Category Archives: BBC bias

Time for a new open thread! Here’s where you detail the bias! The floor is yours…

The ardent pro-mass immigration, open borders lobby, and that includes the BBC, live inside a delusional bubble in which the real world, and the consequences of their actions, don’t penetrate in the slightest.

On Monday Marr and three other lobbyists teamed up against the lone Daniel Hannan as they pressed for unrestricted immigration without regard to what is happening in the world around them.  Steep rises in all sorts of crimes, anti-Semitism, European towns and cities where it is unsafe to walk the streets, attacks on migrant women and children by male migrants (Studiously ignored of course by the Left unlike attacks on migrants by racist groups)…and that’s not even venturing down the road of cultural differences due to religious affiliation.

These people just don’t seem to understand, or don’t care, that Europe is being torn apart by the incursion of millions of foreigners who have little intention of integrating least of all of reforming Islam and abiding by the cultural norms and practises of the countries they go to exploit.

Norman Tebbit spells it out…

These are dangerous days for Western civilisation

We must make a choice: close our frontiers to those unwilling to respect cultural values or admit as many migrants as are delivered

There is a choice to be made. One way is to close our frontiers to those who are unwilling to respect or share our cultural values which spring from our Judeo-Christian inheritance. The other is to admit as many migrants as the people smugglers deliver to our frontiers in the hope that they will adopt our culture and values, knowing that if they did not, we would have to adopt theirs, or risk sinking into a struggle between irreconcilably divided communities.

Even the lefty Der Spiegel admits the migrants are causing chaos and are using or liberal attitudes against us…

Has the German State Lost Control?

It is the clash of two cultures: A constitutional state that emphasizes de-escalation, integration and the empathetic re-socialization of young offenders; and immigrants from authoritarian societies who misunderstand the approach and take advantage of the fact that they, even if they break the law, are neither deported nor toughly punished.

The consequence is that, in some places, law and order is restricted, or doesn’t exist at all. Like in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. Or in troubled city quarters in Frankfurt and Berlin during the entire year.

The state has accepted its own impotence, and it was perhaps possible to accept so long as tens of thousands of asylum-seekers weren’t entering the country every year. But now Germany is facing an enormous task: that of absorbing and integrating hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of refugees. It is a challenge that can only be met if Germany once again begins to consistently enforce its rules.

Being a left wing paper it likes to try and put the blame upon the police, or rather the lack of police and the failure to resource them sufficiently….but in the square in Cologne there were over 100 police officers..more than sufficient you might think for a normal crowd….who would have expected the events that did happen?

However in doing so the paper admits that the real problem is migration itself, migration of people with little intention of conforming to societies rules and norms….and that Germany has lost control….due to its liberal, progressive attitudes towards the migrants.

Who will take control is the question…the government or will it be left to the People to police the streets themselves with all that that leads to…..all out conflict.

Still, Marr and his crowd are happy fiddling whilst Rome burns and Swedes (ironically immigrants themselves once) say Sweden is no longer safe, and 10 year old boys are raped repeatedly.

Con Coughlin in the Telegraph examines the dangers of the Liberal’s open door, look-away approach as ISIS use the migration crisis to inflitrate its terrorist cohorts into Europe….

Isil is actively using the migrant routes to dispatch scores of highly trained terrorists throughout Europe with detailed instructions on how to carry out atrocities on a similar scale to the mass attacks carried out in Paris last November, which claimed 130 innocent lives.

The skilful exploitation of migrant routes by jihadi terror cells will certainly add to the pressure on EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and his aides who, despite months of warnings that the refugee influx would seriously jeopardise European security, have failed miserably to appreciate the scale of threat.

Rather than trying to improve checks made on the backgrounds of those seeking refuge, EU officials have preferred the easier option of lecturing member states on why they need to accept ever-larger migrant quotas.

The result is that European politicians now find themselves overwhelmed by a wealth of security and social concerns .

Curiously the BBC seems less than interested in the reports of terrorist inflitration via the immigrant routes.

We import far more from the EU than we export to them…who needs who?

The Today programme ran two interviews, one each with a pro and anti EU group.  Justin Webb did both interviews, the pro-EU managed to bag the apparently prime 08:10 spot on Monday and the antis got 07:50 on Tuesday.

Perhaps the barrage of criticism the BBC received for the highly inaccurate/dishonest programmes by Jonty Bloom and the subsequent attention on their EU coverage meant that Webb was given a heads up on how to deal with these interviews in a balanced and impartial manner for the interview with Lord Rose from the ‘in’ campaign (08:10) was highly critical of the campaign’s propaganda and Webb did his job as well as anyone could expect.

In contrast the interview with Jon Moyniham from VoteLeave (07:50) was a mixed bag and rather uninspiring, a let down for either side in the debate.  Webb seemed more interested in trivial matters and off-thread themes than keeping to the attack.

Moyniham said that we don’t have a say in how any money the EU generously returns to us is spent…Webb made the odd counter that ‘We know how it is spent’….which wasn’t Moyniham’s point at all….that being, we want a say in how it is spent.

Similarly Webb went off on a tangent and alluded that Moyniham’s policy was to  cut spending on agriculture as if Moyniham himself would have that say.  Moyniham of course would not be in government, he is only part of the Brexit campaign….as he pointed out it would not be his job to make the decision, the important thing was that it was the British government that did make it and not the EU….a difference that Webb couldn’t seem to grasp.

On trade with the EU Webb preferred to say that 50% of our exports (later he corrected that to 45%) went to the EU and 10% of the EU’s exports came to us…he could of course have said that 53% of our imports came from the EU…a different emphasis and it shows how statistics can be used to change a narrative.

Webb insisted on mentioning that although we give a large contribution to the EU we get some back, what he didn’t mention was the cost of all the EU regulations imposed upon our businesses which amount to £33 bn a year apparently.

From a government briefing paper:

Various studies have attempted to quantify the benefit or cost to the UK of its membership of the EU. This is a very difficult exercise and depends on a wide range of assumptions. Estimates vary significantly. For example, a 2005 study by the Institute for Economic Affairs found a cost of between 3% and 4% of GDP while a 2013 study by the CBI found a net benefit of between 4% and 5% of GDP. A 2015 study by Open Europe found that the cost of the 100 most burdensome EU regulations was £33.3 billion a year.

Webb ended on a duff note about the campaign group itself and whether or not it would join forces with other Brexit groups which seemed more a weak attack on the Vote.

David Keighley notes the links the BBC has to pro-EU groups such as the CBI…

In effect, a Radio 4 programme broadcast on Thursday [by Jonty Bloom] was a clear declaration that the Corporation will be actively campaigning to amplify such messages – especially those about the single market.

Perhaps there is no surprise in this – after all an ex-BBC strategy chief, Carolyn Fairbairn, is now director-general of the fanatically Europhile Confederation of British Industry and  has been declaring her referendum plans to the Guardian; and Sir Roger Carr, a former president of the CBI, is now deputy chairman of the BBC Trustees. The Corporation is so steeped in the importance of Brussels that it cannot see or think outside that bubble.

At what point, however, does biased BBC reporting tip over into being deliberately untrue?

The most important point from these interviews is the claim that we would be shut out of European markets….just how likely is that?

The EU bloc is massive…,..

How large is the EU Economy?

Since its formation in 1993, the European Union¹ (EU) has become larger than any individual economy in the world, with its GDP surpassing the USA’s in 2003, for the first time since 1998, as shown in Figure 1. Despite this, the EU’s share of global GDP has fallen from 30% in 1993 to 24% in 2013. This is because growth in non-EU economies has outpaced growth of EU economies, mainly driven by strong growth in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies.

But would it lock the UK, the 5th largest economy in the world and an important trade partner with the EU, out of its markets?  Hardly seems likely when it is committed to open markets and free trade……import tariffs very low or zero…..

The EU benefits from being one of the most open economies in the world and remains committed to free trade.

• The average applied tariff for goods imported into the EU is very low. More than 70% of imports enter the EU at zero or reduced tariffs.

• The EU’s services markets are highly open and we have arguably the most open investment regime in the world.

• The EU has not reacted to the crisis by closing markets. However some the EU’s trading partners have not been so restrained as the EU has highlighted in the Trade and Investment Barriers Report and the report on protectionism.

• In fact the EU has retained its capacity to conclude and implement trade agreements. The recent Free Trade Agreements with South Korea and with Singapore are examples of this and the EU has an ambitious agenda of trade agreements in the pipeline.

And to re-emphasise that….. the EU is only 10% of world demand….there is a whole wide world of opportunity out there…..and the EU is very keen to make deals with non-EU trade partners……

Over the next ten to 15 years, 90% of world demand will be generated outside Europe. That is why it is a key priority for the EU to tap into this growth potential by opening up market opportunities for European businesses abroad. One way of ensuring this is through negotiating agreements with our key partners.

As tariffs are relatively low in world trade today, trade barriers lie behind the customs borders: hence the EU aims to conclude Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements (DCFTA) that, on top of removing tariffs, also open up markets on services, investment, public procurement and include regulatory issues.

If the EU was to complete all its current free trade talks tomorrow, it could add 2.2% to the EU’s GDP or €275 billion. This is equivalent to adding a country as big as Austria or Denmark to the EU economy. In terms of employment, these agreements could generate 2.2 million new jobs or an additional 1% of the EU total workforce.

Highly unlikely that the UK will be locked out of that.

Fascinated to know what we import from Antarctica (£2,771) and North Korea (£1,654,042)

Whilst some MPs exploit fabricated stories of asylum seekers being marked for persecution in order to promote their hard left agenda others are more interested in finding the truth.

Remember the furore about the asylum seekers marked out for persecution by having red doors to their homes?….seems all is not so clear cut…or rather it is…..if a rabble of MPs can find this out why not the enormously resourced BBC?

From The Spectator:

The whole purpose of parliamentary select committees was supposed to be to help inform policy-making. Instead, they have sunk to becoming rather vulgar kangaroo courts used by wannabe barristers of the backbenchers to boost their egos. It took about five minutes at today’s session of the Commons Home Affairs Committee to establish that neither G4S nor Jomast (the landlord which provides properties in Middlesbrough for the housing of asylum-seekers) have a policy of deliberately painting front doors red in order to help identify the occupants as asylum-seekers. Only 59 per cent of properties in the town occupied by asylum-seekers are red, it turns out. Moreover, the doors have been painted red for 20 years – long before they were used to house asylum-seekers.

Still, that doesn’t stop the sorry sagas of the red doors and the red armbands entering Left-wing hall of infamy as they weave their tales of the terrible lives asylum seekers live in this country…..Marr was quick to mention the armband nonsense as an example of our attitude towards migrants as he trailed his programme on immigration yesterday.

The Home Affairs Committee hasn’t published the findings yet.

Red doors and red armband ‘outrage’?   Just examples of migrant ‘lawfare’ and the agitprop of the ‘charity’ migration industry and Left-wing anarchists.

Got to laugh, or cry, as the politicians make fools of themselves and the media bandy this story about as if it was true.

Food wristbands scrapped for Cardiff asylum seekers

A firm providing meals for asylum seekers in Cardiff has dropped demands they wear wristbands as a condition for receiving food.

The coloured bands were given to asylum seekers staying at Lynx House.

But some said it was dehumanising and made people targets for abuse.

The Clearsprings Group, which runs the service, said wristbands were seen as a “reliable and effective way” to guarantee service delivery but, as of Monday, they would no longer be used.

First Minister Carwyn Jones said he was “appalled” by the wristbands.

Heard the BBC giving this important story a good deal of prominence all day…question is, is any of it remotely true?  Do these immigrants really get the slightest bit of abuse because they wear a red arm band that is undoubtedly, firstly, hidden beneath their sleeve, secondly, are probably completely meaningless to anyone on the street…especially as so many people wear armbands for all sorts of causes these days.  The BBC reported that people passing in cars would shout ‘Go back home’ to wristband wearers….might suggest the colour of their faces might actually be the cause of that racism not a probably invisible armband….but hey, before we mock, the armbands were a ‘mental torture’ for one chap….he’d suffered sneeking into the country under a train but couldn’t face another day wearing this rubber band…..any thought that he’ll soon be contacting a solicitor and demanding a pay out in compensation for this oppressive requirement that is so redolent of slavery and the plantations?

What an arse….

I’ll bet he has to wear an ID badge everyday to go to work….same as those at the BBC do……

ID Card Policy

Poor old Eddie Mair is so oppressed and brainwashed that he even complains that he hasn’t got a pass anymore….

My BBC security pass has stopped working. I knew this day would come but a letter would have been nice.

Well, the BBC is making headlines itself today.

“People over 75 may be asked to give up their free TV licence or make a voluntary contribution to it, under plans being considered by the BBC.  The corporation must absorb the loss of £650m worth of licences for over-75s from 2020 as part of a funding deal agreed with ministers last year. A report on ways to appeal for voluntary contributions is due in 2016. The BBC has refused to comment on suggestions that older celebrities might front a publicity campaign.  The Times reported that such a campaign could be run by personalities such as Sir Michael Parkinson and actress Dame Helen Mirren.”

I was on BBC5Live this morning discussing this with Nicky Campbell. My contention remains the same. The BBC funding model is bankrupt, morally and financially. It’s not just over 75 year olds that should be offered a choice as to whether they should pay the BBC poll tax, we ALL should. Using millionaire oldies to try and flog us the idea is an indication as to how detached from reality the BBC has become.

Time for a new one of these for your completion. This is where you detail the bias1

The Guardian never fails us…or its chums at the BBC.

The reason the BBC allowed Savile to rape and abuse young boys and girls was that the BBC were under siege from Thatcher and her ilk…..why is it always Thatcher’s fault?

Savile debacle is the clear consequence of a BBC under siege

Dame Janet has ploughed through 375 witnesses over three years. She has documented four Savile rapes and some 61 sexual assaults in corporation corridors, kitchens, dressing rooms and studios scattered far and wide. And yet she concludes that “nobody in a senior position at the BBC was ever aware of information that could have led to, or assisted in, the prosecution of Savile. Prosecution and imprisonment was the only way to stop him.”

How can this possibly be?

“A deference” down the line that stifled allegations about Savile in a trice. He was “talent” (like other offenders from the same putrid pod). He seemingly couldn’t be stopped, sacked or prosecuted. He was special. Therefore he had to be defended, like the broadcasting giant he served, because – then, in the 1970s, as now – it was under attack.

Those attacks come now, as they came then, from politicians seeking to bully the state broadcaster. They impose unwanted governance by Downing Street démarche. They threaten the BBC’s future – and find ready supporters in Fleet Street. Deference up and down the chain; defensiveness as a dominant posture; a culture of loyalty and mute embarrassment; a determination to survive by rocking as few boats as possible. In today’s terms, the BBC of the 70s and 80s was already a powerful brand: a brand under siege that had to be protected.

Ironically the Guardian’s reaction provides the real answer….the closed world of like-minded chums who don’t want to admit blame and take the responsibility and have other mates in the media to cover up for them.

The Guardian goes on…

Institutions under attack build walls around themselves. They repel controversy. They create sheltered places where bad things can happen. And their external fear translates into an internal dread of nasty news. It’s the job of journalists to open up these worlds – a job failed in Savile’s case over decades, and tragically let slide by a defensive Newsnight.

And if those journalists fail to do their job who is then left to rein in the BBC?  The politicians.  The reason politicians complain about the BBC so much is because there is so much to complain about.  If the BBC journalists were doing their jobs there would be little to complain of but instead they use their privileged positions at the BBC to peddle their own political views and ideologies.  Any wonder they come under scrutiny, especially when they produce reports that whitewash the BBC’s role in Savile’s crimes.

And in reference to the BBC and its whitewash Alex Feltham in the comments links us to this…..

How’s About That Then?

Even those familiar with the BBC’s twisted morality were stunned.

The leaked £10m investigation into Jimmy Savile’s four decade career of paedophilia, sexual assault and rape at the BBC finds that absolutely nobody was responsible. Apparently no manager up to and including the Director-General himself could have done anything to stop this monster pervert stalking the corridors of the BBC. In the words of Dame Janet Smith who wrote the report, “I do not think that the BBC can be criticized for failing to uncover Savile’s sexual deviancy.”

Just imagine what the BBC’s own journalists would make of such a story if the abuser was Willliam Hague and the organization was the Conservative Party? At the very least they would be pushing for the abolition of the Conservative Party and probably of the very concept of conservatism itself. Somehow I don’t think they’ll be taking such an uncompromising line with themselves when the report is officially released.

But you shouldn’t run away with the idea that nobody at the BBC has been held accountable. In the wake of the scandal the BBC has forced out at least 4 employees. It turns out that there are limits to what even the BBC will tolerate. And that limit isn’t the practice of paedophilia on the premises but disloyalty to the cause. The BBC constructively dismissed those who actually had done the right thing and (very belatedly) exposed Savile. Meirion Jones and Liz Mackean who worked on a Newsnight piece which was blocked by their editor Peter Rippon, and Tom Giles and Peter Horrocks who made a Panorama episode on the same subject were left in no doubt that they had no future at the Beeb.

This is an even greater scandal in its way than the original Savile outrage. After all, the only defence of senior BBC bosses over their inaction on Savile was that they were unaware of his crimes. But if that were true, how can they justify destroying the careers of those people who fought to bring those crimes to light?

A little light reading for those who want to judge the BBC’s EU coverage and need a bit more information to go by….

The Norway Option — Some bookmarks

The Norway Option will keep appearing in the EU referendum debate so here are some useful links explaining what it’s all about.

What is the Norway Option?

The Norway Option is a move whereby the UK gives up EU membership by invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and moves to a position in the European Economic Area which essentially only participates in the single market and therefore the four freedoms of movement, goods, capital and people but is not engaged in political union. EEA countries are Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, but as Norway is the biggest country in the group, any proposed shift by the UK to this position gets labelled as The Norway Option.

In order to join the EEA, the UK would probably first join EFTA (of which Switzerland is also a member) although that particular move depends on Brexit negotiations.

A quick comparison of the Norway Option and Britain’s current EU membership:

 

Like all those political exemptions….and most people would probably agree.  Norway seems to have a pretty good deal but the BBC likes to concentrate mainly on the economic consequences of Brexit…or I should say the supposed consequences…There will be winners and losers in either scenario but in the end not much will change economically…but the BBC, as in Bloom’s misleading report, cherry-picks alarmist scenarios that paint a highly negative picture of leaving the EU.

To most people this is not about economics [The billions we plough into the EU might come in handy though]  and more to do with the politics, sovereignty, the ECJ, immigration and control of your own country to a much higher extent than being subsumed inside the EU would, or does, allow.

The BBC of course would find it hard to quantify such feelings  [Though 4 million votes for UKIP might have helped them] and in reality doesn’t try too hard to do so preferring instead to settle for labelling the sceptics racist little Englanders.

Balance, who needs it when you are completely unaccountable.