Here you go, I can see the old open thread one is listing faster than the BBC’s gallery of 1970’s superstars. Over to you..see bias, detail it here!

This could explain an awful lot….and give an insight into not only Mark Easton’s mind but that of many of his colleagues so often reluctant to wave the flag…from 2008:

 About Mark Easton

I recently filled out a form for a visa that asked me my nationality. The choices were English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish or Other. I didn’t want to be an “other” but the options were forcing me to pick. So in the end ‘other’ it was.

I was born in a small detached house on what was then a new estate on the edge of Glasgow in 1959, first child of four. At the age of 10 my parents upped sticks and we all moved to a little village near Winchester in Hampshire. At the local primary school, my Scots accent was quickly knocked out of me and I was left dazed and confused.

My veins, so the genealogy would have it, course with mongrel blood. Saxon, Pict, Jute, and Celt almost certainly. And there’s bound to be extract of Roman, Norman and Viking in there too.

Ancient Irish and Welsh ancestry mix with Scots roots and English upbringing. The whole I regard as 100% British.

Being British is not “other”. It is me.

From that you might gather that he thinks there is no such thing as ‘English’ or ‘Scottish’ or indeed any notion of nationality……preferring the borderless ‘Britain’ and in preferrence to that, if asked, probably ‘European’, and if asked again, a ‘Citizen of the world’.

Which all fits snugly with the BBC’s determination that we are a nation of immigrants and ‘Englishness’ is a relative, almost meaningless term…..echoing what Muslim ‘conservatives’ like the once head of the MCB, Iqbal Sacranie, said….‘no other language or culture should be treated as the ‘norm’ and that the British should only be treated as one community in a community of communities.’

For ‘Britain’ perhaps the BBC would like to use ‘Caliphate’ instead.

What was Englishness and is it possible now to define it in anything more than the loosest and baggiest terms?

This is the usual BBC mantra:

“Thus from a mixture of all kinds began, that het’rogeneous thing, an Englishman.”

Daniel Defoe’s poem, The True-Born Englishman, reflects how many see England – a “mongrel” nation forged from Celts, Angles, Saxons, Danes and Normans.

Successive waves of immigration in the 20th Century have given rise to the notion that England is unique in its composition, a mixture of all things good from all countries.

However they were disabused of this by Peter Mandler, professor of modern cultural history at the University of Cambridge, who said this view of English roots is simply wrong :

“The English are no more mongrel than any other European country – it’s a story that people tell themselves, but it doesn’t describe the country.”

The city centre has seen a 40% increase in private sector jobs, and one of the UK’s largest expansions in recent years

Here is the truth about Labour’s job’s record, showing how they destroyed manufacturing jobs in Britain….the blue area showing job losses in manufacturing from 2001 to 2013….note from 2011 the jobs started to grow:

Labour is now proclaiming itself the party that will bring jobs to the regions.  History tells a different story….most of that famed growth and financial wizardry was in…London…the spectacular collapse of which left the rest of the country having to dig deep to rescue the City whilst the BBC smoothed over the politician’s embarrassment by mostly ignoring their guilty part in that downfall.

However the BBC has been giving plenty of airtime to broadcasting Labour’s ‘new’ regional plan based upon figures provided by the ‘Centre for Cities’ think tank.

Miliband has claimed that 80% of new jobs are being created in London…and therefore this proves that the regions are being left behind…..and the Coalition is failing to spread the recovery nationwide.

Ever get the feeling we’ve been here before such as earlier this year when I asked  ”Will Miliband be announcing a new policy on cities in the next few days?” (A few months out!)

In January this year we looked at the very same claims….

This morning [January] the BBC were trumpeting on the radio some research by a think tank called ‘Centre For Cities’ that said London was growing much faster than other UK cities as the much vaunted ‘Recovery’ left them behind as economic also-rans…presumably hinting they were being ignored or abandoned by the Government.

The BBC said it was an independent think tank, but admitted that it had been set up by Labour peer Lord Sainsbury…er …the man who donated nearly £20 million to Labour.

Apparently…. Centre for Cities was launched in March 2005 as part of IPPR and became independent in November 2007.

 So independent of the IPPR now…Labour’s very own think tank.

Just as today, in January the BBC, and Labour, ignored that inconvenient growth occurring in the regions…..

The story seems to ignore some other truths about ‘the Regions’…the streets may not be paved with  gold but things are moving:

Record growth for business activity

Business activity rose at a record rate in the West Midlands in December according to the latest purchasing managers report for Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking. West Midlands private sector companies reported increases for the eighth month in a row with the rate of expansion the strongest in the 16-year-old survey’s history.

This is from Manchester which they tell us is doomed:

It’s double joy for regional growth

10 Jan 2014 05:59

The city centre has seen a 40% increase in private sector jobs, and one of the UK’s largest expansions in recent years 

So why is the ‘Centre for Cities’ claiming, and the BBC reporting, this:

Manchester ‘underperforming’

So not a lot has changed since January…the BBC is still guilessly reporting Miliband’s every word without challenge….here is the BBC’s ‘expert’ Nick Robinson, who doesn’t bother to fact check Labour’s figures…reporting the ‘stark facts’ as given to him by Labour…until corrected by Tory MPs:

Labour is promising to give more power and more money to cities outside London and the regions that surround them.

It is one part of a series of policies designed to mend what the party is calling the “fractured economy” symbolised by one stark fact – eight out of 10 new private sector jobs created in the past four years have been created in London.

Robinson, the ‘expert’ political and economic journalist, who should be doing some spade work, has had to backtrack and ‘update’:

UPDATE 12:20 BST

When Ed Miliband spoke he dropped the quote in the press release of his speech about four out of five jobs being created in London since 2010.

This was after the Tories pointed out that his figures were 2 years out of date and highlighted the latest official ONS statistics that in the last year four out of five jobs were actually created outside London. This is the link to the latest data.

Robinson adds:

When I asked the Labour leader about this he replied that he was using the “best data I’ve seen”.

So why didn’t Robinson ask about the provenance of the figures in the first place?

The BBC seems all too ready to report Miliband’s claims without questioning the facts or whether the planned chnages are workable or not.

It is a different game with the Tories when Mark Easton is straight on their case should they make any questionable claims based on ‘dodgy’ statistics:

Are the Tories being honest with their claims on violent crime?

5 Live is having a shake up and a reshuffle  …..women are getting thinner on the ground and not much to keep Lenny Henry happy.

Derbyshire and Bacon are out….Adrian Chiles and Peter Allen doing Derbyshire’s shift on a job share basis….any bets Derbyshire won’t be working from Salford anymore?  Peter Allen slipping into Derbyshire’s high heels means there will be no shortage of comment on this site.

Sheila Fogarty is also off unfortunately, and no mention is made of Campbell.

Derbyshire told us of her departure today and said we could find details in the Press and on the Guardian’s website….not sure why anyone at the BBC would be promoting the Guardian website.

Richard Bacon and Victoria Derbyshire to leave 5 live

Richard Bacon and Victoria Derbyshire, two of the biggest names on 5 live, are to leave the station later this year.

Shelagh Fogarty will also move on in the autumn as part of a daytime shake-up for the BBC talk radio station.

Derbyshire said it would be “a huge wrench to leave”, while Bacon said he would “always be grateful” to 5 live.

The new schedule will see Adrian Chiles and Peter Allen host a new mid-morning programme, 5 live Daily, and a new afternoon show on every day but Friday.

Chiles will host 5 live Daily in the 10:00 to 13:00 slot on Mondays and Tuesdays, with Allen hosting for the rest of the week.

BBC Sport presenter Dan Walker and BBC Northern Ireland’s Sarah Brett will co-host the other new show, Afternoon Edition, from 13:00 to 16:00 on Monday to Thursday.

Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode’s Film Review show will retain the afternoon slot on Fridays after a new Friday Sports Panel between 13:00 and 14:00.

Tony Livesey will take on Allen’s current role as co-presenter of Drive, with Chris Warburton taking over Livesey’s slot on Weekend Breakfast.

Punditry show Fighting Talk will also have two new hosts in Georgie Thompson and stand-up comedian Josh Widdicombe.

“Victoria, Shelagh and Richard have all played such key roles delivering fantastic live radio and I wish them every success with their future projects,” said 5 live controller Jonathan Wall.

“This Autumn feels the right time to refresh parts of our schedule as we follow on from what’s already proving to be a wonderful sporting summer.”

“5 live has been a spectacular place to work, I’ve got nothing but good things to say about it,” said Bacon, whose new projects include a BBC One talent search for “Britain’s best amateur painter”.

“It’s been a hugely important part of my career and life, and I’ll always be grateful, and a listener.”

In her own statement, Fogarty said 5 live had given her “some of the happiest times and richest experiences” of her working life.

“I’m very sad to be leaving but it’s definitely time to do so,” she went on. “I’m spending the summer exploring a number of opportunities, before deciding what’s next.”

I tuned into the BBC Today programme this morning before 7am. I was informed that the savage murder of the three young Israeli boys “may” have been “an unauthorised kidnapping” that “went wrong” and thus is no reflection on the good name of Hamas. This is EXACTLY how the BBC responded to the IRA’s bombing of Canary Wharf if you will recall – they instinctively default to the position that any terrorist act carried out is somehow a rogue one, not planned and most certainly not authorised. Just wait for this story to develop when Israel responds to the Hamas barbarism and John Humphrys can sigh about how this “sets back the peace process”.

“Three dead Israeli teenagers responsible for innocent Palestinian deaths….”

The BBC moves on swiftly. It most certainly annoyed Cameron’s humiliation over Juncker and will give Labour one more chance today to rub as much salt into the wounds as possible. But the BBC is keen to allow Germans such as Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble to suggest that the UK can now trust Merkel to be more sympathetic to our aims. He was on Today this morning being given a very sympathetic hearing so that his siren voice could add to that chorus of those europhiles around Cameron who seek to delude us that things will somehow, magically, be different the next time the UK seeks to stop “the project” The BBC is deeply committed to the EU and plays a very clever and treacherous game.

I am sure you will have seen this from the BBC.

Islamist militant group Isis has said it is establishing a caliphate, or Islamic state, on the territories it controls in Iraq and Syria. It also proclaimed the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as caliph and “leader for Muslims everywhere”. Setting up a caliphate ruled by the strict Islamic law has long been a goal of many jihadists.

This suggests that only Jihadists want to see a global caliphate but surely this is not quite the case. Many Islamic scholars around the world also advance the idea of a caliphate, it’s just that the Jihadists are the cutting edge to achieve this. I wish the BBC was not so dhimmified that it fails to confront the core dynamic behind Islam – Dar al Harb.

Here you go, on-time and all ready to go, a NEW Open Thread. Please detail the bias here….

The BBC has a new series, The Honourable Woman, starting next Thursday.

It is about a Jewish woman on a one woman peace mission to the Middle East.  Wonder who the villains will be.

Here’s the Telegraph’s take:

Gyllenhaal plays Nessa Stein, a British citizen but an Israeli Jew by origin, whose father– a Zionist gunrunner – was murdered in front of her when she was a child. She has inherited his ill-gotten fortune and used it to create a foundation that forges relationships between Israel and Palestine. When we first see Nessa, she announces a contract to lay fibre-optic cables in the West Bank, but the ghosts of the past haunt her and the internecine plot shows that her father’s murderous legacy is a curse.

Another daunting aspect of The Honourable Woman was its subject matter, bound to provoke strong reactions. “[The Israel-Palestine question] is so polarising because everyone has such a tight grip on their feelings. Throughout the eight hours we veer from one way to another and people will say, ‘Oh my God, they are being totally pro-Israeli or totally pro-Palestinian.’ But because the piece has been written with such compassion, I hope people will loosen their grip on either side.”

This may sound naive but Gyllenhaal is aware that a few hours of drama is unlikely to aid the peace process and she was sensitive to the intransigence of the situation throughout filming.

Here’s the Guardian’s:

“It’s about Israel and Palestine, refracted through the prism of a family,” Blick explains, fully aware that this sounds like a tough sell. He reveals that he took the idea to Janice Hadlow, the controller of BBC2, who made two recommendations. “She said, ‘Not too much sand’, by which she meant, ‘Make it make sense to a UK audience,’” Blick says. And the other? “The other was, ‘Don’t kill too many children…’” he says, laughing.

It casts Gyllenhaal as Nessa Stein, a British businesswoman with a bird’s-eye view of the intractable conflict in the Middle East. Her father’s company sold munitions; Stein, though, wants it be a force for good, and has moved the company into telecommunications. It’s an eight-part thriller that finds as much drama in affluent London as it does in the West Bank, and articulates the conflict there in personal as well as political terms. It travels back and forth in time, revealing ghastly truths in a beguilingly casual way.

I am certain that it would be foolish to prejudge the BBC and the arts world when it comes to creating the ‘ghastly truth’ about Israel and the Palestinians, and all without killing ‘too many children’….based upon the nefarious activities of a Zionist father who flooded the Middle East with arms, a daughter who wants to right his ‘wrongs’, and a murdered Palestinian businessman.

Any bets there will be a Palestinian suicide bomber blowing himself up in a restaurant,  ‘driven’ to do the deed by the oppressive and vicious illegal occupation of the West Bank by the nazi-like, Zionist IDF.

Enjoy.