Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink, Says So Much More.

 

 

 

The BBC was having a field day yesterday with many of its favourite subjects in the spotlight…austerity, royalty and Thatcher, not to mention a bit of Imperial looting to cast a jaundiced eye over.  Not so much blatant bias that you could point a finger at and claim absolutely that it is bias but perhaps a more perncious, insidious type…a never ending flow of slights, innuendos, hints and provocations intended to nudge you one way…or having that effect, intended or not, as a result of the BBC’s own interest in certain subjects being reflected in their choice of stories to report and how they interpret them.

 

We were treated to repeated reports about the goings on in Prince Charles’ household, or the goings on according to some bird with a book to flog…so no doubt she was very appreciative of the massive coverage and publicity the BBC gave her.

Funny thing  was we were assured by the BBC that this old girl had privileged access to Prince Charles, his family and his staff who we were led to believe had co-operated in the production of this biography….even the six o’clock news last night was peddling this line.

Which you might think strange as this report from the BBC, last updated at 13:14,  says something different….

Clarence House pointed out that the biography, contrary to some reports, was not authorised and the author did not have any exclusive access to the prince or his staff.

 

So that’ll be an unauthorised biography without authorised access to the Prince, his family or staff.

I’m certain the book must have something positive to say about the Prince and his work…and yet the BBC couldn’t find it and hour after hour rolled out this litany of disaster and incompetence.

Maybe the BBC has an axe to grind?

 

 

Then there is the revelations about Sir Peter Hayman…the BBC making discrete links to Thatcher saying she had been informed of the case and had been advised on how to counter claims of a cover up…implying somehow that she was involved in a cover up herself…not making a direct allegation…yet…just the BBC setting her up for the inevitable conspiracy theories that will surface in the coming weeks.

A previously secret file from the 1980s briefed Margaret Thatcher on Sir Peter Hayman’s “sexual perversion”.

Ex-Cabinet Secretary Lord Armstrong told the BBC his priority had been national security implications, rather than whether he should be prosecuted.

 

Here is the BBC’s subtle innuendo that there was a cover up…‘lines to take’:

The file contains “lines to take” for government officials when asked questions by the media about Hayman’s 1978 arrest.

One of these was that there had been “no cover-up”.

 

That ‘lines to take’ phrase, quoted without full context, is entirely misleading and suggestive of Thatcher having to hide something from the media.

 

Oddly in all the BBC reports there is no mention of the Labour government’s role in any of this as Hayman was first investigated in 1978 under Labour’s regime…..So is Thatcher being accused of a cover up of a cover up by Labour when in government?

 

 

What else did the BBC bring us yesterday?

 

The Radical Left and their anti-Austerity drive, in Greece and possibly in Spain too…the BBC being very uncritical and straight faced about this…imagine if UKIP or FN in France were in similar positions of power….the air waves would be in meltdown.

The BBC must be torn…what an irony, the cheers for the radical lefties wanting to do away with the hated ‘Austerity’ and yet those same lefties  might well bring the end of the favoured Grand Project as countries head for the exit of the EU one way or another.

The BBC’s economic ‘experts’ have always been keen to highlight the struggles of European countries which implemented austerity measures….always leaving unsaid, with a pregnant silence that spoke volumes, that ‘perhaps’ Britain might also be similarly suffering under austerity and it should be ended…perhaps, just maybe, we should have a ‘Plan B’!

 

And then there is Saudia Arabia and the funeral of King Abdullah attended by the Great and the Good…much to the disgust of the Guardianistas and subject to outraged comment on the ‘Now Show’ this week.  Why?  Because of Saudi’s horrific human rights record….but what isn’t dwelled upon is why Saudi Arabia has such draconian rules and punishments….it is an islamic state…THE Islamic State, living by the teachings of the Koran…remember what the Guardian said…

King Abdullah embodied the wickedness of Saudi Arabia’s regime

Saudi’s influence on the outside world is almost wholly malign. The young men it sent to fight in Afghanistan turned into al-Qaida. The Sunni jihadis whom Saudis have funded in Iraq and Syria turned into Isis. It has spread a poisonous form of Islam throughout Europe with its subsidies, and corrupted western politicians and businessmen with its culture of bribery. The Saudis have always appealed to the worst forms of western imperialism: their contempt for other Muslims is as great as any American nationalist’s.

 

Not ‘Islam’ but a ‘poisonous form of Islam’.

Curious that so many of our own Muslim community are faithful followers of the very same creed…indeed so many mosques, madrassas, Islamic cultural, educational and social centres as well as our universities, charities and Muslim activist groups are funded by Saudi Arabia, and like-minded Gulf states…and yet criticise British Muslim religiously based practises and you become a pariah, a racist, an Islamophobe.  Criticise Saudi Arabia and you are an enlightened battler for truth and humanity.

 

 

And there’s more cultural anti-British cringe from the BBC…from FOOC….British troops in China looted the Imperial Summer Palace in 1860…what a cultural outrage, the cultured and educated Chinese nation plundered by the heathen imperialist troops of Britain and France.

What was, well the norm for the BBC in cases like these when they get rather sniffy about British foreign adventures, was the complete refusal to explore the fact that the  Chinese had also committed some outrages…some rather bloody ones that led to the looting and destruction of the Old Summer Palace….“This is the reward for perfidy and cruelty”…..swiftly passed over by the BBC  but spelt out here….

In 1860 during the Second Opium War, two British envoys, a journalist for The Times and their small escort of British and Indian troopers met with the Royal Prince under a flag of truce to negotiate. They were imprisoned and tortured, resulting in twenty deaths. The British High Commissioner to China, Lord Elgin, retaliated by ordering the destruction of the palace, which was then carried out by British and French troops.

 

The narrator got quite excited to make a poignant connection between a Lord Elgin in China who was related to an earlier Lord Elgin who removed the ‘Elgin Marbles’ from Greece…making a pointed but pointless comment obviously trying to make some sort of crude resonance between the two.

So yes, the BBC happily painting the British in the blackest of colours whilst the Chinese were the peaceful inhabitants of a huge empire (wonder how they got that!) devastated by ignorant and violent vandals and looters.

 

All in all a good day for the BBC…..cheerleading anti-Austerity groups, making casual, unconfirmed allegations about Prince Charles, making subtle innuendos about Thatcher  no doubt hoping to open a can of worms in the coming weeks, being outraged about Saudia Arabia but not quite sure why, and the perennial outrage at the British Empire at work.