I heard about the Co-op bank fellow being filmed buying drugs…despite the Co-op coughing up the odd million to the Labour Party and many Labour MPs (Ed Balls for one) in its debt so to speak I didn’t think there would be much mileage in this from a BBC bias point of view.
I was wrong as Craig at Is the BBC biased? points out:
Bowdlerising ‘A Banker’s Tale’
Gone [from BBC reports] are his texts about wanting “a two day, drug fuelled gay orgy!!!”
Gone are the allegations he “took great delight” in telling people that he’s “put one over” on the “Tory c****” in parliament.
Gone are all the references to his – and his bank’s – links to the Labour Party. [The Co-Op Bank is a large Labour donor].
Some editor at the BBC News website, presumably, said to whoever wrote this report, “We won’t be talking about any of that”.
Oh…and he’s an ex-Labour councillor…which at least the BBC does admit….but not this….in 2010 Labour leader Ed Miliband appointed him to the party’s Finance and Industry Board.
Bowdlerising is right! The BBC’s version of this story is not so much cleaned-up as decontaminated like the spill from a leaking nuclear reactor!
This affair raises so many issues that it’s difficult t know where to start but not the least of them is the way it shows how a free Press is absolutely vital and why Cameron must not be allowed to capitulate to the unholy alliance of decadent luvvies and Leftist totalitarians who are trying to smother it under the banner of ‘regulation’.
One this is certain. This miserable individual (who we can only hope will now end-up where he belongs – in jail) is so cemented into the ‘great and good’ of the Labour party that this story would have been smothered at birth – much as the lickspittle BBC is trying to do now.
Readers might also want to consider what this story says about the homosexual sub-culture, so enthusiastically championed by the BBC, the hypocrisy rampant in Labour, and the ‘ethical’ movement and the question which is so rarely asked: just who knew? As with Saville, the answer must, surely, be that many did and chose to keep silent.
No doubt the BBC’s habitual sneering at the Mail will now be turned up to full and any future revelations about this vile creature will be kept from our screens unless forced into the open by what is left of our independent media.
re the “homosexual sub-culture”
The Tory Party is not unaffected.
I don’t have big problems with the BBC’s coverage of Flowers and it does give his party affiliation, however I completely agree that Levenson et al is purposed to protect and conceal characters like this from exposure. Well done the Mail on showing what a hypocrite and crook this man is. Hopefully he will find redemption but initial reports suggest he is merely sorry for ‘stupid mistakes’ i.e. being caught.
His homosexuality does seem relevant as he seems to have chosen a high risk lifestyle. As a trustee of the Terence Higgins Trust a drug addled state seems inimical to any concept of ‘safe sex’.
BBC TV news are playing up the ‘Banker’ angle and totally excluding any mention of his links to Labour and the gay grindr sub-culture. If he’d had links to the Tory party or UKIP anybody think the BBC would fail to mention them at the top of the report?
The Coop Bank is a MASSIVE Labour donor and in fact Labour owe them several million. Plus the Mail says that Ed Miliband appointed him to Labour’s Finance and Industry Board…
The Mail report mentions Methodist, Church, Rev etc a similar amount of times to the BBC report…the one big difference is the word “Labour”
As of 17:27 the BBC report mentions Methodist 5 times, Church 3 times, minister 7 times…and Labour 1 time…in the 20th paragraph, well below the ‘scroll line’
The words “Damage Limitation Exercise” and “Control The Story” come to mind…..
BH this morning seems to dwell on his Methodism(9.53 am this morning).
Both Dianne Abbott(Labour retread hack, frequently at the piggy trough there at the BBC) and some mockney bloke called Sam Delaney(former advisor to Harriet Harman amongst other Labour MPs) seemed not to think it worth mentioning what party this “Paul”(first name terms throughout, if mentioned at all) represented.
Still-the Methodists want us all to pray for him…and-yet again-no mention of his Party.
The other guest-some Greenie silicone valley nerdy type was not asked to comment-despite his saying earlier that the age of consent brouhaha is only Californias marijuana debate from a few years ago…I`d have thought he`d bless the Labour Party for being so inclusive re the “drug family” of Milibands Labour Party 2013.
But no-might go off message I suppose…so let Labour file it all for us under Balen and Falkirk…bloody Israel though…eh…eh?
I’ve avoided this site for months, but thought I’d dip in.
I see that you regulars are as myopic as usual.
I’ve looked on the BBC News site and there’s quite a lengthy piece. And it mentions that Mr Flowers is a former Labour councillor.
Chilli, you really should read articles in full before mouthing off.
Interestingly that well known socialist site run by SKY News makes no mention of his Labour Party links.
@Dan, my comment related to the TV news report, not the website story which receives very few views in comparison. Although, as Span Ows notes, the web article is a similar exercise in deflecting damage from Labour & the co-op, onto ‘bankers’.
“I’ve avoided this site for months”
—-
But it… keeps… just…. dragging…. you back.
Plus so many others. And just today.
Thanks be to small mercies.
Excellent dip.
Please don’t lie, Dan. It just makes you seem even more of an idiot.
Yes, as Guess Who notes they’ve all “avoided this site for months”. What I think has happened is that at the shift change the controller has forgotten to change the notes and Dan has read the same memo about how to start their comments…big mistake, stands out like a sore thumb.
These fake intro lines really make me chuckle.
They must have a script writer. And if I were them, I’d get a new one.
Funny, I didn’t think it had been ‘months’ since you’d posted under one of your other sock puppet names.
When I say that I’ve dipped in after a few months, why don’t you believe me?
Do you honestly think that your comments are so incisive and informative that I hang on your every post? Or is it that you can’t comprehend that someone who doesn’t share your view of the world might be telling the truth?
The reason I rarely visit this site is exactly because of your reaction. Why on earth say “Please don’t lie, Dan. It just makes you seem even more of an idiot”. Insults thrown around like that make this site of only passing interest to anyone who isn’t already in your hardcore BBC bashing club.
There are debates to be had. But again you guys have proved this isn’t the forum for that.
Insults thrown around like that make this site of only passing interest to anyone who isn’t already in your hardcore BBC bashing club.
Here’s a line from your opening post:
I see that you regulars are as myopic as usual.
I don’t need to call you an hypocritical idiot, because you showed yourself to be one.
“why don’t you believe me?”
Presumably because instead of talking about BBC bias you post (like the troll who changes his posting name every other day) just to tell us you don’t like the site.
OK you are not that troll. But nobody is interested because you have nothing to say, oh yes, except that you don’t like this site.
Fine. Make it better by giving us your observations and insights into the BBC, or go to another site and give them your observations and insights about the BBC.
Either way the take home message for you seems to be that nobody could care less about what you think about the site.
I am sure fuller coverage would have been given by the BBC and Guardian had the financier happened to be a Catholic clergyman.
Personally I am quite happy to see the whole coop group go under. We have no need for anti semitic organisations on our high streets.
The racist arseholes in the SNP seem quite happy with them though.
http://www.humzayousaf.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68%3Acoopboycott&catid=1%3Anews&Itemid=3&lang=en
Imagine that in charge of a nation.
“Ethical? Labour’s bank is rotten to the core”
By Alex Brummer.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2509048/Ethical-Labours-bank-rotten-core-writes-ALEX-BRUMMER.html
“How DID sleazy preacher Paul Flowers ever become chairman of the Co-op bank?”
By Natalie Clarke.
[Excerpt]:-
“Flowers was a councillor at Bradford City Council for ten years but does not appear to have been universally popular.
“One former councillor told the Mail yesterday: ‘Flowers was an insufferable and pompous man who threw his not inconsiderable weight around.
“‘He always made it plain he was the most educated person in a room and everyone else was a peasant.’ In 2010 – more irony – he was appointed by Labour leader Ed Miliband to the party’s finance and industry board.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2509052/How-DID-sleazy-preacher-chairman.html
‘Daily Mail’ Comment-
“A deafening silence.”
“Could anyone have been more vociferous than Ed Balls in denouncing the reckless bankers, whose greed and incompetence brought Britain’s financial system to the brink of ruin?
“Strange then, that the Shadow Chancellor has been so reticent about the latest banking fiasco, in which an institution that sold itself to public investors as an ‘ethical’ bank – more cautious and responsible with other people’s money than conventional high street lenders – is revealed to be an utter sham.
“As a result of chronic mismanagement, the Co-operative Bank lost £700million in the first six months of this year, has a colossal £1.5billion black hole in its accounts, and is now under the control of American hedge funds, to the likely detriment of thousands of pensioners and other small investors.
“And to cap it all, the bank’s former chairman – a Methodist minister – was exposed yesterday as a sexually incontinent drug abuser. How this man was ever given charge of such a major organisation is a mystery of cosmic proportions.
“But the Co-op sponsors 32 Labour MPs (including Mr Balls), is owed nearly £4million by the party, and provided £34million in cheap loans between 1992 and 2010. Incidentally, the Co-op also has strong links to the Unite union, which pays most of Labour’s bills.
“Could these facts have anything to do with Mr Balls’ deafening silence – or indeed that of his boss, Ed Miliband?”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2509094/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Victory-web-porn-fight-goes-on.html
And Robert Peston admitted this morning that until the crystal meth reports, he’d done no digging into this guy’s background, *even after* the Co-op financial collapse became public knowledge. Wouldn’t we think a business editor should have been looking at the reasons why bad decisions were taken?
Not in his case FF.
I get the impression that Peston is a receiver not a digger for information, waiting by the phone to be fed ‘scoops’ from Labour HQ about mergers and ‘bail outs’.
He’s part of the machine I’m afraid…and of course his contacts would have been keeping their heads down about the Co-op.
VD though was doing her very best to deflect attention away from the ‘substance’ this morning, preferring to talk more about the size of the bank and Flowers’ qualification. She didn’t mention Labour once (expect to introduce a Labour member of the Banking Select Committee).
The worst part is that the BBC is all too eager to advocate tighter drug controls even though the vast majority of the public either wants all or most drugs legalised or are at best apathetic and would rather the police had their priorities set on other things. And one of the most insidious arguments the BBC keeps allowing its chosen commenters to put across is that if drugs were legalised, you’d be more likely to see people working while on drugs and thus endangering others (which is total rubbish – drugs would obviously still not be allowed at work or while driving, and those inclined to use them while doing this probably already are anyway). And yet, they’re more than happy to try and bury a story about the head of a bank taking copious amounts of hard drugs which was provable affecting his job and costing the public hundreds of millions of pounds.
The hypocrisy is amazing.
Flowers is another ‘man’.
The BBC can’t even, on their website, even permit a passing mention of the fact that Flowers was buying drugs for a ‘gay orgy,’ as he put it. They no longer have a concept of ‘news.’ Every fact has to fit the narrative before it is published.
So this Flowers is appointed to Milibands Finanace and Indusrty Board is he?
He`s a Labour political grunt who seems to have risen without trace…yet Peston only refers to his appointment of head of the Co-Op Bank as a “bit odd”(PM tonight 18/11/13).
Reckon we`re onto something very big here…Co-Op, Falkirk, thick councillors in charge at the top of Labours Banking and Finance policies…all roads seem to be leading (yet again) to Miliband and Balls don`t they?
The curse of Bibi continues-you trash Israel,and such things can happen///the Co-Op deserves every bit of this.
Thank you Daily Mail….again.
I remember earlier this year when VD was doing one of her pieces on nasty capitalism (the rigging of LIBOR (which happened on Labour’s watch – but best not mention that last bit, the BBC won’t)), she went all Lady Bracknell – like she often does when she has a bit of Tory dirt to interview.
‘Where can you find a bank you can trust these days?’, she cried theatrically into the microphone in her high pitched indignant voice, knowing full well that the next ‘caller’ to her ‘show’ would give her the right answer…the caller declaring with a smug self satisfaction that she ‘banked with the Co-op’.
Quelle surprise! How convenient. How tragic.
Drug addled head of bank with links to Labour Party ???? hmmmm I smell corruption. Keep digging there’s an even bigger story in this I bet.
Just heard Martha Carnoes ‘interview’ Lord Haw Haw Mynahs (sick) on TWATO. You may be surprised to learn that the Flowers/co-op debacle is all the fault of the coalition, despite the idea to buy Lloyds branches having been floated and strongly encouraged by one Ed Bollox back in 2010.
Never Assume – Biased BBC air jordan 4 cement retro http://www.crip.com/upload/index.asp?module=tags&brand=breds&tags=air-jordan-4-cement-retro