Author Archives: VX

A seat at the top table and those other silly meaningless metaphors about losing “global influence”. What gibberish.

Now WE, yes you and I, have lost OUR seat at the International Court of Justice. Gosh how will I recover from this? They deal with such important matters as Alleged Violations of Sovereign Rights and Maritime Spaces in the Caribbean Sea (Nicaragua v. Colombia).

“This is a failure of UK diplomacy“, says the BBC, and “a retreat from the international stage”. That’s it I’m getting in my nuclear bunker and I suggest you do the same, because Laos or Djibouti could invade any second and wipe us all out now that we are so tiny and frail. Little Britain all alone in the world. We’ll probably sink into the Atlantic some time soon if Laos doesn’t get us.

What these people are suggesting is that if we had a UK representative in the ICJ, they could simply ignore any kind of objectivity and legality in order to ‘influence’ things and make the rulings turn out in our favour – subverting international bodies to benefit the UK. Now that may be how many of these organisations work, and it’s certainly how the EU works, but to propose such a course of action says a lot about the neo-imperialistic approach some people support.

Sky News has just reported on a new paper which claims households are more than £400-a-year worse off as a result of inflation caused by the Brexit vote. It may well be true, who knows. The BBC hasn’t actually reported on this yet, but it seems almost inevitable with a finding like that, so let’s see how long it takes them to plaster it on the front page of the BBC news site. Neverthless, isn’t it strange that they only interviewed the co-author Dr Thomas Sampson, failing to mention at all the three other co-authors, Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, and Dennis Novy? I wonder why that is? Beautiful British names.

As for the report itself, it concludes that “the Brexit vote caused a negative shock to the UK’s expected
future economic performance leading to an immediate depreciation in the value of the pound”. If you do a quick search of the document you’ll find 92 uses of the word ‘import’ but only a single use of the word ‘export’. How very strange…

If you have been following the Rohingya story, you will have heard how the Myanmar army cleared itself of wrongdoing this week. Jonathan Head, BBC South East Asia correspondent tells us:

To no one’s surprise, the army has exonerated itself of pretty much all blame. But its findings lack credibility, both because the inquiry was solely carried out by the very institution accused of committing the abuses, and because of the overwhelming testimony of so many Rohingya, detailing appalling atrocities.

If you have been following the accusations of BBC bias during the last few decades, you will have heard how the BBC cleared itself of any wrongdoing on numerous occasions. But its findings lack credibility, both because the inquiry was solely carried out by the very institution accused of committing the abuses, and because of the overwhelming testimony of so many viewers, detailing appalling bias.

One of the worst and most ridiculous arguments goes like this: “the right say the BBC is too left wing, but the left say the BBC has a right wing bias, so it’s probably quite balanced in reality”. You’ve heard variations of this argument no doubt.

The BBC has many presenters, journalists, employees. Not all of them have the exact same opinion. Andrew Neil is clearly more right wing than Emily Maitlis for example. Laura Kuenssberg is clearly more right wing than a lot of Corbyn supporters would like.

Everyone is biased. Everyone has opinions and preconceptions, and anyway what would true neutrality even look like? Centrism is not unbiased, and even supporting democracy or economic growth are not unbiased. Everyone at the BBC is biased and they simply cannot help it.

BBC output can therefore be biased in different ways at different times, both right wing and left wing (whether this is all “balanced” or not is a different matter). Likewise, the Guardian publish some more right wing articles from time to time, despite their obvious left wing stance. The difference between the Guardian and the BBC is that the Guardian are openly left wing and don’t try to present themselves as some sort of neutral source of “facts” as opposed to “opinions”, like the BBC do. Another difference is that my bin isn’t full of nasty letters the Guardian sent to me because I didn’t pay for their newspaper license.

Universal credit: Households to miss out on benefits over festive season

The latest in the ever more desperate attempts to drum up any possible further controversy over universal credit.

It isn’t until the last segment of the article that we find out, ‘The government said the payments balance out, as claimants will receive more in the following month.’ So people aren’t actually missing out on anything, despite the scary headline and the picture of a sad woman lamenting fascist Tory policies.

In response to a rather hilarious story about BBC News staff sleeping on the job, the BBC put out this drivel:

Even with our eyes closed, it’s good to know the public trusts BBC News more than the Sun. pic.twitter.com/RBogyQSjVa

— BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) November 16, 2017

How stupid do they think we are? It’s quite clear that the question has been worded in such a way as to combine two questions “Which news source do you most use?” and “Which news source do you most trust?”. Of course it’s no surprise that most people use the BBC as their primary source of news given their massive budget which allows in-depth reporting at a local, national and international level. That certainly doesn’t mean it is also the news source they trust the most, and it is an outright lie to claim that they do. For all we know, any of those 57% may trust the Sun more than the BBC, at the same time using the BBC as their primary news source.

Perhaps the BBC will use this question in their next survey.
Which would you prefer?
A. You are forced to eat the remains of your pets and loved ones after they are all murdered by a group of illegal immigrants, and Britain leaves the EU.
B. You are given £10 billion, and Britain remains in the EU.

Anyone who looks at the BBC Persian news website will notice that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is barely mentioned, because the BBC campaign is aimed entirely at a British audience.

Do welfare states boost economic growth, or stunt it?

I’ll let you decide what the answer to that is, but I think we all know what the BBC comrades generally believe.

When you are trying to inform (i.e. brainwash) people on economic matters, there are two techniques you can use: One is to blind them with science and an overwhelming amount of statistical information that they can’t get their heads around to challenge your view. What this article uses is the other strategy – no data, no charts, no facts at all – just some mind-numbing metaphors and anecdotes.

YAWN

The Paradise Papers show that about £10m ($13m) of the Queen’s private money was invested offshore.
It was put into funds in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda by the Duchy of Lancaster, which provides the Queen with an income and handles investments for her £500m private estate.

I applaud the BBC for putting this not only as the top story, but as a full page spread on the BBC News homepage. It’s HUGE news. Oh wait a minute, Elizabeth II is the monarch of both Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, and this is just another republican propaganda campaign by the BBC.

As a public body the BBC has a responsibility to operate as transparently as possible. The Trust takes this duty seriously and has tasked the BBC with setting new standards in openness and transparency.

If they really took it seriously, articles would look like this.

As it is, we are lucky if they even reveal which people worked on an article. What’s the big secret?