It seems a popular sport on the BBC these days to go after successful multinationals who use every legal trick to minimise the tax they pay here in the UK. Demonising the likes of Starbucks and Amazon has been an enthusiastic activity for the Broadcasting House comrades. The game is moving on however and now it is time to go after the “Big 4” Accounting firms who provide the financial advise to these multinationals and are thus “implicit” in the tax avoidance activity that so worries the political left and its broadcasting arm. So, I listened to the 7.39am item on Today when this was discussed and no less august a figure that Margaret Hodge was brought on to pronounce on these matters, effectively threatening the large Accountancy houses with the loss of government contracts if they do not stop helping large corporations. I guess Hodge does understand a few things financial, given her £1.8m shareholding in Stemcor and her lavish use of taxpayers money to fund her expenses. Such details are irrelevant to the BBC, it seems, as it does everything possible to present this harridan as the very model of financial probity.

Hi folks! Am back after a short break and just in time to hear the BBC chirping with delight at the problems Osborne is facing in his Autumn financial statement. I caught the Today broken earlier and their delight that Osborne was not going to hit some of his targets was visceral. There was the unholy trinity of Flanders, Robinson and Easton on at 8.10am to pronounce on the failures of the Coalition. How they miss the sunny uplands of the Labour years when the country was professionally steered towards bankruptcy.  The thing is, I have little sympathy for Osborne (who in my opinion has wimped out of making the really hard cuts to the State sector required) but when one remembers the kid gloves worn by the BBC  when Brown and Darling went a spending it is perfectly obvious a double standard in play here.

We all know the hypocrisy of the BBC…its well paid stars who criticise banker’s pay, the ‘hidden’ commercial side of the BBC that uses its state subsidy to crush commercial rivals, the criticism of ‘greed’ and ‘consumerism’…..and yet here they are, not satisfied with their BBC income, grubbing around for more.….for the odd speech or ‘appearance’…..
Jeremy Bowen
BBC Middle East Editor, Author & Television Presenter
Fee Group: £6k – £10k

Bowen seems to have the same billing as….
4 Poofs & A Piano
Jonathan Ross’ Former House Band on His Popular Friday Night Chat Show
Fee Group: £6k – £10k

Humphrys tops that….just….
John Humphrys
Journalist, broadcaster and television presenter (The Today Programme)
Fee Group: £11k – £15k

A different ‘Bowen’ smashes Jeremy’s pay limit……must be galling for the professional newsman to be out paced by an interior decorator…..

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen
One of The UK’s Most Established Interior Designers
Fee Group: £16k – £25k

A comedian gets even more…..

Graham Norton
Popular & Controversial Irish Chat Show Host
Fee Group: £25k +

And for comparison……a bike rider….

Bradley Wiggins CBE
Winner of the Tour de France (2012) and Olympic Gold Time-Trials (2012)
Fee Group: £50k +

And a computer whizzkid…
Bill Gates
Former Chairman & Chief Software Architect of Microsoft Corporation
Fee Group: £100k +

 
And the Left’s poster boy that never was….but who manages to rake in the money despite his political principles……
David Milliband
Labour politician and former UK Foreign Secretary
Fee Group: £16k – £25k

Here’s a supercharged piece of rhetoric from the pen of George Monbiot….calling for revolution to save the planet.

What’s interesting is that if you replace ‘Neo-Liberal’ with ‘BBC Liberal Left Elite’ it makes a whole lot more sense….the Left’s  ‘self hate’ of the West, the refusal to act against potent threats, the extreme political doctrine, the protection of elitist interests, the refusal to listen to the ‘People’, the determination to grab and hold onto power and influence, the suppression of democracy…..all symptoms of the Left as manifested in the BBC’s output…or as often as not in the omissions in what they broadcast.

Abridged to make sense of Monbiot’s words in the context of the BBC’s convictions…..

‘Humankind’s greatest crisis coincides with the rise of an ideology that makes it impossible to address.…..the world is in the grip of an extreme political doctrine….there could scarcely be a worse set of circumstances for addressing a crisis of any kind. Until it has no choice, the self-hating state will not intervene, however acute the crisis or grave the consequences. Neoliberalism protects the interests of the elite against all-comers.
But the self-hating state cannot act. Captured by interests that democracy is supposed to restrain, it can only sit on the road, ears pricked and whiskers twitching, as the truck thunders towards it. Confrontation is forbidden, action is a mortal sin.

What neoliberal theorists call shrinking the state looks more like shrinking democracy: reducing the means by which citizens can restrain the power of the elite. What they call “the market” looks more like the interests of corporations and the ultra-rich. Neoliberalism appears to be little more than a justification for plutocracy…..

Neoliberalism is not the root of the problem: it is the ideology used, often retrospectively, to justify a global grab of power, public assets and natural resources by an unrestrained elite. But the problem cannot be addressed until the doctrine is challenged by effective political alternatives.
In other words, the struggle…….cannot be won without a wider political fight: a democratic mobilisation against plutocracy.
But this is scarcely a beginning. We must start to articulate a new politics, one that sees intervention as legitimate, that contains a higher purpose…. that puts the survival of people and the living world above the survival of a few favoured industries. In other words, a politics that belongs to us, not just the super-rich.’

‘We must start to articulate a new politics’……yes, we must.  A new politics unadulterated by the malign influence of the BBC’s Leftist clique.

On 5Live Drive  (2 hrs 26 mins 40 secs) we had a report from the BBC’s Cairo correspondent Jon Leyne who told us that after the Muslim Brotherhood’s attempt to seize power and steamroller the ‘Revolution’  it had become ‘a very scary situation’ in Egypt….‘a very dangerous point’.

‘Police have fired tear gas in clashes with tens of thousands of protesters gathered near the presidential palace in the Egyptian capital Cairo.

Many of those gathered outside chanted slogans similar to those directed against the regime of former president Hosni Mubarak during protests in February 2011.’

How times change….events, dear Jeremy, events….and a willingness to admit that nothing has really changed….the Muslim Brotherhood were always likely to act in this way…….it is just that some, in the BBC especially, were not prepared to admit that…..which has a resonance for us in the West as we admit more and more Muslims into Europe but the ‘Establishment’ refuses to consider the consequences for the future……

I’m certain most people remember the BBC’s willingness to accept the benevolence of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Jeremy Bowen saying this:

‘The country’s only properly organised mass political movement outside the ruling party is the Muslim Brotherhood, and it would do very well in any free election.
Unlike the jihadis, it does not believe it is at war with the West. It is conservative, moderate and non-violent. But it is highly critical of Western policy in the Middle East.‘

I believe the BBC were forced to remove the word ‘moderate’ later on.

Michael Burleigh is not so impressed by either Bowen or the Muslim Brotherhood:

‘As usual, BBC television news coverage of events in Egypt is reduced to the spectacle of Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen getting teargas in his eyes. I’m surprised John Simpson hasn’t landed to share the experience. They could gasp, weep and wheeze in tandem. This low grade spectacle is what you and I pay £140 a year for.

Such ‘reporting’ tells us almost nothing about the fundamentals of a conflict which is hugely important since Egypt is a pace setter for trends across the Middle East.

The West is rightly fearful that the Muslim Brotherhood’s understanding of democracy consists of ‘one man, one vote, one time’.

The Muslim Brotherhood is remaining at arm’s length from the demonstrators. It wants elections as soon as possible, because it thinks its organisational strength mean it will win a majority.

It is being careful to stay on side with the army, with whom it has many links. It imagines that while the army preserves public order, it will be able to enact the sort of sharia regime it desires.

That is what is happening behind the drama of Mr Bowen’s tears.‘

Michael Weiss has more evidence of the BBC’s attitude:

‘On January 28, the BBC posted to its website an info-box summary of the Brotherhood’s orientation, which it unquestioningly described as “reject[ing] the use of violence and support[ing] democratic principles.”

An even more laborious attempt to sanitize the Islamist movement came from Middle East editor of the BBC News website Tarik Kafala, who published on February 20, “Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood promotes moderate path.” ‘

Michael Weiss has noticed something about BBC coverage that I  have noticed several times…that despite the ‘BBC’ knowing, for example, about the Muslim Brotherhood’s professed motives and intentions and possibly even investigating such characteristics the ‘frontline’ of the BBC, the reporters and the programme and news presenters, ignore, or don’t know about that, and carry on reporting as if on a different planet with an alternate view that doesn’t match the reality….. They only hear what they want to hear.

Here is Weiss’ summary of that attitude:

‘Given that the BBC has exposed the Brotherhood’s extremism in its broadcast programming, it’s remarkable that the BBC online editors remain wedded to a policy of presenting the organization in its own preferred terms.’

They only hear what they want to hear…and unfortunately that is all they want to tell us a lot of the time which distorts the perceptions of world events and therefore our reactions to them….which can have serious consequences….as in the predominantly anti-Israeli feeling, and all that entails,  engendered by pro-Palestinian reporting.

Why is the BBC wasting our money on JK Rowling’s socialist misery porn?

…asks James Delingpole.

That’s a question I also asked myself when I  read that the BBC are making a film based on Rowling’s latest effort…..Rowling publishes her book and the BBC are straight in there with their cheque book, and our cash, to produce a film that will no doubt be a ‘damning indictment’ of Cameron’s Britain…not the one produced by 13 years of Labour squandering and social destruction but  a Britain reduced to misery and ruin by Tory Austerity policies….the youth a lost generation, the old robbed of their pensions, the poor abandoned and grannies robbed to pay the millionaire’s  tax break.

James Delingpole has it sussed:

‘It’s no wonder the BBC has just forked out God knows how much licence-fee payers money for the rights to stage the TV version of The Casual Vacancy. Never mind that the book was universally panned by the critics for being schematic, depressing and unreadably dull. The reason we’re going to get it on our screens, whether we like it or not, is because its vision of the world conforms so perfectly with the BBC’s.’

The BBC have gone strangely quiet on this story from think tank ‘Cambridge Econometrics’:

‘Large-scale investment in offshore wind would generate more wealth for the economy and create more jobs than relying on gas-fired power plants, a report suggested on Tuesday.

Substantial deployment of offshore wind by 2030 would have only a marginal impact on electricity prices but would boost growth, cut dependence on gas imports and reduce emissions, the report for WWF-UK and Greenpeace said.’

Maybe they are being extremely careful as  the report was funded by WWF and Greenpeace…..it was on BBC Radio(no link) once this morning in an interview with Prof. Ekins from Cambridge Econometrics but haven’t heard a whisper since….and the BBC did mention the lobbyist’s funding…to Ekins’ embarrassment…..’Got to earn a living somehow‘.

The best their website comes up with is this  link to the story.

As Holmes might conclude the dog that doesn’t bark raises suspicions about the story’s merits…if even the ardently pro-AGW Harrabin & Co don’t bite is it any where near credible? …..Harrabin doesn’t even Tweet it.

Has the BBC got cold feet over global warming as the  warming has all but stopped for nearly 16 years as CO2 levels rise ever higher?

Probably not as Harrabin does come up with this nonsense ….read it and you get the distinct impression of a knife being slowly shoved through Osborne’s ribs by Harrabin…..the sole intent of the piece is to rubbish the ‘dash for gas’ and suggest Osborne has been swayed by malign influences…….

Here Harrabin is suggesting that the public outcry over wind farms will be repeated over Fracking….he hopes…..

‘DECC said it was “ridiculous” to suggest that two thirds of England would be fracked, adding that the British Geological Survey was still investigating how much shale gas might realistically be exploited.

But with constituents of some rural areas complaining that they do not like wind farms, the prospect of gas drilling in nearby fields may prove equally politically sensitive.’

His personal take:

roger harrabin ‏@RogerHarrabin

Don’t want to be waved at by windmills? Why not feel the earth move with shale gas? We all like energy so long as its nimby…

Harrabin’s description of a Greenpeace film obtained covertly is interesting…..a ‘sting operation’…’secretly filmed’…..funny how he doesn’t say that the film or ‘footage’ was ‘stolen’ or obtained in any way illegally or immorally….unlike his response to the CRU emails being hacked…or stolen, as he and his BBC colleagues like to call it.

‘Greenpeace claim that the chancellor has been over-influenced on the issue by his father-in-law Lord Howell, who was a government energy minister before climate change was a concern.

In a sting operation Greenpeace secretly filmed Lord Howell warning that the UK was dependent on gas from Qatar so that, “if jihadis took over Qatar we would be up shit creek.” ‘

Harrabin is in Doha at moment enjoying the sun at the climate conference….here is an interesting tweet:

roger harrabin ‏@RogerHarrabin

Bumped into a veteran #climate campaigner in #cop18. He said talks so far from scientific reality, its better to allow meeting to collapse.

Wonder just whose ‘scientific reality‘ we are talking about?

That’s right 6 Mouseketeers…count ’em…one, two, three…..er…maybe four…

The BBC’s own arithmetic doesn’t add up……Do you remember being asked abot animal testing by the BBC?…I wasn’t.

So where do they get the figure of 1/3 of Briton’s wanting a test ban?….the same figure has been used on news bulletins unqualified by the fact that the figure was derived from a poll of a mere 1,000 people……

Animal test ban favoured by a third in BBC poll

Almost one in three (31%) adults say the government should ban all medical research experiments on animals, according to a poll.

The poll, on indications of public attitudes to animal testing, was commissioned for BBC Radio 5 Live.

The BBC admits that ‘ComRes interviewed 1,000 adults by telephone between 30 November and 2 December 2012.’  but that’s not what the title says nor the first paragraph…the meaning is entirely different.

The BBC are going for broke  with this ‘research’ making it into a big story with Derbyshire covering it on her programme today.

Couldn’t bring myself to invest time to listen to her….so can’t say there is an ‘agenda’ either way….but the way the figure is presented suggests soemone has one…..

..In fact I’ve just done my own poll to find out whether people think the BBC have an agenda here…and 100% of them believe they do….from my poll of one person………thanks to Mike sat next to me.

So conclusive proof of BBC bias.

Hi folks! Still away but posting this for your completion…

Paul Mason continues the class war…..

Paul Mason ?@paulmasonnews
Leveson day semiology: men in ties w plummy voices defending “freedom of press”; victims and relatives rarely given same status of voice

 
Really? Thought that was what Leveson was all about.…and hardly off BBC.

When do the people get a say on immigration or Europe or Islam on the BBC?