I have never rated Nick Robinson, he seems to be too pleased with himself and is all too often careless with the facts.  The more I listen to him the more I get that impression confirmed.  This morning is no different as he treats us to a torrent of negative disinformation about Brexit along with Mishal Husain who uses a discussion about robotics in agriculture to scaremonger about agriculture dying in this country #duetoBrexit and all produce having to be imported at exhorbitant prices….no indication that the government says workers will come in on seasonal work visas to work on the farms as they used to do….and paradoxically the guest mentions that these jobs will be the first to go when things get automated…so why do we need these low skilled EU workers?  Oh and we’re being squeezed….worst this century….inflation due to Brexit.   Apocalypse now!

Robinson was talking about the ‘new’ revelation that Parliament will get a vote on the Brexit deal and if they reject it there will be a ‘no deal’ exit.  Robinson must read this blog as he made a meal of emphasisng this was ‘new’…but it’s not as we pointed out yesterday.  Old news that the BBC recycles as terrifying alarmist news about Brexit.

Note the tone and language used….the PM is using a ‘threat’ to pro-EU rebels whereas Tory pro-Brexit ‘rebels’ are the ‘threat’.  Robinson and Kuenssberg continually use the term ‘crash out of the EU’….pretty perjorative and alarmist along with ‘cliff edge’.  Robinson has a technical term to describe the situation….apparently Parliament has to ‘like it or lump it’...a somewhat dismissive and negative term to use.

We also get the twisting of the narrative….Leave based its campaign upon ‘taking back control’  and of course sovereignty….Remain and the BBC try to use this to say that denying Parliament a significant and effective say in what Brexit should look like is a contradiction of this.

The lie to this is of course that ‘Parliament’ consists of mostly Pro-EU MPs who will use any chance to amend and water down Brexit so that Britain doesn’t in fact leave the EU in any meaningful way….we will still pay huge amounts into the EU, still be subject to the ECJ, still be open to mass immigration.

This situation has already arisen as Labour and Remain Tories table hundreds of amendments to the EU bill going through Parliament right now in an attempt to thwart Brexit.

Giving Parliament complete control over Brexit will mean there is no Brexit…..thus the paradox and malignant result of doing so.

‘Parliament’ of course forgets that it is there to implement the will of the People, the People that decided we will have ‘Brexit’…..they voted to leave the EU regardless of the alarmist scaremongering by the Remain campaign given so much airtime by the BBC.

But how would you describe ‘sovereignty’?

Maybe like this….Sovereignty can be understood as the authority of a state to govern itself, and determine its own laws and policies.

Not then….Parliament able to ride roughshod over the will of the people?

Michael Bloomberg: Brexit is stupidest thing any country has done besides Trump

Leave voters are ‘Dumb’ and ‘stupid’…so says former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg….or was it Putin?  The BBC gives Bloomberg top billing on the news this morning with a second bite at telling us that Brexit will be bad for the City…and we get the old myth from the BBC tied into that repeated that 75,000 jobs will go.

Presumably Project Fear is running out of the voices of doom and are having to recycyle the old ones again….how long before Carney or in an attempt to hide the origin the ‘Bank of England’, or the Treasury or Osborne at the Standard or James Chapman [remember him?], or Simon Stephens for the NHS or Sam Coates from the Times etc etc etc pop up oon the BBC with the latest ‘big news about Brexit?

What of that 75,000 jobs to be lost #duetoBrexit?  The Mail looked at that a while back when the BBC first tried to alarm us.   

Turns out the figure actually came from a pro-EU lobby group which the BBC picked up and went to the Bank of England to ‘confirm’…..turns out this is the worst case scenario…but that doesn’t stop the BBC using it as the base figure.

Here’s what the Mail said:[click on ‘Copy’ in menu top right…the square of dots]…

BBC seized on the figures … but got its facts wrong

WARNINGS that Brexit could trigger 75,000 finance job losses led BBC news bulletins yesterday morning – and were also seized on by City lobbyists.

BBC Radio 4 newsreaders said the Bank of England had told lenders to ‘prepare for a no-deal’ Brexit.

They added that the 75,000 figure was ‘predicted’ by the Bank itself.

However, insiders at Threadneedle Street insist it was not a number they came up with themselves.

It is understood that BBC reporters took the figure from a report published a year ago and then asked senior figures at the Bank of England to say if they thought it was reasonable. That conversation is believed to have taken place at the International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington DC three weeks ago.

The Bank has asked lenders to ensure they are ready for all eventualities, including the possibility Britain leaves without a deal. But it has not put a figure on how many long-term jobs might eventually disappear. The 75,000 figure came in a report published last October by consultant Oliver Wyman for TheCityUK lobby group.

But spinners went into overdrive after the BBC reports, using the suggestion that the Bank itself was predicting 75,000 job losses to bolster their argument that highly-paid financiers must get special support.

Ironically, TheCityUK was particularly keen to piggyback on the institution’s authority, saying the figure was ‘consistent’ with its analysis.

Chief executive Miles Celic said: ‘This is another reminder that a “no-deal” Brexit will be no good for the industry, for customers or the economies of the UK and the European Union.’

Is there no end to the BBC lies, deceptions and misinformation?

H/T to Craig at Is the BBC biased? for linking to the BBC report.

The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville tells us in excited tones about…..

Raqqa’s dirty secret

The BBC has uncovered details of a secret deal that let hundreds of IS fighters and their families escape from Raqqa, under the gaze of the US and British-led coalition and Kurdish-led forces who control the city.

A convoy included some of IS’s most notorious members and – despite reassurances – dozens of foreign fighters. Some of those have spread out across Syria, even making it as far as Turkey.

The story is dated….

Publication date

13 November 2017

Now if you follow the news you might have thought that you have heard this before…that convoys of ISIS fighters have been allowed to leave Raqqa…..that’s because you have…way back in October….not quite so ‘secret’ then…and not exactly a BBC exclusive……

From the Guardian….October 14….

Last Isis fighters in Raqqa broker deal to leave Syrian city – local official

Islamic State fighters remaining in Raqqa, once the group’s de facto capital, have brokered a deal that would allow them to leave the city with a number of human shields, according to agencies in Syria.

Omar Alloush, a senior official of the Raqqa Civil Council, told Agence France-Presse a deal had been reached to allow fighters out of the city, which is on the verge of being captured by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

The Times…

Final assault on Raqqa after SDF deal allows Isis rebel convoy to flee

Western-backed forces in Syria have launched the final assault to oust Islamic State from Raqqa after hundreds of militants fled the city, leaving only a few fighters behind.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led coalition, and local Arab tribes struck a deal to allow a convoy of Syrian Isis fighters to leave the self-declared capital of the caliphate at the weekend.

The Telegraph….

Not sure what Quentin Sommerville has been smoking…must be some good shit though…he certainly writes it…..

The BBC has a short memory as it reports this today….parliament to get a vote on Brexit…and if rejects it there will be ‘no deal’…..apparently this is a big concession and surprise…..Kuenssberg spinning away madly for the EU?

Parliament to get binding vote on final Brexit deal

Parliament is to be given a take-it-or leave-it vote on the final Brexit deal before the UK leaves the EU.

Brexit Secretary David Davis said the terms of the UK’s exit, such as money, citizen rights and any transition must become law via a new Act of Parliament.

While any deal would “only hold” if MPs approved it, he said it would not alter the fact the UK was leaving the EU.

Labour welcomed a “climbdown” but some MPs warned of a “sham” if ministers could not be asked to renegotiate.

The BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the announcement was significant because it represented a big concession to potential Tory rebels and Labour MPs at a highly important moment in the Brexit process.

Hmmmmm…thought I remembered this…..from February this year….

British parliament will get vote on final Brexit deal

LONDON — Both houses of the British parliament will get a vote on the Brexit deal that Theresa May strikes with the European Union, the government said Tuesday.

Brexit minister David Jones told the House of Commons he expects this to happen “before the European Parliament debates and votes on the final agreement.”

Asked to clarify what happens if MPs and members of the House of Lords decide they don’t like the deal, Jones said “the vote will be either to accept the deal. Or there will be no deal.”

Former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said: “It is not good enough for the government to offer parliament a hard Brexit or an even harder Brexit.”

Pick up a copy of this week's newspaper to read more about Stanley Donwood's art – the man behind these fantastic anti-Brexit cartoons. pic.twitter.com/LHeKsLOjZB

— The New European (@TheNewEuropean) November 4, 2017

Here’s a ‘Neo European’ wishing old white men would just curl up and die in a cold winter…their grandchildren can then spit on their graves……maybe the police should arrest this guy?  If that’s not hate speech what is?  Silly Hind.

Clearly he doesn’t read his own propaganda rag…it’s not old white men who are to blame for Brexit, it’s old black and Asian folk….bet the BBC would ramp up the outrage if Mr Hind suggested old Black and Asian men should die and people spit on their graves…..

BAME to blame: How minorities got it so wrong

Research by the British Election Study suggests the ethnic minority vote was crucial in the EU referendum.

Only a third voted Leave, but those voters could well have clinched it for Brexit.  Too many South Asians and Caribbean people I met were taken in by false Brexit promises.

We BAME people must take some of the blame as we suffer the consequences.

Mike HindVerified account

@MikeH_PR

Franco-British-based investigative journalist. Contributor to @TheNewEuropean.

Brexit is dying right before everyone's eyes.

Meanwhile, the gammon-faced white men who wanted it are dying too.

Everything to play for.

— Mike Hind (@MikeH_PR) October 13, 2017

Wondering how many Brexit voters are no longer with us. And what a bad winter might mean for for the wall of gammon ????

— Mike Hind (@MikeH_PR) November 12, 2017

Tick tock tick tock… ( #wallofgammon counting down toward the days their grandchildren will spit on their graves for disrespecting the people who fought & died to create the freedoms they voted away ) pic.twitter.com/8HhBGoaHI7

— Mike Hind (@MikeH_PR) November 12, 2017

The Washington Post, along with the New York Times, was a staunch anti-Trump ally of the BBC, all three spreading unfounded rumours about Trump being a compromised Russian agent as truth.

They like to present themselves as the only trustworthy guardians of The Truth that can be relied upon and to that end work assiduously to smear and discredit as many other news and social media outlets as possible with charges of peddling fake news…..news and comment providers that is that are right-leaning and may support Donald Trump.

Here’s a classic Washington Post attempt to link the Drudge Report to Russia.…it is entirely spurious and total nonsense [the WaPo pretty much admits as much in the article!] but the WAPO doesn’t care because the article is intended to just spread the idea, instil doubt in readers and make them think maybe Drudge cannot be trusted…maybe he is pushing Russian fake news.

Look at the links it gives….it admits they are actually way down at the bottom of the Drudge Report amongst a multitude of other links.  It also notes that the Washington Post itself is linked to by Drudge far more than to these other ‘dubious’ sites [RT, Sputnik and Infowars] and yet it ploughs on to try and suggest Drudge is suspiciously linking to far too many dodgy sites.

Just how many times has Drudge linked to these sites in a decade?

DrudgeReportArchives captures an image of the Drudge Report every two minutes, as it has for 16 years. We ran a script that checked the first update to Drudge Report after 9 a.m. on every day of the past decade, counting the number of times Drudge linked to Infowars, RT or Sputnik. Over that period, excluding the two standing links to Infowars, we tallied more than 1,000 links to those sites.

What!!!! So many times…..three sites linked to over 1000 times in 10 years….ye gods man…call the FBI!!!  That’s one link every three or four days…holy smokes!!…..mobilise the army…the Reds are coming…oh wait…that’s a good thing isn’t it?

Look at the graph above and you can see that the WaPO has been linked to far, far more times.

The WaPo’s tag line is ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’…and yet the WaPo is doing its utmost to close and and smear sites and news providers which provide opposing views, and news, to its own world view….as of course is the BBC.

The BBC and its ilk are the real danger to democracy not the likes of Drudge who link to all and sundry and provide a valuable service in bringing as many different points of view to the debate as possible.

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

Another week, same old bias…..list it all here……

Laura Kuenssberg told us that the issue of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s detention was highly sensitive and political which is why the BBC has been stomping around in its size 12’s adding to the kicking Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is getting.

The BBC led the chorus against Boris and his comment [briefed to him by who? and why?] and are now targeting Gove for his innocuous comments.

Sarah Montague this morning [08:10] told us that Gove had ‘waded into this’ with his comments and yet it was Marr that raised the subject asking what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing in Iran….shouldn’t Marr just have said ‘Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was on holiday so why do you think the Iranians are holding her and what can we do to get her released?’  Of course he wouldn’t like to ask that because the answer leads directly to the BBC’s door.  Peter Allen yesterday also asked what she was doing in Iran…so again raising doubts about her activities.

Then Montague, trying to attack Gove in a somewhat poisonous piece, went down a similar avenue as she quoted Gove’s reply to Marr...

Asked on Sunday by Mr Marr what she had been doing in Iran, Mr Gove replied: “I don’t know” adding there was “no reason Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe should be in prison in Iran so far as any of us know”.

She went on to ask the husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe ‘He says ‘So far as any of us know’….Do you think he doubts it?’  That is, what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe says she was doing…ie on holiday.

As said that was supposed to be an attack on Gove but that extraordinary piece of interpretation of a normal turn of phrase in fact merely gives added ammunition to the Iranians who can now say ‘The BBC thinks a second British government minister has doubts about the truth of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s claims to be merely on holiday.’

The BBC can’t have it both ways….attacking Boris and Gove [Gove having been asked to comment by the BBC] for jeopardising Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s position and then at least three times themselves casting doubt on her story and broadcasting it to the world.

I guess deposing two big Brexit supporting ministers is more important to the BBC than the life of one dual-national woman who got caught up in international politics.