Labour Party member David Goodhart has taken a look at the impact and meaning underlying Corbyn’s leadership win. Just the other day I heard a Labour MP state that Corbyn won because he essentially had the backing of London intellectuals and Goodhart seems to take a similar perspective and that Corbyn’s win does not reflect a leftward trend in the country…a trend that the BBC keeps insisting is happening for some reason despite the Tory majority!?

When reading Goodhart’s analysis you can’t help thinking he could also be talking about the BBC which is similarly detached from the majority of the population and run by a left-wing intellectual ‘elite’ [so called] or if you prefer ‘semi-alien lefty liberals’.  Reading the article and you have to note that the BBC is by default in his firing-line and that many of the narratives that they promote are just wrong….such as the population is moving to the left intellectually or that politics is in a crisis.

Here’s a taste of what he says:

There is no evidence that his election represents any significant shift in political opinion—a British version of Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain is not emerging.

His worldview is a rare mix of economic statism and radical egalitarianism and a rather extreme version of the metropolitan liberalism that is generally hostile to tradition and suspicious of national borders. These views are shared by a tiny proportion of the voting public. (My own former accountant Richard Murphy is one of them: the tax/economics adviser to Corbyn is a middle class radical in a conservative profession who liked to represent artists and writers.)

And the young people who are flocking to the Corbyn banner seem to be mainly middle class, university educated idealists. They are not representative of British young people in general who are increasingly liberal on race, gender and sexuality but, if anything, shifting to the right on welfare issues and economics.

In any case, Corbyn leads the Labour Party not as a result of any leftward shift in public opinion but because of a quirk of internal Labour politics at the end of the Blair/Brown era and the utterly uninspiring alternatives.

Normal service will presumably be restored at some point though given the magnitude of his victory it is hard to see when. A semi-alien group of leftists now sit astride the party and will be able to direct its day-to-day positions in parliament and in responding to events but they will have to live with much of the policy inheritance from more centrist times.

[Corbyn’s] election is a symptom of the withering of mainstream social democracy experienced across all rich countries.

This decline has been well documented and has essentially three causes. First—and most visible—the changing class and industrial structure has largely eliminated the old industrial working class. Second, as touched on earlier, centre left parties have become increasingly divided between low income voters who often have quite traditional views on cultural matters and the increasingly dominant liberal middle class (public sector professionals and Guardian readers in the newspaper shorthand) who occupy the other end of the values spectrum on many of the biggest issues of the day such as immigration, welfare, Europe, family. This divided base is one of the reasons why so few Labour politicians have been able to speak with any conviction in recent years. Corbyn has not resolved the conflict he simply ignores it.

Third, and least discussed, is the notion that social democracy has been a victim of its own success. Social democratic ideas have become completely mainstream and, indeed, many have been adopted by the Conservative party.

Ideas associated with the centre left will remain an important current in British public life even without Labour to implement them—consider the recent Conservative plans for a living wage and an apprenticeship levy on big companies. Centre left ideas are also institutionally entrenched in British society in much of the public sector, in the education system, in parts of the media[No kidding].

The idea that without Labour as a contender for office to defend social democracy the malevolent Tories will grind the faces of the poor is just the sort of blinkered, tribal, self-regarding assumption that lost Labour the last general election and elected Jeremy Corbyn.

One of the cliches of British political life in recent years is that it is in crisis due to low levels of participation.

It is true political parties have far fewer members and election turnout has been falling, though there seems to be a turnout floor of around 65 per cent. But British political culture is in rude health: consider the rise in recent years of the SNP and Ukip, the evolution of the Tory Party, the rise of mayors, a noisy and opinionated media.

Gabriel Gatehouse ‏@ggatehouse Sep 11   Would you care to be more specific? What did you feel was misleading? And what was amateurish?

When Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski criticised the BBC’s reporting of the war in Yemen Newsnight invited him onto the programme, not it seems to actually tackle his concerns but to insult and publicly try to humiliate him.  To do this they employed the less than honourable services of James O’Brien who jumped ship from his position as a motor-mouthed shock-jock at LBC…..O’Brien has ‘car crash’ written all over him…still unsure why Newsnight were attracted to him and his talents…though of course the uber marxist Paul Mason also lurked within their hallowed portals.

When Kawczynski stated that the Newsnight film about the war in Yemen was incredibly one-sided and did not reflect the complexities of the situation and failed to deal with atrocities by the Houthi rebels O’Brien made the claim that this one-sided stance was justified because the film was actually about Britain’s involvement in the war in relation to its arms sales to Saudi Arabia who are commiting war crimes.

There is a slight problem with that, in fact many problems, all of which revolve around the fact that O’Brien’s claim is a complete lie.

If you watch the programme, entitled ‘Yemen’s forgotten war’, so even the title seems to suggest a focus on the war in general, you will hear very little about British arms sales to Saudi, though Gatehouse does try to make that connection.

Gatehouse tweets a question advertising the programme asking if Britain is complicit in a ‘humanitarian disaster’ which is not the same as being complicit in war crimes as O’Brien is claiming as justification for the BBC’s one-sided approach….the ‘humanitarian disaster’ has been wrought by both sides but was initiated by the Houthi.

• Gabriel Gatehouse ‏@ggatehouse Sep 10

  Coming up now on @BBCNewsnight: our report from Yemen. Is Britain complicit in a humanitarian catastrophe?

But watching the programme you are not given the broad perspective of both sides being guilty of stoking the war and causing a ‘mere’ humanitarian disaster due to general warfare….the narrative it was glued to was that Saudi Arabia was definitely committing war crimes by deliberately targeting civilians…the BBC stated this without any evidence that civilians were being so deliberately targeted.  Certainly civilians are being killed, but deliberately?  And all by the Saudis? Where’s the BBC’s proof?  They have none and yet they categorically make that claim and used it in that small clip to suggest that Britan is complicit in those ‘war crimes’.

The BBC’s Gabriel Gatehouse seemed all too ready to accept everything he was told and looked as if it was in fact what he wanted to be told as he breathlessly, naively, amateurishly lapped it all up.  He was less than objective in his report and used witnesses whose own impartiality might well be suspect…many of them being either the rebels themselves or those who are sympathetic to them…for example near the end of the film we have a Shia in a bombed mosque telling us this is all the fault of Saudi Money and US weapons…these people are all criminals he tells us…no bias there then from an Iranian backed pro-Houthi man then…and very convenient for the BBC narrative which happily ignores the fact that the Houthi started this war by engineering a coup.  Gatehouse looked as if he came with an agenda and fitted the ‘evidence’ around it.

Another of the BBC’s defences of its one-sided narrative was that the Houthi are not as well armed as the Saudis which somehow makes their killing of civilians somehow more palatable for the BBC.  This is the Houthi who have tanks, artillery, anti-aircraft missiles and aircraft….so all airstrikes may not be by the Saudis and the Coalition…

The Houthis have since called for a general mobilisation of forces to fight the Hadi government. Backed by armoured forces loyal to Saleh, they took control of Taiz.

More than a dozen soldiers from both sides were killed in the fighting. That was quickly followed up by airstrikes targeting Hadi’s palace in Aden, presumably in fighter aircraft flown by Saleh loyalists.

The BBC film claims that damage to buildings in Sanaa is probably the result of Saudi bombing…but where’s the proof?   If anything evidence points to the Houthi being responsible for some of the damage….including to a ‘military complex’ otherwise known as a university…

In the last few days, the Houthis have been targeting buildings owned by the Sunni Islah party, including the Iman University, which has been surrounded.

O’Brien sneared when Kawczynski said that Al Jazeera’s coverage was far more impartial than the BBC’s, O’Brien claiming that it obviously wasn’t because it was a news outlet funded by one of the Gulf States involved in the war.  However if you read Al Jazeera’s reports you can understand why many now use this organisation for a broader and truer perspective on events in the Middle East than provided by the BBC.

Here is just one example as it reports on the war in Yemen… you can read voices and perspectives from both sides, the Saudi-led coalition not escaping criticism at all….

‘Declaration of war’

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Sanaa, Houthi spokesman Mohammed Al Bukhaiti called the military action a declaration of war on Yemen, adding that reports alledging that Mohamed Ali Al Houthi, President of the Revolutionary Committee or Revolutionary Council, had been injured were false. Ali Al Houthi is a cousin of Abdul-Malik Al Houthi, the group’s leader.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif demanded an immediate halt to the military operation, as Iranian state media called the airstrikes a “US-backed aggression”.

“Military action from outside of Yemen against its territorial integrity and its people will have no other result than more bloodshed and more deaths,” he told the Iranian-owned Al-Alam television channel.

“We have always warned countries from the region and the West to be careful and not enter shortsighted games and not go in the same direction as al-Qaeda and Daesh,” he said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Iran denies providing money and training to the Shia Houthi militia in Yemen as claimed by the Saudi-led coalition and some Western officials.

All in all the BBC does not have a case….they are claiming that Saudi Arabia is committing war crimes, and slipped in a claim that Britain is therefore implicated in this, but they present no evidence other than a water-bottling plant that had been bombed and which the Saudis say was used by the Houthi for military purposes…and just as the BBC saw no evidence of such use there’s no evidence that it wasn’t so used…just because it has one purpose doesn’t mean it cannot be used for others at the same time….there is no evidence that the Saudis knew it was purely a civilian plant and bombed it anyway.  There is no evidence that the Saudis are deliberately bombing civilians, the death of whom the BBC seems to regard as a de facto war crime regardless of intent.

O’Brien tries to justify the BBC’s one-sided reporting of the war which looked almost completely only at the Saudi-led coalition’s actions by saying this was because Britain was supplying the weapons that helped Saudi commit war cimes….but as stated above there is absolutely no evidence of such war crimes and the programme then went on to a second narrative…that the Saudi-led strikes against the Houthi were allowing Al Qaeda and ISIL to gain a greater foothold in the region…depsite it being one of AQ’s long established bases.

The BBC’s premise seems to be that we leave the Iranian backed insurgents in charge and let them take over the country and that will stop AQ and ISIL in their tracks.  Two points…one…why is it a good idea to let armed militants takeover a country, especially when backed by the dangerous Iranian regime? and second does the BBC really think that the Houthi will be able to stop AQ and ISIL?

Lastly, clearly Al Jazeera is more than a match for the BBC in the Middle East producing reports that actually do inform its audience about the complexities of events there……unlike the BBC which has long been on the side of the various ‘rebel’, many would call terrorist, groups in the region and produces reports that seem to favour their narrative as the ‘plucky underdogs’.

Just a coincidence that ‘O’Brien’ is the name of the sinister party member and Big Brother thought-police hitman in Orwell’s 1984?

“The very straightforward thing to do in the face of unacceptable governmental pressure and interference would be to say ‘fuck off, do your worst, we’ll fight that’.”

It may not have crossed Lord Bragg’s mind that Tony Hall might fall on his sword after his failure to fend off the government’s plans for the BBC but others do have issues with him……

Michelle Stanistreet: ‘BBC staff and the public have been betrayed again’

NUJ general secretary on preparing a strike at the corporation, why she thinks director general Tony Hall is foolhardy and BBC bullying

On the day she speaks to the Guardian, NUJ reps from across the BBC have gathered to discuss their response to the deal and the cuts that will follow it. “One of the outcomes of today’s meeting is that our members are prepared to take strike action to defend jobs and to defend members at risk as and when they have to,” she says.

The s-word has by no means been unheard-of in the various battles between the union and the BBC – and other media organisations. But this is the first time Stanistreet has been so clear about the union’s resolve to challenge the fallout from the deal that will see the BBC cover the roughly £700m cost of providing free TV licences for the over-75s.

“Staff at the BBC and the general public have been betrayed once again by the very person [Tony Hall] – and the very team of people – there to uphold the values of the BBC, its integrity and its relationship with the licence fee payers. It was beyond belief that another secret, shabby stitch-up was secured without due transparency and consultation and process.”

Hall, she says, “allowed himself to be shafted” by the government. But what else could he have done when he picked up the phone to culture secretary John Whittingdale – was Hall not simply securing the best deal possible in the face of overwhelming pressure? “The very straightforward thing to do in the face of unacceptable governmental pressure and interference would be to say ‘fuck off, do your worst, we’ll fight that’.” That, she says, would have earned Hall the respect and the support of BBC staff, the unions and the “vast bulk of licence fee payers”.

She also doesn’t like the way the BBC discriminates against women.

“You might turn on your television and there’ll be as many women as men presenting. But, if you look behind the screens, that figure becomes incredibly imbalanced. Or you might see women of a certain age on your screens but, once they hit their 40s or 50s, they suddenly become invisible again.”

“Every survey we do … produces anecdotes that continue to make me feel sick or ashamed of the reality of working life for far too many of our women members.”

Labour’s Lord Bragg, Melvyn to you and me, has BBC Chair, Rona Fairhead, in his sights.  He states that “There are a couple of people on the board perfectly capable of taking over and she is a busted flush.  Grandees [no less] in arts and broadcasting have told me so.”

The reason Farihead is a ‘busted flush’ in Bragg’s opinion?  Fairhead failed to challenge the government in July when it made the BBC take on the burden of the free licence fees for the over 75s from 2018.  Bragg says “She has failed a major test.  She has no credibility at all.  It was disgraceful that the Trust was the dog that did not bark in the night.”

Hmmm…so what does he think of Tony Hall, the man who actually negotiated this deal?

Surely he is a ‘busted flush’ who failed a major test?  What do the Grandees think?

The Mail tells us that the little piggies at the BBC who are troughing away at licence fee payers’ expense must stop crying wolf about the Charter Review…

MPs tell BBC to stop crying wolf – and cut £52m pay bill: Backbenchers accuse Corporation of scaremongering and urge it to slash ‘bloated’ staffing costs

The BBC should stop crying wolf about the future of flagship services and instead get serious about slashing its £52 million-a-year bill for senior managers, say MPs.

Tory backbenchers are angry about the BBC’s suggestions that the only way it can save money is by closing flagship channels like BBC Four.

They have accused the broadcaster of scaremongering and want it to start talking seriously about cutting back on ‘bloated’ staffing costs.

But critics claim such threats are groundless and are simply designed to whip up public support for the BBC,

Damian Collins, a Tory member of the House of Commons media and sport select committee said: ‘There are all sorts of kites being flown suggesting popular services will be cut when we know that won’t happen.’

He added: ‘I think what they are trying to do is hit upon populist areas of the BBC where they know there is a vocal audience of people who will be appalled by the idea of them going.’

Once again Tony Hall is at the centre of things, this time as the driving force behind the alarmist campaign that the BBC has mounted…we know that he tried to blackmail the government before the budget by threatening to publicly say he would close BBC 2 so desperate as he seems to be to cling on to the BBC’s enormously privileged and entrenched position.  How can anyone trust a word this man says?  Not even those in the BBC trust him after his failure to block the licence fee move.

Looks more and more like a busted flush every day.

Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski has criticised a Newsnight report on the war in Yemen, or rather it reports on the role Saudi Arabia plays in that war and the supply of arms to Saudi Arabia by the UK……never mind that the airstrikes by the Saudi led coalition are backed by the UN…the BBC implication is that Saudi is deliberately bombing civilians and that the UK is complicit in this ‘war crime’…

The airstrikes are backed by a resolution at the United Nations Security Council. But the UN’s top humanitarian official in Yemen, Johannes van der Klaauw, says attacks on civilian infrastructure are violations of the laws of war.

“Schools and hospitals, markets, enterprises and factories should not be stricken, should not be shelled. Even in warfare there are certain rules, and they are being violated in this conflict,” he said.

Since the conflict started, more than 2,000 civilians have been killed.

They quote a UN offcial but it is they who suggested to him that the Saudis were deliberately targeting civilians and asked him what he thought of that…so the UN official is not talking about facts just a bit of BBC whatifery passed off as truth.

Kawczynski suggested that the BBC’s coverage was biased against Saudi Arabia…

As far as I can see Kawczynski has a case, and Katz a case to answer.  The BBC’s whole programme was set up to attack the Saudi’s role in the war and any British involvement in it.  This was not journalism but propaganda…and it is no different to the BBC reaction to the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The war in Yemen was started by the Houthi who have ousted the legitimate president in a coup and tried to take over the country, it wasn’t started by the Saudis.

The BBC has always been anti-war, or rather, anti wars led by Western interests…and Saudi Arabia is closely linked to the hated US.  Wars by doughty rebels of course are loudly applauded and cheerled….witness the BBC’s coverage of the IRA and the likes of Hamas.

Where is the BBC’s equally indepth coverage of Iran’s involvement in inciting and resourcing these wars?  Iran has been a dangerous provocateur in the Middle East for a long time and has frequently provoked wars that seriously destabilise countries…it has supplied the Taliban in Afghanistan, it helped create chaos in Iraq and stoked the civil war, it essentially created Hezbollah and backs the attacks on Israel and of course it now backs Assad in Syria.

The BBC though makes little mention of Iran’s baleful influence on events and its attempts to inflame Shia Muslims inside Sunni countries.  The BBC has always been somewhat pro-Iranian, often preferring to present it not as the aggressor but as a victim of the West…an excuse the BBC trundles out for everything really….blow up some trains in London and you’re a victim of racist oppression, kill Jews in a Paris supermarket and again you’re a victim of the West or its friends….so it’s OK to kill Jews if you are so oppressed!

The BBC’s excuse for not blaming the rebels and Iran?…

Houthi soldiers, some of them no more than teenagers, are accused of firing heavy weapons in built-up areas.

But it is the Saudis and their coalition partners, mainly Gulf Arab countries including the United Arab Emirates, who have overwhelming force.

 

So if you have the biggest army you must be guilty of something even if you didn’t start the war…sounds familiar…if you’re black you can’t be racist as you are ‘powerless’, if you’re a Palestinian you can’t be a murderous terrorist because the powerful Israelis have tanks and planes.

Sounds like the BBC is making up excuses in order to find a reason to peddle their own preferred anti-Saudi, anti- UK arms sales, narrative.

Kawczynski then gets invited onto Newsnight supposedly to allow him to voice his concerns….however it does look like this was just another set up to allow the BBC to attack him and defend itself rather than to do some serious journalism.

The BBC set their rabid attack dog James O’Brien onto him…now the BBC’s recruitment of O’Brien is visible evidence of its bias and intent.  O’Brien hardly merits the title ‘journalist’, his preferred method of attack is to hype a trumped up, malicious charge against someone and when they deny it and prove it is false, to then claim the charge is therefore proven and the defendant a liar….half truths, complete lies and fabrications are the stock in trade for O’Brien.  His infamous kangaroo court when he tried to smear Nigel Farage with a litany of falsehoods and nonsense was the thing that got him recruited to the BBC…as I said you have to raise questions about the BBC when it deliberately recruits someone who is so visibly prejudiced against UKIP and who clearly doesn’t let the facts stand in the way of a good character assassination.

His interview is arrogant, condescending and patronising.  When Kawczynski raises the question as to why the BBC is not also investigating Houthi atrocities O’Brien brushes that aside and claims that Kawczynski is trying to control what the BBC reports…..when in fact all he is doing is to raise a legitimate concern about the BBC’s very evident lack of balanced reporting.

The editor of Newsnight, the Guardianista, Ian Katz, intervenes with a Tweet claiming that Kawczynski is only complaining about BBC bias because he is paid to act in the interests of Saudi Arabia….

• Ian Katz ‏@iankatz1000 Sep 11

  Perhaps useful bit of context to tonight’s #newsnight interview with @KawczynskiMP from MPs’ register of interests

Curiously Katz doesn’t mention that Tory MP Crispin Blunt, who backs the BBC, has taken money from Jordan, also a member of the Saudi led coalition in Yemen…..surely, on the basis that if you receive money from one country you must therefore be representing their interests, Blunt should also be supporting the war.  Perhpas Jordan should ask for its money back…or Katz apologise for his deliberate libel.

He may have to apologise in court though…as Kawczynski suggests he may sue:

Mr Kawczynski told The Independent on Sunday, that he planned to write to the BBC’s  director-general, Lord Hall, to demand an apology and a correction about Mr Katz’s tweet.

“What [Mr Katz] is deliberately suggesting is because I’ve accepted hospitality from Saudi Arabia, I’ve somehow been in their pockets, spouting what they want me to spout,” he said. “That’s a huge, deliberate attempt to smear me and others, rather than engage in the debate … I consider it a libellous tweet and I’m considering suing him.”

Katz isn’t of course always concerned with details or too up to date on Middle East politics, being a sleepy little fellow…

Damien Thompson in the Spectator thinks that the champagne socialists at the BBC and the Guardian may be in fo a bit for a shock as their dreams come true…

The groans that must be coming from the newsrooms of the Guardian and the BBC right now! With a descant of coloratura shrieks from right-on luvvies. And, needless to say, vigorous hand-wringing – they’ll be sending out for Band-Aids to treat their sore fingers by the end of the day.

‘Progressive’ Labour supporters in higher income brackets did not want Jeremy Corbyn to win today. You only have to read the agonised Twitter streams of just about every liberal journalist in the country to realise that.

You don’t have to tell me that the man’s policies are bonkers and the sympathies of his far-Left supporters verging on the sinister. But the Guardian/BBC lobby weren’t bothered by these people when they were staging  ‘Stop the War’ protests, and though they didn’t join the ‘Occupy’ mob they looked benevolently on such marvellously spontaneous anti-capitalist street theatre.

Which was a bit rich, because – like bien pensant types everywhere – British liberal-Left professionals are obsessed with money. Spending it, mostly.

But now the socialist party they vote for has spoiled everything by electing an actual socialist to lead it, a man so uncouth that it never occurs to him to ease the stress of defending the marginalised by dropping essential oils into his jacuzzi.

It’s all so embarrassing, it really is. The Polish ‘help’ has been quite impertinent since you gently reproved her for voting Tory in May. Now she’s going to be insufferable…

‘Information is power. It is the route to hearts and minds. Information frames what we do, how we think and vote. It is fundamental to the operation of our societies and our lives. All leaders, in the public or private sector, know that any influence they have over information is crucial to their leadership, even to their hold on power. The media – the means of information transmission – are thus fundamental to power and are, inevitably and necessarily, political.’  Will Hutton

 

The lefty Will Hutton has never ranked too high in my thoughts but has sunk even lower once I read his childish and simplistic, not to say wildly misleading, plea for the BBC:

The BBC is loved by the nation. It can use that power to confront the Tories

To deplore – even viscerally to hate – the BBC has become a badge of what it means to be a Tory today. It is the kind of “behemoth” statist organisation with “imperial ambitions” that it is their mission to eliminate, especially given its alleged marriage to “liberal values”. It allegedly crowds out doughty private sector media companies, most of whom represent the Tory interest. It is funded by a “regressive” tax.

The BBC is well known for crushing local news organisations with the weight of its tax funded presence and it competes entirely unfairly against the bigger commercial media companies parking its tanks on their lawns in an ever increasing grab for power and influence.

Hutton is of course not an uninterested party in this having raged against Murdoch for years…

Murdoch has become one of the political issues of our time, as menacing in his own special way to democracy and conduct of politics as many other threats our society faces, only we do not see it, because his power is used behind the scenes to extend his commercial influence and so his grip on the flow of so much of the information in Britain.

Which is ironic really as those very same criticisms could equally be levelled at the BBC, a BBC which has far more of the news audience than Murdoch has…..and as the BBC has a vast swathe of the British public under its influence it is only fit and proper that the BBC comes under intense scrutiny and regulation as Hutton himself admits ‘information is power’ and those who control the information are therefore extremely powerful…

Information is power. It is the route to hearts and minds. Information frames what we do, how we think and vote. It is fundamental to the operation of our societies and our lives. All leaders, in the public or private sector, know that any influence they have over information is crucial to their leadership, even to their hold on power. The media – the means of information transmission – are thus fundamental to power and are, inevitably and necessarily, political.

Hutton tells us that ‘ It is a Tory’s sacred duty, in parliament or in the print media, to pulverise it into insignificance. The opportunity, with charter renewal happening next year, has now presented itself. It will not be passed up.’

But we know that is complete rubbish…the Charter Review will involve people and organisations from all points of view, naturally the BBC itself will have a big say in proceedings, the review panel, despite loud claims to the opposite, are in fact pro-BBC and don’t want to see it ‘diminished’, neither does John Whittingdale himself…

Describing himself as a “huge admirer” of the broadcaster, Whittingdale told viewers of BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning “the last thing I want to do is undermine the BBC”.

And..

Hutton then makes this claim…

Javid and Whittingdale’s twin job is to dismantle the edifice of public service broadcasting. ITV is to be sold abroad; Channel 4 is to be privatised; the BBC is to be scaled back enormously. At the next election, it will be the print and social media that set the political agenda in the Tory interest; public service broadcasters with their commitment to political balance will be greatly less influential and by 2025 largely marginalised. It is not technology driving this change, but political choice.

ITV is a commercial company, Channel 4 is well known as a left wing broadcaster and the BBC is far from impartial itself.  Hutton claims that it will be the right wing Press and social media that will set the agenda in the Tories’ interest in the next election.  However as the ‘dead tree’ Press is declining and the BBC is growing ever bigger and more powerful that’s hard to see…..and as for social media…again this is by-in-large dominated by the Left…and indeed here’s a campaign on 38 Degrees to ‘defend’ the BBC…

Protect our BBC

And of course we have just seen the ‘political earthquake’ of Corbyn being elected with a groundswell of activists as the Guardian notes:

Is grassroots politics the future?

Political candidates in the UK, US and Europe that would have seemed unlikely frontrunners a year ago are challenging establishment politics by harnessing enormous grassroots support. Has politics changed forever?

In the digital age, people aren’t ruled by what’s delivered to them by mainstream media; they decide on who and what they like on social sites – and then they share it – and it seems act on it.

I’m not entirely sure this is correct..’In the digital age, people aren’t ruled by what’s delivered to them by mainstream media’...I think the social media merely acts as an echo chamber not an opinion former and enables like-minded people to connect and then act together in concert to try and influence events.  There is a reason the Left, like Hutton, spend so much time and effort to defend the BBC.  That reason is because the BBC does retain so much power and influence and it acts as an enormous incubus and distribution hub for left wing ideas, culture and values.  The BBC is a powerful resource for the Left, one that politicians fall foul of at their peril….as Hutton admits in the title to his piece….’The BBC is loved by the nation. It can use that power to confront the Tories’.

Indeed the BBC has apparently been using that power to have a sly dig at Cameron when he was recorded making a joke about Yorkshire…apparently this was a BBC recording…but the BBC doesn’t admit that merely saying…

Mr Cameron was wearing a television microphone when he made the comments but was not aware he was being recorded.

You have to ask how the BBC could justify releasing Cameorn’s off-camera comment…it was obviously done to embarrass him and cause him trouble.  The BBC using its power to undermine a political opponent…just another one of the BBC’s dirty tricks.

Hutton himself pleads for some pro-BBC grass roots marching…something for BBC producer Tony Brown to do perhaps?…

Hilarious how he co-ops the public, the ‘we’, into his plans…this is the public that is so often disdained, belittled and held in so much contempt by the BBC and its fellow travelllers..until they need us.

Maybe when the BBC starts to acknowledge the concerns of the vast majority of the public and publishes the truth about immigration, Islam, Europe, Climate Change, and the Labour Party’s role in the destruction of the economy he might have a point.

Until then he is just another left wing useful-idiot trolling on behalf of his favourite propaganda news outlet.

Curious how the BBC so often only refers to Corbyn as ‘leftwing’ in its news reports [Despite knowing Corbyn was firmly on the side of the quasi-Marxist hard left.]  when those of similar strength of convictions on the Right are ‘Far Right’ and Farage is constantly alluded to as someone not unlike a Nazi…even today on Dead Ringers he was slandered as a racist xenophobe for his opinions on immigration…proof of his xenophobia?  He has a German wife.

Funny how the BBC often refers to the ‘dark days of the 80’s’ when looking at Corbyn’s politics because in reality they take the country back to the ‘dark days’ of the 70’s….have to assume this is just evidence of the BBC’s obsessive hatred of Thatcher……

Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, at the age of 66, must count as one of the biggest upsets in British political history.

To his critics, he is almost a caricature of the archetypal “bearded leftie”, an unelectable throwback to the dark days of the 1980s, when Labour valued ideological purity more than winning power.

To his army of supporters he is the only honest man left in politics, someone who can inspire a new generation of activists, and make them believe that there is an alternative to the neo-liberal Thatcherite consensus that has let them down so badly.

Kuwait and the other Gulf Cooperation Council countries are too valuable to accept any refugees. In the end it is not right for us to accept a people that are different from us. We don’t want people that suffer from internal stress and trauma in our country.’

Fahad Alshalami, Kuwaiti official, explaining why the gulf countries aren’t taking Syrian refugees Via Douglas Murray

DB has spotted a BBC producer who has been marching to open the borders up to refugees as he calls them…though they are in effect economic migrants……interesting how the marchers all seem to  be right-on Middle Class people….and a lot of the protest is anti-war, pro-Corbyn and anti-Tory….not saying that it was hijacked by STWC…but good chance our BBC friend is just another useful idiot for the cause…..

Tony Brown ‏@tonyprod77 14 hrs14 hours ago  

“Say it loud and say it proud refugees are welcome here” #refugeeswelcome

And if you weren’t convinced of his views here’s another Tweet…

• Tony Brown ‏@tonyprod77 14 hrs14 hours ago

  The refugees fleeing war and dodgy governments must be encouraged if they see these #refugeeswelcome rallies #London

Brown also retweets this from a fellow media johnny…

Hmmmm…..as Corbyn is intent getting rid of Trident and the Army, intent on taxing and spending our way back to the 70’s if not to the Weimar Republic as he prints billions of pounds to help fund his lavish spending, siding with the terrorists and nationalising anything that moves…and oh yes…Protect the BBC from further cuts…I would imagine that the Tories are right on this one.  Interesting though that Brown’s Labour supporting friend has tweeted something that Brown thinks is spot on and relevant to any debate on Corbyn.

Brown responds to DB’s questions about whether it is appropriate for  BBC journalist to be taking part and Tweeting about such a highly political and controversial subject……

He obviously feels he is losing the argument and resorts to a patronising and childish attempt to gain the moral highground by suggesting DB is not being grown up…whereas a man who reacts purely on an emotional basis regardless of the consequences is a ‘grown up’.

So let’s be grown up and ask what are those consequences of having Europe flooded with migrants the vast majority of whom are young, male and Muslim…if they had AK47’s they would be called an army and this would be an ‘invasion’.  What are the social, political, cultural ramifications of having Europe invaded by young Muslim men?  Not a question Brown has ever considered, he’s just happy to get the feeling of warm glowing smugness of a man panhandling publicly for the credit for his humanity by his public display of compassion which he advertises on Twitter.

It is a question that is essential to ask and yet the BBC doesn’t dare…others do though.

The measured and rational Charles Moore in the Telegraph voices some of his concerns about this influx of Muslims to Western Europe:

Nothing has changed in 25 years to ease my concerns about Islam

Viktor Orbán is the prime minister of Hungary. It is through his country that very large numbers of migrants from the Middle East and the Balkans now pass. At the beginning of this month, Mr Orbán said: “I think we have a right to decide that we don’t want to have a large number of Muslim people in our country.”

Mr Orbán was fiercely attacked for the motives behind his remark. I do not know enough about Hungarian politics to say whether such attacks are justified. But, regardless of the precise facts about Mr Orbán, I would guess most people in western – let alone eastern – Europe would quietly agree with his general proposition. One of the biggest anxieties about the current immigration is its high Muslim element. Is it wrong to have such an anxiety, let alone to express it publicly, let alone to want to have a system of immigration based on it?

It seemed to me that most Muslim leaders saw their role not in integrating Muslims in Britain, but in asserting difference and increasing their muscle. Many favoured sharia law trumping British law. They would not support Muslim membership of the Armed Forces if those forces were deployed against Muslim countries. They wanted it to be illegal to attack Islam, let alone denigrate its prophet; and they waged constant “lawfare” to try to silence their critics. They tended, I thought, to see the advance of their cause as a zero-sum game in which the authorities had to cede more ground (sometimes it is literally a matter of territory) to Muslims.

It would also be wrong to deny that, in current conditions, a large Muslim community in a non-Muslim country produces more political disturbance, more communal tension, more intolerance of other faiths (and of non-faiths) and more terrorism. Few non-Muslims want to live near a mosque, see women veiling their faces or have Muslim practices introduced into state schools. Few non-Muslims want lots more Muslim immigrants.

An assimilated Muslim is not a contradiction in terms, but neither is he or she the norm in Britain today. With the Muslim world in ferment and on the move, the risks grow daily.

The election of Jeremy Corbyn and the foolish, naive motivations of those who supported his inclusion in the election must act as a warning to those who wish to brush aside concerns and bury their heads in the sand about the prospect of a ‘clash of civilizations’ and instead blunder on ramming their own ideological delusions and fallacies down everyone else’s throats in the interest of multiculturalism and diversity….the politics of ‘inclusion’….

When Corbyn thanked the Labour MPs who nominated him “in the spirit of inclusion” the room laughed, as well they might. This is the greatest joke of the campaign: the ‘morons’, as John McTernan’s put it, the MPs who nominated Corbyn because they thought he was too crazy too win and would make the rest seem centrist by comparison. But there is a new rule now: nothing is too crazy for the Labour Party. Not any more.

Being ‘inclusive’, pandering to Muslim activist’s demands, allowing an ever-increasing Islamisation of the public sphere in the hope that if Muslims are allowed to practise their religion more freely, and everyone else is forced to ‘respect’ that, then Muslims won’t beome radicalised….when the opposite is true…they will in fact become more and more ‘radicalised’, or devout, and intent on pressing their advantage, creating a situation where everything has to be done filtered through an Islamic perspective…out of ‘respect’ for Muslims.

Happy Christmas   Ramadan from the morons at the BBC.

H/T Alex in the comments: