Category Archives: BBC bias

SHILLING FOR SYRIA….

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I don’t know about you but it strikes me that the BBC has gone into overdrive to soften up the Nation for a wave of “Syrians”. The image of the little 3 year old Syrian boy who drowned on the beach has been milked for maximum emotional blackmail and true to form the Left have seized upon this and are insisting that our borders open up and we let ’em in. The BBC are also very cute to throw about terms such as “refugees”, “migrants” “asylum seekers” to make THEIR case when it suits them. It’s a moments like this that the menace of the BBC crystallises. It is a force for the destruction of all that so many of us hold dear. It is colluding with those who smuggle people to ensure that the UK becomes part of Northern Africa.

In Need?

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Migrants arriving in Turkey

 

A young child drowns as his parents force him into a tiny boat to go from Turkey to Europe and it turns over not long into the trip throwing all into the sea.  The boy, his brother and many of the adults drown.

Those who are demanding the borders be opened wide to immigrants are delighted, who can doubt that this is what they have longed for, a tragedy to use as ‘click-bait’ and Twitter-agitprop, to exploit as propaganda to ‘shake the conscience of the world’?

The BBC indeed has recognised the importance of the photographs as it is being ruthlessly exploited by the likes of the Independent and the Guardian…as every journalist knows ‘the tears of a child says more than a thousand words ever can.’

The BBC however, to be fair, has stepped back slightly from such exploitation of a dead child, but it is usually more than happy to paint a picture of terrible tragedy and use migrant deaths to leverage our ‘moral obligations’.

The question that is not asked is why the parents of these children decided to make such an obviously dangerous journey in an overcrowded boat with no life jackets for their children when they had no need to leave Turkey, a safe location for them…they decided to make the journey not because of real need but because they wanted, not a safe life, but a better life.  They risked their children’s lives completely unnecessarily.  This is not a ‘refugee’ tragedy but an economic migrant one.  Remember the complete outrage at this...’Bear Grylls blasted by RNLI for ‘leaving young son on rocks’ during lifeboat training exercise’  and yet no such outraged opprobrium for the wreckless parents of these two kids aged 3 and 5.

Yesterday we had the self-righteous Tony Livesey on 5Live tag-teaming with the LibDem’s morally challenged Tim Farron against the Tory Tim Laughton and making the dubious connection between the deaths of the migrants in the lorry in Austria, the Iraq War and our ‘obligation’ to take in migrants.

The LibDems say Cameron is playing politics…

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and should stop playing politics over humanitarian crisis says .

Which kind of suggests it is the LibDems who are actually playing politics as Cameron has not bowed to the sanctimonious moralisers but has actually stood firm against those, like Farron, and Livesey, who make grandly sanctimonious statements, which are more about them than the refugees/migrants….

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There is a humanitarian crisis on our doorstep, but UK Government appears disengaged, cold and irrelevant

Farron makes this meaningless statement that is only intended to burnish his compassionate and humane credentials but in fact says absolutley nothing at all about the problem or the solution…all it says is ‘let all the migrants come here’.  It is empty, simplistic posturing for the cameras….

“When mothers are desperately trying to stop their babies from drowning when their boat has capsized, when people are being left to suffocate in the backs of lorries by evil gangs of traffickers and when children’s bodies are being washed to shore, Britain needs to act.”

“It is heartbreaking what is happening on our continent. We cannot keep turning our backs on this. We can – and must – do more.”

 Livesey was pretty much a disgrace, his programme had nothing to do with journalism, merely intent on berating those who take a more rational view of events and see that the issues will not be solved by short term grandiose gestures that are pure compassion ‘showbiz’…so we take in a few migrants…then what?  Take in 10,000 as Labour suggest and then what?  The migrants from around the world will suddenly go ‘Well OK then, that’s it…we’ll all go back home then…the UK has done it’s bit’?  Like hell.  They’ll keep on coming…in their thousands, millions.

Taking in a few migrants does nothing to solve the crisis.

Yesterday Sarah Montague struggled through an interview  (08:14) with Guy Verhofstadt former Belgian prime minister, which she opened with the words of Germany’s Bild that Britain was among the ‘slackers of Europe’ when it comes to taking in migrants.  She rather suggestively wanted to know if that was correct.  Now the moral grandstander Tim Farron yesterday also drew support from those same words…even though he described Bild as a ‘scurrilous red top’…curious how alarmist sensationalism from a ‘scurrilous red top’ is now used by the normally sneeringly disdainful BBC to bolster its pro-migrant stance.

Verhofstadt went off thread though and stated that the root cause of this crisis was the failure of Europe to deal with the Syrian war and support the takedown of Assad…we are now suffering the consequences of that failure…a failure that the BBC and the Left had no small part in creating.  Which is no doubt why Montague rapidly moved on and demanded to know ‘What is the chance that this crisis can be solved by accepting more migrants?’…so you know exactly what her priorities are…going on to proclaim ‘So the answer is quota’s’ [of migrants] and demanding to know  ‘Is it acceptable that Britain has opted out?’

Whilst saying the UK should take some of the migrants who make it to Europe Verhofstad again went off message and said that the real solution was to stop migrants coming here in the first place and that their asylum claims should be processed in safe haven countries near the zone of conflict.  Again Montague didn’t want to explore that suggestion.

Here The Spectator makes a similar point in a reasoned and measured manner that by far outstrips any of the ‘intellectually lazy feel-good policy for the bien‑pensant’ analysis the BBC does itself…Here’s the answer to your migrant crisis, Mr Cameron

If you step outside the usual angry ding-dong, the posturing of those both pro-immigrant and anti-immigrant; if you resist the easy option taken by the chattering classes who claim the moral high ground by insisting on open borders, you can see that European policy is the result of moral confusion.

What does rescue imply and to whom does it apply? Just being poor does not make someone eligible for being ‘rescued’ by a life in Europe. Mass poverty has to be tackled, but the only way it can be done is for poor countries to catch up with the rich ones. There are ways in which we can help that process, but encouraging the mass emigration of their most enterprising young people is not one of them.

Europe has a moral obligation to rescue, not to make dreams come true.

How can Europe help these people?

Should we invite them to Europe? This has been the defining issue so far in European discussion of the Syrian refugee crisis: ‘How many refugees should Europe take?’ It’s all about us. Unfortunately, while well meaning, this approach is fundamentally irresponsible when judged from the perspective not of the consequences for Europe, but the consequences for Syrians.

The smart way to meet the duty to rescue is to incubate that economic recovery now, before the conflict ends.

Europe can do that by fostering a Syria–in-exile economy located in Jordan and other neighbouring countries. Working in this economy would restore some dignity to the daily lives of refugees and offer them credible hope of a return to normality.

Europe has a duty to fish refugees out of the sea because it is morally responsible for tempting them on to the sea. So whatever else Europe does, it must stop this policy of temptation. Paying a crook thousands of dollars for a place on a boat should not entitle a Syrian refugee to a more privileged entry to Europe. It is profoundly unfair to the other suffering refugees.

Montague didn’t take issue with Verhofstadt when he claimed that the issue of economic migration within Europe has nothing to do with how many refugees we can take.  The reality is that of course it has everything to do with that issue.  When you are taking in over 330,000 new people a year, and that’s just the legal migrants we know about, you have to recognise the difficulties, the pressures on resources,that creates.

The BBC has been trumpeting that ‘A number of Conservative MPs have called for the government to take in more migrants’ trying to create the impression that the world stands in judgement against Cameron, even his own party, but coming up with only two…so they must have had high hopes for this interview…..

Today Jim Naughtie inteviewed Baroness Warsi.(around 08:10)..I’m sure you like me, and Naughtie, might have expected this to go one way as Warsi is well known to be highly critical of Cameron and his Middle East and associated policies.  Wrong.

Warsi was far more circumspect and measured, refusing to be drawn into making emotive statements about accepting unlimited numbers of migrants and the heartlessness of government policy.  Instead she the key was to distinguish between genuine refugees and economic migrants who are effecting the willingness of EU countries to accept refugees.

Naughtie’s interpretation of that was that ‘That must mean we have to take in more [refugees]‘ rather than the obvious take from her words that ‘We should be taking in far fewer EU economic migrants so that resources are freed up to cope with the genuine refugees.’

Curious how the BBC keeps dodging that conclusion….and that Germany, that saviour of the migrants, is deporting what it considers economic migrants…

More than a third of all asylum-seekers arriving in Germany come from Albania, Kosovo and Serbia. Young, poor and disillusioned with their home countries, they are searching for a better future. But almost none of them will be allowed to stay.

Here admitting that economic migrants are ‘blocking’ the refugees….

Migrants from Kosovo are blocking the lodging capacities, “that we urgently need for actual refugee cases”, said Bavarian Internal Affairs Minister Joachim Hermann. Kosovars “unnecessarily cost the state a load of money”, he said.

Warsi made the point that perhaps the most eligible candidates for bringing to the UK are the children who are separated or orphaned  a point made by Toby Young in the Telegraph saying ‘I think the moral case for allowing 1,500 unaccompanied refugee children to settle here is overwhelming. ‘ 

What was interesting in the interview with Warsi was that Naughtie actually raised the suggestion that maybe the answer was to try and deal with the actual cause of the crisis, the conflict in Syria, though he did say ‘not necessarily militarily’.…but that was obviously also in his thoughts, the option was on the table.

Perhaps that is the start of a genuine debate about the causes and the real solution rather than the moral posturing and bullying from the likes of other BBC presenters such as Montague and Livesey and the exploitation of the tragic death of a baby who in reality was a victim of his parent’s bad decision not David Cameron’s ‘cold and heartless’ policies.

 

 

 

 

 

A Tangled Web

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One Webb reveals the truth, the other Web stays schtum.

Nissan has decided to invest £100 million in its Sunderland plant, along with other previous investments, thus, as Justin Webb pointed out in an interview in the Today programme, spiking the guns of the pro-Europe bunch who tell us that no company will invest in the UK if there is a prospect of us leaving the EU as a political entity.

Webb must have been water-boarded by the neo-cons or something as he recently upset another bunch of alarmists, this time the greens, with a somewhat bizarre suggestion, given the BBC’s own fanatical stance, that perhaps the Met. Office had been given the push by the BBC because it was too pro-climate change.  Lol.

Curiously the BBC web report makes absolutely no mention of the European dimension, a somewhat important one, in their story.

Odd that.

 

LOVING THE ALIEN…

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BBC in full blown “accept unlimited immigration” mode, exploiting the situation across Europe for all it is worth. A reader has pointed out that here the BBC seeks to compare those who properly seek to identify illegal immigrants with Nazis! As each day progresses, the BBC are playing loose and easy with the terms “refugees” “asylum seekers” and “migrants”. The suggestion is that the swarm is virtually 100% asylum seekers but then every now and again they cover themselves by admitting that, for example, most Afghan immigrants want into Europe for the money!

BBC Caves In To Political Pressure

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Nick Robinson questioning the first minister Alex Salmond.

 

 

 

Nick Robinson may joke but it looks like Alex Salmond and the SNP intimidation has worked….the BBC is creating a ‘Scottish Editor’.

BBC to appoint new Scotland Editor in admission “Scotland has become the story”

THE BBC is to appoint its first Scotland Editor as a response to the vociferous criticism of its coverage of the referendum.  The corporation will shortly advertise the new post, and hope to appoint journalist to the high profile role by the end of October.  The Scotland Editor will report on Scotland and its issues for the UK BBC network while being based in Scotland.

Which is curious as just two days earlier Robinson had written this…The BBC must resist Alex Salmond’s attempt to control its coverage

The BBC naturally deny this new job was as a result of the SNP bullying:

The new post, insiders say, was not prompted by high profile criticism of the BBC such as former First Minister Alex Salmond’s critique of the broadcasting of political editor Nick Robinson, or this week’s speech by Nicola Sturgeon, the current First Minister.

Instead it has been discussed for months and the BBC hopes to have the successful candidate in place by next month.

As the Guardian says:

The attacks on the BBC are deeply political too. Mr Salmond led a party that wants independence. He dislikes British institutions and has a vested interest in attempting to deny them legitimacy in Scotland – as the Glasgow protest against the BBC also aimed to do. He judges the media by whether they support his nationalist cause or not. At the SNP’s spring conference he proposed that the Scottish parliament, with its SNP majority, should be given control of broadcasting and the BBC in Scotland, even before any further referendum.

This should be seen for the bullying that it is.

The Guardian also tells us that:

Encouragingly, the current first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has attempted to distance herself from it. Last week, she even invited Mr Robinson and his family to a private dinner at Bute House, her official residence.

However Sturgeon has just made a speech in whih she tries to annex the BBC in Scotland and put it under SNP control:

Last night, Ms Sturgeon demanded that Scotland must get a dedicated BBC television channel to counter the often “ill-informed” coverage of London-based journalists who have “totally failed” to cover constitutional change.

As a minimum, Ms Sturgeon called for BBC editors based within Scotland to have greater ability to influence UK reporting, a specific Scottish site for iPlayer programmes, Scottish Parliament oversight for the BBC in Scotland, greater use of Scottish opt-outs,and more powers for the BBC commissioners based in Scotland.

Ms Sturgeon insisted, during her Alternative MacTaggart lecture, she does not believe the BBC’s coverage of the referendum was biased, but said BBC network journalists flown in during the final stages of the campaign “sounded less than fully informed”.

Scotland does indeed seem to get more like Putin’s Russia than is comfortable as Nick Robinson might say.

Strangely enough that old ‘fellow traveller’ Paul mason has leapt to the defence of Alex Salmond:

Paul Mason comes to Alex Salmond’s defence over BBC bias

With Alex Salmond currently engaged in a war of words with Nick Robinson over the BBC’s ‘disgraceful’ coverage of the Scottish referendum, there is one former Beeb employee he can turn to in his time of need. Step forward Paul Mason….who said the BBC’s unionist values were part and parcel of the corporation:

‘I’m absolutely sure that the BBC believes it is a unionist institution. It thinks if Scotland becomes independent there is no provision for a Scottish independent BBC so in its DNA it’s a product of this polity.’

And also:

Mason went on to hint that the corporation is not diverse enough, with its more senior staff often belonging to the same social set:

‘I have this theory about the BBC, that what most people don’t like about it is to do with the social group from which its managers and senior people are recruited.’

But then again Paul Mason, like Alex Salmond, is pretty thin skinned and prepared to use ‘violent’ language to close down debate…here denouncing a commenter who criticises his beloved Syriza as a ‘Nazi collaborator:

Paul Mason calls Syriza critic a ‘Nazi collaborator’

Covering the Greece crisis appears to be beginning to take its toll on Paul Mason. Channel 4′s economics editor became embroiled in a bizarre Twitter rant last night during which he accused an anonymous blogger of being a ‘Nazi supporter’ over their criticism of the Syriza government.

Perhaps Mason’s anti-BBC stand is influenced by the lack of support he seems to get from his ex-BBC colleagues:

However, not everyone is convinced by the explanation. Newsnight‘s policy editor Chris Cook has been quick to claim that @GreekAnalyst is not a troll:

And of course his latest ramblings about the future of Capitalism got panned by the BBC Trust’s Diane Coyle when she asked ‘Is that it?’ as she realised there was a lot of hot air and not a lot of substance to Mason’s towering economic edifice.

Maybe Mason should apply for the job…seems like a win win for him and his new pal north of the border:

Media Job: Head of news and current affairs, BBC Scotland

LEADING BBC Scotland’s newsroom is one of the most exciting and challenging jobs in the BBC.

Based in centres across Scotland, the department provides local, national and international news on radio, television and online for audiences in Scotland and across the United Kingdom.

It provides in depth coverage of Scotland’s business and politics and makes stand-out current affairs and investigations programmes for the nation and the network.

Oh, hang on…could be a difficulty:

You will be able to gain respect at all levels due to your credibility, integrity and professionalism.

You will be a natural strategic thinker, with the ability to plan and evaluate people and editorial decisions in the short, medium and long-term, alongside the day-to-day needs of leading a fast-paced news agenda.

You will have strong editorial judgement and an unwavering focus on impartiality.

 

 

 

 

DON’T PHONE US….

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I thought I should share this with you…

“The BBC complaints telephone line (03700 100 222) have ceased responding to complaints made over the phone, and will now only issue their denials to those who complain in writing.They do not refer to this as a change, or a new policy which might be expected, but instead use the rather unusual phrase a ‘clarification’ what ever that might be. The staff have not been informed of any reason or thinking behind this ‘clarification’ but I would imagine it will only serve in deterring many of the complainants from pursuing legitimate complaints”

Isn’t it amazing that the BBC takes such measures to prevent those who fund it expressing their criticism?

Hmmm….So Much Meaning In Such A Short sentence

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What can Matt McGrath mean?….

Surely the idea of “true” happiness is one of those concepts that only appeals to the young and the easily impressed – like Santa Claus. Or Kevin Pietersen.

Is he saying Pietersen is only a genius in his own mind and the minds of the naive and easily impressed?  Pietersen’s ‘brilliance’ is as mythical as Santa Claus?

Not very impartial that is it?  Fun though.