The Today programme had a look at the Freud affair this morning but there was an essential element missing….Wallace himself

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John Humphrys at around 06:50 began by telling us what Freud had done ‘wrong’ and then we had a comedy sketch of Miliband ‘ambushing’ Cameron at PMQs.

This didn’t enlighten us at all and could, if that was the sum total of the Today programme’s coverage, be seen as feeding us Labour’s narrative as that was that, once the PMQ quotes were done with the ‘exploration’ ended and we moved on to Owen Paterson I believe.

There was no ‘Later we’ll be examining if Freud had a point.’  You could have finished up your cornflakes and left the house thinking what a bastard that Freud is, the Tories really are the nasty party….whilst on Newsnight Laura Kuenssberg admitted that ‘context was important’ and that ‘it might be a discussion worth having’ …and yet she kept defaulting to the position that Freud was wrong despite admitting that this attack was Labour ‘skulduggery’ and that the story fits well into Labour’s mantra of the nasty Tory party and was ‘perfect fodder for Ed Miliband’.…so where is Miliband on the BBC considering the controversial and incendiary nature of his claims?

Then at 07:12 on the Today programme we had another look and someone called Penny Pepper (also on Newsnight) told us that Freud’s words were symptomatic of this government’s attitude towards disabled people and the words were offensive and alarming. She asks how can you say one set of people are worth paying less than another?  Hmmm…well..I don’t earn what Wayne Rooney earns….or what a brain surgeon earns….I am, surely,  offended and alarmed by society’s discrimination towards me….surely, as Kirsty Wark points out on Newsnight, I am worth more to a business than the number of rivets I can productively insert in an hour!  I am not just a number.

Remarkably Penny Pepper on Newsnight admits that there is already such a policy in place that employs disabled people for lower wages..but she dissembles and waffles on…clearly determined to be offended and alarmed.

We then heard Christian May from the Institute of Directors defend Freud and explain the issues as we’ve looked at before.

But the thing that is missing from all this discussion, considering that Labour’s attack is widely seen as a shameful exploitation of the issue and a deliberate misreading of what Freud said, is any challenge to Miliband and his narrative…whwere is Miliband?

When Guido (H/t Mark II and David) reveals that Freud’s thoughts were in fact a policy that Labour adopted and was supported by charities for the disabled (H/T Sir Arthur Strebe-Grebling) you may have reasonably have expected the BBC to drag in Miliband who is making so much political capital out of this, and challenge him on his claims.

The Spectator tells us that ‘This is a stain on Miliband’s character. ‘

Trouble is, it is only a stain if it is brought to light and the Public can view it for what it is.

So far the BBC has dodged actually questioning Miliband’s integrity and motivations for this opportunistic, highly political and underhand attack on Lord Freud which feeds so conveniently into Labour’s desire to paint the Tories as the ‘nasty party’ again….a poisonous narrative for the Tories which the BBC is allowing to fester by default in not tackling Miliband….which may be considered ironic in light of Nick Robinson’s headline….

Ed Miliband facing sustained glare of scrutiny

Well not so far.

I do note that the BBC is making a lot of noise about this, it being one of their top stories …..

First-time buyers will get priority, Labour promises

Curiously there is no link to the election and the thought that this is of course a Labour ‘vote catcher’ policy, more politics than substance.   The BBC religiously makes such a link to any policy or budget announcement from Cameron or Osborne and have done so for the past year ensuring the audience get the idea that any such moves are merely political tricks for short term political gain, designed to win votes rather than for genuine economic or social needs.

 The Independent has noticed the probable Labour motivation and says…[The Labour] Party denies policy is designed to look tougher on immigration and head off Ukip

The BBC’s report is one long Labour love-in.

The BBC announced that it, in the shape of The Media Show (13 mins), would investigate the ‘Media’s’ reporting of Europe….

A new report from the Reuters Institute of Journalism [John Lloyd] argues that the British media’s coverage of the EU is falling short.

In spite of increased column inches and headlines since the Eurozone crisis hit, the study claims mainstream papers and broadcasters still struggle to distil and dramatise the complexities of EU policy and process.

 

I immediately thought ‘Great…the BBC has finally turned the camera upon itself and was about to ask a few difficult questions about its infamously biased reporting on the EU.’

Naturally I was badly mistaken.

The problem, we were told, with reporting of the EU is the ‘Press’, the irresponsible newsapers which chose to spread fear and loathing of the EU using polemical rants and a focus upon the absurdities and errors of the EU that are preferred to fact.

So the EU is not absurd nor does it make any errors?…never mind its accounts have never been signed off as they are so not based upon those precious ‘facts’ but upon lies, fraud and corruption.

The report tells us that the newspapers attitude is one of misguided stridency unconcerned with details and unfortunately presenting a powerful message to the Public.

However their scepticism was useful as it did show a problem with the EU….it was set up to be a federalist state but is in fact run by individual, sovereign nations….there has been a failure of the federalist ideal.

I thought that the problem, as highlighted by the papers, was that the EU is all too powerful and continues to grow ever more powerful at the expenswe of the sovereign nations…that is the problem…the complete opposite to  what this report by John Lloyd tells us….Lloyd being a big fan of the EU.

Whilst Lloyd bashes the papers he thinks the ‘Broadcasters’ ‘do pretty well’….such as the BBC which even in its own report on its EU journalism had to admit it was institutionally inclined to be pro-European.

The problem for those Broadcasters, apparently,  is that the EU is a pretty dry subject….lots of men in suits, all very technical, repetitive, too complex and lacks drama.

If only it were more exciting the Public would take an interest in this vital subject and realise that it is very important for their own interests to pay attention to what is going on in Brussels….and of course don’t listen to those nasty, rude sceptical papers….hmmm…I thought the Public were only too aware of what went on in Brussels, that’s the problem, they know the truth.

When Kelvin Mackenzie said he wished the Sun was more sceptical and reported even more of the absurdities of the EU project the presenter stepped in to demand if that was being ‘responsible’.  So we know that reporting errors and absurdities of the EU is ‘irresponsible’ in the opinion of the BBC….an attitude it takes to much in life such as climate change and Islam.

The programme turned out to be the usual BBC half-baked, self-serving piece of twaddle as it tells us that the EU is great if only people realised that and didn’t listen to those dreadful, sceptical newspapers….the BBC’s job is such a hard one battling ignorance and prejudice whipped up by the Redtops whilst the complex and undramatic nature of events in the EU political sphere make reporting on it so much more difficult that they can’t get anyone to listen to their siren messages.

Good job then that Labour imported millons of EU citizens who will vote for the EU should Cameron actually, for once, do what he said he will do and hold a referendum.

Another reason the BBC loves mass immigration.

Alan has already covered the BBC onslaught against Lord Freud today. I wish to point out two further thoughts. First, isn’t is SO convenient that the BBC blasted this on the same day that the Government announced the biggest fall in unemployment in YEARS and at the same time as Miliband was given heat for dismissing the concerns of English voters re “English votes for English laws”. Oh, and then there was this….from Guido.

Who is the nasty Party?

I commend this YOUTUBE post to you. Here is the background.

“In the run-up to the BBC’s application for the renewal of its Royal Charter – i.e. the legal device by which the BBC has the right to demand a tax of £145.50 of every inhabitor of a U.K. dwelling with a colour TV – the BBC’s adherance to its present Charter’s conditions will come under scrutiny – in particular, the onorous requirement for political impartiality.

This video – the first in a series of fifteen entitled “Educating Rona” – serves to assist that debate. It features acknowledgements, both implicit and explicit, by more than thirty serving and former BBC staff – including: three editors of the agenda-setting “Today” programme; two director-generals; and several news editors, producers, and reporters – which indicate that there exists within the BBC an institutional Left-wing bias.

The full list of acting/former BBC staff whose comments are reproduced include:”Today” reporter Robin Aitken; “Panorama” producer Gerard Baker; former “Newsnight” reporter Joan Bakewell; former director of news Helen Boaden; former “Feedback” presenter Roger Bolton; “The Moral Maze” presenter Michael Buerk; “Top Gear” presenter Jeremy Clarkson; former “Newsnight” political editor Michael Crick; documentary presenter Sebastian Foulks; former diplomatic correspondent Freddie Forsyth; “Woman’s Hour” presenter Jane Garvey; director-general Tony Hall; former “Panorama” producer Steve Hewlett; former director of news Peter Horrocks; former “Panorama” producer Anthony Jay; director of editorial policy and standards David Jordan; former documentaries commissioning editor Richard Klein; former “Today” editor Rod Liddle; former “Today” editor Tim Luckhurst; former “Good Morning Sunday” presenter Don Maclean; Radio 2 presenter Simon Mayo; former political editor Andrew Marr; former “Today” editor Roger Mosey; former BBC governor Dame Neville-Jones; former “One Man And His Dog” presenter Robin Page; former “Newsnight” presenter Jeremy Paxman; former news producer Nick Pollard; former business editor Jeff Randall; political editor Nick Robinson; former “Crimewatch” presenter Nick Ross; former “Talking Politics” presenter Dennis Sewell; former head of current affairs Samir Shah; former news anchor Peter Sissons; former director-general Mark Thompson; “Today” presenter Justin Webb; former Online science editor David Whitehouse; and creative director Alan Yentob.”

Here you go and as requested, a new open thread. Detail the bias here please!

The singer Cat Stevens became a Muslim….I’m sure it had nothing to do with Islam.

However his stated desire to kill Salman Rushdie had everything to do with Islam.

Shame that, present day events considered, the BBC thinks such a person is fit to star on their shows when DLT has been erased from history for squeezing a girl’s boobs.

Once again you have to ask serious questions about the BBC’s news bulletins which reduce a story to the very minimum in such a way that the facts are so distorted that they give the listener or viewer a very misleading idea of events.

Welfare minister Lord Freud has been heard to say that ‘disabled people aren’t worth the minimum wage.’

I was listening in the car to the BBC news and surprisingly managed to keep on the road as my eyes were rolling rapidly in amazement at yet another Tory foot-in-mouth balls up.

And yet…I had an entirely wrong view of events and of what he had said, the full context that gave meaning to his words. being missing.

Even the BBC agrees the BBC is wrong……

The BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson said it was important to understand the context of the conversation and that Lord Freud was not arguing for a new policy of routinely paying people less than the minimum wage.

He said one interpretation of Lord Freud’s comments was that he was “thinking aloud” but suggestions that the minimum wage could be undercut would seem “heartless” and come back to “haunt him”.

 

But as I write this the BBC has this on their front page…

Lord Freud: Disabled people ‘not worth full wage’

This is the entire report on that page…

A welfare minister said a small group of people are “not worth the full wage” and could be paid £2 an hour.

And though there is a fuller description yet again it fails to produce the full wording.

Damon Rose, from the BBC’s disability blog Ouch! having read the full transcript can make up his own mind and says in his analysis:

It’s perhaps understandable that Lord Freud might want to think outside the box to allow desperate disabled people to shine and get a real job with a real (if low) wage which for some may be preferable to remaining at home, isolated, looking forward to a life on benefits.  ……Lord Freud sounds like he was raising an important debate, but has muddied the waters with what sounds like disrespectful language.

 

So perhaps Lord Freud may have a point….it’s just that his phrasing, ‘not worth the minimum wage’, was thoughtless and crass.

In fact the BBC on PM with Eddie Mair (17:07)  did cover this story in depth, asking ‘Does Lord Freud have a point?’

It was only on hearing the full story that I was able to understand exactly what Freud had said and what it was that he in fact meant by it…..unfortunately the programme had on a very hardcore disability campaigner who had no interest in nuance or a measured and reasoned response…but she was kicked into touch by the second guest who explained the issues in a more rational way that put things into perspective…..a perspective missing from BBC news bulletins which went more along the path that the campaigner took.

Here is a transcript (From the Daily Record not the BBC) of what went on at the meeting when Lord Freud ‘mis-spoke’:

In a recording passed to website Politics Home, Lord Freud is heard discussing the plans.

The conversation took place between Lord Freud and a Conservative councillor from Tunbridge Wells, David Scott [who asks if  ‘mentally damaged’ disabled persons need to be paid the minimum wage….]

“You make a really good point about the disabled. Now I had not thought through, and we have not got a system for, you know, kind of going below the Minimum Wage.

“But we do have … You know, Universal Credit is really useful for people with the fluctuating conditions who can do some work – go up and down – because they can earn and get … and get, you know, bolstered through Universal Credit, and they can move that amount up and down.

“Now, there is a small … there is a group, and I know exactly who you mean, where actually as you say  they’re not worth the full wage  and actually I’m going to go and think about that particular issue, whether there is something we can do nationally, and without distorting the whole thing, which actually if someone wants to work for £2 an hour, and it’s working can we actually.”

After he finishes speaking the two carry on their exchange, with Mr Scott telling the peer that “no-one is willing to pay the Minimum wage” for disabled people to work.

Scott: “They particularly want to work because it does add so much to their lives…”

Freud: “Yes.”

Scott:  “…being able to do something. And actually being employed in a job actually gives them so much self-esteem, but nobody is willing to pay that Minimum Wage. And then we’re supporting them massively financially, but we also want them to work, for their own self-esteem and everything else.”

 

It is quite clear that the disabled people Freud is talking about are people who are severely disabled and unable even to do the same work as less disabled people and therefore might find themselves completely unemployable in the normal course of events, and that in order to give them a more fulfilling and interesting life it might be necessary to offer them a job where they do what they can with the employer paying what they can afford whilst the government tops up the rest.

So Eddie Mair and PM did do a good job in finding the answer to the question ‘Does Lord Freud have a point?’.  Unfortunately all that good work counts for little when BBC news bulletins strip away all the context and produce a barebones report that not only is misleading but is enormously damaging.  Something that all too often the bulletins are prone to do.

Time perhaps to retrain its bulletin writers and even lengthen the bulletins if a story merits a longer, more nuanced explanation as this one certainly does considering the ramifications.

A history of Ebola outbreaks from 1976

From 1976 to 2013 a total of 1,716 people died from Ebola.  Around 45 a year.  Kind of puts things into perspective.

Ebola is being treated as if it were a nuclear bomb ready to detonate and contaminate vast swathes of the world, a huge threat that the drugs industry has ignored despite having known about it for nearly 40 years.

The BBC is on the warpath eagerly quoting the ‘experts’ who tell us that a cure for Ebola would have been found if it had broken out in the West.

The drug companies get the blame…There have been no drugs to do the job because developing them is extremely expensive, and, until now, the major pharmaceutical companies have not seen enough of a market.

And yet research has been ongoing for years….Research….and a potentially successful drug has been developed:

The first Briton to contract Ebola, Will Pooley, received ZMapp and then recovered, but the drug’s American manufacturer warned it would take months to replenish supplies.

 

Ebola has not been ignored….Oxfam thinks differently…..

It is neither ethical nor sustainable to leave decisions and financing for research and development to be dictated by the commercial interests of pharmaceutical companies. They will continue producing the medicines that can make the highest profits rather than the therapies that are desperately needed for public health.”

But hang on….Ebola’s history is described as “Until this outbreak, Ebola was a rare disease occurring in small instances and burning itself out.”

Discovered in 1976, just how many cases have there been since then?

From 1976 (when it was first identified) through 2013, the World Health Organization reported a total of 1,716 cases

So over the course of 38 years there were 1,716 cases…around 45 per year.  Any wonder the drugs industry (clue’s in the name) didn’t mobilise and direct massive resources to the disease.

Shame the BBC allows politically motivated people onto its programmes to spread damaging lies. BBC journalists have themselves been making such statements about this….one saying ‘Isn’t it awful the west didn’t apply resources to defeat Ebola decades ago!’

Just how much in the way of resources does the BBC think would have been suitable to cure 45 people a year?

Climate models, the tools used to carve up the economy to suit the socialist dreamers, aren’t as reliable as they told us they were.

The BBC admits…..

Climate change: Models ‘underplay plant CO2 absorption’

Remember that the BBC has in effect banned Lord Lawson from the BBC on the basis that ‘ Lord Lawson’s views on climate change: “are not supported by the evidence from computer modelling and scientific research and I don’t believe this was made sufficiently clear to the audience.”

As the science writer and Conservative peer Matt Ridley made clear this week in The Times, linking the words “evidence” and “computer-modelling” in the same sentence is an oxymoron. Computer models try to predict the future and can only be tested as potential evidence when they are proved to be correct.

The article from the BBC reports that…..

Global climate models have underestimated the amount of CO2 being absorbed by plants, according to new research.

Scientists say that between 1901 and 2010, living things absorbed 16% more of the gas than previously thought.

Despite telling us that…..‘Working out the amount of carbon dioxide that lingers in the atmosphere is critical to estimating the future impacts of global warming on temperatures. ‘

…they ‘reassure’ us that…..

‘…experts believe the new calculation is unlikely to make a difference to global warming predictions.’

And….

‘…it may not mean any great delay in global warming as a result of increased concentrations of the gas.’

And….

Many experts agree that the effect is interesting and may require a recalibration of models – but it doesn’t change the need for long-term emissions cuts to limit the impact of carbon dioxide.

And….

“This new research implies it will be slightly easier to fulfil the target of keeping global warming below two degrees – but with a big emphasis on ‘slightly’,”

“Overall, the cuts in CO2 emissions over the next few decades will still have to be very large if we want to keep warming below two degrees.”

Four times in one report the BBC tries to subtly rubbish this study and downplay any significance to the clmate.

Can’t have you getting the idea that climate modelling is mostly nonsense.

The BBC quotes the researchers who produced the study asking just how big an error is there in the modelling…and then rushed in its ‘other researchers’ to pour cold water on any suggestion that the models are seriously wrong….

‘The researchers believe that Earth systems models have over estimated the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by about 17%, and think their new evaluation of plant absorption explains the gap…. If we are going to predict future CO2 concentration increases for hundreds of years, how big would that bias be?”‘

The BBC’s counter….

‘Other researchers believe the new work could help clarify our models but it may not mean any great delay in global warming as a result of increased concentrations of the gas.’

There may be global warming, or not, but the science hasn’t proved man is responsible.

The BBC is pushing propaganda not science.

What a bit of luck the BBC can slide its hand into our wallets and extract that license tax. Just imagine if it had to finance THIS sort of indulgence itself…

The BBC has spent more than £220,000 on iPhone lessons for staff. Figures have revealed the corporation spent licence fee payers’ money teaching 783 employees how to properly use the gadget over a period of three years. This works out at a cost of nearly £300 per person.