I see the BBC are delighted at Obama’s roll-over to Cuba. I caught an interview this morning on the Today programme with a Labour MP who enjoyed a travelling to Cuba to have a chinwag with ol’ Fidel and who was able to inform us that the REAL cause of Cuba’s woes was….yes, America. The BBC never changes — sighs. A new thread for you!

I  caught quite a few BBC news bulletins yesterday and was left under the impression that the NHS was in meltdown, especially in A&E which has had its ‘worst week on record’, and from what I gathered it is due to a reckless lack of resources…apparently.

Here is a clue as to why the BBC’s coverage might be less than honest:

The scale of the drop is causing concern not only to the health service, but to the government too with an election just around the corner.

Here the BBC makes no mention of the real causes of the innundation at A&E in the last week:

A&E has ‘worst week’ in England

Nor here:

Why are hospitals under so much pressure?

Nor here:

Hospitals struggling as winter hits

Oh…that last one gives a hint as to one of the real reasons but then instantly dismisses it as being too early in Winter for it to occur:

A&E units across the UK are struggling to hit their waiting time target as winter hits, latest figures show.

Demands on the NHS tend to increase during the colder months because of illnesses like flu and norovirus.

But with winter just getting under way, pressures are already reaching record levels.

 

That last sentence suggesting the NHS is buckling already before such illnesses make an impact.

Is that true?

Here this Express article suggests not:

NHS beds crisis as flu hits three-year peak

With flu levels at their highest seasonal level since 2011, NHS England revealed there had been 111,062 emergency admissions last week.

There were also 440,428 patients at A&E departments – more than 24,000 up on the same week last year.

Casualty wards could hit major difficulties if the numbers suffering from flu and norovirus continue to rise, experts warned.

Public Health England data showed flu infection rates last week were 66 per cent higher than last year.

The Telegraph reports:

Rates of norovirus are more than a third higher than last year, while flu is at the highest level for three years.

 

The BBC merely mentions the illnesses as a future pressure on the NHS, one that isn’t happening yet quoting this but failing to bring us the news of the record levels of flu and norovirus already happening:

So what next? “Predictions are very hard to make,” says Chris Hopson, of NHS Providers, which represents hospitals. “What we don’t know is what will happen with Norovirus or flu.

But it seems we do know…..the Express and the Telegraph reporting so.

The BBC prefers to emphasises and concentrate on other causes of pressure on A&E.

The BBC tells us that ‘attendances are going up across the UK ‘  but fails to say why…that GP services are so hopeless that people head to A&E instead…and that with the massive population growth from immmigration there is even more pressure both on GPs and A&E…..the BBC merely tells us that ‘GP surgeries are struggling to cope with unprecedented levels of demand.’

The Guardian telling us that GPs get an extra 40 million consultations a year in 2012, presumably more now…‘The number of consultations has increased – from 300m in 2008 to 340m in 2012 – and doctors are seeing more patients with complex needs.’….but it also doesn’t mention immigration…..preferring instead to blame an ageing population.

The BBC tries to blame cuts in social care budgets but offers no proof or analysis:

A significant factor in this is the squeeze on councils’ social care budgets. Many of the patients who end up in hospital are frail and elderly, and when they are ready to be released need support in the community to get back on their feet. If it’s not there, they have to stay in hospital, which occupies a bed often needed for other patients.

The BBC goes on to blame the GP failure to cope on the government of the day for imposing heavy workloads:

Both the Royal College of GPs and British Medical Association have been vocal about the workload their members are facing.

A recent BMA survey found three quarters of doctors said their caseload was “unsustainable” – and that seems to have started impacting on patients, as latest data from the official NHS England patient survey shows they are finding it more difficult to get an appointment.

No mention that Labour’s reworking of the GP contract gave them huge amounts of money in return for less work…..one aspect of why people can’t get an appointment…the other being the huge influx of immigrants and the massive number registering at GP surgeries.

Listning to some of Peter Allen today and we were led to understand that the problem with GPs was really one of too much paperwork and bureaucracy…GPs were buckling under a mountain of the stuff apparently…so again the government is to blame….no suggestion of what that paperwork is for and why it is imposed…and no suggestion that the GPs employ, with the large budget they are given, someone to do that work.

So a genuine story about flu and norovirus at very high levels is ignored and in its place the BBC brings us a highly political ‘analysis’ of why the NHS is under pressure…..government imposed bureaucracy and an ever increasing workload (unattributed to the major cause) imposed on the poor GPs, an NHS crippled by a failing structure and lack of funding, and cuts to council budgets.

Must be an election coming.

The BBC’s reputation has taken one hell of a beating over Al Sweady having indulged in ‘reckless speculation’ aimed at smearing the British Army.

It has spent years giving a platform to the likes of lawyer Phil Shiner so that they can peddle their lies and have them given a bit of credence by virtue of being on the BBC.

But suddenly the BBC has gone quiet on the allegations of abuse and ill-treatment.

I didn’t listen to Today this morning but having a look at the running order the Al Sweady inquiry doesn’t get a mention, which would be extraordinary if so.

5Live, which has been Shiner’s second home, along with Moazzam Begg’s father, also failed to mention the inquiry…..the likely programmes all seem to have found other things far more interesting such as Sony’s cyber attack and obesity.

Not a peep from the news bulletins.

Surely one of the biggest stories around and yet suddenly the BBC has lost interest.

Does the BBC provide news or propaganda?  Looks more and more like agenda driven propaganda.

The BBC still doing their bit to promote Snowden’s treachery as a good thing:

Snowden spying leaks prompt millions to protect data

Never mind his spying has resulted in extremely serious difficulties for the intelligence services looking to combat islamic terrorists as they learn not just the intelligence gathering capabilities of the intelligence services but more importantly the techniques used.

The fact that the intelligence services could monitor so much information is nothing new as shown by this report from 1999:

Echelon spy network revealed

Imagine a global spying network that can eavesdrop on every single phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet.

It sounds like science fiction, but it’s true.

So why would the BBC continue to tell us that Snowden has revealed anything new about the extent of surveillance or eulogise him for the service he has supposedly provided to the world?

Anyone would think the BBC believes the real enemy isn’t the likes of the Taliban and its Islamic fellow travellers but the intelligence services who are trying to protect us from such mass murderers.

If like me you have been listening or watching the BBC for the last few years and hearing their coverage of the alleged abuse of Iraqis or Afghans by British troops you will know that the BBC has given itself over to the likes of lawyer Phil Shiner and his extraordinary tales, his own very singular version of the truth.

Today the BBC must be absolutely gutted as the Al Sweady inquiry clears, as expected, British troops of allegations they tortured and killed prisoners.

The BBC has put a lot of work into helping Shiner smear the Army’s reputation and put a great many soldiers through the wringer for so many years.

In 2008 the BBC’s Panorama produced a programme, On Whose Orders?, that claimed to investigate the allegations….here is what one viewer thought of the programme:

Is it just me or do these left wing lobbyists and solicitors actually work with, or very close with the BBC , they have a voice out of all proportion and seem to be able to spout whatever bollox they like on the BBC, I swear they should give Shami Chakrabati her own show, for someone who’s never been elected as any kind of public official, she seems to get more airtime than the PM!

Is it any co-incidence that her sister works for the beeb?

What I’m getting at is do these far left lawyers aproach the bbc with program ideas?

Make no mistake , this was phil shiners program, the bbc only tried to distance themselves from him at the end because of all the critisism they’d recieved in all the major newspapers , that’s the reason they emphisised the program was still being made in the newspaper reports, to do some last minute distancing from phil shiner.

 

The Sun newspaper wasn’t impressed:

Beeb ‘slurs’ on Iraq heroes

The BBC were initially blocked from broadcasting the programme but went to court to force the issue so insistent were they about finding out the ‘truth’ of the matter:

Panorama’s legal victory

Panorama has won an important victory in the High Court against the Ministry of Defence which was attempting to prevent the broadcast of details of alleged abuse by soldiers in Iraq.

The Panorama programme ended with a bit of a disclaimer…as set out in the web report:

Panorama has seen no proof that prisoners died at the hands of their captors and concludes that the case being brought by solicitors Phil Shiner and Martyn Day represents the most extreme interpretation of a troubling but confusing incident. They are asking for the bodies to be disinterred and evidence to be handed to Scotland Yard.

 

Despite that dsitinct lack of proof for the next 5 years the BBC continued to bombard us with the allegations in a manner that suggested there was far more substance to them than there was…as we now know…they being the result of deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hatred….you can wonder whether the judge was talking about the Iraqis, Shiner, the BBC or all three of them.

The BBC was very proud of its Panorama programme stating this on the announcement of the inquiry:

New inquiry into British army abuse in Iraq vindicates Panorama

Ironically the first line of this pyrrhic victory was this:

Time can make a world of difference in an emotive, ongoing story.

 

The BBC goes on to suggest:

In revisiting these allegations through public inquiries, the entire system of military justice will inevitably be called into question.

 

Well I imagine military justice has been vindicated…the RMP said there was no case…and there was no case….it was clearly a case of highly suspect allegations being encouraged by ‘ambulance chasing’ lawyers backed up by a media organisation that had its fingers badly burnt as it was caught lying about the Iraq War Dossier and has been seeking to exact revenge ever since.

As the BBC was so clearly ready to congratulate itself on firstly getting its ‘legal victory’ and then slapping itself on the back when it thought itself ‘vindicated’ perhaps it should now make a very large apology to the Public it so badly misled and not least the soldiers it helped pillory and their families who have all had to suffer these allegations for so long.

Con Coughlin at the Telegraph is of the same mind:

Al Sweady inquiry: The British Army deserves a full apology from the BBC

Looking back, it is amazing just how many people were prepared to believe the accusations that the British Army routinely tortured detainees.

BBC limbering up for a new bout of blackening the reputation of the British military today, ahead of the publication of the Al Sweady Inquiry report. I heard a BBC journalist intone this morning that on some occasions Iraqi combatants were…..gasp…SHOUTED at. Oh the horror. When you combine this with the BBC’s embrace of the partisan Democrat Senate report on the CIA, we see the remarkable sight of the State broadcaster damning OUR armed forces whilst the enemy slaughter at will around the world. It’s my view that had the BBC been as pervasive in WW2 as it is now, we could not have won the war because we had to actually FIGHT back. In this refined times that is not possible and the BBC ensures this is the case by pushing the £30m absurdity of this report, in my view.

On time and ready for completion. No sooner had the BBC been propagating the “lone wolf and disturbed individual” meme over the Sydney Jihadist than a group of Pakistani jihadists slaughter over 130 schoolchildren. Hard to put that one down to the preferred “lone wolf” theory, eh? Fill the space.

Your help required. As we all know the BBC is riddled with connections to the UK political left. Do me a favour and detail as many names as you can with the political lineage. I ask for a good reason!

Here you go, a new Open Thread. I see the BBC are virtually orgasmic about the latest UKIP “revelation” and I heard them discussing on the Today programme whether there was a core UKIP support that is indeed homophobic and racist. Plus ca change. Meanwhile, BBC doing all they can to suggest that a devout Muslim has been taken hostage by coffee extremists in Sydney! The floor is yours…

Labour has issued a document that lays out its election strategy for dealing with UKIP…here they talk about how Labour should talk about immigration……essentially only talk about it in order to raise other issues that Labour would prefer to talk about…say the NHS or cuts…change the narrative not people’s minds….

As a political party, we are more effective at changing what is discussed and debated (the salience of the issues), as opposed to changing what may be long-held and entrenched opinions of each party or views on which party has the best policies on each issue. For example, in autumn 2013 we saw a sharp rise in the salience of energy prices in the wake of Ed’s policy announcement at Annual Conference and the integrated campaigns we ran in the weeks and months that followed. More recently, we have seen a substantial increase in the salience of the NHS.

Following from this, when we embark on policy messaging around immigration, which is not an area where Labour has the strongest lead over other parties, we should ensure that this messaging is always done in conjunction with other policy areas. The purpose of this is to raise the salience of those issues in which Labour has a much clearer lead and stands to benefit more from their prominence with the electorate. This is especially true when messaging comes from the local candidate and local party, where the magnitude of this effect may be greatest.

The BBC seems to have taken that approach on board for its reporting as noted in a previous post…..

The BBC field reporter, Matthew Price,  summed it up with the new pro-immigration line of defence…..whilst most studies show that immigrants bring little benefit, if any to the country, Price decided to state that the problem is that the benefits they do bring are being hijacked by national government and resources are being removed from the area they are created in….the problems are created by government not immigrants.