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Some bits and pieces to chew on….

1. I think it was Rachel Burden on 5Live yesterday who claimed that the Greeks voting to keep austerity and the bailout package was an illustration of their belief and confidence in the Euro itself and the European Union. Really? It’s not the runt of the European litter clinging desperately to the German milch-cow’s teat and hoping to do so for life then?…which is what will happen…can anyone see these ‘loans’ being paid off?

2. Victoria Derbyshire states boldly today that austerity has definitely caused growth to stop and asks a Government minister to explain himself…..however you define growth and GDP spending borrowed money is not growth…there might be more money in the economy…for now…but it has to be paid back…with interest later. Stick to English Lit. Vicki. No idea why we have to have austerity and who caused that problem in the first place?

3. How about the timing of the GP’s report on hospitals delaying operations because of ‘cuts’? Rather fortuitous timing with the GP ‘strike’ this coming Thursday…not saying it was timed to try and make the Coalition look bad but the BBC seemed happy to grasp the proffered opportunity that it gave to talk a great deal about cuts and the ‘disappearing’ NHS. Maybe the GPs will get a more sympathetic hearing from the Public….they hope.

4. Niall Ferguson gave his first Reith Lecture today…..the only time during the lecture that the audience reacted was when he said that the best thing American youth could do was to join the Tea Party….large intake of breath from audience….how many work for the BBC?

5.  I just know someone will comment on the Iron Cross….Life’s too short to photoshop something else in….and the BBC are happy to tell you that should the Euro fail the Fascists are going to take over….so in a way it’s appropriate…the BBC’s careless pro Euro talk has helped keep the Euro afloat and now it could sink us all.  Ironic really….that it is the über Liberal BBC which has laid the foundations for a Right Wing coup…apparently.

New Open Thread as last one has slipped down the order.

Sarah Palin lays into the Old Media who refuse to report the truth.

35 minutes of ‘swivel eyed Rightwingnut’ truth to power.

‘Every citizen can be a reporter…taking on the powers that be.’

There must be a subversive at the BBC, a Right winger who likes to throw the odd spanner in the works of the Leftwing steamroller that is crushing all opposition before it.

The BBC have booked Niall Fergusson as its Reith Lecturer….The first of Prof Niall Ferguson’s 2012 Reith Lectures will broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday, 19 June at 09:00 BST.

In an article in the Sunday Times (pay up or miss out) he tells us that ‘The Empire was built on borrowing, but now our (Brown’s?) profligacy has created a timebomb that threatens to ruin future generations’.

He attempts to explain the West’s decline by looking at the reasons for its past success. Personally I believe Socialism is the root of the decline….an ideology which seeks to feather our nests but without paying the cost in terms of work…..they demand more pay but do not in return produce more goods…there is no efficiency, no rise in productivity….it has priced us out of the manufacturing market.

That is by the by, what is interesting in terms of the BBC and its attitudes is what else he says in a BBC ‘Viewpoint’…..

If young Americans knew what was good for them, they would all be in the Tea Party.

In the good, but less likely scenario, the proponents of reform succeed, through a heroic effort of leadership, in persuading not only the young but also a significant proportion of their parents and grandparents to vote for a more responsible fiscal policy.

[We must] alter the way in which governments account for their finances.

The present system is, to put it bluntly, fraudulent.

Public sector balance sheets can – and should be – drawn up so that the liabilities of governments can be compared with their assets.

Here I disagree slightly…it should also take into account realistic forecasts of future growth, either up or down…Brown based his spending on optimistic growth projections….he failed to take into account ‘events dear boy, events’.

But there is also this little aside from a BBC author, note the last bit:

Defining Government Deficit

A government deficit occurs when it spends more money than it receives in income.

Cyclical deficit occurs when the economy weakens during a recession and government income falls because of shrinking tax revenues and increased welfare spending.

When the economy improves, the cyclical deficit turns into a cyclical surplus.

Structural deficit is different from cyclical deficit as it occurs no matter how strong the economy is.

It is debt that has come about as a result of government borrowing. Countries are judged on their ability to pay off this debt on the basis of national debt relative to GDP.

If a country’s debt-to-GDP ratio gets too high, investors will worry that the government will default on the debt. However, it is debt governments can try to control through lower borrowing, spending cuts and higher taxes.

It seems somebody didn’t get the BBC memo….‘Plan B for Borrow’ is to be sold to the Public.

Murdoch’s Leveson statement that Brown phoned him and declared war on his company has been derided by the BBC who like to suggest he is lying….and claim John Major’s statement backed up Brown.

Whatever the phone records show Mandelson says there definitely was a phone call…and other calls Brown often made to ‘vent his feelings’….

Mandelson: ‘There would have been a number of [phone calls]— I mean, Gordon did not hold back in talking to Rupert Murdoch. He did telephone him, he had every right to do so, and when he thought that he was being traduced, as he did, by the Sun, he wanted to give vent to his feelings about that.’

Jay: Okay. You say in your book that Mr Brown was stunned by the news that the Sun had shifted allegiance, and that this grew greater, as it were, over the forthcoming weeks. Was it your assessment that Mr Brown was personally embittered by this?

Mandelson: I think he was greatly upset by it. I don’t think he should have been surprised, but he took these things very personally.

And as for John Major it seems even he may not be quite as honest as he is portrayed…apparently Truth is a grey area for Major

Why mention all this? Because the BBC, happy to call Murdoch a liar, has taken to its bosom its old enemy, the arch political spinner who used to be the ‘liar who took us into an illegal war’…step forward one Alistair Campbell.

The Today website has Campbell as its main story highlighting his claim that Murdoch rang Blair to urge him to go to war quickly….

‘Tony Blair’s former director of communications, Alistair Campbell, has said Rupert Murdoch telephoned Downing Street before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, to warn of the dangers of delaying Britain’s involvement.‘

Mind you he says he did not actually hear the call himself but he did see Blair’s irritated reaction to the call.

The BBC were happy to take his word that Murdoch made such a call and said such a thing.

It was therefore Murdoch’s fault that we went to war.

Ignoring the fact that it was Blair’s policy to be a ‘Liberal interventionist’…ie go to war to impose democracy on ‘tyrants’ and that it was Blair himself who persuaded Bush to go down this road and not be isolationist…. Blair was already totally convinced about the need to go to war and had already committed Britain, subject to Parliamentary approval, to go to war in Iraq….remember the ‘Downing Street Memos’?

Text of the Christopher Meyer Letter – March 18, 2002 memo from Christopher Meyer (UK ambassador to the US) to David Manning (UK Foreign Policy Advisor) recounting Meyer’s meeting with Paul Wolfowitz (US Deputy Secretary of Defense).

‘1. Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, came to Sunday lunch on 17 March.

2. On Iraq I opened by sticking very closely to the script that you used the Condi Rice last week. We backed regime change.’

And…Blair and Bush ‘agreed’ on Iraq regime change in private April 2002 Crawford Ranch meeting.

So Blair was fully committed already…and Murdoch phoning sometime in March 2003 could hardly have been influential as the war began on March 20th. It can be assumed the decision to go to war was already pencilled into Bush and Blair’s diaries long before then.

In other words it perhaps could be suggested with some confidence that Campbell’s claims are merely an extension of Labour’s war against Murdoch and an attempt to smear him by association with the Iraq War….note Justin Webb’s attempt to tie Murdoch in with the ‘Neo Cons’ and US Republican Party….‘was he doing someone elses work…lobbying for the ‘Right’?‘

Campbell says ‘I am not saying remotely that there was anything like collusion.’…but he is just ‘putting it out there’…no smoke without fire….the Spinner knows how minds work.

Not only is this a piece of black propaganda but it illustrates the mendacity of the BBC who opt to call Murdoch a liar but present the slippery tongued Campbell’s word as Gospel when it suits their agenda.

A three line comment in Campbell’s diary has been spun into a major story about Murdoch’s attempting to influence government policy (and thereby lying  at Leveson about never asking politicians for anything), and being in league with US Neo-Cons and lobbying on their behalf.

A more ridiculous story it would be hard to find….unless you listen to the Today programme regularly…..though the recent ‘Royal Jubilee Bus Farce’ still must top the bill for most ridiculous story ever to have graced a prime time current affairs programme.

The BBC’s favourite ‘turbulent priest’ Giles Fraser has said something that might be construed as islamophobic in the corridors of the BBC…
“A week before the Occupy thing started I preached at St. Paul’s about violence,” said Fraser. “I’m very exercised, and always have been, by the way the Church justifies violence to itself.
That sermon is really about [the French anthropologist] René Girard. He argues that religions are sublimated forms of violence—and religion is a bad word for him. Scapegoating the one who’s different unites the community, and it’s the priest who sanctifies this, who launders society’s violence. For Girard, Jesus is the supremely anti-religious figure, because he sees the violent secret that binds people together. Above all he sees the role that religious professionals play in concealing and reinforcing it and that is why they hate him. Jesus is saying, in effect, ‘Those ones you’re telling to go home, those ones you’re pushing around, those ones you kill—they are me. That old person who natters on, the gay boy, the foreigner. The one who’s different.’ ”

From that you could take it that ‘Christianity’, the religion of Jesus Christ, is a religion of Peace, turning the other cheek and the meek inheriting the earth and all that good stuff.

Islam of course may well be the religion that is a classic example of sacredly endorsed violence sanctified by the supposed Revelations of a ‘merciful and forgiving’ God…..

Could any Muslim argue with that description? It seems they are unlikely to, in fact some revel in the violent nature of Islam…..

‘We are not a pacifist religion. We don’t turn the other cheek. We hit back.’
Dr. Kalim Siddiqui, director of the Muslim Institute in London

Surely the BBC will not be happy that their latest anti-Establishment poster boy has been so Islamophobic?

The Today programme yesterday wished Enoch Powell, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth, a happy birthday.

Well, nearly.

Justin Webb says…‘We’re going to wish him, well, a qualified happy birthday.’

…because you know what a racist hate monger he was….

Justin Webb was very insistent that Powell was a racist.

No he wasn’t….Powell made the clear and powerful point that ‘multi-culturalism’ doesn’t work….not because he had antipathy or hatred of any other race but because it is an inevitable consequence of human nature that people of similar background, culture and race will look to group together…and then seek to further their own group interests, and that cannot be denied.

It is fact and anyone who states that fact should not be labelled ‘racist’ ….. Webb has so easily taken on the language of the race ‘hustlers’ probably because that suits his own outlook on life rather than rigorously asserting the evident correctness of Powell’s argument.

Immigration is about race, culture and identity but in the main it is about numbers and the affect mass immigration has on the native population…who have not been given the opportunity to say whether this is what they want…and now post-effect…they are still denied a voice, being branded ‘racist’ by the likes of Webb for raising legitimate concerns.

Over the course of the Leveson Inquiry we have been gravely informed of the deleterious effect of the Murdoch’s malign influence on, and easy access to, politicians.

What the BBC seems reluctant to admit is that all media outlets have access, and demand that access, to the Government in order to lobby in their own interests.

Here is just one (I’m sure there must be many, many more) example of that:

‘Former Beeb boss Greg Dyke says the BBC never curried favour from politicians. ‘I took a decision to stay as far away from them as possible,’ he declared on Question Time. Funny that, as I recall his office begging for a meeting with then Tory leader William Hague during a rough patch for him at the BBC, which was reluctantly agreed to. At the end, the DG asked me if there was a back door he could use to avoid being spotted. What a roaring hypocrite.’

We are also informed that it is the power of the ‘Press’, ie the Newspapers, ie Murdoch, that has had such a detrimental effect on the relationship between politicians and the media…and therefore what the Public get to hear and read.

However Martin Ivens in the Sunday Times begs to differ offering a different perspective…one that the BBC has noted but failed to associate with its own actions…that of the damaging influence of 24 hour rolling news on political coverage and analysis.

Ivens says:  ‘After Margaret Thatcher was ousted, her Conservative and Labour successors became obsessed with the 24-hour cycle of rolling news, to the detriment of a wider strategic vision.  it is important to keep the newspapers on side, but a sense of proportion is required.  The politicians have got the power.’

That last point is important….because both Brown and Major claimed they were at the mercy of Murdoch and his battalions….a question that needs asking….is that really true?  The BBC won’t be delving too far down that path as the answer will not suit its narrative of an over powerful Murdoch Press that now needs to be reined in and perhaps an Empire broken up.

So it would seem that it is not just the newspapers but in fact 24 hour news services such as the BBC’s that put the pressure on politicians to always have ‘something to say’ and therefore encouraging them to make ever more either utterly inane and anodyne statements or to make some outrageous claim that will be swallowed by a media desperate to fill the time and generating artificial controversies that can be endlessly picked over.

Much like the Leveson Inquiry itself which despite the huge distate about the hacking of Milliy Dowler’s phone is of little interest or concern to the Great British Public who would have happily gone on buying the News of the World had it survived.

Leveson is merely the cumulation of Labour’s, the BBC’s and the Guardian’s ideological and commercial ‘War’ on Murdoch.

Gordon Brown may have been lying through his teeth, along with many others, but he seems to have triumphed….like another Scotsman, Lord Lovat, chief of the Frasers in the 18th century, he has imposed his malign influence upon events and has indeed triumphed because his account has been upheld and broadcast worldwide without challenge or question by the BBC, giving him the credibilty and gravitas that he does not merit…Brown has been lent a ‘Grandeur to his villainy’ by a BBC intent on destroying Murdoch and his media organisation.