Here you go, I am catching up on the blog and here’s a new Open Thread for you!

I am aware of some comments made in recent times on other threads which are offensive to any balanced person. I have banned those who made them and erased the comments. It’s impossible for me to police every comment on every thread but let me spell it out; This is a place for polite debate, and I won’t tolerate vicious ad hominem if I am made aware of it. I am naturally open-minded and respect views that contradict mine BUT the credibility of this site will not be compromised. I trust that is clear to all and I thank all of you who respect this on a daily basis.

The people against the elite.

One of the reasons put forward for people not to vote for Brexit was that it could result in the disintegration of the EU as other countries would likely follow and demand a referendum for themselves.

Now isn’t that interesting?  Many people, the majority in most countries, would ask for a referendum on the EU and the likes of Cameron, and the Eurocrats who wish to stay in charge unelected though they are, want to deny that chance to all those Europeans.

Talk about an out of touch elite that arrogantly ignores the People, talk about a democratic deficit, talk about EU ‘fascism’….just not on the BBC….that other ‘out of touch’ elite.

From the Financial Times:

Brexit vote set to fuel more referendums

Britain’s referendum is widely expected to trigger a domino effect of similar votes on EU membership, with a significant majority of French and Italian voters wanting to take the issue to the ballot box.

An Ipsos poll in nine leading EU states found that almost half of people thought that next month’s Brexit vote posed a risk of contagion. In Germany, Italy, Sweden and Hungary, more than 50 per cent of voters agreed that other countries would follow Britain’s lead, if it voted to quit the 28-member bloc.

The poll also found that 58 per cent of Italians and 55 per cent of the French already wanted their own referendums on EU membership, regardless of the result on June 23.

 The potential repercussions of Brexit are a subject of intense concern for European officials, who fear that Britain’s departure would only exacerbate the increasingly acrimonious disunity witnessed during the eurozone and migration crises.

Also of note…whilst all of Dave’s chums and those with a vested interest in keeping the EU club going everyday folk in other countries aren’t so pessimistic…or rather don’t indulge in the scaremongering about the economy…

While 51 per cent feared a British departure would harm the EU economy, only 36 per cent thought that it would hobble Britain’s economy.

Only 26 per cent of Americans and Australians surveyed thought that Brexit would damage the UK economy.

To gauge the effect of a potential Brexit on Britain’s international standing, the pollsters also conducted surveys in Canada, the US, Australia, India and South Africa. A clear majority of respondents in those countries said that the UK’s departure from the EU would make no difference to diplomatic relations.

 

So vote ‘stay’ if you want to keep the unelected in power and to enable them to keep filling their bank accounts with Euro plunder and to keep their hands on the reins of power which they can use to crush all dissent.

The Grand EU Project must go on!

Or

Britain ‘could liberate Europe again’ by voting for Brexit and sparking populist revolution

Britain could “liberate Europe” for a second time in a century by voting for Brexit on June 23, triggering a “patriotic spring” across the continent and an outpouring of populist discontent against Brussels, Geert Wilders, the right-wing Dutch populist, has claimed.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Wilders – a fiercely nationalist, anti-Islamic politician whose Party for Freedom is currently topping the polls in the Netherlands – said that the populist  “genie was now out of the bottle”, and could never be put back in.

“Like in the 1940’s, once again Britain could help liberate Europe from another totalitarian monster, this time called ‘Brussels’. Again, we could be saved by the British,” he said in his heavily fortified office in The Hague where an oil painting Winston Churchill and a Telegraph front page of Margaret Thatcher hang on the walls.

If people see that a country can leave, and the lights do not go out, there is not a war, and a country does not go bankrupt, but even flourishes. If Britain proves that this theory can become a reality, it would have an enormous effect.”

Not sure the BBC will be reporting enthusiastically on that subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfpeiH0uDF8

Labour’s Hugh Gaitskell in October 1962, predicted the truth five decades ago….

‘Of course, the Tories have been indulging in their usual double-talk. When they go to Brussels they show the greatest enthusiasm for political union.

‘When they speak in the House of Commons they are most anxious to aver that there is no commitment whatever to any political union.’

Shouldn’t the BBC be making far more of these statements whenever Osborne or Cameron make their apocalyptic claims?….

Reform EU or Britain quits – George Osborne lays down ultimatum

George Osborne will today deliver a stark warning to Britain’s European partners that the UK will leave the EU unless it embarks on whole-scale economic and political reform.

British PM Cameron lays out terms, warns Britain could still leave EU

Britain would “think again” over its EU membership if no deal is reached.

What of all those warnings from the IMF and the Bank Of England’s Mark Carney and the Treasury?

The Treasury is of course George Osborne’s own plaything…hardly likely to put out statements that the Boss doesn’t approve of…if Osborne wanted to Brexit you can be assured that the Treasury would parrot that line…its ‘analysis’, as the BBC likes to call it, would say whatever Osborne wanted it to say.

What about the Canadian Carney?  He is Osborne’s boy...hand-picked by him to take over the Bank of England..

Osborne personally rang leading City journalists to sell the appointment of the first foreigner to be picked to lead the Bank of England since its foundation in 1694….It is a susceptibility to hero worship that led Osborne to become the first western finance minister to back the appointment of the elegant former French finance minister Christine Lagarde as managing director of the International Monetary Fund in 2011.

And…from the lefty Huffington Post…

Labour MP Slams Mark Carney As George Osborne’s ‘Hand-Picked’ Bank Of England Governor

And the Lefty Guardian…

George Osborne got Mark Carney – at the cost of his principles

And the head of the IMF?  George Osborne backed her not once, but twice to lead the IMF….in 2011

George Osborne backs Christine Lagarde to lead IMF

And in January this year, 2016…

George Osborne backs Christine Lagarde for second term at IMF

Osborne’s backing for Lagarde in 2011 was considered a major coup by her supporters along with the support from German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble.

Carney and Lagarde owe Osborne and have paid him off handsomely in their support for the remain camp.  Obama’s support comes from a USA that has always backed a single Europe and has secretly funded and backed it from the start….in its own interest.

The BBC is quick to mention that Boris once supported Turkey’s accession into the EU (he is after all descended from Turks) and are not shy about repeating that…not so quick or insistent to tell us that Cameron and Osborne told us we could leave the EU if negotiations for reform didn’t go well (and they didn’t) and that many of the Remain supporters owe Osborne so much.

Any wonder that people suggest this referendum is rigged and will lack legitimacy on a stay vote?  The BBC though seems entirely unconcerned about pressing the issue of Cameron rigging the referendum.

Interesting to see several ‘right-wing’ commentators suggest that the BBC is giving us a balanced view of the EU referendum…and yet it’s just not true.  Certainly there have been many debates and interviews that give the suggestion of balance but comparing them the Remain camp gets an easy ride and the underlying tone of the BBC narrative is pro-Remain…very uncritical of Remain’s claims…such as Brexit will cause a new world war, that Brexit is based on the racist hatred of foreigners or that the economy will plunge off a cliff on Brexit…where is the ‘Reality Check’ on the latest ‘Treasury’ claims?  The BBC pushes those claims as fact…the language used is intended to make them sound credible and authoritative…the ‘treasury analysis’ sounds scientific rather than the obedient regurgitation of the Treasury’s boss’s (ie Osborne) words and Osborne ‘warns’ rather than ‘claims’…altogether more dramatic and intense than a mere ‘claim’.

Charles Moore in the Telegraph suggests that the BBC white paper, or is that the white flag from the government?, was part of a deal, the quid pro quo being the BBC’s unstinting support for the pro-EU side…not sure that’s a good deal as such a stance from the BBC was pretty much guaranteed anyway.  He notes the BBC’s complete lack of interest in the leaked letter that reveals the collusion between Big Business and No10 on the pro-EU campaign….such collusion the right-on BBC would normally be desperate to expose….such as when Murdoch was supposed to be in cahoots with the politicians.  Not now though.

The BBC is though far more rigorous with the Out camp’s claims….such as on the NHS or immigration.  On the Today show we had Nick Robinson exploring the issues (08:08)…he starts off with some voices telling us that the Brexit camp’s claims about Turkey are racist, unrealistic and offensive.  No voices telling us how accurate the concerns really are.  In fact what we got was the BBC’s Chris Morris giving us a very aggressive, anti-Brexit campaign lecture on the ‘facts’ telling us that the claim that there are 76 million Turks is wrong, there are 79 million…the Out camp must check its facts.  Well, a minor point and hardly one of great importance but let’s check the facts with…the BBC…from May this year…

• Population 74.5 million

Well, it’s not 76 million, but then again the BBC isn’t stating the correct figure of 79 million itself.  Maybe the BBC should check its facts and get its story right Chris.  Morris is stridently trying to imply the Out camp cannot be trusted and is a ramshackle shambles unable to check facts….therefore presumably we must conclude the same about the BBC..and that Morris is biased.

Morris went on to tell us in no uncertain terms that Turkey will never be allowed to join the EU….accept of course the way is being paved and the politicians like Cameron would be more than happy to open the door regardless of what the population of Europe thinks….and regardless of which with visa free travel Turkey may just come to Europe anyway….by the train, car and plane load regardless of what the official status of Turkey is….and in 2014 ‘The UK Foreign Office says it expects Turkey to be ready for membership “in a decade or so”.’

Robinson links it all to the Far Right and suggests that Turkey wouldn’t want to be in  Europe alongside Marie Le Pen…that’s a Turkey ruled by an Islamist dictator involved in violently suppressing the Kurds, who is accused of killing and locking up journalists and who has locked down the country so that any opposition to him his stamped ruthlessly out.  Yes, I can see he wouldn’t feel at home in a fascist Europe run by supposed extremists.

Robinson goes on to imply that the Brexit campaign is in fact empowering said extremists (as the BBC sees them) because it whips up a distrust of politicians and the supposed pillars of society….not something the BBC could ever be accused of as it cheerleads Islamist terrorism, the likes of Corbyn and his cabal of communists, the anti-Establishment Occupy and various anti-Establishment groups such as Cage and Stop the War.

So if we Brexit it is all a Far-Right plot and we’ll get fascism and war across Europe once again.   The BBC is great isn’t it as it totally ignores the rise of the extreme left and the Islamists?…well, not ignore, the BBC, as said, cheerleads for them whilst ignoring any threat from them to a stable, wealthy and peaceful society.

The likelihood is that Turkey will be allowed to join the EU eventually and that the conditions supposedy imposed will be ignored or met to a minimal standard deemed to be ‘acceptable’ and good enough for the politicians to claim they have been met.  Even if this takes a decade it is still an important part of the discussion on the EU…10 years flies by and then what?  We have a massive Muslim country that will have a big influence over how Europe is run and will have a large Muslim population already in place inside Europe to leverage that influence.  There are legitimate concerns over how a Christian, democratic, liberal and progressive Europe will be effected by such a large and influential Muslim population that is rapidly increasing now…in 10 years that may be massively larger due to immigration, not least from Turkey, and a higher Muslim birthrate combined with a very aggressive Islamist lobby that is not averse to using the threat of violence combined with claims of Muslims being victimised to press their own political advantage.

The BBC refuses to contemplate such things preferring instead to suggest, in line with Cameorn and Co, that Brexit will lead to societal collapse and war due to the rise of Fascism.

Balanced coverage?  Hardly.

The BBC continues its long drawn out sneer at those on the political right as John Sergeant on Saturday dismissed Boris (leader of the Out campaign) as a ‘joke’…a joke who won two elections for the Mayor of London in what is essentially a Labour city…not to mention being voted in as an MP.  Some joke.

John Pienaar declared Trump was ‘the problem’ on Sunday  (39 mins) and when told Trump was ‘practical and focussed on the moment’ (and temperamentally much like JFK, Reagan and LBJ…so not the irrational ‘nut job’ the BBC like to portray him as) Pienaar suggested for some reason that ‘you could say the same about a professional assassin’.  Why on earth would you come up with such a comparison unless you were determined to just malign Trump?  Pienaar made sceptical sounds throughout the piece and knew he was doing so as he had to say ‘of course I have no opinion’….before telling us Trump insulted the ‘whole Muslim world’ and that he was ‘the best opponent Clinton could hope for’.   Hmm…apparently Trump leads the polls for the Presidency….so perhaps Pienaar is wrong….just as he was about Miliband ‘leading the political narrative’...

It’s not the headline, and it takes 219 words to get there, but a new Washington Post poll on the presidential race reveals that Republican Donald Trump leads Democrat Hillary Clinton among registered voters 46 percent to 44 percent.

Earlier in the week on the Today programme we had Mishal Husain urging the young voters to get out and vote telling us they will be an important influence in the EU referendum…being more likely to vote to stay in the EU.. she then mentioned the ex-pats who have fled the UK for sunnier climes and who are also likely to vote to stay, given the chance, to stay in the EU…though Husain hesitated and didn’t admit that…as it might seem too much like a pro-EU broadcast….just as the government launches its own campaign to get the same demographic to vote….knowing they are likely to be pro-EU.

Funnily enough the BBC is giving a lot of airtime to Labour man Eddie Izzard who is right now touring the country to get the young to vote…for the EU.  Izzard was on Marr and on Pienaar’s politics…so a double dose of him on Sunday…and no doubt elsewhere on the BBC as well.  Pienaar made no challenge to many of his claims about the benefits of the EU nor his claim that the Out campaign was extremist, racist and based on the hatred of immigrants.

Izzard describes himself as a radical moderate who seems to want a dictatorship…once a leader is elected he must be obeyed and his message strictly adhered to without debate.  Oddly this ‘new politician’ who wants to break the mould speaks the speak and comes up with the usual dodges when challenged..and to be fair to Pienaar he at least questioned Izzard’s one-man state.

Back to John Sergeant and it is interesting to see how fact and political commentator part company as he describes his part in Margaret Thatcher’s downfall.  On Saturday he related his dinner party tale (1min 50) of how Thatcher made him look a fool…telling us that he didn’t hear Peter Sissons’ warning that Thatcher was behind him…but looking at the video Sergeant has already turned around to see her approaching before we hear the warning from Sissons.  Sergeant tells us that the group coming towards him were shouting ‘where is the microphone’ and that they were pushing and shoving and that Bernard Ingham hit him.  Sergeant was baffled he tells us…because he had the microphone, despite the fact that there were the serried ranks of the world’s Press next to him and that he wanted a BBC exclusive.  He claimed that Thatcher knew nothing of the plan to talk to all the journalists…implying that there was plan to talk solely to him….evidence of that?  None.  He tells us Thatcher said she’d go on to the second ballot and then she ‘swept out’.

Well it’s a good dinner party story but as with most such stories it has been embellished and made more exciting in the telling over the years with Sergeant at the centre of things.  The truth is somewhat different as the video actually shows.  Sergeant knew Thatcher was coming out before Sissons warned him, there was no shouting. Ingham did ask ‘where is the microphone’ because there was an ‘official’ microphone on a stand that Thatcher was meant to speak into.  An official did gently move Sergeant aside but only because Sergeant was in the way of that microphone being positioned and Ingham did not ‘hit’ Sergeant merely moving his arm holding his microphone in the way of the official microphone.  Thatcher was quite amiable and did not make a ‘terse’ statement that she would take part in a second ballot before ‘sweeping out‘…she remained to answer several questions….there was no ‘fighting’ as Sergeant suggests.  All in all a very different and less exciting story than the one spun by Sergeant…see for yourself (3:10)…

The Marr Show was remarkably biased in favour of the EU this morning. Did you see it? Dreadful. New open thread.

Just as Lord Haw Haw betrayed Britain in favour of Hitler’s European dream it looks like the BBC’s Lord Hall Hall has similarly sold Britain down the river and betrayed the British people in favour of the EU empire as he looks to have stitiched up a deal with Cameron and the Remain campaign.

It looks more and more as if the BBC has done a deal with the government.  In return for a white paper on the BBC’s future that far from being radical and reforming in fact reinforced the BBC’s grip on the media world and allowed it to escape scot-free from any censure or control of its bias the BBC has taken to pumping out unalloyed pro-EU, anti-Brexit propaganda with unashamed regularity.

The BBC’s attacks on Boris Johnson, leader of the out campaign, have been ramped up substantially and little effort is made to explore the issues raised by the Brexit camp in any meaningful way….what for example will be the consequences of staying in the EU when the inevitable ever-closer union and the prospect of being forced into the Euro arise?  That is a major question, possibly the only one that counts, and yet the BBC ducks that awkward question all too often…and where is the BBC’s ‘shocked’ reporting on the stitch-up between Big Business and the Government to promote the Remain campaign….the same companies that are angling for big government contracts?

The BBC has consistently tried to dodge those issues, first by preferring to talk about the splits in the Brexit camp and the different groups pushing the same message.  Marr when interviewing Boris desperately tried to avoid talkng about Europe.  Then the BBC dismisses Boris Johnson’s part in the campaign as a mere stunt intended to put him in line for leadership of the Tory Party and that he doesn’t really want to Brexit and then they claim he is a racist (for quoting the Guardian’s opinion on Obama) and finally (at least up till now) they label him as some lunatic spouting on about Hitler….despite the fact he did not make a comparison between Hitler and the EU, merely saying they both aimed for a single authority over Europe that history proves will never work….he also mentioned in the same breath, the Romans and Napoleon….the BBC ignored that and headlined with ‘Hitler’.

The BBC continues the hatchet job today as it gives the patrician and arrogant Tory wet, Michael Heseltine, the top headline on the Frontpage…

Johnson ‘losing judgement’ – Heseltine

Why does the BBC lead with that insult when it is obviously a very subjective and partisan view from someone who is an ardent pro-EU fanatic?  It’s not news, it’s pure propaganda and the BBC is trumpeting it from the rooftops.

What does Heseltine have to say about Cameron’s wild claims about Brexit causing a third world war, or that Putin and ISIS would be cheerleading for Brexit, or the fact that Cameron only a couple of months ago was threatening to leave the EU himself if he didn’t get his substantial reforms (which he did not…in fact he surrendered to the EU, giving up more than he got in return)?

Laura Kuenssberg has always tried to push the ‘Boris wants to be leader’ line and claims he is being dishonest about his motives…on what proof?  None.  This is the BBC making stuff up.  Lying.  Boris has always been sceptical about the EU.

Kuenssberg doesn’t give us analysis, she merely relays Heseltine’s words to us as if they were fact…

This criticism will sting because even though Boris Johnson insists it is not the case, many of his Tory colleagues believe his calculation to join the Out campaign was entirely because he wants to be the next leader of his party.

For Lord Heseltine, who of course had similar ambitions but was thwarted in the end, to suggest his decision and subsequent behaviour will in fact kill his chances will really hurt.

That’s not journalism, that’s just gossip…and what about his ‘subsequent behaviour’?  Kuenssberg casually insinuates  that this behaviour is somehow wrong…and yet Boris has said and done nothing that any normal person without a vested interest in getting a Remain vote in the bag would suggest was wrong or incorrect….and indeed both the Guardian and the BBC have said exactly the same things in the past…and yet now, somehow, they are taboo.  Funny that.  Indeed in the programme mentioned below the BBC claims that a bloodthirsty Christian crusade into Eastern Euope was designed to create a united Europe…..is the BBC claiming that the EU is similar to a bloodthirsty crusade just as it claims Boris said the EU’s aims for a single Europe were somehow like Hitler’s?

The BBC treated us to the final part of its less than subtle pro-EU superstate programme, Europeans…the roots of identity…..

What’s really shaped Europeans’ identity? Historian Margaret MacMillan visits Estonia, exploring how a tiny Estonian nation has dramatised the question of where exactly Europe is…… And she’ll see how new kinds of history – through DNA analysis for example – are revealing why Europeans are such an extraordinary mix of languages, cultures, and migrations.

A blatant attempt to make you believe that there has always been a ‘common European identity’…not just geographic or say a loose one based upon Christianity but an actual pan -European identity that made us virtually into one big state…along with some pro-multiculturalism and migration patter…complete bollocks of course….and a complete misuse of licence fee payers’ money, used as it is to peddle a very one-sided view of history in order to promote the EU and the Remain campaign.

Lord Hall Hall is putting on a show for his political masters.  They are certainly getting their white paper’s worth.  Bet the BBC are glad they kept Whittingdale’s dalliances with a drug addicted prostitute under wraps for so long….such tact has paid off handsomely.

Whilst the BBC has consistently attacked Donald Trump for his idea that there should be some control over which Muslims can be allowed into the US until it is worked out who poses a threat, and yesterday the BBC repeatedly quoted Cameron’s insults towards Trump on this subject (Cameron has a habit of being arrogant and sneering towards those he disagrees with, and whilst normally the BBC would rise up in horror at such ‘Flashman’ behaviour from the Eton educated hooray henry it show no sign of that here…nor when Cameron mocked Farage’s name at PMQs…imagine if he’d said the same about a Muslim).

The BBC (The very diverse and sensitive to others’ culture and lifestyle BBC) however hasn’t even bothered to report this so far…

Muslim states block 11 LGBT groups from attending UN Aids meeting

A group of 51 Muslim states has blocked 11 gay and transgender organizations from attending a high-level meeting at the United Nations next month on ending Aids, sparking a protest by the US, Canada and the EU.

Egypt wrote to the president of the 193-member general assembly on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to object to the participation of the 11 groups. It did not give a reason in the letter, which Reuters has seen.

Samantha Power, US ambassador to the UN, wrote to the general assembly president, Mogens Lykketoft, and said the groups appeared to have been blocked for involvement in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy.

“Given that transgender people are 49 times more likely to be living with HIV than the general population, their exclusion from the high-level meeting will only impede global progress in combating the HIV/Aids pandemic,” Power wrote.

I’m sure the BBC are working in the story right now, just making sure they’ve got the facts right…or is it yet again another example of BBC ‘reporting’ where hiding Muslim intolerance trumps all other groups in the BBC pecking order?  Although Gays or Blacks are on the BBC ‘protected list’ their interests are always subject to being over-ridden by Muslim concerns.  Muslims can essentially be as racist or violent or intolerant as they like and get a free pass from the BBC…even if the victims are black or gay….Christians are of course way, way down the list….and don’t even mention Israelis.

I wonder what the new, Muslim, Emir of London has to say about this issue at the UN.  He had an awful lot to say about Trump…and yet nothing so far on this….then again his Twitter feed only became full of jolly pictures of him at synagogues and churches when he was on the election stump so can we really expect him to be genuinely concerned about such things…his Trump theatrics are just that…designed to get the cheap headlines and some ‘street-cred’ with the extremsists he knocks about with so often…in his role as ‘hooman rights lawyer’ of course…or is that a lawyer who uses human right’s legislation to his own advantage rather than to defend ‘human rights’ per se?  The latter I suspect….just how many white, non-Muslim, non ‘extremist’, human rights cases has he taken on?