Category Archives: Alistair Campbell

LOVING ALISTAIR!

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You cannot failed to have noticed the frequency with which Alistair Campbell has been appearing on the BBC recently. He has become ubiquitous as the BBC pursues the next target onthe hit-list David Cameron for employing Andy Coulson. A Biased BBC reader asks is this the same BBC that now has Tony Blair’s spin doctor, the man who took usto war on a lie leading to the death of British soldiers and hundreds ofthousands of Iraqi civilians?

The Daily Mail has noticed:
‘With almost unbelievable feebleness, it has clasped its one-time persecutor toits bosom. Worst of all, it is treating him as though he is a great statesman,a man of honour and a respectable person, whereas he is, in fact, anunscrupulous bully who has often omitted to tell the truth.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-467567/Why-IS-BBC-lionising-liar-like-Alastair-Campbell.html

 and so has political blogger Iain Dale:
” I can think of no one who book the BBC has publicised more than AlastairCampbell. I can think of no one who has ever had a full half an hour interviewin the 8.10 slot of the Today Programme. I can think of no one who would beallowed three programmes simply to read their book out on prime time BBC2.
Is this the BBC’s way of saying sorry?’
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-bbc-is-saying-sorry-to-alastair.html

Yes it is, step forward Alastair Campbell…here having an enviable amount offree publicity for his books…all organised by the BBC….

‘OMG, as the yoof says, if they (the BBC top brass of course) could see me now.. all alone in a BBC studio, sitting at a BBC computer, eating a BBC tunamelt. They’re very trusting these BBC people — I reckon if I twiddled enough ofthe hundreds of knobs in the vicinity, I could get on air somewhere.
Not that I want to. My voice is starting to go a bit already, having donebreakfast telly and then 19 local and regional radio interviews, all in theinterests of publicising a book
These mass interviews are organised by something called BBC GNS.
http://www.alastaircampbell.org/blog/2010/06/03/all-alone-in-my-own-bbc-studio/

 or how about another BBC job appearing in ‘The Speaker’….ushered in as amentor, a figure to be looked up to and respected by young people….
 
‘Tony Blair’s former Director of Communications and Speech Writer AlastairCampbell, demonstrates the subtleties of Persuasion.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/speaker/about/mentors/index.shtml

 or how about this, a special one off programme just for Mr Campbell:
‘Cracking Up’
In 1986, Alastair Campbell “cracked up”. His breakdown was the culmination ofmonths of intensive stress at work, too much alcohol and myriad other complexissues. Twenty two years later, the former Downing Street Director ofCommunications embarks on a personal journey, exploring his breakdown andsubsequent recovery in this special, one-off programme for BBC Two.
http://www.recoverywirral.com/2010/03/bbc-headroom-cracking-up-alastair-campbell-on-breakdown/

 or there is ‘The Alastair Campbell Diaries’….a series of programmes in whichhe reads extracts from his diaries.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007swj3

or this programme, ‘My Life in Books’, where he reads discusses his 5 favouritebooks, , and note no mention of his controversial past:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z7sgp
‘After the 1997 election he became the Prime Minister’s Chief Press Secretaryand Official Spokesman. He returned to the Labour Party for six months prior tothe 2005 general election and continued to advise the party informally underGordon Brown, including during the 2010 campaign.’

oh and the appearance on Question time, innumerable other appearances on newsprogrammes and with Andrew Marr.

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BLAIR’S FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER

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This is a guest post by Hippiepooter.

One cannot be without sympathy for the upset Alastair Campbell suffered in his interview with Andrew Marr today, both on a human level and as a staunch supporter of the Iraq war myself, but as a committed democrat one does feel the need to state that he and Tony Blair dragged British politics through the mud in coopting the already biased BBC as a propaganda weapon and are now victims of the monster they created.

As a youthful Tribunite member of the Labour Party in the late 70’s it was clear to me that the only real bias at the BBC was towards the Left, and I was against it as it was bad for democracy. When Tony Blair assumed leadership of the Labour Party, this bias went into overdrive. It was patently evident to anyone semi-politically literate that pre ’97 Tony Blair’s office was running an anti-Tory smear campaign in concert with the BBC to get elected, and once elected proceeded to govern with the same appalling contempt for democracy. Mr Campbell certainly wasn’t complaining when Mr Marr in both his Observer and BBC incarnations was doing New Labour’s dirty work traducing the integrity of the Conservative Party in the same manner that he has traduced his own and Mr Blair’s over Iraq.

What our former Prime Minister Mr Blair showed, to me at least, over the Iraq War, is that his heart was in the right place all along. He is, despite all his manifest shortcomings in attaining and retaining power, a personal hero. The Iraq War was just that critical. But if one’s ego is large enough to believe that the means he used via Mr Campbell to attain power were justified, sympathy for their vilification over Iraq has to be qualified. As it is, many of the moral bankrupts who he’d previously exploited to his advantage and who are now vilifying him would be calling for Mr Blair to be strung up for not going to war if we had to suffer the consequences of that today. Saddam could restart his WMD programme at any moment of his choosing. He had given Al Qa’eda leader Al Zarqawi refuge after fleeing Afghanistan. Had we stood down from the threat of war to enforce compliance of UN arms inspection, the marriage between WMD’s and terrorists that Blair feared would have become a reality, with all the apocalyptic consequences that carries.

We dont need another Iraq inquiry into Tony Blair’s decision making. What we need is an Iraq Inquiry into how the BBC acts as a propaganda weapon for the enemy at time of war.

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