Blimey, the last Open Thread is already overflowing SO here is a new one for you! Off you go…detail the bias.

Had to laugh at the BBC this morning doing its very best to cast cold water on further signs of at least some modest economic recovery.  First the bad news for the comrades..

The UK economy grew by 0.6% in the three months to June, according to official figures.  The figure was in line with market expectations, and is up from 0.3% growth in the previous quarter.

Thankfully, renowned economist Nick Robinson is here to tell us that it is  “Growth but not as we know it”  As if that was not enough then we have this ” The view from the shop floor” On the Today programme, caution was thrown to the wind and a veritable barrel of cold water was thrown over the positive news. It’s going so WRONG for Labour’s meme that we are all doomed and so the BBC has to resort to dousing every green shoot of recovery with its own toxic pesticide.

The BBC’s ‘News Quiz’ is hardly worth posting on…it’s so evidently designed purely as a vehicle for leftie comedians, so called, to vent their spleens against the evil Tories that not much needs to be said about it.

Last Saturday’s effort toed the Party line and the first attack was on Lynton Crosby…then there was a completely joke free rant about the  welfare cap and a claim that IDS had invented some ‘bogus figures’…the rest of the programme seemed to be made up of reading out allegedly humorous newspaper clippings which  listeners had sent in.

All great fun.

It couldn’t be that they have a list of things they want to rant about and if they possibly can they will try and fit in a joke, but if they can’t, well, never mind? 

Toksvig and crew couldn’t resist mentioning the Daily Mail of course, and not forgetting Nigel Farage…subtly linking him to the Nazis as is the usual BBC practice.

Toksvig states, for the benefit of Daily Mail readers, small minded and insular beings that they are,  that immigrants actually pay more tax than native Brits….so there!!!

Really?  There’s a special immigrant tax rate is there?  or maybe they’re just more upstanding and moral than the rest of us…they pay what they think they ought to pay in a fair and just society….as set out by the sainted Margaret Hodge?!

So let’s get this straight…..

The Labour Party concoct a story that Tory advisor Lynton Crosby advised ‘profiteering’ private health companies on how to exploit failures in the NHS.

The Guardian splash the story on its front page.

The BBC picks up the Guardian story and runs with it claiming that Cameron faces questions after ‘it emerges’ his election strategist advised private health companies how to profit from NHS reforms.

Guido Fawkes then fact checks and finds that it was in fact a Labour leaning group that made the presentation, Crosby merely provided research to that group.

The Guardian back tracks and changes its story.

The BBC, having run a story that conveniently attacks and undermines a person that represents a danger to its fellow travellers in the Labour Party, is still running the same story at 18:00.

Suddenly the BBC too changes its reporting…but it doesn’t put up a fresh story it edits the old one…changing it entirely….keeping the same web link and an old time stamp…14:59…therefore preventing anyone from seeing the previous, and very erroneous version….unless you had seen it before and were able to link to it via any other website which had picked up the original version.

Sooooo…the BBC runs a smear story, one that it clearly didn’t factcheck, one that it took complete from the Guardian without asking is this true? The fact that the presentation was in 2010 when Crosby was not working for the Tories should immediately have cast doubt on this story…but the BBC ran it full on all day.

Why did they run it?  Because the story was too good to not be true….building on the narrative that Labour and the BBC have been creating for a week or so now to distract from Miliband’s Unite problems.

When the facts became publicly known, thanks to Guido, the BBC did a stealth edit and covered its tracks making it difficult to locate the original version of the report…even the ‘Way Back When Machine’ and ‘News Sniffer’ cannot link to it.

The BBC did a hatchet job on an important figure in the Tories’ election strategy…..the BBC made a deliberate attempt to undermine and discredit someone who is a key player in the Tories’ political battle against Labour….potentially derailing the Tories’ election plans and possibly even the outcome of the election…they hope.

The BBC has been caught red handed interfering in the political process with a clear attempt to rig the election in Labour’s favour.

Gotta love the BBC for their relentless pursuit of Lynton Crosby. Ed Miliband must so appreciate Beeb attempts to smear and blacken the reputation of this man, who whether one likes it or not, has helped turn around Conservative fortunes in recent times. I don’t expect Crosby is lily white, but I don’t expect any in his position in previous times were any less discoloured – say from 1997 to 2010?

Going on a seven day hunger strike in support of Gitmo resident Shaker Aamer is perhaps accidental comedy genius from alleged comedian Frankie Boyle. I was reading this BBC report on Frankie’s “Bobby Sands” moment. All this classic elements are in it; It says he is a UK resident but minimises the fact he is a Saudi national. You have to wade through paragraphs of dirge to get to the bit where we are told WHY he is detained in Gitmo.  The US says he led a unit of Taliban fighters against Nato troops and had met Osama Bin Laden. BBC are then quick to insert that “But Mr Aamer has always said he was in Afghanistan with his family doing charity work.”  As you do. Aamer is the new Binyam Mohammed and I am sure you will recall how the BBC lionised him. If you recall, Binyam was another unfortunate Muslim who was captured by US forces having  travelled to Taliban controlled Afghanistan, around the same time as Shaker Aamer and just prior to the invasion, in order to … clear his drug addled head and experience a Muslim country first hand. I guess these unlucky Muslims must be thankful the BBC are so keen to believe what they allege and give Frankie the publicity he graves. Let’s hope Boyle can make the 7th day.

Yup, I see how bulging with comments Monday’s thread is so here’s a new one for you.  Enjoy filling it!

Andrew Neil, that well known climate scientist, has stirred up a hornet’s nest by daring to question government policy on climate…based as it is on ever increasing temperatures….but there are obvious doubts about that now due to the long hiatus in rising temperatures:

The Sunday Politics interview with Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey on July 14 provoked widespread reaction in the twittersphere and elsewhere, which was only to be expected given the interview was about the latest developments in global warming and the implications for government policy.

The main purpose of the interview was to establish if the government thought the recent and continuing pause in global temperatures meant it should re-think its policies in response to global warming.

This is a vital policy issue since the strategy of this government and the previous Labour government to decarbonise the economy involves multi-billion pound spending decisions, paid for by consumers and taxpayers, which might not have been taken (at least to the same degree or with the same haste) if global warming was not quite the imminent threat it has been depicted.

Our focus was on a global temperature plateau which could be a challenge to the forecasts of climate models which have determined government policy. The plateau could continue for the foreseeable future or melt away as temperatures resume their upward trajectory.

What was possibly even more interesting was this:

It might also be argued that challenging interviews on matters in which there is an overwhelming consensus in Westminster – but not necessarily among voters who pay for both the licence fee and the government’s energy policies – is a particularly legitimate purpose of public-service broadcasting.

So it is the job of public-service broadcasters to challenge the overwhelming consensus?

You could have fooled me and many others who thought the BBC had decided that the science was ‘settled’ and that no more questions needed to be asked…full ahead with green taxes and hair shirts.

I guess when you take money from organisations that promote man made global warming your journalism might be compromised.

And the fact that BBC journalists have few scientific qualifications between them and yet feel compelled to denounce ‘mere bloggers’ as unqualified to comment on climate change…many of whom are actually far  more scientifically qualified that the BBC journalists.

From Staite Communications:

 Having worked in political communications in the UK for nearly 9 years I know the process and it is very clear. The Labour Party are using two newspapers, supported by the BBC, to try and get a scalp which will weaken the Prime Minister.

A piece of information is dressed up as a ‘leak’ by the attack unit at Labour HQ. Interesting to note that editors love leaks. Leaks make the information more ‘sexy’ than if it had just come across the desk of the journalist via a press release.  As I’ve already said, this information is not a ‘leak’ but a presentation given openly to a group of cross-party MPs over three years ago.

This information is then farmed out to journalists at Labour’s two favourite newspapers, The Guardian and/or The Mirror. Once it becomes a front page story – a splash – then that is enough for a call to go in to the BBC newsroom to suggest that maybe they too should be covering this story. If it is a splash in The Guardian the BBC is far more likely to run it as the Corporation buys far more of this newspaper than any other. Voila – a ‘leak’ created in Labour HQ has become a political ‘row’ in three easy steps.

This is an update to the previous post on the BBC’s smear campaign against the Tories’ political advisor, Lynton Crosby.

The Guardian published an article claiming Crosby’s firm was somehow involved in trying to ‘exploit’ the NHS reforms and was giving advice to potential ‘profiteers’ on how to do that.  The BBC have happily leapt aboard that bandwagon without any fact checking…it seems they may regret that.

Perhaps one day they will do their own investigative journalism and not rely on ‘leaks’ from those with vested interests.

Guido has pointed out a very inconvenient fact about the story:

“Crosby Presentation” Organised By Labour Lobbyist
Labour MPs Attended Event Held in Commons

 The Guardian claims that the “leaked” presentation was made by CTF to private healthcare profiteers, it was actually organised by the lobbying firm Westminster Advisers for MPs – who were all given copies. Making it more of a handout than a leak. Westminster Advisers is headed by Dominic Church, a wealthy Labour supporter and a former Hammersmith and Fulham councillor for the party.

Guido notes that the Guardian has cut out slides from a slide show by Crosby’s firm …but renumbered the pages so that nobody would notice….why?

Perhaps this slide might show why:

Guido tells us that The Guardian have corrected their story after he pointed out these facts:

The Guardian has done a follow up which largely corrects the record after Guido pointed out the factual errors in their healthcare lobbying story from this morning. Namely that they had got the target audience completely wrong and that the firm organising the event wasn’t Tory leaning CTF, it was in fact Labour leaning lobbyists Westminster Advisers. A statement issued by Mark Detre from Westminster Advisers confirms the accuracy of Guido’s version of events:

“Crosby Textor Fullbrook provided research and advice into public attitudes on healthcare to H5. H5 is a predecessor to the Association of Independent Healthcare Organisations and they did that in 2010 and 2011. The arrangement between CTF and H5 ended in mid 2011. AIHO is a new organisation formed in March 2013 and has no relationship with CTF.”

 

 

But it seems that the BBC are still behind the times and running the old anti-Tory smear version on their front page with this qualification:

Crosby Textor said: “This so-called leaked document is a presentation of research given to scores of Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative MPs at the House of Commons by H5 almost three years ago, full copies of which were widely circulated at the time.

 

No mention that it was actually presented by a Labour friendly lobby group and not Crosby’s firm who merely did the research.

The BBC may have done a bit of a stealth edit:

This was from the original article this evening when I posted this latest piece at 18:47:

David Cameron faces fresh questions about his election strategist Lynton Crosby after it emerged his lobbying firm advised private health companies at the time of NHS reforms.

 [This is the original but taken from another site…..this was the report that was on the BBC website until late this evening when it was changed to the below]

And this is the new one…time stamped 14:59 (No link to old version…Wayback When Machine itself gets redirected to latest version):

David Cameron’s election strategist has denied Labour claims of a “shocking conflict of interest” over his lobbying firm’s work on behalf of private health companies at the time of NHS reforms.

The new version is quite different to the original but still makes no mention that it was a Labour leaning group that actually made the presentation….and is still stating this:

Lynton Crosby’s company told its client how to exploit perceived “failings” in the NHS in 2010, based on an opinion poll, the Guardian reported.

The economy may be picking up…not just a mere point here and there but some serious uplift maybe in the offing.

GDP figures will be released on Thursday….even the Guardian recognises this could be significant:

Something big happens this Thursday. As events go, the publication of a thin booklet of provisional numbers may sound about as dramatic as the shipping forecast. But the release of the GDP initial estimate for the second quarter of this year will have a huge impact.

The newspapers reported the stirring of strong growth of ‘green shoots’.

The Times did, the Telegraph did….twice:

UK economy showing “green shoots” as growth thought to double

British economy has turned a corner, senior Tories claim

Even the Guardian commented on it ….twice also..though only to throw cold water on the idea of course:

Economy: politics of the recovery

Ignore the hype: Britain’s ‘recovery’ is a fantasy that hides our weakness

Only the BBC has chosen to ignore this ‘good news story’….the Guardian’s ‘huge impact’ dismissed as unimportant.

Remember when the BBC thought GDP figures would show a ‘triple dip’….they were talking about it non stop days befoe the announcement…only to be disappointed…..though why the BBC continued to push the idea of a ‘triple dip’ recession is beyond me…as they already knew that there had been no ‘double dip’ recession….so how could you have a third?

It is all too obvious that the BBC has yet again decided to fix the narrative…hiding the good news whilst highlighting potential bad news……even if it might turn out to be good news in the end…a long run of negative stories even if eventually proven false can lay some useful groundwork in casting doubt and confusion into people’s minds.