COME DANCING?

The arrogance is stunning. The BBC Trust cannot be trusted!

Failed director general George Entwistle’s ‘obscene’ £450,000 pay-off was signed off by a BBC Trust boss as she watched Strictly Come Dancing, it has been revealed.

Lord Patten telephoned his deputy Diana Coyle during the hit show on Saturday evening and they agreed that Entwistle should get double what he was entitled to if he did the ‘honourable’ thing and quit. After the £1.3m deal was done, which also included a £877,000 pension pot, Ms Coyle went back to watching dancers like Denise Van Outen, Fern Britton, Kimberley Walsh, Michael Vaughan and Louis Smith, the BBC Trust confirmed to MailOnline.

Why has Patten not been sacked!!

OOOOOPs! Out Of Africa

 

Bad Timing or what!!!   The BBC’s Martin Plaut  opens up…..Guido has the low down

Who or what do you hate and why?
Tories. As Aneurin Bevan said: ‘No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.’

 

Ich Bin Kentishtowner: Martin Plaut, BBC Journalist & Author

Martin Plaut was born and raised in Cape Town. He left South Africa after the Soweto uprising of 1976, planning to return. But he met and married a British girl and has lived in the UK ever since. He has worked on Africa for the Labour Party and the BBC, writing widely on the subject. His latest book is ‘Who Rules South Africa?’ with Paul Holden. He is also the proud author of the Hamster of Hampstead Heath – available from Daunt books, Hampstead.

Entwistle Lasted 54 Days, How Long Will The Temp Last?

Oh Dear what can the matter be?  Was it all Tim Davie’s fault?

Kevin Marsh, ex Today Ed. explains……

Remember, George Entwistle told John Humphrys in the fatal Today interview that the Newsnight McAlpine film had been signed off “at management board level” – normally it would have been what’s known in the BBC as the News Board, usually chaired by the Head of News, Helen Boaden. The BBC Trust Chairman, Lord Patten, told Andrew Marr something similar.

Now, the line of command upwards from Newsnight prior to the Savile row was: Editor of Newsnight (Peter Rippon) – Head of News Programmes (Steve Mitchell) – Head of News (Helen Boaden) – Director General (George Entwistle)

Once Rippon had “stepped aside” and other News executives ‘recused’ themselves, that line of command on ‘recused’ matters became: acting Editor of Newsnight (??) – Head of Newsgathering (Fran Unsworth) – Director of World Service (Peter Horrocks … replaced during Horrocks’s annual leave by Adrian van Klaveren, the controller of R5Live) – Director of Audio and Music (Tim Davie). That meant Davie was effectively editor-in-chief on ‘recused’ matters.

It appears from what I learnt this morning that the Newsnight McAlpine film was judged to fall within the ‘recused’ area … and that, therefore, it was dealt with by the temporary management structure and not the regular one.

If that’s the case, then many of the questions over the McAlpine film that John Humphrys fired so effectively at George Entwistle – who declined to raise the complications of ‘recusation’ as any defence – might just as properly be put to the new acting Director General, Tim Davie.

Balen Report Next Then

Thanks to GCooper in the comments who points out this revelation  (science writer Maurizio Morabito has unearthed a list – once hosted on the IBT’s website and now stored in the Wayback Machine‘s cache of the internet.) that the BBC tried to hide…and it’s a funny thing…can’t see many of the ‘best scientific experts’ amongst that bunch….lot of environmental pressure groups, businessmen, academics, media and charities….just a shame we don’t have a transcript of what they said:

Full List of Participants to the BBC CMEP Seminar on 26 January 2006

January 26th 2006,

BBC Television Centre, London
Specialists:
Robert May, Oxford University and Imperial College London
Mike Hulme, Director, Tyndall Centre, UEA
Blake Lee-Harwood, Head of Campaigns, Greenpeace
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen
Michael Bravo, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge
Andrew Dlugolecki, Insurance industry consultant
Trevor Evans, US Embassy
Colin Challen MP, Chair, All Party Group on Climate Change
Anuradha Vittachi, Director, Oneworld.net
Andrew Simms, Policy Director, New Economics Foundation
Claire Foster, Church of England
Saleemul Huq, IIED
Poshendra Satyal Pravat, Open University
Li Moxuan, Climate campaigner, Greenpeace China
Tadesse Dadi, Tearfund Ethiopia
Iain Wright, CO2 Project Manager, BP International
Ashok Sinha, Stop Climate Chaos
Andy Atkins, Advocacy Director, Tearfund
Matthew Farrow, CBI
Rafael Hidalgo, TV/multimedia producer
Cheryl Campbell, Executive Director, Television for the Environment
Kevin McCullough, Director, Npower Renewables
Richard D North, Institute of Economic Affairs
Steve Widdicombe, Plymouth Marine Labs
Joe Smith, The Open University
Mark Galloway, Director, IBT
Anita Neville, E3G
Eleni Andreadis, Harvard University
Jos Wheatley, Global Environment Assets Team, DFID
Tessa Tennant, Chair, AsRia
BBC attendees:
Jana Bennett, Director of Television
Sacha Baveystock, Executive Producer, Science
Helen Boaden, Director of News
Andrew Lane, Manager, Weather, TV News
Anne Gilchrist, Executive Editor Indies & Events, CBBC
Dominic Vallely, Executive Editor, Entertainment
Eleanor Moran, Development Executive, Drama Commissioning
Elizabeth McKay, Project Executive, Education
Emma Swain, Commissioning Editor, Specialist Factual
Fergal Keane, (Chair), Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Fran Unsworth, Head of Newsgathering
George Entwistle, Head of TV Current Affairs
Glenwyn Benson, Controller, Factual TV
John Lynch, Creative Director, Specialist Factual
Jon Plowman, Head of Comedy
Jon Williams, TV Editor Newsgathering
Karen O’Connor, Editor, This World, Current Affairs
Catriona McKenzie, Tightrope Pictures catriona@tightropepictures.com

BBC Television Centre, London (cont)
Liz Molyneux, Editorial Executive, Factual Commissioning
Matt Morris, Head of News, Radio Five Live
Neil Nightingale, Head of Natural History Unit
Paul Brannan, Deputy Head of News Interactive
Peter Horrocks, Head of Television News
Peter Rippon, Duty Editor, World at One/PM/The World this Weekend
Phil Harding, Director, English Networks & Nations
Steve Mitchell, Head Of Radio News
Sue Inglish, Head Of Political Programmes
Frances Weil, Editor of News Special Events

SIMPLES

Here’s the first attempt at thinking through a solution to  the BBC’s problems that I’ve seen.

Of course it depends what you think those problems are…and this is Labour’s Tessa Jowell:

BBC crisis: let the public run our national broadcaster

The BBC can weather this storm if we eradicate its culture of moral smugness

The problems it faces are serious and need swift resolution, but they should not be allowed to undermine the case for the BBC, or its continuing success.

Trust is an overused term, but a guarantee of impartiality and accuracy in news and reporting is what the corporation is for.

So is the BBC not impartial and accurate?

 

This crisis must not be allowed to herald the slow death of the uniqueness of the BBC.

To assume that it operates in a normal commercial market is to miss the fact that the BBC is an institution that is sorely needed to counter-balance failures in the market. It is truly a public good…..keeping journalistic and production values higher in the commercial sector than if it didn’t exist.

That’s just an article of faith….where’s the proof?

 

The culture of moralistic smugness which pervades the BBC has to end. There has been a sense that it has sought the benefits of the private sector while enjoying the certainties of the public sector.

Is that really all that’s wrong with the BBC’s ‘moralistic smugness’?  How does it manifest that smugness?  By ‘managing’ what viewers are allowed to see and hear because the BBC knows best?

 

The BBC Trust was created in 2006, as part of a new form of governance. This was in response to the largest-ever deliberative consultation with the public in the course of developing a new charter and negotiating the new licence fee. But the Trust has not yet been a strong enough or assertive enough voice on behalf of the licence-fee payer.

So that’ll be the ‘largest-ever deliberative consultation with the public’ to develop the Trust…..and yet it failed….so how is ‘mutualising’ going to be better?

 

Once the dust settles, the progressive long-term solution to restoring trust in the BBC would be to make it the country’s biggest mutual, with 26.8 million licence-fee payers as its shareholders. As one of our most treasured and important public institutions, the principles of mutualism – democratic ownership, solidarity and equity – would fit perfectly with the BBC’s editorial remit of impartiality, transparency and accountability.

Clearly this is a woman who has never listened to the BBC and never had to make a complaint.

 

By co-opting the public’s voice, a more democratically accountable Trust would have more legitimacy in managing what has become an overly strong BBC executive. Second, the public need to feel after Savile that they have a stake in rebuilding trust in the BBC, rather than a top-down solution based on the appointment of a few new senior women or men.

Shame old Tessa didn’t feel the same way when Labour were in government…not much interested in what the voters, or was that ‘Bigots’, wanted!

 

One of the reasons the Trust has lost confidence is because it is out of touch with the public.

You don’t say…..

 

A mutual BBC would insist on this and remind trustees that their first loyalty is to the licence-fee payers, not the institution itself.

Does it really need to be reminded?  Does it not read its own charter?

 

The third reason for introducing a mutual BBC is that it would give the public more of a say over programmes and direction. It is a simple principle that if we pay for the BBC, the institution should be more accountable to us.

So that’ll be very unbiased, non partisan ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ then six times a night?  Followed by Eastenders and Top Gear.

Can Justin Webb dance?  Guess he might have some time on his hands….if I have a vote.

 

 

What would I like to see?….

  • a separate, independent complaints body.
  • a new recruitment policy pulling a wider range of views and experience.
  • a rotation of journalists so that they don’t get complacent, arrogant and condescending stuck on one programme for years.
  • an effective flow of information up and down the management structure.
  • more willingness to tackle subjects in depth and with admission of all types of views that the BBC now thinks too sensitive to touch….Islam, immigration….and bias on the BBC itself.
  •  News that examines subjects far more in the round….more context and depth rather than an extremely narrow view of things that means we only get a very one sided, partisan view….say of Europe or the economy.

 

I don’t want a vote, I just want them to do what they’re paid to do…and the Trust to do what it’s paid to do…make sure the BBC does what it’s paid to do.

A PARTY POLITICAL BROADCAST ON BEHALF OF THE LABOUR PARTY

Shame the BBC can’t tell us what will happen if we don’t get borrowing under control…what would happen then?  Greece?

 

Never mind they can tell us, in ‘intimate detail’ the ‘cost’ of the spending restrictions, or is that savings?,  on people’s lives…..at least we get one side of the story!

…and remember children….if you have no food on the table and the bailiffs are knocking and the dog’s got fleas don’t vote BNP….vote for the man who submits to the will of Allah….who believes in not making friends with the Kufar, in fact his holy book says ‘kill the unbeliever’, whose religion treats women as possessions, whose religion demands the killing of apostates and homosexuals, the stoning or lashing of adulterers, and the marriage of very young girls.

But heck, you know what, live and let live…..just don’t vote for the horrible, nasty BNP guy…his own family hate him!

 

Anyway, here’s the BBC/Labour Party propaganda….

The Year the Town Hall Shrank

Documentary series telling the story of how the city of Stoke-on-Trent struggles to cope with the impact of the largest funding cuts to local government ever imposed by central government.

The depth of the cuts forces not just the council to reconsider what they do and how they do it, but the people of Stoke to ask themselves what they expect their local authority to do for them. This is not just the story of Stoke, it is the story of us all as it goes behind the rhetoric of whether we are all in it together in this age of austerity, or whether it is right to take tough choices because we have become over-dependent on services that we can simply no longer afford.

With in-depth access to the council and its decision makers and following the human consequences of decisions taken in the town hall and Whitehall, this is a gripping and moving tale of power, competing priorities and the intimate human costs of cuts recorded over the course of a year.

With 700 jobs and £36m in spending slashed by their Stoke City Council, the cuts are beginning to bite – swimming pools, public toilets, libraries and the city farm are all being closed. But now the politicians have to answer for the decisions they have made.

The May local elections are looming. It’s judgement time. Who will voters blame? Council leader Mohammed Pervez or the government who ordered the cuts? Are they about to turn their back on conventional politics and look to a new voice – the BNP? The BNP gained a foothold in Stoke in the previous local elections and are now defending more seats there than on any other council in the UK. 33-year-old unemployed dad Mickey White is new to the party and standing for the first time. His outspoken party leader is Councillor Michael Coleman, ostracised by his family for joining the far right. He claims Islam is the most immediate threat to the people of Stoke.

Stoke is the key battleground for the BNP and they choose to launch their national campaign manifesto in the city. They have to fight off a grass roots offensive from anti-fascist groups who unite to try and see off the BNP for good.

As politicians try to win heads or hearts, the human cost of the cuts plays out alongside the election. After 30 years, Heathside House care home is closing. To make a saving of £500,000 a year, the 30 residents are to be moved out. Most of them suffer from dementia and staff worry that the distress caused by closing the home could seriously damage their health.

Their carers – along with hundreds of other council workers – don’t know themselves whether they will have a job in a month’s time.

PLAYING POLITICS

 

 

“I have fought three elections against the BBC and don’t want to fight another against it.”
Margaret Thatcher

 

 


You have to grin when you hear the BBC great and the good running round with their fingers in their ears shouting about tight budgets, Hutton and top management being to blame….where have we heard similar before?

‘The Daily Star, though quite accurately at the time, and possibly the only time I have found this awful newspaper interesting, mentioned the fact the BBC had blown millions of pounds on substandard American miniseries while cutting back on home-produced drama, wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds on German luxury cars for executives instead of cheaper British cars, and was dominated by a culture of bureaucracy and waste.

And look…..the BBC making up accusations based on flimsy evidence, badly researched, badly edited and libellous programmes.…history is repeating itself.……

‘The Panorama documentary, ‘Maggie’s Militant Tendency’, about the threat of National Front infiltration of the Conservatives, caused a furore.…the documentary, after discussing some of these groups, then decided to accuse both Neil Hamilton and Harvey Proctor of flirting with fascism and dressing in fascist uniforms in their young days. While Proctor in particular was known for his racist views, as well as being outed as a homosexual in his later years, accusations against both men were flimsy and led to a libel case against the Corporation. Mrs Thatcher was furious, though I do believe on this occasion the party’s anger was justified, was turned into a badly-researched and badly-edited programme which was libellous.’
So what’s new? So the BBC has always been suspect professionally and ethically.

Looking back you can see that every time the BBC has got itself into hot  water it is because it has tried to change the political landscape by broadcasting highly politicised messages aimed at contradicting and challenging the government of the day…

….or hiding inconvenient facts…such as Labour’s mass immigration plans and the effects that would have on British society or that there has been no global warming for nearly 15 years and there is no proof that CO2 causes it…indeed the ‘proof’ suggests no link….something even the infamous Prof Phil Jones from the CRU admitted.

 

John Humphrys has usefully illustrated the BBC attitude:
“If we were not prepared to take on a very, very powerful government indeed there would be no point in the BBC existing — that is ultimately what the BBC is for.”

Actually no, that’s not what the BBC is for, it is not some sort of unofficial, self proclaimed opposition…its job is to ascertain the facts not to pass judgement on the rights or wrongs of  any situation.

The Falklands are a classic example of the BBC getting the narrative wrong….adopting a stance suggesting that the Argentine invaders were perhaps equally right in their actions as the British.

This is still reflected today in BBC coverage…here is, again, John Humphrys on Today suggesting we hand the Islands over:

‘So the time has come for Britain to negotiate. A deal should be struck which establishes Argentinian sovereignty over the islands while allowing the islanders to remain British and which perhaps shares the spoils of oil exploration.’

As you can see, still deciding government policy for us.

Here is what the BBC admits itself about its coverage:

‘Initially the problem was over the tone of the BBC’s reporting of the combat, and particularly its presentation of information issued by the military. Peter Snow, on Newsnight, began one sentence: “If we believe the British…”. Casting such doubt on official sources enraged the Thatcher Government, and John Page MP described Snow’s remarks as “almost treasonable”.

Panorama [ran its own anti war feature] under the title Can We Avoid War?
There were misgivings about the programme inside the BBC too. Presenter Robert Kee told The Times it had been one-sided. He was promptly dropped from Panorama, and resigned from the BBC later that month.’

Here is what Thatcher thought was at stake…perhaps everything the BBC hates…..

‘Much was at stake: what we were fighting for eight thousand miles away in the South Atlantic was not only the territory and the people of the Falklands, important though they were. We were defending our honour as a nation, and principles of fundamental importance to the whole world – above all, that aggressors should never succeed and that international law should prevail over the use of force.
The significance of the Falklands War was enormous, both for Britain’s self-confidence and for our standing in the world. Since the Suez fiasco in 1956, British foreign policy had been one long retreat. The tacit assumption made by British and foreign governments alike was that our world role was doomed steadily to diminish. We had come to be seen by both friends and enemies as a nation which lacked the will and the capability to defend its interests in peace, let alone in war. Victory in the Falklands changed that. Everywhere I went after the war, Britain’s name meant something more than it had. The war also had real importance in relations between East and West: years later I was told by a Russian general that the Soviets had been firmly convinced that we would not fight for the Falklands, and that if we did fight we would lose. We proved them wrong on both counts, and they did not forget the fact.’

The BBC weren’t above ‘manufacturing’ its own narrative…such as Thatcher only fighting the war to win an election….nor was it above banning anything from the airwaves that was deemed to show Thatcher in a good light:

The Falklands Play is a dramatic account of the political events leading up to, and including, the 1982 Falklands War. The play was written by Ian Curteis,
In early July the new Head of Plays Peter Goodchild (whose background was in documentaries, rather than drama) requested considerable modifications to the script, amongst them objecting to the portrayal of Thatcher’s “private and instinctive self” – as opposed to the “bellicose Iron Lady of the public scenes” – and requesting the inclusion of discussions between members of the government about the possible effect of the War on the 1983 general election. Curteis declined the latter on the grounds that none of the relevant people he had interviewed had alluded to such conversations, and that there was no other record of them. In addition, he considered that attributing such fictional dialogue to real people could be libellous.

The BBC continued in its anti-Tory vain and its coverage of the extremely political miner’s strike (Scargill trying to bring down the government) and the IRA were highly controversial……eventually resulting in the sacking of Alisdair Milne (whose son is Seumas Milne….over paid, over promoted Guardian …well, troll, might be a fair description).

In 2001 the BBC once again took upon itself the role of peacemaker and set its cap against the Afghan War despite its obvious rights.

This is the ever forthright, yet again, Humphrys on Afghanistan:

‘…..the lives lost were a pointless and avoidable sacrifice…..The cynical view, perhaps the realist one, is that they might as well have stayed at home.
NATO will pull out of Afghanistan because the cynical view is, they have fully come to recognise all of that [Afghan is complicated, backward, tribal place.].  The truly cynical view is that all these soldiers, more than 320 of our own, who have died, have effectively died in vain and why waste another 4 or 5 years for still more to die on a hopeless mission?’

The BBC carried this anti-war stance over into its coverage of the build up to the Iraq War and of the war itself.

The BBC made false allegations about the government lying in its Dossier which set out the case for military action and as a result Greg Dyke, BBC DG, lost his job.

The BBC have never accepted they were wrong and continually rewrite history so that now they openly state that they were right and Hutton was wrong.  They are wrong.

I would contend that the BBC’s stance on Iraq and Afghanistan has cost British soldier’s lives, Afghan civilian  lives and has extended the war immeasurably by turning public opinion against it and made the government reluctant to spend the money to provide the necessary kit to protect the troops and to provide the necessary number of troops to do the job and see it through to the end.

When the BBC decides to play politics it has real consequences.  It costs lives.

Moving on into more recent events the Savile affair saw the ‘open and accountable’ BBC attempt to cover up a scandal…and failing miserably….resulting in the debacle we have now.

Whilst that was about ‘internal’ politics if you like….to do with the image and reputation of the BBC, the later Newsnight programme that intended to ‘out’ a Tory politician as a paedophile can only be judged as once more the BBC entering the political arena…..it’s judgement went out the window as it saw an opportunity to not only attack the Tories and smear them but also to taint Mrs Thatcher’s image if only by association.

It was a chance they couldn’t resist and  threw caution to the wind.

The BBC has of course other strings to its bow when it comes to political intervention….tackling ‘Austerity’ and government ’cuts’ as well as promoting Labour’s Plan B,  seem to be top of the agenda at the moment…..along with quiet encouragement to strikers and rioters to ‘protest’.

The BBC spending £300,000 hiding the Balen Report which reveals if it had any anti-Israeli bias in its reporting hardly shows a nature that regards ‘openness’ and ‘accountability’ as a necessity.

Is BBC News killing Jews?  Does its coverage of the Israel/Palestinian conflict incite anti-Semitic attacks?  We’ll never know what Balen concluded…because the BBC hid the report.   Why?  Just what did it say that’s so bad?

Its refusal to reveal who attended a meeting run by the CMEP, which is essentially a pro AGW advocacy group run by the BBC’s Roger Harrabin and climate activist Joe Smith, hardly demonstrates good faith….the BBC’s complete coverage of global warming was radically altered to adopt a ‘pro man made global warming’ stance was effected by this meeting….so just who attended?…what were the vested interests?…..because they certainly were not the ‘scientific experts’ that the BBC claims they were…being environmental activists, businessmen and media types.

 

The whole raison d’être behind the BBC’s existence is that it provides impartial, accurate and fair news and information to the Public…essential in a democracy…even more essential in a time when the internet makes so much unsubstantiated information available.

It should have been the BBC’s job to quash the rumours about McAlpine…set in motion by the irresponsible, showboating Tom Watson (even though he is making claims about someone else apparently…though he remains silent on the matter for now), instead it fanned the flames and indeed intended to place McAlpine on the bonfire themselves.

The BBC is a left wing organisation through and through…regardless of Mark Thompson’s announcement that that is no longer the case, it still is….anti-Thatcher, anti-Tory, pro-’progressive’ social policies:

“But we were not just anti-Macmillan; we were anti-industry, anti-capitalism, anti-advertising, anti-selling, anti-profit, anti-patriotism, anti-monarchy, anti-Empire, anti-police, anti-armed forces, anti-bomb, anti-authority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place, you name it, we were anti it.” Antony Jay, Telegraph, July 2007

Can anyone say anything has changed?

If the BBC is failing to be impartial and balanced in its reporting then the very reason for its existence disappears….We may as well have a commercial station that pumps out whatever its owner orders it to.

Can it’s attitude be changed?  Can it be made to broadcast impartial news?…if not why should anyone be obliged to pay the license fee any longer for something that they can get from Sky by choice, and a lot more choice at that….or ITV or a myriad of other options on the Internet?  Adverts?  Have you not seen how many adverts the BBC puts out for its own programmes?…even ‘Today’ becomes a ‘trail’ for Panorama or Newsnight  or similar programmes more often than not.

As Patten says…time for a ‘radical overhaul’…though probably not what he had in mind.