Author Archives: David Vance

BEYOND THE FRINGE…

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Did you see that BBC Director General Mark Thompson has used his Edinburgh TV festival (Where else, natch?) speech to hit back at the corporation’s critics. He accepted the need for “radical change” in the corporation but rejected calls for the licence fee to be cut. Why? It seems to me that the license fee must be abolished (or at least savagely cut!) to enable the BBC to play on a level playing field! What say you? The bias can continue but we should not be funding it. 

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GOVE JIHAD

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Poor Michael Gove. From the very beginning, it is obvious that the BBC has it in for him as their farcical coverage of this issue demonstrated. I noted that Today had this to say following Gove’s appearance on Today yesterday. Note the use of words to set him up even before Collins got stuck in…

“On this programme yesterday Education Secretary Michael Gove again trumpeted the government’s plans to introduce a “pupil premium” to make sure schools in disadvantaged areas get more money. Times columnist Philip Collins, a former adviser to Tony Blair, gives his analysis of the policy.”

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THE THREE MOSQUE-TIERS

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A Biased BBC reader writes..

“The remarkable burst of pro-Muslim extremist eulogies are continuing to issue forth from the BBC almost daily….not bad considering there are less than 2 million Muslims in this country…why the blanket coverage for this favoured section of the community?

The BBC has broadcast 4 programmes whitewashing Muslim extremism….omitting important facts whilst elevating others to undue prominence in the name of community peace and harmony.

Programmes telling us the Muslim Brotherhood are ‘mostly harmless’ and probably best if we engage with them, then Newsnight gave us a limited and one sided view of why the Niqab is being worn more in Britain, Radio 4 gave Moazzam Begg a platform for his defence as an innocent victim of Crusading Western aggression which is besieging Islam, and now we have a programme purporting to give us the history of the East London Mosque as a beacon of tolerance and interfaith dialogue but was in reality merely a vehicle for another pro-Muslim programme telling us that Islam is harmless. See here

All very true. The sanitisation of Islamic extremism seems to be a core value for the BBC these days and it part of the daily broadcast output. 

My own view is that whilst we must not generalise, the fact remains that pretty much every terror threat facing our country (excluding Northern Ireland, natch) comes from those who have a dedication to the Religion of Peace. I also think that for Newsnight to try and suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood is anything other than a hate-driven malignancy is surreal. Why can the BBC just  not accept that even Islam has a problem with Islam and the rest of us definitely have an issue with those who would seek to kill us in the name of Mohammed? Has the BBC become dhimmified from within (Yes) and if so, how? Can’t the liberals see that THEY would be the very first victims of a Sharia-fied UK? None so blind…

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NIGER’S PROBLEM

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In the prime post 8am news slot, Today ran an item on the famine that afflicts the African nation of Niger.
Mike Thomson explained the woes that the inhabitants of this country face with first drought and then flood causing endless misery. However I was struck by the fact that Mike mentioned, in passing, that despite being the poorest country in the world it has a booming population. Howe odd. He didn’t mention that fact that Islam has gained a firm grip on this land. I wonder why? Does he think that this has no impact on Niger? If so, he is deluding himself and misleading listeners.

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SOCIALISING SCHOOLS

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Martin Narey from Barnados seems a permanent fixture on the BBC these days and it is clear that his radical socialist views chime with those held bythe State Broadcaster. A favourite BBC trick is to invite the favoured interviewee into the Studio whilst the opponent languishes on the end of a phone line. So it was that Narey was in the studio this morning whilst David Green of Civitas was kept at distance on the phone line. That way, Narey’s voice sounds more powerful, more authoritative than Green’s and since Narey was advocating further social engineering in our schools it was important that he got as good a platform as possible.Even when they attempt “balance” there is always bias.

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BENDING HISTORY (AGAIN)

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I am a fan of Jimi Hendrix (since 1966!), and have also read widely about him; I am currently writing my own book which explains factors about him that have been over-idealised. Given the BBC’s record in mangling history, I therefore looked forward with some trepidation to a BBC Radio 4 programme broadcast earlier this week about this musical genius by the lefty singer-turned- broadcaster Tom Robinson. As I feared, it was mostly a car crash. Robinson spent a good deal of time telling us that Jimi was a supporter of the Black Panthers, and his overall message was that he was at heart a leftist sympathiser and sometime activist who supported – albeit sometimes covertly – every liberal cause around in the 1960s, including being resolutely against the Vietnam war. There were some qualifications to this picture, but the overall thrust was very clear: he was lefty icon and hero. Mr Robinson also disgracefully told us that the Black Panthers were virtually an unmitigated force for good, carefully omitting any reference to their many acts of violence.

The reality of Jimi’s life is very different and much more complex. I believe he did not condemn the Vietnam war outright because at the very least, he was ambivalent about it, having served as a member of 101 Airborne, and he had chums like thbe bassist Billy Cox who were also ex-servicemen. Nor was he a rabid supporter of the Black Panthers; the reality was that he knew that if he crossed them they would make his life hell in that they specialised in creating crowd troubles at selected events. Charles Cross, Hendrix’s most recent biographer, makes this very clear, and in fact mentions the Panthers only seven times in his 500-page analysis, virtually as footnotes. The real evidence suggests that if anything, Jimi – despite his showmanship – was by instinct a social conservative. But at any rate, his powers of analysis and capacity to become involved in any movement were severely limited by his drug addiction.

I could go on, but I think I have made the point. Yet again, here was a full-scale BBC effort to tailor historical reality to fit their own extreme world view – and to cheer, en route, for the Black Panthers. Shameful.

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