On the Today programme Chris Morris looks at the disillusion spreading across Europe with the politician’s private project (08:36)

(A written version here)

It turned into an excuse to bash the Right along the way:

The leader of the far right French National Front, Marine Le Pen, is in the Netherlands today to meet the Dutch far right leader Geert Wilders. The BBC’s Europe correspondent Chris Morris reports. Guy Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium, and leader of the liberal and democrats group in the European parliament, discusses the meeting.

Morris’ choice of words is very careful and designed to trigger certain perceptions.

Morris tells us that there is a surge of populist support for figures on the Far Right like Geert Wilders who knows exactly which buttons to press apparently….the BBC doesn’t say that of Ed Miliband when he is spouting his ‘populist’ policies which are purely designed to catch headlines without actually intending to implement them.

He tells us that cynicism about the European project comes in many guises….linking Eurosceptics in the Uk (wonder whom he means) with the radical Communist Syriza in Greece (lead by ‘led by charismatic young politician Alexis Tsipras‘ as the BBC tells us elsewhere) and what he calls ‘xenophobic populists’   like Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen.

He goes on to call them demagogues, extremist parties…..their views very very unsavoury as one interviewee claimed.

He manages to find two people who don’t find the EU attractive but they both say they are not at all fans of Geert Wilders.  Guess he’s just lucky to find them when his report is suggesting Wilders et al are ever more popular.

He brings on Michael Geary from Maastricht University who says that governments need to combat both Far Right and Far Left rhetoric but Morris doesn’t seem concerned about the Far Left despite two of Golden Dawn’s people being killed recently and concentrates solely on disparaging Wilders and Le Pen and linking UKIP to them by mentioning them in the same breathe.

Interesting how the BBC refers to Left and Right:

As above the Greek Syriza leader is ‘charismatic‘, whilst the French ‘Left Front‘ leader is ‘their firebrand leader Jean-Luc Melenchon described his movement as “the people of French revolutions and rebellions”…how romantic…just like cuddly Russell Brand stroking Paxman’s knee.

and Marine Le Pen, not charismatic nor rebellious apparently…..she is smeared with ‘her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a convicted Holocaust-denier.’

Whilst it’s not Ok for the Daily Mail to look at Ed Miliband’s father’s beliefs when he has stated he was guided by them it is OK to smear Marine Le Pen with her father’s.

There is hardly a mention of any Left Wing parties and their radical views and the dangers they might represent…the BBC seems only concerned with parties that express concern about immigration or Islam…violent revolution and destruction of society seems to be OK.

The BBC’s concern lies essentially with the Right’s success or potential success….Occupy, London riots or George Soros‘ billions pressurising politicians or disrupting the democratic process is presented as the ‘voice of the dispossessed‘ making itself heard.

The Left can do no wrong even when dropping fire extinguishers from roof tops towards people below….that’s probably ‘charismatic’ behaviour.

What’s new though in that from the BBC?

Thanks to George R for this from Charles Moore in the Spectator:

A Dickensian scene of human misery.

Single mothers who cannot scrape together the £145.50 demanded are dragged before the magistrate to pay the six figure salaries of BBC bosses and stars. A cut would be very popular. Go into the next election promising to (say) halve the licence fee. This would immediately please millions and force the BBC to curtail its operations. Once its power starts to decline, it will never recover.

The BBC has very dutifully looked at the recovery and decided ‘nah….not gonna happen really.’

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, says the recovery “has finally taken hold”.

 So why the worry?

The BBC goes on to tell us why we might worry:

The challenge of good economic news

The final words from the BBC….

The challenge for Labour is to keep the political debate off the recovering economy and back onto the cost of living.

Might I suggest that they’ll have little problem with that….the BBC’s phones being manned 24 hours a day.

It was apparent from the start that Labour HQ knew of attempts to rig certain elections, not just Falkirk….and ignored them, even threatening disciplinary action against one person who raised the subject.

This is surely political dynamite, and yet the BBC are consistently ignoring or underplaying it.

Embarrassingly this is from a Labour man prepared to state the truth that the BBC dare not:

So now we know: Ed Miliband struck a deal that allowed Unite to rig the Falkirk selection

In Falkirk, over a hundred new applications were received in the space of a week. And as a result, those members were not, at that stage, being entered into the Labour Party central processing system.
Given the impending selection in Falkirk, it did not take a genius to work out what was going on. Nor did it take long for the Compliance Team to appreciate the political significance of what was unfolding. And that was why the issue was raised directly with Ed Miliband’s office.
A heated debate ensued amongst Miliband’s team about how to proceed. But the key voice in that debate was Tom Watson, a key Miliband confidant, and boss of Murphy. At the time I was told Watson had “spoken to people” about allowing the Unite members on to the system, and letting the selection proceed. Two days ago this intervention was confirmed. In an email dated 14 January, from Stephen Deans to an unnamed recipient, and cc’d to Karrie Murphy, Deans writes: “There have been some membership processing issues that Tom Watson has been helpful in resolving. Tom has asked that you send me an updated list for Falkirk West and the wider membership list to enable us to validate these memberships.”
Another series of leaked emails a week later show mounting concern that the members had still not been placed on the system. One, from Unite political coordinator Tom Wartnett to Karie Murphy says: “I sent them [the membership forms] up with a letter saying Tom Watson has approved them.”
Tom Watson very effectively argued it was in Ed Miliband and the Labour Party’s interests to simply process the membership applications, stand back and let the Falkirk selection run its course. No one wanted a row with Labour’s biggest funder. Miliband’s team agreed.

Ed Miliband did not tackle the machine politics of Falkirk thoroughly. Or swiftly. Instead, he connived in it. Those of us who have been perplexed at his actions over the past fortnight now have our answer.

Why did Miliband capitulate so readily…apart from possibly agreeing with Unite’s politics (McCluskey being a big fan of one Ralph Miliband’s Marxist views):

Unite still Labour’s largest backer despite Falkirk row

Once again the BBC dashes in to ‘protect’ Muslims by debunking claims about Christian deaths:

Are there really 100,000 new Christian martyrs every year?

On the internet, the statistic has taken on a life of its own, popping up all over the place, sometimes with an additional detail – that these 100,000 lives are taken by Muslims.

The BBC did the same when claims about Muslim birthrates suggested we might be over run in the near future, the BBC even producing their own film and placing it on YouTube to counter the film ‘Muslim Demographics’.

Unfortunately for the BBC they will have to work a bit harder….with only 157,000 viewers they have a bit of catching up to do with ‘Muslim Demographic’s‘ 15 million.

Always interesting and informative what the BBC tries to debunk…fair enough you might say if those figures were wrong……but why not other claimed figures that have important social and political consequences?

Such as the ‘rising tide of Islamophobia’ figures produced by the discredited ‘Tell Mama’  pressure group.

Come onto the BBC to tell of a mass uprising against Muslims who now cannot walk the streets in peace and you will always get a welcome at the BBC it seems.

632 anti-Muslim hate incidents recorded by Tell Mama

There doesn’t seem to be a level playing ground here….figures that are damaging to Muslims are debunked…figures that support the Muslim cause are given credibility and authority by the BBC when they definitely don’t deserve such preferential treatment.

Pounce spotted an extraordinary piece of BBC propaganda in the BBC Magazine.

It tells the story of Somali immigrants to Norway.

First thing to note is that this is not an article in the magazine, the cartoon is placed, in prime position, without explanation, there is no attempt to explain what the cartoons are supposed to say, who produced them, nor who the audience is supposed to be.

It is therefore, as said, pure propaganda….because it does of course have a message.

The question you then ask is….who produced the cartoon, and then you ask why?

Who is easy……a small link at the bottom of the cartoon leads you to the ‘Open Society Foundations’.

Who runs and funds that?  George Soros.

So the BBC is placing Soros propaganda on its website without even attempting to make the pretence that it is part of an article or report.

Soros is a multi-billionaire…who massively funds political groups that he favours…notably the Democrats in the US amongst many others around the world trying to topple governments he doesn’t like.

The second question is what are these cartoons for?  Who is the intended audience?

On the OSF’s website you find this:

Through research and advocacy, the At Home in Europe project focuses on advancing equality for groups that are excluded from the mainstream of civic, political, and cultural life in Western Europe—including Europe’s Muslims and white working-class communities.

Muslims excluded?  Really?….if at all….only by their own tendencies and religious convictions.

Here is the cartoon site:

Meet the Somalis    The illustrated stories of Somalis in seven cities in Europe

Meet the Somalis is a collection of 14 illustrated stories depicting the real life experiences of Somalis in seven cities in Europe: Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Leicester, London, Malmo, and Oslo.

Unfortunately it’s a very selective, narrow collection of stories….ones designed to paint a picture of desperate immigrants battling prejudice.

But who is that ‘audience’?  It can’t be recalcitrant Somalis..because it is in English (and because as the cartoons tell us….there are no really recalcitrant Somalis)….therefore the supposition must be that the audience is intended primarily to be the natives of the countries receiving the Somali immigrants….in other words propaganda.

Not surprising when you see who is running the programme:

Nazia Hussain   Director, At Home in Europe Project

A Muslim…..not going to be exactly neutral going by the experience of ‘professional’ Muslims in the UK like Mehdi Hasan…and looking at the cartoons that is bared out….

The intention is to show how wonderful the Somalis are, how willing to integrate, but thwarted in that wish by a prejudiced native population and harassment by the police.

Look at some of the stories….the one on the BBC pages, or Malmo or the Netherlands for instance….Western culture is often derided, the police are always harassing them, Islam is the answer to everything…but you know what….the Somalis all really, really want to integrate and become good Norwegians or Swedes or Dutchmen.

No mention of terrorism, rapes, crime, drugs, anti-Semitism or any other difficulties arising from Somali immigration.

Just out and out propaganda published by an extremist left wing organisation and given prominent ‘top billing’ in the BBC Magazine.

Albaman quotes this in reference to wind strengths over the Philippines:

Haiyan hit Guiuan, on the Philippine island of Samar…the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) assessed Haiyan’s sustained winds at 195 mph, gusting to 235 mph, making it the 4th strongest tropical cyclone in world history. Satellite loops show that Haiyan weakened only slightly, if at all, in the two hours after JTWC’s advisory, so the super typhoon likely made landfall with winds near 195 mph. The next JTWC intensity estimate, for 00Z UTC November 8, about three hours after landfall, put the top winds at 185 mph. Averaging together these estimates gives a strength of 190 mph an hour after landfall. Thus, Haiyan had winds of 190 – 195 mph at landfall, making it the strongest tropical cyclone on record to make landfall in world history.

Unfortunately, as stated before, the Philippines own weather bureau reports top wind speed on landfall at the same place, Samar, as 235kph….147 mph, not 195mph:

So who is correct…the US JTWC based in Haiwaii or the Philippine’s own weather bureau?

Guess we will just have to wait and see.

Though of course the BBC seemed to have changed its mind:

BBC now reporting reduced wind speeds that would make it a Cat4 storm:

Typhoon Haiyan – one of the most powerful storms on record to make landfall – swept through six central Philippine islands on Friday.

It brought sustained winds of 235km/h (147mph), with gusts of 275 km/h (170 mph), with waves as high as 15m (45ft), bringing up to 400mm (15.75 inches) of rain in places.

You would need a heart of stone not to smile at the BBC’s desperation to cloak the news that the UK economy is indisputably on the mend. It’s not so many months since Miliband, Balls and Cooper were never off the State Broadcaster imploring the Coalition to abandon current strategy and adopt “PlanB” – the Labour recipe for success. Now, as it becomes crushingly clear Labour got it so badly wrong, the BBC allow the quiet shelving of “Plan B” and instead all we get is the “cost of living” swerve, also gratefully taken up by the BBC as the new and preferred attack route on the Coalition.

Oh my, it’s so tricky for the BBC. Yesterday we heard David Blunkett warn of riots on our streets as Roma queue up to bring us their multicultural riches and now today Jack Straw reveals that Labour got it badly wrong with their (deliberate) embrace of Open Borders. I am sure the BBC will give both these mea culpas from their political wing every due prominence. Now, back to the Philippines…

Here we go – middle of the week and time for a new Open Thread.