Alternate Tracks

 

Do you want tracts or tracks?  Quentin Letts has gone for the tracks and Radio 3’s politician-free zone detoxing from the Today show’s politicised take on everything from sliced bread to bent bananas.

Letts tells us in the Mail:

Virtuous teetotallers boast about going on a ‘detox’ for a month. Well, bully for them. Mind you, I just did something similar and truly feel a lot better for it.

But this is not because I forsook alcohol. Go without hooch for a month? You must be joking. No. My detox routine concerned early-morning listening habits.

I switched from Radio 4 and instead tuned in to the BBC’s classical music station, Radio 3. Yes, I gave up the Today programme.

It began in the second week of January and it is bliss. Instead of being assailed by the latest Project Fear alarms about how Brexit is going to consign us to ruin, I have had my horizons expanded by top-class music.

Today’s programme would not have changed his mind as it ticked every right-on box from Project Do Fear about Brexit to Project Don’t Fear about Islam.

We had an Imam comparing the shooting in Florida with the actions of the ex-British Jihadis, presumably trying to reassure us that the Jihadis are driven by the same temporal demons of the non-Muslim killer and thus their murderous rampages have nothing to do with Islam.  And anyway…forgive and forget…let’s be more compassionate and forgiving…they were driven to do what they did by circumstances, malign influences and world events…they’re not bad lads really.

Ironically we then had Today launch into Project Fear telling us we will be terrorised by Jihadis if we leave the EU.  They liberally quoted Sir John Sawers, ex-head of MI6, oh, a Remain voter, not mentioned by Today, who has consistently briefed against Brexit and wants it reversed….as any old chum of Tony Blair might do of course.

They also had Robert Hannigan on, ex-Director of GCHQ.  He was previously interviewed by Emma Barnett a couple of weeks ago.  She was rather stunned when she asked him if Brexit has made us less safe, she obviousy thought he’d say it would, but he replied no, in fact there has been more co-operation with Europe since the referendum…the only concern was to make sure we maintained the data sharing of intelligence.  He also said that most intelligence work was bi-lateral between nations and not the EU itself…thus Brexit would make no difference.

How times change…I imagine someone has had a quiet word as an almost completely different picture was coaxed out of him today.  Of course it helped that Justin Webb avoided asking if we would be less safe after Brexit and went straight for the data question…were the questions shaped to avoid embarrassing truths?  Webb cherry-picked subjects that were of minor concern as Hannigan admitted but which could be sensationalised to alarming heights.  It’s like the BBC reporting WWII by only looking at Dieppe, Dunkirk, the Blitz, Singapore and the fall of Tobruk and leaving the audience to think we lost the war….and of course failing to mention the Americans and all the other allies we had to help us win in Europe.  Much like today where our major intelligence partner, the US, wasn’t mentioned…nor all the other countries around the world.

‘Any Questions’ was trailed telling us they would be asking if ‘leaving the EU would make us less safe, and how do we stop it making us less safe?’…..Hmmm…seems like the first question is pretty redundant in their mind.  And of course then there is that important question…processed food, it gives us cancer and an early grave right, especially if you’re poor?  Yes, it’s really all about class war…it’s an ‘issue’ that’s been hijacked by the Left and turned into a narrative about the rich living longer and the poor dying early due to the rubbish food they have to eat due to poverty….never mind people are fitter, bigger and live far, far longer than ever before due to this food….and that is why the NHS is having to cope with so many old people now….processed bread and chicken nuggets….maybe we should feed the lower classes gruel and the odd turnip for a treat and let them die even younger….leaving only the rich, educated and intelligent who can then vote against Brexit in any future referendum and keeping the NHS for the healthy and wealthy.  So many problems solved with a bit of lateral thinking. ‘Toxic’ chicken nuggets are a liberal/fascist’s wet dream really…like Zyklon B for the dirty, unwashed, stupid masses who dare to think for themselves….it is after all Big Business force-feeding us these things…and they all want to Remain….suspicious or what?  Let’s face it Remainers are not shy about wishing death upon Leave voters.

Anyway…here’s some more of Quentin Letts’ thoughts on detoxing from Today…

Without Radio 4 winding me into a bate, life has become much less itchy. Instead of having to hear ministerial half-wits trying to claim the HS2 railway is a good idea, or professional grievance-mongers moan about the health service, or a gloopy-voiced reporter trotting out cliches about food banks, my mornings started with music from various centuries and cultures.

For a newspaper reporter to write that is, you may feel, self-harmful. Is Today not an agenda-setter?

That has always been the received wisdom in Fleet Street and elsewhere in British public life. At big investment houses, in government departments, in the lobbying and public-policy worlds, Today has long been de rigueur.

Maybe I’m imagining it, or maybe I’m just getting old, but since the EU referendum, the output of many BBC current affairs shows has become markedly shrill. Hour after hour they broadcast neuralgia — gripes from the modern Establishment that Brexit is going to bring all manner of disasters.

While prisoners of Radio 4 were being subjected to yet another fist-chewer of an interview with Labour’s robotic Remoaner Sir Keir Starmer MP, or while they were wheeling out yet another retired mandarin or professional secularist or social-mobility hand-wringer, I was being captivated by a Rachmaninoff cello sonata. The cello sang deep and lonely to the piano’s trickle. Mesmerising.

While Today listeners were probably having to endure some big-state propaganda about Whitehall impact assessments or NHS winter pressures or EU immigrants’ rights or Legal Aid cuts or Heaven knows what else, I was having my mind opened to the modern English composer Jonathan Dove’s In Beauty May I Walk.

If I’ve felt a smidgeon of regret it is only because an old friend of mine became editor of ‘Today’ last year and she said she was going to try to make the programme less metropolitan. She quickly ran into flak from the BBC establishment and Labour MPs.

I had been losing patience with Today for some years. I thought the programme was dreadful during the Leveson inquiry, after the Cameron government had caved in to centre-Left demands to bring newspapers under political control.

How could the BBC’s flagship radio programme sympathise so gleefully with such an authoritarian move?

During the Coalition years, when our country’s finances were teetering close to the abyss, Today eagerly promoted voices demanding greater spending by government. We rarely seemed to hear from the taxpayers who crave greater restraint by the Treasury.

Maybe I am being unfair to Mishal Husain and Nick Robinson & Co, but they seem imprisoned in the Westminster bubble, which, with every day that passes is further removed from the real world most Britons live in.

Life is so much bigger and more interesting and full of possibilities than Today suggests.

Can I keep up my abstinence from Today? Possibly not. Journalistic curiosity is inescapable and there is really no one better for skewering our awful politicians than John Humphrys.

But at least I now know where to go for relief when the cacophony of luvvies becomes too much.

Nick Bryant ‘Reporting’

 

Another day on the BBC and another idiotic smear story about Trump.  The ‘Footlights’ used to churn out comic genius like Monty Python, Beyond the Fringe and the Goodies…now all we get from our universities are tragic clowns who end up as BBC reporters trying their best to combine satire with hard edged news and failing miserably at both and of course english graduates who think they are scientists.

Nick Bryant for example.  He regurgitates ancient jibes at Trump in an attempt to disparage him and Fox News but instead ends up embarrassing the BBC as this tripe is given airtime on its flagship news programme the Today show[07:45].

So Trump watches Fox News….how I laughed when I heard that terrible old slur again…the incredibly partisan BBC sneering at a right-leaning Fox News…the BBC is so vastly superior don’t you know!  Fox shockingly played ‘jingoistic music’ as it showed film of a US attack on Jihadis…the BBC would never do such a thing, it prefers to give its airtime to ambulance chasing lawyers and lying jihadis as they try to put our soldiers in prison and earn themselves some blood-money with the BBC aiding and abetting in that.  They earn their 30 pieces of silver for that.

Then apparently Fox was reporting in a Fox manner, bad, on ‘undocumented immigrants’.  Whothey you may ask?  Ah…the BBC’s now official term for illegal immigrants which they now use regularly.  Whilst the BBC tells us it won’t use terms that may appear to be the prefered term used by a particular party, such as terrorism [except when it’s a white guy/Jew], and thus indicate they are supporting one side they are happy to use what is a highly political term that has been designed by the Leftist pro-immigration lobby to try and make out that illegal immigrants are in fact entitled to travel where they like, documents or no documents, and not having documents does not mean they are ‘illegal’.  However the term ‘illegal immigrant’ is the official term used here and in the US…the BBC is very definitely taking sides on this one.  Does it call Jewish settlers ‘undocumented migrants’?  Does it hell, it calls them illegal occupiers.  What is it about the Jews that the BBC doesn’t like?

Then Bryant dragged in a commentator…oh, he’s from the anti-Trump New York Times…the only surprise is he’s not from the anti-Trump Washington Post.  We learn that Trump watching Fox is like children’s TV where the kids react and the programme responds back…it’s a two way mirror…Trump watches Fox, Tweets and his Tweets become news,  setting the agenda for the day.  Erm…pretty much like the BBC then when the Today programme interviews someone, gets the quote they want and the BBC then uses that quote to lead all its news bulletins…usually something derogatory about Brexit or the government’s running of the NHS or welfare.

We then get onto an even more stupid smear…Trump’s tweet about the NHS being in crisis…apparently this is all Fox News’ fault once again.  We now know that Trump’s an idiot because the NHS isn’t in crisis…it’s the best health service in the world as all its defenders came out to say.  Thus Fox is peddling fake news.

Hmmm….isn’t it the BBC’s favourite story when there’s no other news around to claim the NHS is in crisis?  Every winter, every spring, every season, every month, every day….the BBC tells us the NHS is in crisis.  Except it’s not when Trump says it is.

The problem with Trump, we hear, is that he gets his world view from Fox….that the Russia investigation is a witch-hunt [I imagine he can work that out for himself as he must know better than anyone whether he colluded with the Russkies or not], that the FBI are at fault [well…it doesn’t look good for them if you read the news…not just Fox but the lefty NYT], and of course his belief that the Media are biased against him…where on earth would he get a mad idea like that?  Can only be from Fox…or maybe just watching and reading the 90% of US media that is anti-Trump.

Bryant has produced an incredibly flawed, ignorant, partisan, misleading anti-Fox, anti-Trump tract that would be more suitable for one of the BBC’s favourite internet sites that it uses to spread lies and gossip when it can’t be seen to break such drivel as news itself, such as Byline and Buzzfeed, the technique, the trick, is to then report on the furore that the smear stories create and spread the ‘news’ that way thus distancing itself from the blame.

Amazed any editor worth their salt would allow Bryant to push such rubbish on the BBC’s flagship…maybe she agrees with it..in which case the problem is even bigger.

 

 

Right Up The BBC’s Alley

 

 

Russell Brand is the BBC world view, their mindset, brought into being in a perfect, eloquacious, silver-tongued articulate glibness and quite barmy life form…well, life, perhaps not as we know it.  If you have two hours to spare….go and walk the dog or wash the car….anything but watch this video.  Surprised Sam Harris doesn’t run him through with a chair leg or something.

Islam?  All about the peace, designed to produce a loving and harmonious society [though he hasn’t read the Koran].  Nagasaki?  Nuclear terrorism.  Iraq War?  Stealing land and oil [The war cost far, far, far more than buying the oil would ever have].  Wars by the West are just colonisation to sell Coca Cola and Starbucks.  Who are we to judge other societies and cultures?  Burqas are great…wearing one is just a self-discipline for the ladies….it’s like yoga, a way of refining consciousness for a woman in a world where abstract ideas commodifying women are served by overly-bloated power dynamics in the tumble-dryer of love.

Here’s an example of Brand in glorious full flow….he hardly listens to Harris and has the left-wing rhetoric off pat…he is so over the top he doesn’t make much sense and is definitely in love with his own cleverness and poetic flow of left-wing cant….he is set off, triggered, by Harris’ thought that the women of Afghanistan are oppressed…..Brand thinks not….who are we to judge?…..

The metric by which we evaluate them is a distinct metric drawn from another narrative…we might say ‘Bloody hell…women dressing like that’….but I don’t think we are in a position to make that kind of judgement.  Why should their narrative adhere to our template?

The imposition of our heterogeneous, hegemonic ideas of how masculine and feminine relationships work might not be universally applicable.  I think it’s precisely the kind of reasoning that’s used to justify the bombing and commercial colonisation of those territories….‘they’re not like us, they treat women differently from us’….I don’t think we’re in a position to make those judgements.

I think these kinds of theoretical tableaux are used to create a false hierarchy and a moral superiority by a dominant culture that subsequently uses thinking of this nature to underwrite the modern day colonisation and subjugation of these people on a massive scale…it’s 9/11 every day so that a state system can perpetuate itself using rationalism, using comfortable means of execution…it’s no better than 9/11.’

Hmmm…the West freed the Arabs from the Ottoman whip and subsequently helped support and develop so many Muslim countries that then arose, freed the Afghans from the Soviet yoke, fought against the anti-Muslim Serbs in the Balkans, protected Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from the ravages of a secular Saddam and then freed Iraqis to choose their own destiny, they saved Indian Muslims from the Hindu fascists and created Pakistan…a Muslim Zion, they smashed the ‘non-Muslim’ Isamic State that was terrorising so many Muslims….and of course it is well known that Western countries are more Muslim friendly than Muslim countries…go figure Russell.

The anti-Islam West?  The real problem in the Middle East and across the world in Muslim territories, and indeed in the West itself, are the ‘extremist’ Muslims who want to impose ‘Islam’ upon Muslims.

But who are we to judge.  All cultures are equal, it is all relative.  You can contemplate my template, you can contemplate your template, but what you can’t do is conflate one template with another template because that way you just get an illegitimate estimate of a cultural distillate.  or something.

Of course it’s suddenly not all relative when it comes to choosing a political party and a manifesto….suddenly you can make judgements about the value of certain ways of life and policies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mid-Week Open Thread

Apart from John Humphrys noting that Lord Malloch-Brown was ‘subverting democracy’ as he collaborates with a foreign billionaire to sell-out Britain to a foreign power, the EU, the BBC seems to have pretty much ignored Soros’ ‘cash for collaboration’ plot to buy influence over British politicians.  If it was Murdoch?  Did enjoy MB’s assertion that his treachery was ’empowering democracy’ and giving a voice to those whose vote for Brexit was a ‘howl of protest at being ignored’.  He does this by ignoring their historic vote, their ‘howl of protest’, and by subverting that democracy.

The BBC doesn’t ignore Anna Soubry of course, she gets the red-carpet treatment, her every utterance treated, like the EU’s Barnum, as if an eternal and unquestioned truth.  How different to other Tory Back-benchers who support Brexit and are regularly portrayed as mad fascists holding the party to ransom.  Soubry gets a free hand to say what she likes as in the Week at Westminster where she claimed that she put the interests of her constituents before party, she is prepared to compromise, she’s pragmatic.  MP’s must listen to their constituents.  Of course her constituents voted for Brexit which is why Soubry puts their interests first by…er…trying to stop Brexit.  The problem, as she sees it, is that her constituents didn’t know what they were voting for, no idea about the single market or customs union [despite it being made as clear as day by all parties in the referendum].   She moaned that she had been called a ‘traitor’ in the newspapers and says this has definitely led to death threats.  Hmmm…maybe they called her a traitor because she is one…to her own constituents and to the British people who voted ‘OUT’.  Her own actions led to the threats, can’t blame it on the papers who merely reported the truth.

Nice if the BBC spent more time pointing that out to all those Remoaners who demand a recount.

Any other bias out there?  List it all here….

Capitalism is so yesterday…Magic Money Trees are so now

 

The BBC has long pandered to the idea that Capitalism is finished and that a great new idea must replace it, a great leap forward in the way mankind provides the necessities, and luxuries, of life for itself.  It’s complete rubbish of course, Capitalism, like Democracy, maybe the worst form of running our affairs, except for all the others.  It does need reining in naturally but it has lifted so many billions of people out of poverty and hard laborious lives that for all its ills it is still the only true way of life that provides material benefits and the essential freedoms necessary for a civilised society such as individualism and choice in how we conduct our own lives…and of course the essential ability to have a say in and influence on how a society is run.

The BBC would like to see the end of Capitalism but what would it replace it with?  You don’t hear much about that, which could be a problem.  More of a problem is that nearly all other systems are run by dictators at the point of a gun and necessitate the use of force to run ‘smoothly’, or at least give the impression of running smoothly as all information to the contrary gets suppressed.

You just have to look at the petty class-war nastiness we get from the Left already to know how full blown Corbynism would play out.  People pay for the state education system  regardless of whether they use it or not, and the richer you are the more you will pay towards it.  If you send your children to private school you are making the state system less crowded and are ensuring that each pupil in that system gets more money per head and yet Labour want to take away the charitable status of private schools.    Similarly we now hear that Labour wants to make hospitals provide free parking, as they should, but to do it by taxing private health care more.  As with schools the Rich pay for the NHS regardless of whether they use it or not, and they pay far more than somebody on a low income.  Again by not using the NHS they free up resources for NHS patients that would otherwise be spread more thinly.  And yet Labour wants to punish those who use private health care.  Moronic dogmatic ideology, they should encourage people to take out private health care and education so that those in the state system get more resources and attention per pupil or patient.

You may have received your tax summary for the year recently which tells you how your tax contributed to public spending.

Income tax and National Insurance are not the biggest source of income for government, surprisingly maybe, indirect taxes, such as VAT or the fuel levy, are.  In effect, whatever you earn, hardly any of it goes into your own pocket at the end of the day.  But here’s the most important point…all that Government income comes from Businesses, Capitalism, one way or another.  So again, how does the BBC propose to replace that system of funding and provision for all necessary government spending to feed, school, house, clothe, care for, defend and entertain the masses?  An allotment with a goat and a couple of chickens out the back just won’t cut it.  Maybe if you have a magic money tree….didn’t end well for Adam and Eve did it?  Keep away from the trees and snakeoil salesmen like Corbyn.

Government spending is huge and most, around 70%, goes on what might all be lumped together under the title of welfare…the top four items being Benefits, Health, Pensions and Education.  The next highest cost is national debt interest, that’s just the interest on the debt not paying off the debt itself.  It is higher than defence and public order and safety.  More than housing, more than on business and industry, more than on transport.  And yet Labour and the BBC keep telling us we must rack up more and more debt…which accrues more and more interest payments.  Labour says this is good…borrow to take industries like Rail, Water and Power out of private hands and stop profits going to the banks…hmmm…and who do they borrow the money off, and who gets all those interest payments?  The Banks.  Labour’s policy is all smoke and mirrors, lies.  Shame the BBC doesn’t point that out.

No such thing as a free lunch or indeed a free renationalised rail service.

The BBC’s position on Business is of course a complete farce so muddled and contradictory is it.  On the one hand they roundly oppose what they call consumerism, on the other they constantly criticise government for not increasing productivity and not making Britain a more successful place business-wise.  I would like to know how they define consumerism…how much is too much…and which jobs and industries would they like to shut down?  Which products and how many, should people buy?…..sounds dangerously close to Communism where the government decides all that.

Maybe the BBC has a five year plan.  Or an orchard.

 

 

Something Different

 

The good Bishop in the interview below says they can’t get rid of Jesus from Europe.   Some might say Christians, Christianity, Christian culture, Western culture are being erased from Europe.  Slowly but surely.  Time for a bit of that muscular christianity or liberalism we keep hearing about?  Of course it would help if people could remember what liberalism was about.  The BBC et al seem to have forgotten and now tolerate the intolerable, not just tolerate but promote it as something good that we must all praise and appease.  You get the feeling the Nazis might get a more receptive welcome these days from the BBC if only they could present themselves as the victims. [By happy accident I seem to have coincided with a theme on the open thread….. relativising about the war and the Brits/US being war criminals]  Yep, here’s the algorithm…murder 6 million Jews and then, when you have been roundly condemned, claim you are the real victims,  victims of discrimination, marginalisation, alienation, that your community is being targeted by the security services unfairly and this is all making your youth feel angry and unwelcome in Britain.  They are angry and becoming radicalised and this anger may be expressed in violence, quite justified if, naturally, ahem, unjustified, but who can blame them victimised as they are?  Nazis must have their own schools, their beliefs and culture must be respected and non-Nazis must adapt their lives and behaviour so that it does not offend the Nazis.  Nazis spokesmen and their views will be given prominence in the Media and given rapid promotion to places of power and influence so that they feel they have a stake in society.  Nazi culture, beliefs and values will be promoted by the BBC as the norm, as part of British culture, as British culture, and all critics of Nazism will be denounced and vilified as racists and Naziphobes.

Trouble is, that is not a joke is it?

In the meantime….laugh….

 

 

 

 

 

Fake it to make it

 

 

If you can fake sincerity you’ve got it made.  It helps of course if you have the inherited respect and reputation of a venerable and massive institution behind you giving your claim to probity, truthfulness and sincerity a sheen of credibility whenever you are lying through your teeth.

The above interview by Wark of Anne Coulter is on an Ofcom reporting level of dishonesty and misrepresentation so utterly and wilfully deceptive and misleading is it.  Wark is ostensibly interested in ‘fake news’ but it is only alleged fake news that she claims comes from the Right.  Guardianista Laurie Pennie isn’t there to be interviewed, she is there to bolster Wark’s ‘argument’ that Right-wing fake news is a danger to democracy.  Penny is allowed to talk freely and make her points without interruption or challenge whilst Coulter is in the hot chair constantly under attack and inquisition.  Penny makes a completely false claim that Coulter is trying to make out that there is no difference between fake news and the truth, calling Coulter a troll, when in fact Coulter has consistently pointed out fake news in the MSM….Penny deliberately missing the real point…that fake news is the same as MSM news these days, that the MSM news is not the Truth, a point Wark was totally uninterested in examining despite it being more important than fake news coming out of a dodgy website in Macedonia that few people see or believe.

Look at the issues Coulter raised….Ferguson where a black man was shot dead by a white police officer…the BBC still falsely uses this case as an example of police racism in America when in fact it was conclusively proved the officer was justified in using lethal force having already been punched in the face, his eye socket fractured, by the suspect who tried to take his weapon and who later ran at the officer in a threatening  manner and was then shot.  The BBC lied about this being a racist killing, it lied about so many other similar cases, and it is this narrative from much of the left-wing media, of Blacks being deliberatelyy targeted by police and killed, that helped create the murderous backlash we saw when Blacks started to murder police officers in ‘revenge’ attacks.  Trouble is that narrative was completely false, a dangerous lie that the BBC knew was untrue  but continued to peddle it anyway as it suited their agenda.  How many people died because the BBC lied?

Coulter also mentioned Trump being attacked for allegedly mocking a disabled reporter.  The BBC reported this as fact.  Unfortunately the gestures and words used by Trump were the same ones he used to describe anyone whom he thought had lost the plot…and the evidence was plentiful that this was the case.  Trump was not mocking a disabled person he was in fact treating him as he would anyone else in similar circumstances.

Two big fake news stories from the MSM and Wark was totally uninterested in exploring that, she was only concerned with right-wing fake news on social media, as no doubt directed by her bosses, the BBC blatantly targeting social media and trying to blame it for right-wing terrorism, hate crimes and abuse of politicians….never mind it is mostly Muslims and the left-wing who are guilty of the majority of that.  Remember Wark’s attack interview with Tommy Robinson in which she blamed him for the Finsbury Park attack…forgetting conveniently that it was the BBC programme, ‘Three Girls’, that the police said was the catalyst for Osborne’s radicalisation….and indeed Robinson had absolutely nothing to do with the attack or Osborne.

What else is the BBC downplaying?

How about a foreign billionaire trying to corrupt our democracy by using his billions to fund anti-democratic movements in this country in order to overturn one of the most democratic votes this country has ever had?  The BBC is more interested in allegations that Russia interfered in American democracy than in blatant attempts to corrupt our own.  The BBC doesn’t like Trump so it supports all narratives that it thinks will unseat him, on the other hand they don’t like Brexit so they happily ignore the foreign Soros’ attempts to buy influence and power over our Parliament and country….we did have John Humphrys suggest that Soros was ‘subverting the democratic process’ but beyond that we have had almost nothing from the BBC…a remarkable silence about a real corruption scandal when the BBC was quite excited about a C4 programme about a fake Chinese company buying power and influence entrapping Tory politicians.  Hilariously in the Humphrys interview with Lord Malloch-Brown, who runs the campaign that received the Soros money, M-B claimed that he was empowering democracy and that the referendum result was ‘a howl of protest of the people being ignored‘.  Hmmmm…..so he empowers democracy by trying to overturn a huge demcocratic vote and he answers a ‘howl of protest at being ignored’ by, er, ignoring that protest.  What a knobhead.  And Soros has stumped up even more cash as a snub to his critics.  I’d say ‘lock him up’.

And if you think Soros isn’t dangerous look at the boasts of his ‘missionaries’ and then think on how it all turned out…the Arab Spring, Libya and the Ukraine….

It was later during lunch at a plush Budapest hotel that I encountered the full force of the arrogant ethos promoted by the Soros network of organisations. At my table I listened to Dutch, American, British, Ukrainian and Hungarian representatives of Soros NGOs boast about their achievements. Some claimed that they played a major role in the Arab Spring in Egypt. Others voiced their pride in their contribution to the democratisation of the Ukraine. Some bragged about their influence in preparing the ground for the overthrow of the Gadafif regime in Libya.

Then there is Trump again….the CIA have been caught trying to buy compromising material on Trump from the Russians…they deny that this is what they were doing but that must have been their main purpose….getting back so-called cyberweapons is by its nature impossible…‘Yes of course I’ve given you all copies!’…so there must have been another purpose for the meetings…..and remember Trump jr was said to have committed treason for meeting a Russian who claimed to have information on Clinton…so is the CIA committing treason on that logic?  The BBC were very interested in Trump jr, seemingly not so interested in this even though it broke in the lefty NYT….

 

Just more proof the Russians were intent on damaging Trump and yet the BBC still pushes the notion that he was colluding with them.  Fake news?  Course it is.

 

 

 

 

Cheap and Nasty

 

 

You always know you have a stupid, lazy, unpleasant, cowardly comedian when they go for Trump.  They know that they are guaranteed some applause from a certain segment of the audience if they sneer at Trump and make some asinine joke about him, it doesn’t even have to be funny or true…just say ‘Trump’ and you’ll get the applause.  They of course won’t do jokes that are seen as in his favour as to do so would result in Twitter going into meltdown and their credibility as a right-on comedian left in tatters.  They just aren’t brave enough to do real funny, they just go for the group-think tribal self-confirming comfort blanket of anti-Trumpism.  It would be like a white comedian making jokes about Obama because he’s black to a KKK meeting.  Anti-Trumpism is a sort of racism, it’s bigotry, stupidity and cowardice.  The same comedian of course would never make jokes about Mohammed and Islam despite the extraordinary horrors done in the name of Allah.

‘Comedian’ Desiree Burch on the News Quiz is that lazy, bigoted comedian who instead of thinking up some real jokes goes for the low hanging fruit of the Trump.   She laughs at his Tweet about the NHS being in crisis and sneers that he gets his news from Fox…how they laughed.  Only Trump was really just ‘retweeting’ the extremists of the BBC, the Labour Party and the activist doctors and nurses who agitate on behalf of the Labour Party and whose constant drumbeat has been of an NHS in crisis but who suddenly all now agree that the NHS is the best health service in the world.

So a chance to make a joke about the hypocrisy of those who have weaponised the NHS and told constant lies about it and another chance to reference Trump retweeting extremist material not by ‘Britain First’ but by ‘Britain Last’...ie the BBC et al.  But no…go for the easy laugh from your unthinking tribal groupies….don’t challenge them, don’t challenge yourself with some original thought.

It’s the same with thoughtless, partisan politicians who go for that easy applause as Stephen Kinnock did on Any Questions [again the audience seemingly packed with lefties…or a very vocal minority] when he claimed Trump was the problem when it came to North Korea.  Apparently Trump has only made things worse there and he needs to tone his rhetoric down.  Yep, that has worked really well for decades hasn’t it as North Korea totally ignored everything ‘diplomatic’ Presidents have said?  Kinnock is either a fool or bigoted liar prepared to make totally untrue statements for his own ends….intended to make Stephen Kinnock look good [but failing, like father, like son]…‘Trump, what a crass, dangerous and stupid fellow ha ha ha!…clap me now!’

Trouble is what is going on over there directly relates to Trump’s sabre rattling which was intended to, and did, scare the Chinese who then imposed sanctions on North Korea…and now we see North Korea at least going through the motions of trying to be more friendly to South Korea…will it last?  Who knows but it is due to Trump, his sabre rattling backing up a good deal of behind the scenes diplomacy.

Shame Dimbleby then referred to Kinnock’s interpretation as if it was the reality and that Trump really did have to tone down his language…doesn’t he?

Kirsty Wark on Newsnight continued in similar anti-Trump vain with some stupid comments that made no attempt to make a fair assessment or judgement on Trump’s claim that CNN [and all the rest] has been pumping out fake news, it has.  Wark, as is the standard BBC line, claims Trump [apparently now a ‘despot’] is wrong and the MSM, the BBC, is totally blameless and trustworthy….might say such shameless white-washing and stone-walling comments defending the MSM prove her completely wrong and Trump right….H/T Sue at Is the BBC biased? for the quote….

“Aren’t you aiding the despots who say “it’s all about fake news from CNN even the BBC, so we won’t believe it?” You are aiding people by undermining the probity of the mainstream media?” 

‘Probity of the mainstream media’…ho, ho,ho….and you still believe in Father Christmas, unicorns and man-made climate change.

 

 

Start the Week Open Thread

Is there any difference between Afua Hirsch and Hitler?  Both advocates of racial purity,  both using race as a weapon to further their own political aims and those of their own race.  It’s a shame that just about the only black ‘role models’ people see on the BBC or read in the Guardian are the race baiters like Hirsch whose sole aim it would seem is to create a race war, to set up a ‘them and us’ scenario so that Blacks only think of themselves as victims and the only way to be successful is to ‘be black’ [ironically…Britain is racist so be even more ‘black’ to beat the racism!] and to separate themselves from ‘white’ society blaming that for any or all of their problems.   The BBC continues to play its very dangerous game of sensationalising race and giving platforms to people who are not acting in the best interests of black people and are quite happy to stir up racial division and conflict, constantly abusing white people and ‘white’ society in their own racist way because that is how they make a living…writing or broadcasting about race problems, no problems then nothing to write about, no money, no ego-boosting media appearances….problems they have invented or indeed generated themselves…..just like the old joke about the newspaper editor starting a war to sell more  newspapers…only in this case it’s not a joke,  it’s all too real and the BBC aids and abets in that.

List the bias here…..

 

 

Time will tell

 

So a Remainer at the Treasury leaked a document claiming to predict what the economy would look like in 15 years time after Brexit, it assumes the EU would remain as it is now…clearly nonsense.  The document was incomplete and didn’t include data that would show how Brexit might improve the economy but that didn’t stop the BBC et al from using it to tell us we’re all doomed #duetobrexit.

Curious then that the Bank of England’s Ben Broadbent on Wake up to Money, when asked why he couldn’t predict what the interest rates would be in one year, that’s one year not 15, he said …..

That’s why we meet eight times a year, because stuff happens.

‘Stuff happens’….‘stuff’ that they didn’t or couldn’t predict…In other words it’s almost impossible to accurately assess what any economy will do even in a relatively short period of time never mind over 15 years especially when the assumption is that nothing will change in the EU.

Also you might have noted the furore over crime going up according to police statistics whilst the British Crime Survey said it was going down.  The BBC chose to use the police record as the gold standard whilst dismissing the BCS as useless.  Might be because Corbyn is using the rising crime figures to attack May and according to the BBC that is a ‘crack in her armour’.

Whether crime is rising or falling is hugely important. It can affect how much is spent on policing and other related services, even how people vote.

How times change.  When Labour was in power and the BCS showed crime going down but  police records showed crime was going up with Tory MPs making political capital out of the police records the BBC, in the shape of Mark Easton in particular, went out of their way to explain the issues telling us that it was the BCS that was the gold standard, it was unchangeable and thus could be compared year on year and used over 40,000 interviews from crime victims as its basis.  The police records however were totally unreliable, the methods of collecting and recording data changed and this meant there was no reliable means of assessing the true figures for crime from them.

So when Labour was in power the British Crime Survey was the gold standard as it showed crime dropping, when the Tories are in power the police records are the gold standard as they show crime rising.  Funny that.

The BCS is completely unreliable…of that 40,000 or so crime report maybe 1,500 are actually used, and who selects which crimes are judged to be crimes?  The Home Office…so hardly impartial or independent when drawing up crime figures.  On top of that the methods and systems the BCS uses to record crime also change frequently thus making a lie of the BBC’s claim that it is consistent and thus trustworthy when it comes to comparing year on year.  Naturally the BBC now see the error of their ways and have declared the BCS as a total waste of time…until Labour get in again and the BCS shows crime going down.

Here’s Mark Easton in 2008 beating the drum for the BCS:

Police figures go up and down depending on police activity. Crime may not be reported. But the crime survey gets round this problem by asking individuals what has happened to them.

It is regarded as the most robust survey on any subject in the country – tens of thousands of respondents and with a remarkably high completion rate.

And even in 2014 here he is again, telling us the police records are totally unreliable….

Now we know that the statistics watchdog doesn’t trust the police recorded crime figures, what faith can we have that crime really has been falling for the past 20 years?

The answer is plenty.

The UK Statistics Authority has said that police recorded crime data in England and Wales should no longer be designated as National Statistics because of accumulating evidence that they may be unreliable.

Recorded crime figures have always been a lousy way to identify crime trends.

So how can we be confident about crime trends?

Ask people.

The British Crime Survey (now the Crime Survey of England and Wales or CSEW) is a world-renowned invention. Using robust statistical modelling, it identifies far more crimes than are recorded by the police.

 

And yet today….

Labour, and the police, want to link an alleged rise in crime to Tory cuts to the police and the BBC obliges by making that link explicitly again and again whilst talking down the BCS figures…

The Crime Survey continues to show a reduction. But it’s increasingly clear that the survey, with a relatively limited sample, is not good at gauging emerging crime trends and offences which are small in number but great in impact, such as knife crime and robbery.

For now, the police statistics are a more useful guide as to what’s really going on.

Funny how the BCS, ‘world renowned’ and ‘the most robust survey’,  is now so easily dismissed by the BBC when Corbyn goes onto the attack on crime figures and the BCS shows a fall in crime.