A very telling reaction from a Pakistani ‘heritage’ Sunni Muslim MP, Khalid Mahmood, on the Today programme (08:50) to suggestions that it was inappropriate to fly flags at half-mast on the death of King Abdullah.

Mahmood supported Saudi Arabia,  in denial about the malignant effect of Saudia Arabian values on the world.  He expressed surprise that we should have any concerns at all about those values, suggesting that there were far more unpleasant states in the world which had a far worse record on human rights for minorities including religious ones….India for instance….I suppose one surprise is he didn’t suggest Israel.

Remember this is the same Mahmood, that champion of human rights, who wanted to ban the EDL from expressing their views in Brimingham.  He is Sunni, Saudi is Sunni.  (Mehdi Hasan is Shia…and opposes Saudi.)

Now India isn’t perfect but in no way could it be compared to Saudia Arabia…unlike say Mahmood’s birthplace, Pakistan, where religious minorities live in constant fear and are the subject of vicious attacks both legal and vigilante, often backed by the State.

What this illustrates is how conservative Muslims in the UK are in thrall to the Saudi Islamic doctrine backed up by billions of petro-dollars pumped around the world to spread their fundamentalist ideology and in denial about the detrimental effects of the ideology.

The BBC et al are also in deep denial about some issues whilst being prepared to single out a particular country for its hostile reporting….Israel.

The BBC is more than happy not to challenge any Muslim who defends anti-Semitism, even the killing of Jews, on the grounds that Israel’s actions make such ‘retribution’ on European Jews justifiable…the BBC’s Tim Wilcox even promoting that savage narrative himself.

But such Muslims, and Wilcox, seem to ignore far worse suffering around the world, suffering at the hands of other Muslims….the victims being not just non-Muslims but Muslims themselves….the heroic Jihadis going to rescue their Muslim brothers from the Western oppressors are actually killing more Muslims, and prolonging the wars far beyond their natural span, than any Israeli or Western soldier.

Then there is Pakistan…a country created in the same way for Muslims as Israel was for Jews…but Pakistan has far less legitimacy…after all there are many Islamic countries around the world that can provide safe havens for the ‘Ummah’…there were none for the Jews.

The creation of Pakistan has created a storm of violence around the world, its own ‘malign influence’ spreading terrorism and war far and wide.  Millions have died because of Pakistan’s actions…..so why are UK Pakistani Muslims so concerned about little Israel and not their own place of origin?

Nearly a million died and millions more were ethnically cleansed from the newly created Muslim state of Pakistan…but that’s not the whole picture….what about Bangladesh, or East Pakistan as it was once called?  How many died in the war for its independence from Pakistan and how many millions fled in to exile?  And why is no one interested in Bangladesh and Pakistan’s murderous actions?….

The genocide is still too little known about in the West. It is, moreover, the subject of shocking degrees of denial among partisan polemicists and manipulative historians.

Perhaps if this history was better known we could have some genuine perspective on Israel and its actions…..we could also look at the UK’s and the USA’s ‘collateral damage’ figures for Iraq and Afghanistan….Israel would be well ahead of those countries in the efforts it makes to prevent civilian deaths….and then there is Syria…200,000 dead reportedly.  Killed by other Muslims…again those ‘heroic Jihadis’.

The BBC and responsible news providers should be making every effort to change the narrative…both for Israel and for UK foreign policy…so often the excuse for Muslims attacks on UK citizens……as you can see below even some ‘moderate Muslims’ say such a narrative is ‘dishonest and dangerous’...and yet it is the one that the BBC enthusiastically embraces, not just reporting others making such claims but making the connections themselves…thereby supporting the terrorist’s own jusitifications and feeding their narrative which makes for fertile recruiting grounds for an ever increasing amount of Jihadis.

It is a paradox that the BBC and the likes of the Guardian will defend such conservative Muslims and their values in the UK whilst doing their utmost to destroy critics of the same fundamentalist doctrine such as the EDL….and yet they also will denounce Saudia Arabia’s own laws and values which are the basis for many British conservative Muslims’ faith.

Here is the Guardian…

King Abdullah embodied the wickedness of Saudi Arabia’s regime

Saudi’s influence on the outside world is almost wholly malign. The young men it sent to fight in Afghanistan turned into al-Qaida. The Sunni jihadis whom Saudis have funded in Iraq and Syria turned into Isis. It has spread a poisonous form of Islam throughout Europe with its subsidies, and corrupted western politicians and businessmen with its culture of bribery. The Saudis have always appealed to the worst forms of western imperialism: their contempt for other Muslims is as great as any American nationalist’s.

 

Can you imagine them saying that about conservative Muslims in the UK?  And yet Saudi ideology is mainstream in UK Muslim communities.  You know the BBC’s reaction to the Trojan Horse plot….one of denial and cover-up, downplaying it and then, when it could no longer be denied,  suggesting that if that is what Muslim parents want for their children’s schooling then perhaps they should be allowed to have it in the interests of community cohesion.

Just who are practising that ‘poisonous form of Islam’ in Europe then?

You may rightly say hold on!  What about Panorama?  And of course that was one of  the very few times the BBC has dared to be open about the problems of not just violent Muslim extremists but the Muslims who push by other means for the greater influence and dominance of Islam in the UK.

Here is John Ware in the Independent backing up his Panorama programme….

The British Muslims not afraid to fight extremism

A British version of Islam that embraces British culture, rather than seeking to eradicate it, will need to dispel the perception among Muslims that western foreign policy is the root cause of violent extremism. This is “dishonest and dangerous” says Deen. The fact that Islamist terrorism pre-dates Iraq and Afghanistan and that there are many millions of non-Muslims just as aggrieved at foreign policy who do not resort to violence, points to toxic theology as the real culprit.
Forging a British Islam will also require reversing an apparent trend towards more segregated Muslim communities in places such as Birmingham, London and northern mill towns. This is the decades-long consequence of a weakening collective identity, once celebrated as “multiculturalism”, now lamented as sleepwalking our way into segregation.
“I’m not afraid to confront this mafia now,” says Deen. “Before I had a fear that I would be ostracised from the community – it was an unspoken rule that you don’t have a different opinion because you will be shut down. It’s a bully force.
“But I know now that my position is cogent. I know that irrationality will not stand in the way of rationality.”
For all the abuse heaped on them for speaking out, they offer the only credible answer to forces within this country that threaten to divide us in the most dangerous way imaginable.

 

Do they, those ‘moderates’,  have any chance at all against the Saudi, or Deobandi, inspired ‘mafia’?  Not a chance in hell…especially when UK politicians, businessmen, academics, Sports, Royalty and some in the Media are so closely tied to the Gulf Arab States and their royal families.

Conservative Islam threatens to ‘divide us in the most dangerous way imaginable’….that’s not from Tommy Robinson, not from the BNP, not from some Islamophobic racist…..it’s from a BBC journalist.

But here’s the thing…Panorama is a one off, it’s conclusions don’t get followed through into the BBC’s general programming where Muslims must not be upset by having a few home truths spelt out to them in the interests, ironically, of ‘community cohesion’…which if John Ware is right is far from being the actual result of the BBC’s policy on Islam….the result being not to bond us toegther in one harmonious society but to  ‘divide us in the most dangerous way imaginable’.

Here is the face of Islam in the UK that the BBC really works hard to promote in an article by Owen Bennett-Jones:

Blasphemy, jihad and victimhood

Of course, most people still accept that the vast majority of Muslims are just as horrified and upset by militant Islamist violence as anyone else. But Muslims are under increasing pressure.

That is the most telling line in the piece…the essence of all BBC programming….the ‘vast majority of Muslims’ have no interest in actually practising their religion, fundamental Islam, as it should be practised, and no interest in violent propagation of Islam,  and, they are just as much victims of that Islamist violence as non-Muslims as they become subject to Islamophobic attacks.   But how true is any of that?  How many cheered 9/11?  How many secretly admire ISIS and will it to succeed?

Owen Bennett-Jones has been reading a few blogs after Panorama and didn’t like what he saw saying…

Right-wing, media-monitoring blogs are celebrating the shift, praising any programmes and articles that hint that Islam is regressive.

 

I imagine he means the likes of this site which may or may not be ‘right wing’ but is always right!

He goes on…

For years, they have routinely been asked by journalists to condemn violence. Now questions are also being asked about mainstream Muslim opinion on doctrinal issues such as blasphemy.

Many Muslims find now themselves described as extremists not because they support violence but because of their religious views.

 

That again pinpoints a problem with the BBC…in its eyes it is only the ‘violence’ that is extreme…it refuses to accept that Islam, in itself, is extremist when compared to a secular, democratic, liberal state.

He goes on…

While the Charlie Hebdo management sacked a cartoonist for anti-Semitism, it did not hesitate to publish anti-Islamic cartoons.

 

But there is a difference between anti-Semitism and cartoons that criticise Islamic values…or as he calls it…‘anti-Islamic cartoons’.

Anti-Semitism is a hatred based purely upon a racial identity whilst criticism of Islam is criticism of an idea, an ideology…not the same thing at all…it is not a hatred of Muslims as individuals.

You can be anti-Zionism or anti the teachings of the Torah or the Bible without being irrationally anti-Semitic or anti-Christians.

What Bennett-Jones doesn’t tell is is that the sacked cartoonist in question once said this:

‘Yes, I am anti-Semitic and I am not scared to admit it… I want all Jews to live in fear, unless they are pro-Palestinian. Let them die.’

Essentially Owen Bennett-Jones is trying to damn anyone who criticises Islam whilst excusing Muslim extremism as the result of ‘Islamophobia’ or racism…his final sentence summing up the general drift of the piece…

Others reckon the brothers were in fact using the blasphemy issue as a vehicle to express the frustration, anger and powerlessness that come with being the sons of Algerian migrants, alienated and unable to get a fair chance in the society they were born into.

 

That’s OK then….they aren’t to blame for the mass murder of journalists, police officers and Jews.  Bit frustrated about life, not got a job?  Go out and kill someone….stamp of approval from the BBC.

Such denial is rampant at the BBC….When the new King in Saudi Arabia took over the BBC reported on the web only that he said this in his speech:

Within hours of acceding to the throne, King Salman, 78, vowed to maintain the same policies as his predecessors.
“We will continue adhering to the correct policies which Saudi Arabia has followed since its establishment,” he said in a speech broadcast on state television.
The new king wrote on his official Twitter account: “I ask God to help me succeed in my service of the dear [Saudi] people.”

 

Now that one sentence, “We will continue adhering to the correct policies which Saudi Arabia has followed since its establishment,”  is also very telling but rather cryptic for most people especially as the BBC has excised most of the parts of the speech that expand on that statement giving it its full meaning and relevance…..here are those missing, relevant,  parts….

The following is the text of Saudi King Salman’s nationally televised speech Friday following the death of King Abdullah at age 90:
With hearts that believe in God and destiny, and are filled with sadness and grief, I go to the loyal Saudi people and the Arab and Islamic nations condoling the precious loss of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz, may God have mercy on him.
God Almighty chose him to be close to Him after having spent his life seeking obedience of his Lord and to uphold His religion, then to serve his country and his people and defend the Arab and Islamic nations.

We will continue, with God’s grace and strength, committed to the true approach which was followed by this state since its inception.…… We will never deviate from this approach since our constitution is the book of Allah and the Sunnah (deeds and saying) of His Prophet, peace be upon him.
Brothers:
The Arab and Islamic nation is in dire need today to be united and maintain solidarity. We will continue in this country, that God has honored by choosing it as a platform for His message and as the direction Muslims must pray. Our march is to undertake everything possible to keep the unity of our ranks and the unity of word and in defense of our nation’s issues, guided by the teachings of our true Islamic religion which was favored by the Lord to us, the religion of peace, mercy and moderation.

I imagine you can spot the difference…….the Saudis are committed to the ‘Arabs’…not Pakistani Muslims then?  Islam was, after all, revealed to the Arabs as one Arab said rather pointedly…. and the ‘Islamic nation’…hmmm…that’ll be some form of Caliphate then ala ISIS…

They will never deviate from the True Religion and its teachings and will act to spread them around the world bringing peace, mercy and moderation to one and all.  Bless.

Curious someone at the BBC didn’t want you to see that…surely a fairly major part of the speech that indicated exactly what Saudi Arabia intends to do….carry on as before spreading its ‘malign’ message and influence around the world….and our politicians, media, academics, royalty and businessmen will continue to look the other way as long as the money keeps flowing into their pockets.

The narrative has to change….the narrative on Israel must be put into perspective with the mass murder by Muslims of Muslims being a priority…..as well as the various ethnic cleansings and mass exodus of peoples forced out by Islamic nation’s wars….reminding people that the Palestinian refugee’s problems pale into insignificance in the light of such revelations.

The West’s foreign policy must be examined more closely and the preferred lazy and agenda driven narrative that terrorism is purely the result of an anti-Islamic attack by the West proven wrong.  The West has long supported the Islamist cause…that was its mistake…we gave them safe harbour in Londonistan and they turned on us, we supported them in Afghanistan and they turned on us, we got rid of Saddam as Bin laden wanted to do, and they turned on us, we supported the Arab Spring and they turned on us, we refused to go into Syria as politicians bowed to the Muslim communities’ demands that we end ‘western intervention’ in Muslim countries and they turned on us for not intervening.

The BBC has a responsibility to lay out the facts, the history, the realities of who is doing what to whom and yet it fails to do so….it has taken the decision to side, in effect, with the terrorists, with the Jihadis, with the conservative Muslims.

The BBC’s discourse is dishonest and dangerous.  The absolute refusal to tackle the ingrained Muslim narrative of victimhood and the refusal to recognise the Koran’s insidious influence on the minds of the extremists means that the problem will never be tackled other than by continued massive surveillance and arrests in the Muslim community as the pro-Jihadi undercurrents continue to flow and swell fed by the BBC itself….a couple of programmes like Panorama will do nothing to stem this tidal wave of Islamism sweeping through Muslim communities as the BBC’s daily programmes continue with their diet of denial and their reports from the Middle East, and its Jihadi outpost in Australia, continue to justify and cheer on Hamas and ISIS  who are tearing up the maps drawn up when ‘France and Britain carved up the Middle East between them’ as so many BBC journalists like to provocatively, and falsely, claim….things were a lot more complicated than that.

Donnison is quick on the draw when a non-White person is killed and he thinks he can blame it on some form of racism…note all the trigger words…’Moroccan’,  ‘Murdered’,  ‘Islamophobic attack’ with the link provided to the report:

Not so quick to label an attack on Jewish bus passengers as a terrorist attack by a Palestinian…and note no link to the news report in his Tweet and no mention of who attacked who...very unusual for Donnison who religiously links to bad news for Israel…..

And that was that for the attack…no more from Donnison….he is more interested in plain packaging for cigarettes, the Sun’s Page 3 and naturally the BBC’s latest big story…the kidnapping and killing of one Israeli teen and a Palestinian teen….never mind the other two Israeli teens also kidnapped and killed….

The lost sons

The BBC’s Jon Donnison really can’t help himself…he’s a man who supports a terrorist organisation so one can hardly expect him to have a great deal of sense…indeed he demonstrates that lack of sense when he tweets something like this:

Scraping the bottom of the barrel there with an attempt to smear the Sun by association…never mind Jim’ll Fix It was a BBC programme and the BBC looked like it had conducted a cover up.

Why didn’t Donnison post a picture of Miliband and his paper of choice…one that supported the Labour Party for over a decade?…..

Ed Miliband said he will not ban Page 3 pin-ups if he becomes prime minister after the 2015 general election “I’m not in favour of banning it.

Maybe time someone took responsibility for Boy Blunder Down Under and had a word in his ear.

BBC in mourning for the “moderate reformer” and Saudi King Abdullah. I guess there was never a tyrant they couldn’t find some love for. Anyway, here is a new OPEN Thread for you.

Matthew Parris quoting Samuel Johnson:

Samuel Johnson never spoke truer than when he said that a man is never more innocently employed than in the pursuit of money. The pursuit of principle is an infinitely more corrupting thing.

 

Not saying Peston is corrupt or anything when he ‘reports’….

The BBC’s Robert Peston pushes Labour’s inequality narrative….along with the NHS, Labour’s central themes in its election campaign….so when the BBC day in day out ‘investigates’ these subjects and keeps them in the public eye and tries to build an atmosphere of ‘you may feel you’re doing OK but you know what…you’re really in terrible straits and heading for disaster’ you might justifiably suspect some ulterior motive.

‘Inequality’ does seem to have become a major issue that the BBC wants to tackle for some reason…Peston making his Labour Party Patsy of the Year bid as he presents …

…a powerful argument for why the widening gap between the rich and poor, in wealth and income, is bad for everyone – even the super wealthy, unless that is they never want to leave their fortified, hermetically sealed, lavishly appointed bunkers.

 

Here Peston combines his profile rasing exercise with his push for world government….

Why extreme inequality hurts the rich

“We could have developed a vaccine for Ebola years ago if we had chosen to allocate the resources to the appropriate research”.

That is what a senior and respected medical scientist, a man who would be seen as a world authority on such matters, said to me.

So why wasn’t the cure found?

The relevant research didn’t happen because Ebola was seen for a long time to be a disease only of the poor, especially in Africa – and therefore the giant pharmaceutical manufacturers couldn’t see how to make big money out of an Ebola medicine.

Today of course it is clear that Ebola is a global threat – and hence there is a mad rush to find a treatment.

 

The trouble is that’s nonsense as we’ve shown before....there was no major need for an Ebola vaccine….it has been controlled by simple measures such as isolation and movement restrictions….and in 40 years only 1700 people or so have died from it, around 45 a year.  A nasty disease for those who get it but the fact that so few get it and relatively few die suggests that huge investment in producing a cure is not productive when the money could be spent on other illnesses and diseases that kill vastly more people such as malaria….

There were an estimated 627 000 malaria deaths worldwide in 2012

About 3.2 billion people – almost half of the world’s population – are at risk of malaria. In 2013, there were about 198 million malaria cases (with an uncertainty range of 124 million to 283 million) and an estimated 584 000 malaria deaths (with an uncertainty range of 367 000 to 755 000). Increased prevention and control measures have led to a reduction in malaria mortality rates by 47% globally since 2000 and by 54% in the WHO African Region.

Peston isn’t reporting he’s campaigning…

‘….the jaw-dropping pace and scale of how a century of narrowing inequalities has gone into dramatic reverse.

To be clear, Oxfam’s claim today that by 2016 the richest 1% could own as much or the same as the bottom 99% is not wildly implausible.

Trouble is there’s little in the way of real thought, analysis or nuance…he’s just peddling Oxfam’s and Labour’s narrative.

The Spectator has a look under the covers…what Oxfam and the BBC’s Peston don’t want you to know….

What Oxfam doesn’t want you to know: global capitalism means less poverty than ever

The hijacking of Oxfam by the politicised left is nothing short of a tragedy. It’s heartbreaking to see a charity that has built up so much goodwill from so many people being used by activists as a vehicle for global class war. As a result, Oxfam is switching its focus away from global poverty towards something very different: wealth inequality.

It has today come up with some questionable figures suggesting that the richest 1 per cent will soon own over 50 per cent of the wealth.

BBC Radio earlier had someone on from Oxfam saying that the shocking wealth of the 1pc stood alongside the fact that ‘one in nine’ go to bed hungry. Oxfam wants you to believe that the two are somehow linked. There is a link between wealth and global poverty – the more of the former, the less of the latter.

It’s true that one in nine (about 12 per cent) of the world is undernourished. But what Oxfam does not say is that this rate has plummeted since global capitalism really took (i.e., off after the fall of the Berlin Wall).  The United Nations has been keeping tabs on this – below (link: pdf).

Of course, hunger is only one of the killers of the world’s poor. How is all of this inequality that Oxfam complains about affecting the others? Answer: global prosperity is being converted into better medicine and healthcare for those who need it the most. Chinese investment in Africa is now a major factor in helping Africans do things for themselves.

Global poverty is falling because people are doing it for themselves – with the helping hand of free trade. Oxfam prefers to think of people as helpless, waiting for its handouts. Its posters reinforce damaging stereotype images (see above), which damage the dignity of Africans as well as belittle their own achievements.

PS And Oxfam is also wrong to scream about an “inequality explosion” – things may have been getting worse for the last two or three years but the longer view is of global inequality falling.  (hat tip: John Rentoul).

 

 

From ‘Spiked’ in 2008…..

In an ugly world, we need ugly newsreaders

Newsreaders should not be employed because they are pretty. They should be employed because they are intelligent and can read the news. This is why it was a scandal that Moira Stuart was forced to retire prematurely. She was deemed too old. Not enough eye candy. Women should become newsreaders regardless of their looks, not because of them. By taking on attractive female newsreaders, networks give succour to the postmodernist and sexist misapprehension that the only way to secure the attention of an audience is via surface, not substance.

 

 

 

The BBC went very quiet after the Sun’s boob job on the Media and the campaign to get rid of Page 3 went, er, tits up…..it was all a mere storm in a D-cup it seems.

It was wall to wall coverage and a glow of satisfaction from BBC presenters as they congratulated the ‘NoMorePage3’ campaign on its success when they thought they’d sunk the Sun…..

However today they haven’t even bothered to get a quote from them in this article about the boobs bouncing back as the Sun makes a clean breast of things and says upfront that it was all a ‘mammary lapse’ on their part ….from the BBC:

Sun’s Page Three ‘returns’ as paper takes swipe at rivals

Jane Garvey actually declared that ‘It’s gone, we hope’ (29:30)...just so we know exactly where she stands on the issue….and therefore where the BBC stands as she represents its face to the world…as do many others like her.

I imagine the campaign to ban Page 3 is quite happy, the fight goes on and they an continue to hog the limelight and smother themselves in the warm adulation and admiration of likeminded folk such as Brogan Driscoll the Assistant Editor for HuffPost UK Lifestyle who says:

This week, The Sun has taken great pleasure in playing misogynist God.

On Tuesday it reportedly axed its controversial topless Page 3 feature (to the applause of many), only to reinstate it today in a cheap shot at critics.

While we may have no power on the decision to kill off Page 3, public opinion is everything.

There is arguably far greater power in influencing the mood around representations of women in media. And this has certainly happened.

Of course, if like me, you’re still set on seeing the end of Page 3. Don’t just refuse to buy the paper or tut while reading your broadsheet, do something about it – sign the petition and get others to do the same.

 

How very pious and worthy….shame that the Huffington Post, that über trendy Lefty rag, should be renamed the ‘Buff-ington Post’…as it is in the habit of publishing not just one shot a day but hundreds of scantily clad women in suggestive poses……

Ariana Grande Pictures: The ‘Bang Bang’ Singer’s 100 Sexiest Snaps (PHOTOS)

Rita Ora Makes Her ‘The Voice’ Debut: 100 Sexiest Photos Of The ‘I Will Never Let You Down’ Singer (PICS)

Naked Celebs 2014: From Kim Kardashian And Rihanna To Dan Osborne And ‘X Factor’ Hopeful Jake Quickenden (PICS)

And of course the BBC is famous for dumping its female news readers and presenters when they reach a certain age…never mind that to start with they are not exactly people who fell out of the ugly tree and hit all the branches on the way down are they?

What sort of appalling message does that send to the children who will take note that their shelf life is just as short in the BBC news room as on the glamour model circuit and that there is probably more money and fun in Glamour than in reading about death and destruction sat behind a desk in Salford?

Glamour sells whether it’s the news or the Sun paper…and the BBC is as guilty as any tabloid for exploiting women for their appearance…however much they dress it up as ‘intellectual’…..

.

All I can say is that I know an ex-Page 3 girl who is now a doctor…paid for by her modelling days…so stuff that up your jumper and suck on it….er..I mean ponder on that!

 

After a long campaign Murdoch’s Times Newspaper has bowed to pressure and decided not to print the Times’ Crossword in the paper any longer…a decision welcomed by campaigners from the ‘No More Times’ Elitist Crosswords’  campaign and MPs.

In an age when intellectually challenging word games became more readily available on the internet, the Times crossword came to be regarded as more of an anachronism. The status of  the Intellectual in society had changed too. To a new generation, it was rather surreal to open a newspaper and see such a self-evidently intellectually elitist pursuit amid stories about Hollyoaks actresses and popstar nymphettes in bed with Premier League footballers.

Campaigner, actor and writer Lucy-Anne Holmes, started the ‘No More Times Elitist Crosswords’ campaign…she said it was a great day for those cowed by the brilliance of others that so often kept them in the shadows and made them feel intellectually inferior.

Elspeth Morris, a cleaner on Virgin Express trains, said she often felt intimidated and demeaned when she came across Times newspapers left on seats with the filled-in crossword uppermost saying that such conspicuous completion of the intellectually demanding puzzle in a public place was tantamount to a hate crime waiving people’s inadequacies in their faces and rubbing their noses in their lack of education and limited natural talent for academic subjects. ..a public humiliation for so many that made them feel they had no place in a society that put such a high value on academic achievement.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan called it a “long-overdue decision”, which “marks a small but significant step towards improving media portrayal of those less intellectually gifted”.

She stated that we must stop celebrating academic achievement if it meant that other people were made to feel inadequate and rather stupid when in the presence of someone doing the Times Crossword especially in public spaces such as trains, or even in the corridors of power, where she understands that it is common practise for Times Crossword aficionados to ostentatiously brandish completed crosswords under the noses of those passing by, relishing in the feelings of inadequacy they were able to generate in less gifted people who couldn’t complete the crossword.

Lucy-Anne Holmes also stated that it was a great day for the intellectually challenged and a victory for society that recognised brains weren’t everything…children should not have to be pressured at school into pursuing academic excellence….school, and society, should be emphasing the softer skills, the arts, the importance of human relationships, cooperation, kindness and tolerance.

Rupert Murdoch Tweeted in response ‘Bollox’ but apparently that was just an answer to 5 across.  He apologised for any confusion.

BBC presenter Jane Garvey was forced to resign when in the course of a programme discussing the issues surrounding the Times Crossword campign she made the fatal mistake of taking sides and uttered the words ‘It’s gone, we hope’ when told the news that the Times had abandoned the crossword.

Actually she said that about the Sun’s Page 3 and its apparent demise.

The BBC seems rather pleased about the news and thinks it is of great importance giving it plenty of coverage.

Didn’t bother raising a few issues that smack of hypocrisy from campaigner Lucy-Anne Holmes who started the ball rolling.

How did she get her big break for her career in writing?…she used to write a blog...about her ‘disastrous love life’….so she objects to objectifying and demeaning pictures of half-naked women but is prepared to lay bare her love life and her feminine issues to titillate the readers.

I was originally an actress, and I came to writing because in 2006 I had a blog, which detailed my largely disastrous love life! Through the blog I was approached by some agents and publishers. One agent said ‘we think you should write a novel!’ So I said ‘ok.’

 

And her use of makeup, a low cut dress, and the suntan and an alluring publicity photo may induce a certain perception that looks are not unimportant in her life…and maybe, me being ungallant, the lack of a ‘rack’ may indicate other issues with Page 3…..

She tells us:

You founded the ‘No More Page 3′ campaign, what was your reason behind that?
Well, I bought a copy of ‘The Sun’ newspaper during the Olympics and found I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that the largest female image was the Page 3 image, even though Jessica Ennis had just won her terrific gold medal. I kept thinking ‘what is this saying about a woman’s place in society??’ It’s a national family newspaper and it shows page after page of pictures of men in clothes, doing stuff, ie running the country and achieving in sport and a massive image of a woman standing in their knickers showing her breasts for men. We’re sending out two very different messages about each gender, and kids see the paper, it even gives away free kids toys. What does it teach little girls about where their value lies? What does it teach boys about how to respect women? It’s 2014 if we believe in equality we can’t be showing these pictures in newspapers.

 

So instead of Page 3 we have a sports star whose success relies not just on some hard work but on a natural gift for running made possible by a body fit enough to do that…in other words a physical talent no different to being born attractive enough to be a pin up.  If a sports person can make a living with their body why not a model?

She cheers on Jessica Ennis but she isn’t running the country, she’s running round a track….so a strange choice of role model in some respects if trying to say women are capable of running blue chip companies and even the country.

And I’m certain the Sun gave Jessica Ennis massive coverage, far more than any Page 3 girl could hope to get.

And finally and most ironically for someone championing feminist issues there’s this:

Chicklit eh?  Go girl!!

Adrian Goldberg has a Jewish father and a Catholic mother…is he Jewish?  No idea…but he is married to a Muslim…..or rather someone who presumably was a Muslim as such marriages between a Muslim girl and a non-believer are forbidden in Islam…unless the non-believer converts to Islam.  So either Goldberg has converted or his wife has given up her faith for love.

Why the family history?

Goldberg himself has raised the issue….his latest programme being introduced with him as having a personal interest in the subject…that of mixed marriages.

You may think this was yet another BBC attempt at social engineering, and you’d be right.  The programme I heard, the second one, the real purpose of the programme seemed to be to highlight and point out the bigotry of Jews and Christians than in being really concerned about the difficulties in a ‘mixed marriage’.

The subtext of the programme was intended to tell us that it is not just Muslims who are intolerant and bigoted….so stop worrying about Islam and the Islamisation of Europe.

Now Muslims didn’t get a mention…but you know that is the message we are meant to take away…hence the importance of Goldberg’s identity and marriage….he has a horse in this race…a Trojan Horse.

Think not?  Goldberg is well known as an anti-EDL campaigner writing articles against them and for campaigning to ban them from Birmingham…so much for democracy and freedom of expression.

Here he is in ‘The Stirrer’…a journal he started and edited until he went back to work for the BBC when he declared such an interest was incompatible with his new job….however, of course, he still holds those views.

A BAD DAY FOR ENGLISH VALUES

How ironic that plans for a proposed new mosque in Dudley were withdrawn on the same day as four protesters from the English Defence League staged a rooftop protest on the site. Stirrer editor Adrian Goldberg argues that while the decision was pragmatic, it was also a bad day for tolerance.

They appear to be not just anti-Jihadist, but anti-Islamic, and having scented blood can now be expected to step up their protests against wider expressions of the faith, not just its violent fringe elements.

The pressure they exerted in Dudley helped persuade a respectable religious community to dramatically change its plans despite having the full weight of the law behind it – and their climbdown had the collusion of supposedly respectable mainstream politicians.

We should all mourn the decision and fear the consequences.

At stake is nothing less than freedom of worship and expression – English values which the English Defence League appears not to value.

Goldberg joined forces with Islamist Respect politician Salma Yaqoob to ban the EDL from Brimingham…here he is pressing his point home….

Adrian Goldberg, Khalid Mahmood MP and John Hemming MP also attended the public meeting calling for an EDL ban. Pic: John Tyrrell

Just so we know who’s behind the mike and what they really think on these issues when interviewing others on the subject.

Tuesday was Democracy Day on the BBC…no doubt they are glad that’s all over and they can get back to ignoring the plebs and their ignorant, working class ideas that threaten the nice status quo of the liberallatti.

Today gave its last half hour over to the ever present Professor Michael Sandel, the BBC’s philosopher of choice.

Not a huge amount of startling interest or originality….and a notable absence of comment on the Media’s role in democracy….only at the end did we get a comment that might suggest the importance of that Media role,  Sandel saying …

‘Democracy is listening to people with views of which we disagree’

 

Which is ironic given the BBC’s role in closing down genuine debate on immigration, climate change, Europe and Islam.

An irony reinforced immediately in the following programme in which Nick Robinson set out to do a bit of a hatchet job on Nigel Farage.

Robinson seemed intent on undermining Farage whilst at the same time asking if we can have a meaningful democracy that truly represents the many and not just the few….so undermine UKIP whilst talking about ‘meaningful democracy’…then he raises the memory of The  Peterloo Massacre (Manchester”s equivalent of Tianamen Square apparently)  and those who lost their lives fighting for democracy…..the same sort of people who marched with the EDL of course.

‘A powerful call for action’ Robinson says…bringing on Owen Jones to let us know where we are going wrong today….bankers and bosses of course….then Harriet Harman and Caroline Lucas….no prizes for guessing what they say.

The Greens, Robinson tells us, and ‘others’, are offering us a new politics….hmmm…isn’t it UKIP who are really challenging the consensus….the consensus about immigration and Europe which the other parties have agreed to carry on regardless of the population’s views…even denying them a say in a referendum….the only two issues that are of major interest to the Public aside from the economy which is not an issue that people look to UKIP to sort out.

Robinson tells us that political elite have ignored the widespread and legitimate concerns about immigration…..just politicians?  They have been able to ignore the issues because major elements of the Media have allowed them to do so.

The we get to UKIP….a ‘protest party’ says Robinson, dismissing them as a flash in the pan.

Professor Matthew Flinders is brought on to tell us of ‘Amazon politics’….individual, consumerised politics…politics acting like a market due to over-expectation of what can be delivered and how quickly by politicians…a politics that can only fail.  Identity politics and special interest groups demanding their own agendas that are totally incompatible with a fair society be adopted without compromise.

Who is to blame for that though?  Robinson suggests it is the politicians themselves….hang on though….it is the BBC especially that day in day out brings us individual cases of complaint about welfare, the NHS, cuts to council funding and so on…..the BBC forces politicians to run around trying to respond to these high profile cases which are so often backed up by highly politicised single issue campaign groups that have only one target and have no regard for how other seerviuces or budgest are effected by their demands.  The BBC is a world leader in encouraging highly divisive  identity politics.

Farage says proper debate on politics is impossible due to the Media’s role in presenting debate as a war with parties split asunder by rifts and arguments….it puts people off politics and makes media interviews impossible….an argument even the BBC has had itself recently.

Despite what Farage said Robinson ignores that and dodges the Media’s role in distorting how politics plays out when he suggests that it is the professionalisation of politics that has led to politics becoming like a market place and the public alienated from it.

Farage mentions a debate UKIP had about the NHS and how it might have to be funded in future given its problems….Farage arguing, and losing the argument, for an insurance based system.

Farage says that the debate is now presented as a split, as ‘something dreadful happended’ within UKIP….but no, what happened was they had a debate and a vote.

Robinson totally ignores that and indeed ploughs straight on suggesting this was a disaster, that Farage had lost the ‘courage of his convictions’ and that UKIP’s ‘apparent’ new line being they love the NHS…Robinson being once again dismissive of the UKIP policy, suggesting it’s a bit of a fraud….doing exactly what Farage complained of…hyping debate as ‘something dreadful’ in the party.

He says to Farage ‘Your real belief about health systems…‘….showing Robinson hasn’t listened….we know what Farage’s ‘real belief’ is…but he lost the debate and UKIP’s policy is to support the NHS…so Farage’s ‘real belief’ is unimportant….no mention from Robinson of this:

NHS may be forced to abandon free healthcare for all, says Britain’s top doctor as he warns service needs radical change

Robinson’s approach demonstrates Farage’s point perfectly…the Media are determined to ignore what really happens and look for a more dramatic story with attention getting headlines that reveal apparent infighting in a party…especially UKIP…regardless of the truth….Robinson instead of acknowledging that a debate had taken place and a decision made based upon that debate decided that Farage had ‘bottled it’ and suggests that Farage doesn’t ‘love the NHS’...which as we all know is obligatory….truth is Farage was outvoted by his colleagues so his personal beliefs are unimportant in regard to UKIP, or at least in the way that Robinson is trying to protray them….it also explodes the myth of the ‘one man party’ …UKIP obviously not dominated by Farage if he can lose such an important debate.

Robinson ends with sly and irrelevant dig saying that Farage, not UKIP, still believes that the NHS cannot survive in its present form…a view, Robinson tells us, that ‘wasn’t put before the voters of Rochester and Strood.’ ….Robinson is trying to imply that UKIP isn’t being honest…when in fact it is Robinson who isn’t being honest….why would it be out to the voters when it isn’t the policy?

Robinson goes on to try and undermine UKIP’s message that they can bring some powers back to Britain and have some control over its destiny.  Robinson suggests that no government has any power…and therefore you might conclude, UKIP’s policy is just so much hot air and unachievable dreams….so no point in voting for them.

Eseentially rather than discussing democracy and UKIP’s issues with it Robinson seemed purely intent on raising things they said for the purpose of then trying to rubbish them and UKIP…..implying, as said above…no need to vote for this lot.

So much for the BBC’s Democracy Day…..intent only it seems on reinforcing the same old status quo, or if a new party has to come up through the ranks let it be the Greens who seem to get an easy ride and a warm welcome on the BBC.

Maybe an indication of that is a discussion that was going on on one programme, I forget which, when someone said that no political party was increasing its membership….the BBC presenter came back to that later, such was her interest, and said that this wasn’t true…the Greens were increasing their membership..and oh yes..so were the SNP.

Curious that a BBC presenter should automatically prefer to talk about the Greens, or the SNP, rather than UKIP which is also increasing its membership and is, politically, the dominant, game changing party at present……..and no doubt some of the Green’s success in getting more recruits recently has more to do with the likes of the BBC giving them far more positive airtime than before….Caroline Lucas is hardly off the radio at the moment and party membership has leapt from under 30,000 in December to over 44,000 in a few weeks…far from me to be sceptical but can’t help thinking there’s a lot more to that ‘success’ than meets the eye.

Perhaps some at the BBC see the Greens as a potential block on UKIP and therefore aim to give them a boost…if they can get enough votes they might disrupt a UKIP run and maybe stop UKIP from holding the balance of power and prevent  the ‘nightmare’ of UKIP in a possibly forced coalition government with the Tories, political necessity overtaking Cameron’s hatred of them…ala the Tory antipathy towards the LibDems…..maybe Labour can slip in then and take power, perhaps with a Green aliance.

It is certainly the Tory ploy to stop UKIP by getting more people to vote Green…‘voting Green risks letting in the Tories’…..

The Tories have also been helpful. “Dear old Cameron, God bless his cotton socks, said we should be in the debates, and put all the Tory bloggers – and the Sun – on our side! It’s made all the difference for us.”

 

Far too cynical, no one at the BBC would ever dream of interfering in the political process in such a way.

As you may have guessed, our server crashed on Monday, again! This is so annoying and worse still, some posts and comments have yet to be retrieved and indeed some won’t be. Please bear with us, this is so frustrating for me. In the meantime, here is a new Open Thread, approved by Harriet Harman for being breast-free.