Something to chew on as you watch, listen or read BBC reports on the NHS.

Labour claims about the NHS and what the Tories intend to do with it are even less credible than claims Man Utd will sign Ched Evans.

The BBC  rather disengenuously tells us that

Reports over the weekend suggested that Labour is set to make the health service a key election battleground should come as no surprise – nor should the timing.

In fact, some commentators believe, after the economy, the NHS could be the most important issue in the election campaign.

 

Well far from ‘reports over the weekend’ revealing Labour’s plans to place the NHS at the centre of its election campaign, it has been well known for years that this would be the case…the BBC after all has been bringing us NHS ‘disaster’ stories practically everyday and has been running  an ‘NHS Winter Tracker’ which informs you of the state of the NHS in your region…why would the BBC do that?  Because it thinks the bare figures, unadorned by explanation and reasons, would lead you to think the NHS was in meltdown.

So let’s shed a bit of light on the subject ourselves as the BBC fails to do so….the NHS is important, and Labour claims the Tories will cut the NHS and privatise it…….but isn’t that just a little hypocritical of Labour when they themselves would spend less than the Tories and were eager to privatise it?

Labour has been accused of scaremongering:

Labour accused of ‘scaremongering’ after claiming the NHS will be ‘sunk’ if the Tories win the general election 

Labour’s Health Minister, Andy Burnham, says:

‘If the NHS stays on its current course it will be sunk by a toxic mix of cuts and privatisation.’

 

Now that’s pretty curious because in 2010 the same Andy Burnham in an interview with the New Statesman said:

Burnham:  Cameron’s been saying it every week in the Commons: “Oh, the shadow health secretary wants to spend less on health than us.”

NS:  Which is true, isn’t it?

Burnham:  Yes, it is true, but that’s my point.

 

So he admitted then that Labour would spend less than the Tories on the NHS.

But what of his claims that the Tories are privatising the NHS?

We looked at this earlier, ‘The NHS Has Been Privatised….Vote Labour!’, illustrating the BBC’s abysmal lack of truthfulness in their reports when using this headline,  ‘A third of NHS contracts awarded to private firms – report’ to lead into a report that actually admitted only 6% of NHS contracts by value were given to private companies.

But what did Labour say in its 2010 manifesto, when Burnham was still Health Minister?….bearing in mind that Labour complains loudly that just the act of reforming the NHS is problematic….

‘We will continue to press ahead with bold NHS reforms. All hospitals will become Foundation Trusts, with successful FTs given the support and incentives to take over those that are under-performing. Failing hospitals will have their management replaced. Foundation Trusts will be given the freedom to expand their provision into primary and community care, and to increase their private services – where these are consistent with NHS values, and provided they generate surpluses that are invested directly into the NHS.
We will support an active role for the independent sector working alongside the NHS in the provision of care, particularly where they bring innovation – such as in end-of-life care and cancer services, and increase capacity. ‘
Where changes are needed, we will be fair to NHS services and staff and give them a chance to improve, but where they fail to do so we will look to alternative provision.

Burnham claims that Labour only used private contractors to drive down waiting times but that clearly isn’t the case…the intent was to use them when they were more efficient and more effective than NHS services….Foundation Trusts themselves being semi-privatised services….never mind the budget busting PFI’s used to fund new hospitals.

So in summary…..Burnham, Labour, wanted to cut NHS spending and to privatise its services….and yet he claims….‘If the NHS stays on its current course it will be sunk by a toxic mix of cuts and privatisation.’

And just for fun, what did Labour want to do in its 2010 manifesto with the GP’s who now fail us so badly?

The GP access guarantee will ensure everyone has the right to choose a GP in their area offering evening and weekend opening.
We will ensure the NHS suits the lives of busy families expanding further the availability of GP-led health centres open seven days a week ‘8 til 8’ in towns and cities.

So they recognised that the lack of  access to GP  services was failing patients and needed reform.

And what about immigration….surely all this is a bit ‘bigoted’….

We understand people’s concerns about immigration – about whether it will undermine their wages or job prospects, or put pressure on public services or housing – and we have acted. Asylum claims are down to the levels of the early 1990s and net inward migration has fallen. We will use our new Australian-style points-based system to ensure that as growth returns we see rising employment and wages, not rising immigration – but we reject the arbitrary and unworkable Tory quota.

Our new Australian-style points-based system is ensuring we get the migrants our economy needs, but no more. We will gradually tighten the criteria in line with the needs of the British economy and the values of British citizenship, and step up our action against illegal immigration. There will be no unskilled migration from outside the EU.

We recognise that immigration can place pressures on housing and public services in some communities so we will expand the Migration Impact Fund, paid for by contributions from migrants, to help local areas.

Because we believe coming to Britain is a privilege and not a right, we will break the automatic link between staying here for a set period and being able to settle or gain citizenship.

 

I wonder if that all counts as part of the ‘race to the bottom’ as Labour now so rudely calls the competing party policies on immigration…except their own of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6sr1kkCzr0

Judging by today’s Labour love-in at the BBC its going to be a very, very long 5 months or so till the election…..Perhaps we should just take it for granted that the BBC will be biased in Labour’s favour and shut up shop for the duration.

Today was pretty full on and it might indeed take the dedicated forensic skills of Hercule Poirot to untangle the web of intrigue and dodgy reporting emananting from the bowels of the BBC.

On the day that Labour launched its election campaign proper with a major keynote speech from Ed Miliband that was intended to set the tone and the narrative for Labour’s drive to No 10, rather than examine that, the BBC preferred instead to concentrate on discrediting the Tory claim that Labour have £21 bn of unfunded  spending plans….essentially dismissing it out of hand.

But hang on…here’s lefty Dan Hodges expressing some scepticism about Labour’s spending ‘plans’….

‘The ordinary voters  want a very simple answer to a very simple question: “Where’s the money coming from?”

At the moment they’re not getting it. They’re getting characteristic obfuscation and confusion and contradiction.

As I write, Labour’s line appears to be: “We will spend a lot more money than the Tories. But when the Tories say we will spend a lot more money than them, they are lying”.

The 2015 general election campaign started today. Britain is still waiting to hear from the Labour Party and its leader.

 

The BBC  for a long time ignored commentary by Hodges and the many Labour websites that were highly critical of Miliband especially when the furore over the Unions came up….guess they’re still fighitng shy of bringing such messages to the public notice.

A similar forensic approach by the BBC to Labour’s claim that the Tories are taking us back to 1930’s style poverty is egregiouslyand obviously missing…but then it was the BBC itself that fed the line to Labour with Norman Smith making the highly inflammatory comment that…

“It is utterly terrifying, suggesting that spending will have to be hacked back to the levels of the 1930s as a proportion of GDP.

“That is an extraordinary concept, you’re back to the land of Road to Wigan Pier.”

Let’s remind ourselves exactly what he is talking about….

Labour’s spending as a proportion of GDP in 1998?  36%

The Coalition’s projected spending in 2019-20?        35.2%

In 1998 Labour, using the inherited Tory economic plans, took the economy into surplus with government spending at 36% of GDP…..Labour, and the BBC, now claim that the Tory budget target of 35.2% is ‘utterly terrifying’ and will lead to the road to ruin.

The BBC’s Nick Robinson knows the truth but is being extremely quiet about it saying only this in his latest ‘analysis’:

Now it’s true that the OBR forecast that under Tory plans spending would drop to 1930s levels but there’s one crucial rider – that’s as a share of national income which is, of course, massively higher than back then. What’s more, the share of GDP taken by spending was almost as low in the year 2000 when both Eds worked in the Treasury. As I recall the NHS still existed back then.

Once again, though, what will matter is the impression left with the electorate.

My job in the next few months will be try to separate the facts from the claims and the spin.

Yours will be to decide who, if anyone, you trust more.

A small paragraph at the bottom of an article….and hardly indepth.

Not exactly shouting the truth from the rooftops when the BBC is at the same time making huge waves trying to dismantle the Tory attack on Labour….this being their headlining story right now on their frontpage:

Miliband hits back at spending claim

 

The BBC could do so  much better…it’s not hard…here the Institute of Economic Affairs has a go:

Is George Osborne really returning us to a 1930s government? Accurate comparisons suggest a definite ‘no’

As the Economist has pointed out, spending is not the same as provision of services. According to that paper’s analysis, in 1939 almost half of government spending at 30% of GDP was actually debt interest (14% of GDP). That left 16% of GDP for all other government functions, compared to a 30% of GDP net of debt interest forecast for 2019/20. Far from slashing spending on services to 1930s levels then, state spending excluding debt interest as a proportion of a much larger GDP will be almost double what was seen in 1939 by 2019/20.

 

The BBC’s lack of interest (listen to that lack of interest in this supposed interview with Miliband (07:50) by Rachel Burden where she ignores all opportunities to nail Miliband…preferring to ask if he thinks he’d make a good PM…what do you reckon he said?  Didn’t really need her there for all the use she was….suggesting Labour was in the ‘centre ground’…very suspect when Blair has just made his comments about this criticising Miliband)  in analysing the 1930’s claim is all the more surprising when it spent so much time trying to undermine the Tory poster launch which stated that the Tories had cut the deficit in half….the BBC immediately mobilised and told us that the Tories were lying…despite at the launch Cameron openly stating that the deficit cut was as a proportion of GDP.

Here’s Norman Smith in action today…..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTV5gvTp5Po

Perhaps Norman Smith felt a bit guilty about his earlier slip and decided to do his job properly….

BBC journalist booed during Ed Miliband speech

The BBC’s Norman Smith was heckled as he asked whether Labour was “scaremongering” about the state of the NHS in England.

He was called a “pillock” and told to “go back to London” by members of the audience in Salford.

The BBC never fails to disappoint. I caught BBC radio 4 “Today” mocking the Conservative’s claims regarding Labour’s budget busting spending plans should they get back into power; then turned on BBC1 News to hear them give weird Ed Miliband a chance to rubbish the Conservatives. Not a sniff of bias there, no sirree. Anyway here is a NEW Open Thread.

You may have noticed the prominence the BBC gave on Saturday to Labour’s statements on the NHS….or rather statements to come, for Labour were supposed to be making those statements today.  The BBC chose to highlight Miliband’s future statements in preference to the Tories’ actual launch of its election campaign….oh for sure the BBC paid that some attention….delighting in telling us that the Tory poster was dishonest….using an article in the Spectator to inform us about this ‘porkie’ on the Deficit.

Will the BBC be similarly rigorous in their research and make headline news out of the latest from the Spectator:

And now a porkie from Labour: spending is not (really) heading back to 1930s levels

But to the real point of this post…another article from the Spectator:

How the NHS silenced a whistleblowing doctor

And in the Mail:

Demonising of a decent man: His sin? Expressing concerns about the NHS in the Mail. But the venom, bile and hatred this provoked from his fellow doctors will stagger many readers … 

Not a sign of interest from the BBC so far.

Curious really when they have paid attention to what the good doctor has said before…if only to dismiss it out of hand taking his critic’s side…..

‘…a line picked up by the BBC’s health correspondent Nick Triggle. Writing on the Corporation’s website, he said: ‘GPs have already made it clear they will not be “border guards”, and without a simple system to check eligibility there is a risk the crackdown will cost more than it saves.’

He also claimed: ‘Those working in the NHS are much less exercised about the health tourism “problem” than politicians.’ Note those quotation marks around the word ‘problem’, and the implication that it is far from established that there is any such thing as health tourism.

When BBC presenter Sarah Montague interviewed Jeremy Hunt, she gave the word ‘problem’ particular emphasis, employing the spoken equivalent of quotation marks.’

 

 

A ‘whistle-blowing’ surgeon is silenced by the NHS and abused by GPs who started a campaign of vilification against him and the BBC prefers to spend a day asking if Steven Gerrard was a great footballer on Friday.

Always interesting what the BBC decides is a story worth investigating.

The Today programme this morning is giving Labour two large bites of the cherry on its election campaign…that’s of course after an already very large bite of that cherry over the weekend:

Labour has moved to place the health service at the centre of its general election campaign with a warning that the NHS would not survive in its current form under another five years of David Cameron.  In what is being described as a “start of the race” memorandum to activists, the party’s election strategy chief Douglas Alexander has called for a four-month campaign to “save the NHS” in the run-up to polling day on May 7 (see 0710). Andy Burnham is the Shadow Health Secretary. Nick Robinson is our political editor.

Wonder how challenging will the interview be…will the Welsh NHS get a mention?

Alright folks, 2015 begins and here is the first new OPEN THREAD of this fresh year. It’s going to be a BIG year here in the UK as the Nation goes to the polls to elect a new Government. We can be confident of but one thing – the BBC will do everything possible to damage the prospects of UKIP and the Conservative party. The floor is yours…

The BBC were quick to spot these trends:

Sydney cafe: Australians say to Muslims “I’ll ride with you”

And this:

#BBCtrending: The racist video that’s shocked Australia

Strangely not so interested in this trending video:

“‘How to Stab a Jew’ Going Viral on Palestinian Authority Social Media,”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS6BHBai2Ug

The “resisters of occupation in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem” are spreading on Arab social media a frightening video demonstrating tactics on how to stab a Jew to death quickly and efficiently.

The 1-minute and 13-second video, as seen below, shows the “teacher” calmly walking up to a “victim,” stabbing him, and walking away.

Is Lenny Henry racist?

Lenny Henry believes that the colour of your skin determines how you act and think.

That is racist.  Even Obama thinks it is:

There’s no “authentic” way to be black, President Barack Obama told a group.

Henry complains that ‘news in Britain comes from one perspective. A perspective that is almost exclusively white, and predominantly male.’

Henry is clearly a proponent of the belief that Blacks should ‘act, and think, black’.…and that alters the way they see world events.

Black people, apparently, have a different way of looking at the world, one that means a black news reporter would report a story in a different way to a white one.

This approach has long been one used by black activists, black race hustlers, to bully other Black people who they see as ‘acting white’.

Here a black girl tells us that Henry is wrong….there is no such thing as ‘talking white’:

He complains that the BBC is white and male…’British news is dominated by a white, male perspective.   There is a better way.‘   Never mind the Today programme he guest edited has two female presenters, one of whom is of Pakistani origin….and numerous black news readers and presenters on the BBC as a whole….not to mention the Asian network.

He tells us that ‘We’ve had one day of diversity on Radio 4. Now for the other 364’

Fascinating his idea of diversity:

No whites included in the ‘Henry Plan’.

Does his concern widen out into nationality, religion or ‘other’ gender, left handers or right handers, redheads and blonds….are there enough lesbian welsh newsreaders or Muslims with conservative views on the BBC?

And just who is ‘black’ or one of this new race created by the diversity industry…the ‘Bames’.  Just how ‘black’ do you have to be to be considered authentically ‘black’?

Does the news have to be delivered in a Jamaican patois, the Queen’s English being a sign of ‘acting white’?

Henry is just another celebrity who has jumped on the ‘protest’ wagon as a way of furthering their career and gaining some sort of street credibility and authenticity ala Russell Brand…both of whom the BBC has prostrated itself before and delivered up the schedules for their personal use to rant and rave about their personal pet hates, thinking not required.

Maybe one day we will have a guest editor from UKIP or the likes of Tommy Robinson..somehow I doubt it……only one perspective allowed on the BBC…..the one that is of real concern….the one Henry misses out, and the one that does in fact put him and others of his new race, the Bames, into prominent positions because of their race…that of being Liberal.

365 days a year we get the Liberal perspective rammed down our throats and anyone who thinks differently is not just sidelined as Henry claims Bameans are, but actively maligned and attacked by the BBC….how often does the BBC claim people with black skin are perhaps closet racists or nazis that want to shoot immigrants…or indeed joke about shooting people who have  ‘unacceptable’ views about limiting immigration or Israel?  When they start doing that you might have a point about discrimination and the BBC Henry old chum.

Publishers Harper Collins apparently wiped Israel off the map in atlases for sale in the Middle East, can’t upset those tolerant Muslims. Apparently Jordan is now Palestine according to the map……but we knew that anyway….funny no one objects to Muslim Jordan being created out of a large chunk of Palestine by the British.  Harper Collins claims it was a printing error.  Of course it was.

The BBC itself created a programme that prominently and pointedly displayed a map of ‘Palestine’ sans Israel…..the whole programme, The Honourable Woman, being a pro-Palestinian piece of propaganda that suggested it would be best for all if Israel didn’t exist……

BBC News is nowadays more a work of dramatic fiction and emotive angst than straight reporting making dramatic programmes like ‘The Honourable Woman’ almost redundant.

The Honourable Woman though has its place in the BBC battle order…..it is a ‘weapon’ of war as much as any gun or bomb…it is a ‘smart bomb’ delivered into thousands, if not millions, of homes around the world bearing not high explosives but a poisonous message….a message delivered by the BBC on behalf of Hamas, Fatah and all those who wish to ‘wipe Israel off the map’.

That explosive message is that Israel, the ‘Jewish state’, should be dismantled and the Palestinians allowed to take the land of Israel….needless to say the BBC glosses over what would happen to the Jews, merely implying that all would be peace and harmony as the love and understanding flowed between the two peoples.

 

The BBC continues this theme, pretending Israel doesn’t really have a right to exist in this subtle piece of de-legitimisation:

The Jews of Arabia

Interesting first paragraph:

The Jews may have originated in the Middle East but they were long ago scattered far and wide – to the Gulf, among other places. Few now remain, except in Iran.

 

So the Jews were cast out of the Middle East, the BBC means ‘Palestine’, long ago….a subtle allusion suggesting they therefore have no claim on a land called ‘Israel’?…….So we are told few remain in the Gulf States and few, if any, now remain in the Middle East as they were ‘long ago scattered far and wide’ from there (which presumably doesn’t include the Gulf States in the BBC’s mind as the BBC has for some reason limited its exploration of the existence of Jewish communities to those Gulf States) …..except in a place called Israel where there are several million, unmentioned, Jews.

The BBC lists places where Jewish communties existed but misses out any historic connection and community in ‘Palestine’ itself merely mentioning obliquely that ‘ the State of Israel was declared in 1948 ‘  as if the Jews moved in their without any link to the region at all.

Curious the BBC misses out the Jewish population of over 400,000 in ‘Palestine’ as noted in 1938 with only about double the number of Muslims then there….

Whether by design or a casual approach to the relevant facts the BBC has managed to produce another article that subtly undermines Israel using an argument long used by ‘Palestinians’.

If there was no Jewish link to the region could they claim a right to live there?

Here is that argument set out in a piece by a Jewish writer as he puts his counter argument to it:

According to this view, Jews had been absent from the land of Israel for too long to claim their right to return. In their absence, another group of people had come to occupy the land, and thus the Zionist movement could succeed only at this people’s expense. The West, embarrassed by the horrors of the Holocaust, had founded the State of Israel to clear its conscience, and the Arab residents of Palestine were forced to pay the price. The creation of the Jewish State was thus an outrage, so the argument goes, because the very settlement of the land by Jews was illegitimate.

From the Daily Mail:

47,000 Bulgarians and Romanians enter UK in a year

Here is Migration Watch’s estimate of the likely numbers of migrants from Romania and Bulgaria:

Our central estimate is that immigration from these two countries will add 50,000 a year to the UK population for the next five years of which about half is likely to be captured in the immigration statistics.

The Daily Mail gets its figures from a recent report from the supposedly neutral Oxford Migration Observatory  but the OMO seem to be spinning a line that there has been no ‘surge’ in immigration from these countries…a line taken up by the BBC.

In actual fact the BBC seem to be rather coy about these figures…at least on their website.  I can see no mention of this story on the website at all despite it being in the papers since Tuesday morning.

The Guardian does have a report but it plays down the numbers….

No surge of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants after controls lifted

It reports this statement from the researchers…..

Madeleine Sumption, the Migration Observatory director, said: “The growth in the Romanian and Bulgarian population of the UK has been steady for the last seven years, despite transitional controls that limited their access to the labour market and welfare state in the UK. The end of these controls do not seem to have had a very significant effect.”

 

…but as you can see later, this conclusion, that “The growth in the Romanian and Bulgarian population of the UK has been steady for the last seven years”,   is completely false.

5Live did have a report on it  (16:42:45) but whilst spinning the same line of ‘no surge’ seemed to know the figures don’t really support that conclusion and gave a rather lacklustre report telling us that immigration grew at same rate as in 2013….therefore there was no significant increase in migration when restrictions relaxed….no predicted influx of migrants…..Phil Mackie said there was no significant increase year on year.

They did admit there were 250,000 Romanians and Bulgarians now working in the UK.

Whilst mocking the ‘exaggerated claims of a surge in immigration from some’ what was noticeably missing from 5Live’s report was any mention of Migration Watch’s prediction which turned out to be entirely accurate, as is so often the case.  The BBC calls Migration Watch a ‘pressure group’ but doesn’t label the Oxford Migration Observatory in the same way.

Are any of those conclusions on 5Live merited by the figures?

Not really.

Here is what the OMO told us:

The overall population of A2 migrants in the UK in Q3 2012 was 160,000; this increased by 45,000 to 205,000 by Q3 2013 and then increased by 47,000 to 252,000 in Q3 2014. By way of comparison, the A2 population grew by 163,000 between 2007 and 2013 – the years during which transitional controls were in place.

 

It claims these figures show no spike in migration…and Mackie said they showed no ‘year on year increase’…..

…… the existing data suggest it is more likely to show continued steady growth rather than the ‘significant spike’ some predicted.

But that clearly isn’t true….yes 2013 and 2014 were similar…but before that migration was an average of 27,000…somewhat different to 47,000….very selective with their choice of figures to base their conclusions on.

The ONS told us that:

32,000 EU2 citizens immigrated to the UK in the year ending June 2014, a statistically significant increase from 18,000 in the previous 12 months.

 

A graph from the ONS shows the dramatic change in Bulgarian and Romanian immigration….note the large ‘surge’ in 2013..

5Live admitted that there were 250,000 Romanians and Bulgarians in work now…. in January and March 2013 the figure for Romanians and Bulgarians in work was only 140,000:

According to the latest official figures, the number employed in the UK between January and March actually fell. It was 140,000, down 4,000 on the final three months of 2013.

 

The BBC were then crowing that this ‘fall’ in numbers in january and March proved there was no influx of immigrants.

Note that most of these ‘in work’ are actually claiming to be self-employed…and can claim increased benefits based on that status:

The University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory said its analysis showed 59.1 per cent of workers from the two former eastern European states said they were freelance, compared with just 14 per cent of the native UK population.

The figure was also far higher than the 15 per cent of self-employed people from the eight former Communist states – such as Poland – which joined the EU in 2004.

Distinct lack of ‘outrage’ at David Blunkett’s comments on Romanian neighbours:

I’d find it a challenge if Roma gipsies moved into my street, admits Blunkett – the Home Secretary who opened Britain’s borders to new EU members

No job offers from the BBC to the Mail’s Jenny Awford who writes the report unlike the less than honest James O’Brien whom the BBC decided was ‘one of them’ when he conducted a kangaroo court in which he concocted a pack of lies in order to malign Nigel Farage when he said he wouldn’t want to live next to a house full of Romanians, and on the basis of that offered O’Brien a job on Newsnight.

No interest, or outrage,  at all from O’Brien who seems obsessed by UKIP on his Twitter feed.

Also lack of interest in Migration Watch’s report on the benefits, or lack of, of migration:

Response to UCL paper on the fiscal effects of immigration to the UK – Press Release

The BBC made a lot of noise about the UCL report which claimed that EU immigrants produced large benefits for the economy…why the lack of interest now when Migration Watch tells us that the figures actually show?:

Net tax contribution by Eastern European migrants probably negative

Remember, the UCL report was produced by the same man who helped Labour engineer their immigration opendoor policy…he has a huge vested interest in telling us that it worked to our benefit….not something the BBC told us whilst still denouncing Migration Watch as a ‘pressure group’.