Is the BBC biased? draws this to our attention:

From the Independent:

The British public has such “poor religious literacy” that a modern audience would be baffled by the Monty Python film The Life of Brian – because it would not understand the Biblical references, a senior BBC figure has claimed.  

Aaqil Ahmed, the BBC’s head of religion and ethics, told The Independent that failings in religious education over two generations were undermining public understanding of contemporary national and international issues.

This is probably his scariest comment:

“You had generations that missed out. We have poor religious literacy in this country and we have to do something about it,” he said.

Scary because you just know exactly what he intends….though we are told:

“I’m not saying for one second that everybody has to understand religion and therefore become religious,”

Yeah…right.

This is probably his most laugh out loud absolute hogwash of a statement…because we all know the real reason few people make jokes about Muhammed:

Ahmed also claimed that a key reason that Islam is not the subject of more humorous discussion is that the life of the Prophet Muhammad is poorly understood by large sections of the British public. “How can anybody tell a joke about Muhammad when they don’t even know how to spell his name, let alone anything about his life? The day we have people standing up and telling detailed jokes about Muhammad and have the audience understanding that humour, then we will have come a long way in society and we will have a lot more religious literacy about a major world figure.

Let’s give that a go…..here’s a satirical cartoon based upon most people’s understanding of Muhammed and his legacy….most people know what the Koran says about killing the infidel, the House of Islam and the House of war, and they know what is done in the name of Islam by some, many, Muslims, hence they think this cartoon represents a true picture of what Islam means to them:

That is their understanding of Islam and Muhammed…..I imagine that is not what Ahmed requires them to think….and he’d want to censor that….for the likes of Ahmed there is only one way to ‘understand’ Islam…..and it’s not the medieval warlord using religion to excuse the  plundering and killing of the non-believer….as historian Tom Holland tells us happened.

Ahmed is right in way of course….not as he intends….because it is the fact that some people, the BBC for instance,  refuse to accept that image of Islam, that definition of Islam,  because they refuse to accept such an ‘understanding,’ they see no problem with the Islamic ideology and therefore cannot see the need for a ‘cure’, for reform, as Tommy Robinson and Tariq Ramadan both urge, no need to think hard about the effects a growing Islamic influence is having on society and politics….but they are all too ready to blame the ‘West’ instead…its foreign policy or alleged discrimination at home ‘alienating’ and radicalising Muslims.

Melanie Phillips says:

Until our leaders admit the true nature of Islamic extremism, we will never defeat it

If politicians refuse to acknowledge the true nature of this extremism, they will never counter it effectively.

They see only good in the Koran and refuse to accept that it can lead to a great deal of harm….because to accept that would mean they would have to do something about it…and that is the last thing they want to do.

On Christianity the BBC are a lot harsher….on Thursday Melvyn Bragg had a reverential look at the Book of Common Prayer….but reverential though he was he still managed to openly admit that it was a book that ‘split the nation’, that it was ‘poisonous’ in its effect….and that was a book that didn’t insist you kill anyone if they didn’t believe the same as you. (and Bragg tells us that the English Civil War cost more lives per capita than the First World War…something to chew on)

Ex-nun, Karen Armstrong, has called the Bible a ‘toxic arsenal that fuels hatred and sterile polemic’…..about time we had some honest debate about what’s in the Koran as well.

When the likes of the BBC admit that the Koran is not a ‘good’ read then we will have come a long way in society and we will have a lot more religious literacy about a major world figure.

Boris Johnson of course already understands:

To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia – fear of Islam – seems a natural reaction, and, indeed, exactly what that text is intended to provoke. Judged purely on its scripture – to say nothing of what is preached in the mosques – it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its heartlessness towards unbelievers. As the killer of Theo Van Gogh told his victim’s mother this week in a Dutch courtroom, he could not care for her, could not sympathise, because she was not a Muslim.

The trouble with this disgusting arrogance and condescension is that it is widely supported in Koranic texts, and we look in vain for the enlightened Islamic teachers and preachers who will begin the process of reform. What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s medieval ass?

Janet Daley in the telegraph suggests that the frequent claims that the American political system is broken are without merit:

The power of the people is being stolen

How strong should central government be, and how much of our money should it spend?

The first is that the American democratic system is now so damaged that the country’s ability to govern itself effectively is in unprecedented peril. In fact, what has been impaired is the temporary credibility of the federal government, which has relatively little effect on the lives of most Americans. It is state governments that run the affairs that govern most civic and economic activity.

Hardly a day passes when one of the BBC’s political commentators does not indeed spout that smug assumption.

The likelihood being that they do so because if they claim the system is broken then there must be someone who broke it….and that’s, sure as eggs is eggs, going to be the Republicans, the Tea Party to narrow that down.

Many a BBC journo has wistfully announced that perhaps the ‘decisive’ Chinese method of government would be the ideal….and it was John Humphrys who, visiting Tibet, cheerfully applauded the Chinese invasion and talked in awe of the wonders that the Chinese railway was bringing to the Tibetans…along with the hundreds of thousands of Chinese ‘immigrants’…or occupiers as some might call them…not Humphrys though…and never mind the ‘cultural genocide’.

Democracy is so yesterday.

Or as Evan Davis says …the Americans are asking how politics can be reformed to avoid partisan showdowns of a kind that brought government to a standstill…yes Evan, let’s see what Obama wants…and then vote ‘Yes’.  We can’t have any ugly dissent can we.

Davis goes on to claim that:

‘There’s one special and distinctive feature of American politics…gerrymandering….drawing boundaries of congressional seats to suit political ends… to wipe out rivals or to create safe seats for your party.’

Yep….that would never happen here, it’s certainly a distinctive and special feature of US politics alone.

Britain’s electoral system unfairly gerrymandered in favour of Labour

In his piece on David Cameron’s road to Number 10, Iain Martin touches on a crucial issue: “The geography and the electoral map are against the Tories: they need a 10-point lead on polling day to get an overall majority of one seat”. He cites research from YouGov pollster Peter Kellner showing that if Labour and the Tories were to gain an equal share of the vote at the next election, Labour would get 80 more seats. 

Good old BBC tunnel vision…only seeing what it wants to see as long as it supports its narrative…US politics are broken…broken by Republicans…the Republicans need to be ‘fixed’.

Last week Thursday seemed to be a 24 hour Labour Party political broadcast on the BBC.

The BBC attacked the Tories on all fronts blaming them and the dreaded Capitalism for the ills of Society..a veritable Pearl Harbour attack launched at dawn on the Today programme:

Wonga pay day loans

Energy prices

Free schools (asking ‘Is there something rotten within the Free school system?)

Miliband’s ‘Predistribution’…now renamed ‘The Living wage’. (Alan Milburn…back to his Labour roots as he promotes Miliband’s policy under the guise of a ‘report’)

Pensioners who live the ‘high life’ whilst the young are abandoned.

Not a bad agenda for a single day.

When you consider what ex BBC journo Robin Aitken in the Telegraph has to say you may consider that the BBC’s innate affinity with Labour politics is a problem:

The BBC can pretty much dictate terms when it comes to the national debate – and it’s a power it exercises in full measure.

This underlines a truth not sufficiently acknowledged – that all journalism is a matter of selection. The running order of the BBC’s main bulletins is not ordained by some higher authority; instead, it is merely the preference of BBC editors. And to understand why the BBC chooses as it does, you have to understand who makes those selections.

BBC selection boards naturally enough tend to go for candidates made in their own image and likeness. Like other organisations, the BBC chooses people who they feel are “right for us”. In this way, the system becomes self-reinforcing. Aspiring young BBC journalists know that they will be expected to show an interest in a particular type of story. So an internal culture is constructed, recruit by recruit, which reinforces an established world view.

The way the day is structured in the BBC’s main news centre encourages an insidious orthodoxy. Each morning, the senior editors meet to discuss the day’s agenda. A consensus emerges, and because the corporation is fiercely hierarchical, the juniors – nurturing their promising careers – take their cue from their elders and betters. Which is why from morning to midnight, from Today to the Ten O’Clock News and right on down the chain to local radio, the same stories lead the bulletins.

This amplification effect is what gives BBC news output such enormous clout. More than 90 per cent of us listen or watch the BBC every week. For many people, the BBC is their constant companion – from dawn to dusk it is the background soundtrack in the lives of millions.

That is why, uniquely among media organisations, the BBC performs the role of gatekeeper to the national debate.

If the BBC doesn’t run with a story then, arguably, it isn’t a story at all.

Impartiality is not an optional extra for the BBC – it is at the heart of its contract with the licence-fee payers.

The BBC used to inspire near-universal trust: it can no longer take that for granted.

The Mail tells us that:

Dyke’s all-white panel comes under fire from black FA chief for lack of ethnic diversity

And the Mail goes on to explore the story more fully, unlike the BBC’s sport’s editor, David Bond, who does a hatchet job on Dyke and fails to report the fact that Dyke did try and bring non-white people onto the FA commission:

Saturday morning and Justin Webb announced (08:54) that ‘You can’t consider London ‘English’‘ in a discussion about what constitutes Englishness.

So the capital of England is no longer ‘English’ by race or culture.

But the BBC, Mark Easton in particular, thinks immigration is a good thing….and is prepared to be economical with the truth to defend that position.

The BBC’s reaction to an EU report on migration to the UK was slow and when it eventually came up with something it was designed to play down the effects of migration.

EU study on migrants rebuffs ‘benefit tourism’ claims

A European Commission study has found that jobless EU migrants make up a very small share of those claiming social benefits in EU member states.

The study, carried out by a consultancy for the EU’s executive, suggests that claims about large-scale “benefit tourism” in the EU are exaggerated.

This is the BBC’s favourite part of the report which it emphasised and headlined on news reports:

The European Commission says EU migrants continue to make a net contribution to their host countries’ finances, by paying more in taxes than they receive in benefits.

That is disingenuous.

It isn’t the real picture because the BBC and the EU aren’t including housing, use of NHS services, access to police and legal services, schooling, social services and all those other indirect benefits that migrants receive living in this society…..never mind the cultural and social costs to Britain as a  whole as it is forced to take these migrants without anyone asking them whether this is acceptable or not.

The Telegraph notes:

The EU, the consultants, the report on benefit tourists and £71m in fees

The authors of an official European Commission report used to suggest that “benefits tourism” is largely a myth have received more than £70  million in consultancy fees from the European Union, The Telegraph can disclose

and then examines the BBC’s reporting:

Analysis: Was the BBC’s reporting of migrant issue fair and balanced?

Last Monday night the BBC’s 10 O’Clock News – its most popular television news programme – broadcast a bulletin by Mark Easton, the home editor, in the wake of the publication by the European Commission (EC) of its report on migration.

What the BBC said

Introduction by presenter Huw Edwards: “The European Commission has found that jobless migrants from different parts of the EU make up a very small share of those claiming benefits.

“The study suggests that claims about large-scale benefits tourism in the EU are exaggerated.

“But the British Government still wants tougher EU rules and the Commission has asked the Government to publish any evidence it has to back up its claims. Our home editor Mark Easton reports.”

What the BBC said

Three Polish migrants interviewed by Easton each say they have “never met anyone” from their country coming to Britain just to claim hand-outs. One of the three unnamed interviewees says he came here in 1943.

Easton: “Well, reflecting the views in this restaurant, today’s European Commission report quotes research suggesting that, actually, EU migrants are less likely to claim benefits than British citizens and describing ‘benefit tourism’ as a ‘canard’, or a myth.”

Analysis

The word “canard” does not appear in the 276-page document, nor does the word “myth”.

What the BBC said

Easton: “Three years ago the Commission asked the UK Government for evidence of benefit tourism but says ministers have failed to provide any.”

Unfortunately for the incompetent or corrupt Mark Easton the BBC’s own reporting recently backed up the ‘myth’.

On Friday Victoria Derbyshire spoke to Syrian migrants attempting to get to Britain...after travelling through Turkey, Italy, Germany and France…….for once the BBC was open about the reasons the migrants were making a mass move towards the UK.

They were asked why they wanted to come to Britain….and told that ‘all the migrants want to come here.’

The reply was universal…for the money they would be given, free houses, jobs and ‘papers’, i.e. they would become ‘citizens’ of the UK with all the rights and benefits associated with that…and also their family will be able to come to the UK also.

Why wouldn’t they stay in France?  because ‘France wouldn’t treat them well.’  That is, it wouldn’t give them all those handouts and free housing.

The deputy mayor of Calais said Britain was a soft touch…that it should change its rules if it wants to make it harder for migrants to come here.

Though these were Syrian migrants it is a racing certainty that the same attitudes and expectations prevail amongst many other migrants attempting to ‘slip into’ the UK illegally, and amongst those who come openly as EU citizens able to claim many benefits as soon as they enter the country especially if they have children in tow.

The reality on the streets is far different to the happy picture that the BBC paints of a multicultural society joyously embracing the ever increasing diversity that enriches our society…and makes us less racist….as we of course are in the BBC’s eyes.

and nice irony that Dykes, the man who said the BBC was ‘hideously white’, should now be embroiled in his own bit of ‘hideously white’ controversy as he packs an FA commission with white faces (though he did try and recruit some of the, er…BAME community)….the ex-BBC man being bitten by the same ‘race card’ bullies that the BBC usually so readily gives airtime to.

Ed Stourton on World At One reports on the death threats that some Muslim commentators have received from al Shabab.

Talking to Ajmar Masroor Stourton tells him:

‘I have to say you’re being extremely brave.’

This is the same Ajmal Masroor who had to stand down from an election for postings on an Islamist site…MPACUK:

Ajmal Masroor (Liberal Democrat) born 1971. Broadcaster and production consultant. Selected as Lib Dem PPC for West Ham prior to the   last election, but stood down shortly before the close of nominations after being criticised for posting on the Muslim Public Affairs Committee forum.

Harry’s Place in 2010 took a look at Masroor and some of his dodgy links to the Muslim Brotherhood:

Why Does Lib Dem PPC, Masroor, Admire Galloway?

Masroor is a presenter on the Islam Channel: a Muslim Brotherhood dominated organisation, whose CEO, Mohammed Ali Harrath is a convicted terrorist. So, you’d expect him to follow the news. Masroor is also “spokesman” for  Harrow Central Mosque….which links to these organisations:

Muslim Organisations
Muslim Council of Britain
Young Muslim Organisation UK
Islamic Forum Europe

Muslim Relief Agencies
Muslim Aid UK
Islamic Relief

Islam and Muslims
Islam Channel
Islam Expo

Young Muslims Organisation UK and Islamic Forum Europe are front groups for the clerical fascist south Asian party, Jamaat-e-Islami. Islam Channel you know all about.

[And of course the MCB is an Islamist organisation:  “Far from representing the more progressive or spiritual traditions within Islam, the leadership of the MCB takes its inspiration from political Islamism associated with reactionary opposition movements in the Middle East and South Asia”]

IslamOnline is the website of the Holocaust enthusiast and spiritual guide of Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf  al Qaradawi. It is filled with the most vicious of fatwas, including those promoting terrorism against civilians.

Islam Expo is another Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood front. It was founded by Mohammed Sawalha, a fugitive Hamas commander who has also been named on IslamOnline as “manager of the political committee of the International Organization of the Brothers [i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood] in Britain”.

And again here:

He is an Imam who advises Nick Clegg on Muslim affairs, so you’d think he would take a stand against extremists. He was also the LibDem candidate for Bethnal Green and Bow at the 2010 election. But then why has his Mosque (Harrow) hosted a series of hate preachers? The latest event at Harrow was on Saturday, just a few hours before Masroor was on TV condemning extremists.

(They also link to Islamic Forum Europe on their website, which is connected with the Islamist party, Jamaat e Islami).

He is of course homophobic:

Traditionally, Muslim religious authorities have opposed gay sex. They argue that the Koranic authority for this is the story of God’s destruction of the city of Sodom because of its citizens’ sins.
“Homosexuality is a choice, it’s a desire, it’s not something that you are born with,” says the London imam Ajmal Masroor. Homosexuality is not acceptable for either Sunni or Shia Muslims, he says, because God intends for sex to occur between men and women only, within marriage, and “any sexual relationship outside marriage is a sin”.

He is also a supporter of Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, who Masroor tells us ‘Didn’t commit a single crime in Bangladesh’:

Delwar Hossain Sayeedi is a Bangladeshi Islamist politician and Muslim cleric convicted of war crimes during the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war.
The International Crimes Tribunal found Sayeedi guilty in 8 of the 20 charges, including mass killing, rape, arson, looting and forcing minority Hindus to convert to Islam during 1971.

Sayeedi’s “previous visits to the UK have been reportedly marred by violence caused by his supporters.

In this video he preaches in support of Sayeedi and against ‘secular fundamentalism’...France is a country that practises that…oppressing and subjugating Muslims….and he is naturally, against Israel, the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan….and that Allah thinks ‘reformers‘ are troublemakers….so the Koran is what the Koran is.

Secular Liberals are Ok if they come to an accomodation with Muslims, bloodshed must end and justice must prevail…in relation to Sayeedi’s court case…..Islam should be the dominant force in Bangladesh and around the world.

Secular Fundamentalism-A serious threat to Bangladesh by Ajmal Masroor

Policy Exchange has some doubts about befriending ‘Islamists’:

When Progressives Treat With Reactionaries

Oil company Chevron was fined $19 billion by a court in Ecuador last year….based on ‘evidence’ brought by environmentalists.

The BBC did report this in 2012:

Chevron has in the past said the original ruling against the company was a product of “bribery and fraud”.

However things have moved on…..

One of the financiers of an environmental lawsuit that led to a $19 billion verdict against Chevron Corp. in Ecuador told a judge that he came to regret funding the case once after learning that it may be a fraud.

Burford Capital LLC Chief Executive Officer Christopher Bogart told a Manhattan federal judge yesterday that his firm, which he described as the world’s largest dedicated litigation financing provider, supplied $4 million to the Ecuadorean plaintiffs and later sold the share when it became “deeply concerned about the mounting evidence of fraud and misconduct.”

You would have thought that this would have been a big story for the BBC environmental reporters….what is alleged to be a massive con gouging an oil company for $19 billion using methods that are indeed reminiscent of the Mafia.

Apparently not….a week since the story resurfaced…but no signs of it on the BBC…..they know about it because they link to the above report from ‘Bloomberg’ but seem uninterested themselves in disclosing the fraud and criminal actions of their environmental ‘friends’ as AGW alarmist John Ashton might call them.

Of course the BBC’s Harrabin sent out a memo to his fellow reporters ‘guiding’ them on the preferred way to report the court’s findings that Al Gore’s little propaganda film was bunk, downplaying the fact that it was found to be peddling lies….

‘In any future reporting of Gore we should be careful not to suggest that the High Court says Gore was wrong on climate……We might say something like: “Al Gore whose film was judged by the High Court to have used some debatable science” or “Al Gore whose film was judged in the High Court to be controversial in parts”.  The key is to avoid suggesting that the judge disagreed with the main climate change thesis. ‘

And Harrabin confirms he’s not exactly neutral when it comes to climate change…not ‘reporting’ but ‘warning’ of climate change:

I have spent much of the last two decades of my journalistic life warning about the potential dangers of climate change, but when I first watched Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth I felt a flutter of unease.

Harrabin’s not shy, once again, when it comes to tryng to blacken the name of anyone opposed to his campaign to warn us of the dangers of climate change:

The man who brought the complaint, Stuart Dimmock, expressed his delight that this “shockumentary” had been exposed.

Mr Dimmock is a member of the “New Party”, apparently funded by a businessman with a strong dislike of environmentalists and drink-drive laws.

When asked on the BBC’s World Tonight programme who had under-written his court costs, he paused long and loud before saying that “someone on the internet” had offered him support.

Here Harrabin admits the film was political but such an approach was ‘forced’ upon Gore as:

The sceptics knew that they did not need to win the battle of climate facts, they just needed to keep doubt alive.

An Inconvenient Truth is a response to that often cynical campaign, attempting to put climate change beyond doubt and remove ambiguity from presentation of the scientific facts.

The film was made as a polemic, not an educational tool for children. The government would have been on safer ground if it had chosen Sir David Attenborough’s climate change programme which passed the BBC’s own anguished impartiality test.

In the event, ministers seized on the slick, powerful and informative Gore movie as a tool to persuade children, and presumably by extension their parents, to worry about the climate.

And this points to the essentially political nature of the film, and the decision to show it in schools.

So there you have Harrabin making excuses for the lies of Al Gore…..and blaming it all on those awful, ignorant, unscientific Sceptics.

Perhaps that’s why they’re slow out of the traps reporting this:

From the New York Post via Bishop Hill:

Chevron’s landmark lawsuit exposes ‘greenmail’

In a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday, one of the highest-profile environmental campaigns of recent decades is about to be exposed as nothing more than a fraud and extortion racket — “greenmail.”

Chevron is suing lawyer Steven Donziger and a number of activist environmental groups in a civil-racketeering suit, claiming that his landmark $19 billion award against the oil company in an Ecuadorean court was the product of a criminal conspiracy.

Ironically, much of the company’s evidence comes from footage shot for “Crude,” an award-winning pro-Donziger documentary that premiered with much publicity at the Sundance Film Festival.

In an eight-year suit in Ecuador, Donziger and his environmentalist allies argued that the oil company had wantonly polluted the pristine Ecuadorean rainforest, creating vast areas of poisoned land and causing huge spikes in cancer and other diseases.

Chevron got a court order for more than 500 hours of footage from “Crude” that never made it into the documentary.

They show Donziger full of contempt for the country he says he cares about, openly boasting about how corrupt Ecuador’s judicial system is and planning to intimidate the judge because “the only language . . . this judge is going to understand is one of pressure, intimidation and humiliation.”

The filmmaker even recorded the lawyers lamenting that no pollution had spread from the original drilling sites and “right now all the reports are saying . . . nothing has spread anywhere at all” and how this lack of pollution was a serious problem.

But the footage also shows Don­ziger figuring he can brazen it out: “If we take our existing evidence on groundwater contamination, extrapolate based on nothing other than our . . . theory . . . then we can do it. And we can get money for it.”

Chevron will produce evidence that Don­ziger forged the signature of American experts on reports claiming widespread pollution — when these same experts had actually filed reports finding no such thing.

And that Donziger and his associates paid the Ecuadorean court’s “independent” expert more than a quarter of a million dollars so they could ghost-write his findings — the report that recommended the massive damages.

Chevron even promises to show that Donziger offered a judge on the case a $500,000 bribe to swing the judgment.

Chevron is arguing that Don­ziger and his environmental allies are no better than the mafia extorting money out of the company based on threats and fraud.

Here’s an on-time new thread for you all to KEEP detailing the bias!

Victoria Derbyshire had a bit of a melt down today, (around 11:00) but what’s new?,  when interviewing Ian Peters, managing director of British Gas Residential Energy, dropping all pretence of professionalism, preferring instead to harangue him for having the temerity to put prices up.

When he expressed sympathy and understanding for customers she berated him and told him ‘Don’t do it then!’…later claiming that ‘you don’t care a hoot about your customers…how can you say that!’….despite him explaining in detail exactly what his company does to try and reduce bills for the ‘vulnerable’…saying no one has been cut off in the 4 years he has been in charge.

‘Dividends’ are clearly a problem for Derbyshire….an evil capitalist idea that leeches money out of a company to give to the undeserving rich…like perhaps her retired grandmother whose pension company invests in British Gas and the like and provides capital for investment and growth of the company and expects a return on that investment…to pay out pensions?

Finally Derbyshire suggests this might all be a response to ‘the price freeze proposed by the leader of one political party.’

Does she mean Labour?  Why so coy about naming it?

Shelagh Fogarty, a refreshing down to earth change to the shrewish, howling Derbyshire, also tackled the same subject, interviewing Labour’s Caroline Flint.
Unfortunately Fogarty wasn’t well enough briefed to offer more than generalised questions and Flint was able to pump out well rehearsed reams of ‘facts and figures’ which Fogarty couldn’t challenge in any depth.  Having said that she then brought on two experts who comprehensively panned Flint’s claims….so some balance there…but it would be nice to see a BBC presenter with the ability to challenge the likes of Flint themselves.

Fogarty , as usual, also had on Martin Lewis, financial expert, who filled in many gaps that the BBC itself studiously avoids (He also did a comprehensive breakdown in a previous programme of the graduate loan scheme….which again seems a mystery to BBC presenters)…like the fact that Miliband’s price freeze is a con…if you want to freeze your price you can, and not just for 20 months but until 2017…and it will still save you money even with a small premium to pay….also there is no termination fee…so you can leave the plan at any time at no cost….these are some of the fixed tariffs from EDF as an example based on a dual fuel package.

Ed Miliband’s latest big idea, the energy price freeze, based on his claim of a ‘living standards crisis’ gets an easy ride on the BBC despite being roundly slated in most other analyses….but a look back in the BBC archives brings up something interesting from Labour’s recent past when in government….a situation that pretty much exactly mirrors today’s……energy prices going up, dividends going up, and demands for price freezes and profit windfall taxes.

As reported by the BBC in 2008:

The “big six” energy suppliers increased their shareholder dividend payouts by 19% last year, according to new research.
The suppliers paid £1.64bn in dividends in 2007, £257m more than the year before, a study commissioned by the Local Government Association found.
The news comes shortly after Gordon Brown said there would be no one-off fuel payment to help poorer households.
Instead, ministers are likely to focus on new energy-efficiency measures.

The research found that Centrica upped its payout to shareholders to £478m from £409m in 2006 while EDF increased its dividend from £105m to £110m.
Meanwhile, Scottish and Southern Energy’s dividend rose to £474m from £400m and RWE Npower saw a jump from £37m to £250m.
E.ON paid £240m worth of dividends in 2007, after paying nothing in 2006.

The Government has come under increasing pressure from trade unions and Labour backbenchers to help poorer families deal with the rising cost of energy via a one-off tax on the profits of utility companies.

Thus far, Chancellor Alistair Darling has resisted the calls, saying this would make the market less competitive.

But Tony Woodley, joint leader of the two-million strong Unite union, said the government needed to “legislate to cap prices from [those] greedy utilities so that we help the ordinary families in our country”.

What’s notable?

The ‘Big Six’ were around then…so where was the competitive market under Labour?

Gordon Brown said there would be no one-off fuel payment to help poorer households…preferring instead to impose energy efficiency measures.

Alistair Darling says such government interventions would make the market less competitive not more as Miliband claims he wants to do.

Also….a price freeze is proposed by none other than Miliband’s own paymaster and puller of strings, the Unite Union.

And now we have that very policy proposed by Ed Miliband…bought and paid for by the Unite Union.

I guess now they have their puppet in place they are pulling the strings and are deciding what Labour’s policies will be.

What is the point of the BBC and its enormous resources if it doesn’t use them to provide its journalists with the information necessary to tear into the lying, posturing, bullying politicians who set out to deceive the public in order to get and hang on to power whilst trying to avoid taking responsibility for taking a decision and its, more often than not, disastrous outcomes.

I see that the BBC has taken the catastrophic failure of the  Al-Madinah free school in Derby to create the impression that ALL free schools are a disaster unlike the wonderful State controlled sector (well, the part of that which isn’t ON STRIKE today) I heard an interview on Radio 4 just after 5pm which was a full on onslaught into the concept of free schools which managed to avoid the one central fact in the whole matter – namely Al-Madinah’s problem isn’t that it was a FREE school but rather that it is an Islamic school. It’s quite a wonder to match the BBC seize the total dysfunctionality of Islam and twist it into a contrived attack on the Coalition.