The BBC and Labour? The same thing, redux.
“Former Labour Cabinet minister James Purnell is being lined up to run BBC radio – in a move that critics said ‘makes a mockery’ of the BBC’s duty to be impartial.
BBC sources said the former culture secretary, who served under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, is set to be handed one of the corporation’s most sensitive editorial roles despite his high-flying political career.
Mr Purnell, who quit parliament in 2010, is currently the BBC’s £295,000-a-year director of strategy.
In a further twist it emerged that his role was recently expanded to education and children’s programming following an interview conducted by BBC grandees, including Alice Perkins, wife of Mr Purnell’s former Cabinet colleague Jack Straw.
The BBC last night said Mr Purnell’s career in politics should not bar him from senior roles.”
I bet.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3753792/Bias-claims-ex-Labour-minister-lined-run-BBC-radio-Tory-MPs-say-possible-appointment-former-culture-secretary-makes-mockery-corporation-s-impartiality-rules.html#ixzz4I9G6tb6D
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Conservative MPs, what a useless bunch of [Complete as desired].
Last time I looked there was a Conservative Government.
It is in the interests of British people, as well as the interests of the Conservative party, that the left wing, anti British, anti-white, anti heterosexual, totally biased BBC is emasculated; better still obliterated, PDQ.
Vote UKIP to exterminate the BBC.
Vote UKIP… Do me a favour. We’ve voted to Leave and I am as anxious as any Leaver to see that start to happen. What I can’t envisage is any helpful contribution from the insanely warring windbags of UKIP.
Well Owen , Do all of us a favour , If it wasn’t for UKIP you would not have had the privilege of a vote.
Do we have another rebranded bbc troll here ?
Owen has a point. Farage was UKIP and there seems to be nobody with the same charisma or oratorial skills to replace him – they look rudderless.
Like all the other parties they are having their leadership problems – just look at the recent Tory backstabbing, or the never ending Corbyn story that continues to rumble on and on….
UKIP – Brexit – Job done.
Brexit not job done.
Labour is a mess. A treasonous party, internationalist in outlook.
But some of their policies are now needed, May is not going to crush the bankers, stop UK jobs being outsourced.
We need a party that has policies to implement controls on business, to look after normal, British people. No such party currently exists.
UKIP needs to become that party, and take votes off both “major” party.
UKIP needs to change its name and pursue the Gold Medal.
The big laugh, and what annoys me as a UKIP supporter/candidate, is that the big follow-up to Farage was Steve Woolfe. He stupidly left his nomination until the last minute. Due to a “computer glitch” it arrived late….. If this man had been on-the-ball, and, as many of his supporters claimed, there was a conspiracy against him, don’t you think that a person who had leadership qualities would have got the application in MUCH earlier…?
I think we’ve been over this quite a bit here already, yes it’s really annoying that he left it to the day of the deadline, goodness knows why, but apparently he started the process several hours before the deadline and due to “computer says no” syndrome nothing would go through.
In the end, although UKIP claimed not to have received the money on time, he had a paypal printout dated prior to the 12 noon deadline showing he had made the £5000 transfer.
So what I think really stinks is that the NEC then used this as an excuse to exclude him, I think because he was the hands down winner and they couldn’t stomach him, so they used the technicality to rule him out, rather than use their discretion and rule him in.
Contrast to the government ruling to extend referendum voting registration (quite illegally, by the way) for three whole days due to compensate for high traffic taking the servers down for an hour or so.
Very poor show in my opinion, and they’ve probably lost my confidence, and my vote as a result. Shabby, and shocking.
PS. But who else to vote for? Everyone else is worse… It’s a sorry state of affairs. Come back Nigel!!
The Tories missed a trick with the licence fee negotiations.
Leaving aside whether people believe the BBC to be biased or not it is an indisputable fact that something like 70% of people in this country rely upon it for their news. In addition the expansion of the BBC news website is steadily wiping out independent local newspapers in the UK. As long as it continues to exert such a disproportionate influence, regardless of any claims regarding ‘impartiality’, it can effectively act as its own publicity machine.
Such opportunity to influence is unhealthy in an advanced democracy – it is verging on a monopoly – and the Tories could have acted legitimately for that reason alone to cut it down to size.
The problem was, Cameron had more in common with the BBC (EU, ‘climate change’ etc) than was healthy for a right-wing party leader.
Why are they being allowed to get away with it? As already pointed out we have a conservative majority. We don’t want Tory-biased news but it is entirely reasonable to expect the government to reject a public, tax-funded broadcaster that actively campaigns on issues that are at odds with what the paying public actually wants despite its mandate being based on impartiality and honesty. Nobody rational and ethical could support a senior Labourite being in charge of children’s programming, it is quite obviously setting them up for indoctrination even before entering the corrupt education syllabi.
Will May stand up to BBC monopoly or is she – as I suspect – a BBC appointed PM?
You could be right G.W.F- 38 of May’s cabinet voted to Remain in EU, the other 8 voted to leave the EU, a little one sided wouldn’t you agree? I suspect that from pressure outside the political establishment, the Prime Minister will sack those 8 ministers, relacing them the cloice prefferred by those (the Banking Elite & big business) that control the EU. The Cabinet should have been 50/50 but who am I kidding !
I can only add my agreement to the comments of the previous posters who have deplored this appointment. We have seen the BBC growing increasingly arrogant in its behaviour in recent years (the appointment of a former Guardian big wig to the editorship of Newsnight is just one example). The BBC isn’t even pretending to hide its rampant bias now. It is thumbing its nose at everyone on the Right, knowing it will get away with it, however provocatively it acts.
And the “Conservative” government sleeps on, either untroubled or impotent. It has to be one or the other.
Hopefully their arrogance will be their undoing as they obviously believe they can do what they like without any chance of being held to account.
I think more and more people are beginning to see them for what they are – an overgrown bunch of eco-socialist subversives unable to comprehend anything outside the eternal student union bubble of the Islington Twatterati.
Hi James
As it is unlikely you be popping around my place any time soon for a cuppa I thought I would write you a little note instead.
First of all – Please accept my congratulations on getting the BBC radio gig. Your mum must be really proud of her best boy. He must be soooooooooooooo clever. First rubbing shoulders with the “Glorious Gordon” and now having one of the most powerful media positions in the country. My my – you have certainly have done very well.
By the way – I hope you dont mind me asking – but do you call your mum? “mum” or by her first name. I used to call my mum “mum” its so -much more human dont you think ?
I heard you were largely educated in France and then did your”A” levels at Guildford Grammar school. Is this normal for most people? Was this because your parents wanted the best for you or was it because you wanted to familiarise yourself with your enemy. If that was it – how very noble of you to get good “A” level grades and then join a political party which does its best to prevent other gifted kids from availing themselves of the same opportunity you obviously helped yourself to. I never went to Grammar school though my brothers did – But I neither hate Grammar schools or my brothers – Do you?
After school it was Oxford – wow! Is this where you honed your working class credentials, realised you were truly “special” and felt shame that most “non toff” kids would never be able to spend the same quality time mooning around the “dreaming spires” – Poor you it must have been a real burden!
Then work finishing up in the Labour party. Working with Tony and Gordon. Is this where you were really able to make a difference.
Did you help to “rub the rights nose in diversity” THEN WELL DONE! – You certainly rubbed my nose in it! – I was on your side at the time but funnily enough this is one of the things that persuaded me to change political sides. I am afraid seeing my town change in front of my very eyes and see decent, honest people suffer for it, not being able to get housing etc, did not encourage me to embrace your cause.
Sorry you never made PM but with your Saturn sized IQ you knew you could still make a difference so after politics it was off the BBC.
I am quite interested in your motivation on this one – was your primary motivation being working for a rich organisation awash with other peoples money (bit like parliament maybe?) or was it the opportunity to influence society, maybe you undertook a “Common Purpose” leadership course – I bet you did and I bet you were top of the class.
It is good to hear you are now in a job where you can stick up for working class people (who are?) and stick it up the arse of the rest.
I would be interested to know where I fit in to your plans. I am middle aged, white, have spent years doing manual work and own my own home – But dont tell me James I think I can guess where I fit in – and in the words of Corporal Jones “I will not like it!”
So there we have it James I think you are one of these overqualified middle classe idiots who is full of self loathing for his own class and culture and country. I think that unlike the rest of us in this country who generally “grow up” and live in the real world. You are one of these people who want change for changes sake and you are so arrogant that you just know that whatever changes that you make to society it will always be for the common good (or your common good) even if our wives daughters will all have to eventually walk around escorted wearing burkahs and “Rocket Man” is turned into “Flying Man” Maybe even the kids could all sing the “Red Flag” before lessons which tell us that all wars fought by the British Empire were evil. Or even we could sing some songs about Saint Jo and the even saintlier Saint Claud of Junker and how he loves his people.
I dont know James whether these are your plans but what I do know is that you cant be trusted. And in my nasty right wing opinion it is people like you that truly are the personification of what is truly wrong with our society.
So ta ta for now James – but I have changed my mind about tea, please dont come around for tiffin after all – And if you do just be aware that the teapot will not be filled with tea but with something far less pleasant which I have also personally prepared for you (but from my bladder not the the caddy)
Bravo!
O
Beauty.
I think you should of put this on the current main thread, there are references to this crony stitch-up there.
There’s nothing new here: remember the late 1990s, when two card-carrying Labour Party members – Greg Dyke and Gavin Davies – were appointed to the top two BBC jobs. They had to give up their party memberships, as a mere formality, but it is hard to believe that they could have left their political opinions at the door when they went to work; we are all biased, me included. These appointments represented at least one Labour Party supporter too many, even assuming a crude division of people into two Tory or Labour blocks. And in no way did the appointment of someone from the Tory left like Chris Patten to the BBC Trust redress this imbalance; what was needed was a Norman Tebbit to provide a real counter-weight, rather than the pretence thereof.
We appear to only be looking at his history post government.
He was a senior executive at the BBC prior to becoming an M.P. From Wikipedia it is unclear whether he was allowed to be a member of the Labour Party then but seems to have been a Labour Councillor. so may well have been.
There was also no open advertising or competition for the role he came back too. Jobs for the boys?
If it smells like a sewer, it probably is.
Any comments from our trolls in defence of the fragrant one?
Oh yes. It was an indisputable fact that there was no other possible candidate for this job. Who else is there who will assiduously toe the BBC line for such a measly pittance?
Purnell and the BBC are made for each other – both from the same cesspool of deception.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1564465/James-Purnell-in-fake-photo-row.html
Mr Purnell turned up too late for a photo-shoot to promote a new development at a Tameside hospital, so he told the organisers to doctor the picture with fellow MPs to look like he had been there.
The photograph, with Mr Purnell grinning at the edge of the group, was then published in the local press, which was oblivious to the cheating.
Local MPs David Hayes, Tom Levitt and Andrew Gwynne all turned up in time for the photo call, organised by the Tameside and Glossop Hospitals NHS Trust.
A spokesman for the Trust said: “We decided to take a photograph of Mr Purnell in the same spot very shortly after and merge it with the earlier photograph, to which Mr Purnell kindly consented.”
Behaving properly only applies to us plebs. The Purnells of this world live by different rules. Wasters the lot of them
jtf
Standard Marxist behaviour.
They are versatile as well, they remove people from photographs, remember The Commissar Vanishes?
The truthiness is out there.
James will be a real boon to how events are interpreted and narratives enhanced in that unique way the BBC pioneers.