Here you go, a new thread to take us off into the wide blue yonder…over to you!

The BBC’s Alan Yentob obviously didn’t get the memo…no one is supposed to know that the Mirror also hacked phones……the proper line to take is that it was Rupert Murdoch who personally hacked all the phones and more than likely did away with young Milly Dowler.

Alan Yentob takes Sunday Mirror to court over alleged phone hacking

Senior BBC executive Alan Yentob is taking the Sunday Mirror to court over alleged phone hacking.

The veteran BBC creative director, who also presents BBC1’s Imagine arts documentary strand, has lodged his compensation suit in the high court and will have a first hearing before Mr Justice Mann at 2pm on Wednesday, it has been confirmed.

It is understood that his case relates to alleged hacking between 2002 and 2004.

Yentob decided to take the action against Sunday Mirror owner Trinity Mirror after being contacted by detectives working on Operation Golding, an investigation spun off from Operation Weeting, the Metropolitan police investigation into hacking at the News of the World.

Yentob’s action is not the first civil case mounted against the Sunday Mirror.

The BBC said it was a private law suit taken by Yentob and had no further comment to make. “The BBC is not involved in this,” said a spokeswoman.

I have already mentioned that it looked like Emily Maitlis was having a dig at Gove in her report on snap Oftsed inspections but had the rug pulled from under her by a BBC reporter with a more professional approach….and the facts of course.

Guido has highlighted her tweet about Gove’s apparent little problem:

As the allegations made in the interview were total rubbish and have now been withdrawn dubbing the interview a ‘killer interview’ might be seen as a bit of wishful thinking and might make you suspect that some at the BBC are more concerned either with getting Gove and/or with getting a heavyweight political scalp on their CV rather than informing the viewers in a measured and accurate manner of the facts.

Newsnight more showbizz and eye catching stunts than considered journalism?

According to research Britain’s under 30’s are more inclined to lean to the right politically…the BBC in its radio trailer for a programme on this thought this might be a bit of a problem and have set out to investigate.

Generation Right

It’s a commonplace thought that the young start their lives as idealistic left-wingers, only to become more conservative with age. But are today’s twenty-somethings going to debunk that as a myth? Extensive polling shows that in many respects, young people now are to the political right of their parents and grandparents when they were young. Their attitudes often appear characterised by a buccaneering individualism, a suspicion of collectivism and a greater scepticism towards the state.

Declan Harvey of Newsbeat and a team of young journalists examine the implications and ask what it might mean for the welfare state, social institutions and the political landscape in the future.

The programme is just an excuse to target all the favourite bête noires of the left…individualism, the consumer society, the right wing media…oh and thinks that the decline in ‘collectivist norms’ may also be to blame…since when has communism been the ‘norm’ here?….’here’ being outside the BBC bubble.

‘It looks at the possible suggested causes, from the impact of policies which have reduced the level of support young people receive from the state, media coverage of the benefits system, the general decline in collectivist norms since the late 1970s, the rise of the consumer culture, to the role of social media which put the life and social interactions of the individual at the centre of everything.’

The BBC is worried about the rise of what is obviously the next Hitler Youth who will abandon the vulnerable and workless to heartless payday loan companies, who will throw them out of social housing to live on the  mean streets of London now lined with spikes to fend of the verminous homeless and it’ll be a toss up whether granny dies from lack of food or by freezing to death under this callous, uncaring, uncharitable regime.

Yes the BBC is concerned that the youth will vote for the ‘nasty’ Tories….who can doubt we will now see a raft of programming targeted at such ‘youth’ with the aim of re-educating them, with rebalancing their obviously juvenile and immature prejudices and encouraging them to look on life in a more humane, understanding and compassionate, left wing way.

In all seriousness the BBC has completely lost the plot.  This is a highly political programme that insults, denigrates and maligns those with right wing views, treating them as if they are a problem.

What editor thought this might be a good idea in the run up to an election to be pumping out what amounts to left wing propaganda berating these young people for not taking the same line as the sanctimonious and self-righteous worthies of the BBC?

Here you go, a new Open Thread to continue the debate! The floor is yours!

The Independent has this interesting look at Sky as it positions itself to take on the BBC’s news service:

The BBC was impervious to the launch of Sky News. Now they have to take notice

Twenty-five years after the rolling news channel went on air, its editor is in buoyant mood and ready to take some pot shots of his own at rivals in the TV news game.

In 30 years in the business, Ryley has worked for all three of these broadcasters, with the past 19 at Sky. He was a BBC trainee when Rupert Murdoch and his cohorts launched the channel in 1989. “The attitude in the BBC at the time wasn’t even dismissive,” he recalls. “It was that it didn’t really matter and would have very little impact on British television news.”

The BBC News division – which is facing £20m budget cuts and the loss of up to 500 journalists – cannot afford to be complacent about Sky News now. Ryley knows that it’s a good time to strike – with Newsnight in a period of transition after its recent traumatic history

Whilst it’s good to see Sky News prosper and grow we do still need an independent, impartial public broadcaster which will tackle big and difficult subjects without fear or favour such as immigration or the possible Islamification of Europe, never mind challenging all political parties with equal vigour and a relentless search for the truth even when confronted by a supposed consensus.

Of course that is perhaps just a pipedream at the moment, the BBC being irrefutably left wing and still prepared to mobilise against the likes of UKIP when so moved.

For the BBC to choose to reduce its journalistic output, even if decidedly leftleaning, would be a mistake that would have serious impact on its services.

Why choose to reduce what is its core responsibility and yet keep on the Asian network or its digital channels for example which don’t have anywhere near the significance of the news gathering and reporting ability of the BBC as of now?

Whilst the BBC needs to sort out its problems with impartiality, the lack thereof, I agree with the Independent that (the Mason comment aside)…..

We need a BBC with plenty of bite

Ahead of Charter Renewal negotiations, the BBC must not pull in its journalistic teeth. The signs of late have not been great, as troublemakers Jeremy Paxman and Panorama editor Tom Giles have stepped down. The BBC has already lost cage-rattling reporters such as Michael Crick and Paul Mason.

Editorial mistakes could be damaging at this delicate stage of the BBC’s history, but the organisation must avoid becoming risk averse. It must support its investigative teams in the face of powerful subjects – from heads of corporations to leaders of big charities – who might try to undermine their work by going over the heads of journalists in private appeals to BBC executives.

There is real concern in the newsroom of a chilling effect, as emerged after the Hutton crisis in 2004. We need the BBC to be bold.

‘Thoughtful’ has castigated me for not understanding that the extremist hijackers of Birmingham schools are in fact just Muslims merely following their religion….I had thought that such a narrative had been the central theme of the oft repeated posts on this site that examined and disputed the BBC’s , and the ‘Establishment’s’, own interpretation of Islam, that it is the ‘religion of peace’, that those who follow a fundamentalist belief in Islam are distorting or perverting it, and all the time happily ignoring the conflicting values of ‘everyday’, allegedly moderate Islam with those of a democratic, secular, progressive society.

How many times have I quoted Mark Steyn saying that the problem with the ‘extremists’ is not that they are extreme but that they are following the divine directives of their religion?….that’s why they are ‘fundamentalists’…they adhere to the fundamental laws.

This from the Guardian is the classic BBC position on Islam:

Failure to distinguish adequately between Islam and Islamism, and between Islamists and ordinary Muslims, has important consequences. It plays into the hands of Islamists by accepting their own narrative that their politicised understanding of Islam represents the “true” Islam. It can also lead non-Muslims to assume that all Muslims harbour – perhaps secretly – the totalitarian aspirations of Islamism.

Steyn, and ‘Thoughtful’,  are of course correct about ‘extremists’ and the above attitude is wrong….Islam is political and always has been…’Islamism’ wasn’t invented by Tariq Ramadan’s grandpa in the ’30’s, a response to Western colonialism, as we are so often told,  it was invented by Mohammed 1400 years ago.

The surprising fact is the BBC has now started to raise the question of that conflict of values, the ‘clash of cultures’ that has long been denied.

Here they say that the Trojan Horse allegations have altered the narrative that we can’t question Islamic values…‘a defining moment in multi-cultural Britain‘ (at least for now)….

Seven years ago, the future Education Secretary Michael Gove wrote that “there is something rather un-British about seeking to define Britishness“.

He argued that Britishness was something best demonstrated through action rather than described in abstract terms.

And that’s why the state of a small number of predominantly Muslim schools in Birmingham, and how the government and other bodies propose to change them, may turn out to be one of the defining moments in modern multicultural Britain.

An example of that change in direction is one taken by the BBC itself perhaps.  On the Today programme last Saturday (08:33) the über Liberal Justin Webb rather astounded me by raising the question of cultural values (08:36:50) and asks where do you draw the line when deciding when ‘cultural conservatism’ is to be considered ‘extreme’…in other words when does ‘meeting the needs of Muslims’ start becoming toleration of extreme religious views…extreme in relation to British values, culture and law.

Labour’s Tristram Hunt stated clearly that Islamic education was not acceptable in British schools.  Webb said it was a minefield…one the BBC has long avoided I might add.

The problem with Islam is that there is no separation of church and state or indeed of any sphere of personal life…there is no line to draw….a Muslim therefore always looks to try and reshape the world to fit in with his beliefs…whether it is in schools, food or the work place or indeed foreign policy…..and hence will always be in some level of conflict with the non-believer.

Hopefully the attitude to discussing Islam is changing in the UK and a discussion about ‘Islam’ and whether it is compatible or not with Western secular, democratic values can begin without the attempts to avoid the difficult questions and the resultant answers and the usual denouncements of anyone who criticises Islam as racist and islamophobic.

The discussion is important and urgent…..can a social democratic Europe survive a mass population transformation as Muslims migrate here in increasing numbers and assume political power?

Steyn says if you want immigrants to integrate you have to have something to assimilate to…British culture has to be sufficiently confident to impose itself, to believe in itself…but how do you do that as a population has a rising number of Muslims who may not want to conform to the norm?

“A big chunk of Western civilization, consciously or otherwise, has given the impression that it’s dying to surrender to somebody, anybody. Reasonably enough, Islam figures: Hey, why not us?”

Norman Tebbit agrees with the BBC assertion that the Trojan Horse affair maybe ‘one of the defining moments in modern multicultural Britain’…saying the ‘elephant of multiculturalism is out of its corner.’

Tebbit makes some powerful and uncomfortable, for some, comments about immigration and the likelihood of rival societies, ‘mini-Pakistans’,  being established in the UK:

The unmannerly squabble between Theresa May and Micheal Gove is bad enough in itself, but it has now brought the elephant of multiculturalism  out of the corner  and on to centre stage. 

No one should have been surprised at what was going on in schools in Birmingham. It is precisely what I was talking about over 20 years ago and Enoch Powell was warning against long before that. We have imported far too many immigrants who have come here not to live in our society, but to replicate here the society of their homelands.

This is not a tirade against migration from the EU, which we are largely unable to control, but from the rest of the world, which we could have controlled if we had had the will to do so. However, even if suddenly the inward flow of those unwilling to adapt their society to ours were to be entirely cut off, it might  already be too late to prevent the establishment of enclaves in which our values are treated with contempt, while foreign values and even laws are promoted.

It is certainly true that nature abhors a vacuum and with the decline of Christianity leaving the structure of our values system with no foundation there is now a great emptiness in our society. The doctrine of multiculturalism is a nonsense. A society is defined by its culture, and rival cultures are bound to create rival societies within the same territory. That is what has now been forced into public view in Birmingham.

Of course a tolerant dominant culture has no problem in tolerating minority groups. Neither Judaism nor Buddhism are a threat to Christianity in Britain, but if our society loses confidence in its value system, it will not long remain dominant.

For all the shouting and finger-pointing at Westminster, particularly that from the Labour Party – which bears responsibility for destabilising British society by its policy of unlimited, unrestricted, uncounted immigration fanned by unlimited welfare spending – I do not see any evidence yet that the scale of the problem is recognised, let alone that there is a realistic plan to deal with it

And what would be my advice?  Well I feel like the Irishman asked by a stranger the best way to Dublin: “I wouldn’t start from here if I were you.”

The BBC has started its own Islamophobic witch hunt….and hints that the Trojan Horse letter might not be fake after all:

Bradford school governors ‘promoted Islamic agenda’

After having spent such a long time firstly ignoring the Trojan Horse allegations, then downplaying them, the BBC has jumped aboard the bandwagon with allacrity and is banging out a new tune with the vigour of the converted, hunting out Islamic cultural colonisation in Bradford despite that ‘Ofsted and Bradford Metropolitan District Council say no schools in Bradford are currently being investigated in relation to Trojan Horse.’

‘Teachers in Bradford have reported instances of governors promoting a more Islamic ethos, the BBC has learned’

I like this excuse from the governors:

The chairman of the governors rejected claims of an Islamic agenda, saying his aim was to meet community needs.

‘Meeting community needs’?…..that could excuse all sorts of sins couldn’t it…Honour killings?  Just meeting ‘community needs’…and so on.

The BBC has seen documents which may suggest an attempt to bring an Islamic agenda into the classroom at Carlton Bolling, a state secondary school with a largely Muslim governing body.

The chairman of the governors at Carlton Bolling College, Faisal Khan – an independent local councillor formerly of the Respect party – said his aim was to improve academic standards and meet the needs of the communities the school served.

“At the end of the day we have a school that has 90-95% Muslim children, we meet their needs – whether it is halal food, whether it is prayer within school [or] wearing the hijab.

“We don’t want children – irrespective of their background – to compromise on their faith.”

He was meeting “the sensitivities of parents”.

Note Faisal Khan…once of the Respect Party as was Salma Yaqoob who was from the very area of Birmingham that the Trojan Horse allegations first arose..and which she refuted vigorously on the Today programme…small world eh?

The BBC here makes claims of school governors driving out heads who oppose their Islamising agenda…just like the Trojan Horse allegations then:

Confidential documents seen by the BBC reveal head teacher Chris Robinson resigned from her position in 2012 because she felt her reputation, integrity and leadership were being questioned by governors.

Nick Weller, a head teacher in Bradford and chief executive of the Bradford Partnership, believes Ms Robinson was unfairly driven out by the governing body.

“I think an excellent, outstanding head teacher has been driven out by a governing body because she would not give in to their agenda of making it reflect the culture and traditions of the Muslim students, more than it did, or more than is right and proper for a state-funded school.

“There’s a co-ordinated attempt by a small group of unrepresentative people, whose views are not shared by most of the Muslim parents that I talk to, to gain greater control of governing bodies in Bradford and advance their agenda.”

The BBC goes on:

Mr Khan was also a governor at another Bradford school, Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College, where the governing body was sacked en masse in April and replaced with an interim executive board.

It followed an Ofsted inspection that concluded relationships between governors, school staff and the local authority had deteriorated markedly; actions by the governing body were increasingly undermining senior leaders; and governors were becoming too involved in operational matters.

This is interesting…the BBC has long painted the Trojan Horse letter as a fake but here it suggests that it might have some substance:

The so-called Trojan Horse document names Bradford as a city in which a Muslim takeover of schools could be co-ordinated.

“This is a long-term plan and one which we are sure will lead to great success in taking over a number of schools and ensuring they are run on strict Islamic principles,” the document, which has not been authenticated, states.

Here the BBC reports of the response of local politicians:

The local MP in Bradford, David Ward, said: “We cannot allow the situation that has developed in Birmingham, where it has spread to many more schools than are currently affected in Bradford.

“It really needs to be dealt with before it gets out of hand.”

Bradford Metropolitan District Council said it was ready to act quickly in any case where there was concern about relationships between head teachers and governors.

So here the BBC are proactively seeking out the story and taking the allegations seriously….all welcome but a bit of a turn around from its initial response to the Birmingham allegations and the repeated assertion that the letter was fake….but at odds with the likes of Mark Easton and Chris Cook’s ongoing analysis.

One of the major problems with the BBC’s reporting of the ‘Trojan Horse’ story has been the failure to provide historical context, a lack of reference material that allows you to judge current events and put them in perspective, the lack of crucial information about people, their actions and beliefs, and finally a lack of a coherent analysis that ties all that together to bring the audience a genuine and informative picture of events….one look at Panorama’s film about Islamic extremism in schools in 2010 would have confirmed a lot about the Trojan Horse allegations and answered questions about whether or not Gove knew about, and was tackling, extremism in schools….which you might suspect is why the BBC seemed to have ‘forgotten’ that past film of theirs and not used it to judge events now.

Today though at least one BBC journalist showed what can be done, how it should be done, giving a clear, unprejudiced analysis of events leading up to a current political storm in a teacup.

The head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw, claimed Michael Gove had previously rejected the idea of snap inspections of schools.

The BBC were revving up to make this a big story, it leading the news bulletins…but John Mannell on World at One (10 mins 50 sec) scotched that attempt by digging back through the archives and coming up with material and an analysis that suggests Gove is, once again, innocent of the charges laid against him.

All good stuff, clearly and simply presented.

However Emily Maitliss undoes the good work and manages to mangle the story by doing the usual BBC thing of adding in her own opinions and suggestive words and phrases that have little bearing on the truth and seems to relish sprinkling a little vitriol and doubt over things.

Personally I’d prefer the unadorned truth as provided by John Mannell.

Nicky Campbell’s phone-in today discussed ‘British values’:

The education secretary Michael Gove says he wants to put them at the heart of what every school in England delivers — but what are they, and how do we make sure our kids are learning them?

Now Nicky tries hard to be impartial but as always his inner Liberal always breaks loose and rampages around, quietly in a nice middle class way trying to be lovely and tolerant to one and all without condemning anyone for anything.

Talking about the hijacking of secular schools by hardline Muslims who wish to impose Islamic values upon those schools he tells us, as he did yesterday, that this is not a Muslim/non-Muslim issue.

But it is precisely that.  British/western/democratic/secular values versus Islamic ones.

He then claims that no one knows what British values are…in fact just listened to 5Live Drive and they peddle the same line.

Of course that’s nonsense….but a simple way to deal with that vascillitude is to say what is unacceptable……here is the extremism defintion of unacceptable views: ‘The government defines extremism as “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”.’

You might ask if that isn’t just a definition of Islam and therefore is Islam itself ‘extreme’ in the context of a western, secular, progressive democracy?  That question might be backed up with asking if it is unacceptable to promote the view that women are second class citizens, that gays should be killed, that people who want to leave a religion can be killed, that unbelievers are unclean and immoral and can also be killed.

He then tells us that the real problem is intolerance of intolerance.

So…it is people being intolerant of clerical fascism that are the problem in Nicky’s view and not those who would impose a medieval religious regime upon us?

I think the problem is too much tolerance of intolerance….Nicky Campbell and the BBC being at the forefront of that way of relativising everything and never condemning anything….except the Tories and UKIP of course.