TURNING THE TOWN RED

Listening to BBC Radio 5 live is always good for a laugh. Earlier this morning, I listened in the Breakfast programme with Nicky Campbell and Shelagh Fogarty. The item under discussion was in respect of a plan from some supporters of Liverpool FC to raise enough money to buy the troubled club from its American owners. The idea being contemplated is to see if enough fans would be interested in putting up £5000 each and thus buying 1 share each. Apparently Barcelona use this same method and it has kept them out of the hands of speculating capitalists! (Always bad in Beebview) What raised my eyebrows however was when Nicky Campbell asked the Sports correspondent what was to stop someone from investing more than £5000 – would this not entitle them to a greater level of share ownership for example? “No”, came the instant response, “it’s a good communist system” of one man one share. This was met with approval. Power to the people, eh comrades? I don’t know about you but Five Live is bias incarnate, do you ever listen to it and if so, would you agree?

A Friend In Need Is A Friend Indeed

You’re a Justice Minister in one of the most violent countries in the developed world. The prisons are full AND the budgets are tight, so you need to start sending fewer people down. But your stupid voters, brainwashed by the punitive tabloids, won’t like it one little bit. Telling them they’re stupid is bad PR. How can you spin it to avoid “Thugs free to walk streets” headlines ?

You need to find a company who can market it to the stupid voters as “cutting reoffending rates”. But where can such a company be found ?

“There’s a firm at Pacific Quay in Glasgow who’ll do it for free!”

And so there was.

Hezbollah’s little helpers

It’s always entertaining to read virtually any BBC report on matters concerning Israel to gauge the disgraceful bias that runs through BBC coverage. Take this summary of an Israeli government-appointed inquiry into Ehud Olmert’s handling of the 2006 confrontation with Hezbollah, Iran’s surrogates in Lebanon.

For starters we are informed that it was Hezbollah “fighters” whose actions in July 2006 precipitated the ensuing confrontation. Wrong. They were not fighters, they were terrorists. These are the people who hide behind women and children in order to conduct their vicious attacks on innocent Israeli civilians. Hezbollah is a terrorist cabal but we all know the linguistic trouble this causes the moral equivocators at the BBC. It gets worse though because the BBC report then blandly asserts that “In the conflict that followed, more than 1,000 Lebanese died, mostly civilians, along with 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers..” Where does this authoritative “more than 1000 Lebanese died, mostly civilians” come from? We know that the Lebanese government does not distinguish between terrorist and civilians so surely the BBC was not relying on it as the source? Out of this putative 1000, how many Hezbollah terrorists were killed? Al Beeb is coy on this but the IDF estimates 532 Hezbollah thugs were killed, more than half of the total number quoted by the BBC. Of the remainder, how many died either because they gave refuge or were forced to give refuge to Hezbollah? The picture is far from that portrayed by the BBC, although I am sure you will note that the final word on this report goes to a Hezbollah spokesman. Fair and balanced?

MORE VICTIMHOOD?

Interesting report carried by the BBC today on the news that Muslim police officers are being prevented from playing a role in fighting terrorism, according to a senior Muslim Officer. Supt Dal Babu was speaking at the first annual conference of the National Association of Muslim Police Officers. (Looking forward to the first conference of the National Association of Born again Christian Police Officers) Tony McNulty, the supernaturally inept Home Office Minister who attended this delightful exercise in victimhood naturally agreed with the views expressed by the Superintendent. Once again, the BBC delights in reporting how unfair our institutions are to followers of the Religion of Peace. But why is effective policing to be determined on a racial or religious head count? Shouldn’t it be a question of ensuring the most able officers be promoted to ensure that the Islamic Jihadists are tracked down before they can repeat what happened on 7/7? Are we really to believe that some sort of institutional bias is holding back all these intrepid Muslim officers? Why is is that this entire article pushes the one view – namely that Muslim police officers are being discriminated against? Isn’t this just more instance of the promotion of victimhood through the obliging BBC prism?

General BBC-related comment thread:

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may be moderated.

HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER…

What could be more innocent than the BBC obtaining substantial low-interest loans from the European Unions’ “long-term financial institution”? I mean it’s not as if the fact that the BBC is now in hock to the tune of £141m to the European Investment Bank might in any way cloud its nominal neutrality on the topic of the EU, is it? You can read the gory details over on EU Referendum. I wonder at the mindset that prevails at the highest level in the BBC in that it fails to see how the pursuit of such a loan clearly jeopardises the perception of BBC impartiality on EU issues. The EIB, like it’s Euro-weenie masters, is committed to bringing about ever closer convergence of the Euro-superstate. Borrowing this large sum from it creates the impression that the BBC may itself share a similar agenda, as any follower of its “coverage” (Propaganda is a much more accurate term here, I feel) will know. It is said that he who pays the piper calls the tune. In this case, the BBC’s squeaks of protestations of innocence at this deal seem designed to stop us hearing the relentless pro-EU tune it plays.

MAN BITES FOUR LEGGED CREATURE?

The cliched definition of a news story is that “man bites dog!

I laughed at this BBC headline on it’s Breaking News “Man admits plot to behead soldier”. This relates to a vicious plot to kidnap and behead a British soldier. The BBC tells us that this “man” Parviz Khan (an unemployed charity worker, natch. Nice to see he had a caring sharing side) has pleaded guilty to wanting to enact his very own decapitation scene, using an unnamed Muslim British soldier as his victim. Yeah, well we already know just how barbaric the more enthusiastic adherents of the Religion of Peace can be, but what surprises me is why the BBC just cannot come out and state that Parviz himself is a devout Muslim. How about a head-line that states “Muslim admits plot to behead Muslim soldier”? Is this not pertinent to the fact that the Jihad section of the Religion of Peace is as much a threat to those many decent Muslims, some of whom serve in our armed forces, as they are to us infidels? But then again, might that spoil the BBC narrative that all of Islam is pitched against us, when in fact it is obvious that the Jihadi are a threat to every civilised person.

MISSING WORDS

With Al- Beeb, it is always necesary to look out for the missing words in their allegedly fair and balanced reporting. Often these words are missing for a very good reason and I have a small example to share with you today. In this BBC report on the background of the four new “Victims Commissioners” created by the Northern Ireland devolved administration we read about Patricia McBride “whose brother was killed by the SAS.” The BBC chooses not to amplify on how this killing took place but instead leaves the impression that this was just one more death during the long decades of violence. How did he meet his end? Was he perhaps strolling down the street minding his own business when he was suddenly cut down by those bad SAS guys?

Not quite. You see Patricia McBride’s brother, Tony, was an IRA terrorist. He was on an active terror mission in 1982 when he was intercepted by the SAS and killed before he could bring about the murder of others. I would have thought this was more than a mere detail but it is left out of the account for very good reason. To have a neo-Orwellian Victims Commissioner who is there by virtue of the fact that her brother himself belonged to an organisation that created thousands of victims might be a hard sell if openly stated. So better to cloak it and then imply a form of moral relativism between terrorist and terrorised. Since the BBC itself has such trouble in defining a terrorist, this is perhaps understandable, after all moral relativists and moral bankrupts have so much in common.

Do you think they think he was right then?


Man in a Shed
highlights this instance of BBC covering for Gordon in the light of the Hain fiasco. The word “right” is used four times in the opening to the article (including in the photo caption).

This is the kind of knee-jerk support we can expect from the BBC newsrooms. The subliminal dimension of this is underlined by the fact that a search of the BBC website, focussing on News and Sport, cannot locate this article using the exact headline under which it ran- see here.

It’s worth pointing out here that the BBC website search tool is truly the creature of the BBC, aimed at preserving the BBC’s chosen face rather than archiving its content.

What the search did bring up was this article. What is interesting in a way is not the article as much as the way it is described in the “archive” (for want of a better word). Despite the word not being used in the main article, the archive tells how “Peter Hain is taunted by Tories”. The article itself is very loaded, with the nasty Tories to the fore- putting Mr Hain “on the rack” and “under fire” and needing to be warned by the Speaker etc etc. All over “incompetence”, we are told. Needless to say, the matter was not considered only one of incompetence, otherwise Hain would still be in position (according to the statements of Gordon Brown) rather than preparing to face his police investigation. Nice covering Beeb! Somehow it seems to me if they could stop the legal processes taking place in this case, they would, and if they can spike them in any way, they will.

THE ALL SPIN ZONE

When it comes to our political class, I think the best maxim to remember is that if you see their lips moving, you know that they are lying. Problem is that their contempt for us is sometimes hard to fully appreciate as is clear in the news that was reported the other day.

You will remember the favourable headlines such as “MP’s choose sub-inflation pay rise” which greeted the decision taken in Parliament following a call by Commons leader Harriet Harman for “discipline”. Our ever so modest MP’s voted themselves a mere 1.9% pay increase even though the..ahem..Independent Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) had recommended a 2.56% salary rise from £60,277 to £61,820. How more responsible could our elected representatives be?

Quite a lot as it happens. You see along with the 1.9% increase in salary, they also voted themselves another £12 million in a year to further gild their already gold-plated pension scheme and also insisted that expense claims WITHOUT receipts be accepted.
Funny old world, isn’t it? The pigs plunge their snouts in the trough and yet it is presented to us as modesty incarnate!

Hat-tip to Disinterring Bad News.