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Did you read this profile of that other very modern BBC journalist Evan Davis. It’s the The Guardian, naturally…

‘Beneath the serious exterior of a BBC economics guru, Evan Davis reveals a fun, charming, exuberant side – and, perhaps, some interesting piercings Really, life is full of little surprises. Twelve hours before trotting off to TV centre to meet Evan Davis, I just thought of him as the bloke off the Ten O’Clock News …..And yet, there I am, half a day later, wondering if there’s a polite way to ask him if he has a pierced penis.

His in-house nickname at the BBC is Tinsel Tits on account of his – alleged – nipple rings, he never rolls up his sleeves on account of his – alleged – tattoo. And finally, and most rivetingly, according to various gay chatsites on the internet, and my friend in the BBC newsroom, he – allegedly – has a ‘Prince Albert’, so-called because ‘the Prince Consort is said to have had a ring attached to his penis which was then strapped to his thigh in order to maintain the smooth line of the tight trousers that were in fashion at the time’.

and Evan won’t have a word said against ‘the great Peter Jay’. He frequently quotes him – ‘his insight was that economics journalism is not about reporting the facts, there are too many facts’ .'”

The BBC certainly follows that particular thought process….

Here is a description of a BBC journalist……

‘What would Lord justice Leveson make of this journalist?

The most influential journalist in Britain, a man of boundless energy and conviction who breaks almost every rule imaginable. He has twisted the truth, invented quotations and doctored pictures….all he said in the name of the greater good. He fancies himself as Britain’s moral guardian who wants God to give him a big whip so that he can “go around the world and whip the wicked out of it.”

He sees himself, as well as having a fierce sense of his own importance, as the voice of the people, his job, he claims, is to interpret the aspirations of the lower, inarticulate classes to those in power. His team are a band of similarly minded people on a mission….visionaries and charlatans….he sometimes claims a fellowship with Jesus or Ghandi…a spiritual link that drives and inspires his journalism and zealous reforming fervour.

He seamlessly blends sensationalism with great indignation whilst being a curious mixture of conviction, opportunism and sheer humbug……”he twists facts, invents stories, lies and betrays confidences….but always with a genuine desire to reform the world!” ‘

Well OK, alright…. that was an adaption of a description of Victorian journalist William Stead by Dominic Sandbrook in the Sunday Times book review….it wasn’t Jim Naughtie, nor Richard Bacon, nor Jeremy Bowen or Richard Black, nor even Victoria Derbyshire. Assuredly….

However…..I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of those names or possibly many others hadn’t flickered across your mind as you read the piece.

I picked up on this very odd BBC article yesterday as did B-BBC contributor Alan. It’s all about making the grotesque events in Rochdale seem more “universal” and less linked to …., ahem, Islam. As Alan puts it ” The BBC rapid rebuttal service for Muslims goes into operation.”

What happened in Rochdale is apparently happening in Northern Ireland too…..

Rochdale-type abuse cases ‘occur in Northern Ireland’
Vulnerable young girls in Northern Ireland are being sexually exploited in the same way as those in a recent case in Rochdale, says Jacqui Montgomery-Devlin, the manager of Barnardo’s Safe Choices service which aims to protect children at risk.

Except that’s not true exactly is it? There are no Catholics combing the streets for vulnerable young Protestant girls to abuse because they are of a different religion….or vice versa. Yes, abuse does go on, but it is not ‘Rochdale-type’ abuse because in Rochdale a very particular section of the community was targeted….non-Muslims, especially white ones. The BBC seem to be trying to muddy the waters and defend the Rochdale abusers and deny the relevance of their religion in how they chose their victims.

Barnardos may be making an opportunistic appeal to keep the subject in the headlines and help it raise awareness and funds but the BBC are using Barnardos for their own political purposes, twisting the story to have an altogether different outcome. And this is not a new story after all…..in 2004 Barnardos were in the BBC news for exactly the same reason….

Children’s charity Barnardos is launching a new service in Northern Ireland aimed at protecting children from sexual exploitation.
Beyond the Shadows, launched on Friday, is aimed at children between the ages of 12 and 18. “It is important that Northern Ireland now has its own service as we are not exempt from this problem.”
　
So you have to ask why have the BBC made this the headline story on the NI page?

Is it possible they are working to lie to us and hide the truth?…..if it was BNP members doing the same to Muslims because they were ‘worthless and could be abused without a second thought’ due to their different culture or race you could guarantee that the BBC would be demanding the banning of the BNP and having endless exposes of their ‘culture’, lifestyles and beliefs.

And Trevor Phillips of the EHRC doesn’t take the BBC line……..

‘The racial ethnicity of the men involved in the sexual exploitation of children in Greater Manchester cannot be ignored, the chair of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has said. Trevor Phillips said it was “fatuous” to deny racial and cultural factors. Mr Phillips said he was worried about “closed communities” where people were afraid to speak out. “I worry that, in those communities there were people who knew what was going on and didn’t say anything, either because they’re frightened or they’re so separated from the rest of the communities that they think, ‘oh, that’s just how white people let their children carry on, we don’t need to do anything’,” he said.’

Well yesterday was a busy day for me and I thought I would share my experience with you. You see I was in the BBC studio and also on the BBC phoneline. The experiences contrasted vividly.

Firstly, I was on BBC NI “Sunday Sequence” discussing the local economy. My opponent was a hard left Marxist called Eamonn McCann and I thought the host was very even handed in how he treated us. You can listen to it here at 54mins in or so. I was happy enough with my treatment and doff the hat to the team concerned. The BBC can be fair when it chooses.

I was then on BBC5Live last night around 10.30pm. The topic for discussion was William Hague’s “Work harder” article here in the Telegraph. My opponent was a socialist of some hue who I have never heard of.  I got about 45seconds before the host, Stephen Nolan, interrupted me. From there on in it was obvious that Nolan was playing to the gallery about the “nasty” Hague making hard working people work even harder. I was talked over, I was interrupted and the only bit of satisfaction I got was when Nolan mentioned the “British work ethic” and I gently enquired why it was that if this was as intact as he suggested we needed to import hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to do the jobs Brits just won’t do. There was a bit of a silence to that. I got bored with the bias and told Nolan that he was misrepresenting what Hague had said. Nolan then read out his selected quotes, and turned the conversation to the Socialist who was advocating..yes, banks needing to lent more money and the State needing to provide economic growth through the public sector. That was the meme Nolan was pushing and I reckon that this was just a little ritual Tory bashing with me brought on as a bit player to try and defend Hague but not given the chance. As it happened, I disagree with much of what Hague said but never got the chance to clarify that either. (I believe in tax cuts, corporation  cuts for SMALL business and real Welfare cuts) Not a satisfying experience but I suppose one out of two ain’t bad, to update Meatloaf’s maths.

Via Bishop Hill (h/t Umbongo), here’s John Bell of the Iona Community on this morning’s Thought For The Day comparing bankers and climate sceptics to paedophile gangs and terrorist regimes.

Because we live in a broadly patriarchal society, we should not be surprised that the culture which brought about the worldwide financial meltdown was overwhelmingly masculine. But consider also that the people who are most vocal in denying human responsibility for the disastrous effects of climate change are mostly male.

The people who control factories of wage slaves in the developing world are almost exclusively men, as are the commanders of terrorist regimes. Leaders who threaten or declare war are mostly men as are those involved in paedophile gangs.

The fact that this was deemed acceptable speaks volumes about the BBC.

Very busy here so here’s an Open Thread until I get time to get back here.

Tonight Question Time comes from Oldham – which holds the record for the most Vauxhall Corsas per square mile. The name derives from Aldehulme; an Old Norse word meaning “Get the horses; we’re off”

On the panel: Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman MP who famously paid for her nanny on expenses, the Labour bloke who posted a picture of himself on the internet in his Y-fronts Chris Bryant MP, Liberal Democrat peer and serial troublemaker Lord Oakeshitt, Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and “Too Ugly For Television” Mary Beard, and the serial flip-flopping opinions-for-short-term-rent Daily Telegraph columnist Peter Oborne.

Your Moderators line-up consists of David Vance, David Mosque, TheEye and John Ward.

Question Time is followed by This Week. Andrew Neil has Louise Mensch, Alan Johnson and Charles *hic* Kennedy for company.

The lefty French journalist and Guardian political commentator Agnes Poirier looks at the consequences of the election of Francois Hollande in France, and what it could mean for Europe and the UK.

Quentin Letts gives a round-up of the Queen’s Speech week and the aftermath of last week’s elections.

The tedious Will Self looks at stigma, and will pontificate on gay marriage (presumably he’s in favour) and child sex grooming (presumably he’s against).

Biased BBC contributor Alan bravely visits the BBC’s print arm aka The Guardian.

“The BBC ‘in print’, ie The Guardian, does have a cartoon section…..though they call it ‘Comment is Free’…and being highly educated sophisticates for them a thousand words are better than a line drawing to arrange and display your finest thoughts for public consumption and adulation.

You could I suppose, if you were being mean, compare it to the freak shows in the American travelling circuses where people came to gawk at the odd creatures that put themselves on display. It’s always good for a laugh to peruse the CiF section…hopefully its not catching……or compare its ruminations to the fetid swamp gas that belches up out of the ground amusing and intriguing them with dancing ‘fairy lights’ or ‘will-o- the wisps’ before overcoming unwary travellers with the stench of rotting delusions.

Behavioural psychologists must have a field day between CiF and the stories in the Daily Mail that examine the rich variety of the human condition. CiF is gloriously irony free and demonstrates the complete isolation from the real world of most of its contributors.

Polly Toynbee is the Grand Dame of course and is allowed to pen her stuff on the main stage of the real paper…..but not only that…there are occasions when she is freed from the constraints of the printed page and the limitations that places upon her….especially the one that allowed her time to think ( assuming she does put some thought into it…scary though if she does) before pressing the ‘send’ button….however she freed herself from these constraints and went free range this morning giving her mouth a chance to outrun what little brain she possibly has as she leapt from the printed page onto the squawk box and R4’s ‘Today’ discussing the Queen’s Speech and of course the Coalition’s lack of a ‘plan for growth’.

Not to bore you with the ins and outs I’ll go straight for the kill….Toynbee’s solution to growth…..borrow oodles and oodles of money, spend it on stuff and then we’ll have growth to spend on more stuff….because spending on stuff generates growth of the economy.

Not sure how building a school on borrowed money generates growth…..it gives a builder a job….but his wages are paid for by borrowing…and that has to be paid back with interest…so how is that growth? Is that adding wealth to the economy? No.
Only exports generate real growth…ie new income….a closed economy merely circulates the same money and ‘stuff’.

And of course buying lots of ‘stuff’ is an evil Guardianistas and the BBC denounce as ‘Consumerism.’

Happily today we have a prime example of the attitude that prevails amongst the chattering classes who look down upon the rest of us…..

By Suzanne Moore in CiF:
‘It is all rather like fashion advice: just buy the timeless classic, don’t Primark yourself up. The ambition is to have less, just as it is to be thin. Excess is somehow trashy.
Those who cannot filter out what is important cannot afford professional declutterers. They cannot work out which stuff of all the stuff they have needs to be kept. They slide into chaos, trying to fill the emotional void but it cannot be plugged by any amount of material possessions. The categories between what is rubbish and what isn’t have broken down. Their stories revolt and fascinate us because we glimpse ourselves in these dysfunctional relationships to things. Even broken things. In times of austerity we sneer at those who have too much. Although all they have is rubbish.’

Isn’t that gloriously snobbish and elitist….and what you hear in between the lines whenever one of the BBC brigade sneer at the ‘dark side of consumerism’…..ie you and me buying the same stuff as them only cheaper….we’re trashy, too stupid to know better, dysfunctional with emotional needs we try to meet by buying cheap T-shirts from Primark or TK Maxx….but we make great TV for the chattering classes to sneer at in times of austerity….I’m sure Toynbee is ‘in this together’ with us.”

If only one had bought one really super quality, classy pair of sports shoe (trainer to you mate) one wouldn’t need to keep on yearning for the next ‘blingtastic’ Nike model…..and we’d have no more riots!

You don’t see rich people rioting after all do you…that’s because they buy quality first….and make it last.

Wonder what Toynbee does with all that money she earns from sitting on her backside pumping out Marxist tripe if she doesn’t spend it? “

A Biased BBC reader sent me this…

“I watched both Sky and BBC News yesterday to compare their respective ‘takes’ on the Asian rape gang subject. Both reported the sentences and both reported the Judges suggestion that there might have been racial overtones.

BBC interviewed the ex head of Dr Barnardos who reported that there was a known Asian dimension to the matter. And this had been known for some years.

However, Sky interviewed Mohammed Shafiq, the chief executive and a founding member of the Ramadhan Foundation. He made it clear that there is a problem specifically with Pakistani men who detest white girls and consider them useless. Whereas they look up to, and protect girls of their own race. He made it clear that he wanted his views to be spread far and wide, even though they would be unpopular with Pakistanis. He said that ‘Pakistanis need to stand up and be counted on this issue.’

The BBC must have had the same opportunity to report Mr Sadiq’s views, but desided not to do so. Yet this is clearly in the public interest. Once again we see the Corporation in fear of offending any Moslem minority regardless of truth. I have never quite understood what constitutes as hate crime. However, if Mr Sadiq is correct, then surely this atrocity should be considered as one.”