Category Archives: BBC bias

Middle of the week and time for a NEW Open Thread! Detail their bias here!

The BBC day in day out attacks ‘social media’ for allowing far-right racist comments, it never lets a chance go by to attack Breitbart and paint it as a white-supremacist, anti-semitic site, it consistently attacks anyone who supports Trump and tries to demonise them as racist or in the pay of the Russians subverting democracy by various methods [see Panorama and the BBC’s scaremongering about right-wing bots]…conversely it has little to nothing to say about left-wing racism and hate.  It took them a long time to get around to working up any interest in anti-Semitism in Corbyn’s Labour Party and shows no interest in the SNP’s and its supporters’ antics, naturally it shows no  interest in Muslim anti-Semitism and anti-Western, anti-British prejudice…only today we heard a mention by a caller on Campbell’s show about Labour’s anti-semitism saying this was why he wouldn’t vote Labour, this was immediately countered with a claim that the Tories had their own problems with islamophobia…referencing Zac Goldsmith [who we’ve looked at …he made no mention of islam in his mayoral bid…it was Khan himself that ran ‘as a Muslim’]…no comment from Campbell to rebut this slur.

Oddly no mention of this story from the BBC, which has been on Guido all day, and is now in the Mail….

Labour student who introduced Jeremy Corbyn at a campaign rally QUITS after it emerges that she sent racist and anti-Semitic tweets

 

Nick Cohen in the Spectator has a list of reasons for not voting for Corbyn...not unrelated to the above……the BBC isn’t too bothered about any of it…..

What follows is an appeal to Jeremy Corbyn supporters to think again. It’s from Chris, a Labour party member, who does not want to give his full name for fear of abuse. He has compiled a vast, but by no means exhaustive list of the moral and political failings of the Labour leader. He told me:

I’ve noticed that a few of my very clever, thoughtful, moderately left-wing friends were pro-Corbyn, which amazed me. What I discovered was that they knew almost no facts about him or his fellow travellers. I then noticed that any given critical article about Corbyn only listed one or two facts about him. Normal, good people, who aren’t political anoraks like me, don’t have time to read hundreds of articles on politics – they read a few articles and base the rest of their opinions on gut feeling and general trend of the headlines/social media. I decided to collate in one place the most striking, verifiable facts about Corbyn and the movement he represents.

They are well worth reading…..

I write this as a passionate leftist and liberal. Below is a list of facts about Jeremy Corbyn which have not previously been collated in one place. The reader can make up their own mind, based on these facts. This list has been broken up into three sections: ‘Ethics’, ‘Leadership & Electability’, and ‘Social Media & Activists’.

Part One: Ethics

1.  Against peace in Ireland

During the 1980s and 1990s, Jeremy Corbyn supported the IRA and opposed the Northern Ireland peace process:

• By voting against the peace process and the Anglo-Irish Agreement in Parliament, as he believed republican nationalists shouldn’t have to compromise (the evidence is here and here).
• By attending and speaking at annual pro-IRA commemorations for terrorists between 1986 and 1992. The programme for one such event reads: ‘In this, the conclusive phase in the war to rid Ireland of the scourge of British imperialism…force of arms is the only method capable of bringing this about’.
• By aligning with terrorists. Corbyn was general secretary of the editorial board of the hard-left journal Labour Briefing which supported IRA violence and explicitly backed the Brighton Hotel Bombing, which killed 5 people and maimed 31 others. In its December 1984 leader, the editorial board ‘disassociated itself’ from an article criticising the Brighton bombing, saying the criticism was a ‘serious political misjudgement’. The board said it ‘reaffirmed its support for, and solidarity with, the Irish republican movement’, and added that ‘the British only sit up and take notice when they are bombed into it’. Alongside its editorial, the board reprinted a speech by Gerry Adams describing the bombing as a ‘blow for democracy’. The same edition carried a reader’s letter praising the ‘audacity’ of the IRA attack and stating: ‘What do you call four dead Tories? A start.’ They had previously printed the following:

We refuse to parrot the ritual condemnation of ‘violence’ because we insist on placing responsibility where it lies…. Let our Iron Lady know this: those who live by the sword shall die by it. If she wants violence, then violence she will certainly get.

If Corbyn wanted to support a unified Ireland through peaceful means he could have supported the SDLP (Northern Ireland’s Social Democratic and Labour Party), which wanted to unify Ireland through a democratic process. Instead, Corbyn attended ‘Troops Out’ rallies where the SDLP were denounced as sell-outs. In 2015, on BBC Radio Ulster, Corbyn refused five times to specifically condemn IRA violence and terrorism. He hung up rather than answer the question. You can listen here.

Corbyn also appointed as his Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, who opposed the peace process as late as 1998 as it meant compromise. McDonnell also said (before, admittedly, later apologising):

It’s about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table. The peace we have now is due to the action of the IRA. Because of the bravery of the IRA and people like Bobby Sands we now have a peace process.

It is worth remembering that the IRA bombed, shot, or beat to death 1,696 men, women and children, and of course did not achieve a united Ireland.

2. For the Iranian religious right

Jeremy Corbyn has been paid £20,000 to appear five times on the totalitarian Iranian regime’s propaganda channel, which was banned in the UK for its role in filming the tortured forced-confession of Iranian liberal journalist Maziar Bahari. By hosting interviews, Corbyn gives the propaganda the ‘credibility’ of a Western politician. It’s fascinating to hear Iranian democracy campaigner Maziar Bahari’s own thoughts on Corbyn, who he describes as ‘a useful idiot’, and goes on to say:

People who present programmes for Press TV and get paid for it should be really ashamed of themselves — especially if they call themselves liberals and people who are interested in human rights.

The Iranian regime executes gay people, democracy activists, Kurds, and orders the rape of female prisoners. But Corbyn is happy to take their money and aid their propaganda campaign. Watch the end of this clip as Jeremy hosts a caller who describes the BBC as having hosted ‘Zionist liars’.

3. For anti-Semites

• Jeremy Corbyn has praised and supported Raed Salah, an Islamist who has been accused of spreading the Blood Libel (an old antisemitic conspiracy that Jews use the blood of gentile children to make their bread). Salah has also been charged with inciting racial hatred and violence, and has claimed the Jews were behind 9/11. Corbyn has said: ‘Salah is a very honoured citizen’, ‘Salah’s is a voice that must be heard’, ‘Salah is far from a dangerous man’, and ‘I look forward to giving you tea on the terrace because you deserve it!’.
• Corbyn wrote in defence of a vicar who suggested that 9/11 was an inside job by the Jews.
• Corbyn invited Hamas and Hizbollah to Parliament and called them his ‘friends’. Bear in mind that Hamas’s Charter is explicitly genocidal – it makes it clear its supporters want to kill Jews and repeats Nazi conspiracy theories. Their founding Charter also rules out any peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestine problem. It says:

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.

Corbyn doesn’t invite extremist Zionists to parliament, only extremist anti-Semites.

• Corbyn was also a long-time backer of an anti-Israel group founded by Paul Eisen, attending its 2013 event even after Eisen had outed himself as a Holocaust denier years earlier.

4. For Putin

As his right-hand man, Corbyn appointed Seumas Milne, who has argued we should focus more on the positives of Stalin’s communist dictatorship. Milne was also part of the pro-Stalin and pro-Soviet fellow travellers of Fergus Nicholson’s wing of the British Communist Party (he was not an official member), and worked at the pro-Soviet paper Straight Left. Milne has also blamed Russia’s recent invasion of the Ukraine on the West, and has hosted a propaganda media conference for Vladimir Putin.

5. Against self-determination

Corbyn suggested that the Falkland Islands should be shared with Argentina, ignoring a referendum in which 99.8 per cent of the islanders voted to remain British.

Part Two: Electability and Leadership

Jeremy Corbyn has repeatedly demonstrated he isn’t a viable leader. Here’s how:

• Corbyn has shown he has little idea about how to handle the media. Even left-wing newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent have complained that the Corbyn team, through incompetency, release their press statements too late to give them full coverage the next day. One example was the announcement of an internal inquiry into anti-Semitism in the Labour party, wider coverage of which would have taken pressure off Corbyn and the Labour party. Instead, the announcement was made late on a Friday night – meaning the saga dragged on.
• On national television, Jeremy Corbyn refused to back a shoot-to-kill policy if a Paris-style machine gun attack happened in London. He then changed his mind and backtracked a day later.
• Corbyn’s botched attempt at a publicity stunt on a ‘ram-packed’ train was questioned by Virgin who released CCTV images showing the Labour leader appearing to walk past empty seats before he had filmed a video showing him sitting on the floor of a train carriage. Another image released by Virgin also showed Corbyn having later found a seat.
• The following advisors and colleagues have resigned under Corbyn or disowned him in the last ten months, citing incompetence and his unelectability:

1. Neale Coleman, the former aide to Ken Livingstone, resigned following the unexpected announcement of policies he had not be consulted on.
2. Richard Murphy, the left wing tax specialist who was initially supportive of Corbyn, and whose policies the Labour leader took up, has now disowned him due to his failure to create a detailed plan. He said he had lost faith in Corbyn’s vision.
3. David Blanchflower resigned, citing his lack of ability and electability. And Simon Wren-Lewis criticised the Labour leadership for not campaigning ‘more strongly‘ in the EU referendum.
4. World famous left-wing economist Thomas Picketty has also resigned as Corbyn’s economic advisor, criticising his ‘weak’ EU campaign.
5. The Labour MP Thangam Debonaire disowned Corbyn after saying the Labour leader hired and fired her while she was receiving cancer treatment – all without a single word. Her full, shocking account can be read here.
6. The Labour MP Lilian Greenwood, who never publicly criticised Corbyn, and who voted with him on Syria, resigned as the Shadow Transport shadow, claiming Corbyn has repeatedly undermined her. Oh, and there’s also….
7. The 172 Labour MPs, whose views range from centrist to centre-left to fully left-wing, who voted that they had no confidence in Corbyn’s leadership.

But these aren’t the only indications Corbyn isn’t up to the job:

• Corbyn has the lowest public approval rating for an opposition leader after ten months since records began. An Ipsos Mori poll said Corbyn’s rating was -41, compared to -32 for Michael Foot at the same time during his doomed leadership.
• Every large-scale study into why Labour lost the 2015 general election came to the same conclusion: Labour was not trusted on the economy. Corbyn’s response? To promise £500billion in spending but refuse to say where the money will come from.
• Jeremy Corbyn also had a disastrous referendum campaign. Having been pro-Brexit for decades – voting against Common market membership in 1975, and against the Maastricht Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty as an MP – his ‘pro-Remain’ campaign was, at best, half-hearted. What’s more:

1. Corbyn missed the first day of the Labour ‘Remain‘ campaign so he could attend an anti-nuclear weapons rally instead.
2. Leaked emails show that during the EU referendum campaign, Labour party ‘Remain’ campaigners came to the conclusion that the Corbyn Team were deliberately sabotaging their efforts.
3. A full 45 per cent of the millions of Labour voters weren’t aware that Labour was for ‘Remain’.
4. Corbyn’s first actions after the referendum was to, unwisely, call for the immediate invoking of Article 50.

Part Three: Social Media & Activists

It cannot be emphasised enough that abusive Corbyn supporters only represent a vocal minority. However it is also clear that Labour wasn’t experiencing the problems of abuse and intimidation prior to the birth of this current movement. In the process of fact checking, it became apparent that some incidents of abuse may have been exaggerated in order to criticise the pro-Corbyn movement. However, it’s simply not possible to claim that the hundreds-upon-hundreds of separately documented incidents, abusive voicemails and phone calls, physical confrontations, police callouts and death threats are all exaggerations. Here are a list of just some of them:

• Over 40 female MPs have written to Jeremy Corbyn pleading with him to try to curtail the abuse they receive from his supporters. It’s not clear what Jeremy Corbyn has actually done about this issue.
• Across the country, Labour constituency meetings have been temporarily suspended by the NEC because of the levels of abuse and intimidation taking place at some of these gatherings.
• Since challenging Corbyn’s leadership, Labour MP Angela Eagle has been called a ‘dyke’ at a constituency meeting, and has been told by police that, for now, she should not hold constituency surgeries because her safety cannot be guaranteed.
• BBC journalist Laura Kuenssberg has received abuse from Corbyn supporters, including being called a ‘whore’ and a ‘bitch’.
• At the release of the Labour anti-Semitism report, Labour MP Ruth Smeeth was abused by a Corbyn supporter. Meanwhile, Corbyn apparently watched and said nothing.

Of course, there are many other facts to bear in mind when making your choice for Labour leader. It is up to each individual to vote with their conscience, but all of us must strive to vote based on the facts.

Yours sincerely,

CG (name anonymised to avoid harassment and abuse)

And relax….

Just why was Kuenssberg so insistent that Corbyn say if he would dump Brexit if he didn’t get what he wanted in negotiations as PM?…and is the camera set up deliberately to get ‘Vote Labour 8 June’ deliberately in frame?

‘This is a very important point to make for lots of people.  As you say, we don’t know what will happen in the negotiations…. if you are PM can you categorically say we would definitely leave because if you won’t there is a chink of a possibility that things might change and we might end up looking differently about our options.’

Vote Labour, get Remain? Corbyn refuses to say if he would take UK out of EU as Prime Minister. https://t.co/A3uePVoyZe

— Westmonster (@WestmonsterUK) May 9, 2017

Ah, here we go…Kuenssberg admits her line of questioning was all about getting Corbyn to say he’d leave…and this matters….because public opinion might change…Kuenssberg is trying to legitimise a second referendum and a Brexit backtrack…..and encourage people to think Labour might betray the Brexit vote…so ‘Vote Labour’ and you might get Remian!……

If the proposed EU side of the bargain is draconian, or, in this volatile world, the facts and public opinion have changed significantly, why on earth would any political party want to tie itself to a firm position either way…..even reluctance and hesitancy count – because in this election, particularly over Brexit, every word and every move will matter.

Kuenssbergs whole line of questioning was set up to suggest Brexit is not settled and can be reversed…so vote Labour…a double whammy there for the BBC…get rid of Brexit and get the BBC’s preferred choice of Party into Office.

Break the mould….the BBC invents the rules to suit itself….uninvent them…..

Best video on the internet right now. pic.twitter.com/amL8g2C4l3

— Aditya® (@LimitlessAdi) May 4, 2017

The BBC like to suggest that Brexit voting oldies have betrayed the yoof………let’s have a second referendum and get the lazy little s****s out of bed this time…….like in France…..the real President?……the future…..

LE PEN BACKED BY 44% OF YOUTH
MACRON SUPPORTED BY 80% OF 65+https://t.co/wOVXADBXEo

— Westmonster (@WestmonsterUK) May 7, 2017

The Russians have hacked the Guardian in an attempt to disenchant its readers and turn them to Murdoch and his stable of right-wing purveyors of fake news and thus win the election for May.  No, really.

Guardian Soulmates users targeted by Russia after data exposure

Users of Guardian Soulmates have been targeted with sexually explicit emails in what is believed to be a Russian honeytrap ploy after their contact information was accidentally exposed on the dating site.

Information from users’ profiles was included in the spam messages.

The Guardian newspaper’s publisher, which runs the service, said ‘Russian hacking’ was thought to be the cause.  A Guardian spokesman said that it was believed to be an attempt to discredit the Guardian in order to undermine British democracy by closing down left-leaning voices during the election.

Guardian News & Media blamed a third-party technology provider in the Ukraine for the security breach.  They now assure us that the security flaw has now been fixed.

The BBC was contacted by one user who said they had started receiving sexually explicit  spam emails sent to an account they only used with the dating service and that he was definitely thinking that he would vote Tory now after having been forced to read the Sun today and loving it saying he could no longer bear to have the Guardian in the house so traumatised was he by their lack of security.  He said ‘If you can’t trust the Left to keep your personal data safe on a dating site how on earth can we trust them with the nuclear button?’.

Not going well is it?  The BBC’s ‘balanced’ reporting on the election that is.  Two days of anti-Tory messaging..the subtle and not so subtle….

Tory immigration pledge is trashed and never mentioned wthout the refrain that promises were made before and not met….funny, ironic, that the ‘open borders’ BBC, which campaigns relentlessly for more immigration, should be criticising the Tories for having failed to control it…one reason of course is that pressure from the BBC itself means politicians are extremely nervous about taking effective measures because they know they will immediately encounter a storm of protest and accusations of racism.  Similarly the NHS of course….any measures to cut spending would be met with an absolute s**t-storm from the left-wing media and Labour…the same Labour Party that proposed cutting NHS spending in 2010.

Then we have the energy price cap….naturally the BBC claims this is Ed Miliband’s idea…however when Miliband proposed it it was a good idea…now the Tories propose something similar [though uniquely different say the Tories] it’s a bad idea.

We had hardcore labour spin doctor, Tom Baldwin, wheeled in and he of course set about trashing the Tories when supposedly talking about something else….naturally we were not told he was Labour’s senior spinner at one time as he was allowed to freely attack May telling us she was robotic and brittle and that Brexit was definitely going to go wrong and fail.

Yesterday we had a day of ‘Andy Burnham’, Labour’s new mayor in Manchester…we were treated to endless reports of how he is going to end homelessness in Manchester….not a lot of time spent on any Tory mayors with similar ideas.  And what did Burnham’s great idea amount to?  Not much….get people to send in money and Burnham will send it on to the charities that deal with the homeless now…..so nothing new or innovative…just more of the same which didn’t solve anything before so what’s new?…but the BBC loved it and lavished praise and attention on him.  Must be an election going on.

Today we had lots of trumpeting about the film ‘Brassed Off’…apparently the excuse for disinterring it was that it is the 21st anniversary of the film…no doubt the fact that it was about miners sacked by the horrible Fatcher might have had something to do with it in an election…and sure enough one of the actors voiced off telling us Thatcher was terrible but May is worse…more brutal and reactionary.  Course she is luvvie.

The BBC is giving Corbyn and Co a very easy ride at the moment….Corbyn makes a speech today and …well, very little from the BBC so far  in the way of negative comment…except this very interesting interview with Kuenssberg who seems to be pleading with Corbyn to say he’ll drop Brexit if negotiations don’t pan out the way he wants…should he be PM…Pretty clear what Kuenssberg is after here…giving hope to the Remainders…if Corbyn says he will drop Brexit they can vote for him….

‘This is a very important point to make for lots of people.  As you say, we don’t know what will happen in the negotiations…. if you are PM can you categorically say we would definitely leave because if you won’t there is a chink of a possibility that things might change and we might end up thinking differently about our options.’

 

Then there’s McDonnell…given an extraordinarily soft interview by Red Andy….McDonnell is allowed to slither out of any question by giving very evasive, generalised answers that say nothing other than to give the impression that the Marxist McDonnell, whose intent is to destroy Britain, is completely harmless…talk about fake news…

At least we have the usual fallback…Andrew Neil, to do some real journalism….and comes to something when one BBC journo has to ‘reprimand’ another for failing to do his job  in effect….

And almost finally, or at least only the stuff I have caught….the BBC had an orchestrated attack on the Tories’ election soundbite ‘strong and stable’…the attack was relentless and reached throughout the whole of the BBC…from its news programmes, current affairs, to its general programming, its website and of course its ‘comedy’.  The intent?  To undermine the Tory election by mocking and discrediting that line.

Contrast that with how they deal with Labour’s slogan ‘For the many not the few’.  Well you can’t because the BBC has not uttered one word of criticism, mockery or disdain towards it despite it being repeated as many times as the Tories’ slogan.

Curious…even curiouser when you consider that even ‘Labour’ doesn’t like their own slogan…here’s LabourList…

Forget the 20 point plan – Corbyn urgently needs a decent slogan for June 8

Theresa May’s cut-and-run general election caught the Labour Party without a campaign slogan.

Labour had many other gaps, but lack of a slogan should be easy to remedy.

In 1997 Tony Blair won a landslide with “New Labour because Britain deserves better.” In 2001 he offered “Ambitions for Britain” and in 2005 “Britain forward, not back.”

With the exception of “Work or maintenance” none of these slogans committed the party to anything. Each served to create a vaguely uplifting atmosphere around a Labour government. The party should have been able to match them in short order, but its first reported effort at a slogan for 2017 was appalling: “the Tories are the real extremists”.

But Labour’s replacement is not much better: “for the many not the few.”

Blairites have pointed out gleefully that this was first used by Tony Blair.

But the BBC has so far steadfastly refused to point out that Corbyn’s slogan is not only tired and dull but second hand.  Not as if the BBC doesn’t know…it reported in early May that Blair had used it…but made no comment on its recycling by Corbyn…

Blair sketched out, in vague but confident terms, his vision of a modern, united country fit for a new millennium. A country for the “many not the few”.

Not only that but in 2012 the LibDems used exactly the same slogan....

Nice to know that commie Corbyn is actually going to save Capitalism….

And really finally…Matthew Taylor….Blair’s head of policy unit and in charge of drawing up Labour’s election manifestos as well as being in charge of rebutting any anti-Labour press reports…bizarrely now employed by May to head a review of workers’ rights and practices, he has hit the airwaves with loud criticisms of low skilled jobs…in essence, according to the BBC interpretation, which was loud and frequent on the radio today, this means that the much vaunted employment boom is all smoke and mirrors, a mirage created by employing cheap labour and not training them…thus we get low productivity and low wages…erm…isn’t that actually a result of Labour’s open border policy and Big Business demanding the right to import this cheap labour…..a right they demand to keep never mind the Brexit vote?  And now?  All those jobs done by cheap imported migrants are bad for our economy!!!!

Any chance that May’s choice of employee has badly backfired and he is stabbing her in the  back, old loyalties die hard when another chance to get Labour back in office is on the horizon.  Back in 2016 he was hardly ‘onboard’ the Tory bandwagon…

Last month, he also said the government’s flagship new benefit system, universal credit, was on the way to joining an “inglorious list” of disasters alongside the poll tax and rail privatisation.

Curious though…you’d hardly know of his real allegiances…it was mentioned once today but not any other time when I heard him being quoted extensively by the BBC…and nor is his Labour Party connection mentioned in this web report by Kamal Ahmed [not the most reliable of reporters…very pro-Remain it would seem]…here he links Taylor to the government as if to give him credibility and a pro-Tory gloss, which is a complete deception…

The head of the government’s review into zero-hours contracts and the less secure world of work has said that too many businesses still allow “bad work” to flourish.

Ahead of a speech on Tuesday evening, Matthew Taylor told the BBC that workers should be “engaged” by employers and feel more in control of how they work.

“I think bad work is unacceptable when so many people in work are in poverty,” Mr Taylor told me.

“Bad work is clearly bad for our health and well-being, it leads to people dropping out of work.

“Bad work is bad for productivity, so it’s bad for our economy.

Ahmed tells us that Taylor’s report will be released after the election…in the meantime he has given the BBC early, privileged access it seems…wonder why?

Mr Taylor said his review, which will be delivered to Number 10 shortly after the election whoever becomes Prime Minister, will call for a mix of new tax rules and workplace regulations as well as the promotion of a “new norm” around how businesses treat their employees.

Yep….all round a busy two days for the BBC….too busy to find anything genuinely critical to say about Labour it almost seems.

The LibDems are up to their old tricks…saying one thing but doing another….and the BBC is claiming the credit for revealing one story…

In a recording from a question-and-answer session obtained by the BBC, Sir Vince, who is the party’s candidate in the Twickenham seat he lost in 2015, said he had a good relationship with people from other parties, adding: “I particularly met a lot of people on the Labour side whose views are very close to mine.”

However Guido says it was otherwise …

Publicly the LibDems are telling voters they cannot work with Labour because Jeremy Corbyn is “toxic“. This bombshell tape from LBC and Sky News exposes that fib for what it is. Vince Cable and Sarah Olney have been recorded telling members they should collaborate with Labour

As does the Telegraph…

In the recording obtained by Sky News and LBC radio, he told the meeting: “There’s value is value in a good relationship with people in other parties, and I particularly met a lot of people on the Labour side whose views are very close to mine.

The Guardian claims it was the Telegraph…rather oddly…

Vince Cable appears to have hinted at when he told Lib Dems in Ealing that they could do worse than backing the Labour candidate next door to him – Rupa Huq – he gets secretly recorded and then outed in the Daily Telegraph.

Only the BBC thinks it was the BBC that scooped this story….here’s one they can also claim…if only Guido hadn’t got there first….and I’m sure they will such is their interest in exposing fake news….these are fake LibDem newspapers that are in fact campaign material for the election…..

Lying Lib Dems Peddle Fake News

The LibDems are widely regarded as the dirtiest campaigners in British politics, stooping to lows well beneath their Tory and Labour rivals. This takes the biscuit even by their standards. In Wimbledon and Raynes Park the LibDems have produced a fake newspaper with the aim of deceiving voters into believing they are reading neutral coverage about their candidate. There is no imprint on the front page, the imprint at the bottom of the back page is not visible to the naked eye. This really is quite something – it includes a finance ‘column’ by a ‘finance editor’ called Phil Ling. This is a straight lie.  Phil Ling is not a ‘finance editor’, he was the 2015 LibDem candidate down the road in Tooting. 

The LibDems are doing this – deliberately misleading and lying to voters – around the country. Here is Sarah Olney’s fake newspaper in Richmond. It has a tiny imprint that many won’t be able to read. It includes a “special report” purporting to be written by a journalist. This is a lie – it is campaign literature written by a spinner in LibDem HQ. There has been a lot of hand-wringing recently about parties paying for adverts in local newspapers. This from the LibDems is a hundred times worse.

Christopher Booker on the latest Arctic scare:

Inevitably, when even satellite temperatures were showing 2016 as “the hottest year on record”, we were going to be told last winter that the Arctic ice was at its lowest extent ever. Sure enough, before Christmas, a report from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was greeted with such headlines as “Hottest Arctic on record triggers massive ice melt”. In March we had the BBC trumpeting another study that blamed vanishing Arctic ice as the cause of weather which led to the worst-ever smog in Beijing, warning that it “could even threaten the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022”.

But last week we were brought back to earth by the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), as charted by our friend Paul Homewood on his blog Notalotofpeopleknowthat, with the news that ever since December temperatures in the Arctic have consistently been lower than minus 20 C. In April the extent of Arctic sea ice was back to where it was in April 13 years ago. Furthermore, whereas in 2008 most of the ice was extremely thin, this year most has been at least two metres thick. The Greenland ice cap last winter increased in volume faster than at any time for years.

As for those record temperatures brought in 2016 by an exceptionally strong El Niño, the satellites now show that in recent months global temperatures have plummeted by more that 0.6 degrees: just as happened 17 years ago after a similarly strong El Niño had also made 1998 the “hottest year on record”.

This means the global temperature trend has now shown no further warming for 19 years. But the BBC won’t be telling us any of this. And we are still stuck with that insanely damaging Climate Change Act, which in this election will scarcely get a mention.

From ‘Notalotofpeopleknowthat’….

BBC’s Silly Anthrax Scare Story

The BBC have gone right over the top now, with this latest silly little scare story:

‘Throughout history, humans have existed side-by-side with bacteria and viruses. From the bubonic plague to smallpox, we have evolved to resist them, and in response they have developed new ways of infecting us.

However, what would happen if we were suddenly exposed to deadly bacteria and viruses that have been absent for thousands of years, or that we have never met before?

We may be about to find out. Climate change is melting permafrost soils that have been frozen for thousands of years, and as the soils melt they are releasing ancient viruses and bacteria that, having lain dormant, are springing back to life.’

The BBC report then regales us with viruses, thousands of years old, which will be released to kill us all as the permafrost further melts.

Given that it has been warmer than now for most of the last 8000 years, this seems extremely remote, to put it mildly.

the whole report is fake news. As has been well established by proper scientists, malaria and dengue fever are not affected by temperatures.

As one of the world’s leading specialists in the natural history and biology of mosquitoes, Prof Paul Reiter, told the Parliamentary Select Committee on Economic Affairs in 2005:

“The most catastrophic epidemic [of malaria] on record anywhere in the world occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, with a peak incidence of 13 million cases per year, and 600,000 deaths. Transmission was high in many parts of Siberia, and there were 30,000 cases and 10,000 deaths due to falciparum infection (the most deadly malaria parasite) in Archangel, close to the Arctic circle.”

https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we21.htm

But I don’t know why I am surprised. The BBC long ago lost any credibility where reporting on climate change is concerned.