After a tragic and shocking event like the air crash at the Shoreham Air Show in which possibly 20 or more people were killed it would be expected that there would be a feeding frenzy from the Press with all sorts of claims, accusations and wild assertions being made. You’d expect the BBC, as an organisation that has no papers to sell and no axe to grind, to stand back and take a considered look at the crash and its surrounding circumstances.  However listening to John Humphrys this morning on the Today programme (08:10) when he was haranguing John Turner, chairman of the British Air Display Association, I got the impression that this was an interview driven more by emotion and anger, with a good dose of holier than thou sanctimony mixed in with a little bit of ignorance than a measured news interview.  Consider also that the pilot of the aircraft, Andy Hill, was very experienced, ex-RAF Harrier pilot, and no doubt very ‘responsible’ and would have been highly aware of the risks and no doubt shaped his display to ensure it was as safe as possible…..something that Humphrys seems to have overlooked.

Humphrys’ thrust was that the Airshow had been highly irresponsible in allowing the aircraft to display overland and that, obviously, it should have been done over the sea….because there was nowhere for a plane to crash land should the need arise.

Well let’s have a look at Shoreham and see…I’ve put the video of the crash at the top of the post so that you can see that the aircraft approached from wide open countryside and did the loop the loop whilst in open country.

The Mail provides this graphic to show that the people on the road were incredibly unlucky to be hit…and note that the runway is actually directly next to the crash site…so a plane taking off or landing, not doing aerobatics, could have crashed in exactly the same spot….

Look on Google Earth and you can check out the exact layout of the land and you can see that to the north is the open country, to the south is the sea  with urban areas either side….there is plenty of space for an air show.

What do the Red Arrows do? Do they display overland and built up areas?  Yes they do…

….but here’s their latest at Bournemouth where they displayed over the sea but also flew over land…..

The Daily Mail and the Mirror , amongst others in the Press, have got another angle on this…the Red Arrows, they tell us, won’t fly over Shoreham because it’s too dangerous….well, they may have changed their criteria since 2009, but here’s the Red Arrows at Shoreham in 2009 flying north to south:

But let’s go back to John Humphrys and his outrage at the Shoreham Airshow’s  dangerous ‘irresponsibility’….what has he got to say about Farnborough?…once again Google Earth it and you can see the surrounding area is massively built up with even less open land.

Here’s the Red Arrows flying overland at Farnborough last year…

If you are going to pillory someone on national radio, on the BBC’s prime news programme, at the prime slot of 08:10, then you’d better get things right and in perspective….perhaps he should read the BBC’s archives…here they could have told him that a Red Arrows plane crashed, after displaying over the sea, on land.  Perhaps Humphrys thinks the planes should take off and land at sea just to be really safe.

As far as I can tell this interview was pure emotion and ignorance.  The deaths were shocking and tragic but to start whipping up outrage and sounding off about practically closing down air displays is highly disproportionate and wrongheaded based on a complete misreading of the situation and a lack of perspective.

Certainly things need to be looked over as always but to hang someone out to dry based on your own prejudice isn’t news or even  considered opinion, it’s a kangaroo court.

Remember Locherbie?  What would Humphrys say about the routing of airliners using this extreme case as an example?

Jeremy Corbyn is running for the Labour leadership and at the moment looks like having a chance to take on the mantle….much as one Ed Miliband did when he stabbed his brother in the back and stole the leadership from him.   That turned out well.

However we know he isn’t too keen on interviews, or at least ones in which anybody actually asks any questions.

After his debacle on C4 it looks like he’s decided that the best policy is to say nothing and dodge interviews that might prove difficult.

According to Nick Cohen Corbyn was due to have the thumbscrews applied by Andrew Neil but has declined the opportunity to make his case…

I hear that he has cancelled a planned interview with Andrew Neil, the toughest British broadcaster, rather than endure more profane questions.

Can’t imagine why.

Would he have dodged Evan Davis or Justin Webb or even John Humphrys?  I doubt it.

Andrew Neil proves that it is possible to do good journalism at the BBC.

If only there were more of him.

The Tunisians are building an anti-terror wall, as are the Saudis…I wonder if they had Israeli advisors?

Nary a peep from the usual suspects about these apartheid walls….unlike for Israel’s ‘wall of shame’.

We looked at the BBC’s hypocrisy when it comes to Israel’s security barrier before…..they must ‘avoid the political connotations of ‘security fence’ (preferred by the Israeli government) or ‘apartheid wall’ (preferred by the Palestinians). ‘

Never mind that it is a ‘security fence’, and it is mostly a fence, and is there to stop Palestinians murdering Israelis in terrorist attacks….the BBC’s ‘impartiality’ and balance is in reality partiality.  As I say below...’.all very difficult if you have an agenda whilst trying to appear not to have.’   All ironic considering John Humphrys has said (H/T True Too on this site and Craig at Is the BBC biased?)…

My point is, if we shy away from words we feel might cause a bit of offence….if we try to find euphemisms then it’s a dangerous road to go down. We’re not exactly where Orwell was but we’re taking those tiny little baby steps towards that unhealthy state of affairs.

By using the term ‘barrier’, ‘separation barrier’ or ‘West Bank barrier’ the BBC hides the nature and source of the violent threats that made the wall necessary.  It hides the fact that Israel is under terrorist attack by an orgainsation that wishes to wipe it off the map, literally.

From Biased BBC last year….

Degrees Of Separation

Look familiar? That’s not Israel or the West Bank but Northern Ireland

What’s in a name?

Build a wall and it seems the most pressing problem is how to define what that wall is intended to do….what to name the construction…..all very difficult if you have an agenda whilst trying to appear not to have.

In Northern Ireland walls that keep the warring parties apart are ‘Peace Walls’…and they’re still being built….as this BBC report from 2013 reveals:

New ‘peace fence’ at St Matthew’s Church in east Belfast

and here explains the history of these ‘Peace walls’ as the BBC is happy to call them:

Peace walls were first erected in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s as a temporary measure to minimise violence between nationalist and unionist communities.

Four decades later many are still in place.

Belfast’s ‘peace walls’ treble after ceasefires

Funny that the BBC, so willing to recognise that the walls in NI are there to stop terrorism and violence, but can’t bring itself to admit the same motivations are what caused Israel to build its own ‘Peace Wall’.

The BBC’s advice to journalists on what to call the security barrier?

Barrier

BBC journalists should try to avoid using terminology favoured by one side or another in any dispute. 

The BBC uses the term ‘barrier’, ‘separation barrier’ or ‘West Bank barrier’ as an acceptable generic description to avoid the political connotations of ‘security fence’ (preferred by the Israeli government) or ‘apartheid wall’ (preferred by the Palestinians). 

The United Nations also uses the term ‘barrier’. It’s better to keep to this word unless you have sought the advice of the Middle East bureau.   

Of course, a reporter standing in front of a concrete section of the barrier might choose to say ‘this wall’ or use a more precise description in the light of what he or she is looking at.  

By using such non-descript terms the BBC is in fact using ‘terminology favoured by one side’…the Palestinian terrorist …because the bland, inoffensive, anodyne phrases strip the ‘Barrier’ of all meaning….and imposes another…the suggestion that this is about ‘separation’….feeding into the activists loaded ‘favoured terminology’ of  Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state.

This is a deliberate attempt by the BBC to play down Palestinian violence…just as it does with Palestinian rockets…invariably described as ‘homemade’ and ‘inaccurate’…the intention being to suggest they are essentially harmless and not a justification for Israeli retaliation.

Stripping away the real reason for the construction of the security barrier, to stop Palestinians bombing Israelis or shooting at them (hence the concrete sections), is a political intervention by the BBC on behalf of the Palestinians.

The BBC is hiding the fact that Israel has been under attack for over 60 years and is using language favourable to Palestinian terrorists.

(Remind me…why did the BBC spend £300,000 hiding the Balen report?  Does it say in effect ‘BBC News kills Jews‘?  Just which journalists and management are being protected?)

Perhaps the BBC should take note of what a Palestinian called the ‘Separation Barrier’….

Mohammed Assaf, winner of the Arab Idol says:

‘There  are many ways to make a difference in life, but my way is as an artist,” said Assaf, a graduate of Palestine University who has just become a UN youth ambassador. “I’ve always wanted to make my voice heard around the world, to sing about the occupation, about the security walls between communities, and about refugees. My first ambition is a cultural revolution through art. Palestinians don’t want war – they are tired of fighting.”

‘Security Wall’….So called because it provides security to Israelis from Palestinian terrorism.

Simple really…unless you have a political agenda and want to send a message.

John Humphrys was in the Sunday Times last week giving us a great example of how the BBC thinks….the Greek tragedy?  It’s the fault of the Bankers, Big Business and Government…investment bankers and politicians on the make who green lighted Greece’s entry into the Euro…anything to do with the Greek people themselves?   No. No. No. says Humphrys as he ‘slays the big fat Greek myth’.

Oh, hang on, what’s this he goes on to tell us…a woman who refuses to get married as she will lose the pension she has inherited from her father…pensions that provided a very comfortable old age….the electorate who were bribed by the political parties…and, yes, they took what was offered no questions asked….the price of that acquiescence?  Appalling corruption on just about every level.  Don’t want to pay taxes…slip the tax man a few Drachma.

And of course they all signed up eagerly to join the Euro…it wasn’t forced on them…as one Greek said ‘There is big blame’ on the Greek people for voting the way they did……and even now they demand to stay in…

Despite the budget cuts, euro membership is hugely popular in Greece, with polls suggesting that nearly two-thirds of the population are in favour of the move.

Humphrys started his piece by saying that Greeks would have no truck with debt before they joined the EU….this all changed with the advent of the Euro and ‘all hell broke loose’.…which is a subject I’m sure for another discussion about that other BBC bias…Europe.

So it was Greece entering the Euro that crashed its economy and led to massive debts?  They already had massive debts…

Blame It On Profligate Spending 

This could only lead to an inescapable conclusion as noted by the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations):

“Even if Greece had remained outside the euro zone, its dependence on euro borrowing would only have increased. A falling drachma would merely have brought the current crisis to a head earlier by accelerating the rise in Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio (think Iceland)….the problem is excessive foreign borrowing, a problem with which Greece has struggled since the early 19th century.”

 

Well certainly the Euro hasn’t helped but the truth is it didn’t cause Greece’s problems merely compounded them…and made it more difficult to escape them….

The problem for Greece, and other countries in the eurozone, is that a single interest rate and exchange rate do not allow easy adjustment to external crises, and leave domestic devaluation through cuts in wages and prices as the only other option. The lack of institutional support for weaker members from the centre when the euro was created placed the entire burden at times of need on individual Euro governments. That came at huge cost to their economies.

Greece was broke before she entered…..Greece should never have entered the Euro as its economy was in no shape to hold its own and meet the stringent requirements of the Euro zone…as the BBC tells us…

How ‘magic’ made Greek debt disappear before it joined the euro

Greece is at the heart of the ongoing eurozone crisis, but is past sleight of hand by Greek statisticians to blame for the country’s current financial meltdown?

“We used to call him the magician, because he could make everything disappear.

“He made inflation disappear. And then he made the deficit disappear,” recalls Greek economist Miranda Xafa.

Greece fulfilled the Maastricht criteria and was admitted to the eurozone on January 1, 2001 – but by 2004 the deception was becoming transparent.

The difference between the published deficit and the real one was huge.

“[The gap] was about 7% of GDP,” Mr Doukas says.

“The budget said the deficit was 1.5%. The real shortfall was 8.3%.”

Certainly the politicians and bankers who signed off entry into the Euro can take much of the blame but to try and say Greeks themselves are completely innocent is false……Much of that debt was to pay for the massive public sector employment, there were more employees on the rail service than customers, and extremely generous pensions allowed Greeks to retire at 50 and live well, whilst a failure to collect taxes meant that paying for all this largesse was clearly going to be a problem…eventually…..but entering the Euro meant that Greece had sudden access to cheap money and could borrow even more…..an irony perhaps that the EU, part of the problem with cheap money and yet an economic policy straitjacket on Greece, should now be so hard on Greece.

Greece was always heading for a fall but joining the EU speeded that up and whilst forcing some reality upon the Greeks actually stopped them from doing the one thing that would have helped the most….currency devaluation.

The Greek people signed up to all of this and the structure of the Greek economy with its welfare dependency on government spending paid for by borrowing…and they of course signed up to the Euro and still want to be in the club.

Humphrys, who has a house in Greece and is a frequent visitor, with a son who lives and works there, is clearly twisting the facts to suit his own personal agenda…be nice to the Greek people in their moment of tragedy.  A sentiment that pervades the BBC’s own reporting on many subjects not least Islam with the BBC’s stubborn refusal to make any link to the violence around the world and the religion of Islam in cas eit upsest a few people.

News being manipulated to hide uncomfortable truths.  It always turns out bad in the end.

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.

Peston has really outdone himself on the eve of the election….seemingly coming down openly, in a subtle/non-subtle manner, in favour of Labour.

You have to ask why he felt the need to tell us that this is …

An election that really matters

That title indicates he has a view, a view that suggests he thinks one party is the one which will have significant impact on the way your life goes, and the following body  of the article gives a fair indication of what his preferred line might be…and it’s not ‘vote Tory’.  Peston gives us an either/or but it is not hard to guess which way his heart lies and which arguments he finds the more preferable…….

On the EU you can see a gentle nudge towards staying in…..

‘The issues that are on the table are huge, arguably the most important of my political lifetime.

The choice between whether to have a referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) – offered by Tories and UKIP, declined by Labour, LibDem and SNP – is massive.

Leaving the EU would have a profound impact on our economy, immigration and culture. For better or worse it matters.

For what it is worth, the consensus among mainstream economists and leaders of big businesses is that David Cameron’s aim of using the referendum to secure EU reforms is a laudable one.

But they would also argue that the costs of leaving the EU, reformed or not, would be big.’

On the SNP you are led to believe that one party looks to break up the Union and one will defend it….and it is the Tories who are being presented as the ‘enemies’of the SNP whipping up Scottish Nationalism by the BBC today (remarkable that it isn’t the SNP that is whipping up nationalism!  The BBC ignoring or downplaying SNP related violence, intimidation and rampant nationalism in a way that they wouldn’t with UKIP for instance)….

‘Likewise what is going on in Scotland will shape the whole UK…you should ponder which other parties best capture your views about whether the Scots should be ushered towards the exit or urged to stay in the union.’

So to keep the Union together vote Labour!

Then onto Labour itself…the shiny new ‘socialist’ party breaking with the war mongers and false economic prophets of the past (ie Old New Labour) seeking a fairer , more equal society battling the evil money makers….

‘Ed Miliband represents a big break with the New Labour of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, because of his explicit promise of higher taxes on the highest earners and the wealthy, and with his shift to much greater economic interventionism.

Whether you think his mandating of a higher minimum wage, his cap on energy prices, his determination to break-up banks and his raid on non-doms are wealth-destroying meddling or fairness-enhancing reforms, they are not same-old, same-old.’

Then onto the Tories…on the one hand making prudent economic choices…or on the other hand callous, heartless people grinding the poor’s nose in yet more poverty…..the dramatic phrasing of the last sentence indicates how you are supposed to think….

‘Finally even the often sterile debate on how, and how fast. to reduce the gap between taxes and spending – how rapidly to shrink the deficit and start cutting the record national debt – is a big one.

Take just one aspect, the Tories’ plan to reduce welfare bills by a further £12bn.

You can see this as either essential to make the nation’s balance sheet more resistant to inevitable shocks and an imperative to improve work incentives.

Or you can see it as an attack on the poorest and most vulnerable.’

And finally………LOL……

Now even if I were not constrained by BBC impartiality rules, I would not have the chutzpah to tell you how to vote.

But please don’t moan to me that this vote does not matter.

When the party leaders tell you this is the most important election in a generation, for once they are spot on.

Peston has had a bad election with reports and articles that bulge with pro-Labour nuances whilst doing down the Tories.  Peston defends Labour’s economic past suggesting there was no reckless ramping up of debt pre-crash even as John Humphrys said that Miliband must be the ‘last man standing’ who didn’t think that Labour spent wildly and helped make the recession far worse than it could have been.  Peston also suggest that getting the debt down is not important…how times change…..let’s have a look at previous statements made when there wasn’t an election in the offing……

First here’s John Cridland, the CBI director general, said: “Labour has form spending money it does not really have.”

And here’s Peston in 2011 saying pay down the debt…that may take a decade with low growth as a result…but is necessary…and you cannot borrow to run the public finances….

The Future’s Overdrawn

What became clear in 2008 is that we will have to find a way of paying much of that debt back.

That will take at least a decade.

And when we repay debt, we’re spending less. Which means economic activity slows down, growth grinds to a halt.

It is reasonable to assume that growth will be as little as 1% in the coming 10 years….which wouldn’t look so bad after a contraction of 6.3% in output during the 2008-09 recession.

 When essential public services start to be financed through borrowing rather than tax, it is immensely difficult to cut the borrowing.

 

And there’s more  of the same from him……the importance of reducing debt and the likelihood of many years of low growth, maybe just 1%, as we battle to get our economy and spending under control…

It has now become widely recognised that perhaps the greatest economic policy failure in the UK, US and eurozone during the 16 boom years before the crash of 2008 was the explosion of borrowing by banks, households, businesses and governments – or, to use the jargon, the unprecedented and massive leveraging up of entire economies.

 That is why getting the debt down to prudent levels is the most important economic challenge of our time.

 So what’s going on? Why are UK debts still going up?
Well partly it’s to do with a phenomenon I’ve discussed here many times, that debt has been shuffled from the private sector to the public sector.
When banks stopped lending, and private-sector spending and investing collapsed, governments continued to spend, even though tax revenues were falling. So public-sector borrowing exploded.
To be clear, if governments had not continued to spend, our recession might well have become something much worse, a 1930s-style depression.
But it is fair to say that a consequence of banks, households and businesses trying to repay their debts has been a big increase in government borrowing.

We haven’t as yet found a way to get the debts down so that we can be confident that our economy’s foundations are solid and sound again.

What it means is that we must brace ourselves for many years of relatively low growth, perhaps 1% versus the 3% of the 16 boom years before the crash, because we no longer have the fuel of borrowing more and more every year.’

How soon we, and Robert Peston, forget.

And what did Stephanie Flanders have to say way back in 2005 about Labour’s economic miracle?  It’s a miracle based upon borrowing and spending…and it couldn’t go on…not only that but productivity, Labour’s latest ‘concern’ in this election, was dire when they were in control…….

On running the rule over Gordon Brown’s economic record

Britain is growing slower than it has in more than a decade. The high street has ground to a halt, and inflation is the highest it has been under Labour.

 When we look back, in a few years’ time, at Brown’s economy, will we still see an economic miracle? Or another old-fashioned spending binge that, sooner or later, had to run dry?

 Our trade gap has widened almost every year since Labour took office.

 Ed Balls was with Gordon Brown every step of the way until he became MP for Normanton in May 2005. I asked him whether he was disappointed by Britain’s continued low productivity and widening trade gap.

 “There’s an ability for people to plan ahead, invest in the future, which we’ve not seen in the last 20 to 30 years.”

 Quite a few people around the country echoed this view – especially the property developers (before the property crash of course….causing the credit crunch). There is just one problem. Businesses are not investing more. They are investing less.

 Total investment as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the lowest it has been since those records began in 1965.

 Saved by spending

 The miracle, if there is one, is that we carried on growing. But looking around the country, you see it is a miracle built not on investing, or exporting, but on a miraculous capacity to spend.

 The public spending prop

 What is left of the miracle economy, if you strip out the cheap imports and the consumer spending? What is left is a lot of public spending. The only part of the economy that has grown faster than spending by all of us the past few years has been spending by the government.

In the north-east, one recent estimate puts the public sector of the economy at close to 60%.

 But all of that public spending, sooner or later has to be paid for. Ed Balls denies that Gordon Brown’s decision to move the goal posts on his golden rule this summer has done his reputation real harm.

 What Gordon Brown would like to be his final years as chancellor could be the most testing yet.

‘

And a final thing of note…the BBC is usually keen to tell us that all the rising number of self-employed people isn’t a sign of a healthy economy on the up but an indication of a weak economy in which people are desperate to scrape a living and end up as self-employed as a last resort because there are no jobs out there…..the Guardian in 2006 puts the lie to that when it predicts that maybe a third of workers will be self employed by 2011….

‘Become your own boss. And many of us want to. According to research by Vodafone, the number of UK businesses could rise from 3m to 10m over the next five years. That would mean a third of UK workers running their own business by 2011. The government will have to rethink its view on migrants. Otherwise our hourglass economy will become top heavy, toppling into the North Sea and causing a tsunami that would wipe out Scandinavia.’

A bit ironic this report from the BBC, The WW1 poet kids are taught to dislike, in which we are told of the prejudices and cultural values that teachers impose upon their pupils, not teaching them facts but attitudes, using the ‘facts’ as propaganda to sell the pupils a particular narrative.  The teachers approach WWI as an event in history that was unremittingly appalling and anyone who supported the troops and the fight against the Germans should be condemned as jingoistic warmongers, the teachers using such people merely to contrast with the views of those ‘good people’ who opposed or who expressed cynicism about the war which naturally the teachers believe is the correct approach to viewing the war…..never mind that poets and writers are not perhaps the most inclined to be warlike or keen to fight and so may produce a rather jaundiced view of things whilst many people were up for the fight and had a ‘good war’.

It is all a bit ironic for the BBC to report critically on the teacher’s attitude when the BBC is probably the single most powerful purveyor of such an attitude towards War, the Empire, British colonies, British society and its influence in the world…all of which are apparently bad….no wonder any immigrant who comes here is disinclined to sign up to the institution of ‘Britishness’ when he’s told everything British is tainted by our history.

One part of Britain’s anachronistic history is still with us, John Humphrys, still treasured by the BBC which has let him off the leash to supplement his meagre BBC stipend with an article in the Telegraph,  John Humphrys: Where did this general election go so wrong?, that is entirely negative and, whilst making little mention of political parties, is almost entirely weighted against the present government in its bleak view of life in modern Britain.

He tells us this has been a passionless, ‘bloodless’, election with little conflict or argument….can’t really see how he can say that when everyone else is saying this is an election that is breaking the mould, the end of two party politics (ignoring of course the fact we have had a coalition for the last five years…and several in the previous century), not to mention the rise of UKIP, the SNP, and Miliband turning ever redder if not tartan, and the TV debates certainly being examples of a great deal of passionate debate from the polticians.

Curiouslyy he tells us that in the most recent debate  the audience was ‘angry’and ‘bad tempered’ [Peston thinks they were ‘irrational’…that is…anti-Miliband!]…..not exactly bloodless then.

Here he gives us a very narrow, and I don’t believe at all a representative view, of the public’s take on things…

It remains to be seen how representative of the national mood that bad-tempered audience really was. With Today’s little jaunts around the country, we wanted to get cossetted presenters out of the studio for a few days and try to find out what real people are thinking about the election, as opposed to what the politicians and experts tell us they are thinking. Often – too often, perhaps – the answer this election campaign has been not very much at all. Sometimes, it has been absolutely nothing.

I imagine the views expressed in that debate are exactly what the majority of people feel rather than ‘absolutely nothing’. By way of example Humphrys tells us of his talk with a woman in a car wash who wanted him to tell her what was going on in the election…

‘I struggled in the car wash was that she wanted me to tell her what, exactly, was going on. To which there was only one honest answer: damned if I know.’

Humphrys is ‘damned if he knows‘ what is going on in the election…..this is one of the BBC’s senior political reporters from their premier current affairs programme and he doesn’t know what is going on?  Some might say that’s not a surprise.

Humphrys moves onto the economy and our lack of productivity…or supposed lack….again a Labour theme now that thye have lost the growth and living standards arguments.

‘This is the sort of business that Britain needs to succeed if we are ever to get our productivity out of the slow lane, and it has big ambitions to expand. Should things go to plan over the next few years, it will be the biggest technology park of its kind in Europe. That means plenty of jobs – the right kind of jobs – and a serious boost to the economy.’

He goes on to dismiss the jobs created in the UK as the equivalent of ‘mere’ hairdressers….a habit that most BBC reporters have of dismissing the new jobs as worthless and demeaning….

‘….the economy could not really be said to be improving if the jobs being created simply amounted to more and more people cutting each others’ hair. It’s not that I have anything against hairdressers – that’s what my mother did – but those jobs don’t create real wealth by boosting productivity.’

Never mind that Employment in Creative Industries grows five times the rate of the wider UK economy and that ‘the Creative Industries contribute more than £8m per hour to the UK economy, and generate more than £70bn a year, and is outperforming all other sectors of UK.’

No real wealth then from the ‘creatives’…which includes the Media of course.

Then we had another Labour narrative…Europe, we must stay in…because the big bosses tell us we must….Ed Miliband…the ‘voice of the People’!!….

‘Europe. Dr George Gillespie, the chief executive of MIRA, had just returned from a trip to China. One of the big bosses he’d been trying to impress there asked him if it was true that Britain was leaving the EU, because if it was, he couldn’t see much future in investing here. Clarity on whether Britain is staying in Europe or leaving matters to Britain’s bosses.’

Humphrys trundles off to Lowestoft and makes a comment completely untrammelled by the inconvenient fact that the very Europe he has just been praising is responsible for the death of the UK fishing industry…

‘The fishing industry is dying on its feet and there’s little to replace it. ‘

Then we get the idea that Ed Miliband’s ‘everyday folk’ have been ignored…another Labour narrative…

‘….walk ten minutes from the 21st century centre and you’re back in the grim days of derelict factories when Birmingham stopped being the manufacturing heart of Britain.’

Never mind that the Midlands is powering back to industrial health….and Birmingham is in there fighting its corner...Birmingham is top regional ‘hotspot’ for businesses going for growth

Then it’s on to housing and then university with that old lie about ‘debts’…

‘ for their sixth-form children, the worry of accumulating their own debts if they manage to get to university. ‘

Does he not know that more of these ‘children’ have been applying to university than ever before, and from the poorest backgrounds?

He finishes on a whimsical note…

‘The laws of physics dictate that when a moving object achieves a precise momentum, it will proceed on its set course because its weight is balanced against the curve and the gradient. Something like that. It struck me later that political leaders would have us believe in such a happy state. Set the course, press the accelerator and the country will cruise merrily along. Dream on.’

Of course that is not the Tory narrative that we can carry on as before by pressing the accelerator and spending our way out of trouble…that’s a Labour one.

Intentional or not Humphrys is peddling a pro-Labour narrative, one that is entirely negative not to mention mistaken in its perceptions of how people think about the election and events surrounding it.

I suspect they know a great deal about the political options on offer and the various scenarios that may occur should votes go one way or the other.

Humphrys paints a picture of the election and of Britain that is distinctly jaundiced…perhaps he has been listening to the news on the BBC from his own colleagues and swallowing their nonsense whole for too long.

.

Whilst as I said the BBC’s coverage of the Tory manifesto, that I saw, hasn’t been a bloodbath there have been a couple of moments when they let themselves down.

I was disappointed that John Humphrys, from a grounded, working class background and supposedly an experienced and professional journalist with integrity, should allow himself to become the frontman for the Labour Party peddling cheap sensationalist left wing smears on the Today programme instead of rigorous journalism when he not only attacked Fallon for his ‘stab in the back’ comment but went on from there to try and tar the whole Tory Party once again with the label of the ‘Nasty Party’ on the basis of that one comment when he interviewed Theresa May (08:10).

So once again let’s look at whether Fallon was justified in his comment or whether Humphrys is justified in decrying him.

Not so long ago the Left were crowing with glee when the BBC’s Eddie Mair launched his attack on Boris Johnson saying…

“And you, having heard that, tell your friend that that you will supply the address. What does that say about you, Boris Johnson? Making up quotes… lying to your party leader, wanting to be part of someone being physically assaulted – you’re a nasty piece of work, aren’t you?”

The Twitterati were delighted.…

Angi Mansi ‏@WorkPsychol Apr 2    Eddie Mair vs #BorisJohnson “You’re a nasty piece of work, and a liar”: https://youtu.be/ZAxA-9D4X3o  Irresistable interviewing Eddie.

The BBC were pretty proud of it themselves.

Or how about this...from the BBC in 2010?

If you ever doubted that class was still thought to be important in politics, just look at the number of times the words “Tory toff” appear before the name “David Cameron” in a certain left-leaning tabloid.

And if you want to get a feeling of how powerful this inverted snobbery is, just imagine it the other way round.

What if the Daily Telegraph always prefaced the name John Prescott with the words “Labour oik”? It would sound really mean.

So no problem for the Left when a right wing politician is the victim of a personal attack….why then the outrage when Fallon makes a perfectly reasonable and logical connection between Ed Miliband’s treachery and his possible future actions…selling out his brother for political power, selling out the UK’s defence in a pact with the ‘kingmakers’ of the SNP for the top job?

Does Humphrys have a very short memory or does he just conveniently forget things like this from the left wing Mirror in 2010?….

Ed Miliband’s unworthy of the top job

Ed Miliband – who only 22 per cent of voters expect to win the next election – has been told by the party’s former energy minister, Brian Wilson, he should quit to save the party.

“He should look in the mirror and honestly ask the question, ‘Will the electorate ever assent to me being Prime Minister?’” says Wilson.

Er, this is the man who shafted his own brother to get the Labour leadership, who was prepared to publicly and politically disembowel him in order to grab the top job.

That kind of bloke doesn’t give a stuff what’s best for the party OR the electorate.

And let’s face it – the party always wanted David Miliband, and nerdy little Ed knew that.

But he was desperate for power and was prepared to get into bed with the unions and sacrifice his brother on the altar of his own ambition to get it.

The very idea he’ll do what’s best for the country is farcical because he doesn’t actually know (or care) what the country wants.

And however much he stands on his soapbox and tries to “connect” with people, voters can’t ever get past the fact he betrayed his own flesh and blood in the cruel vindictive way he did. 

Someone who does that doesn’t give a toss whether people think he’ll be a good PM.

Pretty damning stuff from the lefty Mirror….Miliband so desperate for power that he publicly and politically disembowelled his brother!

Did anyone else think David Miliband was betrayed by his brother?

The Mail said…..

David Miliband’s wife who still can’t forgive brother-in-law’s Ed’s betrayal.

The sight of the two Primrose Hill-raised Labour apparatchiks engaged in political fratricide was astonishing, and in the subsequent two-and-a-half years, no amount of fine public words or behind-the-scenes finessing has healed that wound.

A black and yellow arrow is the vivid symbol of the International Rescue Committee. You will see it on flags flying over refugee camps from the Syrian borders to the Congo.

Yet it was the poison-tipped missile that thudded between David Miliband’s shoulder blades at the Labour leadership election which most informs his decision to abandon British politics for a place among New York’s glamorous charity elite. 

Younger brother Ed was the deceptively geeky assassin with the bow. He snatched the job David thought was his birthright.

The Express said…..

David Miliband’s wife urges him to quit over brother’s ‘betrayal’

Ms Shackleton, a concert violinist, is known to have become increasingly angry at Ed Miliband’s behaviour during the hard four-month campaign.

In the past, she had encouraged her husband to oust Gordon Brown and was angry when his brother talked him out of launching a coup. She regarded Ed Miliband’s unexpected decision to run for leader as a betrayal.

The Telegraph asked if Ed had betrayed Dave…..

I Did Not Betray My Brother, Ed Miliband Says

The Labour leader disclosed how he never believed David Miliband would return to front line politics following their fractious fight for the party’s top job in 2010.

Ed Miliband, 43, denied he had ever promised his 47 year-old brother a clear run to the leadership, a belief that has fuelled a sense of betrayal among David’s friends and family.

The election caused a major rift between the two and he refused to serve in Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet.

So the evidence stacks up against Ed Miliband and the BBC’s narrative…..shame they put that cheap sensationalism before genuine journalism.

Ed looking extremely comfortable as he stabs his brother in the back.

David Cameron  has been photographed feeding a lamb….an orphaned lamb…sweet, as Jeremy Clarkson would say.

The BBC has decided there is something decidedly of the ‘Dark Arts’ about all this and sent in intrepid reporter, John Humphrys, to investigate the important issues surrounding this breaking news.

Apparently this is ‘the new reality’ of politics with politicians kissing babies and doing photo ops…never been done before though Humphrys can remember back 30 years and vividly recalls a photograph of Mrs Thatcher holding a lamb and looking extremely uncomfortable.

Here’s the ‘new reality’ in 2007…

And why would Humphrys remember a photo of Thatcher all those years ago?

Couldn’t actually find the photo of Thatcher and a lamb….but here she is with a dead sheep…and yes, looking uncomfortable…

oh…hang on…

However she didn’t seem to have any problems with this…

Or indeed this fella….

Humphrys ended by asking if  ‘people are going to say Cameron is trying to manipulate us?’

But that is just the BBC trying to manipulate us by raising such questions….questions they don’t ask when Labour uses such tricks…and the BBC seems to think we are all fools….we know there is an election, we know that politicians kiss babies etc……we know they are trying to win our votes by massaging their images.

And we know the BBC will be trying to undermine the Tory charm offensive…whilst defending Miliband and his bacon sarny photo op disaster…

It once again looks like the BBC is reluctant to shine a light upon its own dark corners.  We know of the puzzling expenditure of £300,000 to cover up the Balen Report and what is presumably its excoriating criticism of the BBC’s anti-Israel reporting but what else lies hidden in the shadows at Aunty Beeb?

The Mail reports that the BBC has shelved a interview critical of the BBC Trust’s Chair, Rona Fairhead…

Anger after BBC scraps interview that called for its chief to quit over her £513,000 second job with scandal-hit HSBC 

The BBC was last night accused of suppressing an interview that called for corporation boss Rona Fairhead to resign over her £10,000-a-day second job at scandal-hit HSBC bank.

It’s a new blow to Mrs Fairhead, chairman of the BBC Trust and a non-executive director of HSBC, who is facing growing calls to quit one of her high-profile jobs over claims of a conflict of interest.

She is due to be questioned by MPs tomorrow after The Mail on Sunday revealed that she was paid £513,000 for just 50 days work at the troubled bank last year, vastly exceeding her £110,000 salary for what is supposed to be her main job overseeing the BBC.

You may also remember that the BBC tried to cover up the Savile affair and the fallout from that and the subsequent exposure is apparently that the open and accountable BBC is demoting or effectively sacking its own journalists who dared to rock the boat as Nick Cohen in the Guardian reports (H/T Guest Who)