Evan Davis interviewed Nigel Farage and it went pretty much as you might expect, Davis not focussing on policy but instead intent on painting Farage as some sort of racist rabble rouser who uses unnecessarily inflammatory language.

The BBC website’s follow up was equally determined to paint a similar picture and uses a snearing tone to undermine and discredit Farage as incompetent or ‘angry’.  The headline of their report itself is an indicator of what the BBC wants you to think…..they have decided what is important in the interview and highlighted it…but it was their question that set up the premise about Farage’s ‘tone’ and it was they who decided this was an issue, it is the BBC, Evan Davis, who insinuates that Farage’s ‘tone’ is somehow unacceptable….and that Farage used it cynically, not really meaning what he said about immigration, in order merely to ‘get noticed’….

Farage ‘used tone to get noticed’

The problem with that is what do they mean by ‘tone’?  Judging by the way the interview went ‘tone’ is not tone of voice, it is not the way you say something, not the language you use, but in this case it is the content of what Farage says….that immigration must be controlled and that multiculturalism has led to various segregated communities that are unhealthy for society…..apparently that is the ‘tone’ that is unacceptable.

Davis only really began the interview (and this is where Newsnight decided to start their edit of the interview from) when he started to ask about UKIP’s polling numbers and linked it to ‘image’ saying that UKIP was polling less than support for its policies might suggest because…..‘there might be a whiff of meanness and divisiveness about the Party’.

Farage tried to answer but was constantly interrupted by Davis who then declared that he think’s this has something to do with your tone, the way you talk about immigration.

So that’s the usual Evan Davis Stalinist-like show trial technique in operation….label someone a racist, demand they prove themselves innocent, interrupt so they can’t explain themselves and then tell them they are racist ….and then declare ‘let’s move on’ before the victim has a chance to object.

So Davis has already set up Farage as somewhat sinister and possibly racist and then tries to ‘prove’ his own labelling of Farage by using the ‘proof’ of his own interpretation of how Farage talks about immigration…naturally Davis, an ardent pro-immigration extremist himself, thinks anyone who talks about controlling immigration is wrong.

But never mind that Davis not only labels Farage with a strawman argument and then goes on to ‘prove’ it with his own thoughts, is he right that UKIP is polling low because it looks ‘mean and divisive’ due to Farage’s ‘tone’?

One reason is that UKIP has been under sustained attack from nearly every news outlet with their own vested interests intent on discrediting and underming UKIP…but even that isn’t the major cause for the low poll ratings.

The real reason UKIP polls low is that people recognise the bigger picture…vote UKIP and you may well end up with Miliband….vote Tory you will at least get a vote on Europe, under Labour you definitely won’t….so one major issue for UKIP supporters has been hijacked by Cameron…..and they also know that UKIP will not, certainly in this election, become a party that can win a majority and fulfill its promise to take us out of Europe and cut immigration….so they vote tactically, and certainly many Tory voters who might vote UKIP will remain Tory although many disgruntled Labour voters may well decide UKIP is less disagreeable than voting Tory.

Davis’ interpretation is wrong and coloured entirely by his own issues with immigration and Europe, not to mention HIV and its associations with Gays in relation to Farage’s comments on HIV positive immigrants and the NHS.

The BBC website tells us….

[Farage] does plenty of interviews and he’s got two televised debates under his belt, but this was probably the toughest exchange so far.

During a half hour of intense scrutiny Nigel Farage was at times tetchy, even angry. “I’m not having this,” he said, when he accused his interrogator of misquoting him. “I don’t hate anything” he said when he thought words were being put in his mouth. “I couldn’t care less,” he said – twice – when pushed on one sensitive issue. He was combative and he stood his ground.

But the interview did emphasise one thing – numbers are not his strong point.  On UKIP’s plan for big tax cuts and deficit reduction he was nonchalant in saying “dynamic growth” in the economy – more revenue from less tax – was the secret to it working.

Farage’s ‘toughest exchange yet’?  Hardly think so….LBC’s James O’Brien’s kangaroo court was by far the ‘toughest’ if only for the continual stream of made up accusations and half-truths O’Brien attempted to lynch Farage with…and yet Farage kept his cool and showed O’Brien to be less than credible as an interviewer and distinctly dishonest.  Evan Davis was less dramatic but had the same intent as O’Brien, to smear Farage with whatever trumped up charge came to hand.

At one point Davis played a clip from an interview Farage did on Fox News about the rise of radical Islam in the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo and claimed this was an example of an unacceptable tone.  It was in fact Farage merely saying what many, many other people, from politicians, to journalists, to academics,  have said.

Davis seems to be saying that any criticism of Islam is unacceptable and shouldn’t be voiced lest we ‘upset’ Muslims, making them feel ‘under siege’.…leading to radicalisation.  The BBC seems to have no problem with a communtiy that says ‘If you criticise us we will turn nasty’….but does have a problem with anyone who suggest FGM, or polygamy, extreme intolerance, or indeed extremism based upon religion, is wrong.

Farage and Davis get sidetracked as to whether Farage in the clip is talking about Islam in the UK, he actually was in that BBC clip, but the interview as a whole was about radical Islam generally and was based upon events in Paris and so Farage, having done so many interviews, may be excused for not remembering the exact details of the clip…especially as it was edited to be very short and without context.

Cuious that Davis thinks this is ‘mean and divisive’……..

Davis dismisses the claim that the Archbishop of Canterbury said we should accept Sharia law in the UK by saying ‘He was misunderstood’.

No, no he wasn’t.  He quite clearly ssaid that we should accept a parallel system of law based upon Sharia…because….if we don’t it will upset Muslims and there will be a ‘breakdown in cohesion’...what could he possibly mean by that?

 “as a matter of fact certain provisions of sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law” ……. “the application of sharia in certain circumstances – if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples’ religion – seems unavoidable?”

 

Here is the BBC’s very own report on the matter….

Sharia law in UK is ‘unavoidable’

Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4’s World at One that the UK has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.

Dr Williams said an approach to law which simply said “there’s one law for everybody and that’s all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts – I think that’s a bit of a danger”.

“There’s a place for finding what would be a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law, as we already do with some other aspects of religious law.”

 

So we must accept that Muslims do not want to be ruled by British law and must have their own legal system…and whatever else they want to keep them happy and quiet.

Farage was right, Davis wrong on that important point.

Things then got surreal with Davis suggesting the recent children’s film about Paddington Bear showed the wonders of immigration and multi-culturalism….‘a proclamation of the virtues of multiculturalism which I know you hate…’

Farage then objected to the word ‘hate’ as it was perjorative and seemingly designed to be a ‘ramping up of the rhetoric’ about him by Davis.

I wonder where Davis got the ‘Paddington’ angle from…..maybe the left-leaning Economist:

UKIP, pursued by a bear

MANY Britons were raised on tales of Paddington, the second-best-known bear in fiction after Winnie-the-Pooh. A kind of ursine Jacques Tati, the well-meaning Paddington caused chaos wherever he went through a mixture of clumsiness and cultural misunderstanding; the best moments usually involved his clashes with pompous British officialdom.

A new film version, directed and written by Paul King, focuses on a quality for which the British once prided themselves—a welcoming attitude towards refugees. An archetypal British explorer called Montgomery Clyde (who travels with grand piano and grandfather clock) meets Paddington’s aunt and uncle, introduces them to the joys of marmalade, and tells them of the warm welcome they can expect in London. When an earthquake destroys their home in “darkest Peru”, Paddington is duly sent to London to seek shelter.

[Laughed at this bit..]

If this interpretation had been served up by the BBC, the publicly subsidised national broadcaster, the howls of protest from the Daily Mail and Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-immigrant UK Independence Party, would have been deafening.

It was a reminder that UKIP polls relatively poorly in multicultural London and that its national ratings are still in the mid-teens, well below the Front National in France.

Not everyone in Britain is a “little Englander”; a lot of people, if they met Mr Farage, would be tempted to follow Paddington’s example and give him “a particularly hard stare”.

Well not this particular commenter…..

From the Telegraph:

BBC accused of left-wing ambush on David Cameron over hostile Radio 1 interview

H/T Guido…

The BBC has given a lifetime ahievement award to a man who expressed the desire to execute Salman Rushdie.….. endorsed by Sharia law…but only in an Islamic State Yusuf Islam assured us….though I’m sure the BBC thinks it has nothing to do with Islam.

This year’s Lifetime Achievement awards will be given to legendary musician Yusuf / Cat Stevens and Grammy Award-winning artist Loudon Wainwright III.

 

From Nick Cohen:

But here is what Islam said to Geoffrey Robertson QC in 1989. (Video here.)

Robertson: You don’t think that this man deserves to die?
Y. Islam: Who, Salman Rushdie?
Robertson: Yes.
Y. Islam: Yes, yes.
Robertson: And do you have a duty to be his executioner?
Y. Islam: Uh, no, not necessarily, unless we were in an Islamic state and I was ordered by a judge or by the authority to carry out such an act – perhaps, yes.
[Some minutes later, Robertson on the subject of a protest where an effigy of the author is to be burned]
Robertson: Would you be part of that protest, Yusuf Islam, would you go to a demonstration where you knew that an effigy was going to be burned?
Y. Islam: I would have hoped that it’d be the real thing.

Just had this from my marvellous Observer colleague Andrew Anthony: “He told me in 1997, eight years after saying on TV that Rushdie should be lynched, that he was in favour of stoning women to death for adultery. He also reconfirmed his position on Rushdie. He set up the Islamia school in Brent, which is currently undergoing council-backed expansion. Its mission statement three years ago explicitly stated that its aim was to bring about the submission of the individual, the community and the world at large to Islam. For this aim it now receives state funding. Its an incubator of the most bonkers religious extremism and segregation, and is particularly strong on the public erasure of women. Why do people go to such lengths to ignore these aspects of Yusuf Islam’s character and philosophy?

If the BBC’s continuing endorsement of a Muslim fundamentalist with views that are evidently quite extreme, in  British society, is quite scary this (H/T Sue at Is the BBC biased?) should create a great deal more concern as it looks as if the BBC’s much vaunted independence has been compromised by Muslim activists seeking to change how the BBC reports Muslim issues:

Aaqil Ahmed, the BBC head of religion and ethics, said: “Religious literacy is far too important just to be left in the hands of people who are not subject specialists. I think you need both.”

Replying to criticism that BBC cuts and the pressures of the 24-hour news cycle had stripped out specialists, he said: “There are a lot of conversations with BBC News. There is a different leadership in BBC News, understanding exactly the world is different.”

He said editors, including director of news and current affairs James Harding, had attended a recent meeting with Muslim academics covering “the rise of religiosity in young Muslim children, the Trojan horse schools, which are not one-offs, they are a glimpse of the future.

“We have to find out the right way of telling that particular story. That notion has landed.”

‘A glimpse of the future’?  What did Ahmed mean by that exactly?  Is he saying that Muslims are becoming more devout, fanatical, in their religious observation and will be demanding British Society adapts to them…or else?

I think he is saying precisely that….but he is also looking to have the BBC report such issues, such as the Trojan Horse scandal, in a Muslim friendly manner rather than present them as the threat to a democratic, secular, tolerant and peaceful society under one law that is the British way.

All of which is a bit laughable as the BBC already does its utmost to pretend there are no such issues with the Religion of Peace and happily sweeps them under the carpet more often than not…or if forced to report them looks to downplay any issues and deny a connection to Islam…the Trojan Horse scandal being a case in point, the BBC claiming it was all a hoax, that there were no issues, that it was a result of islamophobia and racism…the BBC that refused to publish information that indicated that the lead Muslim advocacy group, the MCB, was at the heart of the scandal.  Why would the BBC do that?

Even John Birt noticed the BBC’s failure to address the issues….

BBC’s current affairs programmes ‘failing to address radical Islam and other tough topics’

The BBC is failing to address the “awesomely difficult questions” facing Britain, including the economy and the threat of radical Islam, according to the corporation’s former chief.

John Birt, director-general of the BBC from 1992-2000, said its current affairs analysis was falling short.

“What it’s not sufficiently doing is addressing the very big, awesomely difficult questions our country and our world are facing at the moment,” he said.

There is a war going on, a war of words and ideologies.  Activist Muslims have launched a media assault on our society with the intent to intimidate the Media into censoring themselves on Islamic issues, forcing them to whitewash any crimes or behaviour that can be associated with Islamic teachings in order to silence criticism of Islam and deceive non-Muslims about the serious concerns that the rise of a fundamentalist religiosity, one that is highly intolerant of other religions and which incites high levels of violence in many adherents, in the West raise.

It looks like the BBC has been groomed and recruited.

I think we should know who were these ‘Muslim academics’ that lobbied the BBC and what exactly was said and agreed.  How can it be that private interest groups can shape how the BBC reports the news in their favour?

How soon Rochdale is forgotten.

This morning the BBC filled the airwaves with tall tales about Tory Grant Shapps and Wikipedia edits.

The BBC told us that the administrator who had made the claims about Shapps had said that he ‘couldn’t be sure who had edited the account’….so the question is did the BBC know the identity of that administrator and if so why did they not report it?  Was the story about Shapps just too good to put a stop to?

The Telegraph reports that the administrator at Wikipedia was in fact a LibDem activist…

Wikipedia administrator who accused Grant Shapps of editing pages of Tory rivals is Liberal Democrat activist

Richard Symonds admitted today that he had been “chastised” by other administrators at Wikipedia for not checking with more people before banning a user who he claims is Mr Shapps, or someone working for him.

Mr Symonds also admitted that he had briefed The Guardian newspaper, which broke the alleged story yesterday.

 

No mention of the identity of this administrator in the Guardian story, nor of his inability to actually provide any evidence that linked Shapps to the edits….so where did the BBC get their quote from about his lack of evidence? Did they contact him personally?

After spending the day slinging mud at Shapps, and he was also interrogated on Newsnight last night so important is this story,  the BBC hasn’t bothered to update the story with the rather significant fact that it looks like a bit of LibDem skulduggery at work.

Funny how much time the BBC spends on a story when it seems to suit their bias, as with the ‘Jihadi Bride’s father, and then can suddenly lose all interest when the truth comes out and contradicts their quality journalism…and never a sign of an apology or a rowback from them….they’ve already managed to imprint people’s minds with the BBC version and they know that may well stick however much ‘truth’ comes out later. All very Goebbels-like.

I’m sure Nick Clegg will be rewritng his jokes now…

Asked about the claims, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said he was “prepared to believe” that Mr Shapps had not altered his Wikipedia entry but joked: “It just could have been someone else – Michael Green, for instance.”

 

 

I happened to watch Newsnight on BBC2 last night. It’s been a while and with good reason. The entire programme was one long extenuated assault on the Conservative Party. We had geo-political analysts such as “White Dee” (from Benefits Street) there to explain why Welfare reform is an evil. It is clear that the BBC has decided it must be EVERYTHING possible to help get Ed into Downing Street and with around two weeks to go, it is throwing ALL it can to ensure Cameron is “locked out” of Downing Street for the next five years as the Left run amok with their glove puppet Miliband installed as glorious leader.

Guest post by Robin

“As an aside to the Hopkins and other immigration threads .

Calamities happen in the world , and movement of people’s is one of the consequences .

It could be a huge global catastrophe, or so localised it happens just  to you .
Now imagine your neighbours house burns down , so you offer his family succour for a period .
You think this is a temporary accommodation, until insurance or whatever sorts it out .
But your new intake gets permanent , and divides your house into separate quarters , or even — takes over your ( the )house and you have to move into the garage .
An implausible situation , but not on a global scale for many people in the world in times past , as Romans would testify  Where are the Romans today ?
The Britons had the same , but they are still with us , as they kept a toe hold in Cornwall , Brittany and God’s own country ; Wales . Much as a Welshman reveres the place , it cannot be disputed that they were forced to be there .
This was because the low lying areas where the Angles, Saxons and Jutes were living were being flooded and waves of invasions (or migratory) pressures from the East meant there was no land to settle in mainland Europe, so they invaded Britain .
This wasn’t welcomed . The Romano British didn’t say” Oh you’ve come to take over , no problem we’ll just move westward until your satisfied with the land grab you got .” There was resistance .
And thus it’s been throughout history , and the latest long running saga is with the Palestinians , who feel they have been replaced by Jews. A people who migrated for worse reasons than sea levels encroaching upon land .
The main point is what the Gramscis and BBC omit , that the mass movement of humanity from one part of the globe to another – apart from the USA for a limited period – is not a peaceful event .”

OK folks, time for a new one of these so over to you. THIS is where you detail the bias.

Good start to day on R4…BBC journo’s all asking what should the ‘new governement’, the ‘next government’ and the ‘new Prime Minister’ do to resolve current issues…all rather suggestive that Cameron and Tories are going to be out. Why not just say ‘What do you want the government to do?’

We also hear that rural life is in meltdown with communities rapidly collapsing with all services such as shops, pubs, post offices and bus services being closed.  Might have been relevant to suggest that the country isn’t a museum with pretty little shops and so on being there to make the place look idyllic….perhaps if people used those shops, pubs and post offices they wouldn’t close…..and have to say plenty of such rural services available where I live.

Then they got onto Rural Payments to farmers….slipped in was the comment that farmers desperately ‘need the EU subsidies’.

Hmmm…EU subsidies?  Do they mean the money the EU sends us back from the billions we send them but not before the EU bureaucrats rake off huge salaries with lavish expenses that they pay themselves before generously handing some of it back to us…with the demand that we thank the EUists profusely for their largesse?

The BBC’s biggest story of the day seems to be the Guardian smear that Grant Shapps may have altered his Wikipedia entry….shock and horror!

The BBC’s Norman ‘utterly terrifying’ Smith was delighted with this tale saying ‘This story brought a big smile to my face’.….telling us that Shapps thought it was a Labour Party smear which Smith dismissed with a joke denying it could possibly be a Labour smear operation…..they’re too computer illiterate and lack a sense of humour….leaving it up in the air as to who did alter the entry…suggesting Shapps perhaps?  Even if true…so what?

The Guardian’s evidence?…

The site’s administrators, selected Wikipedia volunteers who patrol the site, told the Guardian that they “believe that the account Contribsx is a sockpuppet of Grant Shapps’ previous accounts on Wikipedia … and based on the evidence the account is either run by Shapps directly or being run by someone else – an assistant or a PR agency – but under his clear direction.”

Oh hang on….anyone can edit it and the administrators can in fact almost be anyone….who is the admin who claims Shapps is guilty and what’s the evidence?…the Guardian fails to enlighten us….the BBC is admitting that that particular admin. ‘can’t be sure of who edited the account‘…..so a non-story about a non-story based on the word of one man who admits he is speculating. Big news!

R4 ignores the Mail story about Unite controlling half of Labour’s candidates…but then again why would we expect the BBC to cover that when they ignored the story when it arose before and even Labour sites attacked Unite and Miliband?  That’ll be the Unite Union that wants to impose Ralph Miliband’s Marxist utopia upon us.  Might be important…especially as Unite Leader, Len McCluskey, says Democracy is over-rated and he wants to use ‘direct action’ to force his views upon society.  Something that might be of interest to anyone thinking of voting for Unite funded Miliband.

Just heard that America is guilty of creating ISIS…never mind it existed in Afghan under a different name long before the BBC’s Peter Taylor claims it was created and the idea to create an Islamic State was always the dream.  The BBC happily ignores the reality that ‘ISIS’ was smashed by the US in Iraq and resurrected by Assad who released them from prisons and attacked their rivals whilst protecting them for his own purposes….not a mention of that key Syrian angle in this write up by Taylor.

The BBC is relentless in trying to blame the West or the US for what is happening in the Middle East…never mind that it was the Arab Spring that set off events in Syria and created the circumstances that allowed ISIS to rise again.

Even Jeremy Bowen admits that the self-immolation of the Tunisian fruit seller was the spark that began the uprisings across the Middle East…Syria would not be self-destructing if that hadn’t happened and ISIS wouldn’t have had the opportunity to rise again…nothing to do with Iraq.

It’s an odd thing isn’t it?  Muslims flock to the infidel and despised West to take advantage of the benefits provided by that infidel and despised Western society, including the ability to practise their religion more freely than when back in their ‘Islamic’ homelands, and yet the West is not allowed to go to Muslim lands to depose secular dictators hated by those same Muslims and to bring religious and political freedom to the oppressed people of those lands as well as to oust regimes like the Taliban…. the sort of Jihadi ‘Muslims’ that ‘real’ Muslims, sat comfortably in their Western homes, tell us aren’t real Muslims…and yet the West is somehow guilty of a crime against Muslims… which drives those ‘Real Muslims’ to be radicalised and to join up with those ‘Non-Islamic’ Jihadi Muslims to fight the Infidel and despised Western oppressor.

Go figure.

The BBC believes it unquestionably.

What brought that little rant on?  This from Craig at Is the BBC biased (yes it is) in which he tells of a complaint he made to the BBC about their lack of coverage of the fact that the father of a ‘Jihadi runaway’ was himself an extremist when they had previously given an enormous amount of airtime to him and his ilk to complain that it was all the Police’s fault or MI5’s fault that his daughter had gone off to join ISIS.

The BBC’s response was to say this…

BBC News is aware of the video material said to show Mr Hussen at a rally in 2012 and we have looked into the matter ourselves.

We didn’t consider it merited a report on its own, but it was included in a TV piece due to run on the evening of Friday, March 27th. Unfortunately, because of other news priorities, including the court verdict in the Amanda Knox/Meredith Kercher case, it didn’t make it to air.

I’m sorry, what was that?  ‘We didn’t consider it merited a report on its own’!

Are they kidding? Having flooded the news with sob stories about his daughter and her friends the BBC couldn’t find time for what is an important part of that story, the missing piece of the jigsaw that answers the question that the BBC constantly asks…Just what drives our young British Muslism to become radicalised?

Turns out its the way they’ve been brought up.  Suddenly though the BBC has lost interest in the answer.

Strange that.

The BBC does reassure us that….

However, it is something that we do intend to return to in the future.

Craig is doubtful…

When the BBC Complaints guy writes, “However, it is something that we do intend to return to in the future”, I afraid I don’t have any confidence in that pledge whatsoever. They clearly have absolutely no plans to update this story. The censorship will continue.

However I have every faith that the BBC will indeed return to the subject….the father will of course be the victim of Western oppression in his homeland that forced him, ironically, to flee to the West where he again suffered discrimination, disenfranchisement, alienation and Islamophobia, not to mention the trauma of watching his homeland being freed from the savage grip of a secular tyrant on the BBC each night…no wonder he became radicalised and turned to extreme measures when the much vaunted Western Democracy failed him.