MISSING YASSER

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Ah, will the BBC ever get over the death of ol’ Yasser – that Jew hating terrorist loving piece of Palestinian slime?  …sorry, I meant that much loved and sadly missed Leader of the most oppressed people ever. I mean when BBC reporter Barbara Plett openly wept at his funeral, those were our tears she expressed, right?

Anyhoo….the issue of Arafat’s death has been a tad tricky for the BBC.  The fact that he died from Aids — or so his doctor said — seemed unsatisfactory for the comrades so far better to fantasise on those conspiracy tales that those evil Jooos had poisoned him with polonium.

BEHIND THE VEIL….

You have to admire the way the BBC can take an issue and spin it to suit the trenchant anti-Coalition narrative that lies at the heart of all it has done since 2010. Take the story of that for ‘cor blimey” Brit Mohammed al Mohammed.

Somalian-born (natch!) Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed is believed to have evaded police observation by disguising himself as a woman in Islamic dress. The 27-year-old went to pray at a mosque in West London on Friday and has not been seen since, Scotland Yard announced last night.

So we have a suspected Jihadist going to a MOSQUE and then evading police scrutiny by dressing up in a Burqa. BBC not interested in why this Somalian terrorist was going to a Mosque and what that may say about what is preached within its confines. BBC not interested in whether the Burqa should be banned from the public square when it is used for such evasion. BBC not interested in why Mr Mohamed is even IN the UK.  No —- the BIG issue for the BBC is the efficacy of the TPims put in place by the Coalition. So, another Somalian poses a threat to the UK population and the BBC turns its guns on Theresa May.

 

Crisis? What Crisis?

64% of Britons are satisfied with life.

 

 

The BBC has been pushing Labour’s ‘cost of living crisis’ hard recently (Ed Miliband: Only Labour can secure ‘recovery for all’) but seems not to want to make much of  this:

Britons happier than before financial crisis as contentment plummets in Europe – OECD

OECD says quality of life in the UK has been only “modestly affected” by the global financial crisis with happiness and even trust in government rising – in marked contrast with its neighbours in the Eurozone

Although the recession sent unemployment rising and put a squeeze on living standards in Britain as elsewhere, the drop in national morale seen in other countries is simply “not visible” in the UK, according to the OECD.

Overall Britain was ranked with Switzerland, Australia, Scandanavia, Canada and New Zealand in the top tier of the OECD’s “How’s Life” study which assesses quality of life across 34 leading countries.

It found that British people enjoy some of the strongest friendship networks and highest levels of income, job security, clean air and water, personal safety and democratic accountability in the OECD.

“In the OECD as a whole, the poor employment situation had a major impact on life satisfaction.

“This trend is not visible in the United Kingdom where, from 2007 to 2012, the percentage of British people declaring being very satisfied with their lives increased from 63 per cent to 64 per cent.”

 

 

The BBC’s response to the OECD’s report was very muted compared to its extensive and one sided coverage of immigration statistics.

Financial crisis hits happiness levels

Countries worst hit by the global financial crisis saw their happiness levels fall as a result, a survey has suggested.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), levels of “life satisfaction” fell sharply between 2007 and 2012 in countries like Greece and Spain.

Trust in governments also deteriorated over that time.

The OECD said the findings showed the far-reaching impact of the crisis.

However, the UK saw its happiness levels rise 1% between 2007 and 2012, putting it in the 20% of happiest countries in the OECD, alongside the likes of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and New Zealand.

The UK also bucked the trend by showing a rise in trust in the government, up from 36% to 47% between 2007 and 2011.

“The global economic crisis has had a profound impact on people’s well-being, reaching far beyond the loss of jobs and income, and affecting citizens’ satisfaction with their lives and their trust in governments,” the 34-member organisation said.

 

Note how it emphasizes the bad news and only then slipped in the ‘but Britain is doing better‘……and note that sly ‘the UK saw its happiness levels rise 1% between 2007 and 2012‘.

 

Satisfaction risen…but by a mere 1%…nothing to cheer about eh?  Let’s downplay the truth.

Why not report what was actually said?:

‘The percentage of British people declaring being very satisfied with their lives increased from 63 per cent to 64 per cent.’

Which tells us that a good majority think their lives aren’t so bad as Labour tell us, via the BBC.

 

Facts But Not All The Facts

 

Immigration has cost a minimum of £62 billion between 2001 and 2011

 

If you’ve been listening to the radio you may have heard the BBC telling us that ‘immigration’, not just EU immigration, has benefited this country as ‘immigrants’ pay more in tax than they take in benefits.

Recent immigrants to UK ‘make net contribution’

Immigrants to the UK since 2000 have made a “substantial” contribution to public finances, a report says.
The study by University College London said recent immigrants were less likely to claim benefits and live in social housing than people born in Britain.
The authors said rather than being a “drain”, their contribution had been “remarkably strong”.

 

The trouble is ‘immigration’ as a whole does not benefit us….but that fact is missing from the BBC reports.

 

The source for these ‘facts’ is the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration, funded partly by the European Union…..and staffed by mainly immigrants:

Research staff

External fellows

 

In 2007 this is what they were telling us:

Policy formation is likely to be influenced by the subjective opinion of domestic residents. This creates a dilemma for policy: while liberal immigration policies may benefit the industrial society, these may be difficult to implement due to public antipathy. 

Understanding the process of attitude formation and how it works through the media is essential to an appropriate policy response. 

 

That good old ‘Manufacturing of Consent’.

 

The BBC is happy to oblige, trying to persuade us that immigration benefits us….they do that by missing out essential facts…as does the CRAM.

 

This is what we are told:

The net fiscal balance of overall immigration to the UK between 2001 and 2011 amounts therefore to a positive net contribution of about 25 billion GBP.

 

Unfortunately that isn’t so……hidden on page 41 we get the real figures…..

1995-2011  Non EU immigrants cost  £104 billion

2001-2011 Non EU immigrants cost £87 billion

 

Now subtract a positive £25 billion from a cost of £87 billion and I make that a total cost of £62 billion.

 

Immigration has cost a minimum of £62 billion between 2001 and 2011

 

And that doesn’t include all the costs of course.

 

Take a look at the ‘research’ for yourself.

 

It’s fairly opaque in style and is impossible for most people to check their sources and conclusions.

But wander through it and cherry pick things that catch your eye and some of these might be of interest and raise a few questions:

 

The first point is that that whacking great loss isn’t quantified in the body of the text…you have to dig for it yourself….which raises the question as to why?

 

Fair comparison?

A major point is that immigrants don’t have all the costs put onto them that the natives do…..things that would be paid for whether or not immigrants were here, ‘pure’ public goods, such as defence, roads, the Civil Service and Government etc, are left out….but such costs are included for the natives when comparing expenditure by government on them and taxes paid…hardly a fair comparison…..

We assign the cost of all these “pure” public goods only to natives, meaning that the expenditure column represents the cost of pure public goods that natives would have to bear in the absence of any immigrant population.

 

Wages

The report says by ratio immigrants are better educated than natives but….

These stark educational differences between immigrants and natives are not, however, reflected by wage differences, as we show in Table 2a: the median wages of natives and non-EEA immigrants are nearly the same, while the median wages for EEA immigrants are substantially below those of natives, by about 15% in 2011

 

Hang on…..immigrants apparently pay more taxes and yet they earn less than the natives?

 

 

Employment

Whilst EU immigrants are apparently slightly more likely to have a job by percentage than the natives, non-EU immigrants are far less likely:

Since the mid-2000s, employment rates have also been slightly higher for EEA immigrants than for natives, 75% versus 70% in 2011(see Table 2b). The employment rate of non-EEAs, on the other hand, is substantially lower in all years, only 62% in 2011

But all those unemployed….25% of EU and 38% of non-EU immigrants will be claiming benefits or costing us in some shape or form.

 

Housing

The report tells us:

…recent immigrants overall are over 3 percentage points less likely to live in social housing than natives

Recent non-EEA immigrants, in contrast, are 2.6 percentage points more likely than natives to live in social housing.

 

Hmmm….2/3rds of immigrants are non-EU…..so 2/3rds of immigrants are 2.6% more likely to be in social housing than natives…..

…and yet the report says that overall, immigrants are 3% less likely to be in social housing.

I don’t know about you but I find those figures, em, confusing.

And what isn’t quantified is the cost of all those immigrants filling up the housing stock

 

Some more doubtful figures

Between 2007 and 2011, recent EEA immigrants made a net contribution of 15.2billion GBP (expressed in 2011 equivalency) to UK public finances, which amounts to an annual average of 2,610 GBP per capita over the 5-year period. Over the same time frame, the annual net fiscal cost of UK natives amounted to about 1,900 GBP per capita and the net fiscal cost of recent non-EEA immigrants to about 332 GBP per capita.

So EU immigrants contributed £2,610 each to the economy whilst a British native cost £1,900 over and above taxes paid annually….that’s around £100 billion annually (based on a population of 60 million).

Of course they did.

 

The trouble is that not all the costs of immigration are taken into account….housing for a start…the massive house inflation and subsequent lack of housing, NHS,  the schools costs, the roads and maintenance of those, the policing, judicial and prison systems, cost of unemployment of natives unable to get a job etc.

 

In 2007 they recognised such costs were relevant, not just financial but social, political and religious….

Over the years labour migration has been important for economic growth and contributed to economic prosperity in Germany and the UK.  It remains a crucial issue (economically and politically) and is one whereby economies can remedy unforeseen skill gaps which may otherwise have detrimental effects on the competitiveness of industry. 

However, although migration can offer benefits by leading to relief of skill shortages, it may also adversely affect labour market prospects of resident workers, put additional strain on the welfare system, lead to an increase in criminal activity, or otherwise unfavourably affect social cohesion (see Dustmann and Glitz 2005 and Dustman et al. 2005 for discussion). While the primary motivation for allowing immigration is because of temporary labour market demands, migrants and their children tend to remain in the receiving economy long after labour market conditions have changed. All this may lead to questions whether the possibly short term benefits from immigration may be outweighed by other consequences.

 

 

I don’t know about you but I find the ‘research’ from the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration  less than convincing on my quick overview and the BBC’s reporting highly partisan and clearly designed to emphasise apparent benefits of immigration whilst hiding the negative.

You have to believe the figures and the interpretation put on them by the researchers to believe that overall EU immigrants benefit the economy.

I don’t believe the CRAM is independent and I believe it starts off from the point of view that immigration is beneficial and has been looking for facts to prove that….its hiding of the costs of non-EU immigration might suggest that attitude on their part.

Lefthand Righthand

 

 

“….far from being an ally in the fight against extremism, the MCB is part of the problem…”

 

 

Andrew Neil lays into the extremist Muslim Council of Britain for:

It’s attitude towards women.

Its alliance with the most fundamentalist of Islamic mosques.

Its toleration of intolerant views, hosting ‘extremists’ at the East London Mosque.

Its willingness to be counted among such people and organisations.

Not to mention a senior member signing a document that threatens death to British troops…and that another of its senior members, a founding member, is now a convicted war criminal.

 

On the other hand the BBC surrenders its editorial independence to the same organisation….as revealed by Rod Liddle in the Spectator:

 

Brave, non-denominational freedom fighters

Those of you who wonder why the BBC is so politically correct, so craven in its expressions regarding, for example, Islamic terror, may find a partial answer here:

To:
Stephen Whittle
Director of Editorial Policy at the BBC
Dear Stephen,
We have received many complaints over the last 24 hours from British Muslims regarding the use of the phrase ‘Islamic terrorists’ by your news reporters in connection with the struggle for Kashmiri independence.
We believe this phrase it totally inappropriate and adds nothing to the story and even distorts what is a long-standing struggle by the Kashmiri people to gain control of their own destiny.
Mr Inayat Bunglawala
Secretary,
Media Committee,
The Muslim Council of Britain

 

Response from Stephen Whittle:
Thanks for your note. I have discussed this with the various output editors. It is not our policy to describe Kashmiri separatists in this way and that has been made clear. It was an isolated incident and will not be repeated.

 

 

Curious that Bunglawala  takes such an interest in Kashmir…because he is completely uninterested in talking about war crimes and terrorism in Muslim Bangladesh:

Inayat Bunglawala says it all with regards to conflict in Bangladesh: 

I was born in the UK and am not Bangladeshi, so to be honest, I very rarely think about the 1971 war. I reckon it is of much more import to those of Pakistani/Bengali backgrounds than to me.
I do nothing whatsoever to bring justice to Muslims in East Pakistan. I have enough on my plate here in the UK.

 

 

 

The MCB: The Taint of Genocide

In May 1995 a Channel 4 documentary ‘Bangladesh, War Crimes File’ directed by David Bergman made allegations of the involvement of three British Bangladeshis in the genocide committed in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971.

Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, one of those individuals named in the documentary, was alleged to have been instrumental in plotting the assassinations of intellectuals, journalists and students with the al-Badr death squads, assisted by the Jamaat-e-Islami.

 

A UK Muslim leader and a US citizen have been sentenced to death over crimes committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence.

UK-Bangladeshi Muslim community leader Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin and Ashrafuzzaman Khanwas were being tried in absentia by a special tribunal in Bangladesh.

They were found guilty on 11 charges relating to the abduction and killing of 18 independence supporters.

 

 

Radical links of UK’s ‘moderate’ Muslim group

The Muslim Council of Britain has been courted by the government and lauded by the Foreign Office but critics tell a different and more disturbing story. Martin Bright reports

Far from representing the more progressive or spiritual traditions within Islam, the leadership of the Muslim Council of Britain and some of its affiliates sympathise with and have links to conservative Islamist movements in the Muslim world and in particular Pakistan’s Jamaat-i-Islami, a radical party committed to the establishment of an Islamic state in Pakistan ruled by sharia law.

One of the MCB’s affiliate organisations, Leicester’s Islamic Foundation, was founded by Khurshid Ahmad, a senior figure in Jamaat-i-Islami.

Another is Birmingham-based Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith, an extremist sect whose website says: ‘The disbelievers are misguided and their ways based on sick or deviant views concerning their societies, their universe and their very existence.’ It urges its adherents not to wear Western hats, walk dogs, watch sport or soap operas and forbids ‘mingling and shaking hands between men and women’.

The strain of Islamic ideology favoured by the MCB leadership and many of its affiliate organisations is inspired by Maulana Maududi, a 20th-century Islamic scholar little known in the West but hugely significant as a thinker across the Muslim world. His writings, which call for a global Islamic revival, influenced Sayyid Qutb, usually credited as the founding father of modern Islamic radicalism and one of the inspirations for al-Qaeda.

In Maududi’s worldview all humanity was split into believers (practising Muslims) and non-believers, whom he describes as ‘barbarians’. He was deeply critical of notions such as nationalism and feminism and called on Muslims to purge themselves of Western influence.

The MCB’s Inayat Bunglawala said he had a deep respect for Maududi and defended the MCB’s affiliation to Khurshid Ahmad’s Islamic Foundation. He said: ‘Maududi is a very important Muslim thinker. The book that brought me to practise Islam was Now Let Us Be Muslims by Maududi. As for Jamaat-i-Islami, it is a perfectly legal body in Pakistan.

 

Imagine The Table Talk!

 

Not long ago we were told that:

The Muslim Brotherhood are no different to the Greek ‘Golden Dawn’  Neo-Nazi party.

 

Which is why you might wonder when Jeremy Bowen slips back into his ‘aren’t the Muslim Brotherhood just so cuddly’ mode:

The jailed joke-cracking Muslim Brotherhood leader

The core of the movement stayed patient, and non violent, deepening its influence by providing the closest thing poor Egyptians had to a welfare state.

That’s the oldest trick in the terrorists book…providing ‘welfare’…Hamas does it, Hezbollah does it.  It’s a recruiting device….hearts and minds….but it doesn’t negate the essential fundamentalism of the groups…their reason for existing and their methods.

Bowen goes on:

.in government President Morsi and his people were incompetent, alienated too many Egyptians, and the army removed them from power in the coup in July this year.

 

Well….that wasn’t the problem…the problem was trying to impose fundamentalist Islam on Egypt….and it wasn’t ‘the Army’ that removed them from power but a massive uprising by the population.

The BBC’s Middle East Editor should pay more attention surely?

 

He continues….

Essam al-Erian is now back in Tora prison, with the rest of the Brotherhood’s leadership.

Hosni Mubarak is there too, with his sons, and his chief lieutenants, including Habib al-Adly.

I doubt they are all in the same wing, but if they did sit down to lunch together imagine the table talk.

 

 

Yep…imagine the table talk….

‘Here’s Bowen’s phone number…….he’s very reliable…..’

 

 

 

Israel…That Dangerous Lie

 

 

The BBC renews its attack on Israel and its right to exist by broadcasting a film made by an anti-Israel Israeli, Ilan Ziv.

The film was originally scheduled to be shown in April but was shelved by the BBC….this site looked at the background to the film and the man who made it then:

Exile: A Myth Unearthed…And Then Buried

 

The BBC trail for the film claimed:

‘…evidence revealed here, suggesting that the Jewish exile from Jerusalem in AD 70 may never have actually happened, has such severe ramifications for relations in the region….raising ethical questions about its impact on modern Middle Eastern issues.’

 

In other words the film aims to prove that there was no such thing as a Jewish exile and therefore no Jewish Diaspora, and therefore there shouldn’t be a Jewish Nation to come ‘Home’ to…i.e  Israel.

Unfortunately….genetic studies show that Jews around the world have definite connections to each other  and stem from the Middle East, and that far from somehow converting en masse whole populations, producing ‘ersatz’ Jews, the reality is that when Jews moved to different regions they inter-married and their spouses converted…a different thing altogether.

 

Ziv claims there is no relationship between his film and another anti-Israeli ‘scholar’ Shlomo Sands who thinks:

The idea of the Jews as a single people or race is a myth, a fiction based on Old Testament “mythistory”, argues Shlomo Sand, a Jewish historian based at the University of Tel Aviv. It is also one of the founding assumptions of the state of Israel, and throughout this polemical, revisionist history Sand has Zionist ideology in his sights.  In essence, his book undermines the moral right of the state of Israel to define itself as exclusively Jewish…..He can find no evidence of any Jewish exile, and without exile there can be no right to return.

 

Clearly as Ziv is trying to prove there was no ‘exile’ and that there is no such thing as an ‘Israeli People’ they are on the same course.

 

Ziv himself says:Part of the editorial debate [within the BBC] was that one freelance employee who was hired as part of the re-versioning of the film called it propaganda,” he said. “Another person inside the BBC, claimed (or so I was told) that the film drove some political point of view.

 

 

Ziv has some strange associates to help promote the film as BBC Watch reports….which should have made the BBC think twice before screening it:

The film-maker announces a screening of the full-length version of the film in Manchester.

 ”I will be showing the original long  version of EXILE A MYTH UNEARTHED in Manchester on Monday  November 4th. Please inquire and RSVP with  LindaClair   lindaclair@btinternet.com

Linda Clair is of course a member of the Manchester branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the screening is promoted on that organisation’s website:

 

PSC Ziv film

 

 

Once again the BBC is pumping out pro-Palestinian propaganda of a very dangerous nature, attempting to delegitimise Israel as a nation….and thereby set the agenda whereby Israel can be legitimately attacked and the Jews driven out….to put it euphemistically perhaps.

 

BBC News Kills Jews?

Just what did the Balen Report say?

 

Of course the Guardian isn’t averse to the same treatment of Israel:

The whole of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, can be read as a record of people coming to terms with failure. In part this was done by the invention of a heroic past, in the empire of Solomon’s time, something that may have been one of the truly great mistakes of history.’

 

So the Guardian suggests ‘Somebody’ invented an ‘heroic past’……‘one of the truly great mistakes of history‘.

Who would that ‘somebody’ be?

The ‘Jews’ of course……the Jews invented their past…invented their existence as a ‘nation’ and invented their right to exist as such a nation.

The Guardian calls that ‘one of the truly great mistakes in history.’

Because it lead to all the trouble in the world..didn’t it?

 

If only little Israel would just magically go away!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going Over The Top

 

 

If Any Question Why The Truth Died, Tell Them It Was Because The BBC Lied.

 

 

Almost 100 years later, when the memorial came under threat, a family descendant expressed his concern – David Cameron.

 

 

 

Jeremy Paxman made an appearance on The Graham Norton Show (about 26 mins in) to advertise his new book and TV programme about the First World War and in the process made a highly political, and as it turns out farcical, attack on Cameron for, according to Paxman, suggesting we should ‘celebrate’ WWI.

 

Only Cameron didn’t say that, far from it….you might have thought someone like Paxman, who makes a living as an interviewer, would pay more attention to what people actually say…..especially as he goes onto claim that this was Cameron’s clumsy use of language.

What we got from the BBC was an utterly wrong headed, highly political attack on the Prime Minister from one of the BBC’s leading political interviewers.

The attack was clearly preplanned….the BBC flashed up a conveniently available photograph of Cameron (29 mins), one of the least flattering that they could get away with…so they knew exactly what the subject of the interview was going to be.

They must have looked pretty hard for this particular photo because I didn’t find it on Google…

 

 

They could have used the photo on the Government website where the speech is located:

The Rt Hon David Cameron MP

 

Wonder why they didn’t use that?

 

 

 

What did Cameron actually say?:

 

In his speech, made at the museum last year, Mr Cameron said the centenary would be a ‘personal priority’ and promised the museum £5million.

Mr Cameron added that he wanted ‘a commemoration that, like the Diamond Jubilee celebrations this year, says something about who we are as a people’.

 

Cameron didn’t say a ‘celebration like the Diamond Jubilee celebrations’…..he said a ‘commemoration…which tells us something about who we are as a people’.

A completely different take on his words from that chosen by Paxman.

 

Cameron was….Calling for the nation to remember the ‘extraordinary sacrifice of a generation’, he also said the War helped shape Britain by prompting medical and technological advances.

He said: ‘For all the profound trauma, the resilience and courage that was shown, the values we hold dear and the lessons we learnt changed our nation and helped to make us who we are today.’

 The completion of transforming IWM London will see the Imperial War Museum reopened as the centrepiece of our commemorations for the centenary of the First World War.  With that transformation, new generations will be inspired by the incredible stories of courage, toil and sacrifice that have brought so many of us here over the past century….it is actually a special place for us all to come, to learn about a defining part of our history and to remember the sacrifice of all those who gave their lives for us, from the First World War to the present day.

Our duty towards these commemorations is clear: to honour those who served, to remember those who died, and to ensure that the lessons learnt live with us forever.  And I think that is exactly what we can do with these commemorations.

 

That all sounds pretty respectful and shows Cameron fully understands the sacrfices and horrors of that war…but Paxman thinks not, claiming Cameron wanted to turn it into a jolly ‘knees up’:

Mr Paxman said: ‘Not to recognise that it was one  of the most consequential events in our history would just be perverse.’

He said: ‘These occasions, when the Prime Minister escapes from his speech-writers, are hazardous.’

‘Our Prime Minister promised the First World War commemoration would be “like the Diamond Jubilee celebrations”. What on earth was he talking about?’

 

Paxman, whose great uncle died in the War, said: ‘The commemorations should have almost nothing in common with the Diamond Jubilee, which was an excuse for a knees-up in the rain to celebrate the happy fact that our national identity is expressed through a family rather than some politician.

 

On Graham Norton Paxman adds.‘Only a complete idiot would ‘celebrate’ such a calamity’

John Bishop then pipes up...’They’re not normal people, they don’t represent normal people, you shouldn’t  be a politician unless you’ve had at least one job’

Paxman replies…’I share that prejudice…I had to interview Russell Brand the other day…and he was banging on about how people are really disenchanted with politicians and I think he’s right…absolutely right about posturing politicians who say there is only two ways of looking at the world…their way or their opponents way…and it’s rubbish.’

Yes…but it’s a political system supported by the BBC who instead of genuinely analysing policies, facts on the ground and all possible remedies hands the airwaves to the Labour Party whilst shutting out other voices like those of UKIP

 

And certainly it is the Oxbridge BBC themselves who are vastly out of touch with the population on economics, immigration, welfare, climate, Islam…well with just about everything.  So it is a bit hard to accept Paxman criticising politicians for being out of touch.

 

And Cameron had an ‘outside job’…at Carlton Communications for seven years

Is that not a ‘proper’ job?  Carlton Communications is a media company, not unlike the BBC…..do I need to say anymore?

Why did Paxman not admit Cameron had this job, choosing instead to imply that he had never worked outside politics?  Is it purely so that he could make a cheap political point…based clearly on a lie?

 

And as for Paxman interviewing Brand……..no you didn’t interview Brand, the multi-millonaire, calling for ‘equality and revolution and the redistribution of wealth and power”…you sat smirking, ineffectively trying to stifle your giggles as Brand went off on one.

 

 

 

 

If you want to read the full speech by Cameron at the Imperial War Museum…which of course tells us why he thinks the Museum is a valuable asset to the country (a notion that Paxman disagrees with thinking the Museum ‘celebrates war’), here it is in its full glory without the revisionist interpretation by the BBC for you to make up your own mind:

Transcript of the speech given by Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday 11 October about plans to mark the First World War centenary.

Prime Minister

Thank you very much, Andrew, for those words and thank you for all the work that you’ve done.  This is, I think, a very exciting time for one of the finest museums in the world.  It is a museum I particularly love.  I will never forget when my mother brought me here as a boy and being absolutely captivated by everything within the museum.  But almost more interesting was bringing my own children here, quite recently, they’ve come twice, I think, altogether.  And realising that even when I was a boy there were still people alive who had fought in the Great War.  There aren’t now, but my children were just as captivated and interested as I was.  I think that speaks volumes about what we are discussing today.

The completion of transforming IWM London will see the Imperial War Museum reopened as the centrepiece of our commemorations for the centenary of the First World War.  With that transformation, new generations will be inspired by the incredible stories of courage, toil and sacrifice that have brought so many of us here over the past century.

From the breathtaking sights of the hanging gallery to the unforgettable smell of the trenches, from great art – like this painting of The Menin Road by Paul Nash – to the many moving stories recorded from the front line, the Imperial War Museum is not just a great place to bring your children – as I said, as I’ve done – it is actually a special place for us all to come, to learn about a defining part of our history and to remember the sacrifice of all those who gave their lives for us, from the First World War to the present day.

We should also recognise that in the decade since the introduction of free access to our national museums, the annual number of visitors here has increased by almost two-thirds.  I passionately believe we should hold on to this heritage and pass it down the generations.  That is why, even in difficult economic times, we are right to maintain free entry to national museums like this.  It is why we will continue to do so.

Today, I want to talk about our preparations to commemorate the centenary of the First World War.  I want to explain why, as Prime Minister, I am making these centenary commemorations a personal priority, and I want to set out some of the steps we are taking to make sure we really do this properly as a country.

Let me start with why this matters so much.  Of course, as Andrew said, there will be some who wonder: why should we make such a priority of commemorations when money is tight and there is no one left from the generation that fought in the Great War?

For me there are three reasons.  The first is the sheer scale of the sacrifice.  When they set out, none of the armies had any idea of the length and scale of the trauma that was going to unfold.  For many, going off to war was a rite of passage.  Many of them were excited; they would eat better than they had when they were down the mines or in the textile mills.  They would have access to better medical care, and many thought they’d be home by Christmas, anyway.  There is the story of the Russian High Command asking for new typewriters and being told the war wouldn’t last long enough to justify the expenditure.

As Major J V Bates from the Royal Army Medical Corp wrote:

‘Being our first experience of war, we men were not so much frightened, as very excited.  It wasn’t until after two or three weeks of continually fighting rear-guard action, reconnaissance patrols and seeing our mates killed and wounded that the real horror of it came home to us.  And if everyone else was as frightened as I was, then we were all petrified.’

Four months later, one million had died in the heavy artillery battles that actually came before the digging of the trenches.  Four years later, the death toll of military and civilians stood at over 16 million, nearly 1 million of them Britons.  200,000 were killed on one day of the Battle of the Somme.  To us, today, it seems so inexplicable that countries which had many things binding them together could indulge in such a never-ending slaughter, but they did.  The death and the suffering was on a scale that outstrips any other conflict.  We only have to look at the Great War memorials in our villages, our churches, our schools and universities.

Out of more than 14,000 parishes in the whole of England and Wales, there are only around 50 so called ‘thankful parishes’, who saw all their soldiers return.  Every single community in Scotland and Northern Ireland lost someone, and the death toll for our friends in the Commonwealth was similarly catastrophic.  In the 1920s over 2,400 cemeteries were constructed in France and Belgium alone, while today there are cemeteries as far afield as Brazil and Syria, Egypt and Ireland.

Rudyard Kipling, whose own son was lost, presumed killed, at the Battle of Loos in 1915, described the construction of these cemeteries as the biggest single bit of work since any of the pharaohs, and as he pointed out, the pharaohs only worked in their own country.  Such was the scale of sacrifice across the world.  The then Indian empire lost more than 70,000 people; Canada lost more than 60,000, so did Australia; New Zealand, 18,000.  And as part of the UK at the time, more than 200,000 Irishmen served in the British forces during the war, with more than 27,000 losing their lives.  This was the extraordinary sacrifice of a generation.  It was a sacrifice they made for us, and it is right that we should remember them.

Second, I think it is also right to acknowledge the impact that the war had on the development of Britain and, indeed, the world as it is today.  For all the profound trauma, the resilience and the courage that was shown, the values we hold dear: friendship, loyalty, what the Australians would call ‘mateship’.  And the lessons we learned, they changed our nation and they helped to make us who we are today.

It is a period of our history through which we can start to trace the origins of a number of very significant advances: the extraordinary bravery of Edith Cavell, whose actions gained such widespread admiration and played an important part in advancing the emancipation of women; the loss of the troopship SS Mendi, in February 1917 and the death of the first black British army officer, Walter Tull, in March 1918, are not just commemorated as tragic moments, but also seen as marking the beginnings of ethnic minorities getting the recognition, respect and equality they deserve.

The improvements in medicine were dramatic.  In 1915 wounds which became infected resulted in a 28% mortality rate; by 1917 the use of antiseptics saw the death toll drop to just 8%.  Plastic surgery developed into a well-established speciality over the course of the war.

At the same time there were hugely significant developments in this period, which, frankly, darkened our world for much of the following century.  The advance in technology transformed the nature of war beyond recognition.  The tanks and aircraft of 1918 were the forerunners of those that fought with such devastation in World War II.  They would have been almost unimaginable for the cavalry regiments that set out in the autumn of 1914.

The war’s geopolitical consequences defined much of the twentieth century.  It unleashed the forces of Bolshevism and Nazism and, of course, with the failure to get the peace right, the great tragedy was that the legacy of ‘the War to end all wars’ was an equally cataclysmic Second World War, just two decades later.

So I think for us today to fail to recognise the huge national and international significance of all these developments during the First World War would be, frankly, a monumental mistake.

There is a third reason why this matters so much.  It is more difficult to define, but I think it is perhaps the most important of all.  There is something about the First World War that makes it a fundamental part of our national consciousness.  Put simply, this matters not just in our heads, but in our hearts; it has a very strong emotional connection.  I feel it very deeply.  Of course, there is no one in my family still alive from the time, or anything close to it.  My grandfather, my uncle, my great uncle all fought in the Second World War.  I have always been fascinated by what happened to them and tried to listen to their experiences.

Even though the family stories that I’ve heard direct from the participants, as it were, were all from World War II, there is something so completely captivating about the stories that we read from World War I.  We look at those fast fading sepia photographs of people posing stiffly and proudly in their uniform.  In many cases it was the first and last image ever taken of them, and this matters to us.

The stories and the writings of the Great War affect us too.  That mixture of horror and courage, suffering and hope; it has permeated our culture.  From the poems of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, my favourite book, Robert Graves’s memoirs recounting his time in the Great War, Good-Bye to All That.  To modern day writers like Sebastian Faulks, from Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy, focusing on the aftermath of trauma, to War Horse, showing the sacrifice of animals in war.  Current generations are still absolutely transfixed by what happened in the Great War and what it meant.

The fact is, individually and as a country, we keep coming back to it, and I think that will go on.  This is not just a matter of the heart for us in Britain.  It is a matter for the heart for the whole of Europe and beyond.  From The Last Post Association, whose volunteers have played every night at the Menin Gate since 1928, to Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery, to the Memorial to the Missing, in Belgium, which is the largest British war cemetery in the world, visited by nearly half a million people every year, still today, to the battlefield memorials right across Western Europe.

For me, when asked: what is the most powerful First World War memory you have?  It is going to visit the battlefields at Gallipoli.  I’ll never forget going, having a fantastic Turkish guide who showed me the beaches we were meant to land at, the beaches we did land at, the fight that went on up those extraordinary hills.  One of the most powerful things I’ve ever seen is the monument erected by the Turks in Gallipoli.  Before I read you the inscription, think in your mind, think of the bloodshed, think of the tens of thousands of Turks who were killed, and then listen to the inscription that they wrote to our boys and to those from the Commonwealth countries that fell.  It is absolutely beautiful, I think.  It goes like this:

‘Those heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives, you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.  Therefore, rest in peace.  There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us, where they lie, side by side, in this country of ours.  You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears.  Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace.  After having lost their lives on this land, they shall become our sons as well.’

So beautiful, beautiful words on this First World War monument.  For me, those words capture so much of what this is all about.  That from such war and hatred can come unity and peace, a confidence and a determination never to go back.  However frustrating and however difficult the debates in Europe, 100 years on we sort out our differences through dialogue and meetings around conference tables, not through the battles on the fields of Flanders or the frozen lakes of western Russia.

Let me turn to the plans for the centenary.  Last November I appointed former  Naval doctor Andrew Murrison as my special representative.  I am very grateful to him for the excellent work he has been doing in assembling ideas from across Government and beyond, and for putting the UK among the leaders in this shared endeavour and for laying the foundations of our commemorations.  Today, I am honoured to be able to say that he is going to be joined by some of the most senior figures in British public life, including Tom King, George Robertson, Menzies Campbell, Jock Stirrup and Richard Dannatt.  That’s  two former Secretaries of State for Defence, one of whom was also a Secretary General of NATO, a former Chief of the Defence Staff, a former Chief of the General Staff.  They’ll be joined by others, including world leading historians, like Hew Strachan, and world class authors like Sebastian Faulks.  I hope they’ll provide senior leadership on a new advisory board that is going to be chaired by the Secretary of State for Culture, Maria Miller.

Our ambition is a truly national commemoration, worth of this historic centenary.  I want a commemoration that captures our national spirit, in every corner of the country, from our schools to our workplaces, to our town halls and local communities.  A commemoration that, like the Diamond Jubilee celebrated this year, says something about who we are as a people.

Remembrance must be the hallmark of our commemorations, and I am determined that Government will play a leading role, with national events and new support for educational initiatives.  These will include national commemorations for the first day of conflict, on 4th August 2014, and for the first day of the Somme, on 1st July 2016.  Together with partners like the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the custodians of our remembrance, the Royal British Legion, there will be further events to commemorate Jutland, Gallipoli and Passchendaele, all leading towards the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day in 2018.

The centenary will also provide the foundations upon which to build an enduring cultural and educational legacy, to put young people front and centre in our commemoration and to ensure that the sacrifice and service of a hundred years ago is still remembered in a hundred years’ time.

Now, the Imperial War Museum is already leading the First World War Centenary Partnership, a growing network of over 500 organisations, helping millions of people across the world to discover more about life in the First World War and its relevance today.  Today we are complementing that with a new centenary education programme, with more than £5 million of new Government funding.  This will include the opportunity for pupils and teachers from every state secondary school to research the people who served in the Great War, and for groups of them then, crucially, to follow their journey to the First World War battlefields.  I think that will be a great initiative and really welcomed by secondary schools and secondary school pupils.

We are also providing a further £5 million of new money, in addition to the £5 million we have already given to support transforming IWM London – this project right here at this incredible museum.  It will match contributions from private, corporate and social donors.

So our commemorations, if you like, will consist of three vital elements: a massive transformation of this museum to make is even better than it is today, a major programme of national commemorative events properly funded, given the proper status that they deserve, and third, an educational programme to create an enduring legacy for generations to come.  All of this will be overseen by a world class advisory board chaired by the Secretary of State for Culture, supported by my own special representative Andrew Murrison.

And that is not all, because we stand ready to incorporate more ideas because a truly national commemoration cannot just be about national initiatives and government action, it needs to be local too.  So the Heritage Lottery Fund is today announcing an additional £6 million to enable young people working in their communities to conserve, explore and share local heritage of the First World War.

That is in addition to the £9 million they have already given to projects marking the centenary, including community heritage projects.  And they are calling for more applications; they are open to new ideas, to more thinking.  So whether it is a series of friendly football matches to mark the famous 1914 Christmas Day truce, or the campaign led by the Greenhithe branch of the Royal British Legion to sow the Western Front’s iconic poppies here in the UK, I think we should get out there and make this centenary a truly national moment, but also something that actually means something in every locality in our country.

So, in total over £50 million is being committed to these centenary commemorations; I think it is absolutely right they should be given such priority, as I have explained.  As a twenty-year-old soldier wrote just a week before he died: ‘But for this war, I and all the others would have passed into oblivion like the countless myriads before us, but we shall live forever in the results of our efforts.’

Our duty towards these commemorations is clear: to honour those who served, to remember those who died, and to ensure that the lessons learnt live with us forever.  And I think that is exactly what we can do with these commemorations.