as William put it. To my mind, that very introduction belies bias. The discussion was very short and came to a quick end as I sought to discuss Amnesty’s support for the Taliban, as revealed by an Amnesty employee here (Now an ex-Amnesty employee). I find these discussion perplexing – the BBC agenda seems clear; Provide a forum for hard leftists like Amnesty to smear the US President and call for his arrest, then try to paint anyone who supports the battler against the Jihadi as an extremist, and then sit back and bathe in smug liberal contentment. It’s in their genes.  

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THE IMPARTIAL GENE GENIE

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Here is a guest post by Clameur de Haro.
“With all the protestations coming from Our Beloved Bastion of Collectivism about how impartiality is in their genes, I thought I’d occasionally delve a little deeper into the genes of some of its more prominent luminaries to try and establish just how much impartiality there is to be found there. 

Stephanie Flanders (above) seemed as good a place as any to start – and topical too, for she’s been much in evidence in recent days, pronouncing Thursday on the G20 in Seoul (but contradicted very convincingly at 1:54:25 by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs Asset Management) and a couple of days earlier on the US’ latest round of quantitative easing (but contradicted persuasively even by Larry Elliott in the Guardian!).

It turns out that Flanders’ maternal grandfather was none other than that gifted writer but also long-time communist sympathiser and probable Soviet agent of influence, the journalist Claud Cockburn. 

Cockburn it was who, when covering the Spanish Civil War, was accused by George Orwell of slanting his reports to discredit non-Stalinist elements fighting against Franco, and of being Stalin’s confidant, mouthpiece and direct agent in Spain: Cockburn it was too who recanted his previous opposition to the 1930s’ appeasement of Hitler immediately on the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 which conceded to Stalin the subjugation of Eastern Poland. It’s sometimes alleged that, curiously, despite his professed sympathies for Stalinism and antipathy to capitalism, Cockburn never visited the Soviet Union but visited the US on many occasions – well, I guess you have to experience a free society many times to remind yourself how bad it is………

Flanders also has as one of her half-uncles the US-based journalist Alexander Cockburn, equally a very fine writer, but one who – apart from his scepticism about the AGW scam – is predominantly left-wing. Among the most consistent themes of his writing are: criticism of the Democrats for not being sufficiently “progressive”: criticism of US foreign policy generally and of support for Israel in particular: and criticism of those already on the left who attack political positions further to the left than their own.

Flanders is an alumna of the same St Paul’s Girls’ School which counts Harriet Harman and Shirley Williams as former students, and is noted for her close networking links with current pillars of the Labour establishment. (Two Eds…..DV)

None of this is to decry Flanders’ formidable intelligence, commitment, or achievements – we’re not talking ability here, after all, we’re talking genes, and it’s not us, it’s the Beeb, who brought the subject up. But, with that kind of pedigree, surely we mere mortals of ignorant licence-payers could be forgiven for wondering whether, whatever it is that’s actually in Our Steffie’s genes, impartiality between statist collectivism and free-market libertarianism it quite probably ain’t.

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STEPHANOMICS AND STIGLITZ

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Stephanie Flanders is pretty excited by the decision by the US ‘Fed’ decided to pump $600 bn intothe US economy.Whilst the rest of the media reported that just about everyindustrial country in the world was outraged by the US move ‘Stephanomics’ wasas usual behind the curve :

” This week’s statement by the Federal Reserve hasachieved all that Ben Bernanke might have hoped it would achieve; stocks areup, the dollar is down, and so are US bond yields. We can’t say for sure thatit will “work”, but all of these developments ought to be netpositive for the US economy….the US sees competitive depreciation as awin-win for them. If other countries, with flexible countries, don’t respondwith QE2 of their own, then their currencies will strengthen, and demand for USgoods in those economi! es will (theoretically) go up. If they do respond, withmore easing to counteract the rise in the currency, then global demand goes up,and the US is once again better off. Put that way, it sounds like a no-brainer’

What is missing is the BBC’s usual kneejerk jump to get a comment from JosephStiglitz, Nobel prize winning economist….and supporter of Labour’s and theBBC’s positon that ‘stimulus’ works, tax cuts don’t. This time Stiglitz wasopposed to the Fed’s printing money….saying Fed policies will not reduce longterm interest rates and produce loans for SME’s and are creating chaos inemerging markets…the money is going to emerging markets which don’t want themoney…because India and China are doing fine, but the influx of short termmoney creates a bubble and increases exchange rates, destabilising theireconomy…The US policy is having an adverse effect around the world.


So no gig for Stiglitz! If you run against their meme, you’re history

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