Yesterday the BBC published a story from unnamed sources that the government had asked energy firms to freeze their prices.

This was untrue…and yet the BBC kept reporting it as fact whilst at the same time admitting the Government had denied the story.

And they are still reporting it as fact.

If you have been listening to the radio you may have heard the frequent advert trumpeting 5Live’s ‘excellence’  (09:50:30) based on that report:

‘The Government has asked the Big Six energy firms not to put up electricity and gas bills until the middle of 2015 unless there is a major jump in wholesale prices.  Shadow energy secretary Caroline Flint is with us in the studio….’

“Energy companies you know, don’t buy energy today for tomorrow, they buy it years in advance, actually, whereas wholesale prices have gone down in recent years and in some recent years flat lined,  we as customers haven’t benefited.

We think it’s important to freeze prices because people have been overcharged but importantly we need to reform the way the market works.”

Call me old fashioned but when a story is concocted by the BBC, and only the BBC, from unnamed (and still unnamed) sources on the day that the Labour Party is launching its price freeze pledge, a story that makes it look like the government is adopting Labour’s policy, and the story is vigorously denied by the Government, and common sense would say the story was untrue, then you have to ask why the BBC has decided to select a clip reporting something that is untrue as being true and has then also added to that a soundbite from a Labour spokesperson outlining Labour’s policies.

It sounds remarkably more like a Labour Party political broadcast than a trail for the BBC…though possibly always hard to tell the difference, the News Quiz today having a relentless barrage of anti-Right jokes and not a single anti-Left one, oddly enough.

The fact that the story has basically vanished from the news after a day when the BBC blitzed us with reports, news bulletins and ‘analysis’ about this says a lot about how solid any evidence for it was…and the intentions behind the strategy.

Is this the future of ‘news’ on the BBC until the election?  A storm of false, anti-government reports whipped up using baseless ‘evidence’ and speculation from unnamed sources, and all maligning the government whilst timed conveniently to damage the government precisely when it also does the most good for Labour?

Has the BBC been caught red-handed pumping out black propaganda against the government whilst promoting Labour policy?

Today was the day when Ed Miliband was to relaunch his energy price freeze policy….just a coincidence that a story broke today, exclusively on the leftwing BBC, that Cameron was supposedly also going to adopt that policy…the only thing was the story was a load of bollocks….in fact “complete b******s”  according to the Government.

The BBC this morning reported that:

The government is asking the Big Six energy companies to hold energy prices until the middle of 2015.

This was reported as fact.

The sources for this report were ‘energy companies and one of the Big Six’, all unnamed….and still unnamed….the story, the BBC says, ‘broke over night’.

So let’s get this right….several energy companies apparently got in touch with the BBC, and only the BBC, this is a BBC ‘exclusive’, a Scoop, in the middle of the night, and told the BBC that Cameron, who has spent the last few weeks castigating the Marxist Miliband for state interventionist plans, his ‘con’,  has suddenly decided to do exactly the same thing and freeze prices.

I’m buying that…sure I am.

Not only that but there appeared to be no government spokesman available at all to come onto the BBC for a very long time….on 5Live the only one we had was Peter Lilley…after 13:00….and Lilley said that in fact it was the energy companies that had come to the government and said they would hold down prices if the government axed some green levies….a completely different picture of events.

But at 07:10, death O’clock in the morning, The BBC had managed to get hold of Labour’s Caroline Flint and put her on the Today programme to talk about this:

0710

The government is asking the ‘big six’ energy companies not to put up prices until the middle of 2015 – after the next general election. The shadow secretary of state for energy and climate change, Caroline Flint, speaks to the Today programme’s Sarah Montague.

Which the BBC followed up with a big splash:

Flint: Cameron ‘following Miliband’s lead’ on energy

“David Cameron is desperately now running around the energy companies asking them to impose a price freeze when he’s spent two months saying that the price freeze that Ed Miliband announced is a con.

“He has been too weak, too indecisive,” she continued.

Stitch up?  I think so.

So the question must be….Just when did the BBC first ask the government to confirm these stories?

It looks like the BBC  haven’t bothered to ask the government and went right ahead and reported this as fact without any confirmation…because the government vigorously denies they ever made any such request…and looking at the facts it seems hardly likely that they would.

The BBC are still reporting (at 16:00 today) it as ‘fact’ on their front page…despite having  a separate story of the government denial….and one story of Miliband claiming Cameron is following his policy, and another reporting Miliband’s policy.  Here is the main headline with the denial…..but still followed by the ‘complete bollocks‘ reported as fact:

Ministers deny energy bill bid

The government denies BBC reports it is seeking a commitment from energy companies to hold their prices down until 2015.

• Cameron wants energy rise limit Watch
• Labour: PM ‘pleading’ with firms Watch
• Government wants energy prices held
• Labour to pledge major energy reform

Ed Miliband: David Cameron pleading with energy companies

3 hours ago

Labour leader Ed Miliband says the prime minister has been “pleading with energy companies to get him off the hook”.

Government asks energy firms to hold prices

Energy bills: Ministers not seeking ‘price pledge’

All a bit of a shambles from the BBC.

But there’s more to this….not only had the BBC managed to get Flint onto the radio at 07:10 but they had rounded up Dale Vince, the boss of Ecotricity…..who not very long ago at all was quite open about his leanings:

Ecotricity boss Dale Vince backs Ed Miliband in energy company power struggle

And:

Ecotricity founder Dale Vince today called for Ed Miliband to go further than thoughts of a price freeze and consider either renationalising the energy industry

He appeared on Wake Up To Money(05:49ish)….so a very fast move by the BBC to get him on early doors.

When asked about the alleged government’s proposal he said:

‘It does sound awfully similar to what Ed Miliband is proposing’.

Well, fancy that.  Of course it does….and that is why it was so unlikely to be true…and yet the BBC report it, unconfirmed by anyone, as fact.

Here is a further taste of Vince’s politics…..

‘The Big Six threatened blackouts if Ed Miliband tried to freeze prices (note ‘threatened‘…I thought ‘warned of’ more appropriate’)…I remember the 70’s when the blackouts were caused by the miners…and now we’ve privatised the energy industry it’s the bosses threatening blackouts.’

The presenter asks:  ‘Do we get stitched up by the Big Six?’  ( a leading question or what?  Vince isn’t exactly neutral here)

Vince replies :  ‘Oh yeah…for years…..since privatisation they’ve been running rings around the regulator and they get away with murder.’

OK…so the privatised energy firms are ripping us off….whilst the jolly little green midget is a ‘friend of the people’ providing energy at affordable prices?  Vince boasts he has fixed his prices until the end of winter as well.

Let’s compare Saint Vince and one of the evil Big Six:

Here is npower’s offer:

Fix your energy prices now until December 2017

You can switch tariff or supplier at any time, with no early exit fee.

So….just what benefit is Miliband’s price freeze when it is already happening?…and from 2013 not some time after the election….I don’t think I’ve ever heard the BBC mention these price fixes by the big companies…why not?

And what about that ‘rip off’…that ‘stitching up’ by the Big Six?

Well UK energy is one of the cheapest in Europe.

Here are Ecotricity’s prices compared to SSE’s:

Electricity……15.67 p/kwh        But SSE costs 13.08 p/kwh

Gas………………04.66 p/kwh        But SSE costs 04.36 p/kwh

Not only that but SSE’s standing charge is much cheaper if you pay by direct debit.

Don’t know about Vince’s arithmetic but I’d say SSE’s prices are cheaper.

So if the Big Six are stitching consumers up, ripping them off…..just what is Ecotricity doing as its prices are higher than SSE’s, one of the Big Six?

Why isn’t the BBC doing these checks on claims by Vince?  They don’t want the facts just as they didn’t check the false claims made by the owner of OVO Energy who was caught out twice making false claims but was given huge publicity by the BBC.

So let’s round this up…..the BBC reported a completely unconfirmed allegation as fact….they made no attempt to confirm it…but they did get in a lot of people who are on Labour’s side to talk about it at suspiciously short notice.

Miliband was relaunching his big ‘price freeze’ policy and it is just coincidental that the BBC was making claims that Cameron was now to adopt that very same policy on the same day?

The BBC are still reporting it as fact on the politics page…3 reports saying the government wants a freeze…and one denying it:

• Ministers deny energy bill bid
• Cameron wants energy rise limit Watch
• Labour: PM ‘pleading’ with firms Watch
• Government wants energy prices held

Note in this ‘breaking story’, ‘Energy bills: Green levy reform plan revealed‘ there is no mention of the denial…but there is a video of Miliband smearing  Cameron…why is it on that page when it is irrelevant to the article?

Note also that the interviewer in the video asks if we should re-nationalise the energy industry?…this is a constant theme from the BBC…..Dominic Laurie is a particular exponent of this policy…he has history ranting about the evils of privatisation…and today continued that theme.

Laurie was talking about this alleged government policy….and brought on some callers….well, one or two…the first two were likely Miliband supporters…and both remarkably demanded nationalisation of the power companies….followed up by texts…also demanding nationalisation…with only one doubter.

Laurie told us this was a policy that was extremely popular with the Public…not sure how he knows.

Laurie also had on Labour MP Alan Whitehead who was allowed to speak practically uninterrupted…only stopping to be fed a question by Laurie that seemed purely designed to allow Whitehead to continue his hatchet job on the Tories…one example….

Laurie asks:  ‘Shouldn’t we wait until the energy companies come out on the record [regarding the alleged government attempt to freeze prices] before we call it a shambles?’

So…Laurie thinks it is all a shambles…and gave Whitehead the chance to ‘confirm’ that, as he would.

But hang on…this was after 12:00pm….so the BBC hadn’t yet had an ‘on the record’ report from the horse’s mouth that the government had asked them to freeze prices?

So why had the BBC been reporting this as an absolute fact?

It looks very much like the BBC has been deliberately putting out false information about the government not bothering to check a story that is highly damaging to the government whilst enormously helpful to Labour…and all on the day Labour were relaunching their own energy policy.

Caught red handed peddling pro-Labour black propaganda?  I think so.

Let’s have a look at some recent BBC history:

Paxman made utterly false and insulting allegations about David Cameron and the BBC has not made any apology.

The BBC gave Miliband a massive platform on Desert Island Discs to sell himself to the Public.

Then John Humphrys wrote an article for the Labour newspaper,  the Mirror, defending Miliband’s appearance on the show.

The BBC has been pretty uncritical of Miliband’s price freeze policy, in fact has been supportive of it whilst being extremely critical and negative towards Cameron’s cutting of the ‘green crap’.

The BBC has been party to the massed attacks on the energy companies…the most recent example being the reporting of the ‘excess winter deaths’ which was vastly exaggerated with the BBC not reporting all the facts allowing it to lay blame at the energy companies’ door…..high fuel prices causing the deaths apparently…along with slogans like ‘heating or eating‘ and then the latest..‘heating or healing’ where cancer victims were also suffering because of the high price of cancer treatment or so we were told by the BBC….but blamed on the energy companies.

And today we have the BBC printing ‘legend as fact’ which conveniently tied in with Labour’s narrative.

Taken together a cynic might suggest there is a thread which runs through all of the BBC’s actions….that of helping out the Labour Party, publicising and promoting its policies whilst burnishing Miliband’s image which every commentator agrees is unappealing to the voters.

I received this very well written and detailed example of BBC BIAS and wanted to share!

“I have done some research on today’s items on the BBC website concerning Iran and Syria, with results that you may find of interest. To cut to the final conclusion, the BBC is hiding from its readers essential information on the Iranian involvement in Syria on the side of the murderous Assad regime, reported amply by other MSM. This allows them to present the deal between the western powers and Iran as an unblemished positive development, rejected only by Israel. Iran is consequently whitewashed, Israel vilified as usual, and the persecuted Syrian people sacrificed to this simplified and distorted narrative.

Although I am Israeli and naturally worried about the rehabilitation of Iran, it seems to me that the true Czechoslovakia of this ‘peace in our time’ approach is in fact Syria, with BBC approval. I wonder if they even realize where their blinkered view of the Middle East has led them.

Here are the details: One BBC report on Syria fails to mention Iran at all.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-2512595 Another, discussing the proposed peace talks for Syria, mentions towards the end that the Syrian opposition powers object to the participation of Iran. Nothing is said as to why Iran is at all relevant in this context

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24628442 Contrast this with the reports on Syria from other MSM, which do refer to Iran’s role, and of which I link two of many: France 24:

http://www.france24.com/en/20131127-syrias-assad-hails-iran-resilience-nuclear-deal

Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-27/iran-dips-into-nukes-bank-to-back-syria.html

To which may be added a leading blog, and a left-wing one at that, the Huffington Post:http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/robin-lustig/iran-nuclear-deal_b_4332506.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

As noted, the deal with Iran is treated by the BBC as an unrelated subject, opposed only by Israel. Even the opposition of Saudi Arabia goes unreported: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25133824“

It’s interesting how the BBC itself is actually seeking to be the Opposition to the Coalition..

The government has denied BBC reports it is seeking a commitment from energy firms to hold their prices down until 2015.

The companies told BBC News ministers had asked them to keep bills on hold so long as there is no significant move in global wholesale energy prices.

Government sources deny this, and say they are focusing instead on boosting competition and reducing green levies to cut annual bills by about £50.

The BBC has decided that Miliband’s stunningly cynical and undeliverable policy to “freeze” energy prices for 18months is beyond serious critique as you would have concluded had you heard the easy trot afforded Caroline Flint on Today this morning.

Ok folks, this is the one to see us all off into the wide blue yonder of the weekend. Detail  the bias here!

An all attack on the energy companies is in progress….the BBC, rather than standing back from the fray and giving us impartial news and information, is more than happy to land a few punches of its own.

We had ‘green’ companies complaining about their state subsidised profiteering being taken away from them…and linking it to yesterday’s scare stories about winter deaths….much exaggerated as shown in a previous post.

The company spokesman telling us that 50% of deaths were due to high fuel bills.

The BBC didn’t challenge that.

The BBC itself was questioning the profits made by the energy companies…and then this interview with Tim Yeo, the reinstated chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Committee.

Once again it ‘tackled’ the subject of Cameron cutting the ‘green crap’…with Yeo demanding no cuts be made…or else the poor will suffer.

As the not so very poor Yeo has many vested interests in green companies every time he or his committee promotes global warming or programmes to deal with it there is the potential that it puts money in Yeo’s pocket.

Conflict of interest?  I can imagine any member of the Public would say so.

Yeo also states that there are no costs put onto the national grid system due to renewable energy infrastructure development….that’s just wrong….there are massive costs associated with connecting up wind farms to the Grid.

The interview seemed scripted…designed just to tick off and tidy up ‘myths and misconceptions’ about green politics and those involved in it….the final segment just confirmed suspicions.

Winifred Robinson asked Yeo about those apparent conflicts of interest…this is a subject that the BBC has avoided for a long time…and it is a separate question to that which was being asked by the Standards Committee in reference to the Sunday Times report.

Yeo claimed that if you read the report  , and he invites you to read it from cover to cover, you will find it cleared him of all charges…‘you will find I have behaved properly in every possible respect’.

Yeo’s reply was highly misleading….because the Committee didn’t examine the potential conflict of interest generally, just in regard to a specific case, and in fact they suggested that they will investigate further such possibilities….and Robinson didn’t challenge his reply ending the interview there.

Yeo was allowed to slip out of that one almost as if it was designed that way.

Here are some extracts from the report to help you decide if the Committee cleared Yeo of having a conflict of interest as he claimed, by being chairman of a climate change committee advising government policy whilst also have large financial stakes in green companies…..

 The committee concluded that Yeo had not breached the rules of the House, stating that “Mr Yeo made no improper commitments, despite the tone of the Sunday Times articles, and the energetic attempts of the journalists concerned to draw him into doing so”.

However, the committee confirmed it was now ready to move forward with a consideration of concerns raised by Speaker John Bercow that there might be “an inherent incompatibility between chairing a Select Committee and having commercial interests, even though fully transparently registered, in the sector covered by that committee”.

The Parliamentary Commissioner who investigated the allegations against Yeo said: “I have not found Mr Yeo to be in breach of the rules of the House but nevertheless have concerns about the external perception of the relationship between a Member’s outside employment and interests and his work for the House,” she wrote.

This is from the report itself:

His comment that he told the director what to say in his evidence and linked to this is his comment that “What I do in private is another matter”. Taken together and at face value they could give the impression of a senior member of the House who has little regard for the rules and can easily find his way round them in order to suit his own purposes. This of course is the perception which is conveyed by the Sunday Times and strongly denied by Mr Yeo.

While the House takes a very reasonable position that a Member’s knowledge and interests may well enhance his or her ability to contribute to the work of the House and in particular to some of the specialist committees, there is equally a reasonable concern that that Member is then placed in a privileged position which he or she may be able to exploit for their own interests with few checks and balances to control this.

...A privileged position…to exploit for their own interests….????

Guess Yeo will be in the news again…maybe not the BBC news, but perhaps Sky will pick it up when the time comes.

Victoria Derbyshire has a love-in with the IPCC. (10:40)

Derbyshire looks at the Kyoto Agreement….she is in full support of it and is shocked that it is being disregarded…‘it’s hugely disappointing’….because of course climate change is the world’s greatest current threat to global security with famine, floods, disease, extreme weather and mass migration.

Naturally she links Typhoon Haiyan to climate change.

Note what the IPCC’s vice chair, Mr. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele,  says…to meet Kyoto targets would mean zero emissions of CO2 by the end of the century.

We are told that the climate has been stable for the last 10,000 years…no it hasn’t…it’s been warming consistently as it emerges from the last ice age…with numerous cold snaps and warm periods just as warm as today’s world.

No questioning the ‘science’…far from it, just all out belief from Derbyshire.

Of the IPCC’s ambitions to get agreement…Derbyshire ends the interview with this…

‘Good luck!’

Yesterday saw the SNP unveil its vision for an Independent Scotland. Now, leaving aside whether one sees this as an act of sublime delusionalism, the question I have for you is how did you think the BBC covered it? I listened to Jim Naughtie wax elegant on the document itself, apparently the sheer number of pages made him think the tome was weighty. In my view, the BBC coverage was pretty much pro SNP, although it is interesting to see that the SNP would remove the BBC from Scotland in the event of them gaining Independence. Sadly of course Salmond would replace with an even more fervently Statist broadcaster! Thoughts on their coverage then?

Here you go, a new Ope thread to keep detailing the bias! Off you go and share what is bothering you.

The BBC tells us that:

The energy regulator Ofgem has launched a scathing attack on the record and profits of the big gas and electricity suppliers.

Sky has a much better report….and mentions something the BBC misses out…curiously:

He also warned that Labour’s proposed energy price freeze “puts at risk the proper functioning of the industry”

Why does the BBC not mention such an important statement about the leading policy of Her Majesty’s Opposition?