Monthly Archives: March 2015

The BBC is being strangely quiet about events surrounding the three little Jihadis who skipped off to join Isis.  The BBC has until recently been bombarding us with tales of distraught families and police and security service failures.

What anyone with a questioning mind might have asked is how the parents of these girls remained in the dark about their intentions, or possible intentions, when their close friend, Sharmeena Begum, had already left for Syria in December.

In light of the fact that she was a close friend of the girls and that the parents must have known each other, especially in such a close community in which news would travel very fast, is it really likely that the three girl’s parents had no idea that the friend had left to go to Syria and that therefore their own daughters might be susceptible to whatever ideas led to that friend leaving to join ISIS?  Apparently it is entirely possible they knew nothing….and the BBC reported such blessed ignorance without challenge.

The BBC was more than happy to swallow whatever guff the parents came up with about their own lack of knowledge and how it was all the Police and MI6’s fault.  Yet another example of the BBC looking to absolve the Muslim community of any blame….the BBC’s thinking is that if the parents are found to be at fault it will reflect badly on the whole community and Islam itself…therefore don’t turn over any stones and uncover anything uncomfortable.

Not all people are so deliberately naive….the Telegraph reports that Social Services, again not the parents, had to intervene in yet another case of ‘radicalisation’…

Mr Justice Hayden made the move following an application from social services bosses at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

He was told that social workers had raised concerns that the girls might flee to areas controlled by the Islamic State

 

The BBC hints at the parent’s part in events..

A number of adults involved in their care have also had their passports seized.

There was evidence to suggest family members in the case had not been “full and frank” with social services, the judge said, and that the girls were becoming “more radicalised”.

Why no mention of Abase Hussen? (see below)  It would seem to be an ideal place in a BBC report to mention his own extremism.

The BBC are themselves being less than ‘full and frank’ with us…it’s not as if it isn’t an important subject…the reasons behind the radicalisation of British Muslims….something which is central to all debate on this subject.

Why for instance do they make no mention of this story from the Mail?….

Father who blamed police for not stopping his daughter joining ISIS, attended 2012 rally led by hate preacher Anjem Choudary and attended by Lee Rigby killer

Sensational footage has emerged showing the father of one of the three schoolgirl ‘jihadi brides’ at the head of an Islamist rally led by hate preacher Anjem Choudary and attended by Michael Adebowale, the killer of soldier Lee Rigby.

The video shows Abase Hussen marching at the front of the demonstrators, behind a banner reading: ‘The followers of Mohammed will conquer America’.

He was filmed chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ amid dozens of protesters and standing just yards away as the American flag is burned.

Kind of an important revelation that the father of one of the ‘radicalised’ Jihadi Brides was himself a ‘radical’.  The BBC has been trying to downplay the part Islam has to play in the radicalisation of Muslims and by distancing the girls’ radicalisation from their families and their own culture tries to place the blame elsewhere..on internet extremists, MI6 and the Police, or foreign policy….never putting the blame where it belongs.

The BBC’s lack of interest in the father’s extremism is strange when you consider their recent indepth look at Jihadis…

Tracking Britain’s jihadists

Guess they’ll be adding him to the list one day.

The BBC’s ‘tracking’ of Jihadis is yet another attempt to mislead the audience…the BBC presenting the ‘radicalisation’ merely as a result of people in one location who are friends with each other and encourage each other to join up…failing to mention the underlying reasons that make them decide to do that…

So what does the data tell us? For a start, many of those who have gone to Syria or Iraq have done so in clusters.

Take Ifthekar Jaman’s hometown of Portsmouth, for example.

This cluster relied on friendship and geography – but there are also ties developed via social media.

We know that Jaman played a key role in the movement of a cluster of young men from Cardiff and Manchester.

Friendship and online links have both played a role in the decisions of 11 girls and women to travel to the region, such as the four teenagers from east London who went missing in recent months.

….but it’s not some ‘Famous Five’ adventure as the BBC wants to portray this as…the radicalisation has ideological roots based on well known Islamic obligations put upon Muslims by their religion that the BBC doesn’t explore.

The BBC dismisses claims that they are ‘hard-core’ jihadis if they travel to Syria…

Late last year, some security chiefs across the West thought that the numbers going to the region were levelling off because many would-be travellers had now come to understand the true nature of the self-styled Islamic State’s aims and barbarity.

That meant those still determined to go were hardcore jihadist sympathisers – and they were presumed to be a small group.

Whether that analysis still stands is open to question.

 

You know what, I don’t think it is open to question…if you travel to the Middle East to join an organisation whose brutality and fundamentalist ideology is unmissably well known then you have to want to be a part of that….pretty ‘hard-core’ I’d say.

The BBC is playing fast and loose with the facts…giving us ones it wants us to have, hiding less convenient ones and those it can’t hide it tries to bury under equivocations and claims of the facts being ‘open to question’.

I thought it was interesting the way the BBC present the “news’ that the Conservative Party are considering options for scrapping several benefits, Department for Work and Pensions document.

The leaked files, to the BBC (SIC) commissioned by Tory officials, also suggest a regional benefits cap and taxing disability benefits as ways to help cut £12bn from the welfare budget by 2017/18. The Conservatives insisted the proposals were not party policy. Labour’s Rachel Reeves said the public had a “right to know” the plans. The shadow work and pensions secretary has written to the Conservatives demanding they explain what welfare cuts they intend to make.

Look at the image the BBC selected to lead the story…

Cruel Tory bastards, right? Vote Labour, right?

At every turn, the BBC is trying to present sensible economics from the Conservatives in the worst possible light. In the face of excellent economic news on just about every front, Labour needs the BBC to do what it can to minimise the advantages to Mr Cameron.

Most polls indicate that Cameron emerged as the winner in the Channel 4/Sky debate last evening. But at 6.30am this morning and then subsequently across its news channel, the BBC handed the victory to Miliband. Remarkable.

Here you go, it’s Friday and this is timely! Detail the bias here!

The rising employment figures have always been a mystery, and an issue, for the BBC, they have never been able to accept that they must be a sign that something, somewhere is going right in the economy and the BBC has always sought to find something negative to say on the subject trying deliberately to undermine the perceived success of the economy….a central plank of the Tories’ election strategy.

Self-employment has been rising and this has often been portrayed by the BBC as a negative…dismissing the jobs as of low value and low status and therefore not a sign of a recovering economy but a sign of desperation by people forced out of work by government Austerity.

However that’s not usually true…most interviews with self-employed people go against the presenter’s narrative that the self-employed were forced into that line of work and are living in a miserable penury….the self-employed more often than not claim to love their work and are enjoying a good measure of success.

An example came up yesterday after the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the RSA released a study into self-employment.  Not sure why they decided to do this study at this time just before an election in which jobs are an issue …especially as in 2003 the JRF released a study that said pretty much exactly the same things about self-employment.

They do admit that self-employment is in 2015…

  ….a trend that predates the crash: self-employment grew in nearly every year since the turn of the century. The implication is that self-employment has as much to do with long-term structural trends in our economy – new technologies, changing mindsets and shifting demographics – as with a short-term cyclical blip.

 

So not really a result of the economic crash or Coalition austerity policies but an increasing and already present trend…and one encouraged by Labour as noted by the JRF in 2003…

Policies to encourage entry into self-employment are increasingly linked to measures to combat social exclusion.

Listening to the BBC’s ‘Wake Up To Money’ and you get the idea that self-employment is a form of Coalition government imposed torture.  An interview with one business woman, Carla, (21 mins) painted a picture of a person held over a barrel, forced to carry on working even at death’s door…. Adam Parson’s exclaiming ‘Wow! …a pretty extreme example of the pressures to keep working.’  when Carla described how she battled on after having a car crash.

By coincidence I heard the same woman being interviewed later on by Peter Allen (10:41) in an interview that had an altogether different tone and painted an entirely different picture of her life and business….Allen asked her ‘How’s it been?’ [Her self-employed life]  She replied ‘Great!’

Allen asked ‘Has it made life better?’ [Being self-employed] She replied ‘Oh yes….I love what I do…it’s so much fun…the creativity you get to enjoy everyday is amazing!’

Sounds like she is enjoying self-employment despite the obvious pressures.

One good thing about Allen is that he often starts from the standard BBC world view but is happy to adjust his views when presented with facts that disprove it…..as when he was ‘shocked’ to hear that the richest in society actually pay a vast amount of tax…and a rising amount contrary to what we are often led to believe.

The ‘WUTM’ crew in contrast are averse to any change in narrative and plough on regardless of the facts or of what their expert guest commentators reveal when it goes against the doom and gloom line the comic duo of Clark and Parsons relentlessly peddle on the BBC…..such as low inflation apparently being a disaster waiting to happen or people starting to borrow more is a sign of desperation as they run out of money…rather than a sign of confidence in the future economy and rising wages.

Adam Parsons unfortunately doesn’t restrict himself to the death watch on WUTM but frequently pops up on other programmes giving us the benefit of his unique take on the world.

Today’s interviews with ‘Carla’ shows though how different things can be made to look by some in the Media when they have an axe to grind.

Tariq Ramadan…the Muslim voice of reason, reform and renaissance, in the BBC’s, the Guardian’s and the Government’s eyes.

Where is Tariq Ramadan?  There has been a tragic plane crash in whihc 150 people have died and the news has been absolutely dominated by reports about this story.

When Muslim terrorists slaughtered cartoonists, Jews and police officers in Paris Ramadan and his ilk told us that it was ‘terrible’, no, really, but…and there’s always a but….Ramadan wanted to know why we were spending so much time on reporting such a trivial event…after all Muslims were being killed around the world and, he claimed, nobody cared…..

We condemn the violent extremism that is targeting westerners. But it is not only westerners. We are reacting emotionally because 12 people were killed in Paris, but there are hundreds being killed day in, day out in Syria and Iraq, and still we send more bombs. We have to look at the big picture. Lives matter, but it is important to be clear that the lives of Muslims in Muslim majority countries have as much value as our own lives in the west.

 

It seems that when the interests of European Muslims are not at stake, and the furtherance of Islam is not an issue, Ramadan is not concerned about what the Media reports and how much coverage they give to particular events.

If the plane’s pilot had been a Muslim with concerns about ‘Western’ foreign policy you can be certain Ramadan and Co would have mobilised and been filling the airwaves with assurances this had nothing to do with Islam and that more people die in Syria everyday…so what’s the problem with a little bit  of ‘terror’ in Europe?

The killings in Paris were important because they were not the ‘mere’ murder of a handful of people but represented a significant attack on the cultural  values , the whole society, of the West.  Ramadan and his other Muslim apologists who cried their crocodile tears over Charlie Hebdo are engaged in a war, a war of words, intent on undermining the West and imposing Islam.  Those who think Ramadan is a reformer are mistaken.

In Canada Ramadan was one of the founders of the Muslim organisation ‘Muslim Presence’…..it has some interesting views on Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons in 2012….

It is a declaration of war… a war of religion that no free expression in the world may be proud of.
No Charlie
If offending is the expression of your freedom, then admit that violence will be the expression of their freedom! It is a trade of bad practices.
No, do not say ‘but’! Assume [your choices]…

Question Time this week comes from the Labour stronghold of Bolton in Greater Manchester. Dimbo will be joined by ‘Conservative’ Education Secretary Nicky Morgan MP, Scottish Labour Leader Jim Murphy MP, Plaid Cymru Leader Leanne Wood, Ukip MEP Steven Woolfe MEP and Janet Street-Porter. What feast for the senses that should be! Join us for the fun at 10:45 or before if you’re really keen.

Here’s the log. We had 10 people in tonight, more would be welcome!

I was listening to the BBC just after 6.30am this morning, to the Today programme. The news item being reported was this;

The SNP would block a minority Conservative government by voting down its Queen’s Speech if it held the post-election balance of power, its former leader Alex Salmond has said. Mr Salmond said the move could bring down the government if Labour joined in, with David Cameron “locked out”.

This is the latest instance of anti-English bellicosity from Salmond but what irritated me was the relative insouciance this was reported by the BBC “analyst”. I can but imagine the BBC response to UKIP declaring it would “lock out” Labour from government. As we go through this election campaign I believe we will see the BBC contining to fawn over the SNP and Labour, whilst demonising UKIP and any vestige of authentic Conservatism from Mr Cameron’s party.

Greg from Not Another Teaching Blog   sends this article for your consideration.

“How you see the BBC’s decision to remove the phenomenally popular presenter of its flagship worldwide show could very well depend on your view of the man in question. Those who support Clarkson see him as the last of dying breed of English TV personalities, the stubborn, old-school and humorous gentlemen who simply enjoys being himself while his detractors see him as obnoxious, offensive and unpleasant.

But let’s be clear: this was not a moral decision by the BBC management. To believe it was is to believe that a racial slur “slope” or a minor physical scuffle are greater crimes against humanity than covering up the sexual abuse of children committed by Jimmy Saville, for which nobody at the Beeb has been punished. The BBC’s firing of Clarkson was – or at least should have been – a business decision. That they have made the wrong one is a matter of delight for me, as it should be for anyone who admires Clarkson or appreciates a quality, politically neutral media service. Continue reading →

Here you go, a new Open Thread to detail the bias!