Monthly Archives: April 2013

Kim Jong Un ‘Hacked Off’?

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David’s already commented on this but I thought it was worth contrasting the far more serious nature of the BBC’s actions in comparison to ‘phone hacking’.

 

The News of The World hacked a few celebrity phones and of course Millie Dowler’s…..tasteless, intrusive, immoral and illegal.

But not the end of the world and nobody died as a result of it.

However the BBC’s own undercover/underhand operation to obtain a story about life inside North Korea may well have put lives at risk……and how about those BBC’s ‘lies and deceptions’?:

LSE professors ‘at risk’ over BBC’s film on North Korea

BBC reporters who posed as students to gain access to communist North Korea have damaged the reputation of British universities and put academics at risk, higher education leaders have said.

A bitter row has erupted between the LSE and the BBC over a programme, due to be shown on Monday, that seeks to expose conditions within the “most rigidly controlled nation on earth”.

‘The university called on the corporation to pull the plug on the programme because of claims that students were fed “lies and deception” before the trip.

Prof George Gaskell, the university’s deputy director, said the trip posed dangers to other LSE academics.

“Some of my colleagues are in Africa, China and various other sensitive countries,” he said. “If their independence and integrity is challenged they may find themselves at considerable risk.”

 

The BBC says this:

‘The students were all explicitly warned about the potential risks of travelling to North Korea with the journalist.”

 

Really?  Then the students are remarkably naive or they weren’t told that at all and the real dangers not emphasised.  I imagine ‘spies’ are not treated with a great deal of sympathy in North Korea.

SUBSCRIBE TO MY VIEWS

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“What kind of tricks are they playing on us, and where are they dragging us?”

　

The BBC is biased. It has a left of centre, progressive prism through which it forces us to view the world.

It is in many respects unaccountable. Yes it may lose the odd Director General but it carries on in the same old way after what are really superficial, surface changes for public consumption, just enough to satisfy the politicians that some form of rethinking is on hand, enough to suggest the BBC recognises that things were going wrong and that action is needed, and is indeed being taken to remedy the situation.

But that’s not the case. This time next year, this time five years from now, the BBC will still be attacking government policies that seek to reel in welfare spending , reform the NHS or in any way conflict with the BBC’s own values.

How to make it accountable?

Perhaps some form of subscription is the only way ahead.

　

Is the license fee justifiable any longer?

Is there a workable alternative?

Is there the political will to force through such a change in the face of undoubted resistance?

At the moment you have no choice as to whether to pay for the BBC…if you don’t like its political stance you have no avenue of complaint…it carries on regardless.  Subscription might force the BBC to concentrate its mind on being impartial and presenting news that is far more balanced and representative of the population.

　

Why is the current method of funding attractive? It certainly works as a means of raking in money…it is fairly easy and efficient to operate.

More importantly perhaps, depending where you sit on the political spectrum, it makes the BBC unaccountable to a great extent to the people who actually use the service…or rather those who watch, listen and read what the BBC provides.

There may be other ‘users’ who go under the radar. The BBC is supposedly independent of government, it proudly reiterates this and boasts of its fierce defence of that independence against political interference.

But how much of that is true? Just how independent is the BBC?

First of all it has its own innate bias…a group think that naturally gravitates towards left wing issues and policies…and therefore towards the Labour and or LibDem position.

Then there is a remarkable revolving door between it and the Labour Party resulting in a frequent exchange of personnel…far more than for many other organisation…though many arrive via the Guardian as well.  Politicians from ‘opposing’ mindsets are of the ‘wet’ kind and are graciously allowed employment at the BBC because essentially they are ‘of the Left’….such as Portillo or Patten…no doubt Ken Clarke will have his hush puppies under a BBC desk soon enough.

It is almost certain that the BBC collaborates or liases with Government both national and local, police and other organisations such as from academia, when dealing with particular issues and deciding how to communicate a particular message,  a line to take.   The need to present a united front, a universal, overarching view of events so that any dissenting voices are discredited and isolated is critical to that message being successfully transmitted…in the interests of ‘social cohesion’ for example….or rather trying not to allow blame to be apportioned where it is due.

An obvious example is the intense and orchestrated response to any Islamic terrorism in the UK.

A bomb goes off or a similarly serious outbreak of violence ‘in the name of Islam’ and instantly across the whole spectrum of the ‘Establishment’ there is the same message….any violence by Muslims, done allegedly in the name of Islam, is denounced as criminal, probably done by someone insane…someone who is perverting the true nature of Islam….Islam is a tolerant and peaceful religion.

Most importantly this should not reflect upon all Muslims  nor the religion of Islam…the perpetrators are Islamists, political actors who use Islam to further their political ends. There is a vast difference between Islam and Islamism….or so the politicians et al tell us.

Seymour Martin Lipset writes in ‘Political Man’:

‘Inherent in all democratic systems is the constant threat that the group conflicts which are democracy’s life-blood may solidify to the point where they threaten to disintegrate the society. Hence conditions which serve to moderate the intensity of partisan battle are among the key requisites of democratic Government.’

　

The BBC is used to spread a particular message, to ‘moderate partisan battles’…in this case about Islam…it is a religion of peace, the bombers or whoever are criminals and not Muslim, they certainly do not represent the majority of Muslims in the country.

So the BBC is far from ‘’independent’ of government in many respects. The government needs the BBC to push its message both at home and abroad and uses a compliant BBC to do so.

All that means of course that the license fee is a convenient firewall between the BBC and the Public, enforced by government statute and the threat of court action against non-payers….and that the government will want to maintain that status quo for its own purposes.

It leaves the BBC unaccountable and unresponsive to concerns of bias and complaints about its output. Whilst the BBC has you by the short and curlies you have no way of effectively reining it in.

The government is unlikely to want to change that….the BBC may be pro-Labour and anti-Tory but they are still a useful and powerful tool in government hands to control the ‘masses’.

　

“Violence can conceal itself with nothing except lies, and the lies can be maintained only by violence. And violence lays its ponderous paw not every day and not on every shoulder. It demands from us only obedience to lies and daily participation in lies – all loyalty lies in that.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn on violence and lies
 

If you can’t stop the lies at least stop buying into them.

A subscription method of funding the BBC would free us of the obligation to pay for something we either do not use or do not agree with politically.

It wouldn’t perhaps change the BBC’s output but would at least give the satisfaction that they do not take our money as well as our freedoms of speech and thought.

Subscription or not, something needs to change and the BBC’s stranglehold on the democratic process broken….remember the Tory Party turned itself inside out to appease the BBC.

The otherwise good output from the BBC needs to be maintained…the national coverage, the freedom from commercial adverts, its place in the ‘national conversation and consciousness’. ..not to mention the wide variety of high quality programmes (if only free of political messages)…and the news website.

But if it continues to pump out a left wing agenda then it should no longer be in the privileged position of picking our pockets to pay for its political propaganda that works against the interests of what is probably the majority of this country whose voices on immigration, Europe, Islam and climate change are all too often suppressed and go unheard.

Double Standards And Leaders

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Spot the missing President in this BBC report about the latest violent attacks by Guantanamo Bay inmates on their guards. We hear about the military not being able to decide what to do, as well as Congressional “restrictions” (translation: Congressmen simply don’t want to deal with the ensuing political mess if any of the POWTs are given a civil trial in their constituency), and we hear about how the hunger strike and violence is in protest of the fact that all these people are being held without charge or trial indefinitely. We even learn that one of the reasons the prisoners aren’t being released all over the place is concerns that they might be harmed if they go back home. Isn’t that nice? The other worry, of course, is that many of them go right back to the battlefield, which is the reason POW camps exist in the first place.

But no mention at all of the President of the United States. It’s a glaring omission, not only because He authorized military tribunals to start up again two years ago. After, of course, the fairly messy result of the civilian attempt the year before. Does He bear no responsibility? Another reason this is an unacceptable omission on the BBC’s part is that the President can simply release them all without sending them back to a dangerous homeland (if that is in fact even a real concern for many of them). There is precedent (e.g. the Uighurs, and everyone’s favorite “Briton”, Binyam Mohammed, who was later, after the BBC received complaints from both sides, demoted to “UK/British resident”) and it’s not impossible for someone capable of diplomacy and deal-making.

George Bush actually released, or transferred to custody in other countries, about 500 detainees during the six years he was in office after the establishment of the prison. Human Rights Watch, a trusted source for the BBC, puts the figure at 532. According to this New York Times interactive feature, there were 242 being held when Bush left office. There are currently 166 detainees, which means that the Nobel Peace Laureate-in-Chief, on the other hand, has released or transferred a mere 76 people in five years. His track record is not good, yet the BBC doesn’t even mention Him in the report about them protesting at what is essentially His failure.

Are there serious obstacles to releasing or transferring all of them? Sure. So why can’t the BBC mention that in His defense? It wouldn’t be biased, so long as they didn’t attempt to shift blame away entirely. The article as it stands does that.

Of course, the BBC is well aware of the President’s failure on this issue, which is why they casually put a link in the sidebar to Andrew Marr’s gently critical special report from before the last election. But is that good enough? It is for the BBC.

Barack Obama’s presidency: Why hope shrivelled

Marr covered a lot of ground in his report, but I’ll keep to a couple relevant and timely points. First, the failure on Guantanamo.

Marr did mention that the President’s early promises to shut down the prison failed.

But Obama’s early promises to close Guantanamo Bay and bring about a new era of trust between the US and the Muslim world have turned to dust. He over-promised.

That’s a fair assessment in its own way. Of course, all politicians over-promise on a regular basis, so that’s hardly a scathing critique.  Matt Frei (ex-BBC, former Washington correspondent and anchor of BBC World News America) was still hopeful and positive even a few months after He was elected and it was clear that not everything was going according to plan:

With a flick of a pen he declared the intention to close down Guantanamo Bay. He reached out to staunch enemies like Iran without sounding craven. He began to talk to the Muslim world rather than at it.

Frei and the rest of the BBC just ran with His promise, never questioning whether or not it was possible or wise. Justin Webb even enthused after that video kiss He blew to Iran early on:

The point is that Mr Obama understands that case himself – the case that says: “Come off it, America IS better, and has a decent case to put before the court of world opinion.”

But he also understands that there may be advantages to not making it, indeed to making the opposite case (to the extent that he did in that al Arabiya interview).

In fact, I wonder whether he really disagrees with the Krauthammer position.

George W Bush said what he thought. The new man is capable of sophistry in the matter of confusing his enemies…

(A cynic might ask who really are His enemies….)

At the time, Frei and Webb were the two top Beeboids in the US, the two highly experienced, world-class journalists the BBC expected you to trust. And they got it wrong. But the BBC is aware now. It’s just not really His fault, you see. Which brings me to the timely points which aren’t strictly relevant to the Guantanamo story.

Marr wheels out a couple of major falsehoods in his attempts to shift blame for the President’s failure to achieve absolutely all our dreams. One of them is a canard we hear a lot from the BBC:

It is quite true that in Congress, the Republicans waged a brutal and remorseless campaign to frustrate him.

In actual fact, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress for the first two years of His reign. They rammed through ObamaCare and spending bills without governing by consensus, without reaching across the aisle. The Republicans could do nothing to stop it. Mark Mardell even once referred to that as a “Golden Age”. So it’s absolutely false to claim that Republicans have blocked Him the entire time.Yet it’s so entrenched in the BBC mindset that even the US-born ex-Guardianista Daniel Nasaw peddles the Narrative. No need for a conspiracy or memos or editorial directives for this kind of Corporation-wide groupthink if they all think the same way anyway. The bias occurs naturally. They don’t even realize they’re doing it.

The very next sentence takes it further.

The level of vituperation and abuse Obama took at the hands of insurgent Tea Party activists went far beyond civilised disagreement.

And civilians protesting stopped Him how, exactly? But never mind the how: consider what Marr’s said there. “Far beyond” civilized disagreement? Really? We all know the BBC and the Left-wing media loved to tar the entire movement, millions of people, with the actions of a few. It was all part of the Narrative that there is no legitimate opposition to the President’s policies. In stark contrast, the BBC praised the Occupy Wall St. movement. At no time did they ever focus on the violence and criminal activity, or declare that the movement itself was tainted because of all the vandalism, rapes, deaths (here’s just a small sample, all of which the BBC refused to cover), or even when Occupiers were arrested for trying to blow up a bridge. In fact, the BBC censored the news of the plotters’ Occupy bona fides. None of this even remotely happened with any Tea Party groups or protests. But that clearly hasn’t stopped the BBC from their smear job. Actually, they were doing it from day one. I challenge anyone to demonstrate how the BBC treated the Occupy movement with similar negativity.

In the very first BBC report, Kevin Connolly insulted all of them with a sexual innuendo. Is this civilized, BBC? It hasn’t gotten any better since.

But let’s focus on “civilized disagreement”. Several BBC programmes in fact relish in over-the top stuff. The first incident which comes to mind is Eddie Mair calling Boris Johnson “a nasty piece of work”. Far beyond civilized disagreement, or merely a robust interview? Question Time is usually a good source of ugly statements which go far beyond civilized disagreement. We recently saw a Labour activist call a UKIP candidate a “disgusting” woman. Far worse is the week-long celebration over Margaret Thatcher’s death. Andrew Marr and Mark Mardell and all the rest of the Beeboids can frown and scold and defame the Tea Party movement and its participants, but they have refused to similarly cast the harsh light on opposition to Thatcher. Will the BBC similarly condemn the unions and Labour and apparently the vast majority of Northern England for going far beyond civilized disagreement in their opposition to the Iron Lady? Or is only The Obamessiah deserving of such special protection?

Is making “Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead” a chart-topper out of hatred for someone far beyond civilized disagreement? How about if a BBC Digital Media Executive tweets that he’s put it on his playlist? What about burning poppies? What about the violence and vandalism during those “student” protests? What about all the BBC employees who tweeted vicious and vulgar things about Mitt Romney or Republicans or Sarah Palin (see the “In Their Own Tweets” page on this site)? All just the isolated acts of a few, no reason to tar the entire BBC, or all opponents of Thatcher’s policies, or all opponents of UKIP, or all opponents of tuition fees or all opponents of budget cuts? Okay, but then we must also condemn Marr and the rest of the BBC for smearing millions over the acts of a few.

The reason I bring that up is because it’s clear that Marr was trying to shift blame away from the President. While he realized that it was never possible to fulfill all those promises, he doesn’t really blame Him for any of the failures. It’s always someone else’s fault. So even when the BBC links to his report as a subtle way to admit the President has failed on Guantanamo, there’s plenty of blame-shifting to be found both in the Guantanamo article and Marr’s feature.

They just can’t help themselves. But the double standards are clear.

BBC AND NORTH KOREA…

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Dd you see this?

The Commentator has learned that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the British publicly owned news organisation, has forged student credentials for its journalists in order that they could gain access to the secretive North Korea.

An e-mail from the director of the London School of Economics (LSE) on Saturday stated that the BBC used the visit to plant three journalists inside North Korea at a risk to the university and its students on the trip.

The letter states that a trip organised by the LSE’s ‘Grimshaw Club’ was used as cover by BBC journalists without the knowledge or consent of the London university. “The School authorities had no advance knowledge of the trip or of its planning,” it said.

When Nelson Mandela Dies…..

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The BBC has come off the fence on grounds of decency and taste:

The Wizard of Oz song at the centre of an anti-Margaret Thatcher campaign will not be played in full on the Official Chart Show.

Instead a five-second clip of the 51-second song will be aired as part of a Newsbeat report, Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper said.

Sales of Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead have soared since the former Prime Minister’s death on Monday, aged 87.

Mr Cooper called the decision “a difficult compromise”.

 

 

However, to play the song as part of the Chart Show would have put the BBC in a more invidious position. 

It goes without saying that a similar situation on the death of Princess Diana or, in the future, Nelson Mandela, would have immediately resulted in a ban on any song which was manipulated into the charts for political purposes or purely for reasons of hatred of either person.

 The BBC is all too ready to censor when it suits.

The BBC recently forced a playwright to alter their script as the BBC believed it could potentially offend Muslims.

The BBC similarly took the film ‘Greenmantle’ out of the schedules…presumably because it related a tale of Muslims joining up with the Germans in WWI with a hope of forming a ‘Caliphate’….the BBC doesn’t want anyone to think that Islamic radicalism was around before the 1930’s….because then they can claim that Islam has nothing to do with religious extremism or political radicalism…it does  not originate from the Islamic tenets or scriptures.

Gary Glitter and Jimmy Savile have been to all intents and purposes erased from the BBC archives.

Today we hear that a Christian teacher is banned indefinitely from schools for revealing his views on homosexuality in reply to questions asked by students.

Ironically the judge explained:  ‘The policy was part of “modern British values of tolerance”‘

 

 

The furore over the song is all a bit of a storm in a tea cup but because the BBC is so ready to censor things which offend certain select groups or cultures and ideologies I think it is only right that they should not play the song.  To play it would indicate a definite bias against the Tories and Mrs Thatcher, a readiness to look the other way for Tories.  They would not deal  with a similar situation in the same way, as I say, on the death of Princess Diana or Nelson Mandela….an immediate ban would be in place.

There is also a very strong case for not playing it on grounds of taste and decency considering the responsibility the BBC bares in its position at the ‘heart of the Nation’ as it likes to remind us frequently and its own perception of itself as something above the rabble in the rest of the media, especially the Redtops….and as it seems, they have decided along those lines.

The BBC says: “It is a compromise and it is a difficult compromise to come to. You have very difficult and emotional arguments on both sides of the fence.

“Let’s not forget you also have a family that is grieving for a loved one who is yet to be buried.”

 

Toby Young in the Telegraph thinks that not playing the song is the end of free speech…but of course it isn’t at all….The case of the Christian teacher might be though.  The song is not a satirical comment nor a political tract…it is purely intended by the organisers to celebrate the death of Mrs Thatcher, after wishing it upon her for years…and so could be, and probably is, a ‘hate crime’…not playing it is therefore not the censoring of free speech but of hate speech.

Is it OK to wish death upon someone just because of their political views?  What’s the difference between that and wishing death upon someone because of their race?

When Ed Miliband and Co denounce the Tories for being ‘poshboys’ or ‘Toffs’ unable to do their job because of their ‘class’….is that not the same as racism?  And yet the BBC laughs it off as a big joke.  Isn’t it Miliband’s attitude that informs the attitude of those who think celebrating the death of Mrs Thatcher is a good idea…it is demonising, dehumanising the Tories, the ‘nasty party’, or ‘the Rich’, so that it becomes seemingly OK to wish death upon them.

 

Targeted ridicule, satire and rational, reasoned critiques have their place and are necessary to keep politician’s and other’s feet on the ground and to stop them believing their own hype but outright gratuitous abuse has no place under the banner of ‘Free Speech’ if the only object is to hurt the other person’s feelings, purely to insult or injure.

 

 

Loadsamoney…..Lovely Bubbly!

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Amused by this from the Beeb in 2005 when they were looking at the ‘Thatcher Years In Graphics’

The first graphic that they use to sum up Thatcher’s legacy?

 

Graph of champagne imports

 

That’s right…Champagne sales to all those nouveau riche barrow boys who flashed the cash.

The BBC could I suppose have had a graph showing how many ‘plebs’ with the wrong school  tie were able to get jobs in the City when Thatcher broke the monopoly of the Old School Tie network that used to run the place…now ‘democratised’.

 

Or indeed how many Champagne bottles littered the corridors of Broadcasting House after the election of Labour to power in 1997.

QUESTION TIME FROM FINCHLEY

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I wanted to create a specific post for Question Time tonight.

‘David Dimbleby presents Question Time from Lady Thatcher’s former constituency of Finchley.  On the panel are Conservative Cabinet Minister Ken Clarke MP, Labour’s former Home Secretary David Blunkett MP, former leader of the Liberal Democrats Ming Campbell MP, Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee and Lady Thatcher’s authorised biographer Charles Moore.”

I can’t liveblog it but I can those of you watching it …and I will be…to leave your opinions here. I fear the worst…