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.

I don’t know if anyone heard the 5Live exploration of the government’s requriement that landlords ensure their tenants are not illegal immigrants but as always it is interesting what catches the eye of the BBC.

The BBC doesn’t think much of this government policy and was busily subverting it with endless criticisms that demonstrated how it will never work.  Curiously though they completely brushed over what was a much more serious concern…that of forged passports.

The landlords often use agencies to check paperwork and identities of their potential tenants.  One such agency the BBC spoke to said that they received anything up to 10 fake passports a week…was the BBC concerned about the fake passports?  No.  They were only concerned to show how difficult things must be for the poor old landlords…never mind that the agnecy clearly had no problem spotting the fakes.

One agency receiving maybe 10 passports a week…so up to 500 a year…and that is only one agency…just the tip of the fake passport mountain.

Perhaps the BBC could investigate this scandal which has serious national security implications…oh hang on, who might be using these fake passports?  Fake immigrants?  Hush that one up.

Whilst on that subject how about these ‘desperate’ migrants’ who fled to Europe because their lives were so at risk?  And then promptly went home again as it was too cold.    So they’d rather risk a martyrs death than turn the heating up a bit in their Authority provided homes?

Thousands of Iraqi migrants ask to be flown BACK to Iraq from Finland because they don’t like the country and it’s ‘too cold’ for them

Any suspicion that their lives weren’t at risk and they were just here for the freebies?

Just waiting for the BBC report into this one.

Dan Walker has been given preferential treatment by the BBC because he is a fundamentalist Christian.  He says... ‘I don’t want to be persecuted because I am a Christian’

Funny how the BBC turns a blind eye to the ‘Muhammedisation’ of Europe and yet expresses great concern about its ‘Putinisation’……

Poland accuses BBC of bias after broadcaster alleges country is being ‘Putinised’

Poland has launched a formal protest against the BBC in connection with a film suggesting that its current government was “Putinising” the country. A letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the broadcaster of being biased in its portrayal.

The report in question was broadcast on the BBC’s current affairs program Newsnight, which featured interviews with a government official, as well as members of the Polish public who are against recently introduced changes affecting Poland’s judiciary and the media.

“In our opinion, the report Is Poland being ‘Putinised? presented the current political situation in Poland in a superficial and distorted manner, far from the journalistic merits expected from the BBC and in apparent contradiction to some of the broadcaster’s own editorial guidelines,” a statement from Artur Dmochowski, a spokesman for Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, read.

Pegida UK Official

@PegidaUK_

The official British branch of the Dresden-born PEGIDA movement. We stand against radical Islam to protect our national identity. Press: ukpegida@outlook.com

The BBC likes to nail the likes of the EDL or Pegida by focussing on the few in those groups who express extreme views or use violence, the BBC ignoring the underlying motivation and rationale behind either movement.  In contrast they ignore the violence of the UAF who are often the actual cause of the violence at EDL rallies, and the BBC will tell us the EDL or Pegida are violent due to a few clashes as said usually instigated by the UAF, whilst telling us that Islam is the religion of peace….ignoring the fact that the Koran is very explicit in its sanctioning of violence to ensure the spread and reinforcement of Islam…an underlying violence to the religion…….a violence that even Tariq Ramadan admits is in the Koran.

‘I wouldn’t say Islam is a religion of peace…..People are naturally violent and religion channels that violence to serve its purpose…to get peace…it’s the way towards peace but it’s not the peaceful reality’

He then tries to turn it on its head….the problem, he says, is not the book but the reader….but the reader is reading a text that accepts people are violent and encourages people to use violence….so the problem is the text…non?

Use violence to move towards peace…but what is peace in Islam?….the domination of Islam over all other religions….with Islam on top there is no need for war…..‘They create a desert and call it peace’.

Back to Pegida……here is a look at Pegida UK that you won’t find at the BBC……the intrepid investigatiors can’t find anything racist about the group however they can’t resist levering in some suspicions…still, it’s far fairer than anything the BBC would do…the BBC being in league with the government to smear and undermine the EDL and no doubt Pegida UK now as well.

An Assessment of the PEGIDA UK rally

On a rainy Saturday 6th February, Pegida UK launched its inaugural demonstration in Birmingham, with similar rallies happening across Europe. An estimated 200 protesters attended the demonstration, which took place on a barren industrial estate miles from the city centre.

The march was peaceful and went smoothly without incident. No thugs, no fights, no Nazis, no inflammatory speeches. However, the rallies in other European countries did see some trouble with a fight in Dublin and some arrests in Calais. The new Pegida UK was keen to dispel allegations of racism or of being the EDL 2.0 but without the booze.  They placed warnings on pre-protest information, saying Neo Nazis would not be accepted at the demonstration. Likewise, Tommy Robinson in his speech talked about meeting a man with swastika tattoo on his finger on Friday night, and then said (in an obviously frustrated voice): “six years on and I’m still having to tell you: if you’re a Nazi, if you’re a racist, and you’re watching this – you’re not welcome on the streets in the UK with us.”

Moreover, the people who attended the demonstration were not a singular, unitary, monolithic bloc.  One protester NOTA Network interviewed said he came because he was worried about English identity and culture being threatened by Islam. Another one said he was not against “all immigration” but wanted “limited immigration”. And another protester said he was here to “defend free speech”. It would be slightly unwise to arrogantly dismiss them all as racists and xenophobes, though that doesn’t mean they were liberal democrats either.

There was not anything that struck me as worryingly racist in the interviews we did or at the rally generally. I say this as a black man who was with my friend Sam Sholli, who is of Iranian stock. We did not feel like we were in danger or anyone was racist towards us. They just seem to be people that are fed up with a status quo that is not working for them and their communities.

Craig at Is the BBC biased?  [hell yeah] brought this to the world’s attention…from the BBC’s Analysis programme….

The ‘island of Ireland’?  Does the BBC not recognise Northern Ireland then?  Does the BBC not understand there is already a border between Ireland and Northern Ireland?

And oh yes…we don’t want any of thise ‘divisive’ things called borders do we?  And ‘revive dangerous tensions’?  Do they not read the news?  Maybe they’ve missed the fact that the ‘war’ goes on.