Category Archives: BBC bias

The BBC has belatedly jumped on the bandwagon and has moved to claim the story about the rape and abuse of so many white girls in Rochdale and Rotherham as its own…after having ignored, downplayed and misreported it for so long.  It has produced a docudrama on events in Rochdale detailing what happened to some girls there and how it was allowed to go on for so long….the Telegraph acclaims the BBC’s programme…

As an act of bearing witness, it was, however, a sterling example of public service broadcasting.

Really?  Where was the BBC when the abuse was actually happening and they knew about it?  Must leave a sour taste in the girls’ mouths as they see the BBC reaping rewards for all their suffering that was for so long ignored with themselves dismissed as white trash.

I heard this comment from a presenter on Woman’s Hour the other day as she discussed the programme with those involved in it…

‘If this makes you angry wait until you see the programme.’

From the BBC which was one of the organisations that turned a blind eye to the real time abuse as it happened and only now is coming out pointing fingers…not at itself of course.

We also had Laura Kuenssberg making an interesting comment about Labour’s re-nationalisation of utilities….

The spending to buy back these companies is apparently not like any other government spending and debt….why?  Because…er…we then have an ‘asset’ that we’ve bought….and so it’s a positive on our national balance sheet.

I’m sure Corbyn was very grateful for that piece of propaganda…but it’s only an asset if we think we might want to sell it in future, not likely under Comrade Corbyn.

Second it’s just like any other debt, it’s got to be paid back and any other spending by government also creates ‘assets’…if the government borrows to build a bridge, or schools or hospitals we have the buildings as ‘assets’….they still have to be paid for though.

Absurd comment from Kuenssberg that seemed intent on helping make the case for nationalisation.

What else have we got?

Oh yes…Brexit was the BBC’s goto bête noire to blame any economic downturn on whilst also claiming immigration was great for the economy and vital for employers.

Curious then that on the Today show we had Remain’s favourite BBC journo, Kamal Ahmed, tell us that the economy is in meltdown with a consumer squeeze as pay is cut and inflation rises.  Ahmed tells us it is the government’s fault for not creating the right atmosphere where ‘work pays’.  Also companies are, get this, too reliant on low paid, low skill workers and are not investing to boost productivity and hence pay.

Yep…low skill and low paid workers keep wages down and are used by businesses so that they don’t have to invest in new technology and upskilling their workforce.

So the BBC is now admitting immigration has held back the British economy, stalling productivity and keeping wages low.

And it blames the government, during an election.  Funny how a new BBC narrative pops up when needed, as suits its political agenda.  The BBC quite happy to sacrifice the immigrants for a couple of weeks if it can damage the Tories by trying to blame them for the economy.  Normal service will return after the election.

Did note the BBC trying to blame the government at first for the NHS computer crash, with Marr trying to suggest ‘deaths’ will be the result.  They had to reel back on this line as expert after expert, and many NHS insiders, said it was down to the NHS Trusts themselves…90% of hospitals being OK indicated that it was failure on the part of individual organisations not to update and secure their PCs rather than government cuts as the BBC initially tried to suggest…along with Labour.

Also of interest, Buzzfeed told the BBC that there is not a problem with ‘fake news’ in the UK…presumably Buzzfeed did not examine the BBC’s output especially concerning fake news…which the BBC insists is the world’s biggest problem and we must crack down hard on it….the BBC appointing itself judge and jury as to what is fake news.

The BBC has also been filling the airwaves with the voice of US General Hayden as he attacks Trump….without telling us he is a known enemy of Trump and who previously stated that he thought Trump was unfit for Office.

Is Trump working for Russia or is it the media organisations like the Washington Post, amongst others?

US politics is in chaos, the democratic system under attack internally, talk of impeaching the President, and an economy sent reeling.

Just who is damaging America…just who is it that is causing the chaos that Putin could only ever have dreamt of in his wildest dreams?  Just who is it that has sent the US stock market tumbling as they destabilises the political system and send out the message that they are intent on bringing down the government and at the very least will upend and block the legislative process?

Just who is doing Putin’s work?  The Washington Post, New York Times and the BBC.

The left-wing media…supporters of democracy, free speech and progressive politics…or the useful idiots of dictators?

Can Donald Trump Be Trusted With State Secrets?

He has the legal right to blurt out classified information, but his ignorance, vanity and foolishness endanger the nation.

New York Times.

The real question is…can the New York Times, the Washington Post and the BBC be trusted not to blurt out classified information in their foolish ignorance, vanity and arrogance?   An irony that the traitor, Bradley Manning, has been released early from prison [due to Obama] and he is the hero, along with Snowden, of these organisations…. Snowden quite probably a Russian spy….they both did enormous damage to Western intelligence and security and put lives at risk…but the BBC et al cheer them on.  Clearly they cannot be trusted.  And now they work to undermine the US President, US democracy and it seems the economy.

The Left-wing media like to chuckle that Trump gets his intel from Fox News….nothing wrong with that you may think.  However as the anti-Trump Washington Post and New York Times run an orchestrated campaign, along with Obama stay-behinds still in Office, to derail Trump by claiming he revealed top secret, sensitive information about an ISIS bomb plot relating to laptops on aircraft, we might consider where Trump might have got his information…was it Fox News or was it the New York Times which on March 21 2017 published this detailed report…

Devices Banned on Flights From 10 Countries Over ISIS Fears

Intelligence showing that the Islamic State is developing a bomb hidden in portable electronics spurred the United States and Britain on Tuesday to bar passengers from airports in a total of 10 Muslim-majority countries from carrying laptop computers, iPads and other devices larger than a cellphone aboard direct inbound flights, two senior American counterterrorism officials said.

Two additional American officials said the explosives were designed to be hidden in laptop batteries. All four spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to publicly discuss the sensitive information.

So the NYT is leaked fairly precise information about a bomb plot and it is such sensitive info that the sources want to stay hidden and yet the Washington Post, NYT, BBC et al are making headlines out of the fact that Trump discussed information with the Russians in the presence of his intelligence and security team who all deny it was in any way sensitive or inappropriate to reveal…the same information the NYT has published months before….and the NYT goes on, as it tries to hunt down Trump, to actually publish the name of the country that provided the intel…Israel supposedly….if the name was so sensitive how come they publish it?  And how did they and the WP get to know the name…because the anti-Trump leakers told them…..so these concerned officials [one strangely an ex-official..so how does he know what was said in the meeting] were so worried that the source of the intel might be compromised they told the NYT and the WP who it was?  Really?

How is it the NYT can publish such sensitive information that, the WP is keen to tell us, the Russians must be able to ‘backwards engineer’ in order to identify sources and methods and thus compromise the origin of the intel…as the WP and NYT claim Trump has done?…and yet Trump is legally able to do that just supposing he had…bet the NYT isn’t.

Not a lot of thought and analysis going on when this story is being reported…the BBC has not bothered at all with informed and considered comment and reporting…it has just cut and  pasted the WP and NYT’s tripe almost verbatim reporting it as fact.  Talk about fake news.

The real story here is who runs the country…is it an elected President or the left-wing media working in cahoots with shadowy spooks?

Katty Kay was on the radio a short while ago sniggering about Putin’s offer to provide a transcript of the meeting with Trump, she went on to say that Putin will be looking in and enjoying the chaos he is causing in America and Europe.  She also opined that Trump is blaming the Media as all politicians do…but of course the Media isn’t to blame…just doing its job she thinks.

Well..really?  Lets look at Kay herself who has just made a claim that Putin is causing chaos in America and Europe….but she has absolutely no evidence for that.  Then there’s the WP and NYT, and the BBC on their coat-tails, inventing stories about Trump in order to damage his credibility and authority….they are causing chaos politically and economically as the markets fall due to these almost certainly fabricatedand exaggerated tales….and who knows how many Americans, Trump supporters, would react if the Left-wing media forced Trump out of Office.

 If I was Trump I’d be hunting down the Washington Post, the New York Times and the those who leaked the story to them and prosecute them every inch of the way.  Lock ’em up.

 And as for upsetting Israel…hmmm….where to start with the Muslim loving Obama who made a deal that would help Iran get the nuclear bomb [we all know that’s going to happen]…

The Obama administration faced its share of accusations that it leaked sensitive Israeli intelligence or military operations.

In November 2013, Israeli officials were reportedly furious at the Obama White House for confirming the Israeli Air Force was behind a strike on a Syrian military base. Israeli policy is not to confirm strikes carried out beyond its borders.

The Times of Israel reported at the time:

Israel’s Channel 10 TV on Friday night quoted Israeli officials branding the American leak as “scandalous.” For Israel’s ally to be acting in this way was “unthinkable,” the officials were quoted as saying.

A second TV report, on Israel’s Channel 2, said the leak “came directly from the White House,” and noted that “this is not the first time” that the administration has compromised Israel by leaking information on such Israeli Air Force raids on Syrian targets.

It said some previous leaks were believed to have come from the Pentagon, and that consideration had been given at one point to establishing a panel to investigate the sources.

In 2012, Israel suspected the Obama administration had leaked information to prevent the Jewish state from striking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

ABC News reported at the time:

The first report in Foreign Policy quotes anonymous American officials saying that Israel has been given access to airbases by Iran’s northern neighbor Azerbaijan from which Israel could launch air strikes or at least drones and search and rescue aircraft.

The second report from Bloomberg, based on a leaked congressional report, said that Iran’s nuclear facilities are so dispersed that it is “unclear what the ultimate effect of a strike would be…” A strike could delay Iran as little as six months, a former official told the researchers.

“It seems like a big campaign to prevent Israel from attacking,” analyst Yoel Guzansky at the Institute for National Security Studies told ABC News. “I think the [Obama] administration is really worried Jerusalem will attack and attack soon. They’re trying hard to prevent it in so many ways.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypKbVHwB-CA

Check out the BBC video…it claims Trump ‘inexplicably’ told the Russians the source of the intelligence….even the Washington Post has not claimed that….claiming only that it was the nature of the intel that could have revealed sources and methods…but offers no proof of course as to what was said….

“Our story says that the nature of the information provided would have allowed the Russians to ‘reverse engineer’ to discover the sources and methods. He said so much that they could figure it out.”

A while back we posted this comment on the BBC’s interpretation of what Trump meant when he said he had the right to share information with the Russians…

The BBC implies Trump’s assertion of his right to share facts with the Russians as an indication of guilt whereas of course all it indicates is that he shared facts about the terrorist threat….it says zilch about what those facts were or their security classification…

The BBC has suddenly added this qualification to their report in an update….

Mr Trump tweeted: “As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety.

“Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against [IS] & terrorism.”

It is not clear if Mr Trump was acknowledging having shared intelligence secrets with the Russian officials, thus contradicting White House statements, or whether he was simply trying to explain what had been discussed.

So now not so sure he was admitting guilt….BBC is so eager to trash Trump they don’t get the facts right first time…happy to peddle anti-Trump fake news just to spin an aura of incompetence and recklessness around his Presidency.

Previous version of the BBC report here on Newssniffer.

The previous version…

In his tweet early on Tuesday, Mr Trump said: “As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety.

“Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against [IS] & terrorism.”    

A report in the Washington Post said Mr Trump had confided top secret information relating to an IS plot thought to centre on the use of laptop computers on aircraft.   

How is it that the BBC opts to paint this as a negative for Brexit negotiations whilst everyone else, the Remain backing FT included, interpret it as a positive for Britain?

Listening to the radio in the car and I hear from the BBC that a recent ECJ ruling concerning an EU-Singapore trade deal means that any deal between the UK and the EU will need ratification by all EU member states and many regional parliaments as well….this will of course, the BBC tells us, be bad for Brexit and will mean we are mired in negotiations for years.

Thought I’d check…just because….here’s the BBC web report…

An EU-Singapore free trade deal cannot take effect fully unless parliaments in all 28 member states approve it, the EU’s top court has decided.

The legal opinion at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) could delay progress towards a UK free trade deal with the EU during the Brexit negotiations.

Indirect “portfolio” investments and commercial arbitration are issues that need national approval, the ruling said.

The verdict makes it more likely that any UK-EU free trade deal will have to be ratified by national and regional parliaments in the EU.

Note that last line…because it is rubbish, false, fake.

The FT tells us…

The Institute of Directors, one of Britain’s leading business organisations, welcomed the decision. “This ruling will probably make it easier for the EU to conclude trade deals without fear of as many hold-ups from national and sub-national legislatures,” said Allie Renison, head of EU and trade policy.

Er…isn’t that the exact opposite of what the BBC is peddling?

And as for all states and parliaments having to ratify…only two issues would need that….

In its widely awaited decision, the ECJ ruled that the EU had exclusive competence in all but two aspects of the Singapore agreement. Only for issues in those two areas — portfolio investments and a dispute-settlement regime for investments — would a deal require unanimous backing by member states.

The Telegraph reports…

Boost for Brexit free trade deal chances after landmark EU court ruling

Britain’s ambition to sign a quick Free Trade Agreement with the European Union after Brexit has received a significant boost after a landmark ruling by the European Court of Justice handed expanded trade negotiation powers to Brussels.

The much-anticipated decision from the court in Luxembourg surprised experts by ruling that on key areas – including financial services and transport – the European Union does not need to seek ratification of a trade deal by the EU’s 38 national and local parliaments.

Trade experts said the ECJ ruling could substantially reduce the risk of any future EU-UK free trade agreement getting bogged down in the EU national parliaments, opening the way for an FTA to be agreed by a qualified majority vote of EU member states.

“The Court of justice says all services – even transport – can be ratified by a qualified majority vote, which is potentially quite a big opening for the UK,” said Steve Peers, professor of EU law at Essex University. “It could certainly make things easier.”

Never, ever, take the BBC’s word for anything.

The BBC went out of its way to hunt down Leave voters who may be having doubts, all part of the Remain spin campaign to suggest Brexit was ‘stolen’ by people who didn’t undertsand what they were voting for and when they found out regretted it….except that’s baloney…the truth is it is Remain voters who have turned and expect Brexit to be implemented in due course as efficiently as possible…but oddly you don’t see the BBC rushing to report and highlight this story..

New poll suggests more than two thirds of people ‘now support Brexit’

A total of 68 per cent of respondents would like to see Britain withdraw from the EU, the latest YouGov figures show. 

Some 45 per cent said they were Eurosceptics, while 22 per cent said they wanted the Government to ignore June’s election result. 

A total of 23 per cent – described as “Re-Leavers” – said that they voted Remain last year, but now believe the government has a duty to carry out the will of the British people.

Nor is there a rush to report this…a report that tells of a Democrat insider leaking DNC emails….just why would the BBC not want to make that well known?  Could it be because it might just sow seeds of doubt about just who hacked the DNC’s and Clinton’s emails?…….

Seth Rich, Murdered DNC Staffer, ‘Leaked Thousands of Internal Emails to WikiLeaks’

Murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich “leaked thousands of internal [DNC] emails to WikiLeaks” and that the FBI is in possession of their correspondence.

Oddly whilst not wanting to promote any story that might be a positive for Trump the BBC is still pumping out what is at present completely unfounded claims, from a paper that is infamously anti-Trump, as fact.  The BBC have doubled up on their previous claims last night and have backed them up with absolutely no evidence but just a lot more speculation..otherwise known as gossip.

The BBC implies Trump’s assertion of his right to share facts with the Russians as an indication of guilt whereas of course all it indicates is that he shared facts about the terrorist threat….it says zilch about what those facts were or their security classification…

Trump defends ‘absolute right’ to share ‘facts’ with Russia

The BBC links two items together suggesting an association…

In his tweet early on Tuesday, Mr Trump said: “As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety.

“Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against [IS] & terrorism.”

A report in the Washington Post said Mr Trump had confided top secret information relating to an IS plot thought to centre on the use of laptop computers on aircraft.

Mr Trump’s move is not illegal, as the US president has the authority to declassify information.

Nice touch that last line….suggesting he did ‘declassify’ sensitive information that perhaps he shouldn’t have.

How about this…

The BBC’s Anthony Zurcher in Washington says this was a carefully constructed defence of the meeting, in which President Trump frames any revelation of intelligence information as a calculated move to advance US national security priorities.

A ‘carefully constructed defence’?  LOL…he just tweeted what happened….Zurcher is the one trying to construct a case against Trump implying that Trump is guilty but trying to get out if it by his ‘carefully constructed defence‘….and of course the meeting would have been precisely to advance US national security priorities…Zurcher frames this as if it was merely some kind of excuse by Trump when it was very obviously the background to the meeting.

Then once again we get the BBC’s conviction that Trump is guilty…

What happened in the Oval Office?

The intelligence disclosed came from a US ally and was considered too sensitive to share with other US allies, the paper reported.

Others at the meeting realised the mistake and scrambled to “contain the damage” by informing the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA), says the Post.

The Washington Post carefully constructs its own defence as it acknowledges it is reporting junk news…

“Our story says that the nature of the information provided would have allowed the Russians to ‘reverse engineer’ to discover the sources and methods. He said so much that they could figure it out.”

Hmmm…that could apply to absolutely any intel….as said in previous post everyone knew that laptops were to be banned on aircraft….Trump told the Russkies exactly that according to his staff….we could work out why and that this must be due to intelligence received…and that must have come from inside ISIS….if the Press knew then how is it suddenly a security breach to reveal the same limited intel to the Russians who could have read it on the BBC website?

Zurcher knows this story is junk…..he admits it is political…

After all, the controversy that swirled around the White House on Monday night was never legal, it was political.

And yet he still reports it as if the claims are true.

The BBC have even called up the old fraud Frank Gardner to add his weight to the claims…where is his evidence that anyone called the NSA and the CIA after the meeting and if they did, where’s the evidence of what they talked about?  Perhaps, and most likely, it was a courtesy call to update them on a meeting that the President had just had with the Russians….something the CIA and NSA would want to be kept up-to-date with.

Gardner has no evidence at all and yet talks as if this is all fact…but note the careful get-out word…’reportedly’…

Golden rule: Frank Gardner, BBC security correspondent

Despite the denials issued by the White House that any actual intelligence sources were revealed to the Russians, whatever was said in that Oval Office meeting was enough to alarm certain officials and, reportedly, to alert the CIA and NSA.

They in turn will have needed to warn the country that supplied the intelligence. There is a golden rule in the world of espionage that when one government supplies intelligence to another it must not be passed on to a third party without permission of the original supplier. The reason is simple: it could put the lives of their human informants at risk.

So despite there being absolutely no evidence that Trump compromised any intelligence or that anyone contacted the CIA or the NSA to ‘alert’ them to the ‘danger’ the BBC is reporting this as fact with a few weasel get-out words that they can point to if challenged about their peddling of politically motivated gossip as news.

This is a mud flinging exercise on a grand scale intended to discredit Trump, paint him as reckless, dangerous and untrustworthy with intelligence and high office…labelling him as unfit to be in Office…the BBC doesn’t care about the truth, it just flings the mud and knows that whatever the truth is that mud will stick and will add to all the other slurs they chuck at Trump in the hope that the American people will say enough is enough.

The BBC is hoping for, and working to engineer, regime change.  So very Russian nyet?

Yesterday, on the same day- I had meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the FM of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin.#LetsMakePeace! pic.twitter.com/SPiIrJqI6G

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2017

The Left-Wing media weaponises fake news to attack Trump and the BBC is a willing ally.

The BBC reports a Washington Post ‘fake news’ story that Trump revealed secret intelligence to the Russians as real…never mind that the Post is radically opposed to Trump and is doing everything in its power to bring him down….and never mind the statements from those at the meeting, that this story is so much bunkum, that the BBC reports but subsequently completely ignores…

Trump ‘shared classified information with Russia’

President Donald Trump revealed highly classified information about so-called Islamic State (IS) to Russia’s foreign minister, officials have told US media.

The information came from a partner of the US which had not given the US permission to share it with Russia, says the Washington Post.

It happened when Mr Trump met Sergei Lavrov in the Oval Office last week, says the paper.

But a senior security official has said the report is not true.

“This story is false,” said Dina Powell, deputy national security adviser for strategy, who was in the meeting. “The president only discussed the common threats that both countries faced.”

Mr Trump’s National Security Advisor, Gen HR McMaster, also said the story was false.

So people who were present at the meeting say this story is completely false….in response the BBC reports that the Washington Post says…

The Washington Post, which broke the story, said the McMaster statement did not amount to a denial of their story.

Really?   lotta lotta laughs.

The BBC is sure it happened despite the statements from those present…

What actually happened?

In a conversation with the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, in the Oval Office, the president revealed details that could lead to the exposure of a source of information, officials told the Washington Post and the New York Times.

The discussion was about an IS plot and the intelligence disclosed came from a US ally, information considered too sensitive to share with other US allies, the papers report.

Others present realised the mistake and scrambled to “contain the damage” by informing the CIA and the National Security Agency, says the Post.

But did it ‘actually happen’?  Those who were there say not…so why does the BBC claim it did happen?  Because it’s yet more mud to fling at the enemy, mud which they hope will stick if they keep flinging enough…

The fallout from this story could be enormous and not just because there is a boundless trove of Republican quotes over the past year – directed at Mrs Clinton – about the utmost importance of protecting top-secret information.

There is the Russian connection, of course.

Then there is the question of whether US allies will be more reluctant to share sensitive intelligence information with the US, lest the president put sources at risk.

This will only stoke accusations by Trump critics that the president is undisciplined and inexperienced in the delicacies of foreign policy, where his shoot-from-the hip style presents an ongoing danger.

The Washington Post tells us that it knows of the details in the intel…

The Post is withholding most plot details, including the name of the city, at the urging of officials who warned that revealing them would jeopardize important intelligence capabilities.

So its ‘source’ revealed this supposedly top secret intel to the Washington Post whilst spinning a tale that claims that Trump revealed it to the Russians?  Oh and never mind that this ‘source’ is trying to undermine the President of the US whilst working for him…attacking US democracy and the electoral system….so Russian huh?  And yet the Post is happy to collude in this treachery.

And what was the intel about?  The Telegraph says it was about a laptop plot to bomb a aircraft….

 So is this just more anti-Trump spin taking a real fact and re-inventing it as an alternate, anti-Trump, fact?

Consider that the US and UK recently announced they wanted to ban laptops from aircraft….kind of suggests they had intel of a plot and that the plot was about laptops.  I could be wrong in that intepretation…lol.  So you and I know, with no help from Trump, that there is probably an ISIS plot to bomb an aircraft.  There must be a source for that intel.  A source inside ISIS. [Sssshhhh…don’t tell the Russians]

The story of the ban was in the newspapers…and on the BBC…

US and UK ban cabin laptops on some inbound flights

And again just a few days ago…

US to discuss with EU possible laptop ban on flights

So is the BBC in collusion with the Russkies, is the BBC’s reckless loose-lips handing top secret intel to the Russians?

Or is there in fact no ‘secret’ to this and the threat was discussed by Trump with the Russians as Powell and McMaster state without revealing any sensitive information?

So why is the BBC claiming beyond doubt that it did happen based on a story from a famously anti-Trump paper?

Not as if the anti-Trump brigade aren’t prepared to perjure themselves…..

The Democrats should be ashamed. This is a disgrace!#DrainTheSwamp pic.twitter.com/UfbKEECm2V

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2017

OK folks, it’s a new week but the BBC won’t stop the daily output of fake news, deceits and half truths. DETAIL the bias here…

Michael Fallon was quizzed by Marr on Army numbers, Marr saying a promise in the 2015 manifesto to keep regular army numbers above 82,000 has been broken…the BBC’s Reality Check agrees….

The Ministry of Defence publishes monthly figures for the size of the armed forces, the most recent of which are for March this year.

It has fallen gradually in the two years since then, so that it now stands at 78,432.

The actual pledge from the manifesto was: “We will maintain the size of the regular armed services and not reduce the army to below 82,000.”

But is that true?  The BBC seem very selective in their choice of figures…The MOD report quoted by the BBC actually says…..

As at 1 March 2017, the Tri-Service Full-time Trained Strength was 142,720. A Service breakdown is shown below in Table 3. Comparisons prior to October 2016 are not available for the Army because it is not possible to identify a split between Phase 1 and Phase 2 training prior to that.

Don’t know about you but a figure of 82,390 is higher than 82,000….isn’t it?

Or another figure from the same MOD publication…bearing in mind there are differences in how regulars are categorised in these reports…as to phase of training and trades and the inclusion of reservists who work and are contracted as regulars….

So again a figure for the regular army of more than 82,000….83,310 in fact…..

The BBC has chosen to quote this figure alone, 78,430……which is the figure only for fully trade trained soldiers…there are raw recruits, then those who have qualified as soldiers and then those who go on to do their specialist trade training….the figure here is of that last unique group and does not include those with no trade training and those still in basic training……

As at 1 March 2017, the FTTS (RN/RM & RAF) and FTTTS (Army) is 138,760, a decrease of 1.3 per cent (1,800 personnel) since 1 March 2016. Of this, the FTTS for the RN/RM is 29,480 , 30,850 for the RAF and the FTTTS [full time trade trained service]  is 78,430 for the Army.

The BBC has not taken into account the regular recruits still in training, trade or basic, and just uses the one figure that suits them to ‘prove’ the Tories failed to deliver on their manifesto and inteprets the manifesto comment in a similar vein.

The BBC’s fact check is deliberately misleading not making clear the differences between trained, trade trained and those in training and not including the figures for the total number of regulars including those still in training.

It tells us that….

  [The Army strength] currently stands at nearly 78,500 so that pledge has been broken.

Fake news.