With several shoots of green indicating that the UK economy may be on the recovery, the BBC has had to find new ways to dampen any positivity people might have so today they have been pushing a survey that claims that half of UK adults are struggling to keep up with bills and debt repayments and this number has worsened since….2006. One assumes that the recession created by Labour might have had something to do with this and that the financial situation for some individuals post economic recession would be more precarious. This is no news served up as a gloom and doom and is simply the BBC trying to help the ludicrous Miliband/Balls agenda.

The BBC’s Rottweiller turns out to be a bit of a lapdog.

John Humphrys fresh from his carpeting by the BBC Trust for being too right wing is proving his loyalty to the Corporation by pulling the wool over listener’s ears.

The BBC had steadfastly ignored recent reports of the hacking of phones by private investigators for hundreds of companies, as well as law firms and other organisations…..might that include the BBC?  They also use PIs as Mark Thompson admitted.

But yesterday on the Today programme (08:50) Humphrys ‘investigated’ the BBC’s lack of interest….or not…he said:

‘Some people draw a distinction between the way this story has been covered and the way that newspapers using private investigators were covered…there is a huge disparity,  massive coverage of the newspapers and relatively little for this bunch.’

Tom Symonds, BBC home affairs correspondent, plays it all down and blames News International for ramping up the coverage….

‘The coverage was due to the News of The World and News International who admitted phone hacking  themselves and when they closed down the News of The World this ramped up the story to a great degree.’

Really?  No coverage before that?  No massive witch hunt against Murdoch?  No massive coverage in the media before that?  It wasn’t that massive coverage, by the Guardian in particular, which lied about the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone, that caused the closure of the News of The World?

Good old BBC…never let the facts get in the way of a good story especially when trying to cover up your own cover up.

Good that the BBC is reporting on the ‘reporting’ of a story…..obviously feeling a little like they were caught out and are trying to cover up their decision not to report this until forced to.

Interesting that they feel the need to comment on the lack of reporting….the complete lack of interest in these big companies and law firms…..with no connections to Murdoch.

We know that the BBC has issues with Islam and that is a prime source for Islamophilia. However when the world’s most prominent Islamic scholar calls for jihad to be waged in Egypt, one would have thought all those world class journalists that we pay for MIGHT have found the story. It seems they missed it. How convenient. I suppose they are too busy hunting down Islamphobes?

“Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi—one of the most influential Islamic clerics in the world, author of over 100 books on Muslim doctrine, head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, and spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood—has just posted a new video where he calls on all the Muslims of the world to come and wage jihad with their lives in Egypt on behalf of “what’s right”—that is, the return to power of the Muslim Brotherhood.

He called on everyone and anyone—the “sons of Al Azhar,” businessmen, journalists—and from all around the world, specifically mentioning Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Senegal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan.

Qaradawi called on them to be shuhada, “martyrs” who sacrifice their lives in the course of the jihad.”

I have to agree with Grant Shapps just for a change!

The BBC’s coverage of the Government’s welfare reforms has sought to paint them as ‘Armageddon’ for the nation, a senior minister said yesterday. Tory Party chairman Grant Shapps accused BBC bosses of letting their ‘personal views take hold’, covering the Coalition’s attempts to rein in the welfare bill as though the world were ending. He spoke out amid a row over the way the BBC Trust censured respected presenter John Humphrys for a programme exposing the truth about the bloated welfare state.

The Trust condemned the TV show as a breach of its impartiality rules after it discussed the ‘dependency culture’ in Mr Humphrys’ home city of Cardiff, where he found some claimants prefer life on benefits to working.  But Mr Shapps said BBC officials should have ‘applauded’ the Today anchorman and condemned other coverage by the BBC as biased against the Government.

Where Shapps gets it wrong, however, is when he goes to say that “The BBC is not a newspaper and needs to remember it’s a state broadcaster who should be providing an objective analysis of events”

And that’s the issue. WHY do we need “a state broadcaster” in the first place? Why does the BBC have to parasite off our taxes by forcing us to pay for it? The BBC cannot be objective or impartial, none of us can. So let us all be honest, accept the BBC is biased and will remain so, and deny it the entirely anachronistic right to take our cash to fund its bias. Yes?

The BBC paint one picture of the Mau Mau but a B-BBC reader paints another;

“I was there as a Police Inspector in the Kikuyu Reserve. I am astonished that the British Government should be giving compensation to Mau Mau. of course it is a different Government to that of the 1950s. Mau Mau murdered large numbers of their own Kikuyu tribe. They didn’t beat them up they chopped them up. What about their families? Oh I forgot, they murdered the families as well.

Mau Mau was not the Kikuyu tribe it was an aberration of the tribe forcing its will on the majority of the tribe. The Mau Mau strategy was enforced oath taking or murder. Kikuyu houses were scattered around the country side.  I personally dealt with more than a hundred murders as did colleagues wherever Kikuyu people lived. This was contained only when the people were moved into fortified villages and their men folk were armed. Latter day historians now call these concentration camps, not safe havens.

Once they felt safe the Kikuyu people went after the Mau Mau and played a major part in their defeat. After the defeat of militant Mau Mau they obviously became more clever in the field of misinformation. Latter day historians should note that Jomo Kenyatta would not have any Mau Mau in his Government. How could they get it so wrong? Perhaps rewriting history is their only way to get noticed”

The BBC have been busy trying to dig up anyone who has been ‘victimised’ by the government’s welfare reforms as Guido highlights:

Newsnight have been caught  red-handed using a private firm to try stir up outrage toward’s the government’s, legal, tweaking of Housing Benefit changes.

No mention of all those who have been or will be helped by this reform…all those needing a family home but are crammed into tiny houses, bedsits or hostels.

What does the company, Support Solutions,  that was running this man hunt for the BBC say about its services?

Our aim is to influence policy in favour of the sector in these challenging times and to be the first to know of and interpret policy development and change which impacts on our sector.

• We are experts in the Welfare Reform Act & Universal Credit, especially as these affect vulnerable people and organisations that provide and/or commission services for vulnerable people.
• We help clients to enhance their housing revenue streams

Their aim…to influence policy and get more money for clients in the housing arena….sounds quite political to me….and in direct opposition to government policy.

Wonder why the BBC chose them to dig up some suitably disadvantaged persons to put on the telly as examples of government cruelty?

Middle of the week, end of the month, and so time for a new OPEN Thread. Play nicely, no abuse but detail the bias from the comrades…..

I don’t think that Lord Howell said anything he needed to apologise for but thanks to the predictable baiting in the Lords from Labour, picked up and magnified by the BBC, he ended up saying sorry for suggesting that “desolate parts” of the north-east with no obvious natural beauty could be potential spots for tracking. Maybe he should have said the north-west? The BBC seized on this with glee and given the BBC opposition to a/ fracking in particular and b/conservatives in general, they have sneered at this for the last 24 hours. Following the logic put forward by Labour and echoed by the BBC  it appears that every inch of the UK is so beautiful that we cannot frack anywhere. How curious.

The BBC Trust, on the basis of a complaint from one man and his dog, has declared that the BBC, or at least John Humphrys is a right wing government stooge:

‘Is the BBC biased’ has done a write up of Sunday Morning Live….it concludes that overall it was a fair effort on the part of the BBC….I haven’t seen it yet so can’t comment myself.

 What is interesting is part of the programme that they have transcribed.

I have in a previous post suggested that most Muslims don’t actually like Islam…..the real, fundamental, follow all the rules Islam….they are in fact ‘Islamophobes’.   They are born into the religion, they are obliged by their community to ‘keep the Faith’ but it is more cultural for them, more lip service than devotion, they’ll take the social and perhaps the spiritual parts of Islam but say no thanks to the wife beating, gay baiting and hand chopping etc.

They might express a desire to see Islam ‘reformed’….that is, have those violent, supremacist and genocidal  parts of the Koran and Sharia excised.

If so they would be denounced as ‘Islamophobes’ were they to appear on the pages of this blog no doubt, as the desires they have for the reform of Islam are the very same concerns that are expressed on this site by posters as they argue the BBC should take a more critical look at Islam, only to be charged with ‘islamophobia’….an irrational hatred of Islam….despite the criticism of Islam being based on reasoned argument and endless proofs from the Koran and the Hadiths themselves.

With that in mind here is part of the write up of the SML programme:

‘We heard from Sheikh Dr Muhammad Al-Hussaini who said that the British people “no longer believe the Islamist peace double discourse from British Muslim leaders.” In one of those “wow!” moments that thrills the heart, Sheikh Muhammad argued that “the literalist, supremacist use and abuse of scripture by violently extremist Islamist groups…isn’t so far actually different to the same kind of literalist supremacist readings of the same kind of scripture by, if you like, sort of mainstream extremist Islamist groups like the Muslim Council of Britain and Jamaat-e-Islami front organisations like the the Islamic Foundation.” He went on to argue that the violent texts in Islam need to be moderated by Islamic scholars and said they should follow the example of Jewish scholars who have long moderated the texts of Deuteronomy. He then went on to denounce the “interfaith or Islamophobia kind of industry”. Mehdi, you won’t be surprised to hear, wasn’t entirely happy about that!’

Anything different in there from what this site says?

No.

And yet  if  ‘John Smith’ should try  to express those views on a BBC programme  he would be quickly cut off and ‘outed’  as a likely EDL member…sin of sins!

Much like, as George R points out, Douglas Murray was smeared by Mehdi Hasan as a ‘supporter’ of the EDL:

Mehdi Hasan and the EDL

Interesting isn’t it…he, Sheikh Muhammad, a Muslim,  says that there is little difference between what the extremists claim and what the mainstream Muslim groups say about Islam.

Much like the FBI offical who told us what the only difference between Al Qaeda and the Islamic community group CAIR (the US MCB equivalent) and the Muslim Brotherhood was:

“The only difference between the guys in the suits and the guys with the AK-47s is timing and tactics.”

In the end they all have the same aims…just different methods of achieving them.

That’s a very important point to remember…one that the BBC and politicians deliberately refuse to acknowledge….because to acknowledge it would mean they would have to do something about it…it would mean suppressing Islam in some form or another.

The non-violent Islamists are just as ‘dangerous’ politically and culturally as the ones prepared to bomb and shoot their way to victory….if you consider Islam itself a threat to democratic, secular/Christian society that is.

The BBC should, if it were doing its job, be examining every word of Sheikh Dr Muhammad Al-Hussaini and be asking just what exactly does he mean?

To do so would mean having to examine Islam and all those tricky little verses about the Jews and Christians being sinners, unclean, to be controlled at the end of a sword.

….and then what?  What if the BBC discovered that this was the true teaching of the Koran, the real meaning of Islam?

That’s why it will never happen.

That and the fact that the ‘Establishment’, from the Royal Family, politicians, businessmen and those in the Media all have close and extensive links to Muslim states……not just through commerce, oil and weapons, but cultural and social ties…a surprising number of the ‘upper crust’ being married to Muslims…George Osborne’s brother for instance.

And of course the final calculation that they make is that should such an eventuality happen, an Isamic takeover, they, already at the top of the tree so to speak, would likely remain there and would not suffer overly much, not having to alter their opulent lifestyles greatly,  judging by the excesses of the Saudi Royal family.

For those at lower levels or the bottom of the tree things might be a lot less pleasant.

Nice though that the BBC keeps giving the floor to an Islamist like Mehdi Hasan without challenging his views themselves.