Category Archives: anti-conservative

SAMCAM BAD, LIBDEMS GOOD

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Caught BBC TV news this morning, rather in the same way as one catches a cold. There was an item on Samantha Cameron talking about her husband, David. I thought she came across fine and quite human. The BBC instantly went to get a woman’s group who found the whole thing “patronising”. It’s clear they seek to undermine the Conservatives even on the most mundane level. Then there was a fawning interview with Nick Clegg, in which he was allowed to bash “the rich” and agree with the Orwellian Childre’s Commissioner that we are criminalising children. BBC loves the liberal agenda and this translates into the toadying interview with Cleggy.

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Graham Stuart on the BBC

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Conservative MP Graham Stuart appeared on the Victoria Derbyshire show this morning to discuss Lord Paul after the non-dom Labour peer had chickened out of an interview at the last minute. Stuart took the opportunity to have a bit of a go at the BBC (his segment begins approx 12.30 in – available for 7 days):

“Imagine a Tory donor who’d bought a company, run its pension fund into the ground, bought the assets back for pennies in the pound, who became a privy counsellor even though he wasn’t qualified while personally funding the leader’s leadership bid – they (sic) would be a massive story and yet somehow the BBC runs day after day on Lord Ashcroft, who as far as I can see has done nothing wrong, and gives Labour an easy ride. It takes me back to the tales we had of the champagne bottles in 1997 and I’m afraid the BBC remains biased and fails to ask the proper questions of those who are currently in power.”

Even though I won’t be voting Tory I find much to agree with there.

Update 8pm. Iain Dale has made this his quote of the day (copy ‘n’ paste job, no link back here I might add). In response, Victoria Derbyshire has asked about the champagne reference:

I’m surprised she hasn’t heard about it, but for her benefit here’s her former Radio Five Live colleague Jane Garvey to explain. (Unfortunately the mp3 link no longer works. If Laban still has the sound file he might like to upload it again.)

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DAMAGE LIMITATION OVER MORNING COFFEE!

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Interesting watching Breakfast BBC this morning. With the latest employment figures out later this morning, the BBC is running the line that many people who have lost their jobs have found this to be a good thing since they have gone on to do other things that they enjoy. Oddly enough, during the 1980’s, I don’t recall the BBC running with such a benign view on job losses, do you? One rule for when the Conservatives are in power, another when the socialists have grabbed control….

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WHEN A DEBATE IS NOT A DEBATE

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The BBC allows all shades of opinion, from A to B! With our first past the post system no longer looking so good for Labour, time for the Today programme to have a debate on alternatives. So, around 7.51am this morning bring on Hillary Benn and Chris Huhne to cover the topic – what could be more balanced than that? All shades of political opinion…!

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TORY ATTACK!

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I’ve received several email from B-BBC readers today picking up on the way in which the BBC has been putting the boot into Cameron’s first bout of electioneering. This is what one reader had to say earlier…

“Radio 5 presents Yougov’s Peter Kellner as a neutral”

Radio Five just interviewed YouGov’s Peter Kellner on the election – specifically his opinion on Cameron and the Tories. Q. Why were Tories not doing better in the polls considering Labour’s unpopularity? Obviously the real answer is Cameron’s position on European Union and Global Warming. Kellner’s ‘analysis’ was that the Tories were still suffering from Major era, while Cameron remained very popular. A few sentences later he smeared Cameron. BBC did not mention that Peter Kellner is married to a Labour Minister. How can BBC interview someone so biased on the election and keep the bias from the listener?
Well the answer to that is very simple – the BBC has no shame. I heard Nick Robinson earlier doing a similar assassination job on the Conservatives. The election is ON and between now and polling day the BBC will do everything possible to ameliorate any Conservative advantage. I am no fan of David Cameron but I can see how unfairly he and his party will be treated by the State Broadcaster. It amazes me that he is so meek and mild as to how he will treat the BBC when he gets into power. I know what I would do, wouldn’t you?

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Today Again

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I’m not the biggest fan of the Cameron-led Conservative Party, but even I was forced to wonder where the Today programme gets balls big enough to follow yesterday’s double-team attack on Tory spokesman Phil Hammond with another one-sided assault on Tory policy this morning. Daniel “Danny” Dorling, a socialist professor of human geography, was given the prime-time slot following Thought For The Day to promote the idea of expanding public sector employment and increasing taxation. Conservative-proposed spending cuts were singled out for criticism by Dorling and his softball-tossing interviewer Sarah Montague. There was no one to offer a counter opinion and not the slightest pretence of balance. It’s not just the political parties that are already in election mode; the Today programme’s manifesto is taking shape too. (Interview can be heard here)

Immediately after Dorling, Justin Webb interviewed Sir David King about his proposal to have a climate scientist on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee. King got very irate when Webb brought up the CRU emails. Even though Webb wasn’t challenging the consensus view, the very mention of the emails is now considered off-limits as far as the high priests of the Warmist cult are concerned. Webb took his punishment meekly, like a good on-message Today presenter should. (Interview can be heard here)

Here’s a rushed transcript of the relevant segment:

King: It’s rather like the fact that there’s a labour market economist on the MPC itself, on the group, designed to stop monetarists riding roughshod over the jobless people. In other words that person has a particular hat to wear, and I’m saying why not put someone on there who understands energy, energy technology, low carbon moves and wears that hat and can express it right there when policies are being decided on our finances.

Webb: You look at the University of East Anglia emails and you do wonder, actually, whether putting someone there would just make them a target, quite apart from anyone else, a target from their own colleagues. It’s not settled enough, is it, to have someone doing the job and everyone accepting that they are doing the right job?

King: Good heavens. What are you saying is not settled enough? The science of climate change?

Webb: No, not the science, but the arguments, the flurries of discussion and dissent among the scientists themselves, and that to have someone there…

King: There is very little discussion and dissent among the scientists. That’s a total misreading of the theft of the UEA emails.

Webb: Well you can see it in the emails, can’t you?

King: (getting angry now) I’m sorry, that is an interpretation of the emails – the scientific community is of one voice on the issue. Is the planet warming up at the moment? That was the issue around the emails, and our Met Office, not involved in the issue, has published its own set of data this week demonstrating that of course we know icebergs are melting, we’re losing ice around the planet, every single piece of evidence from satellites, from temperature measurements is showing that the temperature has risen by three quarters of a degree centigrade.

Webb: OK, and you want that information to be there at the top table in the Treasury, in the Bank of England. Sir David, thank you very much.

“Sir David, thank you very much. May I have another?“

Does anybody else get the impression that Sir David has been rattled by Climategate? As more and more holes appear in their theory, King and his fellow zealots become ever more shrill in their declaration that the science is settled and that all dissent should be crushed. Talking of which, check out the Stalinist heading to King’s article in the latest Prospect magazine:

The Bank’s green future
Darling is getting it wrong on climate change. Now scientists must shape monetary policy.

Update 13.30. Just noticed that Umbongo mentioned these two interviews in the comments to an earlier blog post. Don’t want to deprive anybody of a tip of the hat.

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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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TORIES TO CAUSE CHIEF CONSTABLES TO QUIT?

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Sir Hugh Orde is the most politicised senior Police Chief that I know of. His period as Chief Constable of the PSNI was distinguished, if that is the correct word, by his playing of the political game to accommodate the requirements of the “Peace Process”. For example, he hailed the admission of a convicted IRA bomber onto the controlling Policing Board as progress. Sir Hugh was doing the rounds of the BBC this morning, warning that his fellow Chief Constables might well resign if Conservative plans to bring about more accountable local policing come into being.

On a purely political point of view, I hope some of them carry out this threat since we would be well rid of several Chief Constables. But on the topic specifically of BBC bias, why was there no one invited to defend and explain the Conservative view? Why was Orde’s own heavily politicised history not examined? This item could be seen as the BBC allowing an attack on Conservative policy through the back door and one wonders if the uberCop-come-politician Orde is not simply paying back his Labour masters?

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