Seen this from the BBC?
“British winters are likely to become milder and wetter like the last one but cold spells still need to be planned for, says the UK Met Office. Summers are likely to be hotter and drier, but washouts are still on the cards, it adds.”
So, plan for all sorts. Met Office covering all the odds whilst still flogging AGW. Just wait until the IPCC hits!!!
I have had a tsunami of outraged emails from Biased BBC readers concerning the bizarre and OTT sanitisation of former Co-Op boss Paul Flowers by the BBC today. It seems the Coalition is to blame for the implosion of the Bank and as for Mr Flowers…erm…”colourful”private life, well, I blame Thatcher. Thoughts? Just WHY is the BBC leading all UK news with the hideous self-pity bleating of Flowers??
Miliband’s proposed energy price freeze was apparently a game changing political moment, one that dramatically caught the headlines….so why does the BBC not report one of his backers claiming that Miliband will not honour his promise?
We’ve long been off the opinion that Miliband is as much a windbag as Kinnock ever was…his ‘policies’ being mere populist piffle designed to catch the headlines….and they were very successful at that….the BBC fell head over heels in love with him…Pienaar constantly reminding us that Miliband was ‘setting the agenda’.
We always thought that was so much hot air.
Now it seems that even his own party donors think that as well:
Ed Miliband is unlikely to follow through on his threats to break up the major high street banks and cap energy bills, one of the party’s biggest private donors has said.
John Mills, the entrepreneur behind the JML household products range, said the Labour leader is “less sympathetic” towards business than most voters would like but his policies are merely “rhetoric.”
However, the ever loyal BBC doesn’t even mention this damning claim in their report, they are far more sympathetic and busy making excuses for him:
One of Labour’s biggest individual donors has said there is very little difference between the party and the Conservatives on economic policy.
John Mills, who gave Labour more than £1.5m in shares last year, said the Labour leader Ed Miliband was very “boxed in” over his policy positions.
If Labour stuck with its general economic strategy, the choices between the parties would be “very narrow”.
So despite 4 years of telling us how different things would be under Labour the BBC is reporting that well, actually, there’s not much to set them apart….you know when you come to vote don’t think that the Tories were the ones who rescued the economy…Labour’s policies will be just the same….you can vote Labour quite safely….the economy is safe in their hands.
So much for conviction politics and ‘vive la difference!‘ as Miliband supposedly created a new political landscape.
However Miliband insists:
‘There were clear differences between his party’s economic policies and the Tories.
“I took this job on three and half years ago and always knew this was going to be a close election.
“And I relish the fight over the future of country over the next thirteen months and fundamentally I think that is a fight about what you stand up for.’
Trouble is not even his own backers back trust him, and don’t ask his brother….shame the BBC doesn’t give you the choice as to whether to do so yourself….they just don’t report the inconvenient truth it seems.
Peter Allen ambushed me…he was lurking as presenter on Derbyshire’s show (1 hr 50)….telling us that inflation is going down…but only ‘on the government’s measure of inflation’.
And we all know you can’t trust that don’t we children?
BUT….He went on to say that food prices are going to rise by 3.8%…and your wages just won’t keep up with that….it’s a very big story he tells us….never mind the latest Supermarket price war…. Allen’s new fact coming from one ‘specialist agency’ (Prestige Purchasing), not the ONS…..so getting his alarmist speculation in before it happens…never mind the actual news from today…and most say food inflation is falling….
“Consumer price inflation is expected to have been brought down by ongoing marked discounting by retailers, reduced food price inflation and lower petrol prices.” and .…..’food prices rose at their slowest pace for seven years as supermarkets continued to lure in customers with rival deals.’
Prestige Purchasing is a commercial buying company..therefore its motives for highlighting rising prices might be suspect…..claims of too high food prices and you get government to act on behalf of the food industry?
And hang on that very big story…is old history….they said the same thing in December last year:
David Read, Prestige chief executive, told the Daily Telegraph that food prices could rise by as much as 6 per cent next year, but at the very least were likely to jump by another 3.8 per cent.
And yet food prices have dropped. So why did Allen concentrate on this aspect when the ‘good news’ is real….just another notch on Prestige Purchasing’s PR belt?
Prestige Purchasing thought that getting their claims into the media was a great success in 2013….just what was the success though?…….
Our recent 2013 food and drinks inflation event was a great success! We have had coverage in the Telegraph (http://bit.ly/1bTnkrp), the Daily Mail (http://dailym.ai/18R7RHU), the Morning Advertiser (http://bit.ly/1d7R28B) and Big Hospitality (http://bit.ly/1b1J2mP) to name but a few. Many thanks to everyone who attended, we could not have done it without you.
And the BBC’s own web site report doesn’t think it’s such a big story and failed to mention it…though it does say: Public sector workers saw a rise of just 0.9% in the same period, but private sector pay growth was 1.7%, meaning it has already caught up with the increase in prices.
So I guess some workers are keeping up with inflation.
or as the Telegraph puts it:
10.05 Good news if you work in the private sector – the “cost of living crisis” is potentially over.
The ‘cost of living crisis over’? What line will Labour have to dream up next?….still as long as they have people like Peter Allen and Micky Clark raining on the ‘Economic Recovery Parade’ there’s always an angle for Labour to exploit.
Peter Allen and Micky Clark…the bookends of doom and gloom, one at the start of the day and one at the end (usually).
The Office for National Statistics says:
No mention of food inflation as a major factor….in fact food fell 0.02%…so a very big story indeed:
As mentioned before climate change sceptics are pretty unwelcome at the BBC:
Btu now is the time to be talking if ever there was one:
The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is due out next week. If the leaked draft is reflected in the published report, it will constitute the formal moving on of the debate from the past, futile focus upon “mitigation” to a new debate about resilience and adaptation.
So the mitigation deal has become this: Accept enormous inconvenience, placing authoritarian control into the hands of global agencies, at huge costs that in some cases exceed 17 times the benefits even on the Government’s own evaluation criteria, with a global cost of 2 per cent of GDP at the low end and the risk that the cost will be vastly greater, and do all of this for an entire century, and then maybe – just maybe – we might save between one and ten months of global GDP growth.
Can anyone seriously claim, with a straight face, that that should be regarded as an attractive deal or that the public is suffering from a psychological disorder if it resists mitigation policies?
The BBC has consistently painted the Sceptics as scientifically illiterate, ignorant bloggers, in the pay of Big Oil, or merely as loons….Roger Harrabin, Richard Black and now Matt McGrath have all contributed to that smear campaign.
In this recent article McGrath has a subtle attack on Sceptics whilst pretending to be seeking an accommodation with them….
I once had a dream (or was it a dram?) in which the things we thought we knew for certain about the world were suddenly turned upside down.
In this strange universe, the cold war seemed to suddenly return, Ireland began to perform consistently at rugby, and arch-climate sceptics began to believe in dangerous levels of global warming.
So one thing we know for certain is that the world is threatened by dangerous levels of global warming in McGarth’s opinion.
He goes on, the main thrust of his piece, to misrepresent the views of the Global Warming Policy Foundation and its motivations……
Imagine my surprise then, on reading this new report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).
Here was one of the world’s foremost bastions of contrariness when it comes to man-made climate change, admitting that temperatures were actually rising in response to human emissions of greenhouse gases.
Huh? What about all that stuff we’ve heard in the past from those who refused to accept the science? That the whole thing was a warmist conspiracy, driven by out-of-work ex-communists?
Strangely, the GWPF are not highlighting this acknowledgement that man-made emissions are driving rapid changes in our climate, compared to the historical experience.
Note that link he provides…to a fringe blog:
McGarth’s intention is purely to try and associate the GWPF with what McGrath would like you to think of as ‘right wing nuts’ and therefore lose any credibility…..
The key to the success of the GWPF is the trust and credibility that we have earned in the eyes of a growing number of policy makers, journalists and the interested public. In our relationship with our members, with MPs, the media and our wider readership, it is the most important quality that we have.
Then there’s this little dig:
So how has mainstream science reacted to a research paper that has not been peer reviewed, written by people who are not employed at mainstream scientific institutions, casting doubt on a central tenet of their work?
They can’t possibly be right because they’re not ‘mainstream’ can they?
McGrath finishes off with…..
It may not be a “peace in our time” moment but perhaps it might signal that the time is right for a new, more inclusive debate about climate change.
Dr Ed Hawkins, from the University of Reading, took encouragement from the fact that both the GWPF and the IPCC accepted that significant amounts of further warming were likely this century.
“If we broadly agree on this, the debate can crucially move on to what action is needed to deal with a warming planet,” he said.
Some light perhaps, amid all the heat.
So he suggests….as long as you think like us we can have a debate….it’s not a debate then is it?
Apart from that McGarth is a bit of a misleading little fellow.
The GWPF isn’t really about the science…it is about the policies that should be used to deal with whatever the science says.
This of course is why the BBC don’t like the GWPF:
Above all we seek to inform the media, politicians and the public, in a newsworthy way, on the subject in general and on the misinformation to which they are all too frequently being subjected at the present time.
You may have noted there has been a pretty vocal campaign against Nigel Lawson being ‘allowed’ to speak on the BBC and elsewhere….no coincidence then that McGrath joins in?
Note his description of the GWPF as...the world’s foremost bastions of contrariness....if you disagree with the BBC you are not basing that on science, reason or analysis…it’s ‘contrariness’.
Secondly McGarth misleads as to the content of the report:
A SENSITIVE MATTER HOW THE IPCC BURIED EVIDENCE SHOWING GOOD NEWS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING
Curious McGrath failed to mention the title, and therefore the whole thrust of the report as ‘sceptical’.
McGarth tries to claim that they now support his own views on climate change when in fact the report merely ‘reports’ what the IPCC say and doesn’t claim it is true or false…..purely stating that using IPCC figures a different scenario could be calculated….if you were to believe the IPCC’s figures such and such could happen…that is not endorsement of the man-made global warming theory…which is all it is as yet.
The third misrepresentation is that global warming, if it is happening is ‘man-made’. Global warming may be happening, though on pause now, but there is no proof that it is man made.
Therefore, back to the Telegraph’s reasoning, you need to talk more about adaption than mitigation as there may in fact be nothing to mitigate, or, your mitigation efforts are useless anyway even if man is the cause of global warming….so why waste massive amounts of money on them?
Still nice to see the BBC being as fair and reasonable, and scientific, as usual.
Almost as if Richard Black never left.
Daniel Hannan thinks a subscription form of funding will be the end of the BBC:
Budgets come and go, but something more far-reaching will take place in the House of Commons today; something that might change our political discourse significantly, benignly and permanently.
The Government has indicated that it will back a Bill, brought in by the backbench MP, Andrew Bridgen, to decriminalise non-payment of the Television Licence Fee. Instead of being dragged through the courts.
Once the BBC becomes a private institution, [BBC bias] won’t matter any more. No one will think its values are supposed to be neutral. It will simply be one more news outlet, like the Guardian or the Huffington Post, entitled to its point of view. For what it’s worth, the fact of no longer being state-funded will probably make the Beeb a little bit less Leftist, but that’s neither here nor there. What counts here is that Britain will no longer have what in any other country would be called a state broadcaster.
I think he is wrong…because nothing will substantially change if subscription is brought in…. the subscription can be for the whole package and not pay-on-demand per programme which means the BBC as a whole is maintained even with those bits few really watch or listen to (which is after all part of its raison d’etre)…you want the BBC then pay an annual fee or pay monthly as now…the only difference to now would be…if you don’t want it you don’t have to pay for it.
As for lessening its left wing bias….that worked for the Guardian, and China didn’t it? Desperate to make money but still holding onto the ideology.
He said No one will think its values are supposed to be neutral.…therefore, he suggests, it will make less effort, not more, to control the bias…possibly true….if it were an entirely private service…but of course it won’t be…it will still be required to meet the demands of the Charter….it ignores them now but at least pays lip service to implementing them which keeps it from straying too far into obvious political bias.
Hannan titles his piece ‘The BBC will, in effect, be privatised – with vast consequences’ but that is not what is happening…the major consequence might be solely confined to the amount of funding, I see little reason why anything else should change, unless other laws are also changed as regards to bias….which won’t happen.
As for programming..the BBC already competes hard for the ratings with the commercial stations and pumps out populist programming to keep us watching…I doubt its output will change dramatically in terms of content.
One other thing of note is the usual description of anyone doing ‘bad things’ as ‘conservative’ by the BBC:
The BBC, as Andrew Marr put it, is not so much partisan as culturally biased. There was a neat demonstration on Twitter the other day. How long, I asked playfully, before the Corporation started calling Vladimir Putin, a former KGB man who rails against Ukrainian nationalism, “Right-wing”? A BBC radio producer Tweeted back crossly that it was a perfectly fair way to describe him since he was conservative. Hmm: what he wants to conserve is the old order of the USSR, but never mind: in Beebspeak, “Right-wing” simply means “baddie”.
Stalin was presumably also a ‘conservative’, as was Lenin, Hitler, Chairman Mao and Osama Bin Laden….and maybe even Tony Benn…or Ralph Miliband.
Tony Benn was widely lauded for his staunch convictions……remaining a trenchant champion of hardline, radical leftwing ideology….Miliband claiming he was an “iconic figure of our age…. a great parliamentarian and a conviction politician.“
“Tony Benn spoke his mind and spoke up for his values. Whether you agreed with him or disagreed with him, everyone knew where he stood and what he stood for.
“For someone of such strong views, often at odds with his party, he won respect from across the political spectrum.
“This was because of his unshakeable beliefs and his abiding determination that power and the powerful should be held to account.”
Funny how ‘conviction’ Muslim fundamentalists who stick to their unshakeable beliefs and want to implement Sharia law and attack the ‘West’, ‘holding power to account’, because of its actions in Muslim countries, are vilified as criminals or madmen perverting their religion.
Are they not ‘iconic figures’ for their absolute faith in their beliefs and actions as Benn was?
Another paradox is that the BBC doesn’t blink when so-called moderate Muslims come out with the exact same line as Jihadists and are essentially supporting ‘Jihad’ against Western democracy….though of course denying they are in favour of violence as the means to the end they want to achieve.
A few weeks ago on the Today programme Mo Ansar gave us his opinion as to why Muslims were becoming ‘radicalised’…or becoming ‘conviction’ Muslims you might say.
It was the West’s Foreign Policy….it apparently forged a generation of disenfranchised, angry young British Muslims…..he told us ‘we feel the pain….Muslims are marginalised, disenfranchised and are suffering’ because of this.
Oh yes…he went on…Muslims are undersiege, restless, frustrated…of course they will be attracted to any course of action that they think will deal with that.
So Mo Ansar justifies or excuses, ‘understands’, the used of terrorism for anyone who opposes Western foreign policy..in Muslim countries?
He told us that he is in regular contact with Jihadis.
The question of course, he said, was how to reintroduce all those angry, disenfranchised, restless, frustrated, marginalised, besieged young British Muslims back into decent society.
The answer…change your foreign policy.
‘Is it reliance on terror that truly distinguishes a movement from its political opponents?’
Hmmm…so the problem as Mo Ansar sees it, is the same problem as the Jihadis see it, and the answer is the same…..and whilst he doesn’t support their violent actions he ‘understands’, he ‘feels their pain’.
Naturally the BBC didn’t object to this line of thinking and didn’t raise any objection to the ‘foreign policy is at the heart of the problem’ justification.
They didn’t ask why it is that it is only Muslims who are becoming terrorists on this issue…why not the ‘Million’ who went on the anti-War marches? What is the defining factor that makes someone a Jihadi?
Could it be the Islamic imperative that all Muslims are obliged to fight on behalf of their fellow Muslims if they are ‘attacked’?
In other words it is Islamic law and belief that drives these Jihadists…..but the BBC et all tell us that Islam is a religion of peace and there is no connection between the beliefs that drive the Jihadis and Islam……one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter…
By Professor Adam Roberts
The oft-repeated statement ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ reflects genuine doubts about what constitutes ‘terrorism’. Sir Adam Roberts surveys the ever-changing definition of terrorist activity, including mass murder of civilians exemplified by the events of September 11.
The Muslims ‘terrorism’ then is surely just another expression of the old anti-colonialist terrorism that aimed to end the grip of European empires on foreign lands….though this time by people who also aim to impose their own ’empire’…a religious one…the Caliphate….and therefore is welcomed by the ‘Left’….’Blowback’.
The BBC doesn’t like to use the phrase ‘terrorist’, especially in connection to Palestinians…..perhaps because they believe something along the lines of this:
‘…the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza…was an exercise of violence against which counter-violence was legitimate.’
However the UN General Assembly drafted a definition of Terrorism as:
‘Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstances unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other nature that may be used to justify them.’
Criminal acts….unjustifiable…whatever political or ideological considerations are used to justify the use of terror.
So the BBC should be using the term ‘Terrorism’ in relation to Palestinian terrorism….or maybe not…..it’s, apparently, a ‘value judgement’.….’one man’s terrorist….’
The value judgements frequently implicit in the use of the words “terrorist” or “terrorist group” can create inconsistency in their use or, to audiences, raise doubts about our impartiality. For example, the bombing of a bus in London was carried out by “terrorists”, but the bombing of a bus in Israel was perpetrated by a “suicide bomber”. Or again, “terrorists” in London bombed a tube train, but “insurgents” in Iraq have “assassinated” the Egyptian ambassador. The use of the words can imply judgement where there is no clear consensus about the legitimacy of militant political groups.
As David Spaull, then-Editor of World Service News wrote in 1988:
“Accepting that there are some actions which most people would recognise as a terrorist act- the hand grenade thrown into a crèche, the airport queue machine-gunned – we should still avoid the word. In the first place, our audience is as perceptive as we are, and can make up their own minds without being provided with labels. In the second place, there are actions which are not quite so clearly terrorism and we should not be forced into the position of having to make value judgements on each event”.
“Bomb attack” conveys more information more quickly than “terrorist attack”, similarly “suicide bomber”, “bomber”, “assassin”, “gun man” help fill in the picture.
We also need to ask ourselves whether by using “terrorist” we are taking a political position, or certainly one that may be seen as such.
That blurring of the lines, that hiding behind a claim that calling a hand grenade thrown into a creche ‘terrorism’ is purely a value judgement…perhaps such actions were justifiable by the wider context suggests the BBC……that blurring goes on…as stated above by the likes of Mo Ansar, and passed without challenge by the BBC.
Consider these claims from Harry’s place:
Guest Post, June 5th 2013, 11:20 am
This is a guest post by Amjad Khan
The scrutinous nature of the post-911 political discourse about Islam and Muslims has compelled many, otherwise reactionary and outright bigoted, figures to recast themselves as moderates. Such recasting has been necessary in order to stay in the limelight and remain relevant, but, as is always the case, the mask often slips.
A classic and almost textbook example is the pseudo moderate, and favourite of BBC’s Big Questions, Mo Ansar.
…..it seems Mo’s ‘extensive experience in countering extremism‘ involves promoting and defending the work and goals of what every right-minded person regards as an extremist organisation…..Mo’s twitter feed of full of links to and endorsements of leading extremist groups and individuals. And therein lies the real tragedy. British Muslims have been let down again and again by self-styled leaders who abuse their position to espouse a regressive and reactionary agenda. In the case of Mo, actively promoting the work and ideas of an organisation that gave birth to Anjem Choudary, Omar Bakri and a whole host of other extremists that have inspired many terror attacks in the UK.
British Muslims have been let down by the likes of Mo Ansar?….and those who befriend him…such as Nicky Campbell.
Campbell is on very friendly terms with Mo Ansar who is a regular on his show, and many other BBC shows….here is another, less ‘judgmental’ opinion of Ansar (thanks again to Guest Who)….
Anarchopedia has a long run down on Ansar….Talk:Mohammed Ansar
Campbell urges Ansar to be careful how he talks about Maajid Nawaz and the Mo cartoons.
Broadcaster Nicky Campbell responded:
Ansar replied:
Nicky Campbell warned:
@NickyAACampbell: “@MoAnsar careful pal“
However on his programme he did challenge Ansar and his hypocrisy:
Nicky Campbell: and the Muslim commentator Mo Ansar. Hello Mo.
Nicky Campbell: Mohammed, you’ve been tweeting about this fairly constantly. Given some of the death that have come Maajid Nawaz’s way: “I would be happy to cut off your neck so your kuffr unbeliever friends won’t be amused by your humour”. Somebody else says “you’ll get a welcome in Pakistan”. The history of violence against people who have depicted your prophet, aren’t you grossly irresponsible, Mohammed Ansar?
Mo Ansar: No, I don’t think so.
Nicky Campbell: Well the BBC has a clear record on this, as do British broadcasters, by showing Father Ted, Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Dave Allen ..
Nicky Campbell: Well what’s the problem then with lampooning the prophet, so-called?
David Aaronovitch: Well, I’d like to invite Mo Ansar to do this following thing……Describe to those listeners who haven’t seen the cartoon…… describe that cartoon to the listeners now, Mo.
Mo Ansar: This isn’t about cartoons, David.
Nicky Campbell: Now hang on……..What’s the problem with lampooning Muhammad and showing an image. Explain. Explain to listeners why you have a problem with that.
Mo Ansar: Who said I had a problem with the cartoons?
David Aaronovitch: [laughs as though crying]
Despite this unusual outbreak of rigorous and challenging journalism with Ansar he is usually on very good terms with his old mate:
Nicky Campbell will ‘vouch for me’ says Ansar. Says it all really.
As does this:
‘Bill’ yesterday decided we shouldn’t tackle the BBC’s bias towards Islam on this site.
The above shows precisely why that is necessary.
Ansar tells us that ‘The tide of Islam is irreversible in the West’….’Check the birthrates sometime’.
Both comments are true.
However the BBC went to some lengths, as noted on this site before, to underplay the significance of growing Muslim population in the West….and its effects.
What is the reality and what will be the consequences of a massive growth is Muslim populations in Europe? The BBC doesn’t discuss those consequences….for fear of what people will think….in other words the BBC is doing its best to hide consequences, the bad ones, of the ‘irreversible tide of Islam coming to the West’.
But it’s not just this site indulging in apparently ‘angry outbursts based on our personal prejudices’ rather than investigating ‘true’ BBC bias:
“People in our communities are shocked,” he said. “We are licence-fee payers and we want to know why this has happened. The bias towards Islam at the expense of Hindus and particularly Sikhs is overwhelming and appears to be a part of BBC policy.”
Peter Sissons, one the UK’s most senior and respected broadcasters, has condemned the institutionalised anti-Christian bias of the BBC …..he writes that in the BBC’s “pervading culture” of anti-Christianity, “Islam must not be offended at any price, although Christians are fair game because they do nothing about it if they are offended.”
The British Broadcasting Corporation has admitted to a marked bias against Christianity and a strong inclination to pro-Muslim reporting among the network’s executives and key anchors, in a leaked account of an “impartiality summit.”
The BBC’s bias towards Islam is a big problem when it hides the issues that underlie many people’s concerns, those concerns dismissed tritely as mere prejudice or ‘Islamophobia’, and especially when the BBC hides the connection between violence, terrorism even, and Islamic beliefs and religious imperatives…..never mind the social, political and cultural consequences.
The Public’s understanding of the issues and the consequences that follow as a the result of those issues is undermined, or ignored, by a BBC that refuses to discuss openly the problems that Islam creates….rather than merely telling us Islam is wonderful, peaceful and tolerant ideology…when it clearly isn’t.
You can’t just report the good and ignore the bad in a misplaced attempt to manage community relations. The BBC gives constant support for the notion that foreign policy drives the anger in Muslim communities and hence recruitment of Jihadis…and yet refuses to acknowledge why it is Muslims who become radicalised when persuaded of that reasoning.
To keep plugging that narrative without questioning it is what radicalises Muslims…therefore the BBC is responsible for the resultant ‘radicalisation’ and terrorism that follows….never mind the ‘Talibanisation’ of parts of the UK.
Hence its pro- Muslim bias should be challenged.
Just been listening to Today (around 07:35) where they’ve had on a couple of cheerleaders for the TV Tax…Former chairman of the BBC Lord Grade and shadow culture secretary Harriet Harman …..Justin Webb suggesting that if the BBC had called it a ‘Tax’ it would have been OK to throw people into jail..they’d have understood and accepted that….tipping their caps and exclaiming ‘Gord bless ya gov’nor, I done wrong!’ as they were carted off to the slammer.
Harman tells us she, and Labour, are unswerving supporters of the BBC, I’ll bet they are, and that not just those who have a telly must pay the tax but everyone, regardless of whether they watch the BBC or not, will have to cough up.
Grade didn’t like the technology/subscription route and suggested adding the Tax to your council tax….so again…you pay regardless of whether you have a TV.
They both of course liked the idea of not implementing any changes to the criminal status for non-payment of the tax….they liked the ‘let’s just see how it effects the BBC before change anything’ approach...in other words you know nothing will change…especially if the change in the law is merely a negotiating device for government in the charter review process.
Never mind the public and how it effects them. Labour has said it will support the change in the law, though as above only a political move…the same old Labour trick of trying to look populist whilst imposing the dead hand of government..in this case still really supporting the old system of TV tax and criminal sanction.
Independent of political influence? How can the BBC claim that when they have made themselves so reliant on their friends in the Labour Party to keep funding their gravy train in the way they prefer?
Having said that, Cameron of course is terrified of the BBC, having prostrated himself in front of them and disemboweling his Party with the aim of getting the support of the unelected masters of propaganda at the BBC….and naturally folding under immense BBC pressure not to actually implement the new law…..
The BBC has said a “proper review” of future options must be carried out.
Ask and it shall be done, and indeed was done thus.
The BBC’s strategy director James Purnell said: “We are happy to work with government to see if it can be improved or whether there is an alternative that could be better.”
He said the present system “works pretty well” and warned the proposed change would be a “huge risk” which would increase instances of non-payment.
Earlier this month, Mr Purnell warned BBC channels could close if non-payment of the licence fee were decriminalised.
Sounds like they are ‘happy’. Still, Labour man Purnell knows he has the unswerving support of his ex-colleagues when the real vote comes.
Via Bishop Hill and the Mail:
A BBC executive in charge of editorial standards has ordered programme editors not to broadcast debates between climate scientists and global warming sceptics.
Alasdair MacLeod claimed that such discussions amount to ‘false balance’ and breach an undertaking to the Corporation’s watchdog, the BBC Trust.
Mr MacLeod, head of editorial standards and compliance for BBC Scotland, sent an email on February 27 to 18 senior producers and editors, which has been obtained by The Mail on Sunday.
It reads: ‘When covering climate change stories, we should not run debates / discussions directly between scientists and sceptics.
If a programme does run such a discussion, it will… be in breach of the editorial guidelines on impartiality.’
Mr MacLeod wrote that the reason the Trust decided that there should be no attempt by the BBC to give equal weight to opposing sides on climate change was that sceptics’ views were ‘based on opinion rather than demonstrable scientific validity’.
Last night a Trust spokesman said: ‘We agreed that there should be no attempt to give equal weight to opinion and to evidence in science coverage, but we said specifically that this does not mean that critical opinion should be excluded.
‘We did not specify that the BBC should not broadcast debates/discussions between scientists and sceptics.’
A BBC spokesman added: ‘All viewpoints continue to be given due weight in our output.’
Asked whether the BBC was prepared explicitly to disavow Mr MacLeod’s email, both officials failed to comment.
Did laugh this morning as Justin Webb gave Lord Dannatt a hard time over his suggestion that perhaps we should beef up our military….Webb suggesting that military force doesn’t work anymore.
Has anyone told the Ukrainians?
We also had Thought for the Day with Bishop James Jones who told us that Jesus loved immigrants…and that we are all immigrants really….we must open our hearts and our borders.
Carrying on the religious theme I had the misfortune to listen to ‘Sunday’ for the first time ever…normally the territory of ‘Is the BBC biased‘ I’m moving my tanks onto their lawn, for one day only…I don’t think I could listen to the torrent of lefty outpourings of this one programme for long.
First off we were treated to yet another example of Muslims being persecuted, this time in the Central African Republic where Christian militias are hounding Muslims.
The BBC never showed so much interest in the war in Congo where over 5 million have died, or indeed in the fate of Christians around the Muslim world…but coincidentally, I’m sure, they suddenly found themselves fascinated by Buddhists and Muslims when they began fighting each other…or rather, as the BBC put it, the Buddhists were attacking the harmless Muslims.
Then we had a piece on African immigrants to Europe where once again we had some thoughts that we must treat these people as if they were Jesus himself….and that open borders, welfare, and housing must have no limits….we must have a ‘globalisation of love!’.
Then we had Muslims and Christians joining together to fight slavery….trouble was we had no indication of just who was doing the slaving these days.
Then….it must have been National Islam day on R4…they asked ‘What can feminism do for Muslims?’
Then we had Steve Chalk, an evangelist Christian (normally hated by the BBC except when bringing us the good news about Christian misdeeds presumably), but he told us that the Christian Church has misused the Bible…..justifying slavery and Apartheid….what still?
The sacred text of the Bible is being used to enforce prejudice…a tool of repression and exclusion when it should be a tool of liberation….perhaps he means ‘open borders’ and an immigration free-for-all with houses and welfare handed out as you cross the border.
We must rewrite the Bible for modern times…to bring clarity to what the Bible means he tells us.
So no one knows what the Bible says, what Jesus preached, what the basis of Christianity is?
What do all those Bishops do all day then? Apart from pontificating on R4.
And you wouldn’t mind but when has the BBC had someone on with a similar message about the Koran…that it is ‘used to enforce prejudice…a tool of repression and exclusion’?
There’s more but I really couldn’t force myself to listen….enjoy…….Sunday
