Monthly Archives: July 2012

As we know now the Revolution will not be televised….however it was…. it was called ‘Citizen Smith’, a television comedy show I believed….I was mistaken…it was in fact a documentary following the Glorious Path to Revolution of one Paul Mason…or as we knew him then, Wolfie Smith, Foxy to his friends.

Citizen Smith was “the artistic gesture that stood for its rebel aspirations and its thwarted dreams”….but now those dreams have been reborn and Paul Mason can once again pretend he is manning the barricades singing the Internationale (Billy Bragg version of course)

‘Stand up, all victims of oppression
For the tyrants fear your might
Don’t cling so hard to your possessions
For you have nothing, if you have no rights .’

I don’t normally give Mason much thought but an article about someone else brought him to mind and a vague image I’d had of him coalesced into a lucid and descriptive reality.

Harriet Sergeant is a researcher at a political think tank who befriended a black teen gang in South London and followed their activities for over three years.

She has written a book about the time she spent with them called ‘Among The Hoods’….the Sunday Times’ review mentions that it is an unsettling book….because of Sergeant’s ‘peculiar, over emotional involvement with her subjects…it is as though she has an underclass crush.’

It goes on to say ‘Sergeant reminds me of a middle-class adolescent who becomes obsessed by the cool edginess of the ‘street’ and its handsome denizens……the book reads like a love letter.’

Sergeant herself says ‘I became like a proud mother forever talking about them and boring my friends….’why,’ asked my son once in exasperation, ‘is your phone full of photographs of gang members – but not one of me?’

It might be interesting to see who is on Mason’s phone….just how many radicals or Occupy members are providing him with happy memories?

Mason is obsessed with radicals and alternate lifestyles and the Occupy movement. He even believes Occupy has spawned a new art movement:

‘There has been so much art centred around the Occupy protests that it is beginning to feel like a new artistic movement. What defines it, and could it supplant the world of the galleries?’

‘Like modernism it has started with the sudden import to America of a meme of revolt from outside …It is the art of outsiders….anti-commercial: much of it is in fact done “off the side of a desk” by people trying to hold down real-world jobs. And its aim, like Occupy, is to change American politics.

“There’s a global uprising for democracy going on,” says Read, “and these artists are trying to champion that movement”.

Wow, exciting…except of course it’s nothing new…Occupy didn’t invent protest art….it has been around forever…how many ‘classic’ artists, the ‘old masters’, were subversives and painted hidden messages into their paintings?

Mason spends a lot of time reading Orwell. “He’s my hero. Not only because I think he is the greatest English literary figure of the 20th century but also because I share his understanding of what journalism, political analysis, shooting the breeze and fiction are there to do. Orwell sacrificed everything – including working at the BBC – to confront the truth of what was happening in the world.”

No sign of mason doing that, taking his flip flops and tent and living it for real rather than getting vicarious thrills from the sidelines of his well paid job.  And I’m not sure Mason understands anything Orwell said(see later).

Here Mason voices his fears that without Occupy et al and their guiding hand we would have…..

“The worst thing would be if we ended up in three years with an acutely polarised social situation in a Western country, and the entire elite going: ‘Where the heck did this come from? Who is the bloke with a small moustache?’ You’ve got to arm yourself against these eventualities.”

He freely admits he is “very enthusiastic about people challenging entrenched ideologies”.

Isn’t that exactly how you end up with a ‘Hitler’ or a ‘Stalin’? The whole structure of society is smashed, broken down with no overall authority allowing in the most active, energetic, organised and powerful groups to step into the power vacuum…as has happened in Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood is in the process of taking over.

What Mason is endorsing is mob rule..those who shout loudest or do the most damage get to make the rules…..anarchy and bloodshed is the only outcome of such naive notions.

‘It does often seem remarkable just how well tuned in Mason is to the protesters. The original “20 Things” post, which apparently is a game changing bit of insight, was inspired by an evening in the pub with the anarcho-squatters at London’s Really Free School. They had a sign on their door saying “journalists f**k off” – they were pretty strict about enforcing it too. But they invited Mason to the pub. “Actually, they taught me a lot.” he says.’

What has he learnt….

“The greatest source of hope for me is to see a generation rising who think all forms of hierarchical ideological activity are rubbish.”

So social structure, respect for authority and living by some form of rules is ‘rubbish’.

Mason is a child.

Mason is also pretty keen on this bunch of no hopers…‘students in the self-designated “Research and Destroy” collective at the University of California, Santa Cruz, issued their famous “Communique from an absent future”: “‘Work hard, play hard’ has been the over-eager motto of a generation in training for … what? – drawing hearts in cappuccino foam … We work and we borrow in order to work and to borrow. And the jobs we work toward are the jobs we already have. What our borrowed tuition buys is the privilege of making monthly payments for the rest of our lives.” ‘

This is another of his thoughts on Western society:

‘For the future to be better, we need to break with an economic model that no longer works. For the graduate without a future is a human expression of an economic problem: the west’s model is broken.’

Here is an example of his muddled thinking:

‘However on politics the common theme is the dissolution of centralized power and the demand for “autonomy” and personal freedom in addition to formal democracy and an end to corrupt, family based power-elites…..and this one is troubling for mainstream politics: are we creating a complete disconnect between the values and language of the state and those of the educated young? ‘

Now is that not Tory doctrine…small government, people taking responsibility for themselves and the power to make their own decisions?

Mason claims that the whole ‘new’ wave of protest movements derives from this:

1. At the heart if it all is a new sociological type: the graduate with no future

Which of course is rubbish….graduates, with proper, useful, qualifications, have never been more in demand.

Why take my word for it:

‘It’s not that bad to be a graduate, despite what Left-wing agitprop merchants like Paul Mason might tell you.

‘I’ve had it with Paul Mason. Newsnight’s economics editor, while clearly an intelligent man, is as openly partisan and fiercely Left-wing as it gets. Ever since writing his book, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere, last year, the man has become a roaming, state-sponsored propagandist for the types of young people who quite like the idea of Occupy London. He’s the sort of Lefty who rants about the “end of the neoliberal experiment” between interviews with dreadlocked, dope-smoking hippies squatting in some Arab oil trader’s Chelsea townhouse.

What’s most annoying is the idea that people on Twitter and people hanging around at Occupy and people living in squats are the voice of my generation.’

Mason claims that all the ideologies, the ‘isms’ are being rejected by the youth…really…has he not seen who voted for what in Egypt….or the Green movement or the Occupy movement….call them what you like but essentially most is derived from an ‘ism’…Marxism.

Mason explains that never before has it been possible to connect so many people and have them work together in the aim of reaching one political goal….the internet and social networking has made this possible.

Really?

In a speech to the House of Commons on November 5, 1919, Winston Churchill said: “…Lenin was sent into Russia … in the same way that you might send a vial containing a culture of typhoid or of cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great city, and it worked with amazing accuracy. No sooner did Lenin arrive than he began beckoning a finger here and a finger there to obscure persons in sheltered retreats in New York, Glasgow, in Berne, and other countries, and he gathered together the leading spirits of a formidable sect, the most formidable sect in the world … With these spirits around him he set to work with demoniacal ability to tear to pieces every institution on which the Russian State depended.”

I didn’t know Lenin was logged on and tuned in.

Even in the backward and remote North West Frontier in the 1800’s the whole country could be mobilised by word of mouth in no time and vast hordes of angry Pathans incited to descend upon the British with murderous intent.

Mason’s ’20 Things’ post is either blindingly obvious, wrong or old hat. Mason is caught up in the romance of ‘revolution’ like many of his BBC colleagues and is reliving the exciting student radical days when he was an angry young man who achieved absolutely nothing with all that anger and now looks to spur on the next generation to do what he couldn’t…which is presumably smash capitalism from the way he writes.

It is remarkable that the BBC employ him at all, even more remarkable that they thought he was a fit person to edit Newsnight…..someone of such obviously antagonistic and anti-Capitalist ideas and almost violent views of society is perhaps not someone that could be trusted to present an impartial view of events surrounding the collapse of the banking industry.

Because he is so enamoured with Orwell I’ll leave the last word to his hero…which might make you think Mason hasn’t actually read much of his writing:

‘The general weakening of the whole British morale that took place during the nineteen-thirties, was the work mostly of the left-wing intelligentsia.

The mentality of the left-wing intelligentsia can be studied in half a dozen weekly and monthly papers. The immediately striking thing about all these papers is their generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who live in a world of ideas and never expect to be in a position of power. Another marked characteristic is the emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and have little contact with physical reality. The really important fact about so many of the English intelligentsia is their severance from the common culture of the country.

In the general patriotism of the country they form a little island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. …it is their duty to snigger at every English institution.

All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British…if the fascist nations judged we were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible.’

Rio Ferdinand agrees Ashley Cole is a ‘Choc Ice’.  This is intended as a highly derogatory and insulting comment…it is a racist comment…it infers that someone is acting white or deferring to White society….and is therefore a ‘race traitor’….and that there is something wrong with being ‘White’.

So it infers that it is a peculiarity of a particular Race to act in a certain way.

And to act in a different way is a betrayal of your Race.

No wonder the BBC (at least on the web) haven’t touched this story as it paints a different picture of race in Britain…Blacks are racist too!

It’s not just White people. 

The story was in the web editions of the papers last night…it is on the front page of the Guardian and top story in its media section….and yet nothing, zilch, nada, sweet fanny adams from the BBC.

If you google ‘choc ice photo’ there are hundreds of pictures of Ferdinand…..just how far behind is the BBC?

Janice Lavender, Ferdinand’s mother

The irony is that Ferdinand clearly has more ‘white heritage’ in him than Cole…..which begs the question why people insist on classifying themselves as ‘Black’ when they have a White parent….perhaps a confirmation of that other stereotype of the stupidity of footballers when they insult they’re own parents.

Is it any wonder race relations in this country are so poisoned when high profile media providers refuse to open up certain cans of worms and challenge the issues and self characterisations of so called victims.

Here is a man with a white parent, looking more North African than Black, claiming to be Black and denigrating anyone who acts ‘White’, what ever acting White might be.

The guy clearly has ‘issues’ and is not helped by the BBC confirming his prejudices by insisting anyone ‘white’ is a racist. 

For the BBC White means racist.  Black, Brown, Muslim and you’re the victim of racists.

One last question…just when do you stop being ‘Black’….is there a particular pigment, a tone of skin required…do we need a colour chart from Homebase to grade ourselves? Or is it cultural and social behaviour that categorizes you?

Maybe what Ferdinand is saying is that David Starkey was right…perhaps if more Black youth were ‘choc ices’ and didn’t get caught up in the ‘Gangsta’ culture they might lead happy, successful and fulfilling lives…and the same for the White kids that adopt that same ‘Gangsta’ lifestyle.

Jonathan Freedland thinks the BBC is a bulwark against tyranny.

I beg to differ.

Opposed to tyranny? The same BBC that gave copious support to Saddam Hussein and cost the lives of British troops? The same BBC that even now spreads Iranian misinformation about its nuclear intentions and when the sabres start rattling does all it can to ensure public opinion pressurises government not to attack Iran? The same BBC that ran a campaign to free terrorists from Guantanamo but ignored the hundreds of genuine political prisoners on the other side of the fence in Cuba? The same BBC that eulogises Castro and the mass killer Che Guevara…not to mention the various Islamic terrorists excused and quietly applauded for their anti-Westernism? The same BBC that refuses to criticise probably the world’s most dangerous religion and yet feels otherwise free to denigrate all other religions but mostly Christianity? The same BBC that hankers after Marx and his acolytes but pillories Neocons? The same BBC that aims to see the destruction of the only true democracy in the Middle East, Israel, and replace it with an Islamic Fascist state run on grounds that would make Hitler blush?  The same BBC that refuses to admit that there is an Islamist war on Christians in Nigeria?

If that is what Freedland calls ‘opposed to tyranny’ then I guess all tyrants can rest easy in their beds…it doesn’t look like they’ll be getting a bad Press from the good folks at the BBC.

Interesting snippet from Inspector Gadget about a ‘well known radio journalist’ and a fake ‘police’ blogger.

Gadget Note: I love this story because just after the retail-riots, a well known radio journalist suggested to me that Winter’s stories were far more  ‘human and sensitive’  than mine, and that this fact made him more ‘appealing to the public and more realistic’  than Inspector Gadget!

Now Who is a well known radio journalist?  Nicky Campbell…yes…or how about the more likely suspect….Victoria Derbyshire who just loves those riots?

It is exactly what you might expect her to say.

This may shock you…not only has the BBC had something positive to say about a Coalition policy but it was the BBC nemesis of the Tory Party, Mark Easton, a man whose sole aim in life is to ensure no Tory policy goes undamned, who had some praise…notwithstanding he did find this ‘perverse’.

‘The Big Society’ gambit set out to much fanfare and trumpeting as the great white hope by Cameron seems to have kick started a youthful revolution where people are taking control of their own lives…or at least their youth clubs, setting out to organise, run and fund raise for them themselves.

It is quite startling to hear the dependably downbeat Easton…at least about any Tory policy, singing the praises of what seems a stirring of public spirit….people volunteering and creating active citizens.

Oddly the fly in the ointment was a man called Dominic Cotton who is the communications director for a youth charity, ‘UK Youth’….he is in fact a journalist employed to ‘spin’ I suppose you could say, for UK Youth.

Here though he seems perhaps to have got it wrong…as Youth UK seems to be exactly what Easton is praising…involving 40,000 volunteers and copious amounts of fundraising and subsequent good works.

I suspect toes are being trod on and the charity feels its own territory is threatened with rivals competing for money and volunteers rather than any strong argument against the philosophy or likely survival of these new groups.

The BBC didn’t question Cotton’s stand but perhaps it should have.

However that is really a side issue….where is the BBC bias in this story? Well none really other than it stands in stark contrast to its normal output which is unremittingly negative about just about every aspect of ‘Tory’ policy.

This morning the government’s new scheme, ‘Funding for Lending’ was raised on the BBC and immediately the new scheme was dragged down with doubts about how successful it would be with banks still being targeted as the villains of the piece…as being unwilling to lend.

I would like, just for once, the BBC to examine a business that claims to have been refused a loan and look at the business case being made to justify a bank’s trust to lend money….not something I have ever heard the BBC do, it continually highlights rejections but gives no context…after all the business might be a complete no hoper….any one seen a programme called ‘Dragon’s Den’? BBC should remember not every ‘bright idea’ is a business in the making….and remind themselves that firstly the banks are being told to build up their capital reserves and secondly that it was risky lending, and borrowing, that landed us in the mess we are in today.

If the BBC were to be more positive, not where undue, but where it is called for and merits, it would surely help to lift the country. Confidence is everything…it is the instigator of the ups and downs of the Stock Market, oil prices and consumer spending as well as business investment…if the future is grim no one wants to spend money that they might need to survive the doom predicted by a gloomy BBC.

The BBC’s relentless negativity, mocking and sneering about the ‘Big Society’ has I’m sure done more to make people think ‘I don’t want a part of that if it’s such a joke’ and stand back from the fray in many respects.

Having said that maybe the BBC has had a change of heart…recently there was someone on who said he organised a lot of volunteers to clean up a beach…and it was a huge success with more benefits than just a clean beach…unfortunately I can’t remember who and on what programme….essentially the ‘BS’ in action again.

I would have thought this was something that the BBC would in the normal course of events be all over….however of course it is ‘contaminated’ by the Tory brand for too many in the BBC.

It surely is something that would allow otherwise complete strangers who live near each other to come together, get to know each other and do something for their own community…and thereby, taking control away from a government body, into their own hands…something for them to build and own for themselves…and therefore be more likely to look after…and foster the old fashioned ‘community spirit’.

The BBC is involved in many projects from the Open University to schools and charities, not to mention paintballing for terrorists….and it wouldn’t run amiss to divert some of that energy, effort and resources towards the simple task of ‘introducing’ a community to itself and open their eyes to the possibilities that they can run some aspects of that community themselves and actually make it a real community rather than a group of individuals who don’t even know their neighbour’s name.

The BBC is in effect the ‘Big Society’, with community money being pooled rather than hours of voluntary work, in the interests of the country…to provide entertainment , information and education.

However it has been hijacked by a group with an ideology and mindset at odds with the very people who are the BBC ‘customers’ and all too often fails to bring them the service they deserve and expect…and pay for.

When the BBC produces such vastly distorted political propaganda as this from the Panorama team you have to start thinking that the time has come for  drastic  surgery  cutting out the gangrenous, festering, toxic, politicised heart of the BBC.  They have clearly decided to engage in an outright war of propaganda against ‘Austerity’, quite prepared to use lies and disinformation to spread ‘alarm and despondency’ amongst the population in the hope of inciting social unrest and a toppling of the Coalition.

Panorama is not alone….Victoria Derbyshire, Paul Mason and many others all raise the stakes by painting a picture of doom and hopelessness the only answer to which is taking to the streets…It is perhaps lucky for the BBC that their whole output is not examined closely by those with the power to take measures against them….the BBC should be the subject of an intense scrutiny that leaves no stones unturned, no places to hide…a rigorous investigation of its output to measure just how politicised it is…and then potentially close it down until it can be ‘decontaminated’ and can be trusted to be, not the voice of the people claiming to speak for them, but the source of accurate, impartial and reliable information wihout which no real democracy can function and which gives the people their own voices to speak for themselves and voice their own opinions.

Goebbels would be truly impressed that the BBC Panorama team have so readily and fluently adopted his methods and produced a jaw droppingly distorted piece of black propaganda designed to incite riots, violence and revolution.

It is an astonishingly blatant piece of half truths and lies mixed in with deliberately inflammatory and deceptive, provocative images which attempt build a cleverly constructed tissue of lies to point the finger of blame for the present crisis towards one person.

It is without doubt a shockingly politicised polemic that fabricates a completely false narrative of how we got into this economic mess and who is to blame.

Panorama’s view is that we have a lost generation now…..Youth on the scrapheap with no hope, no jobs and no aspirations.

It tells us that there is no confidence in the politicians…clearly meaning those in power now…to get us out of this economic mess.

The politicians are out of touch…another reference to ‘Old Etonians’.

There is an increasing sense that we’re not ‘all in this together’…another Old Etonian reference.

Panorama says ‘Clearly we’re not all in this together’

Well that’s fairly clear…it’s Cameron and the Bullingdon boys who are the enemy of the People! Hang ’em high!

Panorama tells us that there is growing inequality….its example?…footballers….well yes, they’re getting paid ridiculous sums but there is an even more egregious example of overpay and greed in the Panorama team’s own backyard….just how do they justify the eye wateringly high pay deals for the BBC’s own media stars?…maybe we aren’t all in this together as they say?

The whole premise of Panorama’s polemic is to scare us into believing that if we continue down the road of ‘Austerity’ the country is going to go up in flames as the youth, alienated, jobless and disenfranchised, go on the rampage.

In other words…stop the Austerity…adopt Labour’s Plan B….or else….

Otherwise we will go back to the 1970’s with mass discontent, destructive industrial action and another lost generation and mass disorder(so what did happen to the ‘lost generation’ of the 70’s then…no answer to that).

Who was to blame…well  ‘Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party in 1975 when we last had a double dip recession’….but hang on…she wasn’t Prime Minister…in fact it was Labour in power!!…ignore that, ignore the Unions crippling industry, ignore the bad management….carry on regardless…‘Her answer was to unleash the full force of the free market….and it is the bankers who have benefited.’

Oh…so Thatcher is to blame for the housing bubble, massive bank deregulation since 1997, Libor rigging and massive government overspending in the last decade? …no mention, strangely, of 13 years of Brown, Balls and Blair!…but we did keep getting subliminal messages with endless clips of Thatcher….look into my eyes…it’s all Thatcher’s fault your kids are jobless and will die in poverty in the gutter!

Panorama kept insisting that inequality has grown and we’re all worse off because of it. Really? When I look around I see an enormously wealthy country with ‘stuff’ that people wouldn’t have ever dreamed they could own in previous decades.

The truth is that yes the very rich have gotten richer but the vast majority of people have also seen their incomes and living standards increase enormously.

Why have the rich gotten so much richer? Is it really unfair tax laws or the rich manipulating the system to ‘do us all out of our rightful dues’?

The reality is that globalisation has opened up vast new markets and possibilities that weren’t available in the 1970’s to such an extent….In reality it is not (just) bankers who are so destructive of an economy but firstly business men who sack a British workforce and ship the factory out to Poland or China where Labour costs are so much cheaper…the business owners make more money as margins are higher and become even richer but Britain’s economy and its workers lose out….and secondly it is the ever higher wage demands of the British workforce…ie the unions…and costs imposed by government regulation….and living costs in Britain which force up wages.

Panorama bases much of its poisonous attack on the ‘facts’ of youth unemployment and high housing costs which apparently mean youngsters just ‘give up’…they lose both aspiration and then hope as they cannot buy a house…or have to move miles away from where they work.

The example given is a professional couple working in London who have to make a daily round trip commute of 3 hours because there are no affordable houses in London.

However, you might ask just how much of their choice of where to live is actually purely based on cost and how much on life style?…after all, their choice of home was a very nice country house with a garden in a nice location.

Panorama insists there are no affordable homes in London…..really? Well maybe it depends on the ‘lifestyle’ you want…..

Two minutes on Google and you get some very cheap homes…and not necessarily ‘dumps’.

A two bedroom flat for £50,000, a two bedroom home with ‘shared ownership’ for £99,000, a two bed for £105,000.

And there were lots more…and they were in London close to the centre.

As for a ‘lost generation’….well where do all the immigrants get their jobs? And where do they live? Millions of them…literally. There are jobs there…if people can travel from China and Africa to get jobs here…and not speak the language half the time…well…you know…on yer bike.

And how about the long list of products that have risen in price….coffee? Er…that has risen enormously because of bad growing conditions. How about vehicle fuel…..well that has fallen at least 10p recently…well what about heating fuel?…risen mainly because of green taxes and subsidies…..what about beef?….feedstuffs have risen because the price of corn etc has risen enormously…due to conditions outside our control…such as Russian stockpiling…and crops going for biofuel instead of food.

So the picture is somewhat more complicated than Panorama presents…in fact completely different.

Panorama adopt a philosophy of gloom and despondency…‘deep cuts(?), high unemployment(?), no growth and no hope…we’re returning to the 70’s.’

The question Panorama asks is can we cope with the new age of austerity? Should we have to choose between buying shoes or food? Its answer is clearly no…and the solution…..

‘We caught a glimpse of what such social unrest might look like last summer in Clapham.’

Of course…we’d forgotten those riots weren’t caused by a few anarchist minded yobs out for a good time but by a Youth alienated and forgotten, dumped on the scrapheap by an uncaring Tory government….if democracy fails them then they must use the resources they have to make their voices heard.

Panorama is taking a highly irresponsible attitude…one that is not just ‘forecasting’ social unrest but  inciting it, presenting information in such a way that it deliberately incites discontent, fear and anger….and aims it at particular targets…the Tories and bankers.

This is highly politicised Television designed not to inform but to poison debate and stir up hatred and violence.

There could be good ground for a closer look at this programme from a legal perspective…..let’s see how ‘ghetto’ the highly paid media bumpkins are when they have to share a cell with a rioter.

Don’t forget kids…no job yet, no mansion in Chelsea, no private yacht moored on the Thames?

You know what to do……

‘STORM THE FIRST CLASS!!!’

Victoria Derbyshire interviews the new General Secretary of the TUC, Frances O’Grady.

However it wasn’t so much an interview as a chance to bang the drum for Labour Party policies in what was in effect a half hour party political broadcast.

O’Grady was pitching the Labour line that government cuts are slowing the economy, increasing unemployment, reducing tax revenues and therefore forcing the government to borrow more.

 No questions from Derbyshire…or none that she considered she really  wanted answering, and no other person on to dispute what O’Grady was saying.

So here’s a quick corrective….So far the government hasn’t cut spending overall which is why it is having to keep borrowing…. unemployment is going down….I think 800,000 jobs have been created in the private sector…far more than lost in the pubic sector….and government fiscal responsibility means that the money we do borrow is at far cheaper rates than we would get under a profligate Labour government who wish to borrow even more…with no idea how to pay it off.

 No sign of any thoughts along those lines from Derbyshire….her sole concern was that the TUC had been ineffective in forcing the government to stop the so called cuts in government overall spending.

She seemed quite keen to encourage further strike action…Derbyshire seems quite a fan of such actions…no student protest is complete without her and the 5Live broadcast team.

‘You need to go on strike to get the government to change their mind!’

I took that to be an instruction from Derbyshire…I could be wrong…but I doubt it.

I think Derbyshire is trying to re-imagine her  student days which she utterly wasted by swotting hard and helping orphans when she should have been rabble rousing and bringing down governments ….now she encourages others to rabble rouse and bring down governments.

The ‘callers’ to the show must have been handpicked ‘onside’ cheerleaders for the cause…..they didn’t exactly cause O’Grady any problems…

Caller 1. ‘I agree with everything you say’.

Caller 2. ‘I agree with everything you say but when are we going to have a general strike?’

 Caller 3. ‘I agree with everything you say but you haven’t done much to help Remploy workers?’

Which gives O’Grady the chance to say that Unions are not as powerful as they should be because of oppressive government anti-union legislation (which allows them to kick disabled workers onto the scrapheap.)and that this needs to be repealed and for more people to join the Unions. All in all hardly a balanced or very informative piece being purely from O’Grady’s point of view.

Remarkable that Derbyshire is so unwilling to ask any difficult questions or demand any actual answers to ones she does ask. An obvious question is why should the Unions have any political clout at all in a democracy? Why can a Union Baron, or Baroness, take his membership for granted along with ‘their’ money and hand it all over to a political party. Where is the democracy in what is essentially mob rule?….and that’s assuming that the 6.5 million union members actually support Labour or the policies the unions want to be implemented…which I doubt severely….At least half must be Sun readers.

No such questions from Derbyshire…..the whole show was basically turned over to O’Grady and quite probably broke every rule in the BBC Charter.

Sorry for the delay in putting this up but had a problem accessing the server this morning. A NEW open thread for you…

Certain this must be a sweep stake in the BBC news room…how fast will some one notice the deliberate evasiveness?…..

‘Three men from Birmingham have appeared in court accused of plotting to attack members of the English Defence League.

Our correspondent says the defendants, all with dark hair and beards, wore black sweatshirts and trousers as they sat in the dock at Tuesday’s hearing.’

Guess I’ve just won someone a tenner!