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Question 1.  How do you spell ‘Labour got it wrong’?

Answer: ‘The Tories did it’

What is the missing word in this report  on the failure of PFI hospitals?

And the answer isn’t ‘Tory’.

Hospitals are either going to close or be put into ‘administration’ because their costs have spiralled out of control as they try to make the PFI payments.

What else is there?

Oh yes this: ‘The capital simply has too many hospitals.’

The BBC report down plays the PFI payments as causes of the huge losses and blames firstly the wrong type of patients, secondly not enough of the wrong type of patients anyway, and only lastly having to find huge sums of money to pay off Labour’s (yes that’s the word) PFI scheme….South London Healthcare cut costs by £47 million but still overspent by £40 million…by my maths that is a loss of £87 million in one year without the savings.  Money well spent by Labour trying to ‘buy’ an election or two.

So the truth about Labour’s NHS spending splurge that built vast numbers of hospitals is that there are too many hospitals, built in the wrong places, and designed for the wrong mix of patients.

Isn’t it ironic that it is Labour spending that has broken the NHS and not ‘Tory Cuts’?

Would the report have mentioned the Tories if they had implemented vastly improvident financial planning for the NHS and it had all gone very, very wrong?

I would like to think not…but somehow know better.

Update:

Yes it is the Tories fault……’could it be that the Tories ‘pointless’ reorganisation of the NHS has distracted them from the proper running of the NHS and delayed them taking action to prevent the meltdown?’  ….asks BBC news reader.

The BBC’s Black Ops co-conspirator has surfaced in the shape of the Guardian’s editor Alan Rusbridger going in for the kill whilst Murdoch is down…but still not out.

It is of course beautifully written…articulate and erudite…however it’s beautifully written tripe with a huge side order of self interested drivel.

The overwhelming case for plurality

This is not just about Rupert Murdoch – allowing media power to be concentrated in the hands of a few multibillionaires will impoverish society

Rusbridger claims this is not just about Murdoch but you’d be hard pushed to find any other target other than another fellow Australian ‘right wing’ business magnate mentioned in the piece.

Here is Rusbridger’s breakdown of the essential questions to ask about any media organisation:

In the UK, there is currently more choice, but the economics of news are undergoing a fundamental revolution, so nothing should be taken for granted. There are other powerful media organisations in the UK, including the BBC. In order to gauge the potential threat, try asking seven critical questions:

a) Does it have strong internal governance?

b) Is it effectively externally regulated?

c) Is it subject to, and does it comply with, the law?

d) Is it subjected to normal scrutiny by press and parliament?

e) Does it overtly try to exert public political influence?

f) Does it privately lobby over regulation or competition issues?

g) Does it actively work to expose the private lives of politicians or other public figures?

On such a scorecard, the BBC would score one out of seven – in the sense that only one of the issues, f), is engaged. News Corp would score seven.　

The BBC would only score one out of seven? Seriously? I think you could make the case quite easily that all seven questions apply in a negative way to the BBC to one extent or another.

News Corp has consistently used cross-subsidies to keep down the price of the Times…the Times is still selling at below the cost of production and is 20p cheaper than any of its direct competitors – a fact prominently advertised on its masthead every day.

When Murdoch bought the paper it was on its last legs…he pretty much not only saved the Times but the whole of Fleet Street…or Wapping as it now is.

Rusbridger claims this…‘The Guardian, an independently owned newspaper…’

Let’s remind ourselves of just who pays the bills at the Guardian…and it’s not through sales of the paper which by rights should have folded a long time ago….it is kept afloat by its big business partner….The Guardian has been consistently loss-making. The National Newspaper division of GMG, which also includes The Observer, reported operating losses of £49.9m in 2006, up from £18.6m in 2005.[78] The paper is therefore heavily dependent on cross-subsidisation from profitable companies within the group, including Auto Trader ….not to mention the large advertising revenue it receives from the BBC (a cross subsidy?) for its recruitment adverts.

And look here….The Guardian and its parent groups participate in Project Syndicate, established by George Soros, and intervened in 1995 to save the Mail & Guardian in South Africa, but Guardian Media Group sold the majority of its shares in the Mail & Guardian in 2002.

That’ll be George Soros the multi billionaire financier…..and of course he doesn’t mention the real killer for most news organisations…the BBC website, which is loathed by its commercial competitors who have to earn a living….and the BBC is in its own right a multi-billionaire media empire….something that has conveniently slipped Rusbridger’s notice.

So when Rusbridger says this:

Anything that concentrates power in the hands of fewer and fewer multibillionaire proprietors – whether corporations or individuals – will impoverish our society.

You know he is talking out of his backside….because he is just as much in league with big business and the media moguls running the BBC as any Murdoch or other media baron.

The Guardian of course allows the BBC to say things it can’t say itself. 

The link between the Guardian and the BBC should be investigated and broken…certainly BBC recruiting should be done through a wider range of news papers and other platforms…not only  stopping the cross subsidy to the Guardian but accessing a wider range of the population with hopefully  more broad and tolerant perspective on life.

Here’s something that should get the hearts all aflutter in the corridors of the BBC:

Peter Sands, the chief executive of Standard Chartered, had a breakfast meeting with the Prime Minister on Monday during which he is understood to have raised concerns over a British breakaway.

The warning was sounded amid growing calls from Conservative MPs for Britain to have an “in-out” referendum on the country’s ongoing membership of the European Union.

The disclosure that Mr Sands is concerned about the prospect of Britain leaving the EU underlines how the growing political speculation over the issue may be alarming the City. Such warnings may lead to senior ministers publicly being forced to rule out such a referendum.

The BBC don’t seem to have picked up on this story yet but my bet is that it will grab the headlines tomorrow and reserve itself a place on the Today programme.

Strange though when you think how often the BBC indicated the contacts between Murdoch and politicians were somehow illicit and ill advised…Murdoch clearly making them jump on command to further his commercial interests.

Not so long ago somebody said this:

Rupert Murdoch warned John Major to switch policy on Europe or his papers would not support him, the ex-prime minister has told the Leveson Inquiry.

Sir John recalled the exchange from a private meeting in 1997, which he said he had not spoken about before.

He said the discussion was one he was unlikely to forget. “It is not often someone sits in front of a prime minister and says to a prime minister ‘I would like you to change your policy or my organisation cannot support you’,”

So here we have one of the ‘evil’ bankers having a cosy breakfast  with Cameron and saying ‘don’t leave Europe or we’re ruined’  and no one turns a hair?

Suddenly the BBC’s opinion of bankers will change and the vested interests being pushed at a private meeting with the PM will be an essential lubricant for the free flowing successful continuity of the economy…ie growth…no doubt.

This is a fine illustration of the hypocrisy surrounding Murdoch…we all know there are meetings with all sorts of ‘lobbyists’ from all types of organisation with politicians…business, charity, media and very occasionally us the People get a look in.  The whole Leveson saga might have looked very different if the BBC had stood back and not used the opportunity to damage Murdoch as much as possible for its own commercial and ideological ends.

And as Guido points out the ‘outraged’ Steve Coogan seems to have got over it and gone to work for Sky taking  ‘The Murdoch shilling’…guess cash wins over principles.

Funny old world.

 ….or shoots itself in the foot.

The BBC has commissioned a report on the BBC’s coverage of the ‘Arab Spring’…its conclusions….

The BBC’s coverage of the Arab Spring was generally impartial but could have benefited from greater breadth and context, according to the BBC Trust.

It said the BBC should have done more to authenticate user-generated content (UGC), such as mobile phone footage taken by activists or bystanders.

The Trust praised “the considerable courage of journalists and technicians on the ground to bring stories to air”.

Its report described the BBC’s overall coverage as “remarkable”.

The BBC said it was pleased to see the report’s broad support for its coverage as a whole and the overall recognition of much “outstanding” and “remarkable” journalism.

Having read the article it would seem there was a fair bit missing from the BBC reports…as with its European and Israel/Palestine reports when again background and context were missing.  The BBC are quick to give some facts and then weave  a mythical tale out of them and offering it to us as the journalist’s ‘opinion’…without context and background we, ourselves, cannot judge the plausability of such opinion. 

However I think it fair to say that they also missed, or refused to acknowledge,  the essential truth of these events…that the Islamists were always going to be the main winners in this set of revolutions.

The other point might be just how ready the BBC are to publish this report and yet have steadfastly refused to publish the Balen Report.

There really must be something quite bad in that report…just who would be for the high jump if it ever came out? Perhaps once Mark Thompson vanishes off to his next highly rewarding private media enterprise we may find out.

Update:

From the Guardian report on this story:

Alison Hastings, chair of the BBC Trust’s editorial standards committee, said: “Achieving impartiality across a range of conflicting voices, all eager to command world attention, and where propaganda and fact are sometimes hard to distinguish, continues to present a unique set of challenges. It is remarkable and a credit to BBC News’s commitment and bravery that the Arab spring was covered in a way the audience found engaging, especially alongside a number of other major world news events like the Japanese tsunami.”

A challenge to be impartial?  Well only if you are offering opinions…otherwise it should be relatively simple…and making their own life simpler…to just report fact and if using uncorroborated information from unconfirmed sources then the viewer should be notified that the information is not completely reliable…but does provide some background and allow the viewer to judge for themselves.

And one more thing which will no doubt cheer up the Israelis…..Mortimer’s report into the accuracy and impartiality of the BBC’s coverage of the Arab spring, published on Monday, urged executives to limit Bowen’s travel “so that he would have more time to share his insight and provide them with overall strategic guidance”.

I’m certain the Israelis will be delighted to know that Bowen will be mentoring his replacements and instilling into them his insights and philosophy as well as guiding the whole BBC Middle East enterprise with a Svengali like mastery in his own inimitable style providing the viewers with an undoubtedly original if possibly unusual view of events.

Ever wondered why the BBC seemed so keen to take down Rupert Murdoch and News International?    Just part of the License Fund bargaining ploy…….

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said:

“The upshot of the Leveson revelations of the Murdoch influence and stranglehold on the UK’s political process is a desperate need for a re-evaluation of the BBC licence deal. This was made behind closed doors and under what we know to be Murdoch-driven pressure.”
The NUJ is campaigning against the 20 per cent cuts to the BBC which it claims are a result of the secret deal between Mark Thompson, the out-going director general, and Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, to freeze the BBC licence until 2017.

However perhaps we shouldn’t believe all we heard…never mind all the truth that we didn’t hear from Brown and Co..at the Leveson Inquiry…

Simon Kelner in the Guardian:

“Rarely in the field of public inquisition has there been such a knowledge gap between the investigators and the investigated. The Leveson inquiry has devoted huge amounts of time – and public money – to establish facts that were obvious to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the way newspapers work.”

Nick Robinson happy to tweet about coughs and football but misses the funny one when Labour’s Shadow Education Minister Kevin Brennan gets his numbers wrong:

‘Only 3 in 10 pupils, that’s 60% as I know the Secretary for State’s not very good at maths, got a good GCSE in 1997.’

However the BBC ever comprehensive in their approach to reporting the full story buried that gem in this half hour Parliamentary drone.

@bbcnickrobinson via Twitter

Bring back O levels, attack Jimmy Carr’s tax avoidance, defend the Falklands – attempt to reverse damage of omni shambles perchance?

O Levels….leaked by someone (libDem?) to Daily Mail.

Carr’s tax….brought up by the Times.

Falklands…Think that was the Argies making the running on that one.

So all in all poor show and rubbish analysis.

Bit of a ‘omnishambles’ of a tweet perchance?

Daphne Anson in the ‘Open Thread’ has brought this to our attention and reminds us of the highly selective narrative that the BBC adopts in relation to the Israeli struggle for survival….no doubt made all the harder with the election of a Muslim Brotherhood member as President of Egypt…who claims he will protect Christians and women (from whom?) but no mention of the Jewish neighbours.

The BBC “got it wrong” by not giving prominence to the massacre of the Fogel family by Palestinians in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, the outgoing director-general has admitted.

Mark Thompson was quizzed by Conservative MP Louise Mensch, who made various complaints to the BBC about the coverage, at a Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee hearing on Tuesday. Mrs Mensch said the BBC’s decision not to include the story as part of its rolling news coverage generated “the most reaction I have ever had in all my time in politics.”

“News editors were under a lot of pressure,”

‘

Israel Today agrees with Mr. Edelstein and the Fogel family that it is time for the world to see just how brutal is the threat that the Jews of Israel face, and to then realize which side is truly under siege.’

And this…..perhaps if the Jewish community had had the services of ‘38 Degrees’ they might have got some results…..

BBC head of north-west programming Aziz Rashid has apologised for snubbing Jewish leaders with a standardised reply to their complaint over the scrapping of the Jewish programme on Radio Manchester.

Mr Baigel had written to request a meeting “at which I am sure some understanding could be reached”. He complained that despite BBC consultation over its shake-up of local programming, at “no time was there any contact between Radio Manchester and any official of the Jewish community”.

Quite a few comments recently on the ‘Fast and Furious’ debacle in the US. I haven’t been following the BBC’s coverage of it too closely but having had a quick look here are some thoughts.

The BBC as a whole has reported the story, the latest being on the 20th June, both unattributed as to the author:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18524414

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18528798

However as noted in the comments the BBC’s U.S correspondents seem unusually quiet on the subject despite Mardell’s banner headline on his blog:

Come here for America in all its glory – my take on the twist and turns of the presidency, electoral races and life beyond Washington

Looking back a couple of months and there is still nothing.

Ironically when I googled ‘Mark Mardell Fast and Furious’ the latest result came from..yes..Biased BBC!

Here are the latest stories of note apparently: 

@BBCMarkMardell via TwitterRomney fails to answer his own question about illegal immigration

(Nothing on Obama failing to reveal documents on gun running to drug cartels) 

@BBCMarkMardell via TwitterThe Real Story Of Barack Obama http://t.co/js5ccLbl 

@BBCMarkMardell via TwitterAll the President’s women – fantastic piece on four women caught up in Watergate, in their own words http://t.co/11d9IACr

 And Katty Kay doesn’t do any better looking at football and women’s issues:

@KattyKayBBC via TwitterThe best bit of ESPN’s #Euro2012 coverage of the #GER #GRE game is when they switch to the shot of Merkel watching.

Astonishing really when you consider not only the highly sensitive nature of the subject with the U.S arming the highly violent and murderous Mexican drug cartels however ‘inadvertently but also the possible political fall out…and all with an election coming.

Not on the scale of the ‘Iran-Contra’ scandal but along similar lines….and the American Press seem to think the story merits some attention…calling it the next ‘Watergate’.

Perhaps Mardell is too busy polishing the Liberal Progressive narrative of Obama…. 

Obama supports same-sex marriage

President Barack Obama has been forced out of the closet. Few doubted that he was in favour of gay marriage but “don’t ask, don’t tell” had worked well enough up until now.

The media didn’t ask him. And he certainly wasn’t going to tell

One thing looks certain Mardell isn’t going to ask and Obama doesn’t want to tell.　

This is interesting though…a link that Mardell puts on his blog…presumably he only read the headline…It isn’t too flattering for Obama revealing him to be a man who invented his background in order to polish his credentials as a victim of the ‘Establishment’ and racism to pull in votes….

The Real Story Of Barack Obama

A new biography finally challenges Obama’s famous memoir.And the truth might not be quite as interesting as the president, and his enemies, have imagined.

The two strands of falsehood run together, in that they often serve the same narrative goal: To tell a familiar, simple, and ultimately optimistic story about race and identity in the 20th Century. The false notes in Obama’s family lore include his mother’s claimed experience of racism in Kansas, and incidents of colonial brutality toward his Kenyan grandfather and Indonesian step-grandfather. Obama’s deliberate distortions more clearly serve a single narrative: Race. Obama presents himself through the book as “blacker and more disaffected” than he really was, Maraniss writes, and the narrative “accentuates characters drawn from black acquaintances who played lesser roles his real life but could be used to advance a line of thought, while leaving out or distorting the actions of friends who happened to be white.”

His memoir evokes an angry, misspent youth; a deep and lifelong obsession with race; foreign and strongly Muslim heritage; and roots in the 20th Century’s self-consciously leftist anti-colonial struggle.

The New York Times’s Serge Kovaleski reported dryly in February of 2008, speculating that Obama had “added some writerly touches in his memoir to make the challenges he overcame seem more dramatic.”

Race, central to Obama’s later thought and included in the subtitle of his memoir, wasn’t a central factor in his Hawaii youth or the existential struggles of his young adulthood. And he concludes that attempts, which Obama encouraged in his memoir, to view him through the prism of race “can lead to a misinterpretation” of the sense of “outsiderness” that Maraniss puts at the core of Obama’s identity and ambition.

Across the ocean, the family story that Hussein Onyango, Obama’s paternal grandfather, had been whipped and tortured by the British is “unlikely”: “five people who had close connections to Hussein Onyango said they doubted the story or were certain that it did not happen,” Maraniss writes. The memory that the father of his Indonesian stepfather, Soewarno Martodihardjo, was killed by Dutch soldiers in the fight for independence is “a concocted myth in almost all respects.” In fact, Martodihardjo “fell off a chair at his home while trying to hang drapes, presumable suffering a heart attack.”

Dick Opar, a distant Obama relative who served as a senior Kenyan police official, and who was among the sources dismissing legends of anti-colonial heroism, put it more bluntly.

“People make up stories,” he told Maraniss.

I imagine that Mardell thought that the piece would draw the sting from the Obama critics if it was revealed Obama was an entirely unremarkable person in his youth….however it is what he has grown up into that most are interested in…and part of him is quite prepared to rewrite history for political gain…..’Hope and Change’?  He hoped you wouldn’t notice the changes to his life story!

A new Open Thread for a new week….same old subject!