Category Archives: anti-coalition

I invite you to compare the treatment afforded to Justine Greening here with that given to Maria Eagle here on the topic of improving the rail network. Now I am no fan of LibDem Greening but I thought she was harried and bullied during her interview whereas the not so  lovely but very left Maria was allowed to snipe and attack the Coalition in unhurried splendour. By the way, the irony of John Humphrys having a go at the Rail Network because of taxpayer provided subsidy amused me. £3.5BN a year, John, forced from everyone with a TV?  Plank in your own eye…..

Day in Day Out, some within the BBC produce a relentless drumbeat to accompany the narrative that the Coalition is wrong in everything that it does. Take these consecutive items ran on Today this morning. First up is the a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)  which claims that the government’s public sector pension reforms are unlikely to save money in the long term. It looks like we just have keep finding the unaffordable. Then comes the item that the government’s plans for NHS reforms have damaged and destabilised services. So, leave the dysfunctional NHS alone. This monotonous criticism of everything that the Government tries to do must be joy to Labour but hardly the mark of a balanced broadcaster.

There was an interesting story on the news this morning about the best way to diagnose people to see if they suffer from high blood pressure.

A quarter of patients may find visiting a GP stressful, leading to misdiagnosis and being given drugs they do not need.Patients in England and Wales will be offered extra checks using a mobile device that records blood pressure over 24 hours, says the watchdog NICE.

The BBC response? Can this be afforded because of the dreaded (but imaginary) cuts?

The BBC is salivating at the tension created by the vote on Tuition Fees that comes later today. Listen to Nick “Mr Impartial” Robinson fantasising about how there might yet be a revolution in the Commons to stop the vote going through. I find it entertaining that the BBC consistently ignores the fact that it was Labour that introduced Tuition Fees, that is was Labour that opened up the floodgates of students tumbling into University so creating an inevitable funding crisis, and that it is Labour that now preens as gross hypocrites. But no debate on that.

Don’t know if anyone else watched Newsnight but it’s almost as if the BBC are annoyed that the UK trade unions have not taken to the same level of street violence as we see in France. Quite remarkable, and running close to incitement to riot. Did you see it?  

You would think that all good Guardianistas would have better memories. On “Today” this morning, Justin Webb got stuck into Nick Clegg with the repeated attack line that he had changed his mind on what was needed to fix the economy. As a Biased BBC reader reports… 

You should listen to this interview with Lord Howard which took place this morning on the BBC. I think he handled it very well when it became clear that Sarah Montague had only one real agenda item – to get him to attack Ken Clarke. You could feel his exasperation at the way in which he was being constantly invited to condemn Clarke and the fact that he actually praised the specific initiative clearly irritated Montague. Well played, Lord Howard! The BBC, Montague included, seem unable to comprehend that crime falls when you lack up criminals.

I bet the BBC agonised over this one. In essence they had to choose between Vince Cable (previous BBC icon before he entered the wicked coalition) and Obama (perma-BBC icon) over the issue of State support for scientific R&D. Cable, sensibly, has pronounced that funds should be directed towards R&D excellence which has practical transfer. The BBC contrasts this with Obama’s extension of tax cuts on business R&D. BBC were quite strident in their opposition to the Cable model whilst implicitly supportive of the Obama model. But being the BBC means never being able to say the whole truth so they left out the tax rises on business that Obama is also introducing. Not quite the story put across by the BBC.