Category Archives: BBC

BBC’s Mark Mardell’s Piece On Palin’s 2012 Statement Lives Down To Expectations..

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Mark Mardell, the BBC’s man in the USA, lets the mask slip in a rather unpleasant piece on Governor Palin’s decision not to enter the 2012 Presidential race.

Shriekily filled with venom against a president she branded a socialist and suggested was un-American, in love with guns, God and the unborn, apparently ignorant of the outside world, indeed not fully clued up on the lower 48 (the USA outside Alaska)

What a perfect example of well informed, deeply researched political analysis – paid for, I might add, by a poll tax on everyone who owns a TV set in Britain.

Holding true to the definitive snake oil salesman’s code of practice that the best way to present an untruth is to baldly state it as a fact, Mardell goes for broke.

Sarah Palin’s decision will have disappointed some.
Not the American people who clearly didn’t like her as John McCain’s running mate in 2008.

Excuse me? If that was the case why was it that the only time that the McCain ticket led Obama in the polls was in the first half of September after Palin joined it? After September 15th, of course, the ticket was dead in the water – not because of Palin but due to McCain’s deer-in-the-headlights reaction to the Lehman Brothers collapse.

Naturally Mardell ignores policy positions and goes for the personal…

As a result we have Michelle Bachmann in the race. Herman Cain in the race. Rick Perry in the race.
They are all more authentic, more intelligent, more acceptable than Palin

Hmmmm….Mr Mardell – are you saying Camille Paglia is is just some dumb broad?

No evidence to back this up, of course. Indeed what is fascinating is how Mardell is trying desperately to portray Palin as some sort of X Factor “celebrity” without any connection to the world of serious politics. No reference to her years of executive experience in Alaska as a successful city mayor or popular governor. No reference to her fight against corruption in her own party or her triumphant battles against the big oil companies.

But then why in the world would any rational person be at all surprised at this bucketful of poisonous bile?

It’s Mark Mardell..

For years he was paid by the BBC to pimp the EU as their man in Brussels. Then, when the they began to believe their own hope&change crapola about a totally unvetted Chicago Daley machine hack with zero executive experience, Mardell’s bosses decided to send him to Washington as a kind of court correspondent to wax lyrical about the new Camelot. He must have been delirious with joy, foreseeing an eight year stint pimping for Obama.

But it has all gone horribly wrong. The Obamacare shambles, the ever swelling deficit, the lobbyist rewarding stimulus that has failed to dent unemployment, the ATF guns scandal, the Democrats losing control of the house in 2010, the emergence of the tea party (which, characteristically, Mardell ignored for well over a year )…..

Mardell could even be characterised as the Comical Ali of the Obama regime

a cult figure thanks to his wild claims and colourful language

Obama is crumbling and there is precious little reward in pimping a failure. Hence the vitriolic attack on Palin. When the Brooks/Douthat/Frum axis of appeasement was advocating accomodation with Obama and Huntsman seemed the future Palin was the only leading light of the GOP who was calling him out. Her predictions have been vindicated. She was right about Obama – Mardell and his ilk were wrong – and how it must hurt to be outsmarted by someone “apparently ignorant of the outside world, indeed not fully clued up on the lower 48”

Here’s a suggestion for the BBC, supposedly in cost cutting mode. Why not save money by getting rid of Mardell and just giving White House spokesman Jay Carney a few dollars extra to blah blah blah about the Potemkin villages of Obamaland.

The song will be the same as Mardell’s but the price will be much lower…

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Question Time LiveBlog 8th September 2011: 9/11 Special!

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Question Time tonight is a 9/11 Special.

On the panel tonight in London we have Secretary or State for Defence Liam Fox, failed Labour leadership contender David Miliband and US Assistant Sec of Defense Richard Perle

In the cheap seats we have ‘playwright’ by the name of Bonnie Langford Greer, race-agitator Tariq Ali and a lady called Christina Schmidt who lost her husband serving as a bomb disposal officer in Afghanistan.

So good luck there.

TheEye is unable to join you this evening So leaves you in the splendid hands of the Two Davids…Vance and Mosque. Play nicely!

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The BBC Hits Obama Hard – Only Joking….

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Remember how the BBC regularly hit us hard every day with stories about the arrogance and inefficiency of the Bush presidency? So hard, in fact, that you would have thought we had become the 51st (or, according to Obama, the 58th) state of the union. Also how any mistake made by an officer of the administration was the President’s responsibility?

How times change.

Not much from the Beeb about the Gunrunner scandal involving the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) allowing Mexican drug cartel operatives to buy firearms from US gunshops, ostensibly to track smuggling routes.

Some terribly nasty people say that DoJ Eric Holder, who supervises the ATF was really looking for some juicy soundbites to boost the Obama administration ambition of imposing stricter gun controls in the US.

Dear me – how unchivalrous.

Naturally Holder and Obama knew nothing about Gunrunner – just as, apparently, the BBC knows nothing about Holder and the Black Panthers voter intimidation incident in the 2008 election.

Then there are those Congressional concerns about the legality of America’s involvement in Libya’s civil war. Not much at all apart from this classic from the highly professional and even handed Mark Mardell, highlighted by David Preiser recently at bBBC.

However the US media has been fairly slow to unleash much shoe-leather on both these stories, until recently – and it has been said that the BBC takes all its US cues from the New York Times and Washington Post.

So, whatever the reason we all know that it can’t be because the Beeb is still in the tank for Obama……that can’t possibly be the case…can it?

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BBC "Forgets" Palin E Mail Story – I Wonder Why……

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Having read DB’s post at Biased BBC and the frenetic overture to the Palin e mails saga trumpeted on the BBC website a few days ago

Critics say the e-mails may damage Palin’s presidential chances

I thought I would check out the Beeb’s reaction to the general consensus in the US media that the much vaunted NYT/WaPo “investigation” had spectacularly backfired.

Even plodding Politico hack Molly Ball at Politico (probably through gritted teeth) had to admit

She was hands-on and averse to partisan politics. She championed openness in government and had normal relations with the media. She was a little starstruck by her interactions with national politicians but unafraid to do battle with the chief executives of the world’s largest oil companies.

though, being Molly, she had to inject some squirts of bitchiness a few lines later.

Her colleague Andy Barr, no admirer of Palin, was more generous, as was CNN’s Drew Griffin. In the Daily Telegraph, after the usual set of ill informed bleats from the master of cut and paste “journalism” Alex Spillius, Toby Harnden took Molly Ball’s words and juggled them around to give a semblance of originality.

Even blogging nonentity Ryan Streeter at ConservativeHomeUSA (thought by many to be financed by Lord Ashcroft) who thinks Palin’s role in the GOP should be to strut her stuff as a pretty cheerleader twirling her baton for Superwonk Paul Ryan thought the e mail colonoscopy had proved a damp squib (though, par for the course, he was more mealy mouthed than even Molly Ball.

But from the BBC – zilch, zero, a big fat nothing……I wonder why?

Fortunately, Cornell’s Professor Jacobson, managed to capture the video….

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The Archbishop Of Canterbury, Polly Toynbee with A Beard

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Wow, the Archbishop of Canterbury keeps his beard but discards his sandals for Doc Martens and gives Cameron a good kicking.

Naturally the BBC has an orgasm.

The tone and strength of language used in Dr Williams’ attack on the coalition has taken ministers by surprise.
Accusing the government of being committed to “radical, long-term policies for which no-one voted” is an overtly political statement and one Downing Street has quickly rebuffed.
But they can’t ignore the broad sweep of criticism or questioning of their mandate to govern.

Thus warbled Jo Coburn alleged to be BBC Political Correspondent.

Well, Jo, one effective strategy might well be to ignore it. After all Williams has form on this and his attachment to the Guardian/BBC zeitgeist is as established a fact as Polly Toynbee’s property portfolio in Tuscany. Nobody outside the NW1/Oxbridge media/academic elite gives a fig for what he thinks. He is head of a religious structure that is as empty a husk as the official cult of Rome in the early years of the first millennium. If you want fervour and commitment you go to the evangelicals or other faiths. Williams and his ilk have done more to secularise our culture than any humanist league of bores – so why give him any more oxygen?

The other option, however, is to rip into him tooth and claw, ignoring any screeches from the great and the good. Like Prince Charles Williams believes he has a pass to step up and pontificate from a richly endowed soapbox and hector and lecture us without fear of response except from elements of the tabloid press. Maybe it’s time those soapboxes were kicked away from under their feet.

Tim Montgomerie has already entered the fray with a blistering exposure of the Archbishop’s hypocrisy over social issues. What irritates me is the prelate’s claim that he articulates the concerns of Mr & Mrs Public.

At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context,” he said.
In a wide-ranging attack, he accused the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition of creating “anxiety and anger” in the country by introducing reforms without sufficient debate.
………
“Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around questions such as these at present,” he said.

What he means, of course, is the “anxiety and anger and fear” being expressed by the cartels and special interest groups that feed at the trough currently overflowing with taxpayer’s money, particularly in the field of education, the law, health and social services.

If he really wished to articulate the fears of the silent majority in this country, the people who try to obey the law, pay their own way without incurring massive debt and accept the fact that they have responsibilities as well as rights he would be following a different path by

Asking why it is that so much of our daily life is now decided by faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats from Brussels

Voicing the concerns of the poorest elements in our society worried by the apparent inability of successive governments to confront the issue of unrestricted immigration.

Questioning the wisdom of allowing those guilty of violence, murder and intimidation back onto the streets within a few years of their crime.

Demanding how it is that the “rights” of criminals and terrorists are of a higher order than the public’s right to go about its legal business without interference or assault.

Condemning those who use taxpayer’s money without regard to transparency, fiscal rectitude and effective and meaningful outcomes.

But then he wouldn’t get the great and good seal of approval from James Naughtie, Simon Jenkins and Polly Toynbee and that would never do

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BBC:You Know Palin’s Latest Video Shows She’s Still Shallow But Oh So Cunning..

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Of course there is an element of snark in this BBC piece on the latest Palin video but there is also a reluctant admission

It is one minute and nine seconds of pure advertising genius – a dazzling calling card from the woman who, most now agree, wants to be president.

The writer, Paul Adams, is naturally sniffy about the imagery, calling it “political bromide”. That had me laughing into my morning cuppa as I recalled the hours of relentless left/liberal twaddle pumped out by the beeb, not to mention those 2008 Obama hopey/changey speeches (available in a discount bin near you…)

You know that within what would be described as the “brain” of Adams the BBC chip is frantically signalling the official media elite line on Palin – irrelevant, ignorant, shallow – and the stock phrases come out

“an apparent rainbow coalition of candidates favoured by Ms Palin” (she’s really a racist)
“a populist jab at Washington politics.” (she’s appealing to the great unwashed of America)
“a shameless reference to the most famous three words ever uttered by the man who once made everyone feel good, Ronald Reagan.” (she’ll milk anything to make a point)

But the chip is sometimes suppressed by vestiges of his pre-programmed mind

We’re going to get back to the time-tested truths that made this country great,” she says.
These, Sarah Palin seems to be saying, are my people. My coalition. Not just the honest, hard-working, flag-waving Americans seen throughout, but the candidates just elected to office on a wave of Tea Party fervour – and all those pictured celebrating on election night.
The true brilliance, apart from the sheer speed with which the piece was put together, lies in an apparent rainbow coalition of candidates favoured by Ms Palin – Latinos, Marco Rubio in Florida and Susana Martinez in New Mexico; African Americans, Allen West in Florida and Tim Scott in South Carolina and an Indian American, Nikki Hayley in South Carolina.
It’s a collection of faces clearly designed to puncture the Tea Party’s images as solidly white.

In actual fact I think that Adams has been embedded with the MK II PDS chip now emanating from Washington and obviously delivered to the comrades at the BBC. For the MSM she remains, of course, essentially vapid, ignorant and devoid of ideas but she is no longer stupid. If you read between the lines of the Adams article the message coming out is that she is cunning – or, as Blackadder once said “As cunning as a fox who’s just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University”

They still want to bring her down but time has taught them to extremely wary of her which, in a way, is a mark of respect for her power.

Strange conduct indeed for people who claim to see a Palin candidacy as a surefire conduit towards Obama’s re-election…..

cross posted at The Aged P

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Somebody Doesn’t Like the BBC

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Last month, B-BBC reader La Cumparista made the following comment on David Vance’s post about a BBC interview with a Man Booker Prize nominee:

I would really like Howard Jacobson to win the Man Booker prize this year. Has he had much publicity on the BBC?

Jacobson is listed with the others on BBC news briefs about the authors on the short list, but only Peter Carey got a special feature, presumably because he had won twice before. I don’t recall Jacobson getting the attention of the other authors by the BBC when they did their special report from the black-tie gala event of the announcement.

In any case, I now have a copy of Jacobson’s winning book, The Finkler Question, in my hand. The story opens up with a passage that is very relevant to this blog. The BBC studiously avoided mentioning this in either of their brief interviews of him as one of those on the short list.

The relevant passage begins on Page 6, when Treslove, the non-Jewish character (one of the trio of friends around whom the book is focused), is mugged while walking home one night. It describes the incident which launches the book’s journey to explore what it means to be Jewish in England today:

He passed the BBC, an institution for which he had once worked and cherished idealistic hopes but which he now hated to an irrational degree. Had it been rational he would have taken steps not to pass the building as often as he did. Under his breath he cursed it feebly – ‘Shitheap,’ he said.

A nursery malediction.

That was exactly what he hated about the BBC: it had infantilised him. ‘Auntie’, the nation called the Corporation, fondly. But aunties are equivocal figures of affection, wicked and unreliable, pretending to love only so long as they are short of love themselves, and then off. The BBC, Treslove believed, made addicts of those who listened to it, reducing them to a state of inane dependence. As it did those it employed. Only worse in the case of those employed – handcuffing them in promotions and conceit, disabling them from any other life. Treslove himself a case in point. Though not promoted, only disabled.

Indeed.

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"Adored You On Those Politics Shows, Dahling….Nice Fee?"

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Brian Cox on QT, Tony Robinson on TW afterwards…..who the blazes wants to hear the views of these pompous, overrated, superannuated lefty luvvies? Actors have to be, by default, self centred, vain, bitchy and ruthless to get on – they make bankers appear furry bunnies in comparison, particularly in the C list division inhabited by the likes of Cox and co.

Robinson speculating about swivel eyed Ed leading us into a new form of economics (Pippa Dreadberg and her Marmite Street Theatre?), Cox informing us with actorly gravitas that he is anti Iraq war, anti nuclear deterrent….I am certain their agents assured them that millions would be hanging on their words with bated breath…

Still I suppose we should be grateful that we weren’t exposed to something even worse – one of those “cutting edge”, “brilliantly gifted” self righteous boors who liked to be described as a “marxist” comedian.

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The BBC “Cuts” Orgasm…

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The BBC is certainly maxing out on the evil coalition “cuts” with reverential softballs being thrown to strutting and strident trade union fatcats (all on £100,000+pa) and gut wrenching tales of woe from “randomly selected” families etc.

The mood music is clear, the narrative set in stone with helpful clues to remind of the last bloodthirsty regime which gleefully crushed the poor and the weak into the dust…..”…deepest cuts since the Thatcher years”

Mark Serwotka, leader of the Civil Service penpushers, poured scorn on the need to cut the deficit on BBC1 “Breakfast” this morning. He demanded an increase in government spending and when Simon Jack wondered where the money would come from Serwotka, economic genius, said we should borrow it. Mr Jack, instead of laughing in his face and giving him a pair of clown’s shoes, feebly accepted this cretinous nonsense.

It might seem odd to the average Martian that the Beeb should be helping to feed the egos of these latter day Savonarolas when it is having to face industrial action from it’s own Luddites over downsizing but remember that the BBC, like the Papacy, is always interested in the long term. So soon, just after the first reports of children and old people starving to death because of Osborne’s cuts, expect a full blown crusade, spearheaded by Stephen Fry and assorted Dimblebys and Attenboroughs, showing how the masses are suffering cultural starvation through the freezing of the BBC Poll Tax.

cross posted at The Aged P

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STRIKE!

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Oh no! The BBC could be preparing to go on strike. That might mean we are denied their award-winning programmes, their intrepid fearless investigative journalism, their 24/7 global output. So, let’s hope the strike goes ahead. Then, sack them all.

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