WHY PAKISTAN?

Why Pakistan?

Some of you have questioned what Pakistan had to do with a post about Israel.

The fact you have to ask that answers your own question in a way….the BBC is nowhere near as concerned with the ‘illegal creation’ of Pakistan as it is with Israel.

Just why is the BBC so concerned about Palestinians but so relatively unconcerned about Indians in Kashmir or Bangladeshi history?
Muslims and their supporters claim Israel is an illegal ‘creation’  that shouldn’t  exist, or be allowed to continue.

Israel was created in 1948 and recognised by the UN as a homeland for the Jews…and has ever since been forced to defend itself from Muslim attempts to destroy it which continue to this very day.

The BBC has made it a prime focus of its attention with a forensic dissection of any Israeli action and instant condemnation if, as it usually does, it meets with the BBC’s disapproval.
So important is the Palestinian’s plight that Mark Thompson believed they deserve special treatment from the BBC saying in a radio interview:

‘We provide a bridge to the world, a bridge to freedom, it is very important that the story of Gaza is told around the world.’

…..From that it would seen apparent that Gaza is not ‘free’ and must be freed….with help from the BBC building a ‘bridge to freedom’.

The BBC’s John Simpson said about the kidnap of BBC journo Alan Johnson in Gaza ‘…a savage blow aimed directly at people bringing news to you…stopping the flow of news from somewhere like Gaza is like tying a blindfold around the world’s eyes.’

What they don’t seem to have equal concern about is what is happening in Pakistan.

Why is Pakistan in any way comparable to Israel?  Pakistan was ‘created’ in 1947 ….it was created as a homeland for Muslims…an ’Islamic Zion’ if you like.   During its ‘creation’ over one million people died in fighting…and millions more fled, Sikhs & Hindus forced out whilst Muslims poured in.   And note…inside India there are still millions of Muslims….whilst other religions are not made welcome in Pakistan.
Now the Jews were utterly homeless…with no land or country to call their own and so it was reasonable that somehow, somewhere they might found a Homeland.  Conversely there is no justification for the creation of a Muslim homeland carved out of Indian territory….There are after all numerous Muslim countries around the world should anyone be in need of a Muslim society.

Curiously it is only Israel that is called an ’illegal creation’ that shouldn’t exist and not Pakistan.

Pakistan invaded the Indian region called Kashmir and has illegally occupied half that land since 1949, Pakistan has, as well as fighting several wars against India, sent numerous terrorist groups into India attacking important targets, Pakistan has over 200 terrorist training camps inside its borders, Pakistan created the Taliban in order to control Afghanistan and ensure India did not get a foothold there. The same Taliban that Pakistan still supports as it kills British troops.

And yet the BBC look the other way…towards the Jewish homeland for ‘newsworthy’ stories…..have you ever heard the BBC make a comparison between Israel and Pakistan when supporters of the Palestinians are being interviewed?….are they asked if they also think Pakistan is an ‘illegal state’?

The Muslim attitude might be summed up in this example…..Here is  Inayat Bunglawala, once the media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain.  He has been criticised by the PCC and accused of being racist and anti-Semitic; he rails against ‘Zionist tactics’ and ‘Israeli oppression of the Palestinians’…..and yet he is someone who has absolutely no concern about the plight of fellow Muslims in Pakistan/Bangladesh: (in the comments at 0821…search ‘Inayat‘)
Inayat Bunglawala says it all with regards to conflict in Bangladesh: 

‘I was born in the UK and am not Bangladeshi, so to be honest, I very rarely think about the 1971 war. I reckon it is of much more import to those of Pakistani/Bengali backgrounds than to me.
I do nothing whatsoever to bring justice to Muslims in East Pakistan. I have enough on my plate here in the UK.’

And yet here is his blog…..(Graphic photos)
Which says it all really about his priorities.

Spittoon suggests….
‘His statement is liberating and should be celebrated. It now frees British Muslims of their obligation to loyalty to the Hamas or Hesbollah or the Islamic Republic of Iran etc, in exactly the same manner as Bunglawala does, by saying these words:
I was born in the UK and am not Palestinian/Syrian/Iranian/Kashmiri, so to be honest, I very rarely think about Palestine/Syria/Iran/Kashmir.
By using this simple ethical argument, British Muslims who choose to, can now detach themselves from the insidious emotional blackmail and moral upbraiding which is used to force them to side with this or that national/territorial cause of other Muslims, simply because they were their  co-religionists’

Now why does not the BBC ask such questions?

Bunglawala demonstrates an attitude all too prevalent amongst Muslims…one that the BBC doesn’t question…..when bombs go off in London and  a Muslim suggests that this is because of the presence of British troops in a Muslim country the BBC interviewer never once questions that attitude….this gives a credibility to such a claim, a ‘received wisdom’ that it is hence ‘confirmed’ as correct and of course just leads to more bombs or Jihadists being recruited as they are persuaded of the justness of their cause…because the ‘Establishment’, in this case the BBC, fails to challenge them.

By coincidence Peter Hitchens makes reference to this in his latest  Mail on Sunday column:
‘All I’m sure of is that the rentacrowd anti-Israeli protests are selective and disproportionate (Have the same people protested against Arab killing of Arabs on much larger scale, in several places? No. Why not? You work it out) .
Significantly, the refugees from the 1948 war were not allowed to settle freely where they chose in Egypt (or in any other Arab neighbour country), but were kept in cramped and squalid conditions in so called ‘camps’ (actually grimly permanent slums ), where their descendants remain. This seems to me slightly to contradict Arab propaganda in solidarity with, and in support of the displaced Arabs of the Palestine Mandate.  As I have pointed out before, the other victims of mass ethnic cleansing of the 1940s – the millions of non-Muslims who fled Pakistan for India or the millions of Muslims who hurried the other way, and the millions of Germans driven (with British connivance) out of central Europe –were long ago resettled and given citizenship of their new states. The curious will have to wonder why it is in the Holy Land and nowhere else that the descendants of refugees still live in cramped penury and misery as citizens of nowhere. I have my own theory, but I won’t force it on anyone.’

The BBC’s supine acceptance of Muslim claims and justifications leads to more terrorism, grievance politics and division in society.

As George Entwistle has found out a lack of curiosity, a lack of the will to question and challenge, has consequences.

Mark Thompson told us that: ‘The BBC’s motto is ‘Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation’ – the idea being that access to news, information and debate about different countries and cultures can ultimately help foster mutual understanding and tolerance.’

If only the BBC walked the walk as well as talked the talk.

Burying your head in the sand hoping not to cause a stir only ends up with more trouble later on…..in this case the ‘payoff’ is a radicalised generation of Muslim youth.

BBC Pro-Israeli Bias

 

Always providing a balanced approach to BBC bias I offer you this:

As bombs rain down on the people of Gaza the BBC has once again transformed itself into a platform for Israeli government spokespeople and apologists

 

And an example of their reasoning:

‘Discussing Operation Cast Lead, another recent report on the BBC website tells us that in 2008 ‘hundreds of Palestinians were killed on the first day of Israel’s operation’.  Note again that this was an ‘operation’, not an ‘attack’. Hamas rocket fire into Israel, in contrast, is never referred to merely as an ‘operation’.

In another example, in the same vein as Jonathan Marcus’s reporting, Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East Editor, writes that ‘the danger of the kind of operation Israel has started is that rising casualties on both sides cause a violent escalation that neither side can control’.

Once again, what Israel has started is an ‘operation’, and the depiction of the circumstance as a ‘violent escalation that neither side can control’ leads a reader away from any assumption of there being a clear instigator to this violence.’

Make a complaint to the BBC about it’s Gaza coverage…

 

 

A Slap In The Face For Paul Mason, Occupy And The Simplistic BBC

 

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/384x216/legacy/clip/p00dczdl.jpg?nodefault=true

 

Via Bishop Hill

The New Statesman reminds us of the BBC’s values:

‘The intrinsic value of the BBC embodies an unfashionable, anti-market ethos.’

….whilst paying themselves hefty salaries of course….and all at the same time as denouncing Capitalism, Consumerism and ‘The Market’.

This simple video demonstrates what ‘The market’ does for you…providing jobs, money, necessities of life at prices you can afford, and not a few luxuries, as well as paying for schools, the NHS and the welfare system…….all that from a pencil…

Such a simple concept…and yet so difficult for the dyed in the wool, ideological dogmatists at the BBC to accept.

 

I, Pencil

The Muslim ‘Zionist’ State Of Pakistan Under The BBC Microscope Yet Again….Or Not.

 

 

Funny old world you might think as the Jews, having suffered at the hands of the Nazis, turn into Nazis themselves and aim to wipe out the Palestinians.

Did I just say that?  Must have been listening to the BBC for far too long.

The BBC were a bit nonplussed for a while when Hague blamed Hamas for starting the ‘aggression’.  But the BBC has a plan…just like the Egyptian PM, they are going to ignore Hague and blame Israel.

Nicky Campbell set the tone this morning when his first caller came on to tell us that the Jews, just as the Nazis had wiped out 6 million Jews, were aiming to kill all the Palestinians.

Campbell said absolutely nothing….until later…after a torrent of  listener messages complaining, forced him to raise the subject, well at least for a brief moment anyway.

Campbell then got told off  when a caller said Saudi Arabia was the spiritual leader for Muslims….Campbell said it wasn’t…..caller said it was and he should know, as he’s a Muslim.  Campbell says well, only for Sunnis, caller says there is only one Islam……which is technically true if you understand the reasons God gave for the ‘creation’ of Islam.

Campbell demonstrated all too well the BBC arrogance in preaching about Islam whilst applying its own beliefs to ‘modify’ Islam in order that it fits in with their own ideas of what it should be so that non-Muslims don’t get any ideas about the reality of Islamic beliefs and practises.

The BBC has been pretty creative in finding ways to subtly make the Palestinians the ‘victims’…..they send a reporter to Israel….and then describe the nice modern homes….and the ‘safe’ bomb shelters the Israelis have built inside the homes and the ‘Iron Dome’ anti-rocket system…all of which means the Israelis don’t have to bother about rockets coming from Gaza…what’s the problem?

It’s different in Gaza of course where Wyre Davies  links in with the comment that sadly the Palestinians don’t have bomb shelters or Iron Dome….presumably to save them from what he described as the ‘brutal’ Israeli offensive.

Wyre Davies ?@WyreDavies
#Israel says this assassination is part of a ‘limited’ operation against Hamas. That’s not how many in Gaza would describe such an op.

The Palestinians do have  one option…that’s not to fire hundreds of rockets into Israel…..a bomb shelter and Iron Dome are defensive measures…they ‘protect’ Israelis against something…wonder what that could be?

Davies is rather sceptical about the reasons for Israel’s military strikes….never mind the 1000 rockets fired into Israel in 2012 this is the real reason that Israel is ‘defending itself’:
Wyre Davies ?@WyreDavies
No coincidence there’s soon an election in #Israel. #Netanyahu talks up threats in the North and South, #Lieberman threatens the #PA (1/2)

 

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/files/2012/11/Screen-shot-2012-11-16-at-09.04.19.png

Jonathan Freedland ?@j_freedland
Lots asking my view of Steve Bell’s cartoon. I’m afraid Guardian colleagues tend to discuss such things internally rather than on Twitter

 

That’s right BBC (and Guardian)….Israeli politician starts a war  to win an election…..just as Maggie started the Falkland War?  Never mind the images of body bags etc!  What a vote winner.

 

Jeremy Bowen adds to the mix on Sheila Fogarty’s show with his usual slippery  evasiveness…managing never to say anything good about Israel but not shy about saying something bad.

Can’t help thinking after ‘Balen’ he was promoted to keep him, and the BBC, out of trouble by sidelining him into management with limited time on air.

Today reinforces that impression.

Asked about the history of the conflict he began by telling us that it all began in 1897 when a group of Jews, Zionists, decided they were going to take over part of Palestine and make it the Jewish homeland…the thing is, he says, there were people living there already…..no Jews then Jeremy?
As to the Arab attitude towards the creation of Israel…well…they struggled’ to accept it.  ‘Struggle’ as in ‘Jihad’ presumably.

As to the present fighting Bowen had his own unique take on that…..there was a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel…but there was a bit of a ‘flare up’…but this was dying down …until Israel escalated the conflict by killing Jabari…..in other words it’s Israel’s fault.  They’re the aggressors.

Bowen rather fortuitously has the same notion about who started the war as the Al Qassam Brigade:

Alqassam Brigades ?@AlqassamBrigade
Al Qassam: Assassination of the great leader Ahmed al Jabari is the beginning of liberation war and ominous harbinger on sons of Zion #Gaza

Alqassam Brigades ?@AlqassamBrigade
“Tel Aviv” has its original Arabic name which is (Tel El Rabee), so it would be returned back soon ( war of liberation started) #Gaza #Hamas

However even Twitter can give the lie to the little porkies from the BBC’s Middle East Editor.

How would you describe that ‘flare up’ ?

Amir Mizroch ?@Amirmizroch
Let me see if I get this: Gaza terrorists fire 150 rockets at us since Saturday (Nov 10) and today we open the border and send in goods and food??

Tim Marshall ?@Skytwitius
Rocket fired into Israel fm Gaza, no injuries. IDF says it holds Hamas accountable. Over 1000 missiles fired into Israel in 2012

Amir Mizroch ?@Amirmizroch
Without Iron Dome this would be an entirely different reality show

 

 

So what really kicked off this latest fracas?

Was it the killing of Jabari as Bowen claimed or this rocket attack on an Israeli Army jeep which injured 4 troops…the Israelis fired back…and the Palestinians launched well over 100 rockets and mortars in response…….Jabari was only then targeted…..

November 10
Neil Lazarus ?@awesomeseminars
#breaking news IDF solider hurt in jeep attack likely to lose sight: Solider who was critically wounded … http://bit.ly/X4rOo4  #israel

This video clearly shows the missile hitting the jeep. (On Sat 10th Nov) An IDF inquiry indicated that during a routine Givati force patrol along the border fence, an anti-tank missile was fired from the Sajaiya neighborhood.
The missile penetrated the jeep and exited from the other side. The IDF responded by with tank fire killing four Palestinians and wounding 20.
The event set in motion a round of violence that saw more than 110 rockets being fired at Israel. One of the soldiers wounded in the attack was discharged from the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon on Monday.

Amir Mizroch ?@Amirmizroch
Hamas not taking on Iron Dome. Firing shorter rockets, mortars also targeting almost all IDF activities along Gaza fence. Per @galey_zahal  (10th Nov)

Finally, we had a little chat on the BBC about the Palestinians intentions for Israel….do they really want to wipe it out …or do they just want a peaceable agreement and a two state solution?

Seems not:

Alqassam Brigades ?@AlqassamBrigade
#Palestinian #Resistance strikes on Tel Aviv caused of pampers crisis in the occupied city.

Alqassam Brigades ?@AlqassamBrigade
“Tel Aviv” has its original Arabic name which is (Tel El Rabee), so it would be returned back soon ( war of liberation started) #Gaza #Hamas

Tel Aviv….an Israeli city is ‘occupied’…but soon to be ‘liberated’ in this war of ‘liberation’.

Pretty clear….even if you hadn’t listened to Palestinian politicians of all loyalties talking of freeing ‘Palestine’…. ‘All Palestine’ from the Occupiers.

 

Shame the BBC tend to ignore or de-emphasise such revealing talk.

 

 

 

SEE IT HERE FIRST……..DEAD BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

Razan Saffour@RazanSpeaks

.@AlqassamBrigade I can’t believe I’m saying but this picture is from #Syria, not Gaza. Thank you @Huxley10 for pointing it out.

 

Photo has been removed once ‘mistake’ spotted by many but page Cached at:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:woIs_4lUljQJ:twitter.com/AlqassamBrigade/statuses/268873235037306882+Pic.Twitter.com/iLQGrfHr&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

Remember:

‘Don’t miss any updates from Alqassam Brigades’

 

 

Wonder if the BBC will show any interest in this story and example of ‘Pallywood’ PR….wonder which Palestinian picture editor thought that one up?

To be fair I imagine the BBC would show no interest what so ever had it been the IDF doing something similar.

 

William Daroff ?@Daroff
#Hamas Recycles Pictures of Syrian Dead and Claims Them as Palestinian Dead http://owl.li/fkkiy  (@TabletMag) #IsraelUnderFire

Hamas Recycles Pictures of Syrian Dead


We’ll have more on the PR war being waged on both Twitter and Facebook later, but for now, a disturbing update about Hamas, which is using pictures of children that have been injured or killed in Syria and sending them out through social media to show them as Palestinian dead.
Hamas, Hezbollah, and their ilk have long used images of children as a cudgel to portray Israelis as a wanton murderers of children, even as the IDF remains the only force that doesn’t target civilians. I doubt this is the last we’ll see of it.

Ministry of Truth: Benghazi was a “huge issue” in US election after all.

On this morning’s Today programme BBC Washington correspondent Paul Adams admitted that Benghazi was a “huge issue” in the US election. Funny that, because at the time the BBC clearly thought it was a non-story, best ignored. During the final weeks of the election campaign, as more and more evidence emerged showing contradictions in official claims over what really happened and Republican politicians demanded to know the truth, the staff at the BBC’s Washington bureau decided to bury the story and reported none of the new developments.

But today Adams told us that Benghazi had after all been a big deal during the campaign, explaining that the Republicans hoped “it would undermine Barack Obama”. And there’s the reason the BBC’s pro-Obama editors and journalists ignored the story during those final weeks of the campaign – they had no desire to give any publicity to something that could help the GOP against their guy.

Today programme 16/11/2012 (approx 44.30 in)

Sarah Montague: Now David Petraeus is up before Congress today on another matter isn’t he?

Paul Adams: He certainly is and this is of rather more concern, actually, to most politicians here in Washington and that is what exactly he knew about the attack on the US consulate building and CIA annex in the Libyan city of Benghazi which resulted in the death of the American ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Now this was a huge issue that the Republicans were running with before the election in the hope that it would undermine Barack Obama. They are still pursuing it. There is a lot of anger about what the Republicans regard as essentially a cover up, an attempt by the administration – various bits of the administration – to portray this as simply a mob attack in the wake of publication of that notorious internet video about Mohammed rather than call it what it was which was an organised terrorist attack by groups allied to al-Qaeda. And they also want to know exactly what the CIA was doing there in Benghazi at that annex and what steps were taken to try and relieve the situation once that attack began.

Of course Petraeus is big news now, and the BBC can no longer pretend there’s nothing to report. Hence the whiplash-inducing reassessment of recent history.

A few days before the election I asked BBC foreign correspondent Hugh Sykes (who wasn’t covering the US elections) why the BBC had been ignoring the latest Benghazi developments. He said it was “odd” if the BBC was indeed not reporting it:

By the time of our exchange the BBC had pretty much given up reporting the story. “Odd” indeed.

And while I’m on a Twitter splurge, BBC newsreader Alice Arnold was on holiday in America with her partner Clare Balding when the election was on. She played golf with a Texan guy – good company, apart from his politics:

Phrases you won’t find BBC journalists tweeting: “He was a Democrat but apart from that…” “He was an Obama supporter but apart from that…”

And here’s BBC news producer Richard Bowen (ex-Washington, now London) exchanging a little joke with a friend on the day after the election:

The ultimate horror – a Republican voter! Still, could be worse – the kid might grow up to be a BBC journalist.

THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL

 

 

The BBC has been  making strenuous and concerted efforts in a campaign to overthrow the elected government and undermine its economic policy in this country.

It has been broadcasting repeated claims that ‘Austerity’ will lead only to the revival of Fascism and it scaremongers relentlessly with film and opinion pieces that are meant to frighten us with the spectre of jack booted storm troopers marching down the Mall.

As the Political Party Conference season began the BBC also began its political game broadcasting ‘The Nazis:  A Warning From History’ …..making the link between government imposed economic misery and Fascist dictatorship.  Stephanie Flanders began her ‘Masters of Money’ series that also plugged that message….Austerity will see blood on the streets and revolution.

Now we have their latest effort….’The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler ’……here the BBC warns us that having George Osborne as Chancellor will only lead to another sort of Chancellor…. Adolf Hitler arising from the ashes of the  scorched earth policies of George Osborne and Frau Merkel:

‘Adolf Hitler was an unlikely leader but he still formed a connection with millions of German people, generating a level of charismatic attraction that was almost without parallel. It is a stark warning for the modern day, says historian Laurence Rees (ex BBC man).

In the good economic times, during the mid-to-late twenties in Germany, Hitler was thought charismatic by only a bunch of fanatics. So much so that in the 1928 election the Nazis polled only 2.6% of the vote.
Yet less than five years later Hitler was chancellor of Germany and leader of the most popular political party in the country.

What changed was the economic situation. In the wake of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 there was mass unemployment in Germany and banks crashed.
“The people were really hungry,” says Jutta Ruediger, who started to support the Nazis around this time. “It was very, very hard. And in that context, Hitler with his statements seemed to be the bringer of salvation.”
This history matters to us today. Not because history offers “lessons” – how can it since the past can never repeat itself exactly? But because history can contain warnings.
In an economic crisis millions of people suddenly decided to turn to an unconventional leader they thought had “charisma” because he connected with their fears, hopes and latent desire to blame others for their predicament. And the end result was disastrous for tens of millions of people.
It is in Greece itself – amid terrible economic crisis – that we see the sudden rise of a political movement like the Golden Dawn that glories in its intolerance and desire to persecute minorities.
And it is led by a man who has claimed there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz. Can there be a bigger warning than that?
Laurence Rees is a former creative director of history programmes for the BBC

Kind of a curious view…..when you consider who is provoking revolution and anarchy on the streets of Europe……..

Trade Union barons are whipping up  anti government rhetoric and protest, Marxist anarchist groups occupy cathedrals and public spaces, students and left wing activists riot and threaten to bring down governments, even the BBC broadcasts calls for violent revolution on their programmes…..as on Flander’s Masters of Money…….but what does the BBC see the problem as?

Apparently the imposition of Austerity has led to the activation of Nazi sleeper cells around Europe…The Boys From Brazil are here  just waiting to over turn democracy and goose step across Europe just as they did in the 30’s.

Of course, remember what the BBC won’t tell you….the Nazis, the ‘National Socialists’….were, em, Socialists.

When the BBC calls them ‘Fascists’ or ‘Far Right’ they do so in the hope you, the viewer, will make the connection to any political party on the Right….preferably the Conservatives….thereby associating all ‘that nastiness’ with them and not their true brethren on the Left.

Nazis have more in common with Labour socialists than Tories….Black Shirted Fascist Oswald Mosley was a Labour Party MP…..Communism is merely the other side of the same coin that is Fascism….just as you have Shi’ites and Sunni Muslims.

The BBC hates austerity with a vengeance and never misses a chance to damn it….Evan Davis often saying that Austerity is the ‘medicine that is killing the patient’, whilst Flanders has had a free hand to produce programme after programme supporting Labour’s economic view and ‘Plan B’.

Comments by BBC presenters have no basis in reality….Victoria Derbyshire stating that ‘people are losing their jobs left right and centre’ when unemployment is going down.  The strange little programme ‘Wake Up To Money’ is always good for a laugh….yesterday claiming that the rich haven’t paid anything towards reducing the deficit…when of course they have been hit with the largest tax rises overall, and today they came up with the comment that the Governor of the Bank of England had suggested that we are heading for another triple dip recession in his ‘zig zag’ speech, when he said nothing of the sort.

Nothing like not letting the facts get in the way of a bad news story.

 

However even those old lefties at the Guardian have begun to wake up to reality….

‘Austerity is Here To Stay’

Welcome to 21st-century Europe.

Today’s quarterly inflation review by the Bank of England is merely the latest in a series of indicators that remind governments and peoples across Europe and beyond that the old days are simply over, done, finished.

The message is hard to miss. Times have changed. The only thing that is certain is further uncertainty. We may have come out of recession again, but the idea that Britain, let alone the countries of the eurozone, can expect to see any resumption of the kind of growth rates to which we have all been accustomed since the second world war, is increasingly fanciful. We are living through not a downturn but an epochal change, and we need to make a more consistent effort to understand what this implies.
During the next 50 years, according to a newly published OECD growth report, the world economy is expected to grow at about 3% a year. Most of that growth, however, will be in Asia and the developing nations. Growth in Europe, including the UK, will be much less robust – and will often actually decline.

Got that? Growth in Britain will often decline over the coming half-century. It will not resume. We can talk all we like about stimulus and investment, as Labour did today in its latest denunciation of George Osborne, quite rightly in its way. But, during the next 50 years, growth is going to be halting and uneven and will sometimes be negative. Just like now, in fact.

 The OECD said something else, too. As the world economy grows, it reported, our European share of it will decline. Economic power is shifting to China.

For most of us, relative decline is something we read about but don’t think about until it hits us on the head. Most of us have barely started to grasp what it may mean for our living standards and our politics.

And not just in 50 years’ time, either. These large shifts are already under way. Their impact is now, as well as later.

Smart leaders should recognise that austerity in some form is the context for most of the foreseeable political options in countries like Britain.

But it does mean that political parties in economically developed countries no longer have the same breadth of spending options as they did……. the left cannot simply shout the old mantras.

This is not a defeatist but a realistic assessment.

Clearly, though, the right is more comfortable in such times.

He is right about that. Osborne’s touch may have deserted him recently, but he has the huge advantage of being alive to the context and politics of these new times in ways that the left across Europe is still struggling to match.’

 

Osborne is right…and ‘in touch’ with the context and politics?   How refreshig to see the dawning of reality and the realisation that we have priced ourselves out of the market.

If only the BBC would, if not accept that ‘radical’ view, but at least allow the light of discussion and informed debate to illuminate the viewers and listeners instead of  the BBC itself casting the dark and forebidding shadow of fascism across the airwaves.

Time for the BBC to start accepting the case for Austerity and for not briefing against it in terms designed to frighten everyone to death.