Author Archives: David Vance

Here you go, a new thread to take us off into the wide blue yonder…over to you!

Here you go, a new Open Thread to continue the debate! The floor is yours!

Monday morning arrives and so does a NEW Open Thread for your completion. Over to you….

As has been pointed out to me, the BBC is leading its WORLD NEWS this evening as I write this at 22.31pm with Labour’s demand that Theresa May MUST apologise re the Gove spat. Now I am sure this may change and the link will be out of date but here is the screenshot that indicates a certain…shall we say…. BIAS?

Biased BBC reader Alex notes…

“Take a look at this pointless but all-too-typical pro-EU, left-wing drivel from the BBC that seeks to undermine English identity: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27731725 Now, repeat after me folks: England, unlike Scotland, never has been a unified country, but rather a mix of divided counties. Therefore, multiculturalism and the devolution of English counties is a good thing.”

I have been contacted by Saif Rahman with regard to this article he has written about BBC favourite Mehdi Hasan. I commend it to you…

“He is the UK’s political director of the Huffington Post, appears regularly on BBC’s Question Time, has 122,000 followers on Twitter and a monthly Al-Jazeera TV slot (a channel that boasts broadcasting to 40-60 million people daily in the Arab world).

And anyone who knows me will be aware that I’ve always been keen to expose poor role models within the Muslim community.  Recently we delivered the coup de grace to Muhammad Ansar, the media’s favourite Muslim “public commentator” resulting in the viral #MoCV hashtag, after he had been falsifying claims of being a lawyer, lecturer, community leader, an imam etc. Although he’s not quite in the same league, I would argue Mehdi is more harmful & pernicious.  Unlike MoAnsar’s scrappiness which led to his ultimate demise, Mehdi is wary about the spats he chooses to engage in and his slicker performance lends him a free pass from our generally forgiving public.  It’s about reading between the lines.

I tried to find a journalist to unravel Mehdi and despite offering to help in this endeavour, not a single journalist was willing to take it on.  Journalists are a tighter knit community than I first expected. Few are willing to poop on their own doorstep and even fewer are willing to take on an influential media man with a large following. I came to the conclusion Mehdi was untouchable. Or almost, until i decided to write it myself.”

Do read the rest from Saif, great stuff and I think it is a sound insight into the mindset of one of the BBC’s ‘go-to” guys.  I have debated Medhi on the BBC and found him OK if a touch strident but on Twitter he is plain nasty, full of himself and arrogant beyond words. I find much truth in what Saif says. Do read the full article on the Link.

I’m on Fubarr Radio with Jon Gaunt this morning discussing this story;

The BBC will send more staff for its coverage of Glastonbury Festival than it is dispatching to the World Cup in Brazil. Corporation music chief Bob Shennan said 300 staff were being lined up for the weekend, outstripping the 272 who are to head to Brazil to work on its football programming in the coming weeks. The BBC said it was trying to keep numbers down wherever possible, but each member of staff had a “clear and accountable role” to bring hours of coverage from the Somerset festival.

From my perspective, the BBC is demonstrating a reckless disregard to obtaining value for money for the license payer but I suppose £3billion a year pays for lots of Glastonbury type indulgences? The 272 going to Rio seems excessive to me and it would be interesting to compare the resources the BBC throws at this compared to other global broadcasters.

As the weekend approaches, here is a new Open Thread to see us all off into the blue yonder. Is the BBC showing bias? Detail it HERE…go on, right now.

BBC seem to have enjoyed the Conservative win in the 44th safest Conservative seat in the UK. I caught a very hostile and patronising interview around 6.50am on the Today programme where the meme being flogged was that the UKIP bubble had burst! Honestly, the BBC is as biased against UKIP as rags like The Huffington Post. Little analysis of the WOEFUL Labour performance, of course, just a chuckle at the LibDems. UKIP cut the Conservative majority in half and yet, to the BBC, this is a tragic failure???

What do you make of this then?

Labour’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman, says the BBC should investigate alternatives to the licence fee, in case a better option exists. She told Total Politics magazine that the licence fee was a means to an end, not an end in itself. She said if there was “a better way” to secure independence from the government, “let’s hear about it”. Her comments came a day after comedy producer Armando Iannucci advocated a subscription-based BBC.

WHERE are the Conservatives on this one? Why are leftists leading the debate?