Author Archives: David Vance

General BBC-related comment thread!

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Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely!

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A QUESTION OF IDENTITY.

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Living as I do in Northern Ireland, it has been my long held contention that the BBC operates here as if it were part of a foreign broadcasting corporation. Of course Biased BBC readers living elsewhere in the UK may feel similarly! But I draw your attention to this story, given all due prominence on the BBC Northern Ireland news page today. As you will see, it has absolutely nothing to do with Northern Ireland, and concerns itself exclusively with the financial shenanigans of those in the government of the Irish Republic. It is, by NO definition, a Northern Ireland story. But yet there is it on the Northern Ireland news page. The BBC operates a harmonisation policy when it comes to matters concerning the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. These are treated as if they are all local stories, so facilitating the UK and Irish government agenda of gradualised de facto, if not de jure, unification. The truth of the matter is that this news report concerns a foreign government and it is NOT a UK story. But the dark green-tinged glasses through which the BBC views news sees it all very differently.

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THE NATIONAL DISGRACE.

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No, I don’t mean the UK’s treatment of asylum seekers but rather the State Broadcaster which seems never happier than when impugning the reputation of our country. The BBC has been leading its news channels today with the allegation that the UK’s treatment of asylum seekers falls “seriously below” the standards of a civilised society.

Who says so? Well, it’s a group called The Independent Asylum Commission. This group is described as being “a body of legal and professional experts on refugees”. Well now, therein lies the rub, because it’s nothing of the sort. Yes it has a co-chair in the form of Ifath Nawaz who is the President of the Association of Muslim lawyers (Do Muslims need their own association? Is there an association of Evangelical lawyers?) Maybe they do since Nawaz and her colleagues have campaigned for UK laws to be changed to become compatible with the Sharia – arguing that failure to do so will breach the human rights of Muslims. In addition, the group’s members have said that they also wish for Sharia to become the dominant law-code in the UK. So, Nawaz is clearly a woman whose opinion is magisterially impartial, a shill for sharia. The IAS also has Nicholas Sagovsky as a self-appointed Commissioner. He has a long record of opposing efforts by the British government to impose controls over immigration. Last but not least is the frontman for the group, former Chief Inspector of Prisons Lord Ramsbotham. Now Lord Ramsbotham is a busy chap. When he’s not advocating greater support for the families of convicts, he’s the kinda guy that urges the release from prison for killers such as those who murdered young Jamie Bulger, in other words he is a sopping wet liberal. This is a professional whinge-fest and not the group of sober balanced intellects the BBC pretends

I do believe the UK has an issue on asylum but it is the opposite to which this group suggests. We are far too open to asylum seekers and our traditional British hospitality has been outrageously abused by numerous bogus “asylum seekers.” We also fail to promply deport those who have no right to be here, and of course the fundamental lure of coming to Britain in the first place – the Welfare bonanza – is also in need of drastic reform. None of these points are discussed by the BBC because it empathises with the IAS loathing of the United Kingdom that unites all on the left. Just some of the balance you won’t be hearing today.

Whoops – I see Laban has also blogged this at the same time as me! So, two for the price of one today!

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General BBC-related comment thread!

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131 Comments

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely!

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ARMY DREAMERS.

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It’s good to know that old communists don’t fade away, they just join the National Union of Teachers! Did you read the BBC’s report on the annual NUT conference in Manchester and the onslaught that the comrades have launched on the Armed Forced “preying” on schoolchildren? The BBC provides plenty of space for such illuminating comments as..”Join the Army and we will send you to bomb, shoot and possibly torture fellow human beings in other countries. Join the Army and we will send you probably poorly equipped into situations where people will try to shoot or kill you because you are occupying other people’s countries.
Join the Army, and if you survive and come home, possibly injured or mentally damaged, you and your family will be shabbily treated.”

It’s full on Dave Spartism – sixth form student grant political analysis from the National Union of Whingers yet the BBC gives the Ministry of Defence a mere two sentences to rebuff this hysteria. That’s not balanced! The NUT is of course entitled to its vicious anti-British Armed Forces rhetoric – what else would we expect from them?- but surely the MOD should have been given rather more space to take apart the ranting from the comrades?

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CAUGHT OUT.

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Good to see the BBC’s Midde-East disinformation service exposed and watching the Beeboids forced into issuing apologies for the poor standard of reporting.

You recall all that hysteria the BBC spouted on March 7, following the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva massacre? The BBC showed a bulldozer demolishing a house, while correspondent Nick Miles told viewers: “Hours after the attack, Israeli bulldozers destroyed his family home” Just one problem. That’s right – the house was not demolished. Other broadcasters showed the east Jerusalem home intact and the family commemorating their son’s actions.

Just over a week later in a news item entitled “Israel jets strike northern Gaza” the BBC reported that Israel was deliberately targeting civilians in an operation targeting Qassam rocket launch sites in Gaza, and claiming that the United Nations secretary-general had described it as an attack on civilians. Following a complaint the BBC squirmed “We accept we should have made reference to what [Ban] said about Palestinian rocket attacks as well as to the ‘excessive use of force’ by Israel. We have amended the report, also removing the reference to Israeli ‘attacks on civilians.”

Just what is it that makes BBC reporters see the imaginary demolition of houses? Just what is it that makes the BBC fail to report condemnation of Palestinian terrorists? The answer appears to be an endemic desire to want to believe the worst about Israel and simultaneously portray the Palestinians as doe-eyed innocents. This is BIAS incarnate and in these two instances, the BBC has been forced into providing the balance and accuracy that was lamentably lacking.

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BOOM BOOM!

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As a child, I can remember watching the “Basil Brush” show on the BBC. Basil Brush was a roguish fox puppet whose punch-line was “Boom Boom” when he cracked a one-liner. He disappeared for a number of years from our UK TV screens but has made a welcome return in recent times. But now he’s in trouble – with accusations of anti-gipsy racism thrown his way.

The craven BBC have backed away from supporting their fox. Bosses admitted that an episode which caused offence was “inappropriate” and have told police it will not be shown again. Officers have now decided no further action will be taken. The bizarre complaint was made by a gipsy living on a travellers’ site in Northamptonshire. He alleged a scene showing a gipsy woman trying to sell the puppet fox wooden pegs and heather was offensive and insulting. (To foxes?) The gipsy made an official complaint to Northamptonshire Police, which referred the matter to its Hate Crimes Unit. Last week, after speaking to police officers, the BBC reviewed the tapes and offered not to show the episode again.

Isn’t this so PATHETIC? Why are the Police wasting any resource pursuing this stupid allegation? Why is the BBC behaving so cowardly? This may seem a small event of little significance but in fact it is the failure of the BBC, and also the Police, to categorically dismiss the complaint concerned, that aids the daily advance of the toxic politically correct agenda which is in turn paralysing our free speech. How long before the BBC bans Cher’s “Gypsies, tramps and thieves”? I mean just think of all the offence THAT one gives to minority groups!

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THOSE CRAZY AMERICANS.

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The BBC’s crusade against the war in Iraq and its obsession with impugning the reputation of the US Armed forces never ceases with the latest headline informing us that six people have been killed in a US air strike near the Iraqi town of Samarra, with some reports suggesting they were US-allied anti-al-Qaeda Sunni fighters. The US denied these claims which the BBC says comes from a police source and a militia member.

Mmm..a police source and a “militia” member? Well given that the BBC itself never ceases telling us how heavily infiltrated the Iraqi police has been by terrorists (that nasty word again) and given that the terrorists (“Militia” in BBC-speak) themselves are perhaps not the ideal source for comment on the US military – what credibility has this accusation? None, but that is neither here nor there, it’s the impression that counts. The BBC then goes on to quote some doom-mongering from the Iraq Body Count organisation, I suggest you visit their web site and decide for yourself just how unbiased they are!

The BBC is doing its very best to play down the progress made by the valiant US armed forced in Iraq and at the same time pump up the volume of the allegations made by the Jihadi.

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A RADICAL VOCABULARY.

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What is the problem that the BBC has with using the term “terrorist”? Take this report headed “1970’s radical freed from jail”. It concerns a woman who spent 24 years on the run before pleading guilty to a 1975 attempted police car bombing, and who has been released after a seven-year jail term. Sara Jane Olson, formerly known as Kathleen Soliah, was a member of the terrorist group the so-called Symbionese Liberation Army. The group became famous for kidnapping newspaper heiress Patty Hearst in 1974. Olson also pleaded guilty to the second degree murder of a woman during a 1975 bank raid. This woman is NOT radical, she is a terrorist. Would the BBC please explain WHY the euphemism “radical” is employed rather than than the correct term “terrorist”? Moral relativism got their tongues?

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General BBC-related comment thread!

By | |
164 Comments

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.