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That old familiar sinking feeling, courtesy of BBC morning headlines concerning Rowan Williams’s forthcoming Easter address.

According to the BBC, he was going to say: ‘Although the persecution of the Jews justifies the existence of Israel,  harassment of the Palestinians at Israeli checkpoints must stop.’

Updated wording reversed the order. Now harassment of the Palestinians headed the announcement, while Israel’s existence trailed at the tail end.
Later still, Israel was wiped off the face of the announcement and the Archbish’s retirement address was to be all about easing the everyday lives of the Palestinians.

Anyone would think he was about to deliver a sermon on behalf of the PSC. But was he? The press releases hardly mention the Middle East. The Telegraph, for example only says: “The religious leader will touch on the conflict in the Middle East.”, and even in the BBC’s own web article any reference to the topic is buried, and the tenor of that is completely different, more a plea fro God to bring peace to the region than a potpourri of anti-Israel innuendo as per those  headlines.

Who, I wonder chose to give such prominence to this segment of an otherwise, if I may say so, somewhat dull-sounding sermon, in the Easter Sunday  headlines?

Rowan Williams is well known for making foot in mouth announcements, which might pass unremarked if it weren’t for the BBC’s mischievous habit of cherry-picking misguided molehills and making them into populist mountains.
I haven’t heard his speech. But if it’s anything like what’s predicted in the written press, i.e. about Christianity and young people, well, why must the BBC gratuitously stir up more anti-Israel feelings?

Biased BBC’s Alan notes;

“The Church has always been astonishingly wealthy with vast resources from its taxes upon the people and income from its large estates, more than enough to build the fabulous architectural triumphs of the Cathedrals. It might therefore be something of a moral dilemma for someone like Giles Fraser, the once Dean of St Paul’s, and BBC favorite, to lecture us on the sin of being rich.  After all he has jumped ship from his previous employ to join with the new, equally rich, Priesthood of the Liberal Media.

I mention this merely because whilst watching (ironically enough) the BBC’s ‘How to build a cathedral’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00b09rb/How_to_Build_a_Cathedral/) they quoted St Bernard of Clairvaux.

Not only does St B. inform us that concerns over the merits of financial wealth as opposed to spiritual riches were of major concern many centuries ago but that the Church is certainly not immune from criticism.

‘The church is resplendent in her walls and wanting in her poor. She dresses her stones in gold and lets her sons go naked. The eyes of the rich are fed at the expense of the indigent. The curious find something to amuse them and the needy find nothing to sustain them.’

The BBC et al have the bit between their teeth at present about wealth and inequality as if it was a new dilemma…..was it Andrew Marr who told us the Victorians were in a more equal society than we are now? You must be kidding….Dickens anyone? Nothing like a stunning, wilful blindness to reality when you have a point to make.

I link to St Bernard’s quote because I’m pretty fed up with sanctimonious rubbish about the ‘new’ inequality and super rich in society and it’s also just a brilliant piece of scathing vilification that no well paid Guardian columnist could ever aspire to…..intellectually nor artistically.

Bernard was the chief spokesman for Cistercian values. Monastic life was to be austere and disciplined. Food, buildings and even worship were to be kept simple. Monasteries were to be built away from population centres, thus shielding the brothers from distraction and excessive contributions.

BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX: APOLOGY

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/bernard1.asp
‘I say nothing of the enormous height, extravagant length and unnecessary width of the churches, of their costly polishings and curious paintings which catch the worshipper’s eye and dry up his devotion, things which seem to me in some sense a revival of ancient Jewish rites. Let these things pass, let us say they are all to the honor of God.

Nevertheless, just as the pagan poet Persius inquired of his fellow pagans, so I as a monk ask my fellow monks: “Tell me, oh pontiffs,” he said, “what is gold doing in the sanctuary?” I say (following his meaning rather than his metre): “Tell me, poor men, if you really are poor what is gold doing in the sanctuary?”

We know that the bishops, debtors to both the wise and unwise, use material beauty to arouse the devotion of a carnal people because they cannot do so by spiritual means.

I shall speak plainly: Isn’t greed, a form of idolatry, responsible for all this? Aren’t we seeking contributions rather than spiritual profit?

The church is resplendent in her walls and wanting in her poor. She dresses her stones in gold and lets her sons go naked. The eyes of the rich are fed at the expense of the indigent. The curious find something to amuse them and the needy find nothing to sustain them.”

Good Lord! If we aren’t embarrassed by the silliness of it all, shouldn’t we at least be disgusted by the expense

Interesting post here over on Guido’s site that is well worth a read. In essence, BBC Newsnight favouring the Green Party over UKIP for the Mayoral debate this evening. Shame on them, again. Well done to Guido for flagging up this blatant bias.

Interesting piece on the BBC here concerning the emerging threat from Al Queda in AFRICA, and how this could increase the Jihad threat in Britain.

British youths from African communities could become radicalised as al-Qaeda looks to Africa to build its strength, the Rusi think tank has suggested. It says such a development would pose new challenges for UK and other Western intelligence services. It warns of potential for new or greater radicalisation among British youths from the Somali and other east and west African communities.

The problem lies in the first sentence. Who are these “British youths from African communities”, exactly? Is this a coy way of defining the vast number of Somalis illegally resident in this country? I was impressed the way the BBC produces an article on Al Queda without once mentioning the word Muslim once. (Islamist does make a brief appearance, hard to avoid when talking about Al Shabab I suppose) It’s as if these “youths” that may be radicalised – of the Pakistani, North African and Indian communities in Britain –  could be of any religious background.

This is a lengthy post but I fully commend you read all of it below the fold because it is a wonderful dissection of the current BBC series fronted by Professor Diarmaid Macculloch which aims to subvert everything we know about being British. Biased BBC’s Alan writes…

‘It is only now at the beginning of the 21st Century that history is being rewritten.’

The Story of Maths – 2. The Genius of the East.
Oxford professor Marcus du Sautoy on the BBC.

History is indeed being rewritten…by the BBC.
Stalin’s propaganda chief Willy Munzenberg: “All news is lies and all propaganda is disguised as news.”

The BBC has broadcast what must be one of the ugliest and nastiest pieces of racist polemics outranking anything you might think the BNP could publish….a nastiness that is hidden and given a respectability by the veneer of BBC authority and backed up by the appearance of profound, credible scholarship.

It is a highly sophisticated and polished propaganda drive worthy of Goebbels or Willie Munzenberg, driven by the politically correct imperative to support and excuse mass immigration. It is aimed at the very heart of this nation with the sole intention of destroying national identity and sense of belonging and unity that has for so long held this nation together and provided the world with political, scientific, industrial and social progressive ideas that have made the world a better place.

‘Everything you know about British ancestry is wrong.’

The BBC has put together a three part programme with the intent to challenge every notion you had about what it means to be English and to undermine your very beliefs and identity. Even at face value it is clearly designed to shake a few convictions and beliefs but the deeper meaning is more startling, shocking in its aims and dangerous in its intended consequences. It fully intends that you no longer believe in your own national identity, your ethnicity, your own culture and history.  Continue reading →

B-BBC’s Alan observes;

Funny how the BBC can always remember this from 20 years ago in 1991 from Norman Lamont:

‘Rising unemployment and the recession have been the price that we have had to pay to get inflation down. That price is well worth paying.’ 

but have so far managed to ignore this from Labour:

‘One of Ed Miliband’s closest allies has described rising unemployment and inflation as ‘an orgasmic wet dream‘ for the Left. Jon Trickett, Labour spokesman for the Cabinet Office, claimed some Left-wingers were celebrating the rise in joblessness, as well as the public sector wage freeze and changes to civil service pensions.

Mr Trickett spoke at the launch of a group called Winning Labour, which promotes a bigger role for the trade unions inside the party. He told the meeting at Leeds Civic Hall in July last year: ‘We’re living through amazing times. For anyone on the Left… it’s like an orgasmic wet dream.  ‘Think about it: Capitalism in crisis again; unemployment’s on the rise and so is inflation.’ ‘

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2123767/Miliband-aide-filmed-saying-unemployment-inflation-grubby-dream-Left.html#ixzz1qrm3wo9o
and curious how ‘out of touch’ politicians are such a new phenomenom…or are they?:

‘There is something wrong with the way in which we make our decisions. The Government listen too much to the pollsters and the party managers. The trouble is that they are not even very good at politics, and they are entering too much into policy decisions. As a result, there is too much short-termism, too much reacting to events, and not enough shaping of events. We give the impression of being in office but not in power. Far too many important decisions are made for 36 hours’ publicity.’

Norman Lamont again in 1993.

#bbctbq Sun BBC1 at 10: Tommy Robinson, Dr Matthew Goodwin, Mo Ansar, Jamie Bartlett on; Is Britain complacent about the far right?

Sounds like fun and please read DB’s post below to understand the significance of Mo’s presence.

The above quotes are taken from the Twitter feed of a guest on tomorrow’s edition of The Big Questions where one of the topics will be: “Is Britain too complacent about the far right?” The same guest also pondered a conspiracy at the highest level of French government following the recent Toulouse murders. The views of a wacky far-right nutter dug up by a BBC researcher?

No, not exactly. A friend of the presenter, actually.

With opinions like that he should be able to find some common ground with the EDL guest.

That would be the “poor soul” who murdered seven people, including three children, and filmed himself doing so.

Mo is very good at promoting himself as a go-to media Muslim, but he also has the added help of an unofficial publicist working on his behalf:

The Big Questions presenter even shares his more private opinions with Mr Ansar (for those unfamiliar with Twitter, “dm” = Direct Message, i.e. for the recipient’s eyes only) :

And it looks suspiciously like they’re coordinating ahead of tomorrow’s programme:

That doesn’t seem right (pardon the pun).

UPDATE. Nicky Campbell says he was just discussing “logistics” with Mo Ansar in his tweets today. Here are a couple more screengrabs –  @rynascribe is Nick Ryan, author of a book on right-wing nationalists called Homeland. I get a sense something more was going on here than train times and hotel reservations.

(Note – when I first posted the tweet which begins “Yesterday reports were of a Neo Nazi…” I had cropped out the time when the tweet was sent. I’ve now updated it to include the time so it can be seen that the “Sarkozy knows no limits” tweet followed immediately after.)

Let me get this straight. The Unite trade union which has been behind the threat of the great petrol strike has had a great week. The BBC has wilfully ignored the fact that it was Unite, not the Coalition Government, which has fanned the flames of panic , by implying that it MIGHT strike over the Easter holiday. Yes, the Government could have handled it better, and I think Frances Maude is generally woeful, but it was Unite that initiated the possible crisis. They got off largely scot-free on this central issue, using the “Health and Safety” excuse without any real detailed query from the State Broadcaster.  Having milked the publicity and seen the inept Government twist on the media generated wind, Unite now calls the strike off, at least for the moment. The Government then changes its advice to motorists  and the BBC screams this latest change as major news. Also note that it also seeks to once again link the woeful Maude to the woman in York who suffered severe burns while decanting petrol in her kitchen. It’s as if the BBC is the broadcasting arm for Unite. Surely not.

Why is ITV left to do the investigating concerning Operation Motorman and the broader aspects of the phone hacking scandal?

B-BBC contributor Alan notes…

“Can it be that the BBC are solely intent on one target…Murdoch and News International?

‘Motorman’ and its indications of widespread illegal practises throughout the newspaper industry has been available for everyone to see for a long time.

And yet the BBC showed no interest in its contents….perhaps because the Guardian, in the shape of the ‘Observer’ is also implicated.

http://www.itv.com/news/2012-03-28/do-not-publish-do-not-publish-do-not-publish/?tw_p=twt
http://www.itv.com/news/2012-03-28/backgrounder-do-not-publish-do-not-publish/
‘ITV News has been given unique access to perform a detailed analysis of information seized from private investigator Steve Whittamore in 2003 by investigators acting for the Information Commissioner’s Office. Mr Whittamore specialised in obtaining information on behalf of clients in the media…..information appears to have been obtained illegally from organisations who have either been tricked into handing it over, or from a corrupt source within the organisation. The organisations concerned are the Police, the DVLA, BT, and mobile network providers.’