The BBC has released a report into the future of News.

Here is the BBC’s own version of what’s in the report:

BBC ‘should improve local and World Service news’

BBC News should increase both its local and global coverage and improve its digital services if it is to remain relevant, the corporation has said.

The BBC should “do more to provide local news that properly serves all parts of the UK”, according to a report titled The Future of News.

It should also reverse the trend for closures to World Service language operations, the report said.

“If the UK wants the BBC to remain valued and respected, an ambassador of Britain’s values and an agent of soft power in the world, then the BBC is going to have to commit to growing the World Service and the government will also have to recognise this,” the report said.

As well as “looking at how we can develop a service that might work for North Korea”, the corporation is also “increasingly reflecting on the position of the media in Russia and Turkey”, it said.

The report added: “In many parts of the world, there is not more free expression but less.”

 

This from the BBC that set out to destroy the EDL, smears UKIP as immigrant murdering nazis and incites anti-Semitism with its reporting from the Middle East.

Did laugh at this from the first paragraph of the report…

In a democracy, news is the essential

public service. Government by the

people cannot function without it.

The job of the news is to keep

everyone informed – to enable us to be

better citizens, equipped with what we

need to know.

The same BBC that closed down debate on immigration, Europe and climate change….and tried to mislead us on the economy and Labour’s Plan B.

It tells us that in the age of the internet and the proliferation of many different sources of news…

‘The BBC is more necessary and valuable than ever’

I would suggest it was the other way around….because of the BBC’s dominance of the news and its very one sided view of what we should hear and think, as evidenced by this very report, see below, it is more vital than ever that we have access to the internet and the many and varied sources of news it provides to balance and weigh up the BBC’s coverage which, I have to say, I never accept as a reliable source of ‘truth’ based on long experience of reading and hearing what they tell me only to find that it is only half the story….as shown recently with its very misleading report on the IFS statements about the economy.

The BBC went on….

The internet is not keeping everyone

informed, nor will it: it is, in fact,

magnifying problems of information

inequality, misinformation, polarisation

and disengagement.

 

Sorry but that’s so much bull…..without the internet we would be slaves to the BBC’s world view and as for ‘disengagement’ I would suggest that it has massively increased political participation in one form or another from protest groups, charities and NGOs all utilising it to get their messages across to pressure governments and companies…it has also enabled political parties to revitalise their support…just look at Obama in the US….just look at Russell Brand on YouTube.

The only difference between the BBC and ‘bloggers’ is that the BBC has the money and resources to gather the news but that does not mean that the BBC should be the sole arbiter of what that news means….the blogger is just as able and entitled to analyse and interpret that information as any BBC journalist.  Naturally that puts the ‘professional’ BBC journalist’s nose out of joint but so what?  Celebrate the diversity of opinion!

Compare that BBC’s version of what the ‘Future News’ report says with this from the Telegraph:

BBC World Service ‘under threat from Al Jazeera and nationalist news’

BBC warns the World Service needs extra money to counter rival broadcasters touting news based around ‘political Islam, evangelical Christianity, nationalism and patriotism’

Global news is polarising around religion and nationalism, the report warns.

“There is a deepening global tilt towards news focused or aggregated around a world view: political Islam, evangelical Christianity, nationalism, patriotism and so on. While these are very different and varied phenomena, in such communities of interest shared values become a new brand loyalty.

“Al Jazeera in Arabic sees itself as serving an audience that is conservative and Muslim. For the station and its audience, common religious assumptions give a sense of belonging which can bleed into shared views on political, economic and especially cultural questions.

“Similarly, Fox News articulates a very specific view of what it is to be an American.

“In this polarised world, modern or universal rights – political, human, gender or sexual rights – or concepts of openness and democracy become deeply polarising.”

 

So not just extremist Islam but evangelical Christianity…has the BBC told all those African immigrants they are on its hit list for extermination…ideologically speaking?

Then there’s the other world evils to be tackled…nationalism, patriotism …and the news according to Fox News.

So much for ‘impartial’.

Curious that the BBC’s article didn’t mention any of that.

Curious that the BBC recognises in theory the problems associated with fundamental ideologies in relation to secular, liberal democracies which promote universal rights…and yet it, far from tackling what it calls ‘political Islam’, which to you and me is everyday ‘Islam’ as it is an ideology designed for political purposes wrapped up in religious garb in order to give it divine sanction for its actions, the BBC defends and promotes those who wish to impose ‘political Islam’ upon us….such as in the Torjan Horse case or where it excuses terrorism and refuses to link it to ‘The Religion of Peace’.  How can you claim to be tackling ‘political Islam’ when you refuse to admit what that really means?

As for nationalism and patriotism…this is the BBC that at every turn condemns the British Empire which brought half the world under one rule….thus producing a Pax Britannica….held together at the point of a gun.  It is empires that produce the worst violence as people struggle for their independence from colonialism….something always cheered on by the BBC as it supports ‘good’ nationalism by preferrably brown people, though non-Protestant will do as well….and more violence as they struggle to decide whose vision of the nation will prevail, as in Libya now.

Empires, those borderless mish mashes of states, always break up…it is human nature to want self -rule and for people to define themselves by their location and shared cultures and values.  The BBC in its idealism, as with communists, takes no regard of human nature and tries to impose their utopian vision upon an unwilling mass…all to end in tears and violence.

The BBC’s hatred of nationalism and patriotism extends only as far as that of the Anglo-Saxon world.  The British Empire was bad, the Muslim caliphate good…indeed the BBC in many respects supports the ISIS caliphate which redraws the map of the Middle East regardless of ethnicity or religion…which is curious as the BBC hates the diverse nature of Iraq which it tells us is an unworkable forced union of different peoples….no celebrating diversity there then….of course that was created by Europeans so must be a bad thing.

Yes, the BBC will support you in your fight for independence from your colonial masters but when you get it will denounce you for being nasty little nationalists.  Welcome to the world according to the BBC.

Thanks to Guest Who for pointing me in the direction of Newsnight where (Labour supporting…apparently) Kirsty Wark trashed Andy Burnham, Labour’s Shadow Health Minister.

A fascinating interview that tore Burnham to shreds and showed him up as a one hell of a bluffer unwilling to commit himself to putting a figure on how much of NHS work could be contracted out to the private sector….Burnham stated that the ‘Market experiment was over…and the NHS was now the preferred provider’.…which is very slippy and disengenuous in its abstract non-committal.  The NHS might be the ‘preferred provider’ in theory but if efficiency or quality of care can be provided better by the private sector those in the NHS who are contracting the services will choose that…so it’s an open ended non-commitment to the NHS by Burnham…the private sector, in theory, could provide all the NHS services even if the NHS itself was the ‘preferred provider’ as Burnham will not say just where, at what percentage, he will stop further NHS work being contracted out.

Wark then holed Burnham below the water line with a BBC study of knee and hip operations in which the patients said that they received better quality of care and outcome from private providers.

The King’s fund also told us that Labour’s proposals were very radical which would lead to a fundamental change of the NHS….Wark didn’t take that any further but perhaps should have as it is another one of Labour’s attack lines that the Coalition’s reforms have been unnecessary and highly damaging….just the fact that they happened, not necessarily because of the reforms themselves.

Wark made a significant point that Labour’s electoral position was dependent on differentiating themselves from the Tories based upon the level of private provision they were willing to accept.

That’s very true, and very important to note because it is such an emotive and controversial issue with so many half truths and so much wilful blindness…. on any phone-in dancing around the subject of the NHS you will hear strident voices calling in to shout about the alleged  privatisation of the NHS…by the Tories….Interviews like Wark’s on Newsnight should dispel such myths about privatisation and remind people that Labour had a big hand in privatising the NHS as far as it has been.  However it is the usual story with the BBC…..did I hear a mention of this interview on the news today?  No, not a word…I had no idea Burnham had been roasted by Wark until I saw Guest Who’s comment….and yet it is utterly damning for Labour and highly damaging to their election strategy based on the NHS….why is the BBC not making this headline news?

As with Panorama’s investigation into ‘British Islam’ when the time comes to disseminate the information from such programmes out to the wider BBC, its call-ins, presenter led programmes and news bulletins, you find that all that good work is ignored and discarded, the presenters carrying on in their own little worlds ignoring anything that conflicts wth their world view…or so it seems.  The news bulletins either ignore the findings of the likes of Newsnight or so truncate a story and edit it down so much that the essence of it is lost and the real thrust and important points are completely lost…or worse, they actually change the whole story and totally alter our perception of what actually happened.

Yesterday the BBC interviewed Alan Milburn.  His critical comments in that interview about Labour’s health policies were plastered over other news media…but not on the BBC as I noted yesterday…and that’s despite it being a story broken by a BBC programme in an interview on The World at One, on Radio 4!

Wark did mention Milburn’s comments on Newsnight and stated that Labour was torn internally on this issue…so of significant importance…and yet otherwise ignored by the BBC with no major report based upon that revelation at all on its web site.

Guido suggests it might have been a highly relevant issue…one the BBC might have taken a deeper interest in perhaps?:

Perhaps Burnham’s bad mood was something to do with this morning’s front pages, which report Labour figures have responded to his big speech yesterday by laying into the party’s NHS strategy.

As Miliband centres Labour’s election campaign on the NHS, public satisfaction is at an all time high…

And today we had another example of how BBC News can transform a story and turn it into something, that by using subtle changes of wording, can create a whole different perception leading listeners to the wrong (or right) conclusion.

The BBC claimed to have broken this story…

NHS guidelines for ‘major incidents’ spark political row

Mr Miliband pressed the prime minister on the news that the West Midlands NHS region has issued guidance to hospitals, GPs and Ambulance Trusts in their area – which includes Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton – on declaring major incidents.

But Mr Cameron insisted that ministers had had no involvement in the guidelines.

 

As you might have noted it was the West Midlands NHS region that issued this new guidance to hospitals as to when they can declare a ‘major incident’….not the NHS as a whole, nor the Government.

However what we got from most news bulletins was the news that ‘new guidelines have been issued to parts of the NHS….’

Now that is highly misleading…there is no indication as to who issued those guidelines, you would naturally assume it was the Government, and ‘parts of the NHS’ could be taken to mean anything…most likely that it is a nationwide issue of relevance to certain major hospitals or medical centres.  Again misleading as it was only hospitals in the West Midlands….and the issue had nothing whatsoever to do with the Government.

The BBC’s Norman Smith loudly broke the story this morning….

On the radio he proclaimed that there was ‘an almighty political ding dog over health’ and went on to talk about the political arguments…however he failed to inform us of anything useful…such as what the guidelines said and what the overall effect of them would really be and why.

Norman sent most of the time revealing the contents of emails sent between NHS staff discussing these changes…emails that suggested this was a government plot to stop hospitals declaring ‘major incidents’ and that was intended to ‘manage the news’.

Question…how did the BBC get these emails?  Let’s have a guess…a Labour supporting staff member saw these guidelines and decided to write an email that damned the government…and then sent the emails to Labour and the BBC.

Not as if NHS staff aren’t highly political….

“This isn’t privatisation by the back door, it’s privatisation by the front door, and it is really putting patients’ lives at risk”   Dr Jacky Davis Keep Our NHS Public

The BBC, whilst pretty much ignoring Labour Big Beast Alan Milburn’s critical comments, then mobilises its resources and launches this half-story into the stratosphere…just in time for Prime Minister’s Questions.

Then it spends the day giving it plenty of coverage,  somewhat misleading coverage, and stirs the pot relentlessly.

All this perfectly illustrates a major problem with the BBC’s news management that I have frequently noted…the disconnect between information that comes into the BBC and what is then filtered and disseminated out  into the mainstream BBC system where reports such as Panorama get conveniently ‘forgotten’ and interviews such as last night’s  Newsnight are ignored or downplayed with any reports that do cover such stories deciding to emphasise, for example,  Burnham’s ‘stout defence’ of Labour’s policies and how he intends to change the NHS for the better whilst battling the Tories’ NHS sell off plans.

How many people watch Newsnight, Panorama or listen to the Today programme?  Not that many in the scale of things. How then do they get a full insight into events?  Watching the late night news is just as subject to the vagaries of the likes of Norman Smith’s initerpretations as his work on the radio was as he puts the emphasis on eyecatching ‘scoops’ such as the emails which are irrelevant and posssibly suspect but which make ‘good copy’ rather than trying to explain the complex ins and outs of the issues.

It’s a big problem that disconnect between what investigative journalism on the BBC turns up and what actually gets reported…rarely do those specialist, indepth reports change the ‘conventional wisdom’ of the institution that is the BBC.  Which means you and I don’t get the truth from the BBC…..whether that’s by design or is just a case of bad journalism, inept editing and a failure to recognise what is important in a story I’ll let you decide.

Time for a new one of these. Do detail the bias please!

The Submarine Service used to be called the ‘Silent Service’ using stealth and skill to evade detection and sink the enemy.

Seems that the BBC might well take on that nickname for its ‘silent’ support for Labour in its effort to sink the Tories….its silent support being its bias by omission as it avoids reporting or highlighting unpleasant news for Miliband.

Miliband yesterday launched his bid for election glory based upon his 10 year NHS plan…listening to the Today programme and it was hard to tell if I was listening to a BBC journalist (Hugh Pym) or a Labour politician giving us his spiel.

Pym has followed up with a piece on the web which follows the same route painting a wonderful picture of Labour’s plans with minimal criticism of them…

Labour, the NHS and social care integration

Pym opens with an admission that the NHS is important in the election race…

The NHS always has been a totemic issue for Labour and, in recent decades, has often been seen as a key election issue.

But this time there seems even more determination by Labour to make the state of the NHS the defining issue of the campaign.

 

The BBC admits this…

NHS ‘most important issue’ suggests BBC/Populus poll

So you might wonder, considering how important the NHS is to Labour’s election strategy, where are the headlines on the BBC such as this from the Telegraph?….

Labour election chaos over NHS as Ed Miliband accused of running ‘comfort zone campaign’

Ed Miliband’s attempts to make the NHS his key election weapon have descended into chaos after he was accused of running a “comfort zone campaign” and refused to endorse the shadow health secretary.

Or this from the Guardian, prominent on its front page:

Ed Miliband’s NHS plans risk losing the election, say Blair supporters

Ed Miliband is facing a backlash by Tony Blair supporters who have warned that his plans for the NHS risk playing into Tory hands and could lead to repeating the campaign mistakes of 1992 when Labour lost the general election.

In a sign of unease about Labour’s prospects, the former health secretary Alan Milburn said the party was running a pale imitation of its losing 1992 general election campaign, as it retreated to its comfort zone over the NHS.

Or this from the Huffington Post?

Alan Milburn Slams Ed Miliband’s NHS ‘Comfort Zone’ Campaign

It seems they all think this is a major story worth putting on the front page in bold…the NHS being ‘totemic’ and the ‘most important issue’…and yet the BBC has hidden a major criticism of Miliband and his policies almost at the bottom of this long report with barely a comment:

Ed Miliband and David Cameron step up election battle

And former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn has questioned the opposition’s focus on the NHS as a “comfort zone campaign” and warned the party is ill-prepared to carry out the necessary reforms to the NHS if elected.

 

Loose lips sink ships but the BBC’s tight lipped reporting is doing its best to keep the rickety old hulk of Labour’s election on course and afloat.

Some links to peruse at your leisure that may help you form an opinion of the BBC’s coverage of world affairs:

How Marine Le Pen is winning France’s gay vote

How will the Guardian and the BBC cover the Trinity Mirror phone hacking?

Steerpike is curious to see what coverage the trial will get in the papers and from the BBC. Both the corporation and the Guardian have taken glee in the past at resting the phone hacking crimes firmly in Rupert Murdoch’s court. Giving the impression, of course, that the sin of hacking came straight from the blackness of Murdoch’s heart – rather than a sin that was spread right across an industry.

Pakistan dares to ask: will school attack finally end myth of the ‘good Taliban’?

Decades of state support for jihadis has led to national confusion over who the real enemies are. But the latest attack might be a watershed

Viewpoint: Confrontation key to tackling violent extremism

The challenge for societies is to react and respond to terrorist communications in a different way.
Terrorists do and say things they believe will be successful.
When journalists and analysts comment on terrorist communications they unwittingly serve the terrorists’ purpose.
Discredited ideologies
The most positive new development in terrorism has been that its veneer of championing a noble cause has been stripped to reveal its vulgar lust for violence.
By targeting children, education, sympathetic journalists and aid workers it has exposed its inherent ignorance, its absence of humanity and its innate cowardice.

The invention of Islamophobia

Islamophobia was invented to silence those Muslims who question the Koran and who demand equality of the sexes. By Pascal Bruckner

The term “Islamophobia” serves a number of functions: it denies the reality of an Islamic offensive in Europe all the better to justify it; it attacks secularism by equating it with fundamentalism. Above all, however, it wants to silence all those Muslims who question the Koran, who demand equality of the sexes, who claim the right to renounce religion, and who want to practice their faith freely and without submitting to the dictates of the bearded and doctrinaire.

Phew!!!  What a relief eh?  The barbarians have been defeated, the  takeover of Greek politics by the nazi scumbags of the Far Right hasn’t happened…the BBC’s warnings from history about Hitler’s ressurrection as an Ouzo drinking, plate smashing immigrant basher were just so much paranoid delusion.

Instead we have the delightful prospect of a radical far left group in charge…and in charge of that group…

Alexis Tsipras, “the most dangerous man in Europe”

….which must come as a bit of a surprise to anyone who has watched the BBC over the last few years since the big crash.   Who knew eh?   Whatever happened to that neo-Nazi group that was set to storm, according to the BBC, the Greek parliament and take Europe back to the Golden Dawn of a new Dark Ages?

We’ve seen the BBC’s flexible moral relativism when it comes to defining what is or isn’t terrorism when carried out by adherents to the religion of peace but when it comes to anyone who even gives a hint of having dubiously unacceptable thoughts about limiting immigration suddenly the gloves come off, the moral relativity goes out the window and the firm smack of the liberal intelligentsia’s very own Inquisition is felt far and wide as they mobilise to stop the thought crimes before they can ‘pollute’ the public conversation, the very one sided public conversation, about immigration.

The BBC that won’t call a spade a spade or a terrorist a terrorist, the BBC that refuses to acknowledge that Islam is the divine guide and sanction for those terrorists,   is the same BBC that has absolutely no problem labelling UKIP as the ‘Far Right’ or even associating them with Nazis purely on the basis that they want to control, not stop, immigration…and today we have further evidence of that attitude…mention immigration and you’re of the ‘Far Right’….Syriza in Greece have formed a coalition with the Independent Greek Party…the BBC tells us ..…

What unites Greece’s new coalition partners is fierce opposition to budget cuts. Alexis Tsipras and Independent Greeks leader Panos Kammenos are anti-bailout to the core.

Earlier, he [Tsipras] formed a coalition with the centre-right Independent Greeks.

 

The ‘centre-right party’? Sounds almost moderate and progressive.  However all day on the radio we’ve heard that they are the next closest thing to having the SS marching into Greece again…and indeed a few sentences down we’re told that they are ‘hardline right-wingers’…..and just for good measure they throw in ‘conservatism’….

a hardline right-winger on issues such as immigration….The problem for Mr Tsipras is that many of his own supporters revile Mr Kammenos’s conservatism

 

Remarkable that the BBC is so ready to denounce anyone who does not follow its own agenda on immigration as the ‘Far Right’ or ‘Hardline Right -wingers’…or subtly associate them with Nazis…..even when they have quite moderate immigration policies…..just wonder how they describe Labour’s Frank Field when he too reveals he wants immigration to be controlled.

But this has been the story we have been fed by the BBC since the crash…the Far Right are set to make overwhelming gains in Europe bringing back the prospect of ethnic cleansing, Nazism and worse.

The BBC has steadfastly refused to accept or admit there is any threat from the Islamisation of Europe or indeed from the Left….and has often not just looked away but actively attempted to persuade you that there is no threat, that it is all an illusion dreamt up by racists, Islamophobes and ‘right-wing’ politicians ‘capitalising’ on tragedies such as Charlie Hebdo.

There are , thankfully, more reliable, more honest sources of news, sources of the truth, than the BBC.

Muslim attempts to subvert and undermine the democratic, secular nature of Europe are well known and don’t need re-running here at this time but a few examples of the Left’s dark underbelly might be in order.

The BBC has invested a great deal of time and money in warning us of the dangers of the growth right wing movements and has expressed great fear of their success in elections across Europe….going so far as to air ‘The Nazis: A Warning From History’ just before the European elections…the message obvious…the EU is good…it keeps the peace….vote UKIP and leave the EU and the Nazis will rise again.

On the other hand the BBC has also invested a great deal of time and money in promoting the interests of left wing revolutionaries and radicals….going so far as to employ them, Occupy’s radical priest, the bigoted and ‘Christian’ fraud Giles Fraser, or give them so much airtime as if they were ‘employed’ on the BBC shilling…such as Russell Brand.  The BBC devotes little if any time to exposing left wing violence and the consequences of their ideology being implemented.

Such  left wing extremism and violence is deliberately ignored…where have you seen the BBC investigating the UAF in a similar way that it did the EDL.  The UAF is, despite its name, a Fascist organisation led by an extremist Muslim paid at the behest of its paymasters the far left Unite Union….which also pays for a certain Ed Miliband & Co and has expressed a belief that ’non-democratic’ methods should be used to further its political aims.   Surely a tangled web of extremist interests that should be investigated.

Looking the other way when it is politically convenient is a habit for those on the left and in government especially when events involve certain communities who have been given a special status and immunity from political and social censure by virtue of their race or religion…

In the US a black man executes two police officers in a racially motivated attack….apparently he is ‘mentally unstable’.
In France there are many attacks by Muslims on the Public…again dismissed as not being terrorist events but the result of ‘mental instability’.
In Australia the hostage taking Muslim was also labelled ‘mentally unstable’.
Jihadis heading off to Syria or those generally attracted to fighting for the cause of Islam are often labelled ‘mad’, ignorant and not real Muslims.

Everyone knows the truth…and official attempts to deny the real motives of these people fool no-one…..even the BBC has raised a sceptical eye:

The French authorities are reluctant to say anything to encourage the idea that there is any kind of pattern behind the three attacks.
This was not terrorism, is the official line. Similarly in Nantes, there is a strict embargo on speculation about the motives for the attack.
All of which is perfectly understandable. But many people will be asking themselves if there is not some copycat effect being played out. Also, even if it is established the car attacks were the work of unbalanced individuals, might not Islamist propaganda have played some role in pushing them to the act?

However that doesn’t stop the BBC which, as well as denying any link to Islam, is conversely more than ready to make spurious speculative links to the Far Right for any attack on Muslims or other such ‘victims’ as the BBC sees them.

The Boston Bombs were, according to the BBC, the work of right wing white supremacists….as ‘all the evidence pointed to’ according to Evan Davis and Mark Mardell.

Similarly a mosque is allegedly firebombed in Sweden and the culprits are ‘far right, anti-immigration, neo-nazis’…never mind no one had been arrested and there was absolutely no evidence yet that indicated this….and what is more the BBC refuses to investigate the well known violence of the left in Sweden…or that of Muslim immigrants…instead we have one sided, and highly inaccurate, reports such as this:

Swedish mosque hit by arson in Eskilstuna, injuring five

An arsonist set fire to a mosque in the Swedish town of Eskilstuna on Thursday, injuring five people, police said.

The incident comes amid a fierce debate in Sweden over immigration policies.
The far right wants to cut the number of asylum seekers allowed into Sweden by 90%, while mainstream parties are intent on preserving the country’s liberal policy.
Police are treating the incident as arson but no arrests have been made so far, Mr Franzell added.

 

And this…..

Sweden protest after three mosque fires in one week

However the Mosque fire was in fact an accident…but that didn’t stop the BBC leaping to the conclusions it wanted to about Muslims under attack from Far Right extremists….

Swedish police: mosque fire was an accident. Muslim leader: threats comes from other Muslim groups, “not from extreme right”

The BBC continued to concentrate on the ‘threat’ from the Far Right in Sweden…..

Swedish neo-Nazis: Moves to de-radicalise amid far-right rise

Sweden is still home to an active and at times violent neo-Nazi movement, and there are fears that rising popularity of the Sweden Democrats will also benefit the extremists.

 

This is the BBC that brought us Muslim propaganda in the shape of cartoons...hope you didn’t find them offensive…if you did perhaps a bit of ‘non-terrorism’ might be in order! The BBC seems to think it is just fine to do so.
Back in the UK Mark Mardell tells us that certain sectors of the population are unhappy with politics as they are now….but who does he concentrate on?…the Right…….comparing UKIP to the Tea Party who are apparently ‘malcontents’…a dismissive term of abuse from Mardell……

Disconnected generation ready to make Westminster pay

And in the south of England it is the rise of UKIP that has forced Team Westminster to examine what the future might hold.
It is a situation that has been reflected by events in the US.

The Tea Party, which is not a party, but a hydra-headed movement of like-minded malcontents.
Far right
In Europe the far right are on the march. They have increased their vote, most recently in Sweden.
But it is France that worries many in the political centre, not only in Paris, but even more in Brussels and Berlin.

 

Ah yes, the Far Right eh!  No mention of Muslim terrorists and extremists subverting democracy.

No, no Muslims….but there is that looming Far Right threat again……

France shaken up by Zemmour and ‘new reactionaries’
By Hugh Schofield

There is a new intellectual force in France – giving shape and weight to ideas that challenge the disastrous post-1968 left-wing consensus.
That at least is the hope of the so-called neo-reactionnaires (new reactionaries) – a loose group of writers and thinkers who want to shake up debate on issues like immigration, Islam and national identity.
Of course others see the group rather differently.
For their enemies they are rabble-rousers, providing spurious philosophical cover for the extremism of the National Front (FN).

Surely abit of left wing violence can’t be all that hard to find……and you know what, it isn’t….so let’s have a look at some examples of the Left and its violent, militant tendencies….

Violence Flares in Hamburg

“Red Flora”, as Hamburg’s leftist community centre is named, sticks out like a sore thumb in the city’s hip, alternative yet increasingly upmarket Schanzenviertel district. Last week it prompted police to declare the centre of one of Europe’s richest port cities a “danger zone” and caused the US embassy to issue travel warnings to citizens contemplating a visit.
“If stopped without proper identification, persons may be detained by Hamburg police without further justification,” Berlin’s American embassy cautioned last Wednesday. The draconian measures would appear to have turned posh Hamburg and its famous if less smart Reeperbahn red light district into the Teutonic equivalent of Belfast during the Troubles.
The entrance to the Reeperbahn’s Davidwache police station was festooned with police barricades last week. Police helicopters circled above the city. Uniformed officers conducted stop-and-search operations. Last Wednesday, police were involved in skirmishes with left-wing protesters who pelted them with fireworks. “Many people who live here are fed up with the violence and destruction,” was how Hamburg’s police trade union president, Joachim Lenders, justified the new measures.

Jump in left-wing violence in Germany ‘alarming’

Black-clad crowds stormed past closed and boarded banks, businesses and stores, shouting anti-fascist and anti-capitalist slogans in Berlin’s trendy Kreuzberg district.
But leftist protests like this one on May Day have for many years ended not in song but riots, car burnings and broken shop windows.

leftist crimes rose 40% to 8,673 acts in 2013, nearly half of which were property damage. Violent crimes by leftists rose 28% to 1,659 – largely altercations with police and right-wing groups during demonstrations.
“The increase in politically motivated crimes is alarming,” said Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, earlier this week.
“Violence by extreme left-wing offenders increased and the number of anti-foreigner crimes increased last year, too,” he said. “More people were injured through politically motivated crimes than in previous years.”

The Return of the Radicals: Crisis Fuels Rise in Left-Wing Extremist Violence

Following the 2007 protests at the G-8 meeting in Heiligendamm, the number of attacks by leftist extremists has risen dramatically in Germany. The government is increasing its focus on the autonomists, but authorities know little about a new generation that is torching cars, and worse, in its fight.
German Interior Ministry crime statistics for 2009 show a 53 percent jump in the number of left-wing attacks, the largest increase seen in many years. Police recorded a total of 1,822 left-wing acts of violence in all of Germany, considerably more than those committed by right-wing extremists.

 

Leftwing Acts of Violent Extremism

 

lol…..

Left-Wing “Stop The Violence” Organizers Arrested For Nearly Beating Roommate To Death…

Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) in India

It has become almost a cliché to say that the LWE situation is the most serious internal threat facing the country.

 

 

And never mind all that old fashioned Communism in the USSR and Commie China.  How many millions died, were killed, casting off their chains?

Yep…the threat is definitely from the Far Right and Nigel Farage.

Watch out.  You have been warned.

Something to add to the general debate on free speech and which can inform our judgements on the BBC’s reactions to pressure from Muslim activists and its subsequent approach to ‘free speech’.

A Channel Four debate from 2012 on freedom of speech in relation to Muslim demands on British society…asking

‘Is free speech under threat in Britain?’

The very fact that they need to ask that says everything…….

Note that the arguments used to defend the Muslim right to silence critics of islamic ideology are the same that the BBC’s Owen Bennett-Jones used in his article “Blasphemy, jihad and victimhood“….powerless, marginalised, weak, under attack, angry, frustrated and so on.

Here you go, a new Open Thread. BBC in a bit of a spot – they are delighted a hard left bunch of communists and other assorted leftists have won power in Greece but then concerned this could lead to the unravelling of the EU! Anyway, the floor is yours…

Paris attacks: Do not call Charlie Hebdo killers ‘terrorists’, BBC says

Tarik Kafala, the head of BBC Arabic, the largest of the BBC’s non-English language news services, said the term “terrorist” was too “loaded” to describe the actions of the men who killed 12 people in the attack on the French satirical magazine.

Mr Kafala, whose BBC Arabic television, radio and online news services reach a weekly audience of 36 million people, told The Independent: “We try to avoid describing anyone as a terrorist or an act as being terrorist. What we try to do is to say that ‘two men killed 12 people in an attack on the office of a satirical magazine’. That’s enough, we know what that means and what it is.”

Mr Kafala said: “Terrorism is such a loaded word. The UN has been struggling for more than a decade to define the word and they can’t. It is very difficult to. We know what political violence is, we know what murder, bombings and shootings are and we describe them. That’s much more revealing, we believe, than using a word like terrorist which people will see as value-laden.”

That’s just utter nonsense….there is a basic definition of terrorism…as defined by the Oxford Dictionary…one that most people would agree with:

The unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims

‘Political aims’ can of course encompass ‘religious’ ones as religion is just as political as it is supposedly spiritual.

The UN’s problem with defining terrorism isn’t a definition of what acts are ‘terrorist’ in nature but with who could be defined as terrorist…a different thing altogether…

The search for an agreed definition usually stumbles on two issues. The first is the argument that any definition should include States’ use of armed forces against civilians. We believe that the legal and normative framework against State violations is far stronger than in the case of non-State actors and we do not find this objection to be compelling. The second objection is that peoples under foreign occupation have a right to resistance and a definition of terrorism should not override this right. The right to resistance is contested by some. But it is not the central point: the central point is that there is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians.

 

What happened in Paris is a clear case of terrorism carried out by people affiliated to known terrorist organisations and the questions raised at the UN have no bearing on whether this is terrorism or not…it clearly is.

And of course the BBC has no problem using other people’s language when it comes to Israeli ‘war crimes’…

Amnesty: Israeli strikes on Gaza buildings ‘war crimes’

And as BBC Watch points out…

BBC’s Bowen promotes accusations of Israeli ‘war crimes’

That’s despite Kafala reporting that the definition of a ‘war crime’ is always evolving and never static…despite that the ICC manages to not only come to a working definition of a war crime but also to prosecute and sentence ‘war criminals’.  Funny how that works and yet the BBC Kafala wants to dodge the uncomfortable truth about an act of Islamic terrorism…..

Anyone reading Kafala’s statement would have to assume he has some sympathy with the terrorist murderers judging by his attempt to downplay the nature of their crimes.

It is a fairly blatant attempt not to ‘upset’ Muslims and go with their narrative….in other words as they don’t see it as a crime perhaps…..adopting their language and definitions.

The BBC is introducing a parallel system of reporting news, one news for non-Muslims, another narrative for Muslims…never mind the truth, just report what the most violent sector of a community want to hear and have a peaceful life.

Or as said once before…..

In a wide-ranging interview about faith and broadcasting, Mr Thompson disclosed that producers were faced with the possibilities of “violent threats” instead of normal complaints if they broadcast certain types of satire.

“Without question, ‘I complain in the strongest possible terms’, is different from, ‘I complain in the strongest possible terms and I am loading my AK47 as I write’,” he said. “This definitely raises the stakes.”

 

The BBC’s guidelines, questionable in themselves say:

We try to avoid the use of the term “terrorist” without attribution.

Note that ‘without attribution’….well as pretty much everyone was quite clear that this was a case of terrorism there is an abundance of ‘attribution’ to fall back on should the BBC lack the backbone to make the call themselves.

The BBC guidelines go on….

We should not adopt other people’s language as our own; our responsibility is to remain objective and report in ways that enable our audiences to make their own assessments about who is doing what to whom.

 

By not using the word terrorism they adopt the language of the terrorist and those who wish to whitewash what has happened….Kafala himself isn’t shy about using language that is very definitely the preferred line for Palestinians when he calls the IDF the ‘ Israeli occupation army’.

Terrorism isn’t some abstract word that has no meaning, it has a specific meaning that most reasonable people would agree on….the BBC has introduced an element of relativity into how it should be defined when there isn’t any….and it has introduced that relativity in order to downplay the nature of the act and to assuage the feelings of those who support such acts however obliquely and quietly.  Terrorism is terrorism however good and noble the cause is.

Killing 10 cartoonists is neither good nor noble.  Killing four defenceless Jews is not good nor noble.

Just the act of cowards and terrorists in the name of Allah and the furtherance of his ideology across Europe.

About time the BBC called a terrorist a terrorist and stopped self-censoring and pandoring to those who ‘complain in the strongest possible terms and are loading their AK47s as they write.’

Not had a great deal of time to look at this but you might have heard the BBC plugging the IFS research that tells us that:

Benefits cuts ‘cost average family £489 a year’

Lower income families have been hit the worst as a percentage of their income the BBC insist on telling us….

Low-income working-age households have been hit hardest, losing the most as a percentage of their income.

And only halfway down the report do we get nearer the real truth…

James Browne, a senior research economist at IFS and co-author of the report said: “Whichever way you cut it, low-income households with children and the very richest households have lost out significantly from the changes as a percentage of their incomes.

 

But that is not what the BBC has been highlighting or making any attempt to explain.

What the press release from the IFS actually says is:

Taking these tax and benefit changes as a whole, they have reduced the incomes of low-income households with children and the very richest households by the most as a percentage of income.

 

Now I listened to the BBC reports on this and they were saying that the poorest lost the most as a percentage of their income whilst the richest lost the most in cash terms….that is clearly not the whole truth and doesn’t represent what the IFS said.

Unremarkably the leftwing New Statesman also peddled that line:

The report, by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), suggests that the coalition’s tax and benefit changes have cost the average family more than £1,000 a year. It also adds that the richest tenth have lost out significantly in cash terms, though not as a percentage of income.

 

In one way that is true but only if you selectively omit certain facts and the picture changes if you note that the Coalition tax and benefit changes would have calculated in the effects of legislation by Labour that kicked in just prior to them taking power when working out how to change the system…as the IFS report tells us….

Low-income working-age households have lost the most as a percentage of their income from tax and benefit changes introduced by the coalition, mainly as a result of benefit cuts. However this changes if we include in our analysis the tax rises introduced immediately before the coalition came to office (the first element of the fiscal consolidation that began in April 2010): the richest households have lost the most both in cash terms and as a percentage of income from the overall tax and benefit changes that have taken place since the beginning of 2010.

 

If the richest are already being hit hard then there is less need to put the boot in even more…they have lost the most both in cash terms and as a  percentage of income.

The BBC’s reports are true up to a point and yet not the whole truth…it is an important omission that distorts the effect of the government’s tax and benefits policies completely, and in favour of Labour.

And as this subject, inequality, the poor suffering more than the rich, we’re not in this all together, is one of the main planks of the Labour election campaign it is important that the BBC doesn’t make such careless ‘mistakes’ when reporting such stories…or it might look as if they are just a PR outfit paid and bought for by their Labour chums.

Champagne already on ice?