David Dimbleby presents this week’s show from Liverpool. The panellists are: UKIP MEP for North West England Louise Bours, Conservative MP for Esher and Walton, Dominic Raab; Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell, Guardian columnist Zoe Williams and former England footballer Jermaine Jenas. No MP for any of the Merseyside parliamentary constituencies will appear, for reasons unknown.
Kick off tomorrow (Thursday) at 22.45
Just listening (on Today 08:44) to yet another Frank Gardner attack on Saudi Arabia….bet the Saudis wish they had paid off Gardner with the £1 million that they said they would pay him for his injuries received in a terrorist attack. Not saying it colours his reportage about Saudi but Frank’s a little bit bitter.
Apparently Britain and the US is responsible for the war in Yemen because we supply arms to Saudi Arabia…and of course the usual BBC narrative….this will lead to radicalisation of the ‘youth’…..regardless of whether the bombs hit targets by accident or not says Gardner. So war is bad whatever for Gardner. Hmmm….so why is there a war in Yemen fighting and who started it? Gardner of course doesn’t bother to give context or reasons just a condemnation of Saudi Arabia and the usual BBC pro-Jihadi narrative of angry, besieged Muslims, victims of the West.
Why doesn’t Frank mention in the same report that Iran has been supplying and encouraging the anti-government insurgency in Yemen…ie inciting the war?…
UN: Iran arming Houthi rebels in Yemen since 2009
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — Iran has been shipping weapons to Yemen’s Houthi rebels since at least 2009, according to a confidential UN report, indicating that Tehran’s support dates back to the early years of the Shiite militia’s insurgency.
Iran’s involvement in Yemen goes back years, and ranges from political and religious support for Houthi leaders to military training and active involvement in the fighting, according to media reports and Yemen analysts.
“There is a well-documented history of (Iranian) support for the Houthi, including in various State Department reports — money, weapons — support for a very long time,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters Monday.
There probably wouldn’t be a war in Yemen if it wasn’t for Iran instigating it.
Curious how the BBC totally ignored the state sponsored terror in Iran where the male population of a village was killed by the government just recently…
Iran executed all adult men in one village for drug offences, official reveals
The entire adult male population of a village in southern Iran has been executed for drug offences, according to Iran’s vice-president for women and family affairs.
Of course its not just drug dealers being killed off but gay people and very young women who don’t conform to the Islamic modesty rules.
BBC? Not really interested…..and not really interested in the wars Iran sponsors, certainly not interested in condemning Iran in the same harsh tones it uses to malign Saudi Arabia….wars such as the genocidal one against Israel carried out by Iran’s proxies….those wars that some BBC journalists cheerlead with their support for Hamas….and of course Iran’s support for Assad in Syria.
The BBC adopts a campaigning anti-Saudi tone that it doesn’t use when reporting on Iran. Why? The BBC has always had a soft spot for Iran and sees it as a victim of Western aggression and believes that Iran’s own aggressive actions are merely the inevitable and justified responses to that Western interference in its affairs.
Gardner’s report didn’t seem to have a point other than to blame the UK and US for the war…he told us that the Saudis denied deliberately targeting hospitals but then he said you get a rather different view on the ground….but all we heard was that billboards all over the north of Yemen were telling the local population that it was Western bombs killing them…..who put up those billboards and why? Gardner doesn’t think that’s important. And of course he came up with no proof or any of those ‘facts on the ground’ that indicate the Saudis deliberately target hospitals.
Gardner amusingly told us that he was advising(unasked) the Saudi government on their war….I’m sure their really interested.
Full of his own importance….and other stuff.
I wonder if the BBC thinks that supporting the government position on the EU referendum will make the government look kindly upon the BBC when the Charter Renewal is finally decided? Has Lord Hall Hall got an agreement with Cameron?
No, of course not, the independent and impartial BBC would never stoop so low.
The BBC may interview some who support Brexit but it is becoming more and more obvious that the weight of the BBC coverage is favouring the pro-EU side.
There is little attempt from what I have heard to balance out the debate and provide voices from both sides on certain issues.
When Gove said the ECJ could override the agreement Cameron signed up to the BBC misquoted what he said claiming that he said the agreement was not legally binding at any time….but that wasn’t what he said…this is…
“The facts are that the European court of justice is not bound by this agreement until treaties are changed and we don’t know when that will be. I do think it’s important that people also realise that the European court of justice stands above every nation state, and ultimately it will decide on the basis of the treaties and this deal is not yet in the treaties.”
Not binding until the treaties are changed to incorporate it. And of course the ECJ is a political body that serves the European Union and makes its judgements with that in mind…in the interests of the European Union.
The BBC on the Today programme brought in Dominic Grieve to give us his legal opinon…but he is, as he admitted, an ardent supporter of the EU and in fact was a loud voice urging Cameron to sign up to the agreement he that did. Hardly the voice of impartiality that was needed.
Today I just heard Pienaar give us his opinion on whether the referendum debate is civil or not….apparently it is all Boris Johnson’s fault for calling the PM’s claims ‘Balderdash’…no mention of Cameron’s attacks on the Brexiteers or his rigging of the referendum by trying to gag them and with-hold information from them.
Then we had a clip of the Norwegian PM telling us how awful life was outside the EU…she really wanted to join because you know what, Norway just didn’t have any sovereignty.
The BBC is now playing that clip on the news as if it is a truthful and impartial voice in the debate. What the BBC doesn’t tell us is that the Norwegian politicians have been constantly trying to sign up Norway to more and more EU legislation by the backdoor behind the population’s back…..do we trust Cameron and Co not to do exactly the same?
Why doesn’t the BBC quote other voices from Norway when the vast majority of the Norwegian population are against further integration?…
David Cameron this week said that Britain should not seek to emulate Norway by putting itself outside the European Union. In fact, Norway is happy and free outside. If anything, we would like an even looser relationship with the EU.
The opposition to EU membership in Norway is stronger than ever. The main arguments for staying out are retaining our sovereignty and the democratic deficit of the EU.
Trouble is we’ve been here before with the BBC and its less than honest protrayal of the Norwegian position.Let’s just remind ourselves, and the BBC, what the Norwegian position really is….it co-operates closely with the EU and has a great deal of say in its workings….
Norway and the EU
Norway and the EU enjoy good and close relations, although Norway is not a member of the European Union. The Agreement on the European Economic Area (EEA) is the mainstay of our cooperation, and it ensures that Norway takes part in the EU internal market. We are also part of the Schengen Agreement and cooperate with the EU on foreign and security policy issues.
Through the EEA Agreement, the three EFTA states Norway, Iceland and Liechten-stein are equal partners in the EU internal market, on the same terms as the EU member states. Moreover, the Agreement also covers cooperation in other important areas such as research and development, education, social policy, the environment, consumer protection, tourism and culture. It also enables the three EEA EFTA states to participate in various EU programmes. Norway also participates in the activities of a number of EU agencies through provisions in the EEA Agreement or on the basis of bilateral agreements.
Let’s look at what they have opted out of.…all the politics of the EU including the human rights…note the rules for the single market are 90% global and would be followed anyway, in or out of the EU…..
I think the BBC has given up any real pretence of impartiality and its journalists are now slipping in the pro stuff because it comes so naturally to them, they just can’t help themselves, they don’t even notice it.
When it’s not being used to spread Project Fear, BBC Radio 4 likes to relax by continually expressing its disgust at the success of Donald Trump and this morning was no exception. The BBC just cannot understand how a man like Trump – with his “awful” views – has had such a successful SuperTuesday! I can’t wait for him to become President, just as the UK exist the EU. It will bring on the collective collapse of the rancid BBC.
Here you go, a new Open Thread to welcome the middle of the week! Detail the bias here please!
Always amusing how much effort the BBC puts into avoiding mentioning or downplaying immigration and its effects.
Just why did the BBC decide to frame Macedonia’s actions in protecting itself against the attempt by mostly young, male Muslims to invade Macedonia using brute force as something Macedonia had to ‘defend’….Macedonia doesn’t have to ‘defend’ its actions, it has to defend its, and Europe’s, borders against vast numbers of people who have no intention of integrating and who will in the course of time demand that their families be let in and that they be allowed to practice their religion as they see fit.
Back in Blighty yesterday the world was looking at the shortage of school places.
The BBC’s report tells us what the problem is…
With a population bulge about to hit secondary schools, councils want powers to open new maintained schools and to compel academies to expand.
The population bulge which has put primary schools under pressure will start hitting secondary schools this year, according to official figures.
And that’s it…no talk of immigration or anything connected to it just that euphemistic ‘population bulge’.
The BBC in a What the Papers Say article report the Sun saying…
“One in six schools are full”, is the headline in the Sun, which says the “classroom crisis” is set to worsen because of “Britain’s immigration-fuelled population boom”. In its leader column, the paper says “overcrowded classrooms and the challenges of accommodating myriad different languages will nobble attempts to drive up standards”.
And the Mail saying…
The Daily Mail agrees, saying the number of children who are “non-native speakers soared by nearly 400% from 51,955 to 190,506 in seven years, stretching teachers’ time”.
Rather selective choice of Mail quote as the Mail’s main headline was…
British children ‘neglected’ as migrant pupil numbers soar with 1.2 million children in school whose first language is not English
Then scroll down to the video of Author Matthew Green and Jenni Russell of the Times reviewing the front pages and you will get an EU love-in where they find the arguments for the EU ‘quite convincing’.
What’s also remarkable is that the BBC, other than to show the page itself, doesn’t discuss the Mail’s front page which looks at Blair and the Iraq War …a very sore subject with the BBC…we’ve mentioned this a few days ago when the Mail had Blair’s secret plot to import millions of immigrants on its front page and the BBC ignored that…..I’m guessing the BBC ignore this because it would link to the story on immigration…and then they would have to explain why they didn’t expose Blair at the time of his plot and when Andrew Neather blew the doors off it all and revealed everything….
Look at the selected quotes the BBC plucked from the Mail yesterday….
The Daily Mail agrees, saying the number of children who are “non-native speakers soared by nearly 400% from 51,955 to 190,506 in seven years, stretching teachers’ time”.
The Daily Mail says it has been a “disastrous year for some charities”, with interventions from the prime minister and a committee of MPs, the latter warning charities “are now looking at their ‘last chance’ to put their own house in order”.
The Daily Mail adds a disclaimer to what might otherwise appear to be a good-news story, that while people were “significantly happier at 69”, this was “despite most of them developing chronic diseases such as arthritis, diabetes and high blood pressure”.
Daily Mail – Back to uni on helicopters, private jets and in flash cars: Rich Kids of London show off their favourite transport as they ‘sneer at peasants outside Primark’ and clean their shoes with £50 notes
The Daily Mail reports the hedgehog population was thought to be about 36 million strong in the 1950s, but has declined to less than a million since 2003.
And what about this….
‘Eye-catching headlines’
What would be that ‘eye-catching headline’?…..one about the BBC…
Now the good news: we’re all in the BBC survivors’ club – the Daily Mail reports on how seasoned BBC hacks Frank Gardner, Andrew Marr, Nick Robinson and George Alagiah formed the Survivors’ Club, having been through serious illness or injury.
Incredible that the actual headline story plastered across the frontpage of the Mail is not even mentioned….not a peep about Iraq. It’s almost as if the BBC doesn’t want you to read the book on Blair and his betrayal of the British people….which the BBC silently consented to.
After all the years Paul Mason worked for the BBC has the Tory Party just woken up to the fact he is somewhat left of left? Just why did the ‘impartial’ BBC employ him when he was so obviously way off any norm?
“The fact that the Labour Party is now getting its advice from Yanis Varoufakis and the revolutionary Marxist broadcaster Paul Mason does not suggest to me that they’ve got an answer to economic security. Presumably they chose those two because Chairman Mao was dead and Mickey Mouse was busy.”
Business Insider have unearthed a 1987 ITN clip of a dashing Paul Mason handing out the Workers’ Power newspaper and talking about “building revolutionary politics within the Labour Party”. Workers’ Power were a militant Trotskyist entryist group which infiltrated Labour in the eighties when Mason was working as a music teacher – his economics is all self-taught. The same year Mason was distributing their material, they published a pamphlet commemorating the Russian revolution and praising Lenin. It has taken nearly thirty years to achieve his entryist ambitions, now finally Labour’s Shadow Chancellor has signed him up to help with Labour’s economic policy…
It seems the BBC has shut up shop, it has burnt itself out reporting so enthusiastically about the letter (written by No10) from a group of businessmen cheerleading for the EU and another from some military types who hold the same views.
Odd, if we are supposed to vaue the opinions of such people, that the BBC ignores views from similarly statuesque figures on the Brexit side of things…such as the ex-Governor of the Bank of England whose opinion on the EU seemed to be of absolutely no interest to the BBC at all despite making the somewhat important judgement that the Eurozone is doomed.
Today we have Maj Gen Julian Thompson who expresses yet more critical thinking about the value of the EU…and again no sign of any BBC interest in his views… the one about Obama being a lameduck president no doubted grated somewhat…
Today, membership of the EU weakens our national defence in very dangerous times. Why? Clear-sighted understanding is obscured by four common myths.
Myth One is that the EU has kept the peace in Europe since 1945.
Myth Two is that the Americans want us to stay in the EU.
Myth Three is that if Britain takes back control of her own destiny it will help Putin.
Myth Four is that the EU helps us defeat Islamist terrorism.
Finally, some say: “stay in to rescue others as the EU founders.” I say we’ll do that better from a seaworthy lifeboat than shackled to a sinking deck.
I know from my lifetime’s experience in the service of my country that delusions about what actually keeps us safe, threaten us all. So let us put an end for good to these myths about the EU helping security. The facts show the very opposite.
Both Mervyn King and Julian Thompson have important things to say, things that undermine ‘Project Fear’ and give support to Brexit…..and yet the BBC doesn’t give them the prominence it gives to the voices of Project Fear, if any coverage at all.
Here you go, a new Open Thread to start the week and end the month! BBC bias bothering you? Detail it here please.
Jude Law’s security team was attacked and mugged by migrants when the cameras stopped after the Hollywood star left the jungle camp in Calais
Security guards hired to protect Jude Law when he visited the ‘Jungle’ migrant camp were reportedly targeted by rock-pelting migrants just moments after the actor boarded the coach home.
But moments after the celebrities had boarded the production team coach back to Britain, their security team was ambushed, according to the Sunday People.
The attackers reportedly hurled stones at the men before stealing their mobile phones.
A source told the newspaper: ‘We were shocked to see some of the migrants acting like football hooligans. The security team had stones thrown at them and two had phones smashed and stolen.’
Let ’em all in…they can squat at Jude’s place…places…or Mark Easton’s.
A nice gaff in Malibu or how about the £14 million one in Highgate?……
