‘SOME people like Jews and some do not; but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world.’

Winston Churchill

A columnist, Kevin Myers, in the Irish Times has been sacked for ‘anti-semitism’ and the BBC’s Emma Barnett cornered him today on her show[10:40ish] as he claimed that Jews were disproportionately successful due to their admirable drive to be paid what they are worth and that they have a focus on success, an ambition to get on.

It is just a truth that the Jews are remarkably successful for their numbers…Israel blooms in the desert whilst all around are mired in poverty, failure and instability, Christianity and Islam have taken over the world…both ‘perversions’ of the Jewish faith….as Churchill said….

We owe to the Jews in the Christian revelation a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all other wisdom and learning put together. On that system and by that faith there has been built out of the wreck of the Roman Empire the whole of our existing civilization.

Communism also had a good roll of the dice…again so many of the foremost proponents in the early days were Jews if more ‘internationalists’ than religiously minded ones…so much so that the American Communist Party tried to insist that anti-Communism was in fact the same as anti-Semitism.  No-one can deny that Jews have had an enormous influence on world affairs.  Saying they are good at getting value for money is hardly anti-Semitic…saying Jewish bankers rule the world and leech upon it is…saying there is a Jewish cabal, a secret lobby that runs the world is.  Praising Jews for being successful isn’t…even if you are very clumsy in the way you say it.

Barnett is herself Jewish so you have to question the wisdom of her doing an interview accusing someone of being anti-semitic, all the more so when you consider that she is not the best interviewer, her style being intent on point scoring having already decided a person is ‘guilty’ of the charge she will put against them and shaping the interview to ‘prove’ she’s right.  As Myers himself might say she is not aiming for clarity but moral superiority.  Her style is aggressive, lacks any nuance and understanding of difficult and complex issues and she consistently fails to listen to the answer her guests give her ploughing on as she does determined to prove a non-existent point.  She singularly fails to understand the points made by her guests.  And in this interview, inquisition, kangaroo court, she ably demonstrated all those failings.

The Times of Israel suggests the BBC is wrong to point the finger….

The BBC wilfully misreported what Myers wrote,  saying  ‘Kevin Myers suggested BBC presenters Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz earned high salaries because they were Jewish’. No he did not write that!

Here is what Myers did write (my emboldening):

‘Only one woman is among the top 10 best-paid BBC presenters. Now, why is this? Is it because men are more charismatic performers? Because they work harder? Because they are more driven? Possibly a bit of each. The human resources department — what used to be called “personnel” until people came to be considered as a metabolising, respiring form of mineral ore — will probably tell you that men usually work harder, get sick less frequently and seldom get pregnant.

 But most of all, men tend to be more ambitious: they have that greyback testosterone-powered, hierarchy-climbing id that feminised and egalitarian-obsessed legislatures are increasingly trying to legislate against.  Indeed, only weaponsgrade ambition could have got that deeply irritating jackanapes-on-steroids Jeremy Vine a berserk £700,000-£750,000 (€782,000-€838,000) a year. Plus, he must have one hell of an agent.

So have the BBC’s top women found a revolutionary new kind of negotiator that likes to start high and chisel downwards? Is this amazing unter-agent dedicated to the concept of seeking ever lower salaries for his/her clients, so earning a smaller commission for him/herself? And if such unter-agents actually exist, who is idiotic enough to employ them? The BBC’s female presenters, apparently. I note that two of the best-paid women presenters in the BBC — Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz, with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted — are Jewish. Good for them. Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity.’

You might note that Myer’s real ‘crime’ might be sexism…but Barnett didn’t even broach that subject…and no wonder as the BBC has been caught red-handed being outrageously sexist paying women far, far less than the men…it would have been the most blatant hypocrisy to attack him for this.  You may think it is just as much a cheek of the BBC to tackle Myers on the subject of anti-Semitism when it has been the BBC that has done so much to ferment that in the world, not just in its massively anti-Israel reporting but also in its programming…The very high profile ‘The Honourable Woman’ being astonishingly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel and Jeremy Bowen continued to blame the Jews for the problems in the Middle East blaming ‘Zionism’ along with Western foreign policy for every ill….and just how exacting was the BBC investigation of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party?….extremely slow and reluctant to examine that issue.

Some may think Myers is actually being ‘persecuted’ for something else he wrote after the Manchester bombing…being anti-Islamic and anti-EU….

Nazis Hid Their Crimes; Islamists Exult in Theirs

A suicide bomber attacking a concert for little girls is a little earlier in the curve of depravity than I’d expected. But a nurse being cut to pieces as she minded the injured on London Bridge — at this point in the descent into the abyss, perfectly predictable. The Nazis hid their crimes. These people exult in theirs, knowing that the path to a moral nadir is paved with the public glorification of the most revolting violence. It is also paved with passivity, excuses and equivalence from the host communities.

It’s probably futile saying this, so powerful is the “anti-racism”, “anti- Islamophobe” mob of prating, Christianity-hating liberals, but I believe that we have no historic choice but to seriously restrict the numbers of Muslims moving to Ireland. Furthermore, facial covering should be rigorously outlawed in all public transport, taxis, schools, colleges, banks and EVERY government building. If the enforcement of such measures means a departure from the EU with its toxic and unreal human rights edicts, so be it.

But…is Myers anti-Semitic?  Is he guilty of ‘casual racism’ as Barnett claimed he was as she casually labelled him a racist hate monger.  You might note that after the interview she talked to someone else more on her wavelength…what did he say?  He told us that ‘the British are a very tolerant people’.  I’m sorry what?  Isn’t that just a sweeping generalisation, a stereotype, casual racism?  Well meaning but still propagating a racist myth…as we all know, courtesy of the BBC, that the British are actually nasty racists…#duetobrexit.  Myers can’t give a clumsy compliment to the Jewish population but someone who is ‘onboard’ the PC bandwagon can make similarly sweeping statements about ‘the British’?

How about African runners…an inborn talent of ‘Altitude Natives’ or something else?…

BBC Sport – East African runners: What makes them so dominant?

Put “East African running” into a search engine and you’ll get thousands of results exploring the question of what makes these long distance runners so good.

Everyone is searching for the secret explanation so what does the research evidence point to?

Some people say that since these runners and their forebears live and train at altitude, they’re bound to be good. “Altitude natives”, through long-term exposure combined with endurance training, have increased red blood cells which is one neat explanation of their excellence in endurance events.

Scientists have suggested that it is difficult to break the ongoing East African running stereotype; some runners of other races believe that they cannot compete with the East Africans whilst those from the region believe that they are better runners.

Of these explanations the influence of biology is hotly debated but overall the work ethic needed to succeed at the top level takes place in a social and economic milieu that, for me, is a major influence.

Hmmmm…work ethic is the key…..is that not what Myers says about Jews?  Why is he demonised whilst a BBC columnist isn’t?

Myers told Barnett that what he intended was to point out that Jews make the most of their talents in a way that perhaps others may not, certainly disproportionate to their numbers….an admirable characteristic he said.  Barnett suggested he was slurring Jews by claiming the the Jews had a ‘special power’ to ‘extract money from people’…a trope Hitler used.

This was so far from what Myers actually said…for a start he wasn’t claiming some mythical, God-given ‘special power’ for Jews…just the ability to focus and drive on to achieve what they wanted or needed to do to survive and thrive.

Barnett was insulted by this ‘admiration’ and told us that her pet hate was people who apologise for spreading hatred but then move on to explain it.  Clearly she had no intention of listening to and understanding what Myers said.  She then reeled off a list of things he had apparently said in the interview but misquoted him and misinterpreted, deliberately, what he actually said and meant.

Barnett jumped to conclusions, put words in Myers’ mouth, refused to listen and was intent on crucifying him with the label ‘anti-Semite’ around his neck.

One example is her claim that Myers was a Holocaust denier….and thus, because he apparently denied 6 million Jews were killed by Hitler, he is anti-Semitic…this previous history was proffered as proof of his anti-Semitism…confirmation of what people say about his latest article.

Barnett clearly hadn’t read the article about the Holocaust.  Myers told us he didn’t write the headline…the article was in the Independent and thus must have been their editor’s decision….I managed to find a copy in the Belfast Telegraph, the original article having been scrubbed guiltily from existence on the Independent’s site:

There was no Holocaust: Kevin Myers

Myers is in fact talking about censorship and freedom of speech, the lack of.  How is it that he can say that the Jews were killed in a murderous genocide but if he says this was not technically a ‘Holocaust’ he will be locked up in some countries in Europe?

I’m a holocaust denier; but I also believe that the Nazis planned the extermination of the Jewish people, as far as their evil hands could reach.

What? I admit that there was murder and genocide (or Genocide, as my spell-check wants me to call it) but almost in the same breath, insist that there was no holocaust? How is this possible?  Well, if you turn historical events into current political dogmas, (believed even by my computer) you are thereby creating a sort of secular, godless religion, which becomes mandatory for all who wish to participate in public life. Yet dogmas, by definition, are so simplistic and crude that they are usually not merely wrong, but are also probably so.

This programme [killing Jews] was begun informally by Nazi armies in 1941, and only took organised form after the Wannsee conference in January 1942. Thus was born one of the most satanic operations in world history, in which millions of Jews were murdered. To be sure, you can use the term holocaust to describe these events, but only as a metaphor.

However, to turn that metaphor into a political dogma, a denial of which can result in imprisonment, is to create a religio-penal code of which Torquemada would have approved.

Across Europe, there are countless Islamic madrasahs, in which imams regularly preach hatred for Jews, and where the holocaust is routinely denied. Which member-state of the EU will pursue such conveyors of hate, or seek the extradition of an imam who says that the holocaust was a Zionist hoax? None of them. We know this. For the EU has tolerated the creation of an informal historiographical apartheid. So, on the one hand, a single, eccentric (and possibly deranged) Christian bishop may be hounded for his demented historical beliefs: but on the other, there is a deafening silence over the widespread and virulent distortion of the ‘holocaust’ by Islamic preachers.

If Bishop Williamson has an agenda, it is so bonkers as to rank alongside that of The Lunar Cheese Society.

Yet he, and other Christian cranks like him, could even be imprisoned for their stated beliefs, as other ‘men of God’, working to an infinitely more sinister and far more politically inspired agenda, are simultaneously ignored.

This disparity is now effectively an EU policy.

You can reasonably call such double-standards many things, but the words ‘rational’, ‘wise’ or ‘consistent’ are not among them. ‘Suicidal’ and ‘insane’, however, certainly are.

Interesting how Myers alone is in the dock…why not the editors of the Times or the Independent that ran these articles?

And you may remember how the BBC has so frequently told us we need immigrants because the British workers are so lazy and feckless…we need the hard working East Europeans to save us….what difference is that to what Myers said?…..

Migrant farm workers needed to replace ‘lazy’ Britons

Finally one might consider what the Irish Jewish Representative Council said:

Branding Kevin Myers as either an anti-Semite or a Holocaust denier is an absolute distortion of the facts. More than any other Irish journalist he has written columns about details of the Holocaust over the last three decades that would otherwise not have been known by a substantial Irish audience. The knee-jerk responses from those outside Ireland appear to care little for facts and pass on (along with some media outlets) falsehoods about his previous writings without verification. This has been exacerbated by a thoroughly misleading headline being sent around the world that is wholly unrepresentative of the article to which it refers.

An abysmal interview by Barnett that was badly researched, highly partisan having already decided Myers was guilty and overall badly conducted as is the way with so many of Barnett’s interviews intent as they are not on providing clarity but moral superiority and point scoring.

Myers also wrote, in the Independent originally [again erased from the record], about the pointless and dangerous role aid plays in Africa…for which he was pilloried…

Self-serving generosity has been one of the curses of Africa. It has sustained political systems which would otherwise have collapsed.
It prolonged the Eritrean-Ethiopian war by nearly a decade. It is inspiring Bill Gates’ programme to rid the continent of malaria, when, in the almost complete absence of personal self-discipline, that disease is one of the most efficacious forms of population-control now operating.
If his programme is successful, tens of millions of children who would otherwise have died in infancy will survive to adulthood, he boasts. Oh good: then what?I know. Let them all come here. Yes, that’s an idea.

Was he wrong?  So many ‘respectable’ people think along the same lines……such as the BBC?…

Aid ‘is not solution’ for Africa

The aid business is an industry with its own dynamic.

Much of it is spent in the donor countries in the form of consultancies and goods.

For the recipient it creates dependency, undermines self-reliance and ultimately breeds resentment.

There is no short cut to development. Only Africans themselves can bring change to Africa.

States have to raise taxes and spend them productively in order for their countries to develop.

The Guardian….

Aid helps the rich at the expense of the poor

What we should be talking about is Africa and humanitarian development aid. Africa has been a target, and a victim, of foreign aid in a way China, India and south-east Asia never were. Aid to Africa has not worked over the last 50 years.

Almost everyone I have spoken to recently in Africa feels aid has failed because it enriches the big men at the cost of ordinary people. Foreign aid atrophies, and weakens, the state in Africa, and the only people who grow stronger are the donors: governments and NGOs. It damages the prospects for ordinary people to better their lives, and turns ordinary Africans into victims.

Africans are hard-working people who like to have an enterprise culture. They are natural capitalists and do not need to be patronised by NGOs, who often have left-wing agendas. They need a hand up, not a handout.

From the Africans themselves…

Africa: We don’t want aid. Please keep it for your local poor!

International AID is currently doing more harm to Africa than good. It became the main tool used by foreign governments and organizations to corrupt the African elite, and get them to behave so irrationally toward their own populations and the basic interest of their countries.

Aside corruption and the criminality, International Aid is the root of the 5 Stars colonization disease that cripple the African elite which dislikes the responsibility and the self sacrifice that comes with being in control of a nation destiny. As far as they enjoyed the status offered by their positions, they never liked the responsibilities demanded by the jobs, therefore they use international aid programs as substitute to their responsibilities.

Middle of the week arrives and so does a NEW Open Thread. Here is where YOU detail THEIR bias.

‘The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.’

Douglas Murray in 2016 talks about the way in which free speech has been controlled and censored by the Establishment on the subject of immigration and suggests that mass, uncontrolled immigration is the ‘clearest possible threat to our societies’.…but Merkel and Co don’t want you to know that or if you do know it not to be able to discuss it with other like-minded people or especially not with anyone who might have their eyes ‘opened’ to what is really happening having been gulled by Merkel and Co for so long.

Everything he says applies as much to the BBC as to Merkel…the BBC that sets the tone of the debate and tries to close down the real debate by painting anyone who wants to control immigration as Nazis, of the Far-Right and racists making anyone who has such thoughts self-censor as they are afraid of being labelled a right-wing extremist.

I don’t need to say much at all about this…just cut and paste the blurb for the programme….

John Humphrys was talking to Jeremy Hunt this morning [08:10] about the state of mental health services and we learnt from Humphrys that Reality doesn’t matter, the facts don’t matter, what does matter is perception.  Not really an astounding revelation from the BBC as the BBC has never really dealt in facts.  The problem is of course who creates that Perception.  Unfortunately for the world it is the BBC itself.  And the BBC’s world view?  Entirely at odds with the majority of the country never mind the Tory Party.

A good example is in fact the very subject under discussion, mental health.  The BBC has been campaigning on this issue for a couple of years now, hard not to tune into 5Live and not hear one of the overpaid and underworked employees telling us how terrible the NHS provision is for mental health services ‘since 2010’.  Humphrys tells us demand for such services has skyrocketed…why might that be?  Could it in fact have a great deal to do with the BBC itself telling people they are ill and to head as fast as possible to their GP to demand ‘treatment’ whereas before people might have shrugged it off and gotten through what might well have been a phase….whatever happened to the stiff upper lip?  Not insignificant that ‘Princess Di’ is filling the airwaves again with mawkish, sentimental, self-involved tales.

So quite posssible the BBC itself has played a large part in generating this mental health ‘crisis’….The Tories get no credit despite 1500 more people being seen a day under their rule….they could not have foreseen the sudden massive upsurge in demand when they began cutting services…the massive demand that coincides with the BBC campaign to generate peoples’ awareness of their ‘illness’ and what they should expect to get from the NHS and then to attack the Tories for not dealing with that huge upswing….a perfect storm for the BBC…it generates a crisis and then blames the Tories for it.

The BBC’s answer is always more money…completely disregarding why there is austerity and where all this money will come from….the BBC raising peoples’ expectations and thus putting huge pressure on the government.  The BBC is acting completely irresponsibly and is itself taking part in politics rather than standing back and informing people.

OK, here you go, on time and ready for you to complete with details of egregious bias.

The BBC is the mouthpiece for the immigrant industry that wants to keep the doors to Europe wide open regardless of the consequences….quite possibly with the intent of making those ‘consequences’ happen….the death of ‘White Europe’ and its power and influence which they see as a malign and destructive.

The BBC will admit that most African immigrants are economic, but it ignores that and continues to push for open borders.  It may admit that some immigrants get involved in crime…but of course the criminals are the real victims, forced into their life of crime out of desperation caused by the indifference and neglect of the authorities…never mind no-one [BBC aside] asked the immigrants to come here and that they are completely overwhelming the infrastructure making it impossible to deal with them in any sensible or productive way.

Reading in the Sunday Times today and we have the story of an Afghan migrant.  Now the BBC will tell you he is fleeing violence and the Taliban…but that’s not true…he came to make money…his family, all still alive and well in Afghanistan despite the Taliban, keep asking him for money…but of course he has no job and so is selling himself in the parks to old blokes in cars as he is waiting to be deported….as even Merkel has decided enough is enough and is quietly sending ’em back home…if they have documents.  Oh and look….from Der Spiegel.…

A young, liberal elite has emerged in Kabul, including many women. It is taking a stand against the Taliban’s atrocities in the form of political and artistic initiatives and wants to put an end to Afghanistan’s culture of violence.

Not only not fleeing Afghanistan but fighting the Taliban.  And that is one problem of the migrant crisis encouraged by the BBC….it strips countires of the very people they need to rebuild and develop…the go-getting ones, educated and often already educated and with money…how can these countries grow if they have no skilled people left to make it all work?  The BBC would rather strip them of their nurses and doctors and care workers and entrepreneuers and tell us how good it is for us regardless of the harm it does to these countries and those left behind.

And what of many of those migrants?  We know they often don’t get jobs in Europe but for some life becomes a nightmare as they are ensnared in the criminal underworld.  NGO’s like MSF are essentially helping the criminal gangs traffic migrants to be sold on as prostitutes….

Even the BBC admits the Mafia are involved in the migrant business…however read the article and what is missing?….

Mafia controlled Italy migrant centre, say police

There is no mention in the article that the migrants are being coerced into prostitution on a grand scale as Newsweek tells us…

Police sources told The Times that members of the Vikings—a gang that sprung out of Nigerian universities in the 1980s and demands that members have no criminal record—have collaborated with the local Cosa Nostra, or the Sicilian Mafia in Ballaro, a town in Sicily, and were threatening to expand into the capital Palermo.

The groups have worked together on vice rings involving Nigerian women who have been trafficked to Italy as sex workers. Nigerian women began traveling to Italy in the 1980s to work as fruit pickers but soon turned to sex work, and an estimated 30,000 have since been trafficked from the West African country to work as prostitutes in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, The Guardian reported.

And there is a new development as the group that wants to shut down the trafficking routes, ‘Defend Europe’, are being hounded by Interpol, Italian police, Antifa, Hate Not Hope and other such groups in an attempt to stop them and their work……incredible the effort put in to stop the anti-immigrant movement…shame they don’t put the same effort into stopping the immigrants…can’t be too difficult in reality, they just need the will to do it regardless of what the BBC, Guardian and Hope Not Hate say…

Defend Europe are naturally abhorred by the liberal elite and the left who want open borders and the destruction of Europe, its culture, society and values.  Here is a video about the group but, as with the BBC, the film-maker is coming at this from the perspective that this group is bad news and of the Far-Right regardless of what they say or do….the BBC did a similar film and decided that any talk of controlling immigration had ‘overtones of the concentration camp’ about it as well as ‘ethnic cleansing’ and other dark ‘scary connotations’.…the reality is in fact that the BBC’s extremist immigration propaganda is working towards the ethnic cleansing of white Europeans…those hideously white people the BBC famously dislikes….

When you see stuff like this suggesting white people should all ‘geddit’, ie be attacked or possibly even killed, you have to wonder what will happen when whites are in the minority……many thanks to those in the BBC who think such diversity is so fabulous and cosmopolitan….

Chaos in the White House. We’re destined for a Brexit that keeps us in the EU. Yes, just a few items pushed by the rancid BBC today. Here’s a new Open Thread so please detail the bias here!

Sarah Montague told a complete lie this morning on Today [0810] as she quizzed Brandon Lewis, minister of state for immigration, on what the Tory policy on immigration from the EU would be. Montague kept asserting that the Tory 2017 manifesto stated that they would get migration down to the 10’s of thousands in this parliament….except nowhere in the manifesto did it say that.  The manifesto said that was what this government would work towards but gave no date at which it would be achieved…

A COUNTRY THAT COMES TOGETHER
Controlling immigration
Britain is an open economy and a welcoming society and we will always ensure that
our British businesses can recruit the brightest and best from around the world and
Britain’s world-class universities can attract international students. We also believe that
immigration should be controlled and reduced, because when immigration is too fast
and too high, it is difficult to build a cohesive society.
Thanks to Conservatives in government, there is now more control in the system. The
nature of the immigration we have – more skilled workers and university students,
less abuse and fewer unskilled migrants – better suits the national interest. But with
annual net migration standing at 273,000, immigration to Britain is still too high.

It is our objective to reduce immigration to sustainable levels, by which we mean annual net migration in the tens of thousands, rather than the hundreds of thousands we have seen over the last two decades.
We will, therefore, continue to bear down on immigration from outside the European Union.

We will increase the earnings thresholds for people wishing to sponsor migrants
for family visas. We will toughen the visa requirements for students, to make sure that we
maintain high standards. We will expect students to leave the country at the end of their
course, unless they meet new, higher requirements that allow them to work in Britain
after their studies have concluded. Overseas students will remain in the immigration statistics – in line with international definitions – and within scope of the government’s
policy to reduce annual net migration.
Leaving the European Union means, for the first time in decades, that we will be able
to control immigration from the European Union too. We will therefore establish an
immigration policy that allows us to reduce and control the number of people who come
to Britain from the European Union, while still allowing us to attract the skilled workers
our economy needs.

I’m guessing the BBC is smarting as Corbyn is on the rack for telling porkies about tuition fees and student debt and are now trying to invent a similar ‘scandal’ for the Tories on immigration….gotta have that ‘balance’ in their reporting.

Speaking of ‘balance’ here’s two BBC voices [H/T Craig at Is the BBC biased?…er no according to this] spinning away as you might expect with some interesting asides…no time right now to look at it in depth but you can do that for yourselves….[greatly abridged here]

Impartiality and the BBC – ‘broad balance’ in a two-horse race

There were those, some inside the BBC, who scoffed when we suggested the EU Referendum could be the greatest impartiality challenge the Corporation had ever faced.

There is something about referendums which poses a particular challenge for an impartial news organisation. The single focus on one issue, the passion and the partisanship, the win-or-die mentality of the one-off battle (notwithstanding indyref2) where the polarised arguments become entrenched.

We are never keen on the argument that being attacked by both sides shows you must be getting it right. It’s quite possible to be wrong in two different ways, so we always take such criticisms seriously. In any case, few issues only have two sides, so teetering in the middle of the proverbial see-saw is seldom the right place. After all, the centre is itself a political position in normal politics.

In each referendum (and each election for that matter) the BBC draws up for its programme-makers a specific set of guidelines, which complement and supplement the normal editorial guidelines. With a binary question, such as the EU Referendum, each part of the output had to achieve ‘broad balance’ – a disarmingly bland phrase which actually gives editors the freedom to make judgements rather than be ruled by maths, whilst recognising there had to be an overall similarity and consistency in the levels of coverage for Remain and Leave.

The second key element is that the broad balance must be between the two sides of the argument, not necessarily between the two formally designated campaign groups.

What is the BBC’s duty faced with each campaign’s claims in the context of a referendum? It is not, as some have suggested, to banish some facts, or one of the campaigns, to the outer darkness, a contention usually based on who is making the argument rather than the argument itself. Nor is it to indulge ‘false balance’, that is, to give opposing arguments equivalence whatever the weight of opinion on either side.

The BBC was abundantly clear [lol], for instance, that the overwhelming weight of expert economic and business opinion was advising people to vote Remain. Nonetheless, the BBC should be open to those who may challenge a consensus[very good of them] – not all such conventional opinions stand the test of time, as those many economists who banged the drum for the Euro or who failed to anticipate the financial crash might now attest. Different voices must be heard from time to time, though not necessarily given the same weight or exposure.

The BBC’s job is to enable the debate; it is to interrogate, to challenge, to contextualise and to analyse the claims made on each side. Being a platform for the democratic argument, allowing the two sides to engage directly, is a fundamental purpose of our political coverage, offering the opportunity to cross-examine each other’s claims.

Nor did the BBC shirk its responsibility to analyse the competing claims of both sides. Extensive use was made of Reality Check, the BBC’s fact-checking brand, in TV news bulletins, as well as online. Voters could find out whether it was true £350m a week could be repatriated to the UK if it left the EU. And there too the assumptions and statistical underpinnings of the Remain side’s claims about the future were dissected and laid bare. The notion that these claims were not scrutinised is simply untrue. Where claims were misleading or wrong, the BBC called it.[sorry that’s completely untrue….the BBC’s fact-checking of Remain claims were entirely free of hard fact]

The BBC’s contribution followed the Referendum Guidelines about how to achieve due impartiality and a broad balance between the Referendum arguments; the evidence suggests, by and large, it succeeded, with no substantive complaints from either campaign. Before future elections or referendums, the guidelines will be looked at afresh, but then they always are, because that is precisely the requirement of judging the ‘due’ in ‘due impartiality’.

An example of the BBC’s ‘reality check’ on Remain….such as Osborne’s £4300 hit on families if we leave the EU…

Reality Check verdict: The precise figure is questionable and probably not particularly helpful. If you want to be influenced by economic modelling, the useful thing to take away is that the Treasury thinks leaving the EU would be bad for the economy, by an amount that would dwarf the savings from not having to contribute to the EU Budget.

So may not be a precisely accurate figure but just be assured that leaving the EU would cost you vastly more than staying in…..pretty much an Osborne/Treasury propaganda piece.

Never mind that the NAO has told us that the Treasury forecast [Osborne generated black propaganda] was based upon erroneous assumptions…..

Treasury’s assumptions on Brexit were wrong, says watchdog

The Treasury’s dire Project Fear warnings about Brexit were based on a series of assumptions that have proved wrong, according to a government watchdog.

The National Audit Office (NAO) has highlighted the flaws in the predictions produced by the department in the run-up to the EU referendum.

Under the direction of then-Chancellor George Osborne, the Treasury published a series of papers predicting economic meltdown in the wake of a vote to leave the bloc.

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.

On R4 this evening they were asking:

Why is there still a migrant crisis in Europe?

Well part of the problem is organisations like the BBC that do their best to encourage these people to try their luck.  The BBC is partly responsible for their deaths as they traverse the varied dangers of the routes from the traffickers themselves to desert, war zones and overladen, unseaworthy boats.

The programme tells us these are nearly all economic migrants, most of whom are in fact not poor but the relatively well off and educated…so we are stripping developing countries of the very people they need to succeed and to grow as they head to Europe not for sanctuary but merely for a better life…ie more money.  They do so because it has been made clear to them that once in Europe they will be able to stay there regardless of their actual status and that they will not be sent back or stopped at the borders.

With NGO’s acting as taxi services for the people traffickers [and so many of the women ending up as unwilling prostitutes] and the BBC sending out film crews to make tear-jerking sentimental, guilt-trip films about the migrants and always ready to condemn anyone who seeks to control the flow of migrants as inhumane and lacking compassion is there any wonder there is still a migrant crisis and an endless flow of people thinking they will get a warm welcome, a job or weelfare, housing, schooling and health services on tap because that is what they are lead to believe.

It is remarkable that the BBC can admit so many truths such as that these are economic migrants and have no claim to asylum in Europe and indeed that many end up in a dire state once they get to Europe and yet they still propagate the message that they are ‘desperate’ migrants in need of sanctuary…..without mentioning the huge pressures such migrants put on infrastructure and the fabric of society itself…leading eventually to instability, conflict and breakdown.

It is what Orwell called ‘Doublethink’…the ability to believe in their own lies when knowing them to be lies…

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word—doublethink—involved the use of doublethink.

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them… To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

Polish news is less untruthful…..