Author Archives: Ed Thomas

The misreport

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Jobs could go to fund Afghan war
The defence secretary is due to detail cuts, which could see thousands of jobs go, to pay for new equipment in Afghanistan

I give you no more than the headline and the introduction (but the report is bad enough). It sounds from this as though the Government is pulling out all the stops for Afghanistan, doesn’t it? It sounds as if they have the priorities right and a spirit of sacrifice? In fact, the Government is cutting the Defence budget in a time of war (helllllloooooo?), because they will not cut elsewhere, because they have proved incompetent in managing any kind of budget for anything whatsoever. The idea that there is a positive side to this (ie. winning in Afghanistan) is just pure silage of Brownstuff, tying in with the Prime Mentalist’s ‘gallant visit’ so nicely promo’d by the BBC the other day. And the deeper truth is that Defence is one of the few targets the Mentalist’s “moral compass” will consider for cuts while he ringfences or even cushions HealthnEducayshunnBenefits to assist his election chances. The man is sick, obviously, but the BBC laps such putridity right up.

It is difficult to find a healthy approach to defence in the UK, but at least this report is closer to the truth.

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Turning over a stone or two

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Conservative Home has a new site dedicated to following the activities of the Left. I have a feeling that the BBC is going to afford them rich pickings. Time was when B-BBC was practically the only site that bothered to turn over the stones in the superficially attractive BBC garden to uncover very active little leftist bugs- an endeavour which produced stories like this, for instance

Today, Tim Montgomery notes that “At 0853am this morning the Today programme interviewed Katherine Rake of the Family and Parenting Institute. She used her three minute twenty second slot to attack the Tory idea that marriage should be recognised by the tax system. She avoided a question about the evidence that shows marriage is much more stable than cohabitation and continued her political talking points.”

A little googling shows that her organisation, the innocent sounding “Family and Parent Institute, is 80%+ directly Government funded (the rest apparently from “contracts” with Govt), she was a regular contributor to the Guardian- described by them as “Feminism’s calm champion”- and the chairman of her organisation’s board is Fiona Millar, who of course is partner of You Know Who.

From the Biased-BBC perspective, one wonders if this lady with her impeccable leftist credentials was introduced as a “left-wing commentator”?

The Beeb loves quangos: there are whole swathes of ‘experts’ connected to Government, yet “independent” and best of all from the Guardianista class from which the BBC draws its own recruits. Thus contacts galore are guaranteed, programmes are filled with like minds and cosy insights from Government circles fall like confetti amidst the happy couplings of statist thinkers.

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Fanfare cancelled

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Yesterday I was rather sickened to see close-up the visage of our Prime Minister(discredited to all but Labour loyalists and those who know nothing about him ie. gullible foreigners) splayed across the BBC frontpage. Not another interminable G20 pose-fest, I thought. Not another opportunity for G. Brown to mince across our screens flaunting his moral compass. Yet it was: Gordon had yet another populist wheeze- a tax of financial transactions- to “save the world” with.

The BBC was kindly obliging him, as they have always done. They seemed to sense a chance to hype Gordon as the world’s saviour again- which bombast is the only way to cover the reality that he is the world’s biggest bust as an economic manager and political leader.

Well now the latest pose-fest seems to have squibbed, the BBC having to play backstop for the Prime Mentalist. Despite another grotesque miscalculation on the part of HMG, the BBC report covering the event now simply leads with the glossy affirmation that “G20 vows to spur fragile growth”. Gordon’s latest serial embarrassment is slipped surreptitiously in lower down as having “received a lukewarm response from other G20 countries”. This is just prior to Geitner’s statement of a “very broad consensus that growth remains the dominant policy imperative across our economies”.

Watching the C4News clip here, I almost laughed when Geitner prefaced his rebuttal of Gordon’s scheme by saying that he wanted “to show the appropriate deference to our hosts” (Gordon/UK). Interestingly, Gordon’s gesture did seem to meet a little gleeful approval from the French. And of course from the BBC, until the wind changed.

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Tactical change of climate

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The above video shows what could be called the power of nightmares- a form of Governmental abuse. The BBC yesterday published an article questioning the reality of global warming. One of the sickening things about the BBC is its ability both to change the climate of opinion, and use its journalistic license and political antennae to change course and retain its reputation. When will we get the apology for the rush to declare the debate on warming over? When will they admit they played a part in creating the hysteria which politicians like eager and brainless vampires feed on? Is it ever right to “abandon the pretence of impartiality” as Paxman claimed the BBC had? Now will they be returning to a semblance of impartiality? Why was this only a “pretence” in the first place? Will they not now still hanker after being proved right and keep pushing the MMGW hypothesis as “news”? The BBC’s coverage of climate, and its consequences in the political discourse of this country, represent one of the most powerful arguments against the BBC’s existence.

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Fear and loathing on a Marred Sunday morning

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I wasn’t one of those impressed by Andrew Marr’s question about Gordon and drugs last week. The tone was gentle, and when Gordon replied incoherently “neagh” to the question, and went on immediately to talk about his eyesight instead, Marr did not bring him back to the point.

Cameron, meanwhile, was continually attacked by Marr in the segments of today’s interview that I have seen. Cameron was accused of misleading people even when he began to itemize his assets and their relative worth to him. This was Marr’s “personal question”, and contra his attitude to Brown he was a rottweiller who wasn’t giving up his locked jaws around Cameron’s ankle.

Worse though was Marr’s haranguing over the potential cuts the Tories might make in Government. He utterly ignored the imperative question of the deficit. He hemmed the question in to the narrow one of which of his statist fellows Cameron was going to sack. He didn’t even admit the question of the jobs that would be lost by higher interest rates, raised taxes or the other ills that may follow from failure to rein in the deficit caused by out of control public spending. “but you can’t!”, exploded Marr, “you can’t possibly avoid job losses!!!” Marr almost combusted.

Then there was Europe, where Marr quite brazenly affected not to understand the Cameron positon. It’s quite clear if you bother to inform yourself about the unfinished business in the Czech Republic and Poland. It’s also clear that we, the UK, have ratified the treaty, thanks to the broken promise of the Labour Government. When it becomes law throughout the EU it becomes law here. That will be a different position to work from, should it happen. Marr made out that it was inevitable, to create a straw man argument with which to make Cameron look evasive. It’s far from inevitable as Vaclav Klaus basically will have the last say, and st. Vaclav is a sceptic.

But the BBC have been busy bunnies, for those who assume that the Treaty is all but passed- they are trying to imply double standards from Cameron as he is said to have written to Klaus to make clear that he favours a UK referendum. The BBC have been beavering around trying to find dissonant voices on the eve of the Conservative conference. It’s a hatchet job alright- it’s absolutely clear the BBC have been using their media muscle to winkle out as much scandal as they can with which to spoil the coming conference.

As for Marr- the browbeating he delivered against Cameron was extraordinary. Again and again, right to the end, Marr swung ironic swipes at Cameron’s latest pledge to be direct with the public. Do you recall anything like that concerning Tony Blair’s infamous (because monumentally, historically provably hollow) “pretty straight sort of guy”? Me neither. There is clearly a kind of loathing in Marr’s heart against the Conservatives. He is a shocking ideological roadblock on the Sunday morning BBC schedule.

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Open thread

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I notice there have been a few posts since the last open thread, so here’s a brand new open thread to give you space to publish your views on BBC bias.

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A climate of imbalance

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Sometimes the BBC’s bias still has the power to shock. Perhaps because they just assume that this bias is ok; they know it and they think it’s ok. Reading this article about drought and farming dificulties in California, the story came down to an environmental clash over some fish. The BBC report:

It’s not just drought. The reservoir is fed from the the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, an threatened estuary that is home to a tiny fish called the delta smelt. Environmentalists say the smelt is essential to the food chain, and that a decline in smelt populations has led to falling numbers of bigger predator fish like salmon and bass. Late last year, the US government’s Fish and Wildlife Service argued that pumping water out of the delta harmed the smelt. A federal judge ruled water supplies to Central Valley farms should be reduced, in order to protect the fish. Farmers are challenging the water restrictions in court. They are a well-organised lobby with powerful support.

Notice how “environmentalists say”, federal government acts, and local farmers “are a well organised lobby with powerful support”. Yeah, Beeb, environmentalists aren’t a lobby, they are professionals right? Who just happen to have a massive international industry and lobby behind them. And obviously it’s the local farmers with the powerful support (sounds fishy to me) because that’s why they’ve just lost this years crop and are left challenging in court.

What a travesty. Oh, and I also intensely dislike the BBC’s attempt to generate a Steinbeckian scene out of this story by linking it to that of Latino migrants towards the end.

PS: somehow the indefatigable BBC journalist failed to mention the sterling work of totally impartial and unfishy environmental “organisation” Save the Bay, advised by nobodies like these and directed by disinterested public spirits like these. (including people from Wells Fargo and Cisco, two of California’s biggest companies and employers).

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The Taliban are pleased to announce…

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Reading this article about changes in the Taliban leadership I was struck by the way the language tends to validate them as an organisation. We are told:

Pakistan’s Taliban movement has named a new leader, its deputy head Maulvi Faqir Mohammed has told the BBC. He said Hakimullah Mehsud, a close associate of ex-leader Baitullah Mehsud, had been unanimously appointed at a meeting in northern Pakistan.

So, the “deputy-head” announces that “a close associate” of the “ex-leader” has been “unanimously” “appointed”. It sounds like a union movement, rather than a bunch of bearded desperate goons with ieds and the education levels of ten year olds except no doubt for their memorisation of the Koran.

Richard North of excellent EU Referendum has been railing at the BBC for a different reason- suggesting that they whitewashed corruption in the Afghan elections. Rather than just spotty as the BBC claim, he believes them to be worthless. Whatevever works for you when it comes to cynicism, but surely this illustrates how things are with the BBC- they do the British Government a small favour with a few apparently white lies in the name of furthering democracy, and then tell massive whoppers by covering for the enemies of the West. In hock to the politicians on the one hand, and to their own ideology on the other- where does that leave the paying British public? According to the BBC, claims that the Taliban has been at war with itself following the loss of their leader were just “rumours”, while the unanimous election of the new Taliban leader… totally Halal mate, straight down the line, fair dinkum and jolly hockey sticks, hurrah.

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