Update 1, August 10:

I stumbled upon a comment I made on another blog back on September 1st, 2012, which included Humphrys’ interview with Hague, probably at the end of August. I see I was wrong about Humphrys being upset about actual attacks by Israel on Iran; his complaint was that Israel was thinking about attacking Iran:

Humphrys ranted at William Hague like a juvenile delinquent denied his father’s car keys over Hague’s inability to commit the UK to an attack on Syria’s Assad along with his inability to denounce Israel for considering an attack on Iran.

It’s hard to believe that 7 years have since elapsed.

Original Post:

… but a coiled spring stretched to breaking point and then unleashed.

The Syrian ‘Arab Spring’ began in January 2011. So it must have been sometime between then and July 2014 that John Humphrys interviewed William Hague, Foreign Secretary at the time, on the springy question. I listened to that interview on the World Service. Humphrys was getting really hot under the collar. He was trying to push Hague to commit to Britain going in to topple Bashar al-Assad. (That would be quite a long way down since Assad is such a beanpole.)

Hague was being distinctly uncooperative, though quite polite about it. In the very same interview, Humphrys pushed Hague to condemn Israel for its attacks against Iran. I forget which ones, but I recall that Hague was having none of that either. I was amazed that Humphrys could insist on an attack by one country on another and then almost in the same breath condemn it because different countries were being discussed. In hindsight, it wasn’t that surprising since the BBC will always side with Israel’s enemies.

But Assad himself is a bitter and implacable enemy of Israel, so why would the BBC be so keen on his downfall? Here are some possible reasons:

*The BBC saw the Arab Spring through its romantic, rose-tinted lens: it emerged like a gently unfolding bud in danger of being crushed by the boot of the state. The budding revolutionaries were engaged in a noble, just struggle against overwhelming odds and it was to Britain’s eternal shame that it would not assist them.

*BBC hacks were looking forward to strutting around in Arab-Spring T-shirts. Ideally the design would be an Arafat lookalike with the typical chequered dishcloth around his head and clutching a rifle with ‘Arab Spring’ prominent in Arabic so the hacks could say, “Look, I speak the language!” This would not work as the revolution was turning into a chaotic, violence-ridden failure with various factions slaughtering one another with extraordinary brutality, with the state at the top of the heap.

*The Syrian Spring was probably started by the Muslim Brotherhood. There is a long history of strife between them and the Assad clan. They slaughtered scores of army recruits and tried to assassinate Bashar’s father, Hafez. He responded by ordering the army to surround the town of Hama, where they were based, and kill everyone in the town. The BBC is very fond of the Muslim Brotherhood, supported them against Mubarak and has nothing but love and admiration for Hamas, an offshoot of the Brotherhood.

This impartial, most-trusted broadcaster will always filter its ‘news’ and ‘interviews’ through its prejudices.

Do you want tracts or tracks?  Quentin Letts has gone for the tracks and Radio 3’s politician-free zone detoxing from the Today show’s politicised take on everything from sliced bread to bent bananas.

Letts tells us in the Mail:

Virtuous teetotallers boast about going on a ‘detox’ for a month. Well, bully for them. Mind you, I just did something similar and truly feel a lot better for it.

But this is not because I forsook alcohol. Go without hooch for a month? You must be joking. No. My detox routine concerned early-morning listening habits.

I switched from Radio 4 and instead tuned in to the BBC’s classical music station, Radio 3. Yes, I gave up the Today programme.

It began in the second week of January and it is bliss. Instead of being assailed by the latest Project Fear alarms about how Brexit is going to consign us to ruin, I have had my horizons expanded by top-class music.

Today’s programme would not have changed his mind as it ticked every right-on box from Project Do Fear about Brexit to Project Don’t Fear about Islam.

We had an Imam comparing the shooting in Florida with the actions of the ex-British Jihadis, presumably trying to reassure us that the Jihadis are driven by the same temporal demons of the non-Muslim killer and thus their murderous rampages have nothing to do with Islam.  And anyway…forgive and forget…let’s be more compassionate and forgiving…they were driven to do what they did by circumstances, malign influences and world events…they’re not bad lads really.

Ironically we then had Today launch into Project Fear telling us we will be terrorised by Jihadis if we leave the EU.  They liberally quoted Sir John Sawers, ex-head of MI6, oh, a Remain voter, not mentioned by Today, who has consistently briefed against Brexit and wants it reversed….as any old chum of Tony Blair might do of course.

They also had Robert Hannigan on, ex-Director of GCHQ.  He was previously interviewed by Emma Barnett a couple of weeks ago.  She was rather stunned when she asked him if Brexit has made us less safe, she obviousy thought he’d say it would, but he replied no, in fact there has been more co-operation with Europe since the referendum…the only concern was to make sure we maintained the data sharing of intelligence.  He also said that most intelligence work was bi-lateral between nations and not the EU itself…thus Brexit would make no difference.

How times change…I imagine someone has had a quiet word as an almost completely different picture was coaxed out of him today.  Of course it helped that Justin Webb avoided asking if we would be less safe after Brexit and went straight for the data question…were the questions shaped to avoid embarrassing truths?  Webb cherry-picked subjects that were of minor concern as Hannigan admitted but which could be sensationalised to alarming heights.  It’s like the BBC reporting WWII by only looking at Dieppe, Dunkirk, the Blitz, Singapore and the fall of Tobruk and leaving the audience to think we lost the war….and of course failing to mention the Americans and all the other allies we had to help us win in Europe.  Much like today where our major intelligence partner, the US, wasn’t mentioned…nor all the other countries around the world.

‘Any Questions’ was trailed telling us they would be asking if ‘leaving the EU would make us less safe, and how do we stop it making us less safe?’…..Hmmm…seems like the first question is pretty redundant in their mind.  And of course then there is that important question…processed food, it gives us cancer and an early grave right, especially if you’re poor?  Yes, it’s really all about class war…it’s an ‘issue’ that’s been hijacked by the Left and turned into a narrative about the rich living longer and the poor dying early due to the rubbish food they have to eat due to poverty….never mind people are fitter, bigger and live far, far longer than ever before due to this food….and that is why the NHS is having to cope with so many old people now….processed bread and chicken nuggets….maybe we should feed the lower classes gruel and the odd turnip for a treat and let them die even younger….leaving only the rich, educated and intelligent who can then vote against Brexit in any future referendum and keeping the NHS for the healthy and wealthy.  So many problems solved with a bit of lateral thinking. ‘Toxic’ chicken nuggets are a liberal/fascist’s wet dream really…like Zyklon B for the dirty, unwashed, stupid masses who dare to think for themselves….it is after all Big Business force-feeding us these things…and they all want to Remain….suspicious or what?  Let’s face it Remainers are not shy about wishing death upon Leave voters.

Anyway…here’s some more of Quentin Letts’ thoughts on detoxing from Today…

Without Radio 4 winding me into a bate, life has become much less itchy. Instead of having to hear ministerial half-wits trying to claim the HS2 railway is a good idea, or professional grievance-mongers moan about the health service, or a gloopy-voiced reporter trotting out cliches about food banks, my mornings started with music from various centuries and cultures.

For a newspaper reporter to write that is, you may feel, self-harmful. Is Today not an agenda-setter?

That has always been the received wisdom in Fleet Street and elsewhere in British public life. At big investment houses, in government departments, in the lobbying and public-policy worlds, Today has long been de rigueur.

Maybe I’m imagining it, or maybe I’m just getting old, but since the EU referendum, the output of many BBC current affairs shows has become markedly shrill. Hour after hour they broadcast neuralgia — gripes from the modern Establishment that Brexit is going to bring all manner of disasters.

While prisoners of Radio 4 were being subjected to yet another fist-chewer of an interview with Labour’s robotic Remoaner Sir Keir Starmer MP, or while they were wheeling out yet another retired mandarin or professional secularist or social-mobility hand-wringer, I was being captivated by a Rachmaninoff cello sonata. The cello sang deep and lonely to the piano’s trickle. Mesmerising.

While Today listeners were probably having to endure some big-state propaganda about Whitehall impact assessments or NHS winter pressures or EU immigrants’ rights or Legal Aid cuts or Heaven knows what else, I was having my mind opened to the modern English composer Jonathan Dove’s In Beauty May I Walk.

If I’ve felt a smidgeon of regret it is only because an old friend of mine became editor of ‘Today’ last year and she said she was going to try to make the programme less metropolitan. She quickly ran into flak from the BBC establishment and Labour MPs.

I had been losing patience with Today for some years. I thought the programme was dreadful during the Leveson inquiry, after the Cameron government had caved in to centre-Left demands to bring newspapers under political control.

How could the BBC’s flagship radio programme sympathise so gleefully with such an authoritarian move?

During the Coalition years, when our country’s finances were teetering close to the abyss, Today eagerly promoted voices demanding greater spending by government. We rarely seemed to hear from the taxpayers who crave greater restraint by the Treasury.

Maybe I am being unfair to Mishal Husain and Nick Robinson & Co, but they seem imprisoned in the Westminster bubble, which, with every day that passes is further removed from the real world most Britons live in.

Life is so much bigger and more interesting and full of possibilities than Today suggests.

Can I keep up my abstinence from Today? Possibly not. Journalistic curiosity is inescapable and there is really no one better for skewering our awful politicians than John Humphrys.

But at least I now know where to go for relief when the cacophony of luvvies becomes too much.

Apart from John Humphrys noting that Lord Malloch-Brown was ‘subverting democracy’ as he collaborates with a foreign billionaire to sell-out Britain to a foreign power, the EU, the BBC seems to have pretty much ignored Soros’ ‘cash for collaboration’ plot to buy influence over British politicians.  If it was Murdoch?  Did enjoy MB’s assertion that his treachery was ’empowering democracy’ and giving a voice to those whose vote for Brexit was a ‘howl of protest at being ignored’.  He does this by ignoring their historic vote, their ‘howl of protest’, and by subverting that democracy.

The BBC doesn’t ignore Anna Soubry of course, she gets the red-carpet treatment, her every utterance treated, like the EU’s Barnum, as if an eternal and unquestioned truth.  How different to other Tory Back-benchers who support Brexit and are regularly portrayed as mad fascists holding the party to ransom.  Soubry gets a free hand to say what she likes as in the Week at Westminster where she claimed that she put the interests of her constituents before party, she is prepared to compromise, she’s pragmatic.  MP’s must listen to their constituents.  Of course her constituents voted for Brexit which is why Soubry puts their interests first by…er…trying to stop Brexit.  The problem, as she sees it, is that her constituents didn’t know what they were voting for, no idea about the single market or customs union [despite it being made as clear as day by all parties in the referendum].   She moaned that she had been called a ‘traitor’ in the newspapers and says this has definitely led to death threats.  Hmmm…maybe they called her a traitor because she is one…to her own constituents and to the British people who voted ‘OUT’.  Her own actions led to the threats, can’t blame it on the papers who merely reported the truth.

Nice if the BBC spent more time pointing that out to all those Remoaners who demand a recount.

Any other bias out there?  List it all here….

If you can fake sincerity you’ve got it made.  It helps of course if you have the inherited respect and reputation of a venerable and massive institution behind you giving your claim to probity, truthfulness and sincerity a sheen of credibility whenever you are lying through your teeth.

The above interview by Wark of Anne Coulter is on an Ofcom reporting level of dishonesty and misrepresentation so utterly and wilfully deceptive and misleading is it.  Wark is ostensibly interested in ‘fake news’ but it is only alleged fake news that she claims comes from the Right.  Guardianista Laurie Pennie isn’t there to be interviewed, she is there to bolster Wark’s ‘argument’ that Right-wing fake news is a danger to democracy.  Penny is allowed to talk freely and make her points without interruption or challenge whilst Coulter is in the hot chair constantly under attack and inquisition.  Penny makes a completely false claim that Coulter is trying to make out that there is no difference between fake news and the truth, calling Coulter a troll, when in fact Coulter has consistently pointed out fake news in the MSM….Penny deliberately missing the real point…that fake news is the same as MSM news these days, that the MSM news is not the Truth, a point Wark was totally uninterested in examining despite it being more important than fake news coming out of a dodgy website in Macedonia that few people see or believe.

Look at the issues Coulter raised….Ferguson where a black man was shot dead by a white police officer…the BBC still falsely uses this case as an example of police racism in America when in fact it was conclusively proved the officer was justified in using lethal force having already been punched in the face, his eye socket fractured, by the suspect who tried to take his weapon and who later ran at the officer in a threatening  manner and was then shot.  The BBC lied about this being a racist killing, it lied about so many other similar cases, and it is this narrative from much of the left-wing media, of Blacks being deliberatelyy targeted by police and killed, that helped create the murderous backlash we saw when Blacks started to murder police officers in ‘revenge’ attacks.  Trouble is that narrative was completely false, a dangerous lie that the BBC knew was untrue  but continued to peddle it anyway as it suited their agenda.  How many people died because the BBC lied?

Coulter also mentioned Trump being attacked for allegedly mocking a disabled reporter.  The BBC reported this as fact.  Unfortunately the gestures and words used by Trump were the same ones he used to describe anyone whom he thought had lost the plot…and the evidence was plentiful that this was the case.  Trump was not mocking a disabled person he was in fact treating him as he would anyone else in similar circumstances.

Two big fake news stories from the MSM and Wark was totally uninterested in exploring that, she was only concerned with right-wing fake news on social media, as no doubt directed by her bosses, the BBC blatantly targeting social media and trying to blame it for right-wing terrorism, hate crimes and abuse of politicians….never mind it is mostly Muslims and the left-wing who are guilty of the majority of that.  Remember Wark’s attack interview with Tommy Robinson in which she blamed him for the Finsbury Park attack…forgetting conveniently that it was the BBC programme, ‘Three Girls’, that the police said was the catalyst for Osborne’s radicalisation….and indeed Robinson had absolutely nothing to do with the attack or Osborne.

What else is the BBC downplaying?

How about a foreign billionaire trying to corrupt our democracy by using his billions to fund anti-democratic movements in this country in order to overturn one of the most democratic votes this country has ever had?  The BBC is more interested in allegations that Russia interfered in American democracy than in blatant attempts to corrupt our own.  The BBC doesn’t like Trump so it supports all narratives that it thinks will unseat him, on the other hand they don’t like Brexit so they happily ignore the foreign Soros’ attempts to buy influence and power over our Parliament and country….we did have John Humphrys suggest that Soros was ‘subverting the democratic process’ but beyond that we have had almost nothing from the BBC…a remarkable silence about a real corruption scandal when the BBC was quite excited about a C4 programme about a fake Chinese company buying power and influence entrapping Tory politicians.  Hilariously in the Humphrys interview with Lord Malloch-Brown, who runs the campaign that received the Soros money, M-B claimed that he was empowering democracy and that the referendum result was ‘a howl of protest of the people being ignored‘.  Hmmmm…..so he empowers democracy by trying to overturn a huge demcocratic vote and he answers a ‘howl of protest at being ignored’ by, er, ignoring that protest.  What a knobhead.  And Soros has stumped up even more cash as a snub to his critics.  I’d say ‘lock him up’.

And if you think Soros isn’t dangerous look at the boasts of his ‘missionaries’ and then think on how it all turned out…the Arab Spring, Libya and the Ukraine….

It was later during lunch at a plush Budapest hotel that I encountered the full force of the arrogant ethos promoted by the Soros network of organisations. At my table I listened to Dutch, American, British, Ukrainian and Hungarian representatives of Soros NGOs boast about their achievements. Some claimed that they played a major role in the Arab Spring in Egypt. Others voiced their pride in their contribution to the democratisation of the Ukraine. Some bragged about their influence in preparing the ground for the overthrow of the Gadafif regime in Libya.

Then there is Trump again….the CIA have been caught trying to buy compromising material on Trump from the Russians…they deny that this is what they were doing but that must have been their main purpose….getting back so-called cyberweapons is by its nature impossible…‘Yes of course I’ve given you all copies!’…so there must have been another purpose for the meetings…..and remember Trump jr was said to have committed treason for meeting a Russian who claimed to have information on Clinton…so is the CIA committing treason on that logic?  The BBC were very interested in Trump jr, seemingly not so interested in this even though it broke in the lefty NYT….

According to the @nytimes, a Russian sold phony secrets on “Trump” to the U.S. Asking price was $10 million, brought down to $1 million to be paid over time. I hope people are now seeing & understanding what is going on here. It is all now starting to come out – DRAIN THE SWAMP!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2018

Just more proof the Russians were intent on damaging Trump and yet the BBC still pushes the notion that he was colluding with them.  Fake news?  Course it is.

Only last July Lord Hall Hall was telling us that he paid his ‘talent’ so much because they are worth it and it is the going market rate, don’t pay it and there will be an exodus of talent…….

“I completely understand that to lots and lots of people these are very large sums but we are a global broadcaster, in a very competitive market,” Lord Hall told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“And we have to be competitive but not foolishly.

“No-one would want us to be paying sums where it’s not at a discount to the market. People expect us to have great broadcasters, great presenters, great stars but pay them less than they would get in the market.”

He said he was “satisfied” that every one of the 96 top earners were worth the money.

Hmmmm….well, they were not worth it.  They were given that money purely because the BBC had so much money floating around, they could pay it so they did…which might indicate the licence fee should be cut….and more salaries cut.  Let’s experiment….offer far lower wages and see if the people recruited are a match, or more than a match, for the supposed superstars we have now.  So what if they do decide to eventually head off to the mega wages of the commercial world?…recruit more people, fresh talent that will bring new life and vibrancy to the BBC instead of the entrenched, aged dinosaurs who dominate the place now.

Lord Hall Hall always insisted that he had to pay the market rate to get top talent and that they would flee the BBC to the commercial companies if their wages were cut.  Well now we will find out….and as said, perhaps find out if there is more talent, and cheaper talent, out there than the BBC believes.

Amused to see Sopel is having a cut…this morning he was chuntering on about how inconsistent the White House was [under Trump…never, ever, happened under Obama],  one minute they’d say one thing and later they might correct the story…..never happen at the BBC of course….from the Telegraph….

BBC confirms pay cut for male stars after it changes story five times

The BBC has confirmed that Huw Edwards, John Humphrys, Jeremy Vine, Nick Robinson, Nicky Campbell and Jon Sopel have agreed to reduce their salaries, after a morning of farce in which the BBC website reported some of their names and then retracted them.The BBC has confirmed that Huw Edwards, John Humphrys, Jeremy Vine, Nick Robinson, Nicky Campbell and Jon Sopel have agreed to reduce their salaries, after a morning of farce in which the BBC website reported some of their names and then retracted them.

A source said: “This hasn’t been handled very well.”

Astonishing how many people are paid over £150,000 at the BBC.

Libby Purves asks what we have been asking for years now….just why does the BBC employ people at such exhorbitant rates when they could easily get someone to do the same job, just as competently or better, as a Humphrys or Vine at a vastly lower salary?

The former Radio 4 presenter said that the corporation ‘clings on’ to stars including Graham Norton and Gary Lineker ‘like frightened toddlers to their teddies’ and fail to ‘hunt widely’ for alternative presenters.

She accused BBC bosses of shying away from telling the highest-paid stars that their salaries will shrink because they are concerned about them quitting.

Having said that she would like to see director-general Lord Hall making it clear that top stars are replaceable, she told Radio Times: ‘That this never happens is because of two things.

‘One is that managers like to talk of ‘handling multi-million-pound budgets’, because that makes their own inflated pay seem good value.

‘The other is a craven fear of losing ‘talent’, and a failure to hunt widely for more. They get fixed on the idea that there can only ever be one Norton or Winkleman or Feltz or Lineker.

‘They cling on, like frightened toddlers to their teddies. In fluffy showbiz it’s a bit understandable. But news and good documentaries aren’t showbiz.’

In the Guardian an anonymous and senior BBC woman gives the BBC a broadside for not paying women like her, highly educated, clever, talented and articulate, the same as men…note she also supports the idea that there is no need to pay for ‘talent’ as there is plenty of talent out there untapped that would work for far less…so no need for the BBC to be held hostage by the big stars of news….

Fear stalks the BBC, and women like me are being gaslighted and lied to

The group of BBC women I am a part of now numbers more than 200, including some of the most high-profile at the corporation. We are women who support our colleague Carrie Gracie in her public and eloquent pursuit of that principle of parity.

That I write this anonymously is a sign of both fear and anger among many BBC women, who, even after joining the group, stay silent. Fear that we might be seen as obstructive for speaking out, and anger because the reason for our speaking out is neither obstructive nor designed to make trouble. We just want to see an existing law enforced.

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” George Orwell’s words are embedded in the wall of the front of the building in which I work, next to his statue. And I believe in them.

But the BBC cannot trumpet its editorial independence in telling truth to power, only to expect its highly educated and talented employees to stay silent when they are lied to. And we have been lied to. Both in individual cases and collectively. You could argue that it is a form of gaslighting: continuing to tell women that there is no inequality and, over a period of time, they think they are imagining it. Knowledge is power.  If this is happening to a group of articulate, clever and highly educated women then it must surely be happening in many other industries. 

The leak of a private conversation between two senior broadcasters (John Humphrys and Jon Sopel) about Gracie, should be more than discomfiting. That the BBC management is said to be “deeply unimpressed” is good. But the private conversation isn’t just a sideshow, it is a symptom of a cultural malaise. It represents hardwired hostility and contempt towards women who demand what is right and legal. This can’t be shrugged off as “jocular exchange” or “banter” between old mates.

For a public service broadcaster, salaries of the top earners are indeed inflated. And if individuals bargain with the BBC and say they could earn more money elsewhere, perhaps the BBC should acquire the confidence to let them go. There are many, many talented people – and some of them are even women – who could step into their shoes. Given the BBC’s unique nature, in many cases there are no comparable programmes individuals could go to and still have the same platform they have at the BBC.

Have to say her attack on Humphrys is wrong really…he was joking but if he was having a moan doesn’t he have a right to?  It was not hostility nor contempt towards women.  After all he is having large amounts of money stripped from his salary at no fault of his own….this is down to the BBC which agreed the huge salary in the first place….and now are reneging on the deal because they have been found out rather than coughing up and levelling pay upwards.  Not Humphrys’ fault at all.

John Humphrys [sexist pig] was interviewing a GMB union representative this morning [08:10] about Carillion and its downfall.  The BBC seems to want to shift the blame away from Carillion for some reason and onto the banks and politicians judging by this report….however apparently Capitalism is in the dock even if Carillion management are not.

The GMB rep. made no mention of Capitalism or smashing the system and yet Humphrys kept bringing it up suggesting that the Rep. was telling us the demise of Carillion signified the end of Capitalism…or ‘the system’ as Humphrys called it.  But Captalism isn’t a ‘system’ just the natural way of doing business and way of life for people who create and produce products….it is not an ideology such as Socialism which only works at the point of a gun, and even then doesn’t actually work.

Let’s think…hmmmm…which politician is advocating the smashing of Capitalism and the imposition of a Marxist Utopia?  Could it be the BBC’s favourite terrorist supporting Far-Left Marxist wrecker?  It certainly could, step forward Jeremy Corbyn…or is he too busy writing the BBC’s business reports?   Such as this one which could indeed have been written by Corbyn or one of his lackeys packed full of half-truths, strawmen and conclusions based upon dubious associations and interpretations…..

Was 2017 a bad year for capitalism?

2017 was the year the budget watchdog in the UK finally gave up waiting for the usual historical rise in productivity to return – with painful consequences for the public finances and the chancellor.

When you give up on improving productivity, some would argue that you are pretty much giving up on capitalism.

‘some would argue’…..er who’s that ‘some’?  Corbyn and Co perhaps?

Silenced during the financial crisis, the full-throated roar of capitalism should have been deafening.

And yet on many measures, 2017 was a bad year for capitalism, the system of free-market economics.

For starters it was the year it faced serious opposition.

In his conference speech, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that capitalism faced a “crisis of legitimacy” after the 2008 financial crash and the time had now come for a new economic model, with a bigger role for the public sector, renationalised utilities and more investment in infrastructure and skills.

Labour Party membership doubled under Mr Corbyn, and having been written off by most pundits when the election was called, Labour ended up gaining 30 seats.

Experts who wrote off his chances soon claimed it was no surprise how well Mr Corbyn’s criticisms of capitalism went down given the economic reality of most people’s lives.

Capitalism’s central promise is that through hard work you – and your family – will have a better life. Of course, there are recessions from time to time but, generally speaking, the tide of economic growth will eventually lift all ships.

Well, that hasn’t been true for millions of people since the economic crisis of 2008 but in 2017 a new grievance was added to the decade-long austerity fatigue. After a two-year period in which pay rises narrowly exceeded negligible inflation, prices started rising faster than pay – meaning on average people were getting a little poorer every day.

 The main reason behind stagnant pay was, as every economist in the land told us throughout 2017, poor productivity. 

Where does the BBC think the money comes from to run a socialist utopia?  Business is where the money comes from, even Lenin acknowledged that Capitalism was essential to fund his socialist dream, at least, until it could stand on its own two feet….which of course never happens.  The only other way is socialist slavery where the workers do as they are told for meagre returns as in the Soviet Union…the Soviet Union only kept afloat by loans from the decadent West.  Want to nationalise the railways?  Where does the money come from to run them?  From the taxes on buinesses and from those employed in those businesses.

Interesting that last line about poor productivity as the main reason for stagnating wages…the BBC’s infamous ‘squeeze’.  OK…..not austerity then as the BBC has insisted for years now?

If productivity is the problem why is that?  All too freely available labour...in America where it comes flooding across the border with Mexico and in the UK where it floods across the Channel……

A crucial measure of how far from full recovery the economy remains is the growth of nominal wages (wages unadjusted for inflation). Nominal wage growth since the recovery officially began in mid-2009 has been low and flat. This isn’t surprising–the weak labor market of the last seven years has put enormous downward pressure on wages. Employers don’t have to offer big wage increases to get and keep the workers they need. And this remains true even as a jobs recovery has consistently forged ahead in recent years.

The EU’s forced freedom of movement destroys our productivity and our wages…..remarkably the normally anti-Big Business BBC bends over backwards to hide this and to push the case for Big Business to keep importing cheap labour undercutting our own people.

The reality is that the bosses have been raking it in at the expense of their workers…..productivity for them is fine if measured not by goods produced per man but per pound…..the same amount of goods are being produced for less money, lower wages…thus productivity isn’t down, wages are.  Just remember these are the same bosses who happily pack up a factory and ship it out to China or Turkey and yet the BBC fills the airwaves with stories of how much these fat cats are concerned about the British economy #duetoBrexit.  They don’t give a monkeys, all they are concerned about is their bank accounts.

The BBC continues in this report to push Labour’s lines on housing and social mobility….

Perhaps the most damning report on capitalism in 2017 was to be found in the housing and social mobility figures.

In truth, there have been very few good years for capitalism since the great financial crisis. In 2011, the Occupy movement invaded Wall Street and the City of London demanding immediate global change.

Those tents and placards are long gone.

But the effects of the crisis on earning power, living standards, home ownership and social mobility – all things capitalism promises to improve – remain with us as we end 2017.

But the housing crisis is a result of mass immigration into this country, just how do you house 300,000 people per year? And lack of social mobility is untrue….never have people from all walks of life had more opportunity to get on in life than now.

This BBC report is just pure Corbyn propaganda…and Humphrys this morning just added to the mix.

How much of John Humphrys’ f**king mega-salary is he willing to give up to save Carillion or the NHS?

List the bias here….

John Humphrys’ last laugh?

Humphrys: “Ah… Can you hear me Sopel?”

Sopel: “Humphrys, I can hear you.”

Humphrys: “Good, slight change of subject — first question will be how much of your salary you are prepared to hand over to Carrie Gracie to keep her, and then a few comments about your other colleagues, you know, like our Middle East editor and the other men who are earning too much…”

Sopel: “I mean, obviously if we are talking about the scope for the greatest redistribution I’ll have to come back and say, ‘well yes Mr Humphrys, but…’.”

Humphrys: “And I could save you the trouble, because I could volunteer that I’ve handed over already more than you fucking earn, but I’m still left with more than anybody else and that seems to me to be entirely just – something like that would do it?”

Sopel: “Don’t.”

Humphrys: “Dear God. She’s actually suggested that you should lose money; you know that, don’t you? You’ve read the thing properly, have you?”

Sopel: “Yeah, I have. Yep.”

Humphrys: “And the idea is that I’m not allowed to talk to her about it throughout the whole course of the programme. Not a word.”

Sopel: “I mean…can we have this conversation…I’d love to talk to you about it.”

Humphrys: “Probably not now, yeah right.”

You have to laugh….long and loud.  The biters have been bitten by the very culture of sanctimonious, offence taking, trigger-word fearing, safe-place craving, snowflake ‘don’t mention reality’ neurosis that they  helped create…and deep joy…Trump’s ‘beauty’, Jon Sopel, is one of the victims….and there is a tape recording to prove this one.

BBC ‘deeply unimpressed’ over Carrie Gracie pay jokes

The BBC is “deeply unimpressed” with an off-air chat in which two of its high-profile journalists joked about the gender pay gap, a BBC source has said.

Radio 4’s Today presenter John Humphrys and North America editor Jon Sopel were discussing Carrie Gracie, who had quit as China editor over equal pay.

Before Monday’s show, The Sun and Times reported, they joked of “handing over” pay to keep Gracie in the role.

A BBC spokeswoman said the presenter regrets the “ill-advised” conversation.

Speaking in the Radio 4 studio, Humphrys reportedly asked Sopel about “how much of your salary you are prepared to hand over to Carrie Gracie to keep her”.

He then referred to “other men who are earning too much” at the BBC.

Sopel is understood to have replied that “if we are talking about the scope for the greatest redistribution I’ll have to come back and say well yes Mr Humphrys”.

The presenter is then reported to have uttered a profanity and said that he was “still left with more [pay] than anybody else”.

They were shopped by…

Miriam O’Reilly, who won an ageism case against the BBC in 2011 after being dropped from Countryfile, described the exchange as “base, smug and condescending”.

Claiming to have heard a recording of the chat, Ms O’Reilly said it represented the attitude of “back-slapping entitled males”.

Hilarious…a completely harmless jokey conversation that would be entirely normal in the circumstances has now become an issue of sexist, entitled, smug and condescending males.  Note that ‘claiming’…when she clearly had heard it.

This is how it happens to the likes of Trump…innocent or innocuous comments taken out of context by people with axes to grind and whipped up into a cause celebre and given plenty of sensationalised airtime by the BBC.

Nice to see it happen to their own.

However, one more wrinkle….O’Reilly believes she was taken off air in order to silence her once it was known she had heard the incriminating tape…

She also said she had been dropped from Friday’s Today programme, when she was expecting to talk about equal pay, adding that she believed it was because of concern she would mention the leaked tape on air.

A BBC spokeswoman denied this, saying it was because the item on the programme had become “a much broader discussion about social change” and another guest was more suitable.

She added: “The Today programme often makes changes to schedules and contributors in the run-up to broadcast… It’s wrong to suggest anything else.”

The BBC only so concerned about the gender pay gap and reporting it?….not so keen to do so if it thinks it can get away with it…nor to report on sexist and condescending comments from its own until forced to.