Just been listening to Labour supporting Jim Naughtie repeatedly saying Labour should be voting ‘no’ in the House of Lords on the question of tax credits.

He had the LibDem leader Tim Farron and Labour’s Owen Smith on to chat at 08:10.

Curiously, in light of both parties decision to break with constitutional precedent to not vote down financial legislation voted for in the Commons, Naughtie didn’t ask the right, important, questions, over eager as he seemed to be for them to vote down the government.

Tim Farron just a few months ago in July said that the House of Lords was rotten to the core, corrupt and undemocratic and ‘above the law’….

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron has urged other party leaders to throw their weight behind a constitutional convention after the resignation of Lord Sewel sparked fresh calls for reform of the House of Lords.

Mr Farron welcomed Lord Sewel’s decision to quit but said his downfall had wider implications for an undemocratic system which was “rotten to the core” and allowed peers to feel they were above the law.

Corbyn himself has expressed a similar attitude demanding either reform or abolishment…

No case for unelected patronage in politics – time to end undemocratic House of Lords but not replace with party lists and 15 year terms.

So both Labour’s leader and the LibDem’s think the House of Lords is undemocratic, unrepresentative and corrupt…and yet they both want to use it to destroy the elected government’s legislation that was democratically passed in the Commons.

Why no comment from Naughtie on this rather obvious, relevant and important point?

William Shawcross is right: Islamists are skilled at lawfare

The Telegraph reported…

Muslim men having ’20 children each’ because of polygamy, peer claims

Muslim men in some communities are having up to 20 children each because of polygomy and the rise of “religiously sanctioned gender discrimination” under Sharia Law, peers have warned.

Baroness Cox, a cross-bench peer, highlighted a series of “shocking” examples of the impact of Sharia law on Muslim women in Britain as she called for them to be given greater protection under equality legislation.

“The rights of Muslim women and the rule of law in our land must be upheld.” she said.

She added: “My Muslim friends tell me that in some communities with high polygamy and divorce rates, men may have up to 20 children each.

Clearly, youngsters growing up in dysfunctional families may be vulnerable to extremism and demography may affect democracy.”

Note that rather important last bit about how democracy could be under threat from the rise of Islam in the UK….even the BBC let slip that the rising number of Muslims in Europe could radically alter politics…and it won’t just be on Israeli/Jewish issues either…..

Germany’s traditionally pro-Israeli stance has been shifting, particularly since the 2014 Gaza campaign.

A growth in Germany’s Muslim population, not least through the acceptance of hundreds of thousands of refugees, may also have an effect, long term.

Then there is this from the same report in the Telegraph…

Lord Green of Deddington, chairman of MigrationWatch, said Britain was entirely different to Muslim countries, adding: “Those who come must accept that.”

The independent crossbench peer said: “We must be prepared to insist that there can be only one law.

“We must get away from what I call the Rotherham complex where the authorities were so afraid of offending a minority community that they turned a blind eye to the appalling abuse of young mainly British girls.”

Which brings us to this rather surprising statement from the BBC’s Roger Scruton concerning ‘Islamophobia’…..

At the time of the attacks on the twin towers, many expressed their shock at the gratuitous murder of 3,000 innocent people, blaming doctrinal Islam for the perversion of the criminals responsible. Immediately a new word entered the public discourse – Islamophobia.

The religious fanaticism of those who had flown into the twin towers and the so-called Islamophobia of their critics were both represented as crimes, hardly distinguishable in their destructiveness. The main purpose of future policy, it was implied, must be to ensure that neither crime is committed again. Pressure mounted to forbid Islamophobia by law – and in its way that is what the Racial and Religious Hatred Act has tried to do.

This takes us back to what John Stuart Mill had in mind. It is not falsehood that causes the greatest offence, but truth. You can endure insults and abuse when you know them to be false. But if the remarks that offend you are true, their truth becomes a dagger in the soul – you cry “lies!” at the top of your voice, and know that you must silence the one who utters them.

That is what has happened in the case of Islamophobia. Muslims in our society are often victims of prejudice, abuse and assault, and this is a distressing situation that the law strives to remedy. But when people invent a phobia to explain all criticism of Islam it is not that kind of abuse that they have in mind. They wish to hide the truth, to shout “lies!” in the face of criticism and to silence any attempt at discussion. In my view, however, it is time to bring the truth into the open, including the truth about the Holy Book itself.

So Muslims invented ‘Islamophobia’ to silence their critics.  You heard it here first!

I await the ‘truth about the Holy Book [Koran] itself.’….will the BBC suddenly have to admit that Islam is not a ‘religion of peace’ after all as it urges its followers to fight the unbelievers until Islam reigns supreme never mind happily killing apostates and homosexuals and chopping various bits off of their own citizens? Mishal Husain thought Christianity was deeply backward and unpleasant…God knows what she thinks of Islam then.

‘Media’ matters because it underpins how societies respond to the problems they face. This makes media not only relevant to the most urgent problems of poverty and marginalisation – it makes it critical to solutions designed to address them.

Drama, discussion programmes, public service announcements – can be most effectively used to deliver information and stimulate discussion.

The BBC has been caught once again shilling for the EU and getting handsomely paid for it….The BBC’s Media Action arm is supposedly an independent charity but it, of course, is ‘BBC’ through and through, the staff and values all pushing the same narrative that Big Auntie pushes.

The Telegraph reports that the ‘BBC’ has been paid £9 million to spread the word by training journalists in relevant countries so that they can then become part of the EU friendly propaganda machine.  Let’s hope they have more balls than their BBC counterparts who submit to the orthodoxy so readily.

EU bias row as Brussels pays BBC charity £9m

The BBC is at the centre of a new row over bias in its coverage of Europe after it emerged that the broadcaster’s charitable arm has received more than £9 million directly from Brussels.

The charity, BBC Media Action, was paid the money to deliver key parts of the EU’s political strategy in countries on the fringes of Europe.

Senior Tories warned that taking so much money from the EU will undermine the BBC’s reputation for independence when the broadcaster will be reporting on the EU referendum campaign.

Not the first time of course that the BBC has taken the EU shilling, and it didn’t need to be press-ganged to do so…..

BBC: EU grants – the £20 million sting

There was a brief frisson of excitement last week, with the Spectator blog telling us that the BBC had received about £3 million of EU funds between April 2011 and November 2013, most of which has been spent on unspecified “research and development” projects, with the remaining £1 million spent on programming.

This was the fruits of an FOI request, but had the magazine consulted the EU’s transparency website, it might have come up with an altogether more weighty sum – £20,152,022 (€24,435,906) to be precise. That is the sum dispersed to the BBC from EU funds between 2007-2012 inclusive.

And it turned out that the alarmist ‘independent’ BBC film, ‘The Great European Disaster Movie’ (which didn’t tell the real tale of the disasters the EU has imposed upon us) was also funded in part by the EU.  Go figure.

We’ve looked at the BBC’s ‘Media Action’ before…it used to be called The World Service Trust and is in essence nothing more than a propaganda weapon, soft power that supposedly spreads democracy but in fact seems to be intent on encouraging dissent and protest on subjects close to the BBC’s heart such as the environment and climate change.

Here is a taste of how important they think the media is in changing population’s minds and behaviour and subsequently how they can influence and pressurise governments and other organisations to submit to their demands….

BBC World Service Trust(where the BBC does not think you are looking…so they print the truth):

• ‘Media’ matters because it underpins how societies respond to the problems they face. This makes media not only relevant to the most urgent problems of poverty and marginalisation – it makes it critical to solutions designed to address them.
• It matters too because it is a critical part of strategies to [alter and control behaviour.]
• The media, and increasingly new technologies, is increasingly how humans communicate with each other.
• How well we communicate with each other has a good deal to do with how successful we’re likely to be in confronting the massive problems we face (and the masses.)

Making informed choices

• Media enables people to access information on issues that shape their lives, without which they cannot make choices.
• Media enables people to hold their governments to account and provides a critical check on government corruption
• Media and communication enables people and communities to understand, debate and reach decisions on the issues that confront them

Media and communication can be immense and powerful instruments for change and empowerment in society

• Media can be an important part of the solution to development challenges. But they can also be a part of the problem
• Media can be used as instruments of oppression, manipulation and hate
• Truth can be distorted as well as illuminated, malpractice hidden as well as revealed.
• The character of a country’s media tends to determine the character of a country’s democracy and society. It underpins how people learn, understand and shape change.

Engaging at high levels to gain influence:

Our initiatives and corresponding audience research seek to engage at four different ‘levels’:

The sector level with policy and decision-makers

The organisation level with state, commercial and not-for-profit entities

The practitioner level with professionals and opinion leaders; and

The individual level with various target audiences

Drama can be a powerful mechanism for development. It can build an emotional connection with target audiences over a period of time, while modelling situations or behaviours….drama, discussion programmes, public service announcements – can be most effectively used to deliver information and stimulate discussion.

Viewers or listeners become attached to characters and share in their experiences, sometimes discussing them with people around them, reflecting on their situations and actions and how they might respond if it were them.
Reinforcing the message
In building a campaign we generally use a range of formats, because they cross-promote one another and reinforce messages. Additional materials – such as posters and comics – may also be used to echo the messages and stories conveyed by other media outputs.

Tim Stanley in the Telegraph reports that Hilary Clinton lied about the causes of the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi….

Hillary Clinton’s big Benghazi lie

Clinton won her encounter at the Benghazi hearings, but one important deception was exposed. The administration tried to mislead the American people about the attackers’ motives

On September 11 2012, Islamists overran a compound in Benghazi, Libya and killed ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Conservatives believe the administration mishandled it. Maybe, maybe not. But in one very crucial way, we have solid proof that they lied.

This is what has been forgotten: administration officials tried to claim that the attack was a spontaneous, angry reaction to a revolting anti-Islamic video made by a US resident. The implication was that the assault was unforeseeable and that bigotry was guilty of stirring it up.

Again and again and again, the administration insisted this was an attack in response to a video. And yet we now know that on September 12, Hillary Clinton rang the then Egyptian prime minister, Hisham Kandil, to tell him: “The attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack — not a protest.”

To anyone who was alive, conscious and watching the TV in those days following the murder of Chris Stevens it was quite obvious where the administration stood. It tried to sell the story that the attack was motivated by religious anger. And we finally have proof that they were selling us a lie.

The BBC for some reason, perhaps they are covering up for Obama’s failure, seem to have missed that important point.

The BBC remarkably tells us that…

Despite the committee sitting in four consecutive hours-long sessions on Thursday, the hearing yielded little new information.

Well, nothing except the administration lied about one of the most important facts in this event….its cause, and the fact that it was not a ‘spontaneous and unforeseeable’ event but one that might have been foreseen and prevented by an adminsitration that was on the ball.

Oh wait…the BBC does dare to venture down this tricky path which might lead to the sainted Obama being shown up as incompetent…

Why were we originally told US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans died because of a YouTube video that agitated a large crowd of people?

It’s a good question, and one that was asked by numerous congressional investigations. There were demonstrations against the video in the region at the time, one of which targeted the US embassy in Cairo, and that’s what the administration said also happened in Benghazi.

But many Republicans believed the White House was trying to deflect attention from what they saw as its policy failures in the battle against terrorism. The House Intelligence Committee agreed that the talking points were flawed. But it said intelligence analysts, not political appointees, made the wrong call, and there was no deliberate attempt at a cover up.

Oh, OK….nothing to see here , move along kids….it’s just the Republicans being partisan….there was no deliberate cover up…..em…except Tim Stanley shows that there was….by the politicians….and not sure how the BBC can report the politicians made no failure as it admits that Clinton admits…

 …..that security requests made by the Benghazi consulate were not met.

And that…

…emails show Clinton’s staff had other political priorities than responding to the ambassador’s pleas.[For more security]

Curious that the BBC makes absolutely no mention of the questioning of Clinton about her admission to her family and to the Egyptian president that the attack had nothing to do with an internet video but was in fact a terrorist attack.

Of course a cynic might say that the BBC’s own preferred narrative is that an ‘anti-Islamic video’ caused so much anger and distress in the Muslim world that this is the natural result, blowback, and by default this also covers Obama’s ass for the failure of his administration to protect the embassy.

A cynic might say, or indeed anyone who has the slightest experience of how the BBC thinks and operates.

The weekend beckons and this is timely. I was just thinking to myself that as Corbyn makes Labour increasingly irrelevant from an electoral point of view the BBC becomes the main opposition to the Conservative Government. In itself, that shows the danger of this most biased of broadcasters.

UK gas prices to soar if Russia cuts off supplies to Europe, National Grid warns

Newsnight’s Katz thinks this is important enough to Tweet a few times…

• Ian Katz ‏@iankatz1000 2 hrs2 hours ago

  Fmr Security Minister Lord West on Chinese Hinkley Pt deal: “How nice to have control of key areas of another country’s survival” #newsnight

Hmmm….where does so much of the petrol and diesel that fuels our economy come from?  Where does a lot of our gas come from?

And when the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg berates the Chinese president about human rights does she do so using a microphone made in China, does she have an iPhone in her pocket made in one of those alleged deadly sweat shops, just how much stuff in her home is imported from the hell hole that is China?

Not sure what hypocrisy smells like but I know what it looks like…see above.

The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg asks Lord Hall a difficult question….

“Why do you think members of the British public should be pleased to do more business with a BBC that is not democratic, is not transparent and has a deeply, deeply troubling attitude towards terrorism and Islamic conservatism?”

In relation to the last post that casts doubt on the Governor of the Bank of England’s impartiality, and the BBC’s of course, Fraser Nelson in the Spectator has come to the same conclusion….UK success comes from free trade and a flexible economic and financial system….neither requiring membership of the EU…the US coming to agreement with the EU on a free trade deal whilst remarkably not being a member of the EU……or indeed Vietnam….

Mark Carney may have unwittingly strengthened the case for leaving the EU

I supect that Mark Carney set out to strengthen the case for Britain staying in the European Union with his remarks in Oxford tonight, but his intervention may end up having the reverse effect. First, the Bank of England governor did not talk about the advantages of staying inside the EU. He spoke about the advantages of Britain being part of a free trade block; as Boris Johnson argues in the new Spectator this is still likely even if we vote to leave.

Here’s what he said:-

“Broadly speaking, the evidence suggests that the UK has successfully harnessed the benefits of openness afforded by its EU membership while avoiding some of the drawbacks of reduced flexibility from which some continental European economies suffer”.

In other words, the single market helped – and we didn’t join the Euro, thus avoiding what William Hague so aptly described as a “burning building with no exits.”

Carney added that the UK is “the leading beneficiary” of the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour enshrined in European treaties. But he did not suggest that this would be under threat were we to leave.

Spot the bit where he advises staying in the EU, rather than reneogtiate Norway-style country club membership? Me neither. That said, Carney is a rather political fellow – as we saw with his intervention in the Scottish independence referendum. His words were presented to suggest his intervening on the ‘in’ campaign. And this is his mistake.

The biggest danger facing the ‘in’ campaign is that it is seen as the combined voice of the British elite. If the Bank of England is positioning itself on the ‘in’ side, then this adds to this impression. As Sweden found out, when the entire establishment says ‘vote yes’ then the temptation to vote no can become irresistible.

 

Carney urges EU fiscal sovereignty

Bank of England governor Mark Carney has urged the eurozone to follow the example of the Union joining together the nations of the UK by making a “bold” move towards shared tax and spending arrangements.

He accused the 19-nation bloc of being “relatively timid” in some of the reforms needed to drag it out of stagnation and urged it to embrace “mechanisms to share fiscal sovereignty”.

Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, has made a pro-EU speech based upon a report by Sir Jon Cunliffe begun in May this year…the BBC thinks it gives the green light for the pro-EU camp to start cheering……

Analysis: Robert Peston, economics editor

Although the Bank does not use these precise words, EU membership has made the UK richer and more successful.

The Bank’s analysis concluded that the increased openness of the UK economy owing to EU membership “reinforces the dynamism of the UK economy.

Not sure how Peston comes to that conclusion when the speech actually tells us that the UK’s economy succeeded despite the EU and precisely because it was not integrated into the EU system…Carney himself babbles some double-speak claiming the we succeeded because of the EU and yet EU countries themselves, those in the Euro, suffer due to being in the EU……

“Broadly speaking, the evidence suggests the UK has successfully harnessed the benefits of openness afforded by its EU membership while avoiding some of the drawbacks of reduced flexibility from which some continental European economies suffer.”

What the BBC doesn’t mention is that both Carney and Cunliffe are very pro-EU integration and want the EU to become even more integrated with fiscal and political union….you can’t have one without the other.

What is also missing from the BBC report is the fact that Cunliffe has been an EU mandarin deeply embedded in the system…..

BoE Appoints EU Diplomat Jon Cunliffe as Deputy Governor For Financial Stability

Cunliffe has been the UK’s permanent representative to the European Union since January 2012, covering policy issues including negotiations on the banking union and a number of financial services dossiers.

He was advising the prime minister on Europe and global economic issues between 2007 and 2011.

Cunliffe began his examination supposedly of the consequences of Brexit but which in fact turned into a pro-EU bit of cheerleading whilst refusing to say if a Brexit would be good or bad…

Mr Cunliffe declined to say whether a Brexit scenario, where the UK left the EU single market, would reverse some of those benefits. ‘That’s a counter factual which I can’t know,’ he said.

Well it’s counterfactual to claim we only succeeded because of our connection to the EU….if we hadn’t been so connected we may have been as successful if not more.

And do you know what…in January this year both Carney and Cunliffe made speeches that whilst curiously urging ‘more EU’ admitted that the stagnating EU wasn’t working and that the UK was succeeding despite the EU….

Here is Cunliffe…his first point shows that the conclusion in the latest report was already a foregone conclusion back in January….ie ‘dynamism’ of the UK economy was as a result of being in the EU…

The motivation to create a single, integrated, capital market in the EU is not new. As I have noted, the potential benefits to economic growth and “dynamism” at a time when growth in Europe was sluggish drove the efforts in the 1980s to liberalise capital accounts and create the single market in financial services. The reforms inspired in the 1990s by the Giovannini report aimed to create an integrated, well-functioning financial market to “help the EU economy by encouraging the right investments to be made in the right places” and so to “contribute to higher economic growth and employment.”

However he admits that it is really global regulation that is important not the EU…as shown in the last crash in 2008….

The UK is the home to financial firms and infrastructure that are truly global in their reach and activity. While much of this activity involves the EU, a very large amount does not. If EU regulation and internationally agreed standards diverge materially, it will both create barriers to that activity and opportunities for regulatory arbitrage making it more difficult to ensure UK financial stability.

Here is Carney in January…

Curious that whilst in his speech today he tells us that membership of the EU is the secret to economic success here he reveals that the EU is in fact itself a basket case due to its own policies…how then does the UK succeed?….

The challenges for monetary policy are much greater in the euro area than in the UK.
Since the crisis, euro area nominal GDP has increased by a mere 5% in almost seven years. Consumer
price inflation is already below zero. Core inflation has been running at or below 1% for over a year.

This is potentially dangerous. Low nominal growth is intensifying the euro area’s debt burden (Chart 4).15
The fear of stagnation is holding back spending and investment.

The good news is that European authorities recognise the need to re-found the euro area financial
union on the principle of risk sharing.

As the Presidents of the European Council, European Commission, Eurogroup and European Central Bank
argued in their report, European Monetary Union will not be complete until it builds mechanisms to share
fiscal sovereignty.

Here he compares the EU and the UK….the UK is better off…..

Consider the following comparison between the euro area and the UK.
In the euro area, the private sector continues to generate surplus savings of 3½% of GDP (Chart 7). Those
must be recycled effectively to generate an expansion. The UK no longer faces that challenge. Its private
sector is in balance.
The euro area unemployment rate of 11½% is twice that in the UK.
Gross general government debt in the euro area is roughly the same as in the UK and below the average of
advanced economies.
The weighted average yield on 10-year euro area sovereign debt is around 1%, compared to 1½% in the UK.

And yet, the euro area’s fiscal deficit is half that in the UK. It structural deficit, according to the IMF, is less
than one third as large.

Here Carney explains why the UK is succeeding…and you know what…it ain’t got nothing to do with being in the EU…precisely the opposite in fact……

How the UK is escaping its debt trap

In recent years, the UK economy has shown increasing signs of normalisation. Non-financial private debt has fallen by around 30% of GDP since its peak, the economy has grown consistently above trend, and

unemployment has fallen from a peak of 8.5% to less than 6% today.

This performance underscores several structural features necessary to escape a debt trap.

The first is an integrated financial system which channels savings from one part of the economy to investment in others. Since the near collapse of the UK banking system, bold steps have since been taken to shore up its resilience.

£140 billion of new bank capital has been raised in recent years, and banks’ performance in the recent UK stress test suggest growing confidence in the resilience of the system is merited.

Second, the UK’s fiscal policy framework helps insure against severe systemic shocks The UK had the space to allow its automatic stabilisers to cushion the impact of the recession.

Third, the UK economy is open and flexible.

With a high degree of openness – its imports and exports summing to 60% of GDP – and a flexible exchange rate, the UK has a safety valve that can be used to recycle surplus savings to the rest of the world without driving down domestic demand, wages and prices.

The UK labour market is also highly flexible. The fall in real incomes caused by the depreciation of sterling was absorbed by employees, effectively purchasing faster job creation.

In addition, large inflows of foreign capital – now financing a current account deficit of 6% of GDP – mean spending and investment are higher than would otherwise be possible. This underscores the value of the UK maintaining its attractiveness as an investment destination through a competitive tax system, deep human capital, a flexible economy and ready access to a wide range of markets.

Carney and Cunliffe both want the EU to become more financially integrated….and that can’t be done without political union as well, something that the pro-EU campaign and the BBC tend to avoid mentioning…..if the EU moves towards ever closer union how can the UK remain a partial member?  The UK would have to choose, fully in or out with the freedom to negotiate its trading deals with the EU….and to claim that suddenly we would be unable to trade with the EU is clearly a nonsense as we are also a huge market for the EU to sell to…and they want our goods as well.  If they put up barriers to trade it wouldn’t serve anyone’s proposes.

It is apparent that this ‘report’ by Cunliffe was nothing more than him putting down on paper what he already believed regardless of any other evidence or considerations.  Carney also seems to be very gung ho for the EU regardless of his previous admission that the UK was succeeding because it was outside the EU strait-jacket.

Shame the BBC doesn’t bother to look further than its own prejudices and bias and delve a bit more into the motivations behind Carney and Co’s pro-EU circus.