At least eight people have been killed and 11 seriously hurt in New York after the driver of a truck mowed down people on a cycle path in Lower Manhattan. Juliette Kayyem is former US assistant secretary of Homeland Security.
John Humphrys asked her what she thought of Trump’s reaction to the attack….apparently his reaction is ‘troubling and dark’ and is solely aimed at whipping up anti-Muslim hysteria with his base….as we can see from the countries he targeted for a travel ban.
Humphrys allowed her to rant away and said nothing at all…..never mind the countries chosen were the same countries Obama, with possibly her advice, named as ‘countries of concern’ and Trump’s wish to ban or double check certain people seems ever more justified.
Just listening to ‘Up All Night’ now and Trump is under attack again….he has brought corruption to the White House…how?….some of his ‘oligarch’ appointees have used private jets….er….so did Obama’s…
The use of private planes by President Trump’s Cabinet has come under intense media scrutiny in recent days, but officials in the Obama administration also took pricey flights on the government’s dime, including for personal trips.
Top figures during President Barack Obama’s tenure who used non-commercial planes for travel included then-attorney generals Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, then-FBI director Robert Mueller, and then-CIA director and defense secretary Leon Panetta.
Who knew Obama was therefore so corrupt?
We then heard that there was great shock that Shia Iran has been found to fund and support Al Qaeda, a Sunni organisation, as the CIA releases AQ documents captured from the raid on Bin Laden. Just how far behind the news are these people the BBC wheels in to bring us ‘up to date’?
Iran has long been labelled a terrorist sponsor and has been supporting the Sunni Taliban against British troops for years and Shia groups in Iraq. But it has been known to harbour Al Qaeda since at least 2011…
Since July 2011, the US Treasury and State Departments have repeatedly stated that the Iranian regime allows al Qaeda to maintain a key facilitation network on its soil. This formerly clandestine network is the result of a specific “agreement” between the Iranian government and al Qaeda’s leadership.
On July 19, the State Department once again pointed to the relationship. “Since at least 2009,” State’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2016 reads, “Iran has allowed AQ facilitators to operate a core facilitation pipeline through the country, enabling AQ to move funds and fighters to South Asia and Syria.”
Iran has been supporting Hamas, a Sunni group, for a long time…so why the big surprise about Al Qaeda?
The BBC, Knights of the Long Knives. Very adept at political and character assassination or they try to be. Their heavy handed attacks on Trump and Farage failed miserably despite massive resources thrown at them, Tommy Robinson succumbed to the intense scrutiny and extremely hostile BBC reporting about him and quit the EDL but has since seen the light and bounced back. Andrea Leadsom might be added to the list as she was beaten up badly over her statement about having children. May was savaged during the election and Corbyn given a free ride….undoubtedly costing the Tories many votes. Not forgetting Jacob Rees-Mogg, the DUP, Bush, Sarah Palin and of course Thatcher. Any theme to those chosen? All right-wing. But what about Boris? Like Trump and Farage he has been subjected to massive amounts of highly negative, if not malign, comment from the BBC and yet he still keeps on rolling. Just why does the BBC target Boris in particular?
Boris is enormously popular with much of the Public. This is a problem for the good liberal folk at the BBC who want to stay in the EU and definitely don’t want Boris as PM should he throw his hat into the ring as and when. So two major issues for the BBC, a very popular politician who supports Brexit and who may lead the Tory Party to another stomping election victory….the BBC not wanting either of those things to happen they see Boris as a huge threat to their hegemony and liberal elitist club.
Consider how the BBC reports Hammond and Rudd. Hammond has consistently tried to hijack the Brexit process in order to ensure we get the softest of Brexits, in other words no Brexit at all in effect. He has made statements that go against government policy claiming we need to have the longest transition period possible which he knows would morph gradually into a permanent state of pseudo-non-membership of the EU, he lobbies for a Brexit that is about jobs and the economy, in other words stay in the Single Market, Customs Union and thus keep freedom of movement and rule by the ECJ…ie…stay in the EU, when he knows that the referendum was not won on the jobs and economy platform…it was about sovereignty and immigration, and he has refused to provide money to fund the necessary infrastructure to prepare for a ‘no deal’…or indeed for a Britain which wants to protect its own borders as it leaves the EU. Then here is Amber Rudd who has campaigned vociferously for a soft Brexit and who just days ago said that a ‘no deal’ was ‘unthinkable’.
So both Hammond and Rudd, two very senior cabinet members, have come out in the Press against a key negotiating lever with the EU and May’s official policy…‘no deal is better than a bad deal’…if you aren’t prepared for a ‘no deal’ you are essentially then at the EU’s mercy with little leverage to make them compromise.
Hammond and Rudd have thrown a huge spanner in the works and yet hardly a peep out of the BBC, no shocked headlines, no claims that they have stabbed May in the back, no claims they are undermining May, no claims they are manoeuvring for the leadership, no legions of commentators wheeled in to heap abuse upon them for their shameless politicking. Hammond and Rudd of course want to stay in the EU so why would the BBC criticise them?
How different is the BBC approach to Boris.
Boris as Foreign Secretary has a legitimate interest in Brexit negotiations and as the lead Brexit cheerleader we were told by the Remainders that he must now bear responsibility for the outcome of Brexit. Odd then that when he speaks out, takes that responsibility, he gets shouted down and loudly abused for having the temerity to do so….and the BBC is the chief cheerleader attacking him.
BBCers constantly asked why he hadn’t been sacked (and of course keep asking when May is going), we hear he’s disingenuous, a clever idiot, an egotist, lazy, self-centred and not fit or competent for Office, that he’s a populist with simple solutions but no positive vision for the Country or Party, a divisive, disloyal figure making life impossible for May, odd, difficult, eccentric, an international joke, self-indulgent and only thinking about himself when important world events are happening, an irresponsible revolutionary who is out of control [and should be sacked], that he’s undermining May, stabbing her in the back, he’s not interested in Brexit [a piece of misinformation that he said he only went with Brexit to annoy Cameron was given a lot of credence in passing by the BBC] and is only really positioning himself for the leadership…hmmm…as most Tory MP’s are Remainders how would that work? Kuenssberg spent most of her time filing reports that he was intent on the leadership and Brexit was the means to that end…she later admitted that this ‘fact’ was based upon ‘vicious rumours at Westminster’…in other words poison dripped from his enemies….Kuenssberg’s reports seemed to be more about discrediting Boris in the eyes of possible Leave voters than in the truth.
I did think that the BBC had turned a corner way back earlier in the month when Nick Robinson said he was examining what Phillip Hammond [08:10] had been up to and why everyone was up in arms about him. Would we get the dirt, would Hammond be called a backstabber who was trying to thwart Brexit? Er no…what we got was a pro-EU Labour MP and someone, although a ‘Leaver’, who was actually employed by Hammond. Nothing to see here then…Hammond doing a good job under enormous pressure.
Robinson’s introduction was interesting…..he sneeringly referenced the Mail as the ‘chief cheerleader for Brexit’ and their frontpage that shouted ‘Daggers Drawn….PM slaps treacherous chancellor down!’. Now as just about every other media outlet was giving a similar impression of Hammond’s actions you have to wonder how the BBC could avoid mentioning it or coming to a similar conclusion about Hammond’s betrayal…but they did. They ignored Hammond’s ‘treachery’ for a long time and finally when they did notice they wheeled in two yes men to blow smoke up our backsides.
Why did Robinson raise the subject? Not of course because he was in the slightest bit interested in actually holding Hammond to account but first because of course the right-leaning Mail is pretty influential and therefore needs to be discredited and its story attacking a pro-EU Chancellor pooh-poohed and second because the Mail in the same edition had drawn attention to the fact that Robinson had been wrong about Romanian and Bulgarian migration…
The ‘experts’ who rushed to judgement and got it wrong
‘Well, well, well. So much for those predictions of a flood of immigrants coming form Romania and Bulgaria once the door to the UK was opened’ Nick Robinson, BBC political editor May 2014
And the Mail gloated….naturally Robinson made no mention of his own appearance in the paper nor of the reason for it…..
We all know how, in 2004, the Labour government opened the door to immigration from Poland and seven other Eastern European states, while other countries such as Germany and France imposed restrictions.
The Blair government forecast a relatively small annual influx — of between 5,000 and 13,000. Within five years, nearly a million had arrived.
Following that gigantic miscalculation, one might have expected a little more caution would be shown at the beginning of 2014 when immigration restrictions from Romania and Bulgaria were lifted by the Coalition government.
The Mail warned that history would repeat itself. So did a small number of other organisations such as Migration Watch, a think-tank run by a respected former British ambassador.
This did not prevent many — most notably the BBC — from predicting that anxieties over the number of migrants would turn out to be misplaced.
In fact, they were utterly justified. Yesterday, the Office for National Statistics estimated there are 413,000 Romanians and Bulgarians living in the United Kingdom, equivalent to the population of Bristol.
How misguided the BBC has been. In January 2014, it carried an uncritical interview with the then Romanian ambassador in London, Dr Ion Jinga.
He said the number of citizens coming from his country to the UK would be ‘fewer than in recent years’. It wasn’t.
But the Beeb was adamant that those expressing concern about a new wave of migration were guilty of scare tactics.
Even before the gates were opened, BBC2’s Newsnight carried a report in April 2013 which suggested that only 1 per cent of Romanians and 4 per cent of Bulgarians were ‘actively considering work in the UK’.
Where are all the Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants, asked an item on the BBC’s website at the end of January 2014. It claimed ‘some parts of the UK have reported very few arrivals so far’.
This echoed a visit to Luton airport on January 1, 2014, by the publicity-seeking Labour MP Keith Vaz, which was celebrated by the BBC.
In May 2014, after official figures suggested (wrongly) that very few Romanians and Bulgarians were coming here, the then BBC political editor, Nick Robinson, scoffed: ‘So much for those predictions of a flood of immigrants coming from Romania and Bulgaria once the door to the UK was opened’.
As late as December 2014, Mark Easton — the supposedly authoritative BBC home editor, who over the years has been relaxed about EU immigration — told Radio 4 listeners there were ‘probably 100,000’ Romanians and Bulgarians working in Britain. It took John Humphrys to point out that there were already 189,000.
In short, the all-powerful BBC has been spectacularly wrong. If more than 400,000 people from two countries come to live here in the space of a few years, that surely amounts to some sort of ‘flood’.
We stand at a crossroads over Brexit, with reactionary forces in the government, led by Chancellor Philip Hammond, intent on ensuring that as little as possible changes.
But for the good of this country — its workers, its public services, its businesses, not to mention social cohesion — we have an opportunity to end wildly uncontrolled immigration, whether the BBC and the Establishment like it or not.
So pro-Brexit Boris gets attacked by the BBC, the pro-Brexit Daily Mail gets attacked by the BBC with the added motivation that the Mail had shown the BBC up to be, at best, incompetent, at worst, wilfully misleading, when reporting on issues like immigration. The BBC has a long way to go. Maybe it should just be closed down as it is completely out of control, unaccountable and beyond redemption.
Some tell-tale signs of the drip drip BBC narrative that undermines and erodes British democracy and political truth….
After what the BBC called a ‘sensational leak’ of Home Office draft thoughts on immigration policy sent to the Guardian by a concerned citizen with the undoubted intent of, in some shape or form, derailing and sabotaging Brexit we were treated to a day long flurry of excited BBC analysis of what is a fairly dull and uncontroversial set of proposals. Naturally, despite its less than ‘sensational’ revelations, the BBC pushed the idea that Britain was now closed, the borders sealed off and no one would be allowed into fortress Britain. This means of course that Businesses would fail in a spectacular domino effect, jobless workers would starve in the streets and the Far-Right, taking advantage of the socio-economic chaos, would rise up and instigate the Fourth Reich.
On Nicky Campbell’s show he had a Turkey farmer on to say he would promptly go out of business with no foreign workers as British workers are too lazy, they don’t want to get their hands dirty and they’d rather stay on the dole. Campbell didn’t challenge that at all…he instantly changed the subject and moved on allowing that idea to fester, one that the BBC has often pushed itself of the lazy, workshy, feckless Brits. May of course made comments about immigration in PMQs…she said immigration was good for Britain and the BBC naturally pounced on that quote making it their headline in the bulletins…never mind that May wasn’t talking about mass, extreme, uncontrolled immigration that the BBC supports…her comment could as well describe immigration of one highly skilled man who makes a huge difference to Britain in some way…thus ‘immigration’ is good for Britain…but the BBC doesn’t care to make that distinction or notice the nuance. May also said immigration meant lower wages for workers…the BBC wasn’t so keen to report that….from the Telegraph:
The Prime Minister said it was important to set net migration at sustainable levels because of the “impact it has on people on the lower end of the income scale in depressing their wages.”
And yet the BBC, and Labour, are always making lots of noise about low pay, blaming it on the government….just the wrong government….the culprit was Labour…both for importing millions of cheap workers who undercut British workers and allowed companies to neglect research and development investment that would have increased productivity and for destroying the economy which meant workers only kept their jobs if they took a wage cut.
Which brings us onto an interview by John Humphrys [08:30] with little Owen Jones yesterday in which Jones claimed the Tories had made the Rich vastly more rich and the Poor had had to suffer the biggest pay squeeze in history. Humphrys finished the interview when Jones had stopped whining by saying ‘on that uncontentious note’…and from his tone he absolutely meant that, he was not being ironic. And yet everything Jones said was contentious…the Rich have been taxed hugely since the crash and the poorest have been helped enormously with a big rise in tax allowance taking millions out of tax completely, almost non-existent interest rates and low inflation. The BBC spreading a big lie that feeds into the Labour narrative. Strange that.
Following that interview we had Mishal Husain tackling Remainder Vince Cable…she kept insisting that we should pay the EU whatever asked for immediately so that we can move on in the negotiations. Good of her to do them for us…how would we ever manage without her advice?
Back to today and we had Emma Barnett talking to the [pro-Remain] Times’ Sam Coates, described as a ‘friend of the programme’. Indeed, Coates is now a regular on the BBC spinning for Remain and spreading poisonous little anti-Brexit jibes at will. Today he was in to discuss the ‘leak’…apparently the measures proposed in the draft are ‘draconian and hardline….opposed by many in the cabinet and which businesses find uncomfortable’. We also had on left-wing journo Jack Blanchard who claimed that such proposals would force the EU to ‘retaliate and protect its own interests’…suggesting of course that the proposals are in some way outrageous and unreasonable when they are anything but….naturally any EU reaction will only be ‘blowback’ against British foolishness.
So two Remainers on the BBC to give us their considered thoughts on Brexit….balanced and impartial as always on the BBC.
We also had an hour of anti-Far Right chatter that ended up as demonisation of complete innocents on 5 Live on the first hour of the Afternoon Edition. Of course the Far Right itself should be challenged about their views and actions if they are violent and racist but this programme used the arrest of some ‘National Action’ members to paint a picture of Britain that is just untrue…including the idea that we are heading back to a 1930’s Nazi Germany type crisis and that Brexit has given rise to the rise of the Far Right as it embraces isolationism, nationalism and identity politics….in fact it is the liberal open borders extremism and support for Islamism that has given rise to the rise of the Far Right. No Muslim terrorism and cultural jihad, no Far Right rise.
Apparently Muslims are dehumanised by the Far Right and anyone who thinks that bombs exploding at pop concerts or on trains and buses, or vans running down pedestrians or people being beheaded in the street, or young white girls raped and abused, is in fact anything to do with Muslims is wrong, not only wrong but Islamophobic and racist…these incidents are not reality, they are only ‘images’ that mislead people…people need to be educated and informed…the speaker of course, an ‘expert’ in Far Right ideology, had mostly Muslim friends and he told us how it was ‘funny that anti-Semites, homophobes and racists all congregate together’…hmmm…..in the mosque? Funny how he is so ignorant of the Islamo-fascist ideology that he himself is apparently so educated and informed about.
We had the usual nonsense about the radicalisation of those in the Far Right groups…due to socio-economic factors…alienation, poverty and disenfranchisement as well as their voices not being heard. The same narrative that the BBC uses to explain away Muslim radicalisation…a convenient get out that dodges the truth…that radicalisation is about ideology for Muslims and ‘blowback’ against the Liberal extremism on immigration for the Far Right. In other words this is in both cases down to the likes of those good folk in the BBC who don’t want to look too hard at the truth about Islam and who force mass immigration upon their own countries regardless of native opinion, common sense and the dangerous reality.
Oddly the ‘expert’s’ answer to the ‘rise of the Far Right’ [who, he told us, are on the rise because they have been denied a voice] is to silence them, deny them a platform and make it impossibe for them to get their messages out in public. Not something the BBC practises with Muslim extremists who know they always have a warm welcome in any BBC studio.
Just a few examples of the relentless barrage of anti-Tory, anti-Brexit, anti-Right BBC posturing that paints such a false picture of what is really happening in Britain today.
The BBC…anti-democratic and dangerous for social cohesion and stability.
“Elijah Muhammad,” Muhammed Ali told the TV viewers of 1970s Middle England, “Is the one who preached that the white man of America, number one, is the Devil!”
The whites of America, said Ali, had “lynched us, raped us, castrated us, tarred and feathered us … Elijah Muhammad has been preaching that the white man of America – God taught him – is the blue-eyed, blond-headed Devil! No good in him, no justice, he’s gonna be destroyed!
“The white man is the Devil. We do believe that. We know it!”
Whilst the BBC wouldn’t dream of making any association of black supremacist groups with Obama they have no problem at all in making a positive association of Trump to white supremacists…here actually stating that they are his ‘shock troops’…
A disparate group of provocateurs is challenging conservative orthodoxy from the right. They hate political correctness and love Donald Trump – but their critics say they’re nothing but bigoted white nationalists.
We see this again as the BBC condemns Trump for not singling out white supremacists alone for criticism after violence in Charlottesville whilst not condemning the left’s violence….
President Donald Trump condemned “in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides”.
“The hate and the division must stop right now,” he told reporters, speaking in New Jersey, where he is on a working holiday. “We have to come together as Americans with love for our nation.”
Democrats and Republicans alike took issue with his choice of words, noting that he failed to refer to the central role of white nationalists.
Why should Trump denounce only the Far Right extremists when it was in fact the Far Left groups that attacked the rally? The violence, as with so many EDL rallies attacked by the ‘peaceful’ UAF, was started by the Left. The BBC and anti-Trump US politicians conveniently ignore that left wing violence…and the BBC quotes Republican critics without telling us they are long time critics of Trump…such as Cory Gardner.
President Donald Trump reacted to Saturday’s violence in Charlottesville by condemning violence “on many sides.” His critics pounced, saying that he should have specifically condemned violence by white supremacists, and that by not doing so, he in fact condoned such violence.
The critics are guilty of a double standard, and of exploiting the violence for political gain, widening America’s divisions at a time when national unity is the only proper course.
Condemning one side alone would essentially have given the other side a pass for its tactics — and a political victory that neither deserved.
The purpose of the lie is to connect Trump to white supremacists by implying that he has something to disavow. Many of Trump’s critics compounded that lie Saturday by recycling falseclaims about members of his staff.
Trump’s critics are guilty of something worse than hypocrisy. They are trying to divide the country when the right thing to do is to stress common bonds, as Republicans did in June, though they were the targets.
Trump’s critics tried the same tactics in 2016, and all they achieved was more hatred. It is well past time for the slander to stop.
We had a look at The Tyranny of the Left a little while ago as freedom of speech is rapidly being closed down in order to try and shut out right wing voices in the US and today in the Telegraph Daniel Hannan notes in relation to Venezuela…
We all hate fascism, so why does the extreme Left always get a free pass?
Socialism always begins with the same trajectory. It begins with slogans about The People; it ends with the knock in the night.
This equally applies in the so-called liberal West as we see the UKIP leadership candidate, Anne Marie Waters, demonised on the Today programme by John Humphrys who could hardly disguise the disdain and contempt for her…her crime? She thinks Islam is ‘evil’. Well evil is a strong word…but possibly appropriate in relation to an ideology that calls itself a religion. The likes of Humphrys have no problem calling fascism evil nor the people who practice it…or indeed those who don’t practice it but hold views, such as on immigration, that the Humphrys of this world want to censor and so label anyone who holds them as facists, nazis and racists. And of course the infamous Google show trial and sacking of a man who said something that is pretty well the standard view…that women are better at communicating and have more emotional intelligence…this you can hear spouted many, many times on the BBC itself…the BBC that promotes the vision of more women in Parliament and in business because they bring a different outlook on the world and we will have a friendlier and more polite Parliament with less testosterone floating about. Apparently such views get you sacked at Google and the BBC doesn’t say a word to condemn Google.
Google that tells us diversity and inclusion are at the heart of its operation…and then sacks a man who dares to have an opinion that doesn’t match the one that Goolge has decided everybody must adhere to. I note that when the BBC first reported his words they concentrated merely on his comments about why fewer women achieve great success in tech companies failing to mention that the whole document was in fact about Google’s left wing attitude and its censorship of debate….vindicated as we now see in a pyrrhic victory as a man with ‘right wing’ views is sacked.
Over the weekend, Google was rocked by the publication of an internal manifesto that alleged wide-ranging political bias within the company. In exclusive interviews with Breitbart News, more Google employees are now speaking out.
The 10-page manifesto, which was met by an immediate backlash, described a climate of fear at the company, in which employees who challenged prevailing leftist narratives on diversity were faced with immediate threats to their career.
Niall Ferguson is right, the real tyranny that we should fear is that of the Left…unfortunately the left have a monoploy of the media, academia, social action groups, social media and in politics as even right wing polticians dare not voice their true opinions…just look at the Tory Party now.
Still, there’s always the impartial and non-partisan BBC to hold such people to account and to ensure that there is a balance of views and ideas being aired in public. LOL.
Pro-EU Lord Hall Hall is the enemy within. We know he was greatly upset by the Brexit result and blamed the BBC for not getting the correct message across. He is now in the process of rectifying that by overseeing a BBC that is blatantly and relentlessly pumping out misinformation and pro-EU propaganda that is meant to damage British interests and to ensure the Brexit negotiations fail. The BBC’s loudest message is that the government is in chaos, doesn’t know what it wants to achieve and is completely unprepared for the negotiations. A classic example of this was when David Davis and his team were photographed at the negotiating table with the EU team. The EU team posed with piles of papers whilst the Brits put nothing on the table.
John Humphrys, one of the BBC’s most respected and experienced journalists, seriously suggested on the BBC’s flagship news programme that this showed the Brits were completely unprepared for the negotiations. Why on earth would he peddle such a blatant untruth on the basis of a photograph that was set up before the negotiations had actually started? This was not the negotiation. What Humphrys failed to tell people was that the Brits had a big team behind them for the negotiations…and Humphrys should have known that as the BBC itself mentioned it in a web report…
A UK government source told the BBC that 98 British officials were in Brussels for the negotiations.
So why did the BBC’s premier news programme promote what is obviously a lie, an anti-British lie designed to make the government look bad? Why is it peddling EU propaganda that the British team is in chaos and is totally unprepared with no idea of what it wants to achieve?
The EU’s preferred tactic is to negotiate in public via the Media and the BBC is the willing fellow traveller who provides the headlines and narratives that the EU wants. The EU wants to portray the British as in chaos, unprepared with no plans or any plans they do have are unworkable, unreasonable and ill-thought out whilst its own position is rational, reasonable and in the best interests of everyone…if only the Brits would accept what we, the EU, offer then negotiations could continue quickly and smoothly…however the unreasonable and intransigent British are making a deal impossible. The BBC happily peddles this lie.
Here is an example of the BBC pushing EU propaganda and portraying the Brits as unprepared….
The call to “get down to business” from David Davis is meant to signal that the Brexit talks are entering a serious phase after an opening session of pleasantries and procedural discussions.
That might raise eyebrows on the European side where there’s a perception that Britain dithered for months after the Brexit referendum before getting down to talks.
Hmmm….we couldn’t start negotiations until Article 50 had been signed off…and that was delayed due to enormous opposition from the pro-EU Remainers trying to prevent it happening. Any delay was down to the EU side not the British government.
Today we had a classic example of the BBC twisting someone’s words that damned the likes of the BBC and the Remainders who resist Brexit and turned them into an attack on the government when they actually back the government.
Ex-Governor of the Bank Of England, Lord King, was on the Today show this morning [08:10] stating that the opponents of Brexit had better get on-board as Brexit is going to happen and they should support it and do the best they can to ensure we have a successful exit from the EU…one way of doing this is to back the idea that we have the nuclear option of leaving the EU with no deal if necessary. This he told us was a vital negotiating tactic. We had to have a credible fallback position that would make the other side think they had better deal fairly, with no such fallback putting pressure on the EU we would have no leverage and be forced to accept whatever terms were imposed upon us. He also told us that the media were producing hysterical reports on Brexit and were damaging British interests. Did he mean the BBC? Here’s a clue to his meaning…
This [no deal better than abad deal] ought to be something people can agree on irrespective of whether they voted for Brexit or not.
What was the BBC’s immediate reaction to his words? They immediately span them into a lie claiming that Lord King had ‘urged the government to come up with a credible fallback position’. But that was not what he said. He wants remainers to back the ‘no deal ‘strategy’ whatever their feelings as Brexit is happening and we need to be in a strong negotiating position to get the best terms. The BBC is trying to make out that the government is unprepared and has no fall back…funnily enough the government does have a fallback, the famous ‘No deal is better than a bad deal’ position…exactly what Lord King was talking about….the BBC of course knows this as it has long sought to undermine that and paint it as a mad and ruinous strategy….
“No deal is better than a bad deal.” Those fateful words made it into the Conservative manifesto, in relation to Brexit.
It sounds plausible, of course. And rather like the Leave campaign’s “take back control” slogan, it rings true on an emotional level. Why on earth should we accept an insulting and punitive deal offered by Europe? Better, surely, to just walk away.
But it’s a delusion; a perilous mis-framing of the situation Britain faces going into in these negotiations.
The UK needs a “credible fallback” in case no EU trade deal is reached during Brexit negotiations, former Bank of England governor Mervyn King has said.
Lord King said British negotiators needed to show Brussels the country has an alternative over a bad trade deal post-Brexit.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Lord King said: “We are where we are, and we are in a negotiation and it’s important that the negotiation succeeds.
“But it cannot succeed without a credible fallback position and that is something which I think is a practical thing that the civil service ought to be taking a lead on.”
Oh hang on the BBC slips in as if almost irrelevant and not actually the government’s main fallback position….
Previously Prime Minister Theresa May has said: “No deal is better than a bad deal.”
Ah but…it adds this to suggest that ‘no deal’ actually isn’t on the table which is complete nonsense…
Previously, Brexit minister Steve Baker said the government was preparing for all possible outcomes over Brexit talks, but added a no-deal with Brussels was unlikely.
What Baker was saying that a deal was likely which is totally different from what the BBC implies.
We also have this….
Lord King said: “I don’t know what the economic consequences of Brexit will be, that’s the only honest answer.”
If I remember rightly what he said was that there will be an economic shock of some description but long term we will bounce back. Why does the BBC not mention that?
King is a Brexit supporter and would not be saying the things the BBC says he has in their own intepretation of his words. He knows May’s position is ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ and he also knows, as the BBC and Independent’s ‘analysis’ of that stance show, that the opponents of Brexit are trying to undermine that negotiating position of having a nuclear no deal fallback…he was not telling the government to develop a fallback but was telling the likes of the BBC to start to support the British Brexit negotiations by not talking them and the ‘no deal’ strategy down.
Seems he failed to persuade them as they came straight out after the interview spreading misinformation and lies about the things he had said.
Another example of BBC pro-EU propaganda? There are long queues at airport check-ins as new security measures are put in place and the EU countries fail to provide the necessary staff and systems to cope with this. Some might suspect that this was a deliberate tactic by the EU in order to generate the headlines and photographs about chaos on the borders as checks are imposed on travellers with the intent that this create an image of what might be the result of Brexit for Brits travelling to the EU. The BBC conveniently picks up with that narrative as Any Questions asked ‘Is this our future in Europe now and is it a price worth paying [for Brexit]?’
This is complete rubbish…. the queues are a result of EU incompetence [or machiavellian black propaganda] and even a moment’s thought would tell us that such an idea that having to go through passport control will cause massive delays is a nonsense. Just how do we manage to travel to any country outside the EU without such queues? There are no such queues when you travel to America or India or Australia etc etc etc…..because they have systems that work…glitches aside. Having to flash your passport if you want to enter the EU will not mean 4 to 8 hours in a queue. Just more BBC EU scaremongering and alarmism.
“I know I am banging on about it, but we do have to take the long view, this is all because of a Conservative Party that put their own views ahead of the people.”
Em….the ‘People’ voted for Brexit…Owen Jones’ current position on Brexit?…
I campaigned passionately from a left-wing perspective for Remain during the referendum campaign, in rallies across the country, on television, in my Guardian articles (like here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), on social media, in YouTube videos (like here and here). I received threats of torture and violence as a consequence, which was pretty unpleasant.
May is implementing Brexit, Jones opposes it…just who is putting their views ahead of the ‘People’?
And Owen Jones’ real view of the ‘People’?…
Britain would only exit on the terms of right-wing xenophobic populism.
As austerity-ravaged Greece was placed under what Yanis Varoufakis terms a “postmodern occupation”, its sovereignty overturned and compelled to implement more of the policies that have achieved nothing but economic ruin, Britain’s left is turning against the European Union, and fast.
“Everything good about the EU is in retreat; everything bad is on the rampage,” writes George Monbiot, explaining his about-turn. “All my life I’ve been pro-Europe,” says Caitlin Moran, “but seeing how Germany is treating Greece, I am finding it increasingly distasteful.” Nick Cohen believes the EU is being portrayed “with some truth, as a cruel, fanatical and stupid institution”. “How can the left support what is being done?” asks Suzanne Moore. “The European ‘Union’. Not in my name.” There are senior Labour figures in Westminster and Holyrood privately moving to an “out” position too.
For those of us on the left who have always been critical of the EU, it has felt like a lonely crusade. But left support for withdrawal – “Lexit”, if you like – is not new. If anything, this new wave of left Euroscepticism represents a reawakening. Much of the left campaigned against entering the European Economic Community when Margaret Thatcher and the like campaigned for membership.
The case for Lexit grows ever stronger, and – at the very least – more of us need to start dipping our toes in the water.
John Humphrys was talking to Jeremy Hunt this morning [08:10] about the state of mental health services and we learnt from Humphrys that Reality doesn’t matter, the facts don’t matter, what does matter is perception. Not really an astounding revelation from the BBC as the BBC has never really dealt in facts. The problem is of course who creates that Perception. Unfortunately for the world it is the BBC itself. And the BBC’s world view? Entirely at odds with the majority of the country never mind the Tory Party.
A good example is in fact the very subject under discussion, mental health. The BBC has been campaigning on this issue for a couple of years now, hard not to tune into 5Live and not hear one of the overpaid and underworked employees telling us how terrible the NHS provision is for mental health services ‘since 2010’. Humphrys tells us demand for such services has skyrocketed…why might that be? Could it in fact have a great deal to do with the BBC itself telling people they are ill and to head as fast as possible to their GP to demand ‘treatment’ whereas before people might have shrugged it off and gotten through what might well have been a phase….whatever happened to the stiff upper lip? Not insignificant that ‘Princess Di’ is filling the airwaves again with mawkish, sentimental, self-involved tales.
So quite posssible the BBC itself has played a large part in generating this mental health ‘crisis’….The Tories get no credit despite 1500 more people being seen a day under their rule….they could not have foreseen the sudden massive upsurge in demand when they began cutting services…the massive demand that coincides with the BBC campaign to generate peoples’ awareness of their ‘illness’ and what they should expect to get from the NHS and then to attack the Tories for not dealing with that huge upswing….a perfect storm for the BBC…it generates a crisis and then blames the Tories for it.
The BBC’s answer is always more money…completely disregarding why there is austerity and where all this money will come from….the BBC raising peoples’ expectations and thus putting huge pressure on the government. The BBC is acting completely irresponsibly and is itself taking part in politics rather than standing back and informing people.
Why did the all-powerful BBC refuse to tell the truth about Mr Corbyn?
Theresa May surely has only herself to blame for the Tories’ appalling performance on Thursday. Even before the polls closed it was impossible to find a Conservative MP who thought she had run a good campaign.
But there is another group of people who certainly made a contribution to the outcome and should be hanging their heads in shame this morning. I am speaking of the BBC.
Our national broadcaster accounts for about 50 per cent of news output in this country via its multiple television, radio and web outlets. It is immeasurably more influential than any other news channel or newspaper. That is why it is so important it fulfils its sacred duty to invigilate politicians without fear or favour.
In the case of Jeremy Corbyn, it failed miserably over the past few weeks…..Auntie was laughably indulgent over the past few weeks.
Today, Britain goes to the polls. And frankly, I’m shocked that no one has stood up and said, unambiguously, how profoundly dangerous it would be for the nation if Jeremy Corbyn becomes Prime Minister. So let me be clear, the leader of the Labour Party is an old-fashioned international socialist who has forged links with those quite ready to use terror when they haven’t got their way: the IRA, Hizbollah, Hamas. As a result he is completely unfit to govern and Britain would be less safe with him in No 10.
Why has the BBC not made the slightest attempt to investigate that…in fact why has the BBC done the complete oppsosite and fed us the lie that Corbyn is the best man to defend us from terrorism?
Why did Corbyn do so well in the election? Having one of the most powerful and influential news broadcasters on-side might have helped. There is no doubt that the BBC corrupted annd undermined the democratic process and helped rig the election in Labour’s favour.
The Conservatives made an historically bad decision to hold a general election when they already had a majority, a slim one but a majority, and that, as they should have noted as a caution, had been won against all the odds and the punditry. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. May of course had repeatedly stated that there was no need for another general election only to change her mind in what looked a very opportunistic way. They then made a catastrophic misjudgement in hammering their core vote…the householders who want to pass on their earnings to their children to help them in the future (On top of cutting fuel allowance and the triple lock for Tory voting pensioners). May had learnt nothing from the Tory voting ‘white van man’ national insurance fiasco and subsequent u-turn. She compounded the error by back-tracking on it and changing her mind, whilst refusing to admit she’d changed her mind. Two u-turns whilst proclaiming herself in her main battle-cry to be ‘Strong and Stable’…powerfully undermining her own campaign and the founding principle for her appeal to the electorate…that only a strong and stable leader could deal with the Brexit negotiations.
The other major influence on the outcome of the election were the terrorist attacks which suddenly brought in to play a whole new narrative about police numbers, funding and security. May, having been Home Secretary and having overseen cuts to the police was all too easily put in the frame for the blame…lack of funding led to the attacks was the simplistic message…a message that was all too effective especially as it met with little scrutiny and examination from the BBC despite clear evidence that police funding was not the issue when it comes to identifying and stopping these killers….after all the police actually already knew who these people were and what they were about.
May made one final ‘error’…one that made sense, but it only made sense if the BBC were neutral and took a non-partisan view…which naturally they didn’t and perhaps the Tories should have factored in the BBC’s hatred of them. [The BBC are back to calling them the ‘nasty party’ as they seek alliance with the ‘socially conservative’ DUP’…question…are Muslim conservatives ‘nasty’ then?] May decided not to take part in any of the debates between the leaders…having seen the TV debates and listened to some on the radio you’ll know they are total nonsense and a bearpit for loud voices chanting well rehearsed soundbites and attack lines…the audience learn nothing. The BBC however decided this was a good opportunity to attack May and its presenters constantly criticised her for not appearing in the leaders’ debates telling us she was scared….here’s the BBC’s US correspondent, James Cook, giving us his two penneth worth….
I'll tell you what voters don't like. Unnecessary elections. Especially when the leaders who call them refuse to engage in the campaigns.
Now that’s a complete lie isn’t it? May was out on the stump, she appeared in many interviews and did several audience question and answers as well as one-on-one with interviewers. She in no way ‘dodged the public’ nor rigorous interviews…and of course put herself up for election, the biggest ‘interview’ of all. So just a BBC lie….but one that was spread and encouraged throughout the campaign…naturally a Labour narrative.
BBC presenters relentlessly attacked May for appearing on the One Show telling us this was a soft interview and she was ‘dodging the public’, however when Corbyn did the same interview he was applauded, not a word of criticism from his fellow travellers at the BBC.
And therein lies the real problem. The BBC.
The Power and the Inglorious Bias
The BBC is extraordinarily powerful and yet unaccountable with politicians too afraid to tackle its blatant partisan support for Labour and its extreme liberal ideology that it propagates without fear of any genuine censure and retribution. The BBC is by far the most trusted and goto source for news relying as it does on past reputation, the audience’s innate attachment to it based upon years of ‘brainswashing’ as they grew up watching its programmes and ‘bonding’ with the BBC, putting aside any qualms about bias because they love Top Gear or Poldark or David Attenborough…and of course because the BBC pumps out relentless propaganda on its own behalf telling us how fantastic, how trustworthy, how accurate, how much better quality it is when compared to other news sources…and of course only it can be trusted to deliver the news in an era of ‘post-truth alternate facts’ and ‘fake news’…which is an irony because the BBC is the biggest peddler of fake news out there and is completely untrustworthy as we will show here in an account of how the BBC corrupted British democracy and rigged an election.
The Tories lost it but with a little help from their enemies
It wasn’t all the Tories’ failure but a highly successful campaign by Corbyn, or rather his team, which completely reframed how Corbyn and his fellow disasters-just-waiting-to-happen, Abbott and McDonnell, presented themselves, their policies and ideologies. From being actual terrorist supporting, far-left, Britain-hating extremists they had a complete make-over, new suits, new hairdos and new policies that were astonishing u-turns after decades of saying the complete opposite. However they got away with it because the BBC did not challenge them at all. May was pilloried and vilified for her u-turns, McDonnell was allowed by Marr to whitewash over his avowed Marxism despite clear evidence that he was a Marxist including an incriminating video, only Andrew Neil making any attempt to seriously challenge him, Abbott waffled about a change in hairstyle and Corbyn got away with murder as he dumped his career-long love of terrorists, denied his ambition to thwart all anti-terror legislation and to claim he had always supported shoot-to-kill, actually lying in an ITV interview with Peston about a Kuenssberg interview with him in which he claimed he only opposed shoot-to-kill in the 1980’s in NI…that was a total lie…one that the BBC itself challenged at the time when the BBC Trust ruled in Corbyn’s favour that Kuenssberg had misquoted him…she hadn’t…Corbyn had lied but now that the election was ongoing the BBC suddenly forgot that Corbyn had supported shoot-to-kill, and then lied on Peston, and were presenting him as a man who could be trusted to deal with a terrorist threat…also failing to register his long, long support for such terrorists…Muslim ones as well as IRA.
Putting the record straight by bending the truth
A classic example of the BBC’s highly partisan favouring of Corbyn and the whitewashing of his past is this interview with Boris by Mishal Husain ‘putting the record straight’ as she tells it, Husain insisting that Corbyn supports shoot-to-kill and has said so many times…she makes no note that this is a massive opportunistic u-turn on terror and shoot-to-kill by Corbyn preferring instead to make this strident defence of Corbyn against all the documented facts…
Note how Husain, whilst being very unwilling to talk about Corbyn’s voting record on terror laws, and indeed stopping Boris talking about that, tried to turn the tables by cherry-picking one example when Boris opposed a terror measure…the 90 days detention. This is highly selective and unbalanced…Corbyn just about voted down every anti-terror law he could, and boasted about it, Boris votes against one and this somehow absolves Corbyn for his career long pro-terror stance? I don’t remember Boris honouring IRA murderers or calling Islamic terrorists ‘friends’ and inviting them into parliament…I do however remember Corbyn doing that. Husain just ignored all the inconvenient facts that showed Corbyn to be the terrorist’s friend.
Those who control the past control the present
Quite extraordinary how the BBC can totally ignore Corbyn’s past, his celebrated steadfast refusal to change his ideology in 30 or more years and now his astonishingly convenient and well-timed change of heart on terrorism. Extraordinary when you compare it with how they absolutely slaughtered May for her u-turns and how they now conduct a relentlessly negative and critical ‘exposé’ of the DUP’s ideology, very definitely adopting a censorious tone towards them that is utterly at odds with the indulgent, see-no-evil tone used for Corbyn….the DUP’s sins are being climate sceptics(or ‘deniers’ as the BBC maligns them), opposition to abortion and to same-sex marriage….compare that with Corbyn’s unfaltering, until now, support for terrorists, his failure to tackle anti-Semitism in his party, his desire to abolish NATO, MI5, the Police and the Army and his ruinous economic policies and you wonder who is really the major threat to Britain, world peace and stability.
The BBC lionised him and covered over his extremism in this profile and highlighted his unchanging policies as a notable part of his career…
He has refused to cave in and now has a chance to fight a general election on his own terms – making the case for a different kind of government in line with the principles he has held, more or less unchanged, since he first entered politics more than 40 years ago.
Strange now that the BBC should make little to no comment about his astonishing make-over and revision of his policies just as an election came into sight.
Greed is good
Consider this…Corbyn is all for fairness, community and an equitable spreading of wealth…and yet one of his major vote catching policies, dumping student loans, is the exact opposite of that appealing as it does to the greed in people, the individual’s self-interest at the expense of the community. Rather than take responsibility for their own further education and career advancement Corbyn presented the young with a vote-winning proposition they couldn’t refuse whatever it cost society…free university places. Greed and self-interest is now good under Corbyn…everything that he is supposedly against. No comment from the BBC?
Safe in his hands
What of that narrative that if only we had more community police officers on the beat we’d gather more intelligence and be able to identify these terrorists? Complete nonsense. These people were already on the radar, the problem was that the police could not arrest them and charge them as it was not an offence to merely think certain thoughts, not even to have an ‘ISIS’ flag in your possession as the Muslim who walked freely through Westminster with one draped around his shoulders proved. One reason of course is the lack of legislation allowing stricter laws that cracked down on ‘thoughts’, legislation so often opposed by…Jeremy Corbyn. The BBC refuses to allow the salient facts about anti-terrorism to take hold in the public narrative that we have one of the most efficient and effective counter-terror forces in the world…we make arrests every day and have stopped 18 attacks in the last few years….whatever happened to the wise old words that the BBC used to trot out….the terrorists only have to get lucky once, we have to be lucky everyday? Oh hang on…after the Manchester attack they quote this…
“We used to say that a terrorist only has to be lucky once. We have to be lucky all the time.”
Funny though how that doesn’t seem to apply here for May….the attack isn’t just a terrorist getting ‘lucky’ it’s May’s fault for cutting police budgets….despite pumping in billions more into security and intelligence and the fact that there are 23,000 people ‘of interest’ on the radar…an impossible number to monitor effectively….but remarkable that they know of them all… no?
As Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6, noted in a piece in Thursday’s Daily Telegraph that Corbyn’s response was ‘nakedly political’.
Sir Richard — who is no Tory stooge — wrote that ‘if you ask professionals in the police, they would recognise that creating 10,000 jobs for community policing won’t have the slightest effect on the problem of Islamic terrorism’.
Remarkable that the BBC has ignored the fact that Labour in 2015 were proposing to cut the police budget by a further 10% above what the Tories had already cut. Consider that the police budget has not been cut since 2015 by the Tories and yet they get criticised for the level of funding and that Labour would have cut further…how is it possible that this is not worthy of comment from the BBC?
How is it not worthy of comment that Labour’s ex-shadow home secretary and now Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, and Corbyn, have both opposed the counter-terror Prevent programme?
Foreign Policy black propaganda…The Jihadist’s narrative
Corbyn came straight out after Manchester to blame foreign policy for radicalising Muslims…this has long been a BBC narrative as well…it is an utterly false and dangerous narrative, one that is embedded in the Muslim community as a whole and which feeds the Jihadi recruit conveyor belt…it is an entirely false line of propaganda.
The other incredibly dangerous and false narrative is that these terrorists are not driven by religious ideology, that they are somehow perverting the teachings of Islam. The fact is they are not, ISIS is living history, a revolution that is televised in full technicolour as the Islamic State re-enacts what Muhammed did 1400 years ago as he blitzed the Middle East with a tiny force and established what would become Muslim dominance of the area and beyond….and they are doing it in obedience to the teachings of the Koran and its commands to ‘defend Muslims’ who are under attack…the BBC has been telling Muslims they are under attack, that the West is at war with Islam, for over a decade now. Any wonder so many British Muslims believe that? Where is the counter narrative that tells the real story?
Character assassination
The BBC’s ‘flagship’ current affairs programme, Newsnight, broadcast a profile of Corbyn, a profile put together by a left-wing supporter from the New Statesman, Stephen Bush. This turned out to be a somewhat narrow, dishonest profile, more idolization, an acclamatory tribute, that airbrushed away any controversial aspects of the Corbyn ideology and turned him into a moderate, reasoned and statesman-like politician well respected by everyone. Newsnight then balanced that with a somewhat narrow, dishonest protrayal of May…but this time far from being a glowing, positive tribute as Corbyn received we had a snide, sniping, extremely negative attack from Tory wet, Matthew Parris…a fanatical Remain supporter who hates the fact May is actually going to carry out what the voters expect…Brexit.
The BBC had from the beginning of the campaign targeted May and her slogan ‘Strong and Stable’ relentlessly mocking and deriding it and its use making people embarrassed to use it such is the power of the BBC to intimidate and police what you can and cannot say in public, people now self-censoring themselves in case they get ridiculed by the BBC. The BBC had successfully undermined the Tory’s main theme…..and they couldn’t believe their luck when May did a u-turn on care. The BBC did not do a similar attack on Corbyn despite the fact that he used his ‘For the many not the few’ slogan again and again, naturally. Nor did the BBC bother to note he had stolen the slogan not just from Blair but that the LibDems had used it in 2010. The BBC knew Corbyn was seen as disorganised, weak and incoherent economically so they set out to destroy the Tory message that they represent the only alternative providing in contrast a strong and stable government…and when have you heard a serous attack on Corbyn’s economics….consider that the IFS has said he would impose a rate of tax not seen in peacetime Britain before and you have to ask how the BBC could avoid taking him to task over this.
When May made her speech reacting to the London Bridge attack Laura Kuenssberg claimed that this was an ‘intensely political speech’ hinting that it may be just campaign rhetoric..if you listen to the speech you will hear a perfectly measured speech from the Prime Minister that would be exactly what you might expect from any PM in such a crisis…this was not campaign rhetoric but reasoned comment that laid out how the government might respond, as any member of the public would want to know. Corbyn, who made a massively political and factually wrong statement after Manchester placing the blame on foreign policy and cuts to police budgets, escaped any negative comment and cirticism from the BBC…quite possibly, not only because they support him, but because they fully back that narrative as well…so far from being impartial they were promoting two of their favourite things…the Labour Party and the narrative that terrorism is just blowback from the West’s actions in the Muslim world…thus we must make amends and open our borders to all the refugees.
Right-Wing online trickery
The BBC has targeted Social Media and blamed it for the rise of Trump and Brexit despite the fact that it is dominated by the Left. Facebook was pumping out left-leaning ‘news’ before it got caught and all the tech bosses are of the left and anti-Trump. It suits the BBC narrative however to portray Social Media as a place that ferments and promotes Right-Wing narratives and discontent, the BBC hoping to discredit what are its biggest rivals now for the attention of the young and the news agenda.
It has continued that false narrative into this election as it claims the Tories have conducted an aggressive and highly negative attack campaign online whilst on the other hand Labour have had a far less aggressive, far lower profile and far more positive campaign aimed at getting people to vote rather than using social media to attack the other side….this articel is almost all about the Tories…the Tories bad, Corbyn good…
The Conservatives seem to be targeting Facebook users in marginal constituencies with anti-Jeremy Corbyn attack adverts, designed to draw away the Labour faithful.
Labour are also using Facebook advertising, but their messages are not focused on leaders and their personalities.
The Conservatives are paying for numerous adverts that attack Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn or his close allies, particularly John McDonnell and Diane Abbott. They broadcast a broadly negative message – warning people about the perceived threats of a Corbyn-led government.
Negative political adverts are particularly widespread in the United States, where parties routinely attack the credibility of a candidate and try to alienate their natural supporters. Donald Trump’s election campaign, for example, directed anti-Clinton Facebook adverts at potential Clinton supporters, including African-Americans and young women.
Change of tone for how they describe Labour…
Labour and the Liberal Democrats have also been pushing adverts on social media, though with a different tone. Labour ads on Facebook focus on positive messages, often using the party’s election slogan: “For the many, not the few”.
Oh…and that’s it for the analysis of Labour’s use of Social Media…that’s despite the fact that Labour are using highly negative attack ads….I saw them every day on YouTube…and there’s stuff like this…an utter fabrication, faked news…
Such attack ads by Labour supporters drove the anti-Tory narrative aimed at young voters….
The post was one of many to swarm Facebook by groups in favour of Jeremy Corbyn.
An analysis of the site’s content suggests it may have cost the Tories their majority by driving young Labour supporters to the polls.
Millions used the social network to share articles praising Jeremy Corbyn and trashing the Tories and Theresa May.
These ‘posts’ are likely to have had a powerful effect on Facebook’s predominantly youthful users, who are increasingly reliant on social media as their main source of news.
Of the top 20 most popular political subjects talked about on Facebook, almost all of the discussion topics about Labour cast it in a positive light.
By contrast, six of the seven most popular topics about the Conservatives were deeply critical.
Is it not odd how the BBC could miss all that or indeed how they forget that it was the Left who dominated and originated the use of social media as a means to manipulate the vote…..the Facebook founder even helping Obama…
Army of helpers
With the help of Facebook founder Chris Hughes – who devised an innovative internet fundraising system – the campaign eventually attracted more than three million donors. They donated about $650m (£403m) – more than both presidential contenders in 2004 combined.
Mr Obama had the money for four times as many campaign offices as Mr McCain and a vast army of campaign staff and volunteers. They developed and exploited a vast database of information about potential donors and voters in every key state.
Everyone who visited the Obama website was asked to sign up to get more information. Everyone who did so was asked to contribute, or volunteer. If they did, they received several follow-up calls and messages asking for more money, or more assistance.
The 2008 Obama Presidential campaign made history. Not only was Obama the first African American to be elected president, but he was also the first presidential candidate to effectively use social media as a major campaign strategy. It’s easy to forget, given how ubiquitous social media is today, that in 2008 sending out voting reminders on Twitter and interacting with people on Facebook was a big deal.
The huge success of Barack Obama’s campaigning during his 2008 presidential campaign, when he raised over half his money online and organised huge numbers of “offline” events via the internet.
Tory use of social media is being presented by the BBC as a rather scheming, underhand and dishonest way of tricking voters and manipulating the election…the same tactics by Obama and Labour are applauded with any negative issues airbrushed out of the story. Once again a very selective and partisan narrative from the BBC.
Namecalling
The BBC is always ready to police our language and will often refuse to use language that it claims is too negative or that presents only the narrative of one side. Famously of course ‘Terrorism’ is one word that it is reluctant to use despite the fact that it is easily defined and clear when something is a terrorist act…the BBC though has trouble when Muslims commit terrorist acts…then it becomes conflicted as it believes, as said above, that Muslims are only reacting in response to Western aggression and therefore theirs’ is the justifiable violence of Freedom Fighters and Resisters. The BBC series, ‘The Honourable Woman’, was based upon this theme, the evil Israelis forcing Palestinians to use terrorism as they had no other weapon to combat the all powerful IDF.
The BBC though are quite happy to adopt and use the language of one side when it suits, such as the ‘Bedroom Tax’, or the ‘Dementia Tax’, when such language is used in a derogatory fashion meant to malign and demonise a Tory policy.
How different when it came to Labour’s ‘Garden Tax’…not only would the BBC not use the term but actually refused to talk about the subject at all, John Humphrys dismissing it out of hand when raised on the Today show by a Tory MP, claiming that it wasn’t in the Labour manifesto…when of course it is in there.
And also, thanks to Toobiwan for reminding me, there is ‘Hard Brexit‘and ‘Soft Brexit’, two terms that the BBC is happy to use despite the fact that such things do not exist…as May says ‘Brexit means Brexit’...the purported ‘Soft Brexit’, ie Corbyn’s favoured approach of a tariff free trade deal with all that entails, ie, free movement, is not Brexit at all and is in fact just continued memebership of the EU…in other words a lie…a lie that the BBC is happy to peddle.
Finally, at least all that I can remember off the top of my head, there’s Nick Robinson’s and Dimbleby’s demand that Corbyn get a good Press. Bias? Just a bit.
The BBC has been involved in one of the most blatant attempts to steal an election that we will witness, an astonishing corruption of the democratic process, a rigging of the election that very nearly put a terrorist sympathiser in No10. Putin must be taking notes.
For a start there is absolutely no mention that Corbyn, extremely uncomforatble under questioning about his non-policy on nuclear weapons, refused to make any reply to an audience member’s statement….can’t imagine the BBC letting May get away with that…a stubborn refusal to comment on a serious issue in what is a showcase for their policies and for them to explain themselves. The Today show had a long piece on Corbyn’s nuclear quizzing and yet failed to mention his clamming up?!!! Not mentioned elsewhere either. A small but telling summing up of QT last night by the BBC….May was robustly questioned by the audience…Corbyn was heckled. So Corbyn wasn’t properly and robustly taken to task on his nuclear policies and insistently questioned as he tried to evade the answer then? No, he was ‘heckled’ by an angry mob of irrational and abusive Right-wingers [I open out and realise for you the BBC’s intended narrative of grizzled old glumbucket Corbyn under unwarranted attack].
And check this BBC selective reporting as they decide what is important and what isn’t [no guesses needed]…..Michael Fallon has said there is no plan to raise taxes…the BBC has taken this as him saying there will be no tax rises and that this is a change to the manifesto…despite reporting: ‘Income tax: Conservatives have ‘no plans’ to raise tax’
Senior Conservatives have said there are “no plans” to raise income tax if the party wins the general election, in an apparent change of policy.
In what way is that a change of policy? It just means right now there is no plan to raise taxes…that may change. You may have ‘no plan’ to change job or move house but…that may change.
The BBC is trying to keep up the narrative of a ‘weak and wobbly’ May…indeed John Humphrys agreeing with Ed Miliband as he trotted out the phrase this morning. Isn’t May in fact showing strength as she changed her care policy and refused to take part, whilst being pilloried by the BBC, again Humphrys this morning, in a staged ‘debate’ for the benefit, it might be said, mostly of the broadcasters who want a circus and a stream of out of context soundbites to mock the politicians with.
Curious that the BBC is so keen to ascribe a change in policy when there clearly is none and yet when the Labour Party propose a land tax, a ‘garden tax’, in its manifesto the BBC completely ignores it…and indeed if the subject is raised, dismisses it out of hand…Humphrys this morning dismissed IDS’s comment about a garden tax by saying Labour had proposed no such thing…and yet they have.
Labour’s suggestion of a land tax is a huge issue, it is supposed to replace the council tax…which of course was a replacement for the hated Poll Tax which had fatal consequences for Mrs Thatcher. Replacing council tax is a massive issue which will be highly controversial and raise all sorts of problems and resentments…and yet the BBC is totally ignoring what is a bit of a bombshell tucked away in the back of the Labour manifesto….however, mention you have ‘no plans’ to raise tax and it is frontpage news and the BBC invents a wholely fake narrative around it. This was similar to the BBC invention of a ‘split’ in the Tory party over Brexit and immigration…May said she was ‘aiming’ to reach a certain figure, David Davis on QT said it was a target to get to a certain figure...’we’d like to get it down in this next parliament’.…apparently this is a controversial and damaging split in the Party on a major policy issue….you heard it on the BBC first.
That narrative is a complete nonsense from the BBC…it even admits there is no time frame in the manifesto and yet bases their whole narrative of a ‘controversy’ on there being one…fake news…where is the confusion?…..
The Conservatives have denied there is any confusion in their immigration policy after Theresa May signalled she wanted to cut numbers to less than 100,000 a year by 2022.
The target, which is in the party’s manifesto but without a timeframe, has not been met since it was set in 2009.
Brexit Secretary David Davis said the Tories would “aim” to hit the target in five years – but could not promise.
As for the glories of ‘debate’…you just had to listen to IDS and Ed Miliband on the Today show…Humphrys started by making a ‘clever’ comment about May’s failure to make the necessary obeisance to her media masters, but following this Today ‘debate’ between IDS and Miliband there were all sort of groans and comments about how bad it was and how pointless as you had pre-planned soundbites, disruptive interruptions, shouty grandstanding and a distinct unwillingness to listen and actually debate. We learned nothing other than ‘debates’ are useless unless rigorously policed and directed…in which case why have one as you may as well have a face to face, one to one, as per C4 along with audience questions?
Humphrys was definitely more onside for Miliband…and why does the BBC keep picking IDS to talk for the Tories…because he’s not a good brawler…even up against nerdy Miliband he struggled. Miliband kept talking over IDS and lobbing in one of those ‘clever’ soundbites…in this case that ‘people are fed up with austerity’ [and thus want a free spender like Corbyn]…the easy answer to that is that people are grown ups with the ability to think for themselves and can spot a fraud and a ruinous economic policy a mile off..hence Miliband didn’t get elected at the last election. The too nice IDS couldn’t silence Miliband though and Humphrys was more inclined to silence IDS. Any wonder the BBC’s first choice is probably IDS?
It must be great to have the national broadcaster on your side, championing your cause and throwing doubt on your opponent’s arguments, sowing confusion about their aims, generating a vision of apocalyptic doom and gloom upon your opponent’s cause. Yep, the EU must be overjoyed to have the BBC on its side.
The BBC is having a field day telling May & Co what they can and cannot have in the negotiations….who needs the EU wasting its time when the BBC is there to lay out the terms itself?
Is she fooling herself? Or does Theresa May have reserves of political magic as yet unseen?
Not only is May a fool but Brexit will wreck the economy and unleash the ‘demons’ in the Tory Party…meaning of course some sort of latent Fascist streak…..
All this, knowing that one false move could wreak havoc on the economy or unleash demons inside her own party.
Oh, not only foolish but pigheaded and wrong…Brexit is not the right course for the country….
Just as determination can go a long way to achieving any goal, politicians can be resolute and also wrong.
There are no guarantees that the prime minister’s aims are the right ones for the country. Still less certainty that they can be achieved.
“Boris told such dreadful lies It made one gasp and stretch one’s eyes”
Lansdale finished with this piece of advice…
Maybe Mr Johnson might remember the last line of the Fawlty Towers episode when a ranting Basil is being led away by the nurses and one of the stunned German guests asks: “However did they win?”
Well I guess we won the war because not only did we have God on our side but also the British Broadcasting Corporation which backed the British war effort rather than siding with the enemy.
So Boris is chastised and mocked but now the EU is saying we are blackmailing them the BBC once again jumps, not on the EU, but on the Brexit team…. John Humphrys on the Today Show telling David Davies that it was ‘inconceivable’ that Britain could get what it wants in negotiations…nice to have the BBC doing the EU’s dirty work pre-empting negotiations and claiming our own demands are ridiculous and unachievable. Then Humphrys moved onto the nonsense claim that the government was blackmailing the EU quoting this from May from her speech….
In security terms a failure to reach agreement would mean our cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened.
Humphrys says…
‘and that has been interpreted as…..’give us what we want or else…’…It did rather sound like blackmail didn’t it?’
What he doesn’t bother to quote is the rest of her sentence….
In this kind of scenario, both the United Kingdom and the European Union would of course cope with the change, but it is not the outcome that either side should seek. We must therefore work hard to avoid that outcome.
She is not blackmailing anyone just stating the bleeding obvious…no agreement then other ways of cooperating on security must be worked out.
Humphrys also fails to note the huge amount of times May assured us that security and co-operation is a top priority…in her speech and in the letter itself…..
‘It is a plan for a new deep and special partnership between Britain and the European Union. A partnership of values. A partnership of interests. A partnership based on cooperation in areas such as security and economic affairs.
We will play our part to ensure that Europe is able to project its values and defend itself from security threats.
With Europe’s security more fragile today than at any time since the end of the Cold War, weakening our cooperation and failing to stand up for European values would be a costly mistake.
In an increasingly unstable world, we must continue to forge the closest possible security co-operation to keep our people safe. We face the same global threats from terrorism and extremism. That message was only reinforced by the abhorrent attack on Westminster Bridge and this Place last week.
‘So there should be no reason why we should not agree a new deep and special partnership between the UK and the EU that works for us all.
‘We seek continued cooperation with our European partners in important areas such as crime, terrorism and foreign affairs.
In the letter….
We want to make sure that Europe remains strong and prosperous and is capable of projecting its values, leading in the world, and defending itself from security threats.
In security terms a failure to reach agreement would mean our cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened. In this kind of scenario, both the United Kingdom and the European Union would of course cope with the change, but it is not the outcome that either side should seek. We must therefore work hard to avoid that outcome.
We should work towards securing a comprehensive agreement. We want to agree a deep and special partnership between the UK and the EU, taking in both economic and security cooperation.
We want to play our part to ensure that Europe remains strong and prosperous and able to lead in the world, projecting its values and defending itself from security threats.
Europe’s security is more fragile today than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Weakening our cooperation for the prosperity and protection of our citizens would be a costly mistake.
Together, I know we are capable of reaching an agreement about the UK’s rights and obligations as a departing member state, while establishing a deep and special partnership that contributes towards the prosperity, security and global power of our continent.
Talk about cherry-picking a single phrase and attributing a completely false interpretation to it that coincidentally suits your own purpose….casting doubt upon Brexit. Good old BBC.
I listened with amazement, but no surprise, to John Humphrys attempting to blame the government for the witch-hunt against British troops by the likes of Phil Shiner. Humphrys sententiously told us that ‘something had gone badly wrong‘ and that the government was surely complicit in this hounding of the troops.
The government certainly set up the inquiries but why? The only reason such inquiries are deemed necessary is because of the likes of the BBC which puts enormous pressure on the government by its relentlessly negative reporting which always looks to find fault and blame and does so with a high moral tone demanding ‘justice’ and ‘human rights’.
But the real twist in the tale is of course that it is the BBC that is complicit in the witch-hunt and hounding of the troops that made them endure years of pressure and intense scrutiny and uncertainty. For years the BBC reported Shiner’s claims as fact, as the truth, when they were a pack of lies. This has had enormous consequences, not just on the lives of the troops, but on national security and on the radicalisation of Muslims as the BBC’s narrative that the war in Iraq was illegal, a war against Muslims and that ‘Britain’ has been committing war crimes against Muslims, fed into the Jihadists’ own narrative that they use to recruit more head chopping fanatics. Thanks Lord Hall.
When the BBC hunts down British troops and does all it can to hinder a war effort whilst at the same time supporting and excusing Muslim terrorism something has gone badly wrong at the BBC. Fix it or close it down.
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