So it’s all over bar the shouting….and what do we know that’s new?  Nothing.

Anyone who has listened to Sturgeon swatting aside the hopeless journos of the Today programme will know she is an effective speaker….never mind the poll ratings in Scotland.  And everyone else was as expected.

A complete waste of time that was more about the Media and its sense of its own importance than any attempt to provide us with real enlightenment….Paxman’s over aggressive interviews were equally unenlightening though they had the potential to be much more effective….in fact that was the format that should have been used for all party leaders….a head to head with a sensible journo with questions sent in from the public and fellow politicians….we might actually have learnt something and had less posturing from all, including Paxman and the interviews could have been longer and more involved spread over the day and not crammed into a couple of hours for 7 party leaders to try and get a word in on complex subjects…..you could also have known in advance when your politician of choice was going to be grilled and tuned in to watch without having to waste time on those of no interest to you….after all did we want to know what their policies are and how they defend them or was it more about watching a political dogfight to see who could out-talk all the rest, and not necessarily the winner because they had the best policies…..aren’t we told we are tired of such smooth talking politicians and want more grit and reality from them?  So why put them on show in a gladitorial contest?  Because it supposedly made good TV.

And what of Farage and his comments about HIV and immigration, comments he has made before?...the BBC lays into Farage …

BBC Political Correspondent Alex Forsyth, on the campaign trail in Ramsgate, said she had been told by a senior UKIP source that “people who support us are likely to agree with us on this issue”.

And the comment could be viewed as part of a “shock and core” strategy to “reach out to their core voters”.

…and quotes as many of the self serving sanctimonious put downs from other politicians who haven’t the guts to say the things that Farage does as it can cram into a report….a report that is remarkably lacking in honesty…..what’s missing?  Perhaps a quick shufty on Google would have made Farage look less like the pariah the BBC is trying to paint him as….how about this from only a year ago….

Ban on HIV positive immigrants entering the UK proposed for Immigration Bill by Tory MPs

Conservative MPs have been accused of trying to change the law to ban foreigners with HIV and Hepatitis B from living and working in Britain.

Nearly 20 Tories backed an amendment to the Government’s controversial Immigration Bill which would have required anyone coming to settle in Britain to prove that they were not HIV positive.

 

Or how about this from 2005…

Tories plan HIV tests for migrants

The Conservative party raised the political heat on immigration yesterday by demanding that anyone seeking to come to Britain for more than a year should undergo compulsory health tests including screening for HIV and TB.

And it wasn’t just the Tories…

Labour responded a week later with a range of tough proposals in the Home Office’s five-year plan, including its own proposals for migrant health checks, focusing on TB.

 

And never mind that ‘core’ UKIP vote that the BBC is so worried about….I suspect you could ask almost anyone in the street if Farage is right and get an answer that would have the chattering classes demanding  a new voting system…perhaps each vote in leafy lefty Hampstead be worth 5 of those from UKIP ghettos.

The Mail looked into this subject a while back…

Immigrants, HIV and the true cost to the NHS: Should the ‘International Health Service’ be treating patients who come here with the killer disease, asks SUE REID

And it’s not as if the BBC themselves haven’t raised the question about health tourism….

“It seems very strange when we’re shaving off the pennies here and there to actually open the door wide to the citizens of the world to walk in and have free medical care at primary care level in the UK.”

Farage is evil.  Or just honest.

From Harry’s Place...

‘Hey Khaled, looking good!’ The BBC as an Enabler of Antisemitic Terrorism

On 1 April the world woke up to a Hamas propaganda video. It took the form of a BBC ‘interview’ with Khaled Mashaal, the leader of Hamas, and an accompanying ‘analysis’ by the BBC’s Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen. It was so Andrex-puppy-soft, so simperingly unchallenging, so knowingly complicit in helping Hamas to spin to a western audience, that I thought it was an April Fools joke. (It wasn’t.)

When Bowen met Mashaal it was more Susanna Reid than Jeremy Paxman.

Just like the besotted Reid, Jeremy Bowen began with a bit of flirting. “Khaled Mashaal looked to be in good health. ‘Keep fit to keep on resisting,’ Mashaal joked before the interview” Bowen tells us.

(I bet Mashaal was looking chipper. A private gym in Qatar, private jets, luxury hotels and a personal fortune estimated at $2.6 billion will do that for you. And if the Jerusalem Post is correct, Mashaal also owns a 2.5 acre commercial centre in Qatar, which can put a smile on your face.)

Bowen then allowed Mashaal, an anti-Semitic terrorist who has exulted in the killing of Jews as Jews, to preen and pose, without challenge, before a global audience, with the full imprimatur of a respectful BBC, as a heroic Palestinian democrat, a moderate man, a peacemaker, and a reluctant Liberator in the glorious tradition of Nelson Mandela and George Washington.

Bowen might have asked Mashaal ‘If your goals are so benign, and so moderate, as you claim, why not revoke those parts of the Hamas Charter which say “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”?

Instead Bowen opted for a ‘Mr. Mashaal, do you have a message for the nation?’ style of ‘interviewing’. Matti Friedman calls this the ‘ideological onslaught successfully disguised as journalism.’ Yesterday, knowingly or not, the BBC was used as a vehicle for Hamas Propaganda. Yesterday, to its shame, the BBC became an enabler.

The Muslim Brotherhood propagandist has found a new cause…..it is worth looking to see what Bowen’s apprentice, Donnison, is saying on Twitter?  No, I can pretty much guess what Hamas’ mouthpiece in Oz is saying….ahh couldn’t resist…amused by this…

What if the BBC’s John Sweeney had said….Islam…A force for good or something more sinister?  It’s not easy to investigate Islam.  If you investigate them, they will come for you….a cult that is corrupt, sinister and dangerous, out to capture people and brainwash them.  So, a force for good or a brainwashing cult?

What if Piers Morgan had said that Tom Cruise must ditch the vile cult of Islam NOW before Hollywood ‎ditches him?

What if he said this…

What is different, and shockingly so, is what we now know about his always mysterious personal life.

And in particular, his relationship with an even more mysterious entity – Islam.

On Sunday, the BBC aired a much-hyped documentary into the cult , called “Going Islamic”.

It was an astonishing, terrifying film; one which finally nailed many of the unpalatable truths about this deeply secretive and deeply unpleasant ideology.

The whole ideology is utterly sickening in its cynical heartlessness and exploitation.

Muslims, as they always do, reacted with a vicious public diatribe against the BBC – condemning it as a pack of lies.

Denigrating opponents is their default position to any perceived attack.

But of course it wasn’t Islam it was Scientology that has enraged Piers and Sweeney.

Isn’t it odd how some religions get kid glove treatment whatever they do and others, whacko and slightly sinister perhaps, get absolutely vilified….would Morgan or Sweeney call Islam vile, sickening and deeply unpleasant…or even corrupt, sinister and dangerous?  Don’t think so.

And it’s not as if Christianity, the full-on ‘authorised’ and ‘approved’ versions don’t have their own dark sides…..but nothing that can compare to the acts done in the name of Islam…acts which can be justified with clear commands from the Koran and Hadith.

And yet……it’s Scientology that gets it in the neck from the Media (and Piers Morgan, whoever he was)…paradoxically the BBC’s Sweeney, who was ‘spying’ on the Church of Scientology and making a film about them complains that they were ‘spying’ on him and checking what he was up to as he spied upon them….their spying was bad, his good…..Sweeney’s investigation makes altogether fairly, by comparison, trivial complaints against Scientology, nothing that couldn’t be levelled at Christianity never mind Islam…..and the film seems more concerned with explaining away Sweeney’s mad outburst from a previous attempt to examine Scientology than anything else…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4PDZt74adg

At Easter, a Christian festival, the BBC are more concerned about Islam and what you think about it….yesterday they gave us some Muslim propaganda and today they bring us yet more with this on the Frontpage…

US Christian wears hijab for 40 days

Jessey Eagan is a Christian and a mother of two, who works as a children’s director at Imago Dei Church in Peoria, Illinois. This year during Lent, she decided to wear a hijab. She kept a diary of her experience in a blog called #40DaysOfHijab, which is sparkling a debate both in the Christian and Muslim community.

Who cares?  The BBC always adds in that line about ‘sparking debate in the community’ in an attempt to show that it’s not just a story of interest to the BBC bubble and has real relevance to the world…when it doesn’t.

Perhaps a US Christian might like to dress up as Kenyan Christian and keep a diary of their experience…possibly a very short diary…..147 dead in Kenya terror attack as Islamists target Christian students

Or those in Egypt, or Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia or Syria or Nigeria…you get the picture.

In the Spectator there are some thoughts from Roger Scruton about ‘The problem of the integration of the Muslim community into our cities’  and how the Left have deliberately set out to destroy our own civilisation and society.

He tells us that ‘‘The truth is hard. We don’t need reminding that there is a heavy censorship in all matters to do with immigration, to do with the integration of immigrant communities and in particular the integration of Muslim communities.’

He says there is a battle for our civilisation and we’re losing it…[There is a battle?]….. ‘Yes, and for the survival of western civilisation. It’s not as though we’ve lost it completely. We still have got this civilisation — it’s all we’ve got, and it’s not as though we’re going to be able to replace it with any other.’

And the BBC is battling on which side?  Look at this report and you might wonder...A truly dangerous meeting of minds.

The BBC is claiming that MI5 knew of the likelihood that the men who carried out the 7/7 attacks were likely to become suicide bombers and missed the opportunity to stop them…..the BBC’s source?  An apparent MI5 agent…a disgruntled ex-Jihadi….whose story doesn’t add up.

The former MI5 agent who calls himself Aimen Dean recently spoke for the first time about his work for the UK intelligence agencies.

He says his job was to “understand al-Qaeda and other jihadist movement cells based in the UK as well as their recruitment and fundraising activities”.

So it was that in the winter of 2003 he went to the meeting room in Dudley to attend a lecture by a man he had never heard of but who would go on to be an inspiration to Islamist extremists throughout the world…Anwar al-Awlaki.

He can remember the names and faces of men he met briefly in a crowd..

Dean said he shook hands with everyone there, including three men who’d driven down from Leeds. They introduced themselves as Mohammad, Shehzad and Abu Abdullah. The next time Dean saw their faces was in news reports following the 7/7 bombings in which 52 people died.

The BBC tells us…

Dean says he was invited to the eight-day course of lectures by someone who was at that time being watched by MI5 because of concerns he was involved in terrorist activity. Curious to hear the preachings of this new kid on the block, he agreed to be there.

They then say..

In the winter of 2003, MI5 were sufficiently interested in what their agent told them about the lectures that the BBC understands they hurriedly mounted a surveillance operation outside the venue, photographing people coming and going. But by the time the team was in place it seems the men from Leeds had left, since no photographs of them were taken.

So MI5 were already watching a terrorist suspect, the man who invited Dean to the lectures, and yet the BBC tells us they had to ‘hurriedly’ mount a surveillance operation and unfortunately missed the 7/7 boys?  And yet they were already watching the suspect and they must have had pre-warning of the lectures which were over 8 days….but the team wasn’t in place in time?  Someone is telling porkies.

The BBC speculates that MI5 hid ‘the damning evidence of their negligence’, which is what they are trying to subtly suggest in this story….

A parliamentary committee report in the aftermath of 7/7 found that it could not criticise the judgements made by MI5 and the police based on the information that they had and their priorities at the time. There is no reference in the report to the lecture given by al-Awlaki in Dudley but that may have been because the intelligence had come to MI5 from an undercover agent who needed to be protected.

Maybe there is no mention of it because it never happened.

We’re then told more of what good old Dean said…

Dean remembers reporting to his MI5 handler that all of those in the room could potentially become suicide bombers, but he says that he never expected anyone to attack the UK.

Remarkable…not only does Dean say he saw the 7/7 bombers and remembers them well and that MI5 missed them but that he knew they would become suicide bombers…probably…and again MI5 missed them and must have made little effort to find the people at the lectures despite the ‘knowledge’ that they had 30 potential suicide bombers roaming the UK.

Can’t help thinking someone is taking the BBC for a ride…a ride that the BBC is happy to go along with even if they think it is suspect…the BBC will never turn down a chance to poke the security services in the eye.

I didn’t get to see it myself but was interested in how the BBC has covered it! I’m talking about the “Leader’s debate” on ITV last night, of course. BBC enthusiastic about Sturgeon, in particular. It seems her brand of strident caledonian neo marxism appeals to the BBC, for some inexplicable reason! They also bigged up Bennett and Woods, whilst downplaying Farage and Cameron. No bias at all in play, right?

Here you go, on time and awaiting your completion!

This has a prominent position on the BBC Frontpage…

#BBCtrending: The ‘Eid Pray Love’ movement

The BBC tells us that ‘These Muslims are fasting…and its not Ramadan’ to show solidarity with Christians.’

Really?  In what way are they ‘fasting’?

What are the big sacrifices they are making ‘in solidarity with Christians‘?

Sweets, cheese, no online shopping, Instagram…and the man who organised it…he’s giving up sour cream and onion crisps….for a while.

We’re told by a Christian ‘interfaith activist’ that they are showing a different side to Islam to how it is portrayed in the Media…challenging people’s perceptions, myths and fears.

The Muslims tells us that it is an “initiative with the goal of uniting Muslims and changing our perception through positive social, and interfaith action.”

So in other words it has nothing to do with ‘solidarity with Christians’ but all to do with trying to make people think Islam is wonderful.

It’s outright propaganda for the Muslim religion,  a ‘Trojan Horse’ if you like.

Good of the BBC to put it on the Frontpage especially at Easter when we hear what other Muslims think is the real face of Islam rather than what we hear in the Media….the BBC and the Guardian….. Muslims may be taking the opportunity to flock to ISIS….. about which this is an interesting comment….

However, police have not been told of the families’ concerns as the schools do not want their pupils to be criminalised.

Mr Afzal told The Times: ‘One head said he was being approached almost on a daily basis by parents who fear their kids are about to go to Syria.’

But neither the parents nor the school go to the police.

Will we hear Muslims subsequently blaming the police for not stopping their Jihadi offspring from going to Syria as we have recently had….only for it to turn out the parents often knew more than they were admitting about the radicalisation process? Or as Sir Peter Fahy said…

The parents of teenagers who flee Britain to join ISIS should take more responsibility for their children’s actions, a senior police officer has said.

Sir Peter Fahy, one of the country’s leading counter terrorism officers, said families are more to blame for young jihadis who runaway to Syria than the police, schools or local authorities.

Rather than report their concerns to police for fear of being criticised, some parents are guilty of embracing ‘victimhood’ when their children leave, he claimed.

Despite the major economic news being manufacturing is growing at its fastest rate in eight months the BBC was pretty much ignoring that and instead is blitzing us with stories about productivity, or the lack of, in the economy and are trying to present it as a result of ‘Austerity’….that’s despite the lack of productivity being a very old story.  Robert Peston was on the R4 news telling us that if we hadn’t had austerity growth would have been 15% higher…and so would wages….a Labour narrative and pure speculation…there is no counterfactual, Peston is claiming something he can’t prove…and therefore should not be saying it.

But who did he get that figure from in the first place?  An economist named John Van Reenen, who was an advisor to the Labour government and has always opposed austerity...even before it began...

Van Reenen, John (2010) Extreme austerity is the wrong medicine British Politics and Policy at LSE (28 Jun 2010)

Here is his thoughts on the Labour economy in 2007…..just before the SHTF….(not saying that he’s a bad economist but he had no idea that the worst recession in one hundred years was about to hit)

Labour’s Economic Legacy

John Van Reenen
The economy is probably the most successful legacy of the Blair years. Ironically, New Labour’s economic policies have been set by his heir, chancellor Gordon Brown.  Blair leaves behind an economy in better shape than any previous Labour leader.

Here we see where Peston gets the figure of 15% from…and it is the worst case scenario…why did he pick that?…

John Van Reenen of the LSE, who also disagreed with austerity, said “UK GDP is about 15% below where we would have expected on pre-crisis trends… Premature austerity has damaged UK welfare and, as I and others argued at the time, delaying consolidation would have left the UK in a much stronger position than it is today.”

 

Note that Peston’s article is one of those rapid rebuttals the BBC issues when things are going pear shaped for Labour…such as one hundred businessmen writing in the Telegraoph that Labour’s economic policies will damage the country just as Miliband is trying to say he is business friendly…

Who to trust – business leaders or economists?

 

Peston says…

On the day that more than 100 past and current business leaders have written to the Telegraph that the “Conservative-led government has been good for business and has pursued policies which have supported investment and job creation”, a survey of academic macro-economists has come up with a different conclusion.

 

Trouble is it wasn’t ‘on the day’...it was last Saturday this poll was released….the letter in the Telegraph appeared on Wednesday.

Here you can see the cogs working and evidence that he is trying to counter the Telegraph letter…

Now to be clear, this is not a scientifically robust poll of those who know best. But nor is the Telegraph’s letter – and those those who took part in the economists’ survey are no less distinguished in their field than the business signatories.

 

Who would I trust?  I’d follow the money and the people who make the money not those who have political axes to grind and don’t dirty their hands actually producing the stuff they talk so knowledgeably about.

Here is Peston’s unemotional report on productivity…

Weep for falling productivity

We should be both grateful and worried that British productivity has been so lousy since the great crash and recession.

Lousy only since the crash?  Hmmm…productivity in the UK in comparison to other countries has always been ‘lousy’…here’s what the IFS says……

The UK–US productivity gap narrowed over the late 1980s and early 1990s but has widened slightly since 2004. In 2008 – the latest year for which international comparisons are available – US worker s were 33% more productive than those in the UK. The UK’s lower level of productivity has contributed to a lower level of GDP per capita. In 2009 GDP per capita, measured in US dollars, was $37,391 in the UK and $46,008 in the US .

GDP was growing under Labour but what was the cause of that?  Was it productivity? or was it merely the huge number of immigrants flooding here increasing GDP but lowering wages and not actually adding to the economy overall?  The London School of Economics tells us that it was not a rise in productivity…..

Since 1997 total GDP growth has been driven mainly by increases in employment and capital (especially information technology) rather than increases in overall efficiency.

Even Peston’s new friend, John Van Reenen, admitted in 2007 that UK productivity was low under Labour…

Gordon Brown and British business leaders alike have jealously eyed the US “productivity miracle” for more than 10 years – after 1995 US output per hour growth doubled compared to the previous 20 years.

The US continues to lead in productivity, the measure of output per employee. According to the Office of National Statistics, GDP per worker in the US was 27% higher than in the UK in 2005.

Yet the UK is showing little sign of catching up.

 

Peston tells us…

The point is that a big contributor to the absence of any growth at all in output per worker and output per hour is that employment has grown much faster than national income….Lower productivity undermines the competitiveness of British firms in the global economy.

And the absence of productivity growth undermines the ability of British firms to increase our pay.

 

Many issues with that…first…we’ve always been less competitive as the IFS showed and Van Reneen admitted…second Peston claims lack of productivity undermines pay growth and that output per worker and output per hour are the measure of productivity.

Another way of measuring it would be to assess output per pound paid in wages….employers are keeping people in jobs at lower wages…but they are still producing the same amount….for less money…so productivity per pound is probably still good….or else why would employment be rising so fast?  After all employers are not charities they employ someone for a good reason, a reason that will result in profits for the business.

There is no ‘puzzle’ to the apparent lack of productivity…it is just that the wrong measure is being used.

Wages are part of the equation when measuring productivity….maybe not in the textbooks, or in BBC studios, but on the factory floor it is.

One reason wages are so low is because of the mass immigration and flood of cheap labour that means employers don’t have to compete for workers by offering higher wages.

Wonder why Peston doesn’t dwell on that?

A contribution by Graeme Thompson who posts as ‘hippiepooter’.

“Picking up from Alan’s post here on the BBC’s (ahem) ‘under-reporting’ of recent facts emerging about the Commons appearance of the families of ‘jihadi brides’, Britain’s patron saint of counter-jihad Douglas Murray prompts further thought here.

So let’s give this another spin with all that has now emerged. The father of one of the girls who went off to do Jihad and the lawyer that represented all the families who blamed the police in the Commons are rabid Jihadists.

This sensational (though entirely unsurprising) story has had banner headlines in The Times, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the Evening Standard, but if you relied on the BBC for your news you would be unaware of it.

Why is this? Could it be that the correctnick left are anti-Western allies of Jihad and control the BBC? Why else would they aid and abet the propaganda of our country’s enemies then put a news blackout on their exposure?

We use the word ‘Islamist’ to differentiate between Muslims who want to kill us and Muslims who don’t. The last thing any civilised nation wants is a pogrom against an immigrant community when atrocities are committed in the name of its religion. However, Jihad is an integral part of Islam, and a Muslim who renounces Jihad renounces Islam.

One way we can defeat Jihad and stop demographic islamisation of our nation is to de-islamisize our Muslim population. The best way we can do this is with the Koran. How could such a lying, thieving, warmongering, child molesting, Jew hating monster like Mohammed possibly be the ‘last prophet of God’?

This Satanic religion is killing our country and the BBC is helping it.”

Wow, one of those mornings where I have received numerous emails from you folks mentioning the BBC Radio 4 Today programme hatchet job on the letter in the Daily Telegraph supporting Conservative economic policies. I also see it has been picked up on the Open Thread. I did hear Robert Peston in full “Save Ed” mode and the BBC was doing everything possible to push the Labour narrative that the thoughts of 100 senior business leaders means little and anyway there are academic based economists out there who support Ed! It looks more and more that the BBC are the official opposition to the prospect of a Cameron return to Number Ten!