After much skirmishing Tony Hall has finally fired the opening salvo in the Charter Wars and set out his initial gameplan for the BBC march to victory.

It is a gameplan with imperial ambitions.  Less is definitely more in Tony Hall’s world it seems.  That world is to be seen by more and more people but filtered more and more through the BBC lens…if Hall has his way. This is a huge, ambitious power grab to make the BBC the king maker, the interpreter of world events that everyone turns to whether they realise it or not as the BBC feeds its news into other ‘independent’ outlets and controls how that news is interpreted and perceived.

However we must remember that ‘this is not an expansionist BBC.’  And Russian troops are not in the Ukraine.

Let’s look at some of the detail……

He tells us, as usual, that we all love the BBC..

The BBC has a very simple purpose. We’re here to make great programmes and services. That’s why people love the BBC. That’s why they enjoy it. That’s why they trust it. That’s why they value it.

The BBC makes great programmes…that’s why he says…they enjoy it…they love it….they trust it…they value it.

Just one thing missing from that of course….here’s how the sentence ended….’That’s what they pay us to do.’

If Hall really was so sure that the people loved the BBC, trusted and enjoyed it, he would have said ‘That’s why they pay us to do it’  Of course he couldn’t say that because the audience doesn’t have the choice as to whether they can make that ultimate signal of approval by paying hard cash for something.

When Hall puts his confidence in his own genius to the test and starts to ask how many people will pay for this service, and how much, we might start to believe him.

And let’s also start with a bit of truth…Hall claims that  ‘The iPlayer helped create a market, and others followed with successful players of their own.’

Really?  YouTube went live in 2005….Channel 4’s 4OD in 2006:

Channel 4 Launches 4oD Video-On-Demand Service

16 Nov 2006 News Releases

Channel 4 today announces the launch of 4oD, its own-brand video-on-demand service, making it the first UK broadcaster to make all its home-grown programming available on an on demand basis. 

The iPlayer?  2007…

BBC iPlayer launched

Dec 27th 2007, 00:00

Christmas Day saw the official launch of the BBC’s much anticipated online iPlayer, with television adverts pushing the playback service to viewers.

Hall is trying to create the idea that the BBC is at the centre of creativity and the new digital world…clearly they are in fact behind the curve on this not leading from the front.  Sky, and Alan Sugar, were the pioneers of innovative digital technology not the BBC….the BBC which spent £100 million on a digital management system that never got off the ground….Youtube cost a couple of million to start up….where did the BBC go so wrong?

Hilariously Hall says…‘We intend to put our technology and digital capabilities at the service of our partners and the wider industry – bringing us closer together for the good of the country – to deliver the very best to audiences.’  I’m sure they are all very grateful…but going backwards probably isn’t in their own gameplans.

Onto the meat of the speech and we get to Hall’s over-inflated, high flown bombast that pumps out the self-adoring flattery of the BBC…he tells us that the essence of the BBC is “excellence without arrogance” and then goes on to say that not only does he want the BBC to be ‘a BBC that is a creative powerhouse for the whole of the United Kingdom’ but that it already is that powerhouse….’We are the cornerstone of one of the most successful media industries of the world.’  No bloated self-regard and arrogance there then.

Many might quibble with his claim as there are many more broadcasters and creative movers and shakers out there….and essentially the BBC is in its position purely because it is in its position…it is too big to fail…and as Stalin said ‘Quantity has a quality all of its own’.  The BBC maybe a big player in the media industry but that is only because of its unique, abundant and risk free funding rather than any other innate talent or quality that only the BBC possesses….it has relatively vast amounts of money, it spends it, therefore it dominates…possibly an argument against the license fee rather than for it, especially when you consider how the BBC uses that power to disseminate highly political messages within its programmes which kind of makes a mockery of Halls ‘watchwords’….‘Creative freedom. Universal reach. Trust and consent. These are the watchwords of the BBC.’

What of that freedom to be as creative as they like?….

We want the BBC in the next decade to be a magnet for creativity – the place people come to make brilliant programmes, programmes of distinction. For producers, directors, writers, artists to have the creative freedom to do things they would find it harder to do elsewhere.

And, by the way, that isn’t just coming from me. It’s what Peter Kosminsky, who directed Wolf Hall for us, Hugo Blick, and other extraordinarily gifted people – it’s what they tell me.

That’ll be the BBC that carefully ‘manages’ what can be said about climate change, which even now is ‘managing’ how we are meant to perceive the immigration crisis…how many times have you heard a  BBC presenter ask ‘Have you changed your mind yet on how we should treat refugees?’?  Clearly we are supposed to listen and learn……as I type Craig at Is the BBC Biased? (Hell yes!)  brings us this from Mark Easton…

Our conscience has been pricked, our hearts have been softened. The tragic image of little Alan Kurdi lying dead on Europe’s shoreline has, we are told, awakened Britain’s generous nature….But I’m afraid I don’t believe it.

No, ‘fraid not Mark.

This is the BBC which refuses to publish the truth about Islam and has censored its own programmes to hide uncomfortable truths…for example about the causes of radicalisation…the BBC’s preferred cause being Western foreign policy…when the truth came out that it was due to the increasing identification with Islam by young Muslims the BBC suddenly shelved the film that they had commissioned in search of the answer…an answer they didn’t want to find.

And as for Hugo Blick…the man who brought us ‘The Honourable Woman’…a highly, highly politicised anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian tract that wasn’t even particularly good TV.  Freedom to be creative?  God help us.

What else?  Oh yes…

Our aim, as we set out in the paper we’re publishing today, is to create a BBC that is more distinctive than ever – and clearly distinguishable from the market.

That’ll be Strictly, Doctors, The Voice and a few historical bodice rippers.   Very distinguished.

Then we have….

The BBC’s mission was set nearly a century ago by its founding father, Lord Reith. It was to inform, to educate and to entertain. That mission is as pertinent today as it was then. And as necessary in the future as it is now.

The BBC doesn’t ‘educate’ and ‘inform’…it provides us with very subjective material that provides a very one-sided view of the world….as with immigration.

Which brings us onto this…Trust….

The internet strengthens the case for the BBC and its enduring role in serving the public.

In the internet era, it is easier to find information but harder to know whether to trust it. In the internet age our mission is simple: great British programmes and a trusted guide for every one of us.

‘Trust’ the BBC?  You are kidding.

However if you do trust the BBC you can provide them with all your personal data that enables them to personalise its service to you…

Mobile also provides the best opportunity to deliver a more personalised news service and to inform audiences in new ways – the relevant data, context and information that everyone needs, delivered to suit their requirements.

A bespoke BBC News, made to measure for you, wherever you are.

Big Brother is watching and taking notes of everything you do.

Then there are those imperial ambitions…to take on the world….curiously India is counted as amongst those nations in need of the BBC’s help in democratising itself…alongside those other paragons of virtue…Russia and the Middle Eastern states….just another example of the BBC’s anti-Hindu stance that is all too apparent at the moment?…

It’ll also be the backbone of our global news operation helping us to reach 500m people, building on the unique power and brand of the World Service – one of our country’s greatest assets abroad.

This is a service we want to strengthen and expand through new proposals we are also publishing today. My own strong view is that this is one area where this country’s voice could be much stronger – especially in the Middle East, India and Russia and the states that used to make up the Soviet Union.

And then there is the local news…Janet Daley isn’t impressed and nor are local newsmen…here’s Hall blowing smoke up their backsides….

Local democracy really interests me. I’ve seen for myself how important our local radio stations are, and I’m really proud of the way they serve their communities. But I now want us to go further.

So, in future, The BBC would set aside licence fee funding to invest in a service that reports on Councils, courts and public services. And we would make available our regional video and local audio for immediate use on the internet services of local and regional news organisations.

In my view, that’s good for audiences, good for the industry but we look forward to hearing the views of others.

So having the BBC provide independent news outlets with news is good for democracy?  It sounds more like something Stalin would have been overjoyed about as the local press seem to suggest:

The BBC’s plans for “a network of 100 public service reporters across the country” did not find favour with the Scottish Newspaper Society, who labelled the proposal “a Trojan horse which will undermine long-established publications and destroy local news agencies”.

“Instead of helping local news publishers, it would make the BBC even more powerful and would further concentrate coverage of news in the hands of the state-funded broadcaster,” said its director John McLellan.

“Under the guise of being helpful, the BBC would end up replacing independent local news services,” he told Radio 4’s The World at One, calling the plan “a further expansion of the BBC’s encroachment”.

The BBC disagrees…

This accusation was rejected by James Purnell, the BBC’s director of strategy, who told the same programme it was “very much not the goal” for the BBC to “take over all local journalism”.

Then we get onto another brick in the Berlin Wall that the BBC seems to want to build to annex off the media world as its own little kingdom…the ‘Ideas Service’…..a ‘gift to the world’….like Communism no doubt……

In the 20th century, Britain created the World Service, a democratic gift to the world. In this century, building on the wealth of British knowledge and culture, we want to offer another gift: the Ideas Service.

It is a core part of our vision for an Open BBC.

The Ideas Service will be a platform for the ideas that matter and for the people who want to explore them. An open online platform.

The Service will host the best content from the BBC but also from some of our country’s leading cultural institutions: from the British Museum to the Royal Shakespeare Company, from the Edinburgh Festivals to the Liverpool Biennial, from this amazing institution – the Science Museum – to the University of Manchester.

Our new, Open BBC will act as a curator bringing the best from Britain’s great cultural institutions and thinkers to everyone. Britain has some of the greatest cultural forces in the world. We want to join with them, working alongside them, to make Britain the greatest cultural force in the world.

So the BBC will be the ‘curator’ of these ‘ideas’?…it will file, manage, analyse and interpret and then disseminate….everything once again filtered through the BBC lens.  No area of life is to be free from the BBC thought police it seems.

As Hall admits…others may bring you the news but the BBC will help you to ‘understand’ it….all coloured by its own particular and very prejudiced way of thinking.

We are extremely ambitious for this new service.

Where Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information, ours, in a smaller way, would be to understand it.

It’s a brave new world out there.

And there’s more of this to come…

Today’s paper is the first in a series of four key moments. The second paper, which will be published at the Royal Television Society conference later this month, sets out our proposals on the future of BBC production and Worldwide. The third, which will be published in early October, will be the BBC’s direct response to the Government’s questions set out in their Green Paper. The fourth moment, later in the year, will set out the BBC’s money saving proposals.

Here we go, a new Open Thread for you to detail the bias. The BBC has become a prime cheerleader for Open Borders and the UK accepting as many “Syrian Refugees” as you can shake a stick at. Each morning we are presented with ever so cuddly tales of grateful smiling Mums and cute kids. Just don’t mention the vast number of fighting age men….anyway, the floor belongs to you.

The BBC did a hatchet job on the Hungarian PM, Viktor Orban, for his comments about Muslim migration into Europe and referenced a comment by the Economist made way back in 2007…….the BBC said..

‘Politics of the gutter’

Out of government, Mr Orban was regarded by political analysts as a populist, to the extent that in 2007 the UK’s Economist awarded him its “politics of the gutter award”, citing his “cynical populism and mystifyingly authoritarian socialist-style policies”.

 

And here is what the Economist said:

Politics of the gutter award: Given jointly to Ferenc Gyurcsany, prime minister of Hungary, for admitting that his government had lied, and for turning a blind eye to police brutality; and to Hungary’s opposition leader, Viktor Orban, for cynical populism and mystifyingly authoritarian socialist-style policies.

Have to say that Jeremy Corbyn must be in line for the next award then considering his ‘ cynical populism and mystifyingly authoritarian socialist-style policies.‘

But it is, as always, instructive as to what the BBC doesn’t tell us that the Economist also said….first that ….

Most worrying trend: Between the Baltic, Black and Adriatic seas there is not a single strong reforming government. Drift, muddle and sleaze were the hallmarks of 2006.

And yet the BBC complains that Orban is too strong, too reformist….curious they miss that one out.

Then, and this is all the more surprising omission considering the BBC is writing about immigration into Europe and defending it, there is this…..

Big question: East-west migration. The worst-governed ex-communist countries have lost a million people or more to emigration. Now local job markets are tight, and wages are rising, but not enough to attract many migrants back. The opportunities and the quality of government are still so much better in western Europe. Until that gap narrows, worries of depopulation in the east, and overcrowding in the west, will grow.

So the Economist thinks that there is ‘overcrowding in the west‘!  No wonder the BBC missed that little gem out.

Remember the furore over Cameron using the word ‘swarm’…apparently this meant he was dismissing the migrants (can we use that word?) as insects or animals (and listen to Sarah Montague snort in what is definitely a knowingly mocking way when Sir John Holmes talks of not seeing migrants as ‘animals’ in another interview…you know exaclty what went  through her mind and how she was thinking).

Remember Gordon Brown’s reaction to the ‘bigoted’ Gillian Duffy when she talked of immigrants ‘flocking here’.

Guess someone at the BBC didn’t get the memo….

Ending the war in Syria would make a huge difference – but that still looks a long way off. Syrians are the biggest group of migrants flocking to Europe.

‘Flocking to Europe’.…shock horror!!  Hang him out to dry.

Funny no one has denounced the BBC for such language.

The crisis deepens: Isis are threatening to capture a vital highway in Syria – its loss could spark the exodus of millions more refugees

 

Many credible voices, such as Lord Carey and Boris Johnson, are saying that Europe is essentially being invaded.  Had the migrants been armed we would look entirely differently at them but because they come over as ‘refugees’ they are treated benignly as if there are no very serious implications resulting from this tidal wave of people who are mostly Muslim entering Europe.

It is undeniable that what is happening is in essence everything that ISIL could have dreamt of…the increasing spread of Islam to Europe and all without any actual military/terrorist force having to be deployed.  People like the Prime Minister of Hungary suggest that this is a cultural time bomb inside Europe….one that we have already had plenty of evidence is ticking.

The BBC asks what is to be done?  It has several answers…

• Agreeing on asylum rules
• National asylum quotas
• Tackling migration at source
• Legal migration paths
• Sending migrants back

None of which solve the real problem…the war in Syria.  The BBC ‘solution’s’ actually increase the problem or ignore that real problem though they do admit that:

Ending the war in Syria would make a huge difference – but that still looks a long way off. Syrians are the biggest group of migrants flocking to Europe.

Why hasn’t anyone acted to make a genuine effort to end the war?  Because the same BBC and its fellow travellers would launch a media counter-offensive to prevent military action just as they did with Iraq and then proceed to paint Cameron as a war criminal over the course of the next 10 years.

Merkel has said that the refugee crisis is Europe’s biggest migration emergency since the second world war.

So treat this like the second world war.  Put together a massive coalition of forces and destroy ISIL.  Assad is almost certainly secure…..with Russian forces reportedly now moving in to support and bolster his regime making it very difficult to take action against him without getting a counter-reaction from Moscow…hardly likely to be something that brings peace to the world.

The West [& Saudi Arabia will have to be told to back off and stop supporting ISIL….and also to stop funding Muslim fundamentalism around the world] will have to accept that Assad is in fact the best hope for a stable Syria and Iraq and will have to fight alongside him to destroy ISIL even if not in an explicit coalition…. we joined up with the Communists in WWII so nothing new there.  The ‘Free Syria’ forces will have to be put back in their box..  Hard facts but the only way.

This demands not just airstrikes but a massive presence on the ground.  Kurdish forces, and certainly not Iraqi forces, will not dislodge ISIL. Only the combined might of many countries will rapidly end this and it has to be done now.

Lord Carey advocates airstrikes, George Osborne wants to smash ISIL,  the former defence secretary Liam Fox says that “handwringing” about the plight of the refugees was not enough and action was needed to deal with the “root of the problem”…

 “You’ve got to deal with the [migration] problem at source, which is this evil Assad regime and the Isil terrorists, and you need a comprehensive plan for a more stable, peaceful Syria. A huge challenge of course, but you can’t just let that crisis fester. We’ve got to get engaged in that.”

Even the ‘tread-lightly’ Matthew Parris in the Times thinks that the answer lies in tackling Syria telling us to ‘Stop crying if you’re serious about migrants’.  He says that saying ‘we must do more’ when we see photos of dead children is not a policy….a ‘shaft of ice should enter the soul’ when considering the issues and we should not be swayed by emotive photographs or presumably BBC ‘journalism’.

He argues that the likes of the BBC have been exploiting the photograph of the drowned boy but we should not be swayed by this when deciding how to react, and that if we don’t get it right social cohesion in Europe will fall apart with all that entails….

Basic human decency takes us not a quarter of the way to a solution…Millions of migrants from another culture settling across Europe in a short time is not the answer for the countries they come from, or for us.

Every effort must be made to stop this accelerating…..There will be casualties and, yes, “casualties” is a euphemism for dead people. It isn’t easy to pit, against the power of one heart-rending photograph, a string of abstract nouns about the future social cohesion.  But we must try.’

He is suggesting military action is the solution and that Muslim migration is a danger to Europe echoing the words of Orban and Carey and Boris Johnson.

The BBC has been avoiding serious discussion about military action as the solution…as shown above its main concern is the migrants and their comfort and when given the opportunity Sarah Montague failed to explore the issue when raised by Sir John Holmes. which is kind of remarkable for the BBC’s prime news and current affairs programme bearing in mind that this is probably one of , if not the, most pressing issue at the moment for the UK.

The BBC will of course not want to raise the question of the effect of Muslim immigration into Europe but it looks like it may well be forced onto their agenda with so many voices expressing serious concerns about this issue.

The only solution to Syria is boots on the ground.  The BBC will hate this as it not only opposes any military action but is more than happy to see European unity and cultural solidarity smashed by immigration as it does in the UK seeking to encourage the notion that there is no such thing as ‘English’ identity.

The BBC does not really want a solution to the emigration crisis, it thinks the ‘crisis’ is in fact everything it, and the hard left, has dreamt of for years.

The BBC et al have been scathingly dismissive of the Hungarian approach to migration especially the Prime Minister’s suggestion that Hungary should only take in Christian migrants as Muslims will ‘threaten to undermine Europe’s Christian roots’.  The BBC have decided he is an extremist….Hungary PM Viktor Orban: Antagonising Europe since 2010.   However if you read the piece you will come away thinking there is nothing that Hungary has done that is ‘extreme’, judging by the BBC’s seeming criteria for such a label the Tories would also be ‘extremists’…but then what’s new?

Orban was roundly condemned for his words…

He denied that the emergency was a refugee crisis, but one of mass migration.

“Those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims,” he said. “This is an important question, because Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity.

“Is it not worrying in itself that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian? There is no alternative, and we have no option but to defend our borders.”

But is he right?  Judging by events not just from around the world but inside Europe itself you have to say he probably is.

So how will people now react to the words of Lord Carey?:

Britain should make Syrian Christians a priority because they are a particularly vulnerable group. Furthermore, we are a Christian nation with an established Church so Syrian Christians will find no challenge to integration. The churches are already well-prepared and eager to offer support and accommodation to those escaping the conflict.

Some will not like me saying this, but in recent years, there has been too much Muslim mass immigration to Europe. This has resulted in ghettos of Muslim communities living parallel lives to mainstream society, following their own customs and even their own laws. Isn’t it high-time instead for the oil-rich Gulf States to open their doors to the many Muslims who are fleeing conflict? Surely if they are concerned for fellow Muslims who prefer to live in Muslim-majority countries, then they have a moral responsibility to intervene.

The Guardian has reported only his comments on airstrikes in Syria they have dodged his other comments…. the BBC has not reported any of his words at all at present.

He also says:

As a European Union, we should be prepared to close the doors to large numbers of economic migrants and return them to their countries. A proper process of registration must be conducted, ideally in refugee camps on the borders of Europe. And if the numbers get too large, we should be prepared to admit refugees on a provisional and temporary basis, reviewing their status periodically until they can return home.

It’s not enough to send aid to refugee camps in the Middle East. There must be renewed military and diplomatic efforts to crush the twin menaces of Islamic State and al-Qaeda once and for all. Make no mistake: this may mean air strikes and other British military assistance to create secure and safe enclaves in Syria.

So a triple whammy for the BBC….no more Muslims, no more economic migrants and military action to crush Muslim extremists.

The BBC are scouring Wikipedia for the dirt on Lord Carey as you read.  The hatchets are being sharpened and a counter-narrative prepared to prove him not only wrong but possibly mad and more than likely the long lost son of Adolf Hitler.

Standby.

This demonstrates perfectly how the rhetoric over the immigration crisis has got vastly out of hand and people have lost their marbles…the Daily Mail’s Robert Hardman sinks to the depths here…

A desperate father and a train ride with such grim echoes: ROBERT HARDMAN on the trains carting migrants off to detention camps in Hungary

Through the condensation fogging up this oven of a railway carriage, an exhausted, ecstatic face pressed itself to the window yesterday morning.

In the morning queues for loos and standpipes around Hungary’s largest railway terminal, several thousand of the saddest souls on Earth began to dream that they were on the move again after a two-day standstill. But not for long.

By lunchtime, the truth was out and spreading like wildfire through this infernal dump. This train had not been going anywhere near the border with Austria, let alone the longed-for embrace of Germany. It had all been a monstrous hoax. A Hungarian policeman admitted as much with a mirthless snigger the moment it left the station.

This cargo – there’s no way they could be described as ‘passengers’ – was actually destined for a railway siding next to the Bicske detention camp a few miles outside Budapest. The only welcome was police wielding batons.

As word reached back to Keleti, there was disbelief – as much among locals as the migrants themselves. You did not need to be a historian to sense the chilling echo of Europe’s not-too-distant past. The last time people were duped on to trains around here, they ended up in Auschwitz.

Pathetically, after making the explicit association with the concentration camps, he adds:

Let us be clear that there is nothing remotely comparable to the Nazi era in the conduct or intentions of the Hungarian authorities.

And oh yes…that ‘desperate’,’caring father’…..the one who got all the sympathetic photos in the papers and who is the main subject of Hardman’s piece? …look at exactly what he did to his pregnant wife who was holding a baby…

The BBC does a hatchet job on a firm of lawyers who support the Christian employee in the US who refuses to marry gay couples….The legal team behind Kentucky’s defiant clerk

We are told that ‘It has been labelled a hate group and one of twelve organisations embarking on an “anti-gay crusade” in the US, but it is a group that anti-gay rights activists are increasingly turning to to represent their views.’  So fairly clear how we are supposed to perceive this firm and Christian views.

Fair enough you might say if a certain group’s views are judged illiberal and prejudiced but of course that’s is only fair enough if the BBC applies the same standards to all religions…..not just the one that Muslim Mishal Husain declared was deeply ‘unpleasant and backward’…and it wasn’t Islam.

How is it that one of the BBC’s favourite commentators can get away with this, and indeed his religion get away with it?…

As a Muslim, I struggle with the idea of homosexuality – but I oppose homophobia

I am also (to Richard Dawkins’s continuing disappointment) a believing Muslim. And, as a result, I really do struggle with this issue of homosexuality. As a supporter of secularism, I am willing to accept same-sex weddings in a state-sanctioned register office, on grounds of equity. As a believer in Islam, however, I insist that no mosque be forced to hold one against its wishes.

 

Paradoxically, ‘as a Muslim’, he quotes the Koran to prove that Islam is not homophobic:

Out of the 114 chapters of the Quran, 113 begin by introducing the God of Islam as a God of mercy and compassion. The Prophet Muhammad himself is referred to as “a mercy for all creation”. This mercy applies to everyone, whether heterosexual or homosexual.

Er…how is it that ‘as a Muslim’ then he has a problem with homosexuality if the Koran says all is fair in love and war?…well not war obviously, there is no mention of war in the Koran!

Just another example of the BBC’s hypocrisy….and they’re not in short supply today…….

The BBC must be squirming with embarrassment then over this…

‘I can’t believe they picked him over me!’ Eggheads’ CJ de Mooi claims Strictly bosses snubbed him for Jeremy Vine after he asked for same-sex dance partner

Eggheads star CJ de Mooi has blasted BBC bosses for being behind the times after claiming he was snubbed for a place on this year’s Strictly Come Dancing because he asked for a same-sex partner.

The openly gay 45-year-old – who sits on the panel of the hit BBC quiz show – said producers opted to go with the programme’s host Jeremy Vine after he asked to dance with a man during negotiations.

Speaking to the Daily Mirror, he said: ‘I can’t believe they picked Jeremy over me. I’m quite upset. It’s because I wanted to dance in a same-sex couple.

Is the BBC a homophobic hate group then?

Oh and one more….not done Stewart Lee for a while (not in a gay way…not that that would be wrong!) so here goes…..he doesn’t like religion and has made a programme about the illiberal nature of blasphemy laws….

Whilst he is happy mostly attacking Christians he does mention Islam in there…however when back in the real world and having to make those dangerous ‘blasphemous’ statements he’s a lot more coy when it comes to Islam…in fact rather than attack Islam and Muslim extremism he attacks those ‘Islamophobes’ who are brave enough to stand up and have their say so don’t let the title of the video fool you….and his latest tour apparently has the same narrative about Islamophobia…

There is a bidding war going on as to who is the most humane, the most compassionate, who can get the most brownie points for making the boldest bid for pro-asylum seeker empathy.

Labour’s Yvette Cooper opened the bidding, no doubt as a cunning ploy in her leadership election run, with a grandiose gesture of 10,000 whilst Andy Burnham claimed he had always been thinking along those lines and she had stolen his glory.  Meanwhile the world’s conscience that is Bob Geldorf trumps them both with a personal pledge to adopt 4 Syrian families.

Not to be outdone the Green’s Natalie Bennett displays the usual measured and rational approach so long associated with the Greens and suggests we take in 250,000…or 1 in 8 of the refugees…not sure about her maths as there are over 4 million refugees from Syria alone..never mind those from Afghanistan and Eritrea that she also thinks in need of help.

Finally of course, and where would we be without him, there is the right irreverent Giles Fraser who has said that the Bible is clear: let the refugees in, every last one

Thousands more, says David Cameron now, grudgingly conceding to popular pressure. But why not all of them? Surely that’s the biblical answer to the “how many can we take?” question. Every single last one. Let’s dig up the greenbelt, create new cities, turn our Downton Abbeys into flats and church halls into temporary dormitories, and reclaim all those empty penthouses being used as nothing more than investment vehicles. Yes, it may change the character of this country. Or maybe it won’t require anything like such drastic action – who knows? But let’s do whatever it takes to open the door of welcome.

Another good paycheque gone into his bank account then.  Nothing like a bit of controversy to get yourself into the papers or on TV and sex up your career prospects…and Giles is an expert at that…having fled his job in disgust at the capitalist ogres of the Church who wanted outrageously and selfishly to use their churches without them being occupied he has gone on to make a tidy wedge, ironically, from his worthy statements that he churns out relentlessly proclaiming both his humanity and his anti-Establishment credentials at the same time.  No wonder the BBC and the Guardian snapped his talents up.

From the Guardian: