Peter Allen was having a discussion (about 2 hrs 37mins) about Calais and the migrant attempts to rush the border (astonished to hear the BBC say maybe 500 have actually made it through the tunnel!)…he had 4 politicians on to give us their views…no one from UKIP though.

Allen referred to the Nicky Campbell phone-in which I hadn’t heard.  Allen said that there were some extreme views being voiced which he thought might have worried Labour’s Mike Gapes. I have quickly run through Campbell’s programme and as far as I can make out the BBC seems to have filtered out most anti-immigration callers…the ones I did hear were concerned about immigration but expressed sympathy for the migrants and one suggested that the solution was to build the economies and stabilise the countries where the migrants were coming from.  Hardly worryingly extreme or extremely worrying.  The other callers were either truckers, politicians or several who were pro-immigration…one of whom, maybe Allen’s ‘extremist’ (unlikely I know),  wanted the borders kept open because it is our nation’s, no doubt fascist, behaviour that has caused all the world’s problems and resulted in the migrant crisis…therefore we must pay!

Whilst Allen thought Gapes might be worried about people having ‘extreme’ views (Allen didn’t elaborate on what they were) it turns out Gapes wasn’t worried at all because he knows that phone-ins such as Campbell’s attracts right-wingers who are out of work with nothing to do except be angry about the world.

So now we know…the sheer contempt he has for most people of this country.  His patronisng and arrogant, unpleasant attitude is exactly what we have come to expect from the Left…and why Labour loses and will keep losing elections…they have a total and utter disregard for the People’s opinions, they hold them in complete contempt and are absolutely dismissive of their views.

I guess he hasn’t learnt a thing…

Labour shadow minister accused of ‘contempt for working classes’ over white van tweet

Fair-do’s Allen did stand up for the callers and even the Tabloid Press which might possibly be representing the views of the many rather than being the people who get the blame for ‘whipping up anti-immigrant feeling’…of course those who want to control immigration don’t have considered and coherent reasons for their stance…its just racism, stupidity and prejudice.

Gapes was in the Home Office from 2001 to 2002 so I suppose he feels some responsibility/guilt for the car-crash immigration policies that Labour passed onto the Tories.

Campbell told us that it is all about women and children and suffering…and he managed to slip in a quick soundbiote for climate change….things can only get worse as the climate does and forces people to flee their burning hot countries…the ones not under metres of flood water….guess he had a tick list of things to mention.

The debate about migration is very narrow, as you can tell from Campbell’s thoughts  There is very little about the real impact of migration upon the country and just when do you draw the line on numbers.  It was interesting to hear the 4 politicians, Labour, Tory, SNP and Clyde Cymru, all being to varying degrees accepting of immigration and essentially a de facto open border,  not one of them represented the views of what must be the majority of the people in this country.  They all take the easy, non-controversial route of expressing sympathy for the migrants saying we must look at this as a human tragedy essentially not a security issue and yes, the numbers must be controlled…but of course they refuse to state a number or how it will be done.

Oh, and if you’re an immigrant and you want help setting up home or just a bed for the night, or someone to pay for your kids’ education and healthcare contact Mike Gapes, Member of Parliament for Ilford South….and see if he puts his money where his principles are…I’m guessing you’d better find a nice warm doorway to sleep in……

Jonathan Dimbleby is worried….the family inheritance, the hand-me down job at the BBC, is under threat…what will the young Dimblebys do to earn a crust?

He urges a public revolt, an uprising to save the BBC….to save it from what I’m not sure…

Jonathan Dimbleby urges public to rise up in support of embattled BBC

‘The veteran political broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby has attacked the commercial enemies of the BBC for setting out to destroy it, and has urged audiences to rise up to defend the corporation.

“Even people within the BBC [who are] now beginning to stand up for it, fail to identify those vested interests. The Murdoch press is an enemy of the BBC for commercial reasons,” said Dimbleby, 70, in reaction to the release of the government’s green paper on the future size and remit of the corporation.

Making an unexpected intervention at a recording of Radio 4’s long-running current affairs comment show, Any Questions?, Dimbleby, brother of David and son of the BBC’s first war reporter, the late Richard Dimbleby, said the corporation’s opponents “have to be taken on by the BBC and by those viewers and listeners who own the BBC”. He added: “Go around the world, listen to what people say about the BBC, they think it’s astonishing we are having to think about whether or not it should survive.”

Dimbleby’s comments were not broadcast and are not included in the iPlayer version of the programme. His impassioned outburst was made over his radio microphone at the end of the recording in Leamington Spa, in response to a question from panellist and shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna and it came as the BBC Trust, the body that oversees the corporation, prepares to step up its information campaign.’

Ah it’s the usual suspects that are being lined up as the villains of the piece….criticism of the BBC or its reform are a machiavellian plot by Murdoch and his toady politicians…..and all in response to a question from a Labour MP…one too chicken to attempt to win the Labour leadership.

As the Guardian says the BBC Trust is also on the campaign trail…

‘A trust official said trustees were about to launch “the biggest ever version” of the research and public consultation work they regularly carry out. “There will be more intensive work than we have ever done in a single period and larger-scale research likely to reach more than 100,000 people,” he said. The trust was determined to broaden the debate and prevent a focus on perceived failings of the corporation.’

Astonishing how much effort and money they are putting into defending the BBC’s entrenched and very privileged position…money and effort they never put in before to discover the Public’s views….because they didn’t want to know them…on Europe, Labour’s economic policies, immigration or Islam.

The Guardian quotes another BBC defender…

Dimbleby’s sentiments were echoed this weekend by Frank Cottrell Boyce, the writer behind the most popular recent display of British cultural values, the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in London.

“It speaks for the nation”….. ‘the “range of tones and ideas” embodied by the BBC formed a sense of national identity and provided the varied voice that politicians often claim Britain needs to defeat extreme ideologies and terrorism.’

No, it doesn’t speak for the nation, it speaks for a small group, a self-selected metropolitan elite that has no desire to listen to what the lesser mortals want or think, they only want to impose their own values and beliefs and to have to discuss or negotiate this with the Plebs is far, far beneath them.

As for defeating extreme ideologies and terrorism…has he never listened to the BBC?  Has he never listened to Nicky Campbell or Victoria Derbyshire pandering to Islamist callers on the phone-ins?  Has he never listened to the relentless drumbeat of anti-Britishness that blames everything from ‘carving up the Middle East’ after WWI to the Iraq War for Islamic radicalism…never once actually blaming the real culprits…the people who adhere to the Islamic religion and follow its commands to its inevitable conclusions.

The Guardian is in full-on save the BBC mode publishing article after article in its defence, however this one by Anne McElvoy has slipped through the net….

‘The BBC is not undergoing involuntary euthanasia’

‘[There are] howls of mawkish protest and rallying cries of “save the BBC” – before we’re entirely sure from what.

A collective protest letter from celebrities, which turned out to have been encouraged from within, has not helped. We should treat such confections with the scepticism we reserve for letters from self-interested business folk calling for Tory votes before an election. Deep breaths all round. The BBC is not really “under attack”, being “bullied”, nor on the brink of being replaced by a porn-funded network based in an offshore tax haven. But it is undergoing an exercise that it does not like – having to defend its funding model and growth of its services.

Neither is an unreasonable question to ask, which makes me think that it might be better to show an interest in the process and be firm and clear on what its red lines are, rather than adopting a “how very dare you?” one about the exercise.

Scope and finance are very much legitimate questions for publicly funded broadcasters. The BBC is big and has expanded rapidly from the 1990s. There are some good reasons for this – and some not so good. It is large because scale helped it achieve impact in a global media world and technology has enabled it to add services quickly. It has not, however, undergone much scrutiny for the impact of this on others. A serious radio competitor, for example, has never got off the ground, while newspaper websites are up against its prodigious online offering. Asking a group of people who have run other broadcasting bodies to advise the government on the BBC’s impact on media markets is not lese-majesty.’

A far more measured and reasoned tone….the BBC is not threatened with closure or very much at all in reality.  The review process has only just started and yet the BBC is firing broadsides at anything that moves trying to win the non-existent argument….or rather one, of a dire threat to the BBC, that it has concocted out of its own imaginings.

The BBC seems entirely unprepard to even contemplate the review….it may after all end up with the recommendation that nothing changes other than a few minor tweeks….and the likelihood is that the BBC’s funding will be on an even firmer footing with a simple subscription system or national tax and a charge for the iPlayer.  I fail to see how it will be prevented fom making all those programmes that the likes of Frank Cottrell Boyce say provide the UK with so much overseas influence….and even if they’re not made by the BBC they’ll be made by someone else….as with Top Gear, which will probably be resurrected under a different guise on ITV.  The real ‘soft power’, the ‘World Service’ will also still be funded and broadcast whatever.

The BBC is not under an existential threat.  Calm down and stop crying wolf.

This is some interesting stuff from the BBC archives concerning reaction to Germany’s Lord Haw Haw broadcasts….relevant now because they were the internet broadcasts of the day.

Over 9 million Brits listened to these broadcasts every day according to BBC research at the time…the most likely to listen were young males, ‘politically’ minded, from better off families…sound familiar?

In this letter the then BBC Director General wrote to Government that…

‘The Haw-Haw question is of great importance – we here have never regarded it as
the joke which it is supposed to be by some – and I hope that you will forgive a
fairly lengthy letter about it. That Haw-Haw should be countered is of course
agreed entirely; the only problem concerns the methods.’

‘There is, first, the question of the size and the nature of Haw-Haw’s public. It
is undeniable that he is widely listened to at present: what is more doubtful is
how listeners react to him.’

The BBC did some research in 1940 to find out who was listening to Haw Haw and why….

THE EFFECT OF HAMBURG PROPAGANDA IN GREAT BRITAIN

The British people weren’t so easily fooled then it seems…

‘There is general recognition that Haw-Haw is a liar, and, though many concede
that his broadcasts contain grains of truth, we have not yet come across a single
listener who accepts his word as “gospel”.’

‘All the evidence supports the view that Haw-Haw is listened to as an entertainment and virtually never as a source of news. His undeniably great success as an entertainer arises largely, we believe, from his success in appealing, both with the audacious naughtiness of his comments and with his barefaced lies, to the latent schoolboy in each of us.’

However he was still considered a risk…and

A British Army major writes to Home Intelligence at the BBC highlighting concerns about Haw-Haw’s propaganda. He advises that these broadcasts should not be countered directly with analysis and corrections, as this would enable Haw-Haw to improve and in turn command bigger audiences. Neither should there be a veto on listening to him. Instead, the only solution lies with the BBC……

‘The Only Real Remedy Lies with the BBC’

One aspect of broadcasting is becoming very important. There is more or less consistent listening to Hamburg in the B.E.F., in Officers’ messes, men’s canteens and estaminets. The D.M.I. considers that this is a grave danger to morale and may be in the future a very definite penetration point for enemy propaganda.

“Haw Haw”, or his successor, is at present treated as a joke but by the free publicity given to him in every possible way, both out here and at home, not only has his general listening public been increased but the widespread discussion of his outstanding faults has enabled German propaganda experts to correct those faults and to make his broadcasts more palatable to British listeners.

The phrases “Of course he does bring out a lot of good points, you know” and “Let’s hear what Hamburg’s got to say about it” are still frequently heard. The danger is not serious at the moment but should any series of reverses at sea, on land or in the air take place there is no doubt that alarmist reports from Hamburg would find a large military audience ready to receive them, and ready to accept some proportion as being true.

Just a shame that the BBC doesn’t think countering the Jihadi narrative is equally important today…in fact the BBC fed into it with its attacks on the Iraq War, which also had an effect on British troops fighting that war, and still feeds into that narrative…Nicky Campbell in the past couple of weeks has made several references to the Iraq War being to blame for what is happening in the Middle East now…and it’s not just Campbell on the BBC who makes that claim amongst many others that pillory British history in the region in a very one-sided and deliberately simplistic way such as saying the British ‘carved up the Middle East’….and then there’s the BBC’s demonisation of Israel and the censoring of those who raise the issue of the conflict between fundamentalist Islam and Western ideals.

Muzzling the critics of conservative Islam and its propagandists is not conducive to social cohesion nor a free world.

As the Egyptian intellectual Abd al-Munim Said once observed, “The biggest problem with conspiracy theories is that they keep us not only from the truth, but also from confronting our faults and problems.” They also make us look like loons. Can we give it a rest, please?

That’s a quote from a Mehdi Hasan article about conspiracy theories and why Muslims are so in thrall to them.  Which is pretty funny when you know Hasan’s record of whinging about the grand and terrible conspiracy against Muslims such as this in the Guardian by him…Misreporting Muslims, …and of course who can forget this massive whinge...Mehdi Hasan: sanctions for ‘dishonest, demonising press coverage’ of Muslims….and today we have another….Life for British Muslims since 7/7 – abuse, suspicion and constant apologies

Mehdi is starting to look like a loon…please can you give it a rest!?  Try confronting your faults and problems and stop blaming them on the immoral, stupid Kafir cattle.

Why examine the honourable Mehdi and his ranting?  Allison Pearson in the Telegraph tells us that:

We have failed the victims of 7/7

Ten years after the 7/7 bombings, the threat from terrorism is real and deadly – yet many Muslims still fail to accept our British liberal values, says Allison Pearson

Against that horrifying background, consider the complaint this week in the Guardian by the writer and editor, Mehdi Hasan. He says that since 7/7, British Muslims have met with discrimination – “subject to unprecedented scrutiny; tagged as a suspect community, the enemy within, a ‘fifth column’ (to quote Nigel Farage)”.

Well, yes. If substantial numbers of men from a certain group in society are presenting an unprecedented threat to a country, then scrutiny and suspicion do tend to be the result. As for discrimination, try lying on a beach in Tunisia and being shot dead for no reason other than not being Muslim.

I’m not sure that Hasan and commentators like him fully grasp the widespread dismay at the failure of many Muslims to accept the values of our society.

Indeed….what first peaked my interest was this in the New Statesman...the title annoyed me…

A decade after 7/7, our anti-terror efforts stopped attacks but lost the battle for hearts and minds

The writer of course means Muslim hearts and minds…but isn’t the truth that Muslims have lost the hearts and minds of the rest of the population, not just with the bombs that went off and the seemingly endless attempts to carry out more attacks but the relentless barrage of Muslim rhetoric, intimidation, threats and hectoring, the attempts to force Islam down everyones throat whilst crying out that they, the Muslims, are the real victims of 9/11 and 7/7?

Allison Pearson by coincidence has expressed exactly what I was thinking….and Hasan has popped up with the usual special pleading and claims of victimhood to confirm the thought.

The New Statesman article wasn’t what it initially seemed, yet another Hasan type litany of Muslim woes at the hands of the Kafir.  What we actually got was a condemnation of the government strategy but not in the way Hasan and his cronies might want…it says we must change the narrative and make more of our Western values and emphasising what Muslims have here that they won’t have even in a notional ‘Muslim’ state……

The government’s Prevent strategy has one overarching goal: dissuading young British Muslims from supporting terrorism against the UK. That approach seems reasonable but has been poorly calibrated.

The focus on achieving security at home left the jihadist campaigns abroad largely unaddressed. Moreover, some preachers in the UK were allowed to promote radical views, in the hope that this might act as a “safety valve” for otherwise angry men, dissipating and deflecting their energies.

Some of the most basic ideas that define our society and our whole way of life were never promoted with enough vigour or conviction. Freedom of speech, religious liberty and protections for minorities have all been secured only because of Britain’s secular values. This is what gives religious conservatives the opportunity and right to practise their faith as they see fit while allowing others to live in freedom and dignity, too. This has never been robustly explained by our government, let alone celebrated by it.

“Regardless of being born and bred in the west, the epitome of democracy, our Islam was not washed away,” the Mannans said in their statement from Syria. Yet it was secular Britain that allowed them to live as free Muslims, pursuing whatever version of Islam they saw fit. Will such religious pluralism be tolerated in their new land?

This of course is what the BBC should have been doing all along…after all it is charged with maintaining civil society and cohesion…instead of which it has served to widen the gap between Muslim and non-Muslim, pandering to the rhetoric of the radicals and peddling their propaganda whilst all the time variously condemning the West both as it is today and its history telling Muslims they have been victims not just through present day actions in the Middle East but throughout history at the hands of the West.

To finish I’ll just raise a few points about Hasan’s latest article in which he uses the most blatant images and rhetorical tricks to try and twist the narrative his way.

He says ‘How about the Muslim residents of the three areas in Birmingham that in 2010 were to be surrounded by a “ring of steel” of 218 “spy cameras” as part of a counter-terrorism operation?.

Now Muslims and their apologists often make a comparison with Northern Ireland, Nicky Campbell is especially guilty of this, and yet there is no comparison…NI was about land and politics not religion.  However Muslims often complain that no other group is treated as if they were terrorists….hmmm…have they not heard of NI?  If they want to know what real anti-terror policies look like try NI when it had its 30,000 strong security force, its watch towers, its SAS ambushes, its military patrols, its peace walls, and yes, its CCTV…..and why not have all that if it keeps the peace on our streets on the Mainland?  After all the good Giles Fraser suggests it might not be such a bad idea…in order to protect a ‘tolerant Islam’…

It might feel a little more convincingly like a Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, commissioned perhaps as a celebration of religious plurality, were it not for the seven tonnes of Russian-made BRDM-2 armoured personnel carrier stationed outside.

And maybe they are right to do all this. For Kazakhstan has, within its own set limits, developed a properly deserved reputation for religious toleration. For instance, a huge blue synagogue has been built on the outskirts of town, one of many. Forget all that rubbishy racist stuff about Borat and “The Running of the Jew” – this is a place of genuine diversity, where different faiths rub along remarkably well. Despite all the off-putting pomposity of the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, it’s not a totally unrealistic reflection of how things are here. Maybe there is something for that tank to protect.

Hasan tells us that ‘Depending on which poll you believe, a majority of Brits believe “Muslims create problems in the UK”, link “Islam with extremism” and would be “bothered” by the building of a big mosque in their neighbourhood.’

and Tweets this:

• Mehdi Hasan ‏@mehdirhasan 5 hrs5 hours ago

  “Express delete story claiming ‘half of British Muslims support ISIS'” – sheesh. http://politicalscrapbook.net/2015/07/express-delete-story-claiming-half-of-british-muslims-support-isis/ …

Trouble is there is this research from the Pew Foundation that suggests British Muslims are at odds with British society, if not supporting ISIS, or their methods….

Muslims Distrust Westerners More than Vice Versa

In particular, British Muslims stand apart from their coreligionists elsewhere in Europe. They receive the highest religious-cultural negativity score, indicating more negative attitudes.

Britain’s score, based on the perception of British Muslims of Western non-Muslims with regards to these  characteristics, was higher than other European Muslims, and in  fact, closer to the score (opinion) of Muslims in Muslim countries. British Muslims are more inclined to see a conflict between Islam and modernity; more likely to self-identify along religious lines than national lines; and more deeply concerned about the future of Muslims in Britain. When asked, “Is there a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a Modern society?”, almost half of British Muslims (49%) felt there was.

Sheesh!!!

Hasan trumpets this.. .’In 2007 a fresh-faced MP spent two days at the home of a Muslim family in Birmingham and then wrote boldly of how it wasn’t possible to “bully people into feeling British: we have to inspire them”; “you can’t even start to talk about a truly integrated society while people are suffering racist … abuse … on a daily basis”.’

Indeed…let’s change that narrative from Muslims as victims and start to highlight all the good things the West has done for Muslims both here and abroad…..the BBC should start the ‘presses rolling’ straight away.

Toby Young was on 5Live  (13:20) the other day talking about Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn and telling us of his very far left credentials, he rattled off the identifiers….support for Hamas and Hezbollah, a Stop The War fanatic, someone who wants to hand the Falklands to the Argies….and let’s not forget an end to austerity.

I thought hang on….that’s pretty much a run down of much of what the BBC supports.

John Humphrys has said we should surrender the Falklands, or is that the Islas Malvinas?, to the Junta…

‘So the time has come for Britain to negotiate. A deal should be struck which establishes Argentinian sovereignty over the islands while allowing the islanders to remain British and which perhaps shares the spoils of oil exploration.’

….as did Peter Allen…

Peter Allen relates to Nicky Campbell how when as a young journalist he asked Mrs Thatcher this about the Falklands War:

‘Why are you bothering to fight this war when you  know perfectly well that you will have  to give them back to the Argentinians eventually.‘

 

and today we have a reminder of what Maggie thought of the BBC’s deadly coverage of the Falklands War…

The BBC has long been a propagandist for the terrorist group Hamas, making strenuous efforts to turn Israel, not the terrorists, into a pariah state.  Here Yolande Knell gives us a good example of how the BBC tries to rework Hamas’ reputation and that of the Muslim Brotherhood….Can Hamas hold back Islamic State in Gaza?

What is a squabble between two fanatical Islamist groups is portrayed as ‘moderate’ Hamas defending itself from extremist ISIS elements in Gaza…..we are still  fed the old lie about a moderate Muslim Brotherhood…So far, Hamas, which has its ideological roots in the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood, has been largely able to contain them.

Here’s news for you Yolande…the Muslim Brotherhood is the intellectual and spiritual home of Al Qaeda and therefore of ISIS, as well as Hamas.  AQ and ISIS are putting Muslim Brotherhood beliefs into action.

The Muslim Brotherhood is not ‘moderate’.

As always with BBC reports about Gaza there is the obligatory mention of this...Last year’s 50-day conflict killed some 2,200 Palestinians, mainly civilians, according to the UN, and 73 on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers. The BBC shoehorns in the casualty figures whatever the story is.   Israel is of course to blame for the rise of ISIS in Gaza…Some observers see Israel’s approach as potentially playing into the Salafists’ hands.

As for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…well it’s back to John Humphrys again I suppose…as a starting point.

The BBC plays a dangerous game.   It’s all too often British troops who pay the price for that.

‘Overall, television coverage of the whole election has not covered itself, or anything else, in glory.  Too often it has bought the line fed to it by pollsters and pundits on one hand and been childishly confrontational on the other.

This should be the last time that Television attempts to force the political reality into a preassigned format.

The BBC needs fewer gimmicks, more real journalists and a new helmsman; ITV needs to be less deferential to the BBC; Channel 4 needs to grow up.’

AA Gill in the Sunday Times today.

Listening to the BBC news in the car and I heard that Mandelson had pilloried Miliband for not laying out Labour’s plan for economic growth… the web report doesn’t quote him on growth but limits itself to this….

Comparing Labour’s economic strategy to a polo mint “with a great hole in the middle”, he said it gave the impression it was “for the poor, hate the rich, ignoring completely the vast swathe of the population who exist in between who do have values like ours”.

Mandelson’s words reminded me of something from earlier in the week that I let go by at the time, a Nicky Campbell debate on Tuesday in which he asks ‘Are the politicans failing to talk about the issues that are important to you?’

Now if he had asked that back say in January you might have thought yes, let’s stick our oar in and make ourselves heard but two days before the election, you have to be kidding!, and is the BBC really trying to lay the blame for a lack of debate over a wide range of subjects at the politician’s door?

Surely it was the BBC’s job to broaden the debate and ask those relevant questions about subjects the politicians want to skirt around such as education, foreign policy and immigration…and yes Labour’s plans for growth….the one subject they did want to get their teeth into was the Tory’s plans for welfare reforms and the £12 bn of savings/cuts….funny that.

The BBC had a bad election as I said before….it showed clear bias in what subjects it concentrated on, who got the headlines and who it sought to undermine….but it also had a bad election in its role as a news and current affairs broadcaster just from a professional point of view, failing to explore all the issues and challenge the politicans of all colours and creeds about them.  It had a very lazy election.

Just as Mandelson says Labour was intent solely on bashing the rich and presenting itself as the party of the poor the BBC followed the same agenda telling us that inequality was THE major political narrative of our time.  How often did the BBC report from the poorest areas of a city or region, from foodbanks or concentrated on Zero Hour Contracts when such contracts make up a very small portion of the employment market and around 2/3rds of people on them are happy to be so?  This was the BBC that painted the bleakest picture of the NHS as a failed or failing enterprise rather than having a balanced look at what it provides…certainly it is under strain but not as a result of Coaliton changes.  Then we had the ‘living wage’, non-doms, the bedroom tax and the apparent lack of productivity.

All Labour policy concerns given headline status by the BBC.

What did the Tories get?  The sole big Tory splash that I can remember the BBC going big on was the Tory NHS announcement…but that of course was only to try to rip it apart with claims that the promise was unfunded.  However, despite a couple of interviews when Miliband was on the rack over his NHS plans, the BBC machine ignored the fact that Labour’s own plans were unfunded…the Mansion tax and tax avoidance money making schemes ridiculed by most commentators.

Labour promised to spend £2.5 billion above whatever the Tories promised….and yet even that £2.5 bn was, as said, unfunded….so how on earth would they fund the rest?

That takes us to growth and Labour’s lack of plans to increase it…central to funding all its promises, and especially in addressing the ‘living standards crisis’, unless they aimed to fund it all by soaking the rich…..where were the BBC questions asking about this important factor in Labour’s utopian dream?  How was Labour going to fund that improvement in living standards that was the backbone of its attack on the Tories?

The IFS, led by a man with links to the Labour party, told us that Labour could make very few cuts, borrow more and still cut the deficit…just how would that work?  The BBC didn’t ask.  Even when the BBC did quote something from the IFS that criticised both parties the criticism of Labour was soon massaged out of the news.

The BBC failed both in its remit to be impartial and also just from a professional stand point…failing to explore the issues, failing to challenge the Parties on subjects they didn’t want to talk about and failing to really get what the Public thought important into the debate…which is all a bit ironic as the BBC claims it was at the heart of it all…

Election 2015: TV debates ‘most influential’ for voters

More than a third of voters were influenced by the TV debates between the political leaders in the run-up to the election, a survey has found.

According to a Panelbase survey of 3,019 people, 38% were influenced by the debates, 23% by TV news coverage and 10% by party political broadcasts.

The research group said TV was “by far the most influential media source”, outscoring newspapers and social media.

Of those surveyed by Panelbase, 62% said TV coverage overall had been the most influential in informing them about the general election, the parties and their policies – helping them form their opinions.

TV wielded far more power on those surveyed than newspapers at 25%, websites at 17%, radio at 14%, and speaking to family and friends at 14%.

A paradox there….if TV coverage is so influential why is there not a Labour government?  Perhaps the answer is that  we would have had an even bigger Tory majority if the BBC had been less, far, far less, biased.

We asked why the BBC totally ignored a caller to LBC who castigated Labour and Miliband for having failed to provide a good NHS service…..On Monday Nicky Campbell may have provided a reason as to why the BBC cannot bring itself to publicise such criticism of Miliband and Labour……Campbell told us that another member of the Public had given a Labour politician a severe ear bashing but he couldn’t tell us what that person had said because of course the BBC is politically neutral.….work that out if you can.

Later Victoria Derbyshire had a bit of ‘brain fade’ telling us that we had had a Conservative-Labour Coalition government for the last 5 years……or was it Conservative -West Ham?  Will the BBC be ‘laughing’ endlessly at such a foolish mistake for days on end?  Perhaps they could bring in a psychologist as they did to discuss Cameron’s little faux pas?

It did seem like the BBC was pushing Labour’s agenda on Monday…with quite a bit of SNP thrown into the mix…..the BBC frequently seems to assume we will have a Labour government and discusses an SNP pact with Labour as if that was the most likely scenario…and as so often we had a look at the ‘puzzle’ of productivity, or the lack of….a Labour theme now that employment is always going up and they need to find another angle to attack the Coalition somehow.

Then we had the aforementioned Campbell who was talking about housing….yet again a Labour theme.  Then Victoria Derbyshire talking about mental health…again a subject Labour, and the LibDems (for some reason) thinks it has the Tories up against the ropes on.

Then we had the Evan Davis ‘Leaders’ Interview’, this time with Nicola Sturgeon.  I was going to watch it but Craig at Is the BBC biased? has done sterling work and provided us with a run down of how it went…..not bad at all from Sturgeon’s point of view….all that was missing was a glass of wine and some candlelight….a completely different ‘tone’ to the aggressive and sanctimoniously disapproving lecture Nigel Farage received.

Have to say the BBC’s coverage of the SNP gets ever more like a glorification….Wednesday seemed to be a coronation of Sturgeon by the BBC with much trumpeting if her as a ‘breath of fresh air’ and a ‘straight talker’…..both of which are complete nonsense…she’s a politician the same as all the rest…..in private she says she thinks Miliband is unfit to be PM and she’d prefer a Tory government but says something different in public and no comment from the BBC about her repeated claim to really respect ‘democracy’…the woman who wants to keep having referendums until she gets the answer she wants on independence.

Then we have Cardiff University’s run down of news coverage of the election…apparently, again h/t Craig, the Tories are way out in front in receiving airtime from the various news broadcasters….though that doesn’t say whether it is positive or negative coverage…so hardly an informative study….here is how they went about that study…

The Cardiff University study examined bulletins on Channel 5 at 5pm, Channel 4 at 7pm and at 10pm on BBC, ITV and Sky News.

Not exactly comprehensive….but they have noticed that the BBC gives more time to Miliband…

The BBC was an outlier, giving more time to Miliband, who made up 24.3% of time leaders were speaking on screen, compared to 21.9% of time for Cameron.

Now anyone who has listened to the BBC radio output or read the website will know that Labour has the lion’s share of the headlines…hardly a day goes by when ‘Labour announces……’  doesn’t get top billing and as on Monday the latest Labour policy ‘discussed’ repeatedly on the BBC.  The BBC takes the risk that the policy will get mauled but keeping Labour in the headlines and the Tories out seems to be the BBC modus operandi….unless it is unmistakeably bad news for Labour, such as callers on the NHS blasting Miliband, which is completely absent from the BBC, or bad news for Cameron such as the ridiculous story about ‘brain fade’ which will be discussed endlessly.  If a Tory policy does make it to the headline it is not long before it is replaced with the Labour response rubbishing it.

It is as we have always suspected with these ‘studies’ that they are extremely limited in scope and only examine a very small part of any broadcaster’s output…far less than you and  I can hear as we go though the day listening to various BBC programmes and getting a real feel for the output as whole over the day.

The Left are happy…migrants from African are dying in their hundreds and their deaths can be exploited by the likes of the BBC to promote an open door immigration policy….regardless of the consequences for European society and civilisation that that entails….and regardless of the consequences for the immigrants...’luring them to their death’.

Exrpressing cheap sympathy for the death of these people the BBC, and others, refuse to analyse what is going on.  Their simple, convenient, equation, designed as emotional blackmail, is that migrants are desperate to come here, they are dying in the attempt, and therefore to prevent them dying we must fling open the borders and let them in…never mind that in Libya alone there are reportedly over one million migrants , with more coming, waiting for their chance to head to Europe, the land of milk and honey.

The real solution is to send ground troops to stabilise Libya, to destroy ISIS and to prevent the boats being launched in the first place but the BBC, and the ‘Muslim community’, are opposed to that….the ‘Muslim community’ don’t want us fighting Islamic extremists like IS apparently, but are happy if the West could topple Assad in Syria for them…funny that.

Here is a classic bit of emotional blackmail and extremist rhetoric from the UN…..

Anti-immigrant rhetoric from politicians across Europe, including Britain, is blocking attempts to introduce large search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean that would save large numbers of migrant lives, a senior UN official has warned.

Laurens Jolles said political expediency was preventing measures being taken to reduce migrant deaths.

Jolles, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative in Italy, said: “In many countries in Europe at the moment, the [political] dialogue and the rhetoric is quite extreme and very irresponsible.”

No…. ‘anti-immigrant rhetoric from politicians’ is not killing anyone.  First it is the extremist pro-immigration, open border rhetoric that is encouraging people to try and come to Europe where they know they will be able to force countries to  look after them if they can make a landing.  It is the ‘come one come all’ rhetoric from the likes of the UN that creates these dangerous situations….you can see how Obama’s pro-immigration encouragement has resulted in a disastrous flood of illegal immigrants into the US…..The Spectator says...’The real culprit isn’t Triton but the EU’s tragic asylum and immigration policy. Though it is designed to save people, it instead lures them to their death.’

Second it is not the ‘politician’s’ rhetoric…they are expressing the will of the majority of the people that immigration should be controlled…and saying that immigration needs control is hardly ‘rhetoric that is quite extreme and very irresponsible’ as the UN claims.

Third the UN’s solution…ignore what the people think and impose draconian pro-immigration policies upon them.

Which is an irony….the UN tells us that these migrants are fleeing tyrannical, oppressive regimes and yet its solution is to create such regimes in Europe where the political ‘elite’ impose policies to deal with issues that the prejudiced and ignorant peasants, you and me, aren’t capable of understanding and who don’t have the capacity for intelligent thought and humane compassion in our sordid little lives that would allow us to empathise and understand these migrants.

The BBC thinks that hiding the realities of the situation will prevent an angry response as millions of immigrants continue to swarm across the borders….the reality is that the lack of debate and the lack of consent from the population for this immigration policy will result, eventually, in an extreme reaction against immigrants…the irony being that that is precisely what the BBC attempts to prevent.

In a Nicky Campbell phone-in we heard the accusation that anyone who opposes immigration would have opposed Jewish immigration in the 1930’s and thereby were themselves the equivalent of Nazis.

Campbell seemed to like that….but you could raise the inconvenient fact that the BBC blocked Churchill from the airwaves as he warned of the danger of Herr Hitler because the BBC didn’t want to upset Adolf just as they block or deride those speak of controlling immigration, or demand we change UK foreign policy so that we don’t upset the ‘Muslim community’.  If Churchill had been free to speak he may have influenced events and Europe may have done more to stop Hitler and prevented the war in which millions died.  The BBC’s good intentions helping to cause a war, just as their hiding of Assad’s chemical attack on a school before the crucial vote on Syria helped to create ISIS…..A ‘warning from history’….as is this…..

Terror on the streets of South Africa

Gaddafi also warned us…..

Back in August 2010, the Libyan despot went to Rome and made a blackmailing offer which many Italian politicians must now be wishing they had accepted.

Gaddafi said: ‘Italy needs to convince her European allies to accept this Libyan proposal – €5 billion [then about £4 billion] to Libya to stop illegal immigration. ‘Europe runs the risk of turning black from illegal immigration, it could turn into Africa. We need support from the European Union to stop this army trying to get across from Libya, which is their entry point.

‘At the moment there is a dangerous level of immigration from Africa into Europe and we don’t know what will happen.

‘What will be the reaction of the white Christian Europeans to this mass of hungry, uneducated Africans?’

‘We don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and cohesive continent or if it will be destroyed by this barbarian invasion. We have to imagine that this could happen but before it does we need to work together.’

The BBC and their pro-immigration extremist ilk are storing up a dangerous and violent future for a Europe that is being  ‘invaded’ on many fronts.

Nicky Campbell this morning ran his phone-in on the news that Nigel Farage and his family were attacked by anti-UKIP protestors who were doing much what the Brown Shirts did in the 1930’s.

Campbell didn’t challenge the constant claims by the protestors that Farage was a prejudiced racist peddling fear…Campbell dodged that preferring instead to suggest merely that many people support Farage and vote for UKIP…which is a different thing altogether….Campbell leaving the thought that Farage and UKIP are racists up in the air.

Campbell was asking if direct action protests were legitimate…curiously he didn’t mention the prominent reports that Ed Miliband’s paymaster, Len McCluskey, has recently stated that he intends to ignore the law of the land if the Tories are elected and will engage in such direct action as necessary to force his will upon the country…views he has expressed before…..

“All concepts of politics, of whatever kind, are about conflict──how to contain it, or abolish it.”

So if we are on a march towards “one nation” and ultimately “one world”, it is a road that leads through struggle and conflict.

We are taught to believe that democracy is the cornerstone of a modern civilised society; but our Lords and Masters want to define democracy, limiting us to an ‘X’ on a Ballot Paper every 5 years.

This is not my definition of democracy.

They tell us strike action, civil disobedience, direct action and protest are all somehow unpatriotic.

Our history tells us they are not.

Whatever the upshot of electoral politics, working-class politics must grow and develop, based on the socialist education Ralph Miliband called for.

In the midst of an unending economic crisis, with what Ralph would have called a discredited ruling class at the helm, it is past time for the working class to step forward with its own vision and alternative.

One of Campbell’s main contributors was Charlie Kimber, National Secretary for the Socialist Workers Party…..it’s aim…

Workers create all the wealth under capitalism. A new society can only be constructed when they collectively seize control of that wealth and plan its production and distribution according to need.

For a party that demands respect for all sorts of people and claims to champion the downtrodden it might have been relevant to ask Kimber about the way the SWP handled rape allegations made against a senior member of the SWP… swept under the carpet by them…so much for respect. Then again Campbell could have asked about the many, many millions killed by Socialism including those under the National Socialist regime in Germany by those hoping to create the perfect Socialist society.

Or Campbell could have challenged Kimber about his allies….

SWP cosying up to Islamic fundamentalists…again

Thankfully Campbell was mostly irrelevant, most callers did his job for him and challenged the protestors, standing their ground and denouncing the protestors and their actions in a reasoned and measured way that completely undermined Kimber and his ilk.

Funny how Farage is allowed to be pilloried for his views but others, like Kimber, seem to get a pass for theirs on the BBC…..and on that… interesting that Theresa May mentions extremist Islamists and the Far Right as people with hateful beliefs in her speech today….again what about the Left?  The ‘leftwing’  UAF is the organisation that starts the violence at EDL marches.

Personally, I’ve never quite understood why so many of my co-religionists are so keen to kill or maim those who ‘insult’ Islam, Prophet Muhammad or the Quran.

Media Hasan 2012

 

Errrr…scrub that……

 

Good old Media Hasan, that Islamist opportunistic chancer…thought we’d lost him for a while but he’s crawled out from  under his stone to make a comment, finally, about Charlie Hebdo.

Of course he was in a difficult position….support Charlie Hebdo and burnish his liberal, progressive, secular credentials as he is prone to do and really upset the Brothers, or support the killers and he’d be discredited and finished, he’d be sharing taxis with Nicky Campbell’s ex-mate Mo Ansar.  Islam or Free Speech?  Islam or Free Speech?  One had to go.  ‘fraid it was the Free Speech.  Just as the choice he made with homophobia…he chose Islam whilst also paradoxically claiming not to be homophobic.

Amusing that he is so ‘tired’ of all the media attention asking for his comments…so unlike him…wonder why he doesn’t really want to comment.

Actually you know it’s Muslim news story week when Muslims slaughter cartoonists and Jews….never mind what is happening in the rest of the world….good old Boko Haram eh…2000 people massacred.  Muhammed, forgiving and merciful, and peaceful, must be crying now.

Remember, the now media shy Media Hasan, once urged his fellow Muslims to become fellow media junkies and join the profession…in order to further the interests of Islam in the West, to push the Muslim point of view…to win the battle.

Guess he just doesn’t want to talk about this story too much.

And 4 BBC outlets?  Why bother?  Hasan is a charlatan and an Islamist….he’s about as trustworthy as David Cameron.

For example…here he is expressing his moral outrage at one of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons:

Trouble is this is the man who said, not as satire, not using the analogy as some form of anti-racist critique, but as the truth from his God…that non-Muslims are ignorant cattle, immoral animals, kufir….  Unbelief is an infirmity, an illness,  a disease of the human mind.   Divisive, racist, demonising language?  ‘us and them’ eh?

I just don’t buy your outrage Hasan…I think you are a fraud….it was you that said this wasn’t it?…

 “No faith or community should be protected from criticism and even ridicule”.

 

Consider this…his latest piece now that he has worked out his ‘position’ on Charlie Hebdo…not so keen on all that free speech and blasphemy now…..

As a Muslim, I’m Fed Up With the Hypocrisy of the Free Speech Fundamentalists

 

Dear liberal pundit, [No longer he then]

I’m writing to you to make a simple request: please stop. You think you’re defying the terrorists when, in reality, you’re playing into their bloodstained hands by dividing and demonising. Us and them. The enlightened and liberal west v the backward, barbaric Muslims.

Yours faithfully,

Mehdi

 

Hasan says:

Has your publication, for example, run cartoons mocking the Holocaust? No? How about caricatures of the 9/11 victims falling from the twin towers?

 

The Holocaust or 9/11 being the goto ‘taboo’ subjects for defenders of the indefensible to make comparisons with cartoons of Muhammed or Islam.  Mocking the Holocaust is mocking 6 million dead and mocking the actual victims of 9/11 as Hasan makes a comparison to would be highly inappropriate but  mocking Islam is mocking an idea..spot the difference between mocking the mass murder of people and an ideology…one that caused the death of so many people itself…..and having said that Charlie Hebdo did do a cartoon of 9/11 the following November after it happened showing Bin Laden saying ‘Look no hands’…as with all Charlie Hebdo cartoons there will be a context for that image and it should not be taken at face value as joking about 9/11…it is obviously a comment of some kind playing off events in November…perhaps a comment on the investigation into who committed the crime:

In fact here’s a cartoon that does mention the victims in  a political comment showing how, just because it’s a cartoon, it doesn’t mean the victims or the subjects are being mocked or insulted:

And no one gets shot.

And as far as I can see Media Hasan has absolutely nothing to say about Dieudonné and his Muslim and Far Right friends who have adopted his anti-Semitic salute…La Quennelle…

Dieudonné not mocking Jews or ‘Zionism’ but inciting violence against them:

Hasan complains of ‘ crude caricatures of bulbous-nosed Arabs’…..get over it……Le Rosbif  turn the other cheek…..But I guess that’s a Christian virtue….

‘Who wants the English in Europe?

Curiously in 2012 Hasan took the opposite stance to today’s rant denouncing those ‘non-existent’ ‘backward, barbaric Muslims’…in fact this is the article that the BBC’s Mishal Husain linked to after the Charlie Hebdo attack to persuade us that Muslims can be restrained and civilised…curiously the New Statesman republished the article after the attack but rapidly withdrew it…could Media Hasan have had other plans, a different stance on ‘blasphemy’,  and didn’t want to be shown up as a hypocrite? (see Daily Mail also!)

Mehdi Hasan on Islam and blasphemy: Muhammad survived Dante’s Inferno. He’ll survive a YouTube clip

 

Dear Muslim protester,

Where do I begin? Having watched you shout and scream in front of the world’s television cameras, throw petrol bombs and smash windows, I reluctantly decided to write this open letter to you.

Let me be blunt: you and I have little in common other than our shared Islamic faith, our common belief that there is no God but God and Muhammad is His Messenger.

If I’m honest, I have to say that, listening to your belligerent rhetoric and watching your violent behaviour, I struggle to recognise the Islam in which you profess to believe.

Like freedom, tolerance is not a western invention or innovation; it is an Islamic virtue. As the great Muslim caliph Ali ibn Abu Talib once wrote: “Remember that people are of two kinds: they are either your brothers in religion or your brothers in mankind.”

Yours faithfully, Mehdi.

 

Yours faithfully eh?  LOL.

Oh, here he is again denouncing blasphemy laws….

Not In My Name: Islam, Pakistan and the Blasphemy Laws

Personally, I’ve never quite understood why so many of my co-religionists are so keen to kill or maim those who ‘insult’ Islam, Prophet Muhammad or the Quran.

I,  for one, am fed up with politicians, mullahs and mobs using my religion to further their own vicious and sectarian agendas. So here’s my own very simple message to the bigots, fanatics and reactionaries of the Islamic world: whatever intellectual or theological disagreements we may have with them, the fact is that Christians (and, for that matter, Jews) are our brethren; the Quran respectfully refers to them as the “People of the Book“.

 

 

‘I,  for one, am fed up with politicians, mullahs and mobs using my religion to further their own vicious and sectarian agendas.’?

Yep never see Media Hasan exploiting situations to further the Islamic cause and his own agenda….and just think on…Hasan tells Muslims that Islam should not bend to fit in with other societies.

Still the BBC seems to like him and think he has something of worth to say.

Watch out you dog lovers, music lovers, beer drinkers and people in same-sex relationships, you non-believers…Islam says you are transgressors….you are out and out Kafirs….watch the video.