Right-washing The Left

 

 

‘Hitler’s Nazi party were national socialists, and therefore technically left wing – but so left wing as to appear right wing in their extreme and racist views. The same can apply to the BNP.’

from the BBC dictionary…ala Orwell

 

From Teddy Bear in the comments….a BBC reply to someone who complained that they were referring to the BNP as right-wing when they should be called left-wing:

 

Dear Mr D****

Thanks for your e-mail.

I understand you have concerns with our presenters and reporters referring to the BNP or similar parties as “far-right” when you feel that this description is inaccurate.

I can assure you that we carefully consider the terminology before referring to any organisation or person in our news reports.

The BNP was born out of the National Front – a “national” party, who like many parties purporting to represent the national interests of a particular country, claim themselves to be national socialists. NS is an extremely left wing form of political belief – Hitler’s Nazi party were national socialists, and therefore technically left wing – but so left wing as to appear right wing in their extreme and racist views. The same can apply to the BNP.

I would like to assure you that I’ve registered your feelings about this matter on our audience log. This is the internal report of audience feedback which we compile daily for all programme makers and commissioning executives within the BBC, and also their senior management. It ensures that your points, and all other comments we receive, are circulated and considered across the BBC.

Thank you once again for taking the trouble to share your views with us.

Regards
Ross *****
BBC Complaints

 

 

As Teddy Bear says ‘you couldn’t make it up’.…but you know what…somebody did!

 

 

Why?

 

 

Why is the BBC giving this herbert more publicity?…….

 

Muslim broadcaster Mo Ansar

Immigration Street protesters gather outside Channel 4 offices

A group of Southampton residents are protesting outside Channel 4’s headquarters against the pending TV series Immigration Street.

Muslim broadcaster and community activist Mo Ansar, who lives in Southampton and took part in the protest, said the series producers, Love Productions, had been “reckless in their approach”.

He said: “We’ve seen with the Benefits Street programme and the programmes on Gypsy traveller communities that this sensationalist broadcasting results in prejudice.

“Both these communities have had backlashes. It fuels and feeds the far-right.”

 

 

A know-nothing self-publicist who will jump on any bandwagon to get himself on the tellyand in the media.

I’m sure we all benefit from his words of wisdom.  Cheers BBC.  Remind me,  just why did so many BBC programmes refuse to have him on?

An yet he’s back.

 

 

 

 

Fry’s Non-Turkish Delight

 

 

Some thoughts on free speech, blasphemy and religion.

 

Curiously whilst the BBC reports this, Benedict Cumberbatch in call to pardon convicted gay men,  it hasn’t bothered to report the words of one of its favourite sons, Stephen Fry, when he denounced God……off with his head!  And they were pretty keen on his gay marriage after all….Why is Stephen Fry’s decision to get married a major news story for the BBC?

 

 

 

From the Telegraph:

Stephen Fry, a staunch atheist, has launched an impassioned attack on religion, stating that any God who created this universe was “an utter maniac, totally selfish” and “evil”.

The newly married broadcaster was asked what he would do if he found himself at the “pearly gates” after his death.

“I’ll say: bone cancer in children, what’s that about?” he said.

“How dare you. How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that’s not our fault? It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil.

“Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?”

Fry was being interviewed for an Irish television show called The Meaning of Life when he launched into an impassioned tirade about God’s existence.

Asked if he thought he would get to heaven, he replied: “No, but I wouldn’t want to. I wouldn’t want to get in on his terms. They’re wrong.

He added: “The God who created this universe, if he created this universe, is quite clearly a maniac, an utter maniac, totally selfish.

“We have to spend our lives on our knees thanking him. What kind of God would do that?

“Yes, the world is very splendid, but it also has in it insects whose whole life cycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind. Why? Why did you do that to us? It is simply not acceptable.

“Atheism is not just about not believing there’s a god. On the assumption there is one, what kind of God is he? It’s perfectly apparent that was monstrous, utterly monstrous, and deserves no respect.”

He added: “The moment you banish him, your life becomes simpler, purer cleaner, more worth living in my opinion.”

Fry said he preferred the religion of the ancient Greeks whose Gods did not present themselves as being “all-seeing, all-wise, all-kind, all beneficent”.

 

The Catholic convert that is Tim Stanley makes a hash of countering Fry on God’s behalf.

 

Perhaps just a little bit too much free speech there for the BBC’s liking in these controversial times.

 

Things were different once….or not….Cleese bashing the Bishop and coming out on top…..

 

 

 

 

Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink, Says So Much More.

 

 

 

The BBC was having a field day yesterday with many of its favourite subjects in the spotlight…austerity, royalty and Thatcher, not to mention a bit of Imperial looting to cast a jaundiced eye over.  Not so much blatant bias that you could point a finger at and claim absolutely that it is bias but perhaps a more perncious, insidious type…a never ending flow of slights, innuendos, hints and provocations intended to nudge you one way…or having that effect, intended or not, as a result of the BBC’s own interest in certain subjects being reflected in their choice of stories to report and how they interpret them.

 

We were treated to repeated reports about the goings on in Prince Charles’ household, or the goings on according to some bird with a book to flog…so no doubt she was very appreciative of the massive coverage and publicity the BBC gave her.

Funny thing  was we were assured by the BBC that this old girl had privileged access to Prince Charles, his family and his staff who we were led to believe had co-operated in the production of this biography….even the six o’clock news last night was peddling this line.

Which you might think strange as this report from the BBC, last updated at 13:14,  says something different….

Clarence House pointed out that the biography, contrary to some reports, was not authorised and the author did not have any exclusive access to the prince or his staff.

 

So that’ll be an unauthorised biography without authorised access to the Prince, his family or staff.

I’m certain the book must have something positive to say about the Prince and his work…and yet the BBC couldn’t find it and hour after hour rolled out this litany of disaster and incompetence.

Maybe the BBC has an axe to grind?

 

 

Then there is the revelations about Sir Peter Hayman…the BBC making discrete links to Thatcher saying she had been informed of the case and had been advised on how to counter claims of a cover up…implying somehow that she was involved in a cover up herself…not making a direct allegation…yet…just the BBC setting her up for the inevitable conspiracy theories that will surface in the coming weeks.

A previously secret file from the 1980s briefed Margaret Thatcher on Sir Peter Hayman’s “sexual perversion”.

Ex-Cabinet Secretary Lord Armstrong told the BBC his priority had been national security implications, rather than whether he should be prosecuted.

 

Here is the BBC’s subtle innuendo that there was a cover up…‘lines to take’:

The file contains “lines to take” for government officials when asked questions by the media about Hayman’s 1978 arrest.

One of these was that there had been “no cover-up”.

 

That ‘lines to take’ phrase, quoted without full context, is entirely misleading and suggestive of Thatcher having to hide something from the media.

 

Oddly in all the BBC reports there is no mention of the Labour government’s role in any of this as Hayman was first investigated in 1978 under Labour’s regime…..So is Thatcher being accused of a cover up of a cover up by Labour when in government?

 

 

What else did the BBC bring us yesterday?

 

The Radical Left and their anti-Austerity drive, in Greece and possibly in Spain too…the BBC being very uncritical and straight faced about this…imagine if UKIP or FN in France were in similar positions of power….the air waves would be in meltdown.

The BBC must be torn…what an irony, the cheers for the radical lefties wanting to do away with the hated ‘Austerity’ and yet those same lefties  might well bring the end of the favoured Grand Project as countries head for the exit of the EU one way or another.

The BBC’s economic ‘experts’ have always been keen to highlight the struggles of European countries which implemented austerity measures….always leaving unsaid, with a pregnant silence that spoke volumes, that ‘perhaps’ Britain might also be similarly suffering under austerity and it should be ended…perhaps, just maybe, we should have a ‘Plan B’!

 

And then there is Saudia Arabia and the funeral of King Abdullah attended by the Great and the Good…much to the disgust of the Guardianistas and subject to outraged comment on the ‘Now Show’ this week.  Why?  Because of Saudi’s horrific human rights record….but what isn’t dwelled upon is why Saudi Arabia has such draconian rules and punishments….it is an islamic state…THE Islamic State, living by the teachings of the Koran…remember what the Guardian said…

King Abdullah embodied the wickedness of Saudi Arabia’s regime

Saudi’s influence on the outside world is almost wholly malign. The young men it sent to fight in Afghanistan turned into al-Qaida. The Sunni jihadis whom Saudis have funded in Iraq and Syria turned into Isis. It has spread a poisonous form of Islam throughout Europe with its subsidies, and corrupted western politicians and businessmen with its culture of bribery. The Saudis have always appealed to the worst forms of western imperialism: their contempt for other Muslims is as great as any American nationalist’s.

 

Not ‘Islam’ but a ‘poisonous form of Islam’.

Curious that so many of our own Muslim community are faithful followers of the very same creed…indeed so many mosques, madrassas, Islamic cultural, educational and social centres as well as our universities, charities and Muslim activist groups are funded by Saudi Arabia, and like-minded Gulf states…and yet criticise British Muslim religiously based practises and you become a pariah, a racist, an Islamophobe.  Criticise Saudi Arabia and you are an enlightened battler for truth and humanity.

 

 

And there’s more cultural anti-British cringe from the BBC…from FOOC….British troops in China looted the Imperial Summer Palace in 1860…what a cultural outrage, the cultured and educated Chinese nation plundered by the heathen imperialist troops of Britain and France.

What was, well the norm for the BBC in cases like these when they get rather sniffy about British foreign adventures, was the complete refusal to explore the fact that the  Chinese had also committed some outrages…some rather bloody ones that led to the looting and destruction of the Old Summer Palace….“This is the reward for perfidy and cruelty”…..swiftly passed over by the BBC  but spelt out here….

In 1860 during the Second Opium War, two British envoys, a journalist for The Times and their small escort of British and Indian troopers met with the Royal Prince under a flag of truce to negotiate. They were imprisoned and tortured, resulting in twenty deaths. The British High Commissioner to China, Lord Elgin, retaliated by ordering the destruction of the palace, which was then carried out by British and French troops.

 

The narrator got quite excited to make a poignant connection between a Lord Elgin in China who was related to an earlier Lord Elgin who removed the ‘Elgin Marbles’ from Greece…making a pointed but pointless comment obviously trying to make some sort of crude resonance between the two.

So yes, the BBC happily painting the British in the blackest of colours whilst the Chinese were the peaceful inhabitants of a huge empire (wonder how they got that!) devastated by ignorant and violent vandals and looters.

 

All in all a good day for the BBC…..cheerleading anti-Austerity groups, making casual, unconfirmed allegations about Prince Charles, making subtle innuendos about Thatcher  no doubt hoping to open a can of worms in the coming weeks, being outraged about Saudia Arabia but not quite sure why, and the perennial outrage at the British Empire at work.

 

 

Auntie Knows Best

 

 

The BBC has released a report into the future of News.

Here is the BBC’s own version of what’s in the report:

BBC ‘should improve local and World Service news’

BBC News should increase both its local and global coverage and improve its digital services if it is to remain relevant, the corporation has said.

The BBC should “do more to provide local news that properly serves all parts of the UK”, according to a report titled The Future of News.

It should also reverse the trend for closures to World Service language operations, the report said.

“If the UK wants the BBC to remain valued and respected, an ambassador of Britain’s values and an agent of soft power in the world, then the BBC is going to have to commit to growing the World Service and the government will also have to recognise this,” the report said.

As well as “looking at how we can develop a service that might work for North Korea”, the corporation is also “increasingly reflecting on the position of the media in Russia and Turkey”, it said.

The report added: “In many parts of the world, there is not more free expression but less.”

 

 

This from the BBC that set out to destroy the EDL, smears UKIP as immigrant murdering nazis and incites anti-Semitism with its reporting from the Middle East.

Did laugh at this from the first paragraph of the report…

In a democracy, news is the essential
public service. Government by the
people cannot function without it.

The job of the news is to keep

everyone informed – to enable us to be
better citizens, equipped with what we
need to know.

 

The same BBC that closed down debate on immigration, Europe and climate change….and tried to mislead us on the economy and Labour’s Plan B.

It tells us that in the age of the internet and the proliferation of many different sources of news…

‘The BBC is more necessary and valuable than ever’

 

I would suggest it was the other way around….because of the BBC’s dominance of the news and its very one sided view of what we should hear and think, as evidenced by this very report, see below, it is more vital than ever that we have access to the internet and the many and varied sources of news it provides to balance and weigh up the BBC’s coverage which, I have to say, I never accept as a reliable source of ‘truth’ based on long experience of reading and hearing what they tell me only to find that it is only half the story….as shown recently with its very misleading report on the IFS statements about the economy.

The BBC went on….

The internet is not keeping everyone
informed, nor will it: it is, in fact,
magnifying problems of information
inequality, misinformation, polarisation
and disengagement.

 

Sorry but that’s so much bull…..without the internet we would be slaves to the BBC’s world view and as for ‘disengagement’ I would suggest that it has massively increased political participation in one form or another from protest groups, charities and NGOs all utilising it to get their messages across to pressure governments and companies…it has also enabled political parties to revitalise their support…just look at Obama in the US….just look at Russell Brand on YouTube.

The only difference between the BBC and ‘bloggers’ is that the BBC has the money and resources to gather the news but that does not mean that the BBC should be the sole arbiter of what that news means….the blogger is just as able and entitled to analyse and interpret that information as any BBC journalist.  Naturally that puts the ‘professional’ BBC journalist’s nose out of joint but so what?  Celebrate the diversity of opinion!

 

Compare that BBC’s version of what the ‘Future News’ report says with this from the Telegraph:

BBC World Service ‘under threat from Al Jazeera and nationalist news’

BBC warns the World Service needs extra money to counter rival broadcasters touting news based around ‘political Islam, evangelical Christianity, nationalism and patriotism’

Global news is polarising around religion and nationalism, the report warns.

“There is a deepening global tilt towards news focused or aggregated around a world view: political Islam, evangelical Christianity, nationalism, patriotism and so on. While these are very different and varied phenomena, in such communities of interest shared values become a new brand loyalty.

“Al Jazeera in Arabic sees itself as serving an audience that is conservative and Muslim. For the station and its audience, common religious assumptions give a sense of belonging which can bleed into shared views on political, economic and especially cultural questions.

“Similarly, Fox News articulates a very specific view of what it is to be an American.

“In this polarised world, modern or universal rights – political, human, gender or sexual rights – or concepts of openness and democracy become deeply polarising.”

 

So not just extremist Islam but evangelical Christianity…has the BBC told all those African immigrants they are on its hit list for extermination…ideologically speaking?

Then there’s the other world evils to be tackled…nationalism, patriotism …and the news according to Fox News.

So much for ‘impartial’.

Curious that the BBC’s article didn’t mention any of that.

 

Curious that the BBC recognises in theory the problems associated with fundamental ideologies in relation to secular, liberal democracies which promote universal rights…and yet it, far from tackling what it calls ‘political Islam’, which to you and me is everyday ‘Islam’ as it is an ideology designed for political purposes wrapped up in religious garb in order to give it divine sanction for its actions, the BBC defends and promotes those who wish to impose ‘political Islam’ upon us….such as in the Torjan Horse case or where it excuses terrorism and refuses to link it to ‘The Religion of Peace’.  How can you claim to be tackling ‘political Islam’ when you refuse to admit what that really means?

As for nationalism and patriotism…this is the BBC that at every turn condemns the British Empire which brought half the world under one rule….thus producing a Pax Britannica….held together at the point of a gun.  It is empires that produce the worst violence as people struggle for their independence from colonialism….something always cheered on by the BBC as it supports ‘good’ nationalism by preferrably brown people, though non-Protestant will do as well….and more violence as they struggle to decide whose vision of the nation will prevail, as in Libya now.

Empires, those borderless mish mashes of states, always break up…it is human nature to want self -rule and for people to define themselves by their location and shared cultures and values.  The BBC in its idealism, as with communists, takes no regard of human nature and tries to impose their utopian vision upon an unwilling mass…all to end in tears and violence.

The BBC’s hatred of nationalism and patriotism extends only as far as that of the Anglo-Saxon world.  The British Empire was bad, the Muslim caliphate good…indeed the BBC in many respects supports the ISIS caliphate which redraws the map of the Middle East regardless of ethnicity or religion…which is curious as the BBC hates the diverse nature of Iraq which it tells us is an unworkable forced union of different peoples….no celebrating diversity there then….of course that was created by Europeans so must be a bad thing.

Yes, the BBC will support you in your fight for independence from your colonial masters but when you get it will denounce you for being nasty little nationalists.  Welcome to the world according to the BBC.

 

 

 

 

 

Sunk Without Trace

 

Thanks to Guest Who for pointing me in the direction of Newsnight where (Labour supporting…apparently) Kirsty Wark trashed Andy Burnham, Labour’s Shadow Health Minister.

 

 

 

A fascinating interview that tore Burnham to shreds and showed him up as a one hell of a bluffer unwilling to commit himself to putting a figure on how much of NHS work could be contracted out to the private sector….Burnham stated that the ‘Market experiment was over…and the NHS was now the preferred provider’.…which is very slippy and disengenuous in its abstract non-committal.  The NHS might be the ‘preferred provider’ in theory but if efficiency or quality of care can be provided better by the private sector those in the NHS who are contracting the services will choose that…so it’s an open ended non-commitment to the NHS by Burnham…the private sector, in theory, could provide all the NHS services even if the NHS itself was the ‘preferred provider’ as Burnham will not say just where, at what percentage, he will stop further NHS work being contracted out.

 

Wark then holed Burnham below the water line with a BBC study of knee and hip operations in which the patients said that they received better quality of care and outcome from private providers.

The King’s fund also told us that Labour’s proposals were very radical which would lead to a fundamental change of the NHS….Wark didn’t take that any further but perhaps should have as it is another one of Labour’s attack lines that the Coalition’s reforms have been unnecessary and highly damaging….just the fact that they happened, not necessarily because of the reforms themselves.

Wark made a significant point that Labour’s electoral position was dependent on differentiating themselves from the Tories based upon the level of private provision they were willing to accept.

That’s very true, and very important to note because it is such an emotive and controversial issue with so many half truths and so much wilful blindness…. on any phone-in dancing around the subject of the NHS you will hear strident voices calling in to shout about the alleged  privatisation of the NHS…by the Tories….Interviews like Wark’s on Newsnight should dispel such myths about privatisation and remind people that Labour had a big hand in privatising the NHS as far as it has been.  However it is the usual story with the BBC…..did I hear a mention of this interview on the news today?  No, not a word…I had no idea Burnham had been roasted by Wark until I saw Guest Who’s comment….and yet it is utterly damning for Labour and highly damaging to their election strategy based on the NHS….why is the BBC not making this headline news?

As with Panorama’s investigation into ‘British Islam’ when the time comes to disseminate the information from such programmes out to the wider BBC, its call-ins, presenter led programmes and news bulletins, you find that all that good work is ignored and discarded, the presenters carrying on in their own little worlds ignoring anything that conflicts wth their world view…or so it seems.  The news bulletins either ignore the findings of the likes of Newsnight or so truncate a story and edit it down so much that the essence of it is lost and the real thrust and important points are completely lost…or worse, they actually change the whole story and totally alter our perception of what actually happened.

Yesterday the BBC interviewed Alan Milburn.  His critical comments in that interview about Labour’s health policies were plastered over other news media…but not on the BBC as I noted yesterday…and that’s despite it being a story broken by a BBC programme in an interview on The World at One, on Radio 4!

Wark did mention Milburn’s comments on Newsnight and stated that Labour was torn internally on this issue…so of significant importance…and yet otherwise ignored by the BBC with no major report based upon that revelation at all on its web site.

Guido suggests it might have been a highly relevant issue…one the BBC might have taken a deeper interest in perhaps?:

Perhaps Burnham’s bad mood was something to do with this morning’s front pages, which report Labour figures have responded to his big speech yesterday by laying into the party’s NHS strategy.

As Miliband centres Labour’s election campaign on the NHS, public satisfaction is at an all time high

 

 

And today we had another example of how BBC News can transform a story and turn it into something, that by using subtle changes of wording, can create a whole different perception leading listeners to the wrong (or right) conclusion.

 

The BBC claimed to have broken this story…

NHS guidelines for ‘major incidents’ spark political row

Mr Miliband pressed the prime minister on the news that the West Midlands NHS region has issued guidance to hospitals, GPs and Ambulance Trusts in their area – which includes Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton – on declaring major incidents.

But Mr Cameron insisted that ministers had had no involvement in the guidelines.

 

As you might have noted it was the West Midlands NHS region that issued this new guidance to hospitals as to when they can declare a ‘major incident’….not the NHS as a whole, nor the Government.

However what we got from most news bulletins was the news that ‘new guidelines have been issued to parts of the NHS….’

Now that is highly misleading…there is no indication as to who issued those guidelines, you would naturally assume it was the Government, and ‘parts of the NHS’ could be taken to mean anything…most likely that it is a nationwide issue of relevance to certain major hospitals or medical centres.  Again misleading as it was only hospitals in the West Midlands….and the issue had nothing whatsoever to do with the Government.

The BBC’s Norman Smith loudly broke the story this morning….

bbc nhs 1

On the radio he proclaimed that there was ‘an almighty political ding dog over health’ and went on to talk about the political arguments…however he failed to inform us of anything useful…such as what the guidelines said and what the overall effect of them would really be and why.

Norman sent most of the time revealing the contents of emails sent between NHS staff discussing these changes…emails that suggested this was a government plot to stop hospitals declaring ‘major incidents’ and that was intended to ‘manage the news’.

Question…how did the BBC get these emails?  Let’s have a guess…a Labour supporting staff member saw these guidelines and decided to write an email that damned the government…and then sent the emails to Labour and the BBC.

Not as if NHS staff aren’t highly political….

Dr Jacky Davis

“This isn’t privatisation by the back door, it’s privatisation by the front door, and it is really putting patients’ lives at risk”   Dr Jacky Davis Keep Our NHS Public

 

The BBC, whilst pretty much ignoring Labour Big Beast Alan Milburn’s critical comments, then mobilises its resources and launches this half-story into the stratosphere…just in time for Prime Minister’s Questions.

Then it spends the day giving it plenty of coverage,  somewhat misleading coverage, and stirs the pot relentlessly.

 

All this perfectly illustrates a major problem with the BBC’s news management that I have frequently noted…the disconnect between information that comes into the BBC and what is then filtered and disseminated out  into the mainstream BBC system where reports such as Panorama get conveniently ‘forgotten’ and interviews such as last night’s  Newsnight are ignored or downplayed with any reports that do cover such stories deciding to emphasise, for example,  Burnham’s ‘stout defence’ of Labour’s policies and how he intends to change the NHS for the better whilst battling the Tories’ NHS sell off plans.

 

How many people watch Newsnight, Panorama or listen to the Today programme?  Not that many in the scale of things. How then do they get a full insight into events?  Watching the late night news is just as subject to the vagaries of the likes of Norman Smith’s initerpretations as his work on the radio was as he puts the emphasis on eyecatching ‘scoops’ such as the emails which are irrelevant and posssibly suspect but which make ‘good copy’ rather than trying to explain the complex ins and outs of the issues.

It’s a big problem that disconnect between what investigative journalism on the BBC turns up and what actually gets reported…rarely do those specialist, indepth reports change the ‘conventional wisdom’ of the institution that is the BBC.  Which means you and I don’t get the truth from the BBC…..whether that’s by design or is just a case of bad journalism, inept editing and a failure to recognise what is important in a story I’ll let you decide.

 

 

 

 

 

The BBC’s Silent Service

 

 

The Submarine Service used to be called the ‘Silent Service’ using stealth and skill to evade detection and sink the enemy.

Seems that the BBC might well take on that nickname for its ‘silent’ support for Labour in its effort to sink the Tories….its silent support being its bias by omission as it avoids reporting or highlighting unpleasant news for Miliband.

Miliband yesterday launched his bid for election glory based upon his 10 year NHS plan…listening to the Today programme and it was hard to tell if I was listening to a BBC journalist (Hugh Pym) or a Labour politician giving us his spiel.

Pym has followed up with a piece on the web which follows the same route painting a wonderful picture of Labour’s plans with minimal criticism of them…

Labour, the NHS and social care integration

 

Pym opens with an admission that the NHS is important in the election race…

The NHS always has been a totemic issue for Labour and, in recent decades, has often been seen as a key election issue.

But this time there seems even more determination by Labour to make the state of the NHS the defining issue of the campaign.

 

The BBC admits this…

NHS ‘most important issue’ suggests BBC/Populus poll

 

 

So you might wonder, considering how important the NHS is to Labour’s election strategy, where are the headlines on the BBC such as this from the Telegraph?….

Labour election chaos over NHS as Ed Miliband accused of running ‘comfort zone campaign’

Ed Miliband’s attempts to make the NHS his key election weapon have descended into chaos after he was accused of running a “comfort zone campaign” and refused to endorse the shadow health secretary.

 

Or this from the Guardian, prominent on its front page:

Ed Miliband’s NHS plans risk losing the election, say Blair supporters

Ed Miliband is facing a backlash by Tony Blair supporters who have warned that his plans for the NHS risk playing into Tory hands and could lead to repeating the campaign mistakes of 1992 when Labour lost the general election.

In a sign of unease about Labour’s prospects, the former health secretary Alan Milburn said the party was running a pale imitation of its losing 1992 general election campaign, as it retreated to its comfort zone over the NHS.

 

Or this from the Huffington Post?

Alan Milburn Slams Ed Miliband’s NHS ‘Comfort Zone’ Campaign

 

 

It seems they all think this is a major story worth putting on the front page in bold…the NHS being ‘totemic’ and the ‘most important issue’…and yet the BBC has hidden a major criticism of Miliband and his policies almost at the bottom of this long report with barely a comment:

Ed Miliband and David Cameron step up election battle

And former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn has questioned the opposition’s focus on the NHS as a “comfort zone campaign” and warned the party is ill-prepared to carry out the necessary reforms to the NHS if elected.

 

 

Loose lips sink ships but the BBC’s tight lipped reporting is doing its best to keep the rickety old hulk of Labour’s election on course and afloat.

 

 

 

Informing the debate

 

 

Some links to peruse at your leisure that may help you form an opinion of the BBC’s coverage of world affairs:

How Marine Le Pen is winning France’s gay vote

The Front National now has the support of a quarter of Paris’s gay voters – and only 16 per cent of the straight ones

 

How will the Guardian and the BBC cover the Trinity Mirror phone hacking?

Steerpike is curious to see what coverage the trial will get in the papers and from the BBC. Both the corporation and the Guardian have taken glee in the past at resting the phone hacking crimes firmly in Rupert Murdoch’s court. Giving the impression, of course, that the sin of hacking came straight from the blackness of Murdoch’s heart – rather than a sin that was spread right across an industry.

 

Pakistan dares to ask: will school attack finally end myth of the ‘good Taliban’?

Decades of state support for jihadis has led to national confusion over who the real enemies are. But the latest attack might be a watershed

 

 

Viewpoint: Confrontation key to tackling violent extremism

The challenge for societies is to react and respond to terrorist communications in a different way.
Terrorists do and say things they believe will be successful.
When journalists and analysts comment on terrorist communications they unwittingly serve the terrorists’ purpose.
Discredited ideologies
The most positive new development in terrorism has been that its veneer of championing a noble cause has been stripped to reveal its vulgar lust for violence.
By targeting children, education, sympathetic journalists and aid workers it has exposed its inherent ignorance, its absence of humanity and its innate cowardice.

 

The invention of Islamophobia

Islamophobia was invented to silence those Muslims who question the Koran and who demand equality of the sexes. By Pascal Bruckner

The term “Islamophobia” serves a number of functions: it denies the reality of an Islamic offensive in Europe all the better to justify it; it attacks secularism by equating it with fundamentalism. Above all, however, it wants to silence all those Muslims who question the Koran, who demand equality of the sexes, who claim the right to renounce religion, and who want to practice their faith freely and without submitting to the dictates of the bearded and doctrinaire.

Far Right Fright?

Phew!!!  What a relief eh?  The barbarians have been defeated, the  takeover of Greek politics by the nazi scumbags of the Far Right hasn’t happened…the BBC’s warnings from history about Hitler’s ressurrection as an Ouzo drinking, plate smashing immigrant basher were just so much paranoid delusion.

Instead we have the delightful prospect of a radical far left group in charge…and in charge of that group…

Alexis Tsipras, “the most dangerous man in Europe”

 

….which must come as a bit of a surprise to anyone who has watched the BBC over the last few years since the big crash.   Who knew eh?   Whatever happened to that neo-Nazi group that was set to storm, according to the BBC, the Greek parliament and take Europe back to the Golden Dawn of a new Dark Ages?

 

We’ve seen the BBC’s flexible moral relativism when it comes to defining what is or isn’t terrorism when carried out by adherents to the religion of peace but when it comes to anyone who even gives a hint of having dubiously unacceptable thoughts about limiting immigration suddenly the gloves come off, the moral relativity goes out the window and the firm smack of the liberal intelligentsia’s very own Inquisition is felt far and wide as they mobilise to stop the thought crimes before they can ‘pollute’ the public conversation, the very one sided public conversation, about immigration.

The BBC that won’t call a spade a spade or a terrorist a terrorist, the BBC that refuses to acknowledge that Islam is the divine guide and sanction for those terrorists,   is the same BBC that has absolutely no problem labelling UKIP as the ‘Far Right’ or even associating them with Nazis purely on the basis that they want to control, not stop, immigration…and today we have further evidence of that attitude…mention immigration and you’re of the ‘Far Right’….Syriza in Greece have formed a coalition with the Independent Greek Party…the BBC tells us ..

What unites Greece’s new coalition partners is fierce opposition to budget cuts. Alexis Tsipras and Independent Greeks leader Panos Kammenos are anti-bailout to the core.

Earlier, he [Tsipras] formed a coalition with the centre-right Independent Greeks.

 

The ‘centre-right party’? Sounds almost moderate and progressive.  However all day on the radio we’ve heard that they are the next closest thing to having the SS marching into Greece again…and indeed a few sentences down we’re told that they are ‘hardline right-wingers’…..and just for good measure they throw in ‘conservatism’….

a hardline right-winger on issues such as immigration….The problem for Mr Tsipras is that many of his own supporters revile Mr Kammenos’s conservatism

 

Remarkable that the BBC is so ready to denounce anyone who does not follow its own agenda on immigration as the ‘Far Right’ or ‘Hardline Right -wingers’…or subtly associate them with Nazis…..even when they have quite moderate immigration policies…..just wonder how they describe Labour’s Frank Field when he too reveals he wants immigration to be controlled.

But this has been the story we have been fed by the BBC since the crash…the Far Right are set to make overwhelming gains in Europe bringing back the prospect of ethnic cleansing, Nazism and worse.

The BBC has steadfastly refused to accept or admit there is any threat from the Islamisation of Europe or indeed from the Left….and has often not just looked away but actively attempted to persuade you that there is no threat, that it is all an illusion dreamt up by racists, Islamophobes and ‘right-wing’ politicians ‘capitalising’ on tragedies such as Charlie Hebdo.

There are , thankfully, more reliable, more honest sources of news, sources of the truth, than the BBC.

Muslim attempts to subvert and undermine the democratic, secular nature of Europe are well known and don’t need re-running here at this time but a few examples of the Left’s dark underbelly might be in order.

The BBC has invested a great deal of time and money in warning us of the dangers of the growth right wing movements and has expressed great fear of their success in elections across Europe….going so far as to air ‘The Nazis: A Warning From History’ just before the European elections…the message obvious…the EU is good…it keeps the peace….vote UKIP and leave the EU and the Nazis will rise again.

On the other hand the BBC has also invested a great deal of time and money in promoting the interests of left wing revolutionaries and radicals….going so far as to employ them, Occupy’s radical priest, the bigoted and ‘Christian’ fraud Giles Fraser, or give them so much airtime as if they were ‘employed’ on the BBC shilling…such as Russell Brand.  The BBC devotes little if any time to exposing left wing violence and the consequences of their ideology being implemented.

Such  left wing extremism and violence is deliberately ignored…where have you seen the BBC investigating the UAF in a similar way that it did the EDL.  The UAF is, despite its name, a Fascist organisation led by an extremist Muslim paid at the behest of its paymasters the far left Unite Union….which also pays for a certain Ed Miliband & Co and has expressed a belief that ’non-democratic’ methods should be used to further its political aims.   Surely a tangled web of extremist interests that should be investigated.

Looking the other way when it is politically convenient is a habit for those on the left and in government especially when events involve certain communities who have been given a special status and immunity from political and social censure by virtue of their race or religion…

In the US a black man executes two police officers in a racially motivated attack….apparently he is ‘mentally unstable’.
In France there are many attacks by Muslims on the Public…again dismissed as not being terrorist events but the result of ‘mental instability’.
In Australia the hostage taking Muslim was also labelled ‘mentally unstable’.
Jihadis heading off to Syria or those generally attracted to fighting for the cause of Islam are often labelled ‘mad’, ignorant and not real Muslims.

Everyone knows the truth…and official attempts to deny the real motives of these people fool no-one…..even the BBC has raised a sceptical eye:

The French authorities are reluctant to say anything to encourage the idea that there is any kind of pattern behind the three attacks.
This was not terrorism, is the official line. Similarly in Nantes, there is a strict embargo on speculation about the motives for the attack.
All of which is perfectly understandable. But many people will be asking themselves if there is not some copycat effect being played out. Also, even if it is established the car attacks were the work of unbalanced individuals, might not Islamist propaganda have played some role in pushing them to the act?

However that doesn’t stop the BBC which, as well as denying any link to Islam, is conversely more than ready to make spurious speculative links to the Far Right for any attack on Muslims or other such ‘victims’ as the BBC sees them.

The Boston Bombs were, according to the BBC, the work of right wing white supremacists….as ‘all the evidence pointed to’ according to Evan Davis and Mark Mardell.

Similarly a mosque is allegedly firebombed in Sweden and the culprits are ‘far right, anti-immigration, neo-nazis’…never mind no one had been arrested and there was absolutely no evidence yet that indicated this….and what is more the BBC refuses to investigate the well known violence of the left in Sweden…or that of Muslim immigrants…instead we have one sided, and highly inaccurate, reports such as this:

Swedish mosque hit by arson in Eskilstuna, injuring five

An arsonist set fire to a mosque in the Swedish town of Eskilstuna on Thursday, injuring five people, police said.

The incident comes amid a fierce debate in Sweden over immigration policies.
The far right wants to cut the number of asylum seekers allowed into Sweden by 90%, while mainstream parties are intent on preserving the country’s liberal policy.
Police are treating the incident as arson but no arrests have been made so far, Mr Franzell added.

 

And this…..

Sweden protest after three mosque fires in one week

 

However the Mosque fire was in fact an accident…but that didn’t stop the BBC leaping to the conclusions it wanted to about Muslims under attack from Far Right extremists….

Swedish police: mosque fire was an accident. Muslim leader: threats comes from other Muslim groups, “not from extreme right”

The BBC continued to concentrate on the ‘threat’ from the Far Right in Sweden…..

Swedish neo-Nazis: Moves to de-radicalise amid far-right rise

Sweden is still home to an active and at times violent neo-Nazi movement, and there are fears that rising popularity of the Sweden Democrats will also benefit the extremists.

 

This is the BBC that brought us Muslim propaganda in the shape of cartoons...hope you didn’t find them offensive…if you did perhaps a bit of ‘non-terrorism’ might be in order! The BBC seems to think it is just fine to do so.
Back in the UK Mark Mardell tells us that certain sectors of the population are unhappy with politics as they are now….but who does he concentrate on?…the Right…….comparing UKIP to the Tea Party who are apparently ‘malcontents’…a dismissive term of abuse from Mardell……

Disconnected generation ready to make Westminster pay

And in the south of England it is the rise of UKIP that has forced Team Westminster to examine what the future might hold.
It is a situation that has been reflected by events in the US.

The Tea Party, which is not a party, but a hydra-headed movement of like-minded malcontents.
Far right
In Europe the far right are on the march. They have increased their vote, most recently in Sweden.
But it is France that worries many in the political centre, not only in Paris, but even more in Brussels and Berlin.

 

Ah yes, the Far Right eh!  No mention of Muslim terrorists and extremists subverting democracy.

No, no Muslims….but there is that looming Far Right threat again……

France shaken up by Zemmour and ‘new reactionaries’
By Hugh Schofield

There is a new intellectual force in France – giving shape and weight to ideas that challenge the disastrous post-1968 left-wing consensus.
That at least is the hope of the so-called neo-reactionnaires (new reactionaries) – a loose group of writers and thinkers who want to shake up debate on issues like immigration, Islam and national identity.
Of course others see the group rather differently.
For their enemies they are rabble-rousers, providing spurious philosophical cover for the extremism of the National Front (FN).

 

 

Surely abit of left wing violence can’t be all that hard to find……and you know what, it isn’t….so let’s have a look at some examples of the Left and its violent, militant tendencies….

 

 

 

 

Violence Flares in Hamburg

“Red Flora”, as Hamburg’s leftist community centre is named, sticks out like a sore thumb in the city’s hip, alternative yet increasingly upmarket Schanzenviertel district. Last week it prompted police to declare the centre of one of Europe’s richest port cities a “danger zone” and caused the US embassy to issue travel warnings to citizens contemplating a visit.
“If stopped without proper identification, persons may be detained by Hamburg police without further justification,” Berlin’s American embassy cautioned last Wednesday. The draconian measures would appear to have turned posh Hamburg and its famous if less smart Reeperbahn red light district into the Teutonic equivalent of Belfast during the Troubles.
The entrance to the Reeperbahn’s Davidwache police station was festooned with police barricades last week. Police helicopters circled above the city. Uniformed officers conducted stop-and-search operations. Last Wednesday, police were involved in skirmishes with left-wing protesters who pelted them with fireworks. “Many people who live here are fed up with the violence and destruction,” was how Hamburg’s police trade union president, Joachim Lenders, justified the new measures.

Jump in left-wing violence in Germany ‘alarming’

Black-clad crowds stormed past closed and boarded banks, businesses and stores, shouting anti-fascist and anti-capitalist slogans in Berlin’s trendy Kreuzberg district.
But leftist protests like this one on May Day have for many years ended not in song but riots, car burnings and broken shop windows.

leftist crimes rose 40% to 8,673 acts in 2013, nearly half of which were property damage. Violent crimes by leftists rose 28% to 1,659 – largely altercations with police and right-wing groups during demonstrations.
“The increase in politically motivated crimes is alarming,” said Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, earlier this week.
“Violence by extreme left-wing offenders increased and the number of anti-foreigner crimes increased last year, too,” he said. “More people were injured through politically motivated crimes than in previous years.”

The Return of the Radicals: Crisis Fuels Rise in Left-Wing Extremist Violence

Following the 2007 protests at the G-8 meeting in Heiligendamm, the number of attacks by leftist extremists has risen dramatically in Germany. The government is increasing its focus on the autonomists, but authorities know little about a new generation that is torching cars, and worse, in its fight.
German Interior Ministry crime statistics for 2009 show a 53 percent jump in the number of left-wing attacks, the largest increase seen in many years. Police recorded a total of 1,822 left-wing acts of violence in all of Germany, considerably more than those committed by right-wing extremists.

 

Leftwing Acts of Violent Extremism

 

lol…..

Left-Wing “Stop The Violence” Organizers Arrested For Nearly Beating Roommate To Death…

 

Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) in India

It has become almost a cliché to say that the LWE situation is the most serious internal threat facing the country.

 

 

And never mind all that old fashioned Communism in the USSR and Commie China.  How many millions died, were killed, casting off their chains?

Yep…the threat is definitely from the Far Right and Nigel Farage.

Watch out.  You have been warned.

 

 

 

 

 

The Sensibilities Of The Muslim Faithful

Something to add to the general debate on free speech and which can inform our judgements on the BBC’s reactions to pressure from Muslim activists and its subsequent approach to ‘free speech’.

A Channel Four debate from 2012 on freedom of speech in relation to Muslim demands on British society…asking

‘Is free speech under threat in Britain?’

 

The very fact that they need to ask that says everything…….

 

 

 

Note that the arguments used to defend the Muslim right to silence critics of islamic ideology are the same that the BBC’s Owen Bennett-Jones used in his article “Blasphemy, jihad and victimhood“….powerless, marginalised, weak, under attack, angry, frustrated and so on.