The Young are up in arms, disenfranchised (couldn’t be arsed to get out of bed), marginalised, ignored, demeaned and …and…ooohh…it’s soooooo unfair!!!!

Rather than take to the streets with a Koran in one hand and an AK in the other they’ve taken en masse to modern liberal guerrilla fighter’s weapons of choice, Twitter, Facebook and the dread power of the online petition….but what might be familiar to any Jihadi is the BBC’s support and understanding for their grievances and its determination to press their case for them without much in the way of critical thought or analysis. The Young, we are told, don’t like Brexit and that’s good enough for the BBC…the case rests.

Good job Twitter, Facebook and Change.org weren’t around in 1975 or else all those youngsters who were denied the vote then would have been savaging the Oldies as now…. but now the old dogs have had their day.  And what about all those bastards who joined the army to fight the Nazis in WWII?  What a load of selfish f*****s eh? The underage who couldn’t join  up might have wanted to surrender if only they’d been given the chance.  We could have had a beautiful EU long ago of it hadn’t been for the British Armys’ killers and murderers who destroyed the dream…..yeah Hitler may have killed 6 million Jews but the motorways, the socialism, the pride and unity across Europe, the smart uniforms, just think…and anyway Hitler only killed the Jews coz of what the Israelis were doing in Gaza…so you know…like…they deserved it…only saying what I heard on the BBC.

Brendan O’Neil talks about the massive drive to overturn the democratic vote (the most democratic vote…far more than any general election), part of which is the loud campiagn by the ‘yoof’ to try and claim they were somehow robbed of their future and therefore, in some shape or form, the vote should be run again…only with the young getting two votes each presumably.

The BBC has been very supportive and has been running through all the possible permutations and excuses for a rerun….if only Angie had got out of bed, if only George had not been out of his skull at Glastonbury, if only Alfie’s mum had let him out to play….the vote could have been so different.

This is all part of the BBC’s own campaign to delegitimise the vote.  The BBC has many angles of attack not least of which of course is the usual omission or downplaying of inconvenient and awkward facts, such as the Obama backtracking on the perils of Brexit and his new found criticism and scepticism about the EU project, as well as a remarkable reluctance to ask questions about the Remain campaign’s astoundingly dishonest and alarmist claims and threats whilst forensically and relentlessly attacking Leave’s claims.  The BBC, along with others, want to make out that the stupid voters were fooled by ‘lies’ and so the vote can be annulled.

Alastair Campbell tweeted: ‘EU law allows customers to withdraw from contract if contract based on lies. LEAVE agenda riddled with them. Lawyers on the case.’

The BBC disgracefully, but as per normal for them, portrays the voters as thick, ignorant and uneducated and not a little bigoted.

The BBC dresses up its own bigotry as ‘research’ which tells us that Leave voters are all a bit thick and uneducated…

Was there a Brexit graduate gap?

Voters without degrees were more likely to back leaving the European Union, figures suggest.

Along with age, class and the part of the UK you live in, graduate status was one of the key factors that influenced whether or not you supported EU membership, election analysts believe.

Andrej handed out leaflets for the Remain campaign. At first, every British-born voter he spoke to told him they were voting Remain. But then all of a sudden, “on Facebook they were saying ‘We’re using pens to vote‘”.

It’s not malice that drives suspicion of foreigners and conspiracy theories, he believes. “Some of the people here are not educated good. They don’t have access to the information in full.”

The BBC may slip in the odd qualifier that things are ‘complicated’ but the message is plain….the less educated you are the more you are likely to vote Leave..and the more likely you are to be fooled by the propaganda…..as the Guardian insists…

A week before the referendum, pollsters working for Britain Stronger in Europe admitted that they were getting extremely worried about Vote Leave’s suggestion that £350m sent to the EU could be diverted to British priorities such as the NHS. Guardian focus groups in Brighton and Knowsley suggested many voters saw the message and believed it.

One woman in Merseyside told the group: “Just think, we could get £20bn back a year and make the country great again.”

The BBC has been making strenuous efforts to attack the £350 million pound claim by Leave and suggest that, as the Guardian does, this led to voters being misled and as they have based their vote upon it…let’s all vote again.  As said though…no such analysis and conclusions about the Remain campaign’s claims.

I noted that Nick Robinson and Sarah Montague both (an editorial decision?  Must be) used the same way of talking about the £350m in interviews on Saturday with Leave representatives along the lines that ‘If you can’t get all that £350m back…’.  It’s a bear trap for Leave that the BBC deliberately set…..because if they say ‘But we won’t get £350m back…’ the BBC leaps in and says ah but your whole campaign was based upon that (when the BBC isn’t alternately, when it suits, claiming the campaign was based on immigration) and you now admit it was a lie.  It has been the BBC that has been claiming Leave said we would get the whole £350m back…..Leave have always qualified their statement by admitting that we get a rebate and that the EU spends some of that money on UK projects…Leave’s point, missed again and again by Humphrys and Co, was that it is the UK government that should choose how to spend that money not an unelected EU bureaucrat.

The BBC has been trying very, very hard to find evidence to ‘prove’ Remain’s biblical claims of doom and disaster are coming true……and yet it is a mere 5 days since the vote and things are bound to be jittery….the more reasoned predictions always said short term the economy would take a moderate tumble but would bounce back possibly stronger.  The BBC opts to report the market and sterling falls as signs of Osborne’s impending doom and ignores that long term things will improve.

One other tactic in the campaign to delegitimise the vote is to claim it has led to attacks on foreigners in the UK…

‘Go back home’ – Bitter backlash post EU referendum

No proof of course that is true but now every racist attack will be so labelled….and yet as we know all too well the BBC relentlessly reported such attacks before the vote.  Many such reports may well be false…the arson at a Halal butchers seems somewhat dubious…not the first time such fires have been set for insurance or to blame ‘racists’ …remember the Darul Uloom school ‘arson’?  Four boys arrested…no names and no convictions?  Why not?  Was the fire set by boys from the school themselves in order to blame the EDL in the wake of the killing of Lee Rigby and to make out that Muslims are the real victims of such murders?

In 2014 Poles were being attacked…in ‘Remain’ country too…

Seven attacks in 10 days as racist gang targets Polish community in east Belfast

The BBC themselves reported that Polish immigrants were the attackers in some hate crimes….

Poles held over Sweden asylum centre attack plot

Cameron of course has joined the bandwagon and made his opportunist speech about ‘hate crimes’ linking the latest attacks to Brexit and yet nowhere do we hear him express any concern for the Leave voters attacked and abused in what are equally ‘hate crimes’.  Why are the police not investigating the ‘Liberal’ terror squads on Twitter and in the streets who vilify Leave voters?

The BBC has done a story on this and yet it’s of lower profile than its mainstream stories about immigrants being attacked and somehow it’s just not really a hate crime.

Jane Kelly in Conservative Woman relates a few more tales…

By 4.40 am on Friday 24^th, it was clear that the mass of people in the UK had voted to quit the EU, doing so in a bigger number than have ever voted on any issue in any British ballot before. Surprised and amazed I went for a morning walk with a friend visiting from London. He was wearing a red ‘Leave’ T-shirt, not to be provocative but it was the only thing he’d brought with him to wear. I hadn’t noticed it at all, so I was surprised when a fat youth, wearing an earring and tight shorts shouted at us: ‘You should be ashamed! Ashamed! You have ruined the lives of a whole generation!’

And this…

On BBC-2’s Newsnight that night we were treated to a small forum in which someone with the unlikely name, ‘Paris Lees’  a ‘transgender rights activist,’ who writes on Twitter that ‘it’s time for a revolution of love,’ declared that the Leave campaign had been a load of deliberate lies. She/he railed about old people ruining the future for her generation. Dr David Starkey asked her/him quite logically if she/he would like a cut off point for voting, people over 65 perhaps not being allowed to vote at all, or younger people having two votes?

She/he then turned her/his loving gaze onto Dr David Starkey, discounting his opinion because, she said, he was a ‘privileged, white male.’

Perhaps we should have a cut off point for the terminally stupid and idiotic…perhaps Newsnight should as well…why waste our time with ‘interesting’ morons?  Then again….Paul Mason.

The BBC has a strange logic…it gathers in every single tale of racist attack, pronounces them as the fallout from the Brexit vote and implies that Brexit is therefore a bad thing.

Compare how it reports on crimes by immigrants.  There are thousands of crimes committed by immigrants in the UK ranging from murder and rape to shoplifting and fraud…and yet the BBC does not make any link to ‘immigration’ and certainly does not draw the conclusion that perhaps immigration has some drawbacks and maybe it should be controlled.

Perhaps Mark Easton or Evan Davis would like to explain how open borders was good for the family of Alice Gross…tied up, raped, abused and killed?

Foreigners entering Britain ‘were not routinely checked for convictions at the time Alice Gross’ Latvian killer came to UK’

Alice Gross would almost certainly be alive today if it hadn’t been for the EU’s freedom of movement rule as he wouldn’t have tried to come here.

Mark Easton, who sits on the BBC sofa blithely telling us how immigration is good for us and that it is unstoppable so we’d better get used to it, should be ashamed of himself.

Yelling abuse at a Muslim in a headscarf or raping and murdering a 14 year old girl.  Which is worse?  Depends who does the crime says the BBC.

If an IRA bomb had killed the 96 at Hillsborough do you think the BBC would have so enthusiastically campaigned for an enquiry?

We’ve looked before at the BBC’s decidedly lacklustre approach to the thought that there should be more inquiries into the Birmingham bombing, it’s almost as if they didn’t want any IRA killers to be caught and prosecuted.

It seems that wasn’t a one off interview and that this tone of indifference to IRA murder might be ‘institutional’ as Kathy Gyngell reports…

The BBC sank to a new low yesterday (Weds) morning. Its Today Programme coverage of the Birmingham pub bombings inquest resumption left me as angry as I can remember feeling.

We were told that, after more than 40 years, the survivors and families of the victims of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings were to find out if their request for the resumption of the inquest into the deaths of 21 people would be successful – without which the perpetrators of this shocking terror attack could never be brought to book.

So was the usually victim-charged BBC celebrating this ‘win’ for justice?

No.  The mood in the studio was unenthusiastic. In fact they set out to put a damper on it. They invited Chris Mullins, a former MP and the ‘investigative journalist’ instrumental in freeing the six men wrongly convicted of the Birmingham pub bombings, to comment. And none too sympathetic was he.

Humphrys had already set the scene. The ‘real’ shocking miscarriage of justice had been to the freed Birmingham Six.

Insensitive did not even begin to describe it.

IRA killers, Islamist killers, Palestinian murderers, terrorists of all creeds and colours welcomed and given a platform to help them explain away their murders by the BBC.

As said many times, it is the BBC that is one of the biggest dangers to our society as it consistently supports those who use bombs, bullets and street thuggery to thwart the democratic process.

The BBC cheerleads for terrorists and murder.

Amused to hear Peter Allen saying he was going to devote the last part of his programme to the Labour Party….sure he didn’t mean that.

They were of course talking  about the ‘car crash’ Labour leadership election and one subject came up was the #toriesforcorbyn windup.  A Tory voting caller told Allen that he was going to vote for Corbyn…Allen said that he strongly disapproved and that this was very undemocratic…it would damage democracy.

Hmmm….how about the most influential media organisation in the UK, the BBC, siding with Labour year after year?….or Murdoch siding with Labour for 12 years?  Seemed pretty hunky dory then…at least until the Sun switched to the Tories and Brown declared war on Murdoch.  Isn’t that ‘war’ also undemocratic, usng the forces of government to smash a free press that doesn’t support you now?

I wonder what Allen thinks of the Guardian and Polly Toynbee…does he similarly disapprove or does he reserve his contempt just for the Tories?….here’s the Guardian’s idea of how to manipulate democracy……

How to vote tactically: a no-guarantees guide to gaming the election

Britain’s rotten electoral system means that once again it’s nose-peg time

Under first-past-the-post Labour, Greens and Lib Dems will have to vote-swap to keep the Tories out.

Talking tactics brings politics into disrepute and disgusts young voters with its calculating cynicism. But that’s what our rotten system demands: head not heart. For those in seats where they know following their heart helps Cameron into Downing Street, vote-swapping is an option that lets them register heartfelt politics while using their head to block the brutality of Conservative plans.

The new vote-swap site already has 100,000 voters signed up – with no publicity. This year vote-swappers could make all the difference.

So Polly Toynbee knows tactical voting is disreputable but is prepared to look away if it gets in the Party she wants to win…head not heart.

Which brings us to Lord Prescott being interviewed by Humphrys this morning (08:10) about Blair’s comment that people voting with their heart for Corbyn need a heart transplant.  Apparently this was ‘totally unacceptable abuse’ …can’t see the problem myself.  If Blair thinks Corbyn’s policies are wildly wrong and damaging and people are thinking of voting for him solely on the basis of a warm and cuddly feeling then perhaps they do need a change of heart….utopian policies that do more damage than good are not in any way admirable…just delusional.  Humphrys made no case for Bair’s defence.

Prescott’s not beyond a bit of personal abuse himself…

John Prescott: You’d have to be a plonker to vote for a Del Boy Prime Minister like dodgy David Cameron

A prime plonker not a prime minister.

Isn’t he calling voters who vote for Cameron ‘plonkers’?  Not really any different in substance to saying voters need a heart transplant if they vote for Corbyn.

How about when he declared Cameron a coward...’John Prescott was among the first to spring into the Twittersphere, branding Cameron a “coward” who knew Miliband would “wipe the floor with him”.’

Prescott seems to have a problem with demcocracy and free speech where people voice their opinions…if their opinons differ from his that is…here’s what he thought David Miliband should do…‘He should shut up.’

Yep, very democratic….I guess being a ‘Lord’ has gone to Prescott’s head.

It was amusing to hear Prescott advising Blair, the man who won three elections, on how to win elections…apparently the Iraq war was the cause of Labour losing voters in 2015…hmm…..how about 2005?  Wasn’t it Labour that won that election?  The invasion of Iraq being in 2003.  Margaret Beckett was right about Prescott. Humphrys said nothing but then again he doesn’t have a good record on comments aout Iraq…and the BBC’s standard response to any world problem is that the Iraq war caused it.  Well it certainly finished the career of Greg Dyke at the BBC.

Prescott claims that we should all be talking about policies not being abusive…which is why he spent so much of an interview on the BBC’s prime current affairs programme talking not about policies but about abuse and then spending a good chunk more of it abusing Tony Blair.  Prescott can’t even remember Liz kendall’s name.

Prescott claimed that the polls indicating Corbyn was in the lead were a Murdoch conspiracy…Humphrys didn’t raise an objection…despite the first such poll being reported by the lefty bible, the New Statesman, only a week ago….

Jeremy Corbyn “on course to come top” in the Labour leadership election

IS…that’s Independent Scotland rather than Islamic State..however a cynic, a realist, might conclude that the Tartan Mussolini might well take Scotland to the edge of respectability with his promises of a free-for-all Scotland and a brave new socialist republic.  Of course when the NHS puts up the shutters and there’s no more BBC it will be free…because if there’s nothing to ‘buy’ you won’t need money…so that’s the currency argument dealt with as well.  LOL.

But is the BBC biased on the question of Scottish independence?  The Nats think so, pro-Union of course, but on the national coverage I’d suggest they were pro-Yes, though that is based purely on my perception of whatever I manage to hear or see.

It’s not scientific but I always got the impression that the BBC gave Salmond & Co a free ride in interviews whilst the pro-union camp were  dealt with in a more negative manner….for example Humphrys’ interview with Darling recently where he constantly interrupted and seemed determined to run down the pro-union campaign…whereas a little while later the SNP’s John Swinney swanned in for a quick chat and moments later was off the hook without breaking sweat.

The BBC seems prone to talking of the ‘anti-independence’ or the ‘no’ campaign rather than choosing to call it the ‘Pro-Union’ campaign whereas the Yes crowd are more often than not the ‘Yes’ campaign or ‘Pro-Independence’….all very positive.   Admittedly the pro-Union campaign didn’t help itself but the BBC should be impartial regardless of the incompetence of one side or another.

The BBC has been big on the ‘panic’ references recently, the papers are of course full of it, but again why follow the paper’s lead?  The BBC should be above the fray and giving us a cool assessment but this morning we heard that it was not the appearance of panic but actual panic that sends Cameron et al to take the road to Scotland.  But not so long ago he was accused of ducking the issues as he was unpopular in Scotland as a Tory (despite the Tories getting nearly as many votes as the SNP)….so when the campaign is on a knife edge and he makes an appearance he then gets accused of panic.

But it isn’t panic….looking at the polls they thought the referendum was probably in the bag for a long time only for the polls to suddenly show a swing to the Nats…..of course they’re going to react…it’s not panic just common sense. Why the BBC emphasises the ‘panic’ label I can’t imagine other than to compete with the tabloids…and it just happens to be the Nats own narrative:  John Swinney: Atmosphere of absolute panic in no campaign

It would be a natural fit for the BBC to cheerlead independence despite their aversion to the nation state.  Their aversion to ‘Britain’ as an historical, political, economic, social and racial, ex-Imperial construct overrides their dislike of nationalism.

Their failsafe is that independence makes the remnants more vulnerable to be picked off and absorbed by the faceless EU, something the Tartan Mussolini is desperate to achieve for his own wee personal fifedom….ironically….never mind still wanting to keep the BBC, the NHS, the Queen and  oh yes the currency.

Independence?….my arse.

I admit to not seeing the benefits of independence, it seems all based on emotion and hatred of Westminster politicians and the ‘English’ generated by the Tartan Mussolini and his mob who of course are politicians themselves.  The downsides seem all too apparent and decidedly risky….the marginal, and merely promised, benefits massively outweighed by those downsides…emotional, historic, practical and economic.

Scotland’s Future

Can’t wait to see the Tartan Mussolini going shirtless in a Braveheart moment…can’t be long now…certain to be good friends with this guy:

The BBC’s new drama, The Honourable Woman, is based around events, historic and present day, occurring in Israel and Palestine.

We are assured that it is entirely neutral in its approach and does not take sides.
The Author, and producer/director, Hugo Blick, tells us he has been scrupulously careful in exploring the issues:

The lead character is an Israeli – do you think that might cause some to react to the drama suggesting it could be biased?

It is important that viewers and critics watch the entire series – as intended – before making judgements on the characters or story arc because great care has been taken to explore this complexity. It is also important to note that the character played by Lubna Azabal is a Palestinian and that the series title could equally reflect upon her.

The Guardian applauds his skill in negotiating the political minefield:

Does anyone perceive Blick taking sides? I thought he walked a difficult tightrope with real skill. Calling for equality of opportunity with the statement: “Terror thrives in poverty. It dies in wealth,” felt powerful without being contentious.

The first 15 minutes would disabuse you of any notion that this is not an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian polemic….it is based upon the premise that Israel must be destroyed.

It starts with the brutal murder of the ‘Honourable Woman’s’ father, an apparently Zionist arms dealer, killed by a Palestinian with a pair of tongs…no doubt an ironic comment on the supposed ‘David and Goliath’ power relationship between the two combatants now so fashionable in BBC interpretations of events….otherwise known as ‘The News’.

Blick’s tale is a shallow, naive allegory of the Middle East…the father is the old Israel, or rather the Israel that it still is, ‘armed and dangerous’, whilst the daughter, Nessa Stein, that ‘Honourable Woman’, is the new Israel, or rather the ‘one state’ solution where the walls are taken down and there are no barriers any more between the Jews and the Palestinians and everyone lives happily everafter.

The father, as said, is killed off, just as Israel should be we are led to think… Blick admits the conflict is embodied within the characters…. ‘In The Honourable Woman the conflict is used as a creative device – a reflection of the internal conflict of the central character.’

Nessa tells us that strong walls were needed for Israel to thrive, and that’s what her father offered, strong walls for a fledgling nation….but those walls aren’t needed now.

She goes on….telling us that Israel’s GDP in the previous year exceeded $220bn…a fledgling nation no more….the Palestinians on the other hand had a GDP of only $4bn.

She tells us ‘What a difference a wall makes.’

Which wall would that be Mr Blick?  Could he possibly be making a not so subtle allusion to the Israeli security barrier?

Nessa goes on to reveal that ‘I believe in Israel’  but there needs to be ‘fundamental change….the greatest threat to Israel is Palestinian poverty, terror thrives in poverty, it dies in wealth…..The strongest wall we can help Israel to maintain is one through which equality of opportunity can pass.’

I’m certain Blick has absolutely no intention of making any allusion whatsoever to the ‘infamous’ Israeli ‘wall’, that security barrier that defends it, its people, from Palestinian terror attacks….but which anti-Israeli activists like to characterise as a symbol of apartheid and economic oppression crushing the Palestinian people, unfairly restricting their lives and economy.

Blick is saying that that wall must come down, it must be breached, he is saying Israel must be destroyed as a nation.

And Blick is not above using Jewish stereotypes…the moaning wife of Nessa’s brother being an archetypal ‘Jewess’ whilst the Jewish businessman, Shlomo, wanting the contract for laying communications cables, is the Pub ‘humorists’ idea of a Jewish businessman…brash, rude, loud and obnoxious….add onto that a racist talking of that ‘Palestinian bastard’ and subliminally suggesting that Arabs are ‘fucking camel jockeys’….oye vay!

If Blick gives up writing drama he can get a job writing jokes for Al Murray’s ‘Pub Landlord’….not so very different to good old Shlomo.

It should also be noted that the BBC was happy to screen this programme despite it involving the kidnapping of a Palestinian child.  No cultural sensitivities, no postponing of the broadcast, at a time when a Palestinian teenager has indeed been kidnapped and killed.

Why might that be?  Could it be that later on we find out that the kidnap in the programme was at the instigation of some ‘evil’ Israelis and the BBC is quite happy to reinforce that impression in light of the arrest of some Israelis for the kidnap and murder of the Palestinian?

The Guardian certainly liked what it saw and applauded its ‘relevance’…check the link they provide:

‘This new eight-parter is among the most exciting TV events of the year (pace the World Cup). The opener didn’t disappoint, weaving not one but two whodunnits – the suicide/murder of Samir Meshal and kidnap of Kasim – around the most intractable political issue of the day (it could hardly feel more timely) and the life of the woman in the middle.’

But never mind the politics just how good was the programme as entertainment?

Other left leaning publications also love it, which might indicate something of the politics:

From the New Statesman:
The momentum, richness and complexity are maintained. The Honourable Woman will win every award going and when it ends in the final days of summer, its fans, who will be legion and messianic in its cause, will have to take up needlepoint or mah-jong. Nothing on telly is going to be this good for some time to come.

From the Huffington Post:

When the BBC do it right, they do it superbly, as with ‘The Honourable Woman’ – an engrossing political thriller AND family drama that looks like it could become the UK’s answer to ‘Homeland’.

Unfortunately their political persuasions get the better of their critical faculties…the programme is clunky, clumsy, simplistic and obvious.  It is a student project that incorporates every device known to ‘media man’ to laboriously make its points.

A highly political and very old fashioned production…it’s like something dragged out of the 70’s  lacking style, sophistication and real, believable excitement.   Has Blick not seen anything by Tarantino, or even the BBC’s, still lefty but stylish, Sherlock?

The Huffington Post and others say ‘it could become the UK’s answer to ‘Homeland’. ‘

No, it couldn’t, have they not actually seen Homeland?  The first series was brilliant, the second maintained the standard, the third was pretty dire.  The BBC has gone straight for ‘dire’ with ‘The Honourable Woman’.

The acting was wooden and lifeless…when the Zionist arms dealing father was killed off in front of his children they just sat there staring….the Mail explains:

The victim’s daughter was an eight-year-old Nessa Stein. She sat frozen with her father’s blood spattered across her face, in a green velvet chair far too big for her.
That Alice-in-Wonderland image of stillness amid chaos is a trick borrowed from European cinema, light years removed from the  all-action blur of Hollywood.

Blick borrowing from ‘European cinema’…that could explain why it is crap.

Maggie Gyllenhaal as Nessa Stein, a supposedly powerful business woman, is unbelievable, not unbelievably good, just unbelievable…with an incredibly annoying ‘breathy’ voice over.

Her brother might as well be replaced by a bag of sand, the nanny seems a few drinks short of a good time and the other supporting actors are highly mannered stereotypes…I do though like the MI6 fellow, Sir Hugh Hayden-Hoyle,….though how Rod Liddle got the time to play the part is beyond me….however, again likeable but still too stagey.

The supposedly dramatic and exciting finale where the the boy is kidnapped was laughable nonsense…..Nessa’s bodyguard appearing out of nowhere, completely unnoticed by the kidnappers despite the open nature of the area, managing to shoot a kidnapper with a pistol at long range in the dark…never mind the whole tortured invention of the kidnap itself…a ridiculously complex concoction once again more probably the result of a drunken brainstorming session by those students of film check-boxing all the required ingredients for a thriller resulting in a cliched and uninventive ‘spectacular’.

Still, that’s purely my view…others beg to differ:

Blick patiently and methodically lays out the building blocks of this drama like a grandmaster positioning his pieces.

The Honourable Woman is a marathon, not a sprint: a drama with more layers than Rachel Green’s traditional English trifle and Dante’s circles of Hell combined – and twice as darkly fascinating.

Though thinking of it…that could just be damning by faint praise….‘a grandmaster positioning his pieces’?  Are we to be dragged through 7 epsiodes of mind-numbing pawn play only to be rewarded finally with a rising crescendo of eyepopping action and the tying up of all loose ends in an intellectually gratifying masterpiece that satisfies the most jaded of critics?

The Today programme decided it had to do a routine on the Magna Carta, (08:22) the BBC being then BBC they had a not so subtle undercurrent of disdain and amused contempt for the whole thing much as Gavin Esler did when talking of ‘British values’…‘whatever they are…smirk smirk’.

Historian David Starkey didn’t let them get away with their patronising attitude saying that ‘Tradition’ was a word that ‘you [Evan Davis] and this programme always treats with such contempt.’

Davis had begun by telling us that some people say that the signing of the Magna Carta was one of the defining episodes in the building of our democracy.

He immediately had to qualify that with a question as to what is ‘our’ and what is ‘democracy’?  Nothing is absolute with the BBC, an attitude designed to allow them to make equivalence with other cultures and say they are just as acceptable as ‘British values’…whatever they are.

David Starkey corrected Davis and said the Magna Carta had nothing to do with democracy, which is two a penny, but was important because it was the foundation of limited and responsible government.

Davis went on to ask ‘In a sequence of events would you put it [the Magna Carta] at the number one of importance or would you put it along the lines of…..’

David Starkey had to jump in there and exclaim…

‘Oh dear…this is like a Guardian football list of your 10 best favourite armpit scratching records…this is vulgar way of approaching this…..it’s immensely important.’

Starkey goes on to provide great value and more pokes in the eye for Davis and the other ‘expert’  Nicholas Vincent, medieval historian…..though a ‘Tudor expert’ Starkey seems to know more medieval history than Vincent…though perhaps Vincent’s thoughts are coloured by his less than impressed attitude towards the Magna Carta despite grudgingly admitting its ‘importance’.

Apparently David Starkey is making a series on the Magna Carta for the BBC next year…should be interesting.

From the Magna Carta website:

Magna Carta matters. It is the foundation stone supporting the freedoms enjoyed today by hundreds of millions of people in more than 100 countries.

Magna Carta enshrined the Rule of Law in English society. It limited the power of authoritarian rule. It paved the way for trial by jury, modified through the ages as the franchise was extended. It proclaimed certain religious liberties, “the English Church shall be free”. It defined limits on taxation; every American remembers that “no taxation without representation” was the cry of the American colonists petitioning the King for their rights as free men.

For centuries it has influenced constitutional thinking worldwide including in France, Germany, Japan, the United States and India as well as many Commonwealth countries, and throughout Latin America and Africa.  Over the past 800 years, denials of Magna Carta’s basic principles have led to a loss of liberties, loss of human rights and even genocide. It is an exceptional document on which democratic society has been constructed.

Nearly five hundred years later it was central to both the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution.  The newly-independent United States included many of its concepts in the 1791 Bill of Rights. In 1870 Bishop William Stubbs asserted “the whole of the constitutional history of England is a commentary on this Charter.”  In 1965 Lord Denning, the most celebrated English judge of the 20^th Century, described Magna Carta as “the greatest constitutional document of all times – the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.”

Another lasting legacy is seen in the UN Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948. Speaking at the UN General Assembly as she submitted the UN Declaration, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt argued that “we stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind. This declaration may well become the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere”.

And:

In a 2005 speech, Lord Woolf described it as “first of a series of instruments that now are recognised as having a special constitutional status”, the others being the Habeas Corpus Act, the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights, and the Act of Settlement.

Some reaction to Starkey from his fans:

Imagine a global spying network that can eavesdrop on every single phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet.

It sounds like science fiction, but it’s true.

The power of the network, codenamed Echelon, is astounding.

Every international telephone call, fax, e-mail, or radio transmission can be listened to by powerful computers capable of voice recognition.

That was written in 1999….and its still true now….what’s new?

The NSA has been hoovering up all your data….and it’s just one big surprise…who knew?  Obama has things under control though….

Mark Mardell’s love-in with the Pres. continues….

As ever, insiders say the president has mastered all the complex technical details in play and thought long and hard about which way to go.

As so often, his liberal instincts may be at war with his perceived duty as commander in chief – and he may be doomed to disappoint many on both sides of the debate.

Isn’t the Pres. just great?  So intelligent, so Liberal…and forced against his better nature to keep Guantanamo open, to increase drone attacks…and to spy relentlessly on his political opponents in the election.

Ironically perhaps this is from the Guardian:

Oh hang on Mark…… here is another example of Obama’s Liberal ethics:

Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me

Well….just for the election run up anyway…..

The ACLU released a report this week that shows that under Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder, warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American’s electronic communications is “sharply on the rise.”

Obama Warrantless Wiretapping….Obama Signs Extension Of Controversial Bush-Era Program

The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger said on the Today programme:

This is a remarkable day. The president of the United States responding to information that’s been put into the public domain by newspaper, not by the oversight committees that are supposed to look after these things.

Well…..hardly ‘Breaking News’ is it….14 years out of date in fact….not so ‘remarkable’.

Asked about MI6 chief Sir John Sawers’s claim that terrorists were “rubbing their hands with glee” at the revelations, he said:

That was a very theatrical moment, but there was no evidence attached. The NSA is collecting 200m records a day on people who are not suspected of anything. This is warrant-less, suspicion-less collection of data on all of us, and that’s why it has become such a huge issue amongst people who think this is a bit disturbing.

I mean don’t listen to me, listen to Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented the internet [in fact the world wide web]; he was horrified to learn about the weaknesses that had been put into the web, and how this is going to harm the web itself.

Listen to the tech companies – the American … tech companies see a revulsion from the end of the world at their businesses, and this is going to have severe financial implications.

Just a shame that every time you log onto his paper’s website you are being tracked often by those very tech companies…….and such tracking can be blocked by the paper…the BBC usually has no tracking for instance…..

Does the Guardian get paid to allow tracking of its customers?

Here is Google Analytics:

Your customers go everywhere; shouldn’t your analytics? Google Analytics shows you the full customer picture across ads and videos, websites and social tools, tablets and smartphones. That makes it easier to serve your current customers and win new ones.

Know your audience

No two people think exactly alike. Google Analytics helps you analyze visitor traffic and paint a complete picture of your audience and their needs, wherever they are along the path to purchase.

Pretty clear….your every move on the net is being analysed by commercial companies….and clear that a company must actively want to have ‘Google Analytics’ on its site to help it track its customers.

You can of course try to block the trackers….but most sites require you to allow their cookies which also track you whilst ‘helping you get a better service’.

Why no concern about these Trackers…or about the phone companies that have your every movement on their data bases, or the network of numberplate recognition cameras that track you around the country, or Tescos logging your every purchase, or smart meters logging  everything you do at home…etc….

And is  all this such a surprise?  The BBC consistently fails to mention the exact same revelations from 1999.….the exact same complaints….and it was Republican congressman who began the ball rolling to investigate all that.

Not sure why the BBC lets the Guardian get away with this….Humphrys didn’t push Rusbridger very hard at all this morning…as said this is nothing new….massive trawls of data by the intelligence agencies, collection of intelligence on friendly countries and commercial interests, cries of outrage and appeals for investigations…..what’s new?

A couple of the BBC’s reports from 1999…..

Echelon: Big brother without a cause?

Critics accuse the United States’ intelligence community and its English-speaking partners of waging what is in effect a new Cold War.

At stake are international contracts worth billions of dollars, and at the disposal of the spymasters is an intelligence gathering system of immense power.

The Echelon spy system, whose existence has only recently been acknowledged by US officials, is capable of hoovering up millions of phone calls, faxes and emails a minute.

A report published by the European Parliament in February alleges that Echelon twice helped US companies gain a commercial advantage over European firms.

“There’s no safeguards, no remedies…….There’s nowhere you can go to say that they’ve been snooping on your international communications. It is a totally lawless world.”

EU probes Echelon

The European Parliament has voted to form a committee to investigate allegation that the US spy network, Echelon, is being used as a tool for industrial espionage.

So shouldn’t the BBC be asking what happened to all that ‘investigation’ in 1999?

Rusbridger’s ‘theatrical’ claims are just that…nothing new…and according to the intelligence agencies putting lives at risk as Rusbridger and Co aid the terrorists.

As the Guardian’s revelations are not new their publication of the material is clearly unnecessary…and therefore unnecessary risks are being taken regardless of the dangers associated with publishing….all so that Rusbridger can pose as the saviour of a Liberal world….

Is that not what the BBC should concentrate on with this story…whether the Guardian is unnecessarily putting lives at risk for commercial gain?

This is what energy company SSE had to say today as it raised prices:

‘Over many years, policymakers themselves have failed to highlight adequately the cost to consumers of the policies they have pursued in government.’

Government has been allowed to hide the costs of those ‘green’ energy policies and the way they makes our fuel bills go ever upward, and the reason is that the BBC has, instead of doing what Humphrys said was the BBC’s role, bringing Power to account, it has done everything it could to support those policies:

The BBC has worked hand in hand with climate scientists.

It’s journalists have taken money from those climate scientists to fund their propaganda.

It has worked hand in hand with climate activists.

It is a climate activist in its own right.

The BBC instead of investigating, challenging and reporting political events surrounding climate change has worked with the politicians to promote their policies.

Even today the BBC continues to muddy the waters and distract attention from the real reasons for price rises and concentrates on inciting a feeling amongst the public that the energy companies are profiteering as they freeze in their homes and old people and the vulnerable fall sick or die from the cold.

We are constantly treated to Miliband’s analysis …that the market is failing and companies ripping us off….and his price freeze is the answer.

Here the BBC tells us that Greg Barker, government Energy Minister, has been ‘defending the energy companies’ against Miliband’s claims and that ‘the more these companies put their bills up the more Ed Miliband’s offer looks attractive’..….so the BBC takes Labour’s narrative…that the Tories are only supporting big companies and abandoning the ‘vulnerable’….and Miliband’s policy is popular.

The BBC must think everyone is a fool…Miliband’s proposals have been roundly condemned by just about everyone…even a previous Labour energy minister.

This is what the BBC tells us Adam Scorer, Director of Consumer Futures says:

“SSE and others who follow need to demonstrate why this rise is justified.”

But in fact his main message was this (11 mins):

‘I have a lot of sympathy with SSE…We are in a high cost energy market and the prices aren’t going to come down any time soon…the only solution is…Government needs to make a real and sustained difference to the cost of energy. Sadly, short term freezes or the exhortation to switch just do not get to the heart of the matter. We need to see Government and regulators pull the right levers.’

So Miliband’s short term price freeze is a crock.

Strange the BBC didn’t quote that.

Just been listening to Labour’s Diane Abbot on Question Time….she claims that the 8% rise in energy price by SSE demonstrates that the energy market is rigged and dysfunctional.

So let’s have a  look at whether the companies are making undue profits, if the market is rigged and dysfunctional…and if so, who is to blame.

The company says it has put prices up because of a rise in wholesale prices…in the main…. it is their first price rise in twelve months….and the profit margin is a mere 5%.

Ofgem is the regulator for the energy market and this is what it has to say about the price of energy:

Facts about wholesale costs
The wholesale price of gas for use this winter is 8 per cent higher than the price of gas for use last winter.
The wholesale price of electricity for use this winter is 13 per cent higher than the price of electricity for use last winter.

We have made the transition from a country self-sufficient in gas to a country dependent on gas imports. This, together with environmental targets and the need to invest in ageing power stations and energy networks, has increased pressure on prices.

Facts about environmental costs
Over the last ten years environmental costs have risen from £10 to over £100.
Compared to 2012, environmental costs have risen by around £10 to £115 of an average annual dual fuel household bill.
If current trends continue, we anticipate environmental costs to increase further over the next 12 months.

Energy bills have risen in recent years for a number of reasons. These include the impact of global energy prices on wholesale energy costs, the increasing cost of meeting the government’s environmental targets and the cost of investing in the pipe and wire networks.

So that’s pretty clear…SSE raises prices 8%…Miliband claims it’s a scandal, the BBC reports his words…but doesn’t report along side that that wholesale prices have risen 8% for gas and 13% for electricity.

The BBC has been broadcasting a doom and gloom scenario for these price rises…it has been broadcasting Miliband’s soundbite all day…‘It’s a scandal and the government is just standing by allowing these companies to rip us off.’

John Pienaar tells us every chance he gets that Ed Miliband is setting the agenda on the ‘cost of living crisis’….no mention that this new line by Labour is because their Plan B strategy failed so miserably.

Is Miliband setting the agenda then?
Didn’t the government raise the tax thresh hold for millions of low paid workers? (Something that rarely gets a mention on the BBC)…and as for energy isn’t the government already working to keep prices low and transparent and improve competition in the market?  So, well ahead of Miliband.

The government tells us:

On 21 June 2013, after two years extensive research, we published detailed rule changes that will deliver a simpler, clearer and fairer energy market.
The reforms will tackle problems of widespread consumer confusion over energy tariffs, poor supplier behaviour and lack of transparency which is stifling competition. This will give consumers the choice they want and simplicity to compare energy tariffs, making it much easier to access the information they need to find the best deal on the market.

There is little genuine effort on the part of the BBC to drill down into the figures and who is to blame.

Here is Guido:
Ed Admitted Cost of Living Would Be Increased By His Policies
Willing to “Lose Six Months of Economic Growth”

Here is Sky News:
Demonising Energy Firms May Be Slightly Unfair

Here is the Telegraph:
Ed Miliband can’t freeze those bills he himself sent through the roof

But look at the BBC and Miliband’s role in all this is missing….the green tax burden is downplayed and the analysis of exactly why prices rise is missing in detail…the BBC mentions wholesale prices and ‘government levies’ as it puts it, but fails to give the detail…such as wholesale has risen 8% and 13% in the last year…kind of an important fact.

They tell us that the green taxes, or government levies or programmes, only make up a small part of a bill….
David Cameron wants to shift the focus of restricting price rises on to green taxes, which make up part of your bill…It’s only a small percentage of what you pay

A small percentage?  The BBC itself tells us that it is up to 11%….and as you can see from Ofgem’s figures that is £115 per year on your bill and set to rise…anything up to a total of£300.

As the green tax is the only thing other than company profit that can be reduced and thereby reduce retail prices those taxes should be taking a far more prominent role in the discussions by the BBC.

Are the markets failing?  Well it makes a nice soundbite….but what is the truth and who is responsible for the markets?

Firstly I fail to see how 6 companies constitutes a lack of competition…amongst a myriad of smaller companies…and it was Labour that reduced the number of big companies from 14 to 6…and bare in mind that National Grid is a monopoly..and its prices have gone up 10%…why is that not a ‘scandal’, why is that not due to lack of competition, why does Miliband not want to freeze their prices?

Clearly it is not a market failure that is driving up prices….and with margins of only 5% the companies don’t have much room for price cuts…..and as they all buy wholesale from the same markets and use the same National Grid infrastructure prices are always going to be similar and therefore comments from Labour about market failure can be seen to be so much hot air.

Who is responsible for regulating the market and what is their role?

Ofgem is the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets.

Our role is to make sure that retail energy markets work in the interests of consumers. We do this by monitoring the market and, where necessary, taking action to strengthen competition or enforce the rules with which suppliers must comply.

Our priority is to protect customers’ interests.  One way in which we do this is through the promotion of effectively functioning competitive markets.

When necessary, we use our powers to monitor and address any anti-competitive behaviour or practices which may affect the market.

So pretty clear…Ofgem regulates the market, tries to ensure ‘value for money’ for the customer and promotes competition within the market.

If the market isn’t working presumably it’s not the market’s fault, because the market is being ‘controlled’ by the state regulator.

It is Ofgem’s fault.

Ofgem also regulates the National Grid network….SSE said that 10% of its cost rise came from the National Grid raising its own prices….this is what Ofgem says:

It is important that National Grid has appropriate commercial incentives to operate the gas NTS in an economic and efficient manner, as they are required to do under the terms of their licence as the System Operator.
To achieve this we work to develop incentive schemes that provide National Grid with an appropriate balance of risk and reward. At the same time, we also try to protect the interests of present and future consumers, who ultimately pay for the costs of system operation.

Listening to the BBC and its own analysis and presentation you’d never know of Ofgem’s large and vital role, you’d never know of the price rises in wholesale gas and electricity and how they relate to SSE’s price rise, you’d never know whether the markets are failing or not and you’d never know that Miliband’s price freeze was an eye-catching highly cynical political ploy…a trick.

It is just curious how the BBC whilst mentioning the bare minimum of facts manages to ignore those facts and still push the idea that the companies are profiteering, that  price freeze is a good idea and that all this has nothing to do with green policies, or Ed Miliband.

Listening to the BBC you might just come away with the idea that the energy companies are ripping everyone off, that capitalism has failed again, and that the only answer is a good dose of socialist state intervention…a solution that the Public apparently finds attractive.

  Ed Balls today made a joke about Cameron and his beach towel then went on to hide his own embarrassment at Labour’s 13 years of destruction with a load of old flannel.

The BBC’s reaction to all that is going on with Labour at the moment?  Well…not too bad as I saw it….at least in parts.

John Pienaar was his usual Labour leaning self, in my opinion…with little in the way of hard hitting analysis of Balls’ speech.

This morning on Today Justin Webb had the job of tackling Balls. (07:35)  The interview was on the moderate side with no questions that Balls couldn’t easily bat aside.  Humphrys should really have done the interview, his style of interviewing would have rattled Balls far more.

Webb allowed Balls to get away with a lot of  that ‘flannel’.

For instance Balls said that the Socialism that Labour represented was not ‘economic socialism’..it was about values, policies with an ethical basis..fairness.  Webb didn’t challenge that claim that it wasn’t the economics of socialism that was being taken up once again by Labour.

Webb said that Labour were going to spend more but hadn’t laid out the ‘big picture’ of what cuts they would make and what actual plans they had.

Balls replied Labour would match the government’s spending plan but make different choices within that budget.

In contradiction to that, and his request to the OBR to scrutinize his plans,  he said the budget plans would only be published in the 2015 manifesto.

Webb didn’t react to either point…the first means that Balls has adopted Osborne’s Plan A…and the second point raises the question of just what would the OBR be looking at if Labour’s budget isn’t published until 2015…Balls has after all spent 3 years steadfastly refusing to disclose his spending plans whilst making claims that his spending plans would save the economy….and yet he always said he couldn’t publish the plans because he didn’t have the data…so how could he work out that plan in the first place?

The reliably awkward Andrew Neil however proved more hard hitting than Webb on the Daily Politics.….though the BBC have once again dragged in someone from the New Economic Foundation….she panned Labour…but only because they weren’t really socialist enough.

At 08:22  the Today programme delved into the murky world of Damien McBride who has lifted the lid to confirm what we already knew about the mad, bad and ugly goings on in Labour’s backrooms.

It seems also to have stirred the BBC into action…whilst they are reluctant to criticise Brown for his economic policies they apparently have no problem here slating him for his political machinations….and it seems apparent that Brown knew all too well what was going on and even ignored complaints from MPs and Cabinet members.

Later on Woman’s Hour brought on Harriet Harman and again the BBC laid into Brown in regard to McBride’s revelations with some reasonably challenging questions.  However once that little difficulty was out of the way it was all sisterly love and unity….eulogising about Harman’s feminist sensibilities.

Harman complained about the lack of women in Parliament….stating that the problem with Thatcher was that yes, she was a woman PM, but she did little to help women to enter Parliament and that Thatcher got to be PM by the shocking tactic of playing men at their own game…..whatever that means….is there a separate and different route reserved for women…bikinis and baking competitions rather than the trouble of having to win at the ballot box?

Harman was allowed to avoid answering the obvious question…she could have been Labour Leader and possibly PM if she had gone for the leadership, but she refused to take on the challenge.  How is it that a champion of women’s progress and someone who says she wants more women in higher profile jobs refused to put herself in the role that could have helped with that…apparently…if, as she claims, Thatcher could have helped women, why did she not take on the responsibility herself?

And no questions about her casting aside her feminist solidarity when it came to refusing to accept an all woman candidate list in a constituency her husband wanted to stand in.

All in all a mixed bag today….they were on the right track but the heart didn’t seem to be in it for the most part, lacking a bit of the necessary brutality when dealing with Labour’s politicians and policies…..a brutality necessary because whilst Balls made the hilariously unaware claim (having spent 3 years denying Labour had anything to do with the greatest economic crash in 100 years…and still denying it in his speech today) that Osborne can’t airbrush out the economic past, Balls and his Labour comrades are all wandering around the studios saying that McBride’s allegations are all things dragged up from the past, irrelevant, depressing, and you know what, let’s not talk about it.

I see that our resident contrarians spent the best part of a day trying to persuade readers that the BBC is entirely innocent of any anti-Israeli spin in its preferred choice of questions for a Gallup poll.

I think a more informed, impartial and rational look at the information tells the true story.

The excellent BBC Watch has come to the same conclusion that Biased BBC did when it looked at David Cowling’s, the BBC’s Head of Political Research, comments about which question was his favourite in the Gallup world poll….that he was , of course, referring to Israel….

DC: “Yes, I think it would be “Which country do you believe to be the greatest threat to world peace today?”. I suspect that – working with journalists – I know colleagues who would be quite excited by what might be coming out of…”

Humphrys interrupts:

“That’s certainly true, but isn’t it a bit narrow? Because there aren’t many…although you could say of course the United States because it’s the most powerful, or you could say China because it’s whatever, or you could say North Korea because it’s bonkers, or you know….

DC: “What I’d be interested in, John, is the variations. So for example there are going to be questions asked in Lebanon, in the West Bank and Gaza. I suspect different answers there if it was asked..”

So, with Cowling having already done his bit as far as trying to influence BBC audiences into selecting a specific question is concerned, all that remains is to place bets on the phrasing of upcoming BBC headlines to be written by those “quite excited” journalists – and it might not be outlandish to assume that there is a fairly strong possibility that the words “Israel” and “threat” will be in there somewhere.’

Nothing clearer than that…no doubt that Cowling was referring to Israel. 

The real question that the BBC might like to ask is why is it that people view Israel in such a negative light?

Could it possibly be that it is inherent in the thinking of the BBC staff such as Cowling who ably illustrated the problem in that interview…his first thought was of Israel as a ‘threat to world peace‘….could it be that years of BBC negative reporting, amongst other’s, on Israel has led to….

Brainwashing and the demonising of Israel

In 2003 the EU conducted a similar poll and guess what the result was….

Senior Israeli figures have voiced anger at a European survey labelling their country the greatest threat to world peace.

“We are not only said but outraged. Not at European citizens but at those who are responsible for forming public opinion,” Israel’s mission to the EU said in a statement.

The Israeli Minister for the Diaspora affairs, Natan Sharansky, said the results showed the EU engaged in “rampant brainwashing”.

European Commission President Romano Prodi expressed his concern about the findings, saying that they “point to the continued existence of a bias that must be condemned out of hand”.

“To the extent that this may indicate a deeper, more general prejudice against the Jewish world, our repugnance is even more radical,” Mr Prodi said in a statement.

“The European Union, which shows sensitivity on human rights issues, would do well to stop the… demonising of Israel before Europe deteriorates once again to dark sections of its past,” Mr Sharansky said.

.

Could such polls have an effect on how the EU conducts its policies?

‘Earlier, an EU spokesman played down the importance of the survey.

The spokesman, Gerassimos Thomas, said the poll results would not affect European policy-making in the short term……But the BBC’s Tim Franks in Brussels says the findings may reduce European diplomats’ effectiveness in dealing with the Israel-Palestinian conflict by heightening Israeli distrust of the EU.’

 Despite the EU’s half hearted denial it is obvious these polls are used to influence policy as Gallup tells us:

‘Giving you the power to act on what the world is thinking’

In 2007 the BBC conducted its own poll…..Thanks to George R for providing this link to the article about that BBC poll which managed to finger Israel as the world’s most dangerous nation.

It seems that the BBC has learnt nothing.

This is what the 2007 survey asked:

According to the BBC, the survey “gave respondents a list of 12 countries and asked whether they had a mostly positive or mostly negative influence in the world. “The country with the highest number of mostly negative responses overall is Israel (56% negative, 17% positive).

This is the reason for the negative outlook:

“It appears that people around the world tend to look negatively on countries whose profile is marked by the use or pursuit of military power,” said pollster Steven Kull, who directed the survey.

So Israel is a dangerous country because of the use of military power?

No questions as to why it might be forced to use that military power?

What do Hamas and Hezbollah use then? Of course, as the BBC’s Mishal Husain says they are only ‘home made contraptions‘.

The evil Israelis defending themselves against the peace loving Palestinians…..appalling warmongers those Joows.