Category Archives: BBC bias

Its not often that I am lucky enough to get the opportunity  to catch some of R4’s Woman’s Hour but today was one of those days when the chance came my way and I leapt at it.  As with every other occasion it seems I, by chance, managed to tune in just as they were talking about converts to Islam.  Usually it is about the joys of conversion and just how happy everyone seems.  The researchers must have got it wrong this time as the narrative went rapidly off line, the convert, in  a book under discussion, going from infidel, to Muslim convert, to suicide bomber.

However there was a rapid rebuttal of any thoughts that Islam might be the trigger for the convert’s terrorism, the author stating that it absolutely had nothing to do with Islam but was a result of the woman’s own psychological problems, Islam does not lead you into terrorism.

The presenter, Jane Garvey, told us that Muslims were sick to death of Islam and terrorism being linked together….it’s all the media’s fault…..Garvey said that ‘it’s so unfair’.

Except it’s not really is it?  Islam does have a link to terrorism….but there’s the rub, Muslim campaigners always claim that terrorism and violence are not linked to Islam however that’s not really the problem with Islam in the West.  The problem is the innate nature of Islam that is in opposition to everything that a democratic, secular, liberal, western civilisation stands for and it is that ‘extremism’ by comparison to the West’s values that is the problem which Muslims and the BBC don’t want to talk about and divert attention away from by talking of terrorism or violence as if they are the only issues….just look at how the BBC reported the Trojan Horse scandal…the BBC  essentially lied about what was going on, downplaying its significance, telling us that it was a hoax, that this was more about racism, Islamophobia and paranoia of non-Muslims than any real threat to society.

The author of the book, Meike Ziervogel, told us that she had considered converting to Islam herself, however it was not for spiritual reasons.   She said she found certain aspects of Islam highly attractive at the time, almost mesmerising….the rigid structure, the rituals, the praying 5 times a day, the rules that told you exactly how to live your life.  In the end she didn’t convert but as I listened I thought that Islam must be the ideal religion for those on the autistic spectrum needing that rigid structure to their lives in order to cope in a world so full of options.

Whilst fanatically rigid Islam is by far the most suitable for those needing an ‘institutionalised’ way of life many religions could offer similar solace and support almost like a drug to help treat them, taking away the need for free thought and decision making, all that confusing choice and personal responsibility.

Maybe Islam should be available on the NHS.  Religion is the opium of the masses after all.

As religion strips away the need to think it puts the power into the hands of the leader’s of the religion which is what makes religion, with its unthinking, often fanatical, battalions on tap, so dangerous.  The Church of England had long been the source of much radicalism and terror until it was tamed and became the friendly parish priest doling out tea and sympathy linking the community together.  Religions need to be leavened, moderated, to control and rein in the fanaticism.

Islam on the other hand is nowhere near that stage of development, and looks increasingly like it never will flip to the peaceful side.  The BBC’s Giles Fraser for one is happy that this is so, and in fact wants the Church to go down a similar path of radicalisation and fundamentalism…presumably he wants a Christian Isis…a Chrisis?

He tells us that…

The Church of England is the longest-running prevent strategy in history. If not from its inception, then certainly from the end of the English civil war, the big idea of the C of E was to prevent radicalisation – precisely the sort of radicalisation that led to religious people butchering each other throughout the 1630s and 40s. Its strategy was to discourage two things: big expansive politically minded theology – the sort of theology that has ambitions to change the world – and religious passion (or “enthusiasm” as it was dismissively described).

And then along comes Islam – and, thankfully, it disrupts this absurd game and refuses to play by the rules. Its practitioners want to talk about God, sex and politics rather than mortgages, school places and the latest Boden catalogue. And good for them.

Yes, good for them….that’s precisley what we need…more radicalisation… ‘the sort of radicalisation that led to religious people butchering each other throughout the 1630s and 40s.’  Good for them.

Fraser likes ‘non-violent extremism’ and doesn’t appreciate Cameron’s approach to it….

Attacking it is simply an attack on thinking big, thinking differently and arguing passionately. It comes from a now defunct C of E mindset (now defunct even within the C of E, thank God) that assumes it’s the job of religious people to be pastorally nice, softly spoken and uncontroversial. But that’s not Jesus. And like him, I believe in pulling the mighty from their thrones and lifting up the lowly. And I believe there is an authority greater than yours – one I would obey before I would obey the laws of this land. And if that makes me a dangerous extremist, Mr Cameron, then you probably ought to come over to south London and arrest me now.

Trouble is ‘non-violent extremism’ is the source of the ideology that spawns the violence that is intended to impose that ‘non-violent’ extremist ideology on those who don’t agree with it….as he admits….

Of course, the reason the authorities are often nervous of religious anarchy is precisely because of the enormous power that it can evoke, for good and ill. Hence the need for our episcopal prefects to behave as the state’s health and safety officers in matters of religion.

And here’s where Giles disagrees with himself..declaring that diverse and turbulent religions need tanks on the streets and state control of religion, ala Cameron?, to keep the peace between the communities…..who’d have thought?….direct from Kazakhstan and Giles Fraser’s brain…

There’s also an increasing anxiety that a less repressive approach to religion might open the door to radicalisation. So only state-authorised religions are allowed here. Missionaries are regulated. Religious political parties are banned. And the president of Kazakhstan, an old-style ex-Soviet politician – who received a comedy 97.75% of the vote at his re-re-re-election back in April – presides over this gathering of well-meaning religious flannel.

And maybe they are right to do all this. For Kazakhstan has, within its own set limits, developed a properly deserved reputation for religious toleration. …..his is a place of genuine diversity, where different faiths rub along remarkably well. Despite all the off-putting pomposity of the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, it’s not a totally unrealistic reflection of how things are here. Maybe there is something for that tank to protect.

 

Great that the BBC employs a wannabe religious extremist who wants to turn the Church fundamentalist and radicalise it by injecting some ‘anarchic religious energy’ into it.  Just what we need, yet another set of religious fanatics, this time presumably wanting to live by their fundamentalist religious beliefs and presumably also therefore opposing those other religions that attack and undermine Christianity…such as Islam….a recipe for disaster and religious wars on a grander scale than we have already?

Christianity…the new Religion of Peace?

A black teacher is stabbed by a teenager of Pakistani background who shouts ‘nigger’ and ‘black bastard’ as he does so.  It’s a ‘racially motivated’ attack.

It is well known that there is a level of racial tension between the two communities.

But what does the BBC do, apart from ignore the race of the attacker?  It interviews an Asian teacher about the racism in schools (08:10) he has suffered as a teacher.  Sue at Is the BBC biased? also noticed the disconnect between events on the ground and the BBC’s reaction as the major issue that arises from the case is not racism towards teachers, I imagine most people already recognise that there is some of that going on ( why is the BBC committing its prime-time slot at 08:10 to already established truths?), but that it highlights the racism that almost endemic between the two communities.

The BBC has looked at the subject before in this 2006 report Rise of UK’s ‘inter-ethnic conflicts’  so you might ask why they are being so circumspect about it now, trying to divert attention away from the real issues and onto some almost abstract notion of racism in general in schools.  The answer is almost certainly to do with the heightened tensions and controversies around Islam, immigration and asylum seekers today.  The BBC does not want to put a spotlight on the problems that having ever increasingly diverse and separate communities results in when it is spending so much time banging the drum for immigration and multi-culturalism.

Just at a time when such issues really need to be openly debated in a rational manner the BBC instead attempts to play down and cover up the problems and dangers that come from such vast numbers of immigrants suddenly turning up in a community.  Not only that but in order to silence them or scare anyone else into silence or risk being publicly ‘shamed’ as a racist, the BBC also resorts to alarmist and threatening scaremongering denouncing those who oppose open borders as racists or as people who are inciting racial tensions by inflammatory language…the BBC of course deciding what is and what is not inflammatory.

The real hilarity in the interview began when Laura Pidcock, education manager at Show Racism the Red Card, came on and said that we shouldn’t condemn or judge pupils who were being racist, in fact we should allow them to be racist (I’m pretty sure that’s what she was suggesting!).  You could hear Jim Naughtie starting to huff and puff.  She said the pupils should have a safe place to express themselves and we must not criminalise them for their racism but understand it and the events in their lives that led them to think and behave like this.

Of course what could the BBC find to object to in that approach, after all that is the approach they take to dealing with Muslim extremism, radicalisation and terrorism?…..understand, explain away, don’t condemn, in fact allow it to continue so that Muslims don’t feel alienated and besieged.

Later in a different segment of the programme (08:50) we heard the BBC interviewer raising the suggestion that we shouldn’t over-react to ‘controversial’ subjects, in this case a book about the Holocaust, because by over-reacting there is a danger that we close down debate and don’t explore the the issues properly.

Does he mean such as the way the BBC over-reacts to anyone who even hints that it might just be sensible to limit immigration, or at least have a debate about it, by calling them a Nazi and accusing them of recklessly inflamming anti-immigrant feeling?

• BBC Radio 4 Today ‏@BBCr4today Aug 8

  ‘The size of the lie was so great’ – Martin Amis on Robert Conquest and Stalin’s ‘utopia’ http://bbc.in/1MXQC9a 

We looked at the BBC’s refusal to report the words of the Foreign Secretary, Phillip Hammond, about immigration and its potential to have hugely damaging economic and social effects in Europe and give them the import they required.  The BBC totally ignored his comments until this morning when the subject finally came up.  Did the BBC want to investigate the extremely serious issues that Hammond raised?  Did they think that a warning that the economy will suffer and that society may break down due to uncontrolled mass immigration was something that needed to be part of the public discussion about immigration?

No.

The BBC instead went to war against Hammond and Cameron declaring that they had got the ‘tone’ wrong when speaking about immigration in the manner that they had.  What we have is a BBC, supposedly a news organisation, that instead of examining the issues coolly and rationally, deliberately seeks to ratchet up the extremist pro-immigration rhetoric by trying to silence all voices critical of mass immigration, and that even includes the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, labelling them either racists or people who are using inflammatory language that incites racism and hostility towards immigrants….which pre-supposes that all people who have an opinion which leans towards less immigration are doing so because they are racist or led by the nose by rabble rousing politicians….this is the same BBC that itself exploits highly emotive language and images to manipulate the audience’s perceptions and opinions on immigration and is quite happy to metaphorically and in reality to dangle dead bodies of immigrants in front of us, continually hyping up the ‘desperation’ of the migrants and the dangers they faced in their journeys to get here…all intended to play with your emotions…..so whose ‘tone’ is inflammatory and exploitative?

The BBC has decided that it will sit in moral judgement and that it is the final arbiter of what our immigration policy should be.  It is vastly overstepping the mark when it comes to its role in society believing it has the right to not only decide government policy but also to publicly denounce and vilify government ministers who don’t toe the BBC line.

They managed to bully and intimidate Andrew Mitchell on the Today programme (08:10)  demanding to know what he thought about Cameron’s use of the word ‘swarming’ and Hammond’s words…Mitchell shamefully backed down in front of their bullying and refused to back them instead repeating the approved BBC mantra that all migrants are humans and need to be treated with digntity and respect or some such happy clappy sentiments.

Hmmm….from 2003….did they get the ‘tone’ right?…..

A report by the influential House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee published earlier this month said the large number of asylum-seekers was threatening “social unrest” and had to be curbed.

 

Later on(about 08:43) we had someone on from Oxfam.  He was asked how he would sell the public the idea that we must allow in more migrants…..not a leading question at all is it?, one that pre-supposes we should let them in….once again the BBC not reportng but campaigning.

His answer was that Britain has to accept more asylum seekers… he’d sell the idea by ‘describing the misery of the lives of people in Syria and the desperation of those who are crossing the ocean with terrible risk to their lives and terrible suffering….when you get that sense of personal connectivity you recognise that these are not just people who are looking for a sunnier tomorrow, they are people who are living in fear and in poverty.’

Curiously that is exactly how the BBC goes about ‘reporting’ the issues already.  In other words they are ‘selling us the idea’ of more migrants being allowed in to Britain….wherever they come from and for whatever reason.

Later on on 5Live (around 12:20) we had Le Crackpot, the UN’s Francois Crépeau, who thinks anyone who  opposes mass immigration is racist and that the borders should be flung wide open …..to allow people to come and go…trouble is there won’t be much ‘going’ will there?

To give you an idea of how mass immigration would be handled but with no ideas on how the welfare system, the NHS, schools, housing would survive…no ideas on how they would be managed…but here’s some fine grandstanding by him with some thoughts that demonstrate just how out of touch he really is with the world…look at how complicated and impossibly involved his solutions are…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5_rZK5emog

Having heard the BBC reporting all day that a teenager had been convicted of stabbing a black teacher in a ‘racially motivated’ attack I, possibly along with most people, assumed that the attacker was white.

Not so.  What the BBC fails to mention is that he was of Pakistani background…as the Guardian, the Mirror and Sky point out.  The court has ordered that the boy’s name not be released but that doesn’t stop his ethnic origins being mentioned…and they are relevant to the report….as Sky reports he ‘could not handle being disciplined by a black man.’ 

Of course I should have known better, for if he had of been white the BBC would almost certainly have said so.

The BBC isn’t so shy when it comes to making allegations and naming names of white police officers as it continues with its Ferguson reporting and keeps up the narrative of innocent black youths gunned down by racist white cops  The consequences of that type of inflammatory and inaccurate reporting such as using the Michael Brown case as the prime example of police racism when we know that wasn’t at all true,  can be seen on the streets of Ferguson right now as yet more disturbances break out and police are shot at and respond by shooting the attacker.

Is the BBC ‘maintaining civic society and citizenship’ or helping to stir up inter-communal conflict?

The BBC has been wallowing in the first anniversary of the shooting of Black thug Michael Brown by police in Ferguson.

Shots have been fired in Ferguson, Missouri, at a protest to mark the first anniversary of the killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. St Louis County police said an officer was “involved in a shooting after coming under heavy gunfire” and that “two unmarked cars took shots”. Eyewitnesses reported seeing at least one injured person lying on the ground. The shooting of the 18-year-old by white police officer Darren Wilson sparked demonstrations across America.

BBC desperate to a/Sanctify Michael Brown and b/Make this all about race.

They like to use this sort of image when discussing Michael Brown.

Not this one…

The loss of any young life is to be deeply regretted but it really does not help things when the media, in this case the BBC, race bait the case and then keep reinforcing it.

There was a curious item on BBC Today this morning at 6.55am. . Mattia Toaldo, a policy fellow in the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, was brought on to advance the agenda that the UK has an obligation to “do more” to stabilise Syria.

Now you can argue that to’s and fro’s of that for all you want but what I found strange was that he stated that the number of migrants moving through Syria has increased from 40-50,000 to around 200,000 in recent times. How does he know? Who is documenting this information in the rubble of the Libyan State? Why does the BBC allow these figures to go unchallenged? We were also told that around 60% of migrants hitting the shores of Europe are “asylum seekers” apparently. No mention of why so many of these “asylum seekers” feel a need to escape France for Britain, of course.

Strikes me the BBC is out to create the narrative that since “we” created instability in Africa, “we” have an obligation to absorb the swarm.

I am sure you will be delighted to know that BBC Radio 4 is to start up a new series of “The Reunion”. In the first thrilling episode …

“Sue MacGregor speaks to former detainees and the head of the guard force at Guantanamo Bay.

In 2002, a detention camp was hastily built in a remote corner of Cub, to house the men captured in America’s “war on terror”. Thirteen years later, it is still there. And in the intervening time, Guantanamo Bay has become a byword for controversy, a place Amnesty International called “the gulag of our time”.

As ever, the BBC presents the Islamists behind Gitmo bars as victims and represents the place of their captivity using the hyperbole from Amnesty. No mention of the fact that many of those released from the “gulag” have gone on to kill in the name of Jihad and no mention of the fact that there was good reason to keep them behind bars in the first place.

Through the prism of the BBC, people like Moazzam Beggs are true heroes, noble warriors for justice and equality and this programme will be one more propaganda tool for the Islamist scum that have been rightly incarcerated in such terrible conditions that they have all put on weight. Just like the Gulags, right Amnesty?

On time and awaiting your attention. A New OPEN thread to detail the bias!

The ‘Pyrenean Shack’?

Stewart Lee has been worried.  He’s been away. On holiday.  In the Pyrenees.  In a Pyrenean ‘shack’ no less.   Anyway, he’s been worried.  Worried that without his acid wit raining down on Cameron’s parade, without him mustering the Twitterati against the marauding Middle Class Daily Mail readers, and without him manning the BBC barricades that defend that august and generous institution from the predations of the ‘Vested Interests’, the country will fall apart.  Have to say, not so far.   No need to hurry back Stew!

Lee, cut off from the world, had two choices, one the Daily Mail, the other a copy of the Guardian.  Naturally like all good Lefties he chose the Mail as we know they all do.  Well, the Guardian was left ‘abandoned in a campsite lavatory’.…I knew there had to be a use for it…though that old joke comes to mind.

Of course reading the Mail was only in the interest of work, researching the enemy.  He found plenty to tickle his fancy and to reinvigorate his bile duct, in particular a Quentin Letts article…he’s very popular in the Guardian at the moment.

Lee informs us that  ‘on page 14, the demonstrably inaccurate writer Quentin Letts rubbished institutionalised attempts to encourage social mobility in an incoherent column that included the genuine sentence: “Middle-class parents are middle class because they have learned what it takes to succeed.”

For some reason that sentence just doesn’t get Lee’s approval.  Why not?  It’s perfectly clear and understandable to any normal person of even passing intelligence.  But then again if you’re looking out from the Bubble still pretending to be working class as you send instagram postcards from your Pyrenean gite all the world must be a mystery especially that concept of the hated Middle Class and that other mystery to the Left…getting things on merit.  The comrades say no, it doesn’t compute.

Lee explains his concerns…..

‘The sentence, of course, does not bear a moment’s analysis, attempting to assuage readers’ guilt by assuring them their privilege is deserved. But it seemed so bizarre to me that such a sentence could actually be written without shame, only 12 days after I had left the country, only two and half months after the Conservative victory, that I wondered what was really going on at home.’

No, he’s right, no need to spend even a moment having to analyse the sentence, it’s clear as day what it means.  Good of Lee to spell out his hackneyed old trot-like antipathy to the Middle Class…but should they really feel guilty at being Middle Class?  Why?  Of course, I know what it is, they got to be Middle Class achievers coz they’re Masons, the dodgy handshake and Pythonesque leg wiggle…the route to success.  That’s right, the cardiac surgeon in the hospital, the lawyer, the dentist, the successful small businessman, the highly qualified nurse, the school teacher….yep none of them deserve to  have what they have.  They didn’t earn one bit of they’re place in society, it was all handed to them on a plate.   Yep, they should really be ashamed of themselves for studying hard for years on end, for focussing on improving their lives, for improving society and providing all those essential services that keep the place running.  Yep, yep, yep, don’t need them, bloody parasites, what we really need is more comedians whose sole qualification is a chip on their shoulder, oh and an amenable and generous benefactor like the BBC or the Guardian to keep the pay cheques rolling in.  Who needs merit when you hit the goldmine of lefty paydirt.

The BBC’s College of Journalism will have to buck up its ideas.  Just what have they been teaching the BBC’s finest and brightest?

I had always thought that the point of an interview was not only to ask questions and to get some answers to those questions but ultimately to publish those responses for public consumption.  Apparently I was wrong, the idea is to write up only those responses you wanted to get in order to ‘prove’ whatever point you are trying to make and then quietly shelve the rest of the interview if it tells awkward or  inconvenient truths that undermine your wonderful and powerfully made narrative.

The BBC interviewed a very important man today, the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, and then went on to bury the interview.

Look as I could I couldn’t see this interview on the website…surely an interview with the Foreign Secretary about a highly controversial subject as the immigration farce at Calais in which he makes somewhat ‘bombshell’ statements would be headline news.

But no.  I found the ‘report’ eventually, such as it was, tucked quietly away on the sidebar under the anodyne heading ‘More can be done on channel security’.  This insignificant little heading doesn’t even make it to the Frontpage, lurking on the UK page instead.  Anyone would think the BBC were trying to hide it.  Having heard a BBC radio report on the interview I now realise I didn’t get the full story there either.

Why would they do that when they go to town over a ‘church’ in the Calais ‘Jungle’…which will be broadcast next Sunday…along with God’s own little left wing storm trooper Giles Fraser?

Maybe the Telegraph’s headline, and it is the main headline, tells us why the BBC seek to hide what Hammond said:

Millions of African migrants threaten standard of living, Philip Hammond says

The BBC’s own write up gives us very little to go on merely saying that Hammond said that “more that can be done to enhance the physical security” of the Channel Tunnel and returning migrants to their country of origin was the solution to the problem of “large numbers of pretty desperate” migrants in Calais.

You have to watch the video to find out the rest of his comments about us being swamped, my word not his but his by implication, by immigration which will essentially destroy Europe as it can in no way absorb the millions of immigrants likely to come here.

Now that’s just common sense and what critics of mass immigration have been saying for a long time….but I think it is the first time I have heard someone as senior as Hammond make such a dramatic statement of truth.

It is an issue of overarching importance and has profound implications for the future of Europe and indeed the world.  Europe is clinging on as one of the few bastions of political, social and cultural freedom in the world, an area of the world that others still look to for their values and for protection and support.  If Europe breaks down, as it inevitably will due to massive immigration, who will be that ‘light’ that gives hope to many people of the world?  America?  It will probably retract into itself or become far more aggressive.  How about Russia, China, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia?  LOL.

The BBC would say that is precisely why the immigrants flock here, and yet they bring with them the seeds of Europe’s destruction.  It is impossible to provide a safe harbour for all the people in the world who say they feel oppressed or downtrodden or feel like they’d like a bit more cash in their pocket. Ironically it is the BBC’s World Service that is an example of what part of the solution is…it provides that ‘soft power’ intended to influence people and ’empower’ them with information and techniques to do battle with undemocratic regimes.  People are encouraged to be the masters of their own destiny and to take back their own countries…but paradoxically the BBC also sends out the message that says ‘Sod all that…drop everything, forget your own land, your culture, your family and friends…come to Europe to live off handouts and charity.’  That’s not sustainable, it’s impossible.  If the BBC thinks people in Europe will continue to tolerate millions of immigrants forcing their way into Europe they are mistaken.  It will not end well.

Here’s my grand solution…one that not only occupies the immigrants but also eventually solves the problem at source.

All those immigrants of fighting age, those who so vigorously assault the defences at Calais for instance, should be conscripted into an African army, trained, armed and equiped and sent back to Africa to do battle with those who oppress the African nations and that includes Syria.  Your great grandfathers or grandfathers probably fought in the last war against the Nazis to maintain the peace and freedoms of Europe….they were more likely than not conscripted into the forces to fight for years on behalf of certain values and beliefs.  I see no reason why those who come here should not be made to similarly fight for the same values in their own lands…if they aren’t prepared to fight for those rights, to put themselves at risk, why should they expect to be allowed to be the recipient of all the benefits of a Europe that so many did lose their lives to defend?  I wonder how many such immigrants would make their way here once they knew they might have to ‘live the cowboy’ and actually do something positive to end the ‘desperate’ situation back home which they’ve left their fellow countrymen to deal with when they ran off for a better life elsewhere.

The BBC’s solution?  Open the borders, open huge refugee camps, open your wallets, keep your mouths shut, and hope all hell doesn’t break loose.