The law in regard to ‘joint enterprise’ has changed…and the BBC was very excited…it just loves a ‘wrongly convicted’ prisoner set free.

Got the impression listening to the BBC yesterday morning that their initial reaction was rather joyous and that they could foresee plenty of ‘exclusive’ BBC stories down the line about injustices being righted as prisoners put in appeal after appeal all of which the BBC would happily devote much campaigning airtime to.

Only later, as surely the emails and texts rolled in to put a different perspective on things, did I hear the BBC presenters start to give a more sympathetic hearing to the families of the murdered.

Odd how times and opinions change…here’s the now current state of affairs….

The law which has allowed people to be convicted of murder even if they did not inflict the fatal blow has been wrongly interpreted for more than 30 years, the Supreme Court has ruled.

The joint enterprise law has been used to convict people in gang-related cases if defendants “could” have foreseen violent acts by their associates.

However, judges ruled it was wrong to treat “foresight” as a sufficient test.

Delivering the judgement, Lord Neuberger said it was wrong to treat “foresight” as a sufficient test to convict someone of murder.

“The court is satisfied after a much fuller review of the law than in the earlier cases that the courts took a wrong turn in 1984. And it is the responsibility of this court to put the law right,” he said.

Strange how previously the same Lord Neuberger thought that not only was foresight of intent to kill worthy of a murder conviction but that even if the accessory only foresaw ‘serious injury’ he was still guilty of murder by reason of joint enterprise……

Lord Neuberger set out why the appeal was rejected:
‘Accordingly, in the absence of special factors, and subject to any good
reason to the contrary, I consider that, even if the primary perpetrator
intended to kill the victim, an alleged accessory should not escape a murder
conviction simply because he only foresaw or expected that the perpetrator
intended to cause serious injury. The mere fact that the perpetrator intended
to kill does not render his actions ‘entirely’ or ‘fundamentally’
different from what the alleged accessory foresaw or intended.’

The Hyde principle and the ‘fundamental difference’ rule
In R v Hyde the Court of Appeal set out the basis of secondary liability for
the collateral offence to a joint enterprise.25 The House of Lords in R v
English qualified this basis with the fundamental difference rule.26 In R v
Rahman this law is restated by Lord Brown as follows:

If B realises (without agreeing to such conduct being used) that A may kill
or intentionally inflict serious injury, but nevertheless continues to participate
with A in the venture, that will amount to a sufficient mental element for B to be guilty of murder if A, with the requisite intent, kills in the course
of the venture unless (i) A suddenly produces and uses a weapon of which B
knows nothing and which is more lethal than any weapon which B contemplates
that A or any other participant may be carrying and (ii) for that reason A’s act is to
be regarded as fundamentally different from anything foreseen by B. . . .27
Lord Scott, Lord Rodger and Lord Neuberger endorsed the restatement
of the law proposed by Lord Brown. The law can be summarised as
follows: if a secondary party participates in a joint enterprise in which
the principal commits murder, the secondary party will become liable
for that collateral offence if he contemplated that there was a real risk
that the principal might act with the mens rea for murder in furtherance
of the common purpose unless the English qualification applies. The
qualification requires that the principal suddenly produces and uses a
weapon of which the secondary party knows nothing and which is more
lethal than any weapon of which the secondary party was aware. If this
qualification is satisfied, there is no secondary liability for the collateral
offence.

The BBC’s foody programme ‘TheFood Programme’ is what you might typically think of as a perfect example of BBC think, that middle class do-gooding ‘something must be done’ touch of snobby arrogance that doesn’t brook any opposition….at least in this programme ‘First Bite’.

In her new book, First Bite – How We Learn To Eat, Bee Wilson takes a deep and reflective look at how food choices and habits are shaped, and how they can be changed.

Sheila Dillon is joined by Bee Wilson and special guests to discuss the book’s surprising findings, and how to make positive changes where positive change is needed.

Sheila and Bee are joined by Rosie Boycott, who advises the Mayor of London on food and is Chair of the London Food Board, as well as father and son Geoff and Anthony Whitington who star in the just-released film Fixing Dad, which documents Geoff’s struggles with type 2 diabetes and his two sons’ efforts to help him.

The presenter, Sheila Dillon, is ‘wowed’ by Wilson’s book which is ‘remarkable’ and the whole programme doesn’t put up much, if any, fight against Wilson’s thinking…..people are apparently confused about food and why they eat what they eat…they just don’t realise they are all victims of a conspiracy….presumably by that ‘industrial food system’ which Dillon shows so much disdain for and which has apparently destroyed the British food culture.

Geoff Whitington has diabetes, he was 20 stone, a lorry driver who used to stop at fast food outlets 6 or 7 times a day…but you know what?  His weight and subsequent diabetes….. not his fault.

He tells us (22 mins 30 secs) that he kept telling himself that it was his own fault, he was the one putting this stuff in his own mouth…but he learnt the truth…he’s a victim, it’s not his fault, he was ‘forced’ to eat in that manner by clever marketing by those nasty fast food outlets.

MacDonalds got the blame for this one…so the usual BBC prejudice against the US corporate….no mention of all those greasy spoon truck stops he must also have graced with his business….just how much clever marketing do they do?  Clever buggers at them roadside caffs….. such a magnetic draw…irresistable.

We are told that we live in a dysfunctional food environment, we aren’t clever or educated enough to feed ourselves properly…..the government must do something…it is nothing to do with ‘willpower’ or our own actions.

No voices in opposition, no voices of reason to bring a bit of sense to the discussion, no one to tell the trucker that it was his own damned fault he bulked up.

I imagine there is a reason supermarkets sell fresh fruit and vegetables (so cleverly marketed as the first thing you see when you enter a store…..shocking how they force us to eat our 5 a day!) and fresh meat along with all those wholesome ingredients for homecooking.   Somebody must be buying all that good stuff….can there really be so many know-it-all BBC presenters out there buying it all up whilst the rest of us ignorant plebs gorge ourselves on pizza and oven chips?

Yes, no one knows how to, or has the will to, cook anymore.  No one is interested in the slightest about food and cooking.  Which is why the BBC has so many programmes about…cooking and food.

The Guardian is becoming less of a newspaper and more and more of a campaigning, issues led vehicle for the green ink brigade.  The BBC isn’t far behind especially with its highly inaccurate and one-sided ‘reporting’ of Race in America….even today it tells us that its programme about OJ Simpson was more concerned with racial issues than the murder itself.

The Guardian gives a platform to just about any disgruntled black person to say the most ridiculous rubbish and present it as truth….a ‘truth’ I suspect most black people wouldn’t subscribe to it being the result of a mind that sees everything in terms of race because that is how it has been trained to see the world…everything that you fail  at is because of racism in society not because of your own limitations.  Articles in the Guardian, and BBC, just reinforce that way of seeing the world and reduces the black person to a victim unable to help themselves….it is a self-fulfilling prophecy…but one caused not by the usual suspect racists but by do-gooding white progressives who think black people can’t achieve success without their help…and it makes those white progressives feel very good about themselves as they go about their ‘missionary’ duties to the adopted ‘natives’.

Here’s one such black ‘victim’ given a platform by the Guardian to vent his grievances…

I’m tired of being around people who feel intimidated by my blackness

In our society, black is seen as negative and white as successful, leading many to reach for a cultural mask. It’s time we stopped trying to fit in

[The] psychological coping mechanism, the “cultural mask”…the layering of identities that a black person takes on to cope.

As a black person you almost automatically learn to use this this mask in order to survive in a society predominantly catering to a white audience. It shows in different forms – from extremes of self-hate, where all things black are rejected, to coping strategies such as not wearing braids to a job interview in fear of being deemed “too ethnic”. These compromising adaptation strategies help us feel included, avoiding the fear that if one was to show blackness in its entirety there will be alienation and confusion from one’s counterparts.

We are taught that to be black in our society is to be negative and to be white in our society is to be successful, elegant and all those other positive, sophisticated terms. This negative position has conditioned some of us to not only reject our blackness but to become submissive and not speak out about our experiences of prejudice.

Complete nonsense…‘taught that being black is a negative’?   Since when?  There are many, many high profile, successful black people in the UK.

‘.. compromising adaptation strategies help us feel included‘…you mean like going to a job in a suit or not having a mohican or a crewcut or covered in tattoos or bits of metal thrust through parts of your face?  Nothing to do with race, more to do with corporate culture and general rules on what is acceptable business presentation.

The real racists are people like VV Brown who wrote this whinge…..for in reality it is nothing more than a long attack on white people stereotyping them and ‘their culture’ as racist…..white culture, black culture…..can you have a culture based on skin colour….VV Brown is mistaking the origins of differing cultures….it is not skin colour that defines a culture but where that person, or his predecessors, came from and brought their culture from….White Germans could have a vastly different culture to Brits and yet they are the same colour.

Here’s another mad message from the Guardian..this time its a disappointing rant from Nick Cohen who gets it badly wrong…

Farage’s vile views are dominating the Europhobe pitch

The case for leaving Europe could not be racist. If Farage gave us a referendum about immigration, he would turn it into a culture war. Voting to leave would mean voting against racial equality and gay marriage and in favour of confining women to the kitchen and bedroom.

We got a taste of the Trumpish politics that are about to hit us during last year’s general election campaign. Farage announced on a TV debate that he would stop people coming “into Britain from anywhere in the world and get diagnosed with HIV and get the retro-viral drugs that cost up to £25,000 per year per patient”.

In one sentence he managed to “signal” to his “core” that he was against gays, foreigners and scroungers. It wasn’t so much dog-whistle as wolf-whistle politics. Farage was leering at prejudiced voters and telling them how much he fancied them.

Astonishing and highly inaccurate protrayal of Farage and his policies….he wants to limit immigration…therefore…he’s Hitler reincarnated?  Cohen has lost the plot……his raging, liberal, intolerant arrogance is fully on show here…..a perfect example of the true mind of a ‘liberal’ who speaks grandly of free speech and democracy but when put to the test shows his true colours….all those UKIP voters….prejudiced, bigoted, racist losers who must be defeated….

Our unfair electoral system may have denied Farage a seat. But nearly 4 million people voted for Ukip. They were the “left-behinds” – the losers, who have been hit by conservative economics and liberal multiculturalism. Their secure jobs have gone and so has their sense of national identity. They didn’t retch when Farage conjured the bogey of HIV-infected foreign scroungers. They cheered, and said: “Here’s a man who isn’t afraid of political correctness… Here’s a man who tells it like it is.”

They want their prejudices verified. They want a stage-army of villains to boo and jeer. Whether the Eurosceptics dog whistle or wolf whistle, they will come, and they won’t care that their behaviour wrecks their own cause, and disgraces their country.

It is for this reason, above all others, that they must be comprehensively defeated.

The Today programme graced us with a report revealing that UK children are amongst the unhappiest in  the world and 5Live followed up on that.

0850 A major international study ranks England 13th out of 16 countries when it comes to children’s life satisfaction. Jonathan Bradshaw is a professor of social policy at the University of York who co-edited the report.

I know that the BBC is trying to cut back on spending but does it have to recycyle old news?

From August 2015…the exact same old report …

Children in England ‘among unhappiest in world’

Children in England are among the unhappiest in the world, behind countries such as Ethiopia, Algeria and Romania, research suggests.

The Children’s Society report, which looked at 15 diverse countries, ranked England 14th for life satisfaction of its young people, ahead of South Korea.

If I looked closely would I find that this story is linked to some other that is designed as an attack on some government policy?  Is this the BBC using its services to pressurise the government…or is this just a cock up?

 

 

The BBC’s Hugh Sykes has tweeted that the alleged sex abuse of a 15 year old girl by Sunderland footballer (ex), Adam Johnston, was the result of a conspiracy by Manchester United to undermine Sunderland….or so he has heard from ‘credible’ sources.

The BBC long ignored allegations against Islamist Tower Hamlet Mayor, Lutfur Rahman, until reality caught up with them and they could no longer ignore the story.  Similarly they seem to be ignoring reports about London Mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan who has been linked to Muslim extremist groups by several reports…..and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is in the mix too.

What is also interesting is that the reports about Khan’s brother-in-Law shows how the BBC’s claims that Muslim extremism in the UK is purely a result of the Iraq War is, well, a complete lie, a lie that is politically motivated as the BBC tries to blame all the world’s ills on that war which it so ardently opposed….

‘Mr Javaid’s name appeared on a fatwa in 1998 calling for a “full-scale war of jihad” against Britain and the US.’

From the Mail:

Sadiq Khan, Labour candidate for London mayor, made a speech while the ‘black flag of jihad’ was flying and gave his support to groups linked to extremism

From The Sun:

Extremist views: Labour terror error as Tories fear rout in London mayor contest

LABOUR’S candidate for Mayor of London and party boss Jeremy Corbyn attended a rally in 2006 with an extremist Muslim leader who threatened “fire throughout the world”.

Sadiq Khan later defended Dr Azam Tamimi, a senior figure in the Muslim Association of Britain, for using “flowery” language.

Last night Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke slammed the news, telling The Sun: “Once again this goes to show how the hard-left clique at the top of the Labour Party hate the West and everything we stand for.”

From the Telegraph:

Labour’s mayoral hopeful Sidiq Khan linked to ‘online bin Laden’

Labour’s candidate for London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has faced criticism, after it emerged that Labour’s candidate had shared a platform with a group backed by an extremist imam who was as an al-Qaeda recruiter.

From the Evening Standard:

The links of mayoral hopeful Sadiq Khan’s former brother-in-law to one of the UK’s most notorious extremist organisations are revealed today.

Douglas Murray in the Spectator illustrates why people like Khan are a problem as they seek to downplay extremism and claim Islam is not extreme itself in comparison to a Western society:

Sadiq Khan MP had a piece in the Telegraph last week attacking an excellent piece by Charles Moore in the same paper the Saturday before. In his piece Sadiq makes a number of claims which are worth rebutting…..

Once again a prominent Muslim has used what could have been an opportunity to tackle a problem to instead underplay the problem and deride legitimate concerns expressed about this. Rather than distracting people from the main problem, Sadiq Khan has merely highlighted it.

Problems such as this:

Among those running against Mr Khan at the 2010 general election in Tooting was a Liberal Democrat candidate who was an Ahmadiyya Muslim. Personally I find the Ahmadiyaa among the most admirable as well as progressive movements within Islam. They are also among the most persecuted and reviled, deemed to be heretics by many Muslims. Bigotry against Ahmadiyaa Muslims was extended towards the Liberal Democrat candidate in Tooting. Indeed it was so strong that during the 2010 campaign it was reported that he was told not to come to an election hustings at Sadiq Khan’s own mosque – the Tooting Islamic Centre.

When the Conservative candidate arrived at the same mosque he was reportedly mistaken for the Ahmadiyya Liberal Democrat candidate. The Conservative candidate then had to be locked in a room at the back of the mosque by members of the mosque to safeguard him from attack.

Why does the BBC also seek to playdown and hide the problem of Islam based ‘extremism’ and also fail to report, until forced to by weight of evdence and other Media being more honest, Khan’s reported links to extremists?

I imagine the naive BBC would love to see a Muslim London mayor, so cosmopolitan…..remind me, just how did that work out for the non-Muslim residents of Tower Hamlets?

From Charles Moore 2013:

Apols for my absence. BT stripped me of ALL broadband for a week and I am now catching up on all my various platforms. I think the BBC are playing a blinder FOR the Prime Minister at the moment. They are carefully playing along with the whole  “Will he or won’t he get a deal on the EU” in the full knowledge that this is a foregone conclusion. The only time the BBC will facilitate a Conservative Government is when it’s Prime Minister is out to keep us IN the rancid EU. Regardless, this is where YOU detail the bias so let’s be hearing from you!!!

A new open thread to tide you over….

BBC Grandee Jonathan Dimbleby has been at it again…urging us, the paying public, to support his life of ease and licence fee sponsored largesse and his overweening sense of entitlement.

Apparently he has been berating the Any Questions audience to write to their MPs to stop the government and the vested interests of those on the right-wing from crushing the BBC…never mind that the government has given many reassurances that the left-wing BBC is basically untouchable.

Not the first time Dimbleby has expressed his fear and loathing for the Tory government and those ‘vested interests’, not the first time he has abused and exploited his position to propagandise on behalf of his employer…

The veteran political broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby has attacked the commercial enemies of the BBC for setting out to destroy it, and has urged audiences to rise up to defend the corporation.

Making an unexpected intervention at a recording of Radio 4’s long-running current affairs comment show, Any Questions?, Dimbleby, brother of David and son of the BBC’s first war reporter, the late Richard Dimbleby, said the corporation’s opponents “have to be taken on by the BBC and by those viewers and listeners who own the BBC”. He added: “Go around the world, listen to what people say about the BBC, they think it’s astonishing we are having to think about whether or not it should survive.”

And here he is again confecting outlandish conspiracy theories…

Broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby has hit out at the BBC’s “enemies” and warned against cuts to the licence fee.

The appointment of Tory MP John Whittingdale, who has called the licence fee “worse than the poll tax”, to the post of culture secretary has led to speculation that the broadcaster could face major changes to the way it is funded.

But Dimbleby called on the government to think twice before delivering a punitive licence fee settlement when it comes to charter renewal.

He told RadioTimes.com that “the nation would lose massively if the BBC were to face any kind of demise”.

“I believe that while there are powerful vested interests who would like to see the BBC denied a licence fee, without a licence fee the BBC could not do what it does.

This is the BBC which is the overwhelmingly dominant news provider, one that seeks to crush the competition be they Sky, News Internatonal or the smallest local newspaper….just remember how the BBC took part in the anti-Murdoch witch-hunt that was the Leveson Inquiry….it did everything it could to attack its biggest commercial and ideological rival.

Talk about ‘vested interests’ and ‘enemies’.  Dimbleby is very selective in his ranting.

Here for example is a case in point that illustrates the reach, power and dominance of the BBC…

Not only does the BBC have a classical music magazine but it has a website also……how many more BBC magazines have such websites?  Should the BBC be providing these magazines that compete so unfairly with the truly commercial sector?

The BBC’s magazines are published by a private company, Immediate Media Company,  but of course the content comes courtesy of the BBC which also gives the magazines huge amounts of publicity, every programme being an advert for the magazine in effect, as well as back up in the form of BBC ‘roadshows’.

The profits from the magazines help fund BBC programmes…hardly fair to genuinely commercial media companies…

BBC Music magazine is published by Immediate Media Company Limited under licence from BBC Worldwide, which helps fund new BBC programmes.

BBC people like Dimbleby obviously don’t know just how well off they are, or rather they know all too well that they have led an enchanted life at the expense of the licence fee payers and are scared to death that they have been found out.

They don’t like it up ’em.

Curious how the BBC loves to ‘help’ us judge the effeciveness of the Tory government whether it is how it runs A&E or how successful it is in providing affordable homes for people.  Neither of those helpful sites were particularly accurate…the housing one suggested it was impossible to find an affordable home in London and yet one look at estate agent websites showed that was just not the case.  In light of which you have to roll your eyes at the latest wheeze from the BBC….tracking how the government is doing in fulfilling its manifesto commitments…

Daily and Sunday Politics manifesto tracker: Economy

We all know that the real world and the opposition of other political parties and pressure groups, one being the BBC itself, means that manifesto policies rarely become reality which is why you have to wonder at the reason behind the BBC move which can only highlight government ‘failure’ in the main, to varying degrees…will the BBC put such ‘failures’ in context and put the blame for the failure where it belongs or is this merely an exercise to provocatively ‘shame’ the government and call it a failure?

Here are two examples from the BBC’s most recent ‘tracking’….

Aim to achieve full employment in the UK

– Manifesto, page 18

• The government has not defined full employment, but William Beveridge, the architect of our welfare state, defined it as a workforce that was 3% unemployed. The current unemployment rate, as of February 2016, is 5.1%. The ONS employment rate – the proportion of working-age people in work – shows 74% of those aged 16-64 were in work in September-November 2015

Now that’s pretty misleading as we know that employment is at record levels in the UK...UK employment rate hits highest level since records began…..Why no mention of that context?

And what of this?….

Accept the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission that the National Minimum Wage should rise to £6.70 this autumn, on course for a Minimum Wage that will be over £8 by the end of the decade

– Manifesto, page 21

• In the Summer Budget 2015 George Osborne announced the introduction of a ‘National Living Wage’, starting at £7.20 and rising to £9 an hour by 2020

The BBC does mark that as a success for the government and yet they and the usual suspects have been attacking the policy as a failure for weeks now, in fact from the instant it was announced in the budget…despite the BBC never once, in my hearing, criticising Miliband for his ‘living wage’ policies and the ridiculous ‘predistribution’ plan.

Both examples illustrate how the BBC’s tracker is pretty much worthless as a trustworthy and valuable reference point as the tracker fails to report real world events and problems the government has in enacting its manifesto commitments.

Kind of suspect this arose from a brainstorm session for bored journos looking for something to write….preferably with the possibility of undermining the Tory government.  Make-work for those who don’t want to go out and do some real investigative journalism and dig up some real stories.