Talking of imaginary games...I came up with one today...
Think of a statement that sounds pretty uncontroversial, unremarkable and one that would be approved of my most if not all people. So something like -
"I find a coffee rounds off a meal nicely." or
"It's annoying when your coin gets refused by a slot machine." or
"New sheets feel nice on the skin."
Now imagine President Trump said one of these things.
The game then is to think of how the BBC's Senior North American Whatnot, Anthony Zurcher, might misrepresent this innocent comment and turn it into something reprehensible, indefensible or grounds for impeachment.
So for instance, "New sheets feel nice on the skin."
You might have this Zurcher interpretation: "Skin tone as a defining element of your Presidency? White sheets have certainly had their (notorious) place in America's dark history. Surprising the President is not as sensitive to these things, as he is to his ego or the touch of cotton on his flesh - so does he sleep naked by the way? And could Melania care either way?"
Talking of Anthony Zurcher, this tweet is typical Zurch:
Anthony Zurcher Retweeted NBC News: @NBCNews WATCH: President Trump says "Robert E. Lee was a great general" during Ohio rally, calling the Confederate leader "incredible."
Anthony Zurcher added: 11,000 Ohioans died fighting the Confederates in the Civil War.
If you watch the actual video you find that Trump was actually praising the head of the Union army General Ulysses S. Grant - a native of Ohio:
Yes, that was a classic Zurcher attack! Truncate the text...link to something irrelevant...and hope for the best (ie the worst for Trump). Zurcher is the gnat biting the rhino's hide a thousand times a day. Annoying but the rhino is not brought down.
Last evening The Great British Menu came to an end with the Grand Banquet - held at Bart's Hospital. As readers here might guess the banquet gave a good opportunity to showcase the BBC's core values. I've commented before that as a true Socialist, Nye Bevan might be turning in his grave over the inclusion of scollops, venison, beef fillet, lobster, langoustines, caviar etc in the regional rounds instead of a humble fare in his honour. Why not stage the event in a village hall in Tredegar?
It's obvious really, the BBC's heartland for this type of show is in London. As a change to the usual format the programme had a vote amongst the diners to elect a 'Champion of Champions' from the four remaining chefs. James won. Why? Because he was representing London and the South East, and his back-story was built up to be the most compelling - regardless of the quality of his dish.
Yes- the core values are in every programme they make now. Virture signalling on a grand scale. I’m sure programmes don’t get commissioned now unless they can demonstrate diversity and inclusivity - the more the better is the motto.
However..the vote was by everyone eating at the banquet so just maybe his food was the best.
You're right Arthur. Humble fare wouldn't get a look in. Dish after dish was rejected by the judges as not spectacular enough and not 'banquet worthy' even when they said it was perfectly cooked and of high quality. Village hall wouldn't be 'banquet worthy' for the worthies who were invited. Comments online noted that the judges went on and on about treating the hardworking staff of the NHS but apart from a token couple of cleaners the guests were senior managers, TV celebrity doctors and those holding awards and honours. And the crass 'champion of champions' nonsense wasn't liked by anyone.
The Great British Menu was from beginning to end a BBC propaganda exercise in praise of the NHS. Chefs were chosen as much for their declared indebtedness to the NHS as their culinary skills; every heat was chock-full of messages about what a wonderful institution it is; and the judges vied with each other to heap more superlatives on the selflessness and brilliance of NHS staff. During the final on Friday, the banquet guests, drawn from the NHS, were described as saints. This throughout was the Jeremy Corbyn view of the NHS, ironically held in a week when - despite all the billions lavished upon it - it actually came 35th in an league table of the world's health services, behind even Panama.
Robin, you confirmed what I feared. As soon as I heard it was to celebrate the NHS I just guessed how awful it wouldn’t be and refused to watch even though I had seen previous series. I just hope that overall the BBC realise they have a decline in viewing figures but I fear they are so obseywith the message that they don’t realise it is the message that causes viewers to switch off.
In the light of Coburngate we can see how far things have moved.
Biased BBC will now have to change its name to Brazenly Biased BBC.
This site will have to change it name to "C'm on, No One Anymore Seriously Maintains the BBC Isn't Hugely and Mendaciously Biased." Bit of a mouthful, but the interrogative mode is no longer apposite!
Looking back, when I first went seeking out sites that were registering my concerns about bias on the BBC, I thought it was a rather narrow, political bias that was the concern focussed on the EU and immigration. But now I have to admit this is way more broad and deep and malevolent.
Look at the arrogance of Coburn...it tells you everything. They feel they have complete licence to be biased now.
But far worse than the brazen arrogance (Evan Davis was displaying it as well when dealing with Myron Ebell, declaring the IPCC infallible on a par with some Medieval Pope), is the sense that the BBC is now fully opposed to all the liberal notions they once extolled and which we were once encouraged to believe in.
They no longer support free speech. Speech is to be licensed and controlled. Certain popular figures are not to be allowed to speak on the BBC controlled channels. The BBC supports with real gusto criminalisation of speech of which it disapproves.
The BBC no longer believes in democracy. It has been supporting the campaign to overturn the 23rd June 2016 Referendum result ever since 24th June 2016. It is promoting the idea that young people's votes should be worth more than old people's votes. It think group rights trump individual rights. It has promoted the idea of unelected technocratic government - providing crucial support to unelected technocrats like Carney.
The BBC no longer supports equality of opportunity. It is now fully signed up to the opposing principle of equality of outcome which the Bolsheviks were the first to attempt to implement as a matter of state policy.
The BBC no longer supports the family and is working hard to degenderise the population (whilst - absurdly and hypocritically - promoting gender-segregated sport).
The BBC no longer supports science. It supports a parody of science. Various nostrums are declarted inviolably true. No vaccine ever harmed a child. Anthropogenic global warming is a proven fact and will result in disaster for the planet (despite global warming hitherto having done nothing to interfere with the growth in world GDP or agricultural output). All scientific research shows men and women to be equal in all respects. Darwin was not a malevolent old racist who used his theories to back his racism. Our major scientific advances in the past were thanks to Islam.
The BBC no longer backs Anglicanism or even Christianity. It is working hard 24/7 to promote Islam at the expense of all other religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Bahai and Mormonism. In order to do this the BBC lies about Sharia, the history of the Islamic world, the influence of Islam on science, Islam's involvement in slavery, the life of Mohammed and a host of other issues.
The BBC no longer has any interest in our cultural achievements, such as Shakespeare, Elgar, Dickens, Vaughan Williams, or the pre-Raphaelites. You might find something tucked away something so they can show it to Ofcom as their homework, but they certainly are not interested in that sort of stuff.
It wouldn't be quite so bad if the BBC were honest about all this. If they stood up and said "We take your licence fee money and use it to promote religious intolerance, the suppression of free speech, pseudo-science, destruction of the family, and hatred of British culture" I could just about stomach it. But, nope, they hide behind a veneer of respectability ("Look we still sit around tables and have debates, even though, like in Soviet Russia, the debates are all between people who agree with each other.")...Every now and then they come over a bit patriotic for those licensed bouts of patriotism...Poppy Day and so on...
But there is now real mendacity and malevolence behind the mask. They set out to destroy people, to break them mentally and physically. They have the named targets: Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Tommy Robinson and now - of course - Gerard Batten. Having selected the target they are relentless in their misrepresentation, their denial of free speech, their enthusiasm for the violent mobs that go after them.
It's always annoying hearing a bored woman on the BBC pretending to be interested in sport because that's what pays the bills. It was equally annoying hearing Jonny Diamond finally doing something that matched his official title (Royal Correspondent) commentating on the Royal Wedding. This guy clearly has no interest in the idea of monarchy, in the royal family or in the clothes they wear for special occasions. That's not my interpretation - he made it abundantly clear himself with various sarky comments.
The BBC has sports reporters who hate sport, royal correspondents who hate royalty, religious correspondents who hate religions, American correspondents who hate America and Brexit correspondents who...oh yeah, hate Brexit of course!...it's all beginning to make sense at last!! :) I see ...Wait a minute though, why don't they have EU correspondents who hate the EU? :)
Excellent analysis MB. You might add the self-perpetuating nature of the organisation regenerating itself like some hideous creature of myth. With a huge intake of intelligent HR raw material, the BBC is so set up that dissenters to the corporate ideology have become virtually extinct.
The well paid incomer to the BBC will subconsciously conform to the ideals. Those of rebellious nature or independent thought will quickly be weeded out and will never succeed in climbing the career ladder.
Employment at the BBC has all the hallmarks of the Politburo. Conformity to to directives from the Central Committee (who in this case are the super-salaried establishment within the BBC - Easton, Simpson, Dimbleby etc) is taken as a precondition to employment there.
Of course what the Low IQ Ideologues like Easton don't realise is that the ideological victory is swiftly followed by a return to nature. Once it is shown that ideology trumps law, decency, civility, humanity...the mulitiplying body of victims and - more importantly - potential victims, soon realise that you can only fight fire with fire.
In order to survive, you have to lie just as much as they lie, be as corrupt as they are, be as mendacious as they are - meeting their denunciations with your own denunciations of them...
This is what led the people of Russia to their sorry state in 1956 when even the Communists themselves had become sick of the whole business and wanted to call a kind of internal ideological truce. Mao of course hated that truce...he carried on with the ideological war until the 70s when the Chinese Communists called a truce.
She's still Jenny from the bloc...the EU bloc that is...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45835795
This sounds like wonky-polling to me. Greens up by AfD levelling and CSU doesn't make sense. But Germans are v. careful about presenting the "correct face" in public, so expect Germans to lie about whether they will vote for AfD.
The Greens might be doing slightly better because green energy is a popular policy in Southern Germany (where most of the sunshine is). But if CSU are falling, then most of their votes I think will be going to the AfD.
Well never let it be said I don't own up when completely wrong...the opinion polls were pretty spot on.
But I wrote that before I saw the photo of the glamorous, photogenic blonde Green leader in Bavaria posing like a model in a traditional dirdl skirt next to another photo of the male CSU leader in godawful drag at the Bavarian Carnival...Clearly they do things differently in Bavaria!
I am beginning to wonder if BBC presenters are paid a bonus for using the Beeb's current hurrah-words, regardless of context. BBC 2 had a repeat of a Monty Don gardening prog. at about 8 a.m. today, on which the star turn was an expert on garden worms; the bit that caught my attention was, "... you will have a DIVERSITY of worms in your garden." Let's hope the Beeb never discovers that worms are hermaphrodites, otherwise they'll be wanting to use the little beggars as rôle models ... Oh,...oh yeah!
Rather than getting everyone to change cultural habits that are hundreds of thousands of years old, why doesn't harrabin called for an end to mass immigration and end to population growth in Africa, Asia and Latin America? Wouldn't that be far more effective in protecting the environment?
Both Nick Robinson and Mark Mardell have given this speech by arch Remainer Ivan Rogers their stamp of approval and asked us to read it.
Rogers is a "rum cove"...something of a perpetual student, he studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure (spelling not guaranteed). He pursued doctoral studies in the history of socio-biology and eugenic thinking on the political left - but didn't complete his degree. He was senior civil servant. PPS to Blair and then our Permanent Representative to the EU. He was an early saboteur of the democratic Brexit vote and had to resign his position when it became clear he was actively frustrating the Government's policy on implementing Brexit.
Well I think we can see why Mardell and Robinson find his pearls of wisdom so attractive.
I could write a book about how wrong headed the article is.
1. He is still pushing the old defeatist line (which even the BBC gave up on) that it takes 10 years or more to negotiate a trade deal. This despite the complex USMCA trade deal having been negotiated within about 18 months. I do accept it will take 10 years or more is you have people like Rogers around and if we let the EU take that long.
2. He misleads and distorts at every turn. He claims during the proposed transition period "We will, automatatically be ically and immediately, over any transition period, be bound by law and decisions over which our representatives and voters had no say." This is absurd. More than 99% of any regulatory framework will have been agreed while we were EU Members. There will only be a small, virtually non-existent, fraction that is new and implemented during the the transition period.
3. He claims "We all know the 350 million figure on the side of the red bus was specious." but he claims it resonated with the public. I dispute that. The bus would have had little impact were it not for the attempt by the Remain media, BBC to the fore, to try and turn it into a major scandal - Leavers caught out in a "lie". The figure was not specious, it was debatable. It did include our rebate, but the rebate is not guaranteed for all time. It was time limited and due for review (not something Remainers were honest about). It was not a very clever slogan. It would have been better to have stated "£9 billion every year" (our actual payment) rather than £350 million per week. The net billions certainly did resonate. People were asking what are we getting out of this for all that money?
4. He states correctly that you cannot have "access" to the Single Market. The Single Market is a legal construct you're either a (EU) member of it or you're not - even Norway is not part of the EU Single Market. But it is not the Brexiters who have been arguing for continued membership of the Single Market after we leave as though that were a possibility - it is the Remainers and they have been pushing this fiction in order to frustate the implementation of the democratic will of the people.
5. He uses the offensive term "nativist reactionary" to describe the populist movement and links that to the Brexit cause. He thus tries to make out that Brexiters are opposed to free trade, which is of course absurd. Virtually all main speakers for Leave spoke enthusiastically about free trade opportunities: Johnson, Davis, Farage, Leadsom, Hannan. He's just trying to rewrite history.
6. He claims we were permanently opted out of monetary union. If we were permanently opted out, why did Brown and Blair have policies about how we would join (a number of tests)? We were opted out as long as a UK government was prepared to keep us out.
7. He claims the EU is not working to create a federal state. Really? The EU has its own flag, its own anthem, its own currency, its own central bank, free movement across many of its internal borders, it has its own law making structure, its own parliament, a Common Foreign and Security Policy, and a Common Security and Defence Policy that combines military personnel and assets. It's the dishonesty of these Remainers that is so hard to take. The EU is effectively already a Federal State. It just needs to top it up with a proper army and real fiscal union for it to be there.
8. Lastly, in all his speech which is supposed to be a "what went wrong" exposition as well as a "what won't go right" Remain Moan, he doesn't once mention Merkel Million Migrant Madness. I think that really brought home (a) how Germany can make up the rules as it goes along (b) how much our lives could be affected by a crazy whim of the German Chancellor and (c) how the EU didn't have meaningful borders.
... 'Will Gompertz on Banksy's shredded Love is in the Bin' ...
It's worth reading through the article, in which WG gives his own opinion - something BBC reporters are usually loathed to do.
... 'But contemporary art is not valued for its inherent aesthetic qualities (although that is how it is presented to us), it is valued pretty much solely on the basis of an artist's reputation. All that matters is the brand, that it is a Banksy, or a Koons, or a Kusama. For a lot of collectors art has become an asset class.....
... My [GM's] view? It is art. Made by an artist who many don't rate but I do. Why? Because he has something to say....
.... You might not agree with him, but at least he is making art that penetrates the public consciousness; art that is in the world, not detached from it; art that raises questions that need an airing.' ...
The BBC love to report on Banksy. He represents their mindset - anti globalisation, anti big business, and support for the underdog. But, isn't this just lazy reporting by the BBC and their Arts Correspondent? No doubt, Banksy's output will be accompanied by easy-to-reproduce press releases and storylines. To my mind Banksy's work is derived from the Pop-Art Movement. Richard Hamilton's famous list of tenets of Pop-Art: "Popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business, would seem to fit Banksy's output admirably - especially Big Business - his paintings change hands for £millions.
Much like pop stars of the 1960s, without any thought of making their fortunes, pop-artists were rebellious - poking fun at the establishment. Again as with pop stars it was only after the event that Big Business moved in on their backs.
Gompertz applies a shallow level of art criticism to Banksy's work, choosing only to concentrate upon the political statements made by the artists - as he does with Turner Prize winners and shortlist. Some of the BBC's archive programmes on the likes of Augustus John are inspiring as we watch them work. Art appreciation has disappeared from the role of the critic.
Corny - but, through Gompertz, all we are encouraged to see the price of the artwork without seeing its value.
I think Banksy was heavily influenced by the Situationist art movement.
Is the BBC anti-globalist? I don't think so. They want a kind of PC capitalism but so do a lot of the biggest globalists. I think they oppose traditional free market capitalism.
Is the BBC anti-globalist? It's a good question. If McDonalds are in 123 countries, then to my mind that's globalisation. Because McD's formula is capitalist, then I wouldn't expect the BBC to celebrate their success. If globalisation means that we all eat the same type of food (burgers) then, apart from today's message that we should eat less meat, then I suppose the BBC might support the inclusivity aspect of globalisation.
I think that, essentially, the BBC are in the pro Globalist camp. That means being broadly supportive of the big tech companies, China, the Obamas, the Clintons, Soros, political correctness and no borders migration policies.
But of course the Globalist camp is a broad church...and the BBC is in the soft left corner of the camp...so they whinge about a lot of things to do with capitalism, they generally encourage anti-capitalist ideas in young people and they want to see worldwide regulation of global companies (but a lot of globalist billionaires argue for the same). I think modern capitalism of the Facebook/Google/Amazon/Microsoft type is really much more a kind of monopolostic capitalism, divorced from the free market ethos. Monopolists are normally good at cutting deals with governments and make natural allies of the monopolistically-minded BBC.
"Much like pop stars of the 1960s, without any thought of making their fortunes, pop-artists were rebellious..."
Yes and No. The male pop stars of the 1960s who emerged pre-1967ish were generally the sons of factory workers and plumbers. They started out wanting, not unreasonably, to make as much money in one night playing at The Cavern or Eel Pie Island or even the local village hall as their fathers made in a week of hard, grimy toil (with the added bonus of getting up late, having fun and pretty much their pick of girls). It was mainly the pop stars of the later 60s who were not so interested in money, or claimed not to be at least. Many more of the later 60s stars were from middle class or above backgrounds (Pink Floyd, Genesis etc) and had been to art college or university and had less fear or experience of poverty. Those survivors of the early 60s cohort who appeared to be fashionably less interested in money when the end of the 1960s came along were the few who had a more middle class background to start with and/or had been to art college* such as Lennon and Jagger. Their later attitude to money was no doubt also coloured somewhat by the fact that by then they were phenomenally wealthy.
How genuinely rebellious, in a radically political rather than in a pop culture/personal sense, any of the major 1960s artists were is debatable.
* Ian MacDonald's brilliant "Revolution in the Head" points out how massively influenced British 1960s and 1970s pop music was by the art colleges that existed in every major city. He rightly points out that they were repositories for lots of non-academic kids who were nevertheless bright and obviously had some kind of spark or talent without necessarily knowing what for exactly. Many a pop phenomenon began there and many of their early audiences were drawn from there too. Such places didn't exist in the US and they contributed to the differences between the two countries cultures.
Yes, Revolution in the Head is v. good. Kinks and the Who are another example of the Art School influence.
We shouldn't knock this 60s spirit or our art schools. The UK is phenomenally successful in all things related to creative endeavour: music, art, design, fashion, luxury cars and computer games and so on.
Feedback this week had very little listener feedback, it was mostly about the BBC's Climate Blasphemy Laws and promoting podcasts. Finally Roger Bolton gave us one of those little insights into how the conversation around the water cooler goes when he closed by telling us that we live in difficult times and that we need something to make us laugh. Around my water cooler I laugh every time I hear the BBC tell me that we live in difficult times as I know it is just their tears over Clinton and 'Remain' losing.
Yep. "Difficult times" = Napoleonic wars, Hungry Forties, Irish Famine, WW1, the Great Depression, WW2 and post war austerity/housing shortage...maybe even the 3 day week. What Bolton and the other water coolants mean is "things aren't going our way the way we'd like them to". It has other names e.g. "throwing a tantrum", "stamping your little feet" and "bursting into tears".
Just keep watching this. It is like a microcosm of what we are facing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyTPjKpn8Mk
Note Coburn's insane pro-Sharia argumentation. Note her denying that a religion is an ideology just like any other ideology. She's obviously a secularist and probably an atheist but she cynically dons religious robes to take a shot against Batten.
Note how Coburn hypocritically (having previously given him the same treatment) is now claiming Farage as a "voice of moderation".
Note Batten very admirably pushes back on all her disgusting attempts to turn perfectly normal opinions - anti-grooming, anti-Sharia, anti-terrorism - into some morally reprehensible.
Batten has rise hugely in my estimation. Thanks, Jo. :)
I take it the youtube is the wild ravings of Jo Coburn on Friday. It was clear she had lost her mind when she started snapping that it was a religion, not an ideology - when she herself had been using the word a few minutes before in the same programme. Another thing: she accused Batten of supporting violence and when he objected, she angrily denied she'd accused him, claiming it was a question. As I watched and listened I neither saw nor heard any sign of interrogation but a further hostile accusation in an unedifying stream of antagonism and bullying. Liar, liar, I thought. And a disgusting display from BBC. I wonder when she is going to be interrogated and shouted at for her own bigotry and if it will make the BBC front page when she is forced to issue a public apology. Waiting...
I hope UKIP get some lawyer to draft a formal complaint. Even though the BBC hierarchy will support Coburn the Barbarian to the hilt, they will still find it difficult to defend her behaviour, so this is a rare occasion where a complaint might make life really difficult for them.
BBC are in a strange place. You'd expect them to be in seventh heaven: a Conservative Government tottering, in danger of complete meltdown, failure of negotiations in Brussels...surely opporunity for a second referendum.
But no...they are oddly muted. Norman Smith speaks more in sorrow than anger and with none of his usual hyperbolic excitement. Honest Nick doesn't seem to have much wind in his sails. The BBC folk are scratching their collective head trying to see a way forward but can't.
So I am led to the conclusion that the BBC is desperate to shore up May. Their ultimate nightmare would be to see a new, much more popular Conservative PM, who goes to the nation wipes the floor with Corbyn and wins a majority for a hard Brexit if necessary.
I agree. But it's instructive to see how they treat something when they are not on the "warpath". Suddenly they are looking to reduce the temperature, to not speculate too much, to report matter-of-factly. They are not referring to the economic damage this impasse is doing... etc etc. It is definitely not their preferred option (that being a second referendum decision to Remain) but if necessary they can live with a Chequers style deal and then hope for a revived Second Referendum later or possibly they will push the "Rejoin the EU" campaign that will be launched by Soros and Co immediately after we depart.
It's possible that the BBC are endeavouring to carry their can level in the hope that neither a Corbyn led Government nor a genuine Leave Leader of the Conservative Party were to take May's place. In either case, the BBC's cosiness in their unassailable bubble might be at an end.
Indeed. I think the higher ups, the more established presenters at the BBC can see the dangers they face from a Corbyn government once Dawn Butler or similar is appointed Comissar for Cultural Affairs.
Francis Fukuyama wasn't quite saying the right things on Radio 4 this morning which is why Marr had to ignore them. He stated quite clearly and unequivocally that mass immigration was responsible for the rise in the populist right in Europe.
Silence from Marr.
Marr of course as a veteran player knew what required of him out on the field so to speak. We had the "so called" Football Lads Alliance but there was no "so called" when he referred to the Anti-Fascists in the next breath.
Have I discovered a new form of bias or is this an example of bias by soft questioning...?
Ed Stourton had the Fine Gael rep on. Ed refers (in the correct BBC formulation) to the possibility of the UK "crashing out"..."what then for the border?" he asks...
The Fine Gael guy flannels and then refuses to entertain the possibility that the UK might "crash out". Terrier-like (sarcasm) Ed returns to the fray and, well, kind of restates the question and gets nowhere.
Of course we know why the Fine Gael guy was being so evasive...Stourton should have asked him directly: "If the UK leaves the EU without a deal, will you erect border posts on the border in line with your EU obligations?" We know the real answer is "NO! not in a million years!!" So this whole border issue is a negotiation ploy designed to wreck Brexit and Hapless May, at the behest of her pro-Remain civil servants has fallen for it.
She's had 774 tweets in response. Normally she's lucky to get into double figures. And let's say...comments could be going better.
I hope Gerard Batten has lodged a formal complaint. Someone on bBBC spotted that although towards the end of the interview she launches into Batten for referring to Islam as an ideology, it was she who first mentioned ideology in that respect! - that's how biased she was!!
I’m not sure there is really much difference in practice between a religion and an ideology. I am by no means a UKIP supporter, but the ferocity of Coburn’s attack on Batten was quite appalling. Another point that came up during the same discussion, was that it would not be acceptable to condemn the whole of the Catholic church because of the child abuse scandals. Perhaps not, but I would certainly recognise that there are some serious, fundamental problems within Catholicism - which was exactly what Batten was suggesting with regard to Islam. Even the point that Rochdale and other cases were allowed to carry on for so long because of fears about Islamophobia were left hanging in the air without any real discussion. Coburn also rather too deftly brushed aside the Saville references.
Politics Live seems to have a very pronounced agenda. The topic of a few weeks ago was, “The toxic nature of masculinity”.
There's no real difference between a religion and an ideology. Belief in a deity doesn't separate them since Buddhism, considered a religion, doesn't have a deity and Deism, which does believe in a deity is often considered a philosophical position. Some religions are more overtly political than others and all religions get involved in politics one way or another. Islam has never seen any distinction between religious belief, personal practice, the law and public policy.
Coburn studied Middle Eastern politics, so it's reasonable to suppose she has some understanding of Islam's history and belief system and how it is expressed through Sharia law. So she must be dissembling, in order to confuse the audience, do down GB and further her ideology - PC multiculturalism.
Kaiser posted and put the video URL https://youtu.be/PGeIEk29Xw0?t=391 You can click the 3 dots and pull up the transcript as a guide cos its not perfect 6:40 You are condeming all Muslim Men. women, chidren if they adhere to anideology 7:29 (angry voice) right it is a religion BTW not an ideology, it is a religion
Ideology = belief system ..and that is all religions , but also other things like communism etc (POLTICAL ideology)
Absurd prominence given by the BBC to this minor spat in American politics (Trump's joke about Pocahontas). But the weird thing I noticed was this use of "blood" by the BBC, like they were some outfit from the RHSA in 1941. Surely we have moved on from such fanciful notions as our blood carrying our ethnic identity. And in any case I should think at least 150 million Americans have as much Native American "blood" (to use the BBC phrase) in them as she does. She definitely hasn't got as much as Winston Churchill who was one eighth Native American - far more impressive and much admired by Trump.
Mark Easton is not as clever as he thinks he is, that permanent smirk and the air of superiority that sweats out of him is always a dead giveaway.
His latest Brexit report tonight was the usual doom and gloom designed to prove that the latest survey results show we are split down the middle and divided. As if we didn’t know it, Easton is determined to remind us time and time again.
He picked his way through the survey results, only choosing the ones that suited his argument and personal opinions. As the numbers came up - white meant better, bright red meant worse.
‘I want you to focus on what was written on the side of that bus’ he said- blatantly leading his Swansea panel by the hand to demonstrate that Brexit won’t make the NHS better.
‘List the three things that are most important to you after Brexit’ he said - before excitedly and proudly telling them that on-one had listed immigration.
Mark Easton can’t be described as impartial by any stretch of the imagination. He is your typical BBC propaganda merchant. His modus operandi is usually the same. He takes a survey and cherry picks the data to fit the message he wants. Then he gets the great British public to act as unwitting stooges to get validate the story he has concocted.
I compare him to the guy you used to have in the Politburo - the Chief Ideologue, who was supposed to keep all the ohter Commissars on the right path and explain away any apparent conflicts between ideology and reality. He is dangerous and tends to give the ideological lead to the BBC sheep: no such thing as England, nationalism is outmoded, mass migration is good, mass migration is changing the country for the better, multiculturalism enriches the country, the old are lost and confused etc etc .
... 'Painting of Trump among past presidents seen at White House' ...
This article starts as a straight news story about a painting The Republican Club, by Andy Thomas, hanging on the wall of the Oval Office. We find that Andy Thomas has painted something very similar for the Democrats, showing their Presidents sitting together around a table in a club.
But, the BBC could not help itself. It had to include: ... 'Inevitably, others used photo-editing software to make their own amendments to the scene.' ...
The accompanying composite image shows a photoshopped superimposed paste-in of the Donald Trump inflatable in place of the painted portrait of the real Donald Trump at the table.
This manipulation is shallow, gimmicky, childish, and insulting to the POTUS. It is clearly intended to draw for the article's author Chris Bell a round of congratulations from his friends at the BBC as he jumps on the bandwagon of anti Trump rhetoric flooding out from the BBC. I'm sure this behaviour will confirm, just ib case there was any doubt, that the BBC won't be tolerated by DT, and the likes of John Sopel will continue to spread his bile from a pavement somewhere in Washington DC.
BBC Trending is run by an American Radical who tried to start a Village Voice type publication in London, completely failed and ended up working for the BBC. Hence the things allegedly "trending" are more often than not anti-Trump nonsense.
R4 prog about the rise of Libertarian bloggers The progmaker Gavin Haynes seems like an antifa who's been told to turn it down a bit, so as not to make it too obvious. yet he obviously sneers at Sargon etc. And goes soft on his lefty guests.
Useful info at the beginning Sargon regularly gets half a million views ..which is the same as Newsnight (So that is rather an indication of Newsnight's fall) That Owen Jones looks like a minnow with his 109K Twitter followers vs PJWs 850K He claims that Sargon makes £10K/month from viewers and "probably as much from advertising"
Oh, these politicians and the BBC. This time it's Ed Vaizey:
'But the sheer pace of technological change and the huge sums of money involved means we need to think hard about how we secure the BBC’s future. It remains the domestic leader in national and local radio, a vital provider of news and the host of national events such as The Proms, still one of the key organisations binding an increasingly fractured nation together.'
That last bit makes me sick. No organisation, apart from the political parties, is more divisive than the BBC, with its Labourist obsession and insistence upon categorising everyone and everything as black or white - or variants upon. https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/we-need-the-bbc-to-be-more-secure-than-ever-but-its-role-must-change-a3962076.html
The BBC tried to kill the Last Night of the Proms several years ago. Giving the Proms to the BBC to care for is like giving a baby to a pyschopathic nurse. They are doing their best to declassicise it and turn it into something it never was. It's not as though there aren't plenty of outlets for pop, rap, rock and jazz. They've had to give up on their plans to completely change the Last Night of the Proms - but no doubt deep in their modernist breasts they would love to see it off.
Yes, the BBC is probably the most divisive institution in the land, although many of our universities may be running them a close second.
What a pathetic specimen that Vaizey guy is. Lacklustre Cameronian to his bones.
It's ironic, but not funny, when you consider how much time the BBC spends on pointing the finger at everyone else for being divisive and hateful.
I paused while scrolling past Newsnight and noticing the presenter. Couldn't think of his name but anyway... he was looking at the comment sections of the newspapers and when it came to The Times he said, 'Melanie Phillips, controversial columnist' by way of introduction. I don't suppose he'd put the same sort of label on a Jones or a Toynbee, say.
Well what cosy chats on the cutting edge Today programme. Cyber attacks: Russia mentioned about 20 times...China (probably the world's leading state-sponsored cyber attacker) not once. Finished up with a discussion about the possibility of a new "third way" party emerging. The discussion was between Nick Robinson, Phil Collins and Polly Toynbee. Pretty much the full range of BBC opinion on show there! The analysis was pretty pathetic. Nick sounded positively enthusiastic when the subject came to who might lead a new third way party..."they might be listening now!" he said excitedly.
The BBC do cover Venezuala but it's interesting HOW they cover. When dealing with Poland, Hungery or Austria, they are only too happy to describe governments as nationalist, right wing, populist or far right as the mood takes them. Reports on countries like Burma are replete with references to military government.
But when it comes to discussing the situation in a country, Venezuala, run by an avowedly left wing socialist government, the BBC makes no reference to the character of the government or its military backing.
It appears as though all the suffering is happening in a vacuum.
Perhaps they are just hoping that given most people are pretty apolitical and know little about South America they will assume Venezuala is run by one of those South American juntas (that actually don't exist any more).
Are they trying to protect Jeremy and Labour's Left - famously supportive of Chavez's left wing rule?
Are they trying to protect their left leaning, anti-capitalist ideology?
What has happened in Venezuala is truly staggering. You have to go back to Mao's feats of socliast mismanagement to find parallels. With all that oil they manage to have power cuts and starvation. This is where anti-entrepreneurial state socialism meets mass Latin American corruption. Horrendous.
The government has been doing a 16-week consultation about changing the law to give people the right to 'self declare' what sex they are and to have a birth certificate stating that sex, among other changes to advance trans rights. The consultation is due to end at 11pm on 19 October, that's Friday of this week.
So Woman's Hour, the programme which brings us a female perspective, allegedly, and always quick off the mark on anything important, such as the latest 'race row', or scrambling to put a famous man with all the maleness intact into its Power List of top women a few years back, took until yesterday, 15 October, to inform and invite listeners to put in their comments on the consultation. And they had a discussion about it today. Yes, that's right. Fifteen weeks went by before they could bring themselves to notice and advise their audience about it or even discuss it.
Jane Garvey, who is usually very eager to get stuck in on behalf of women if there's a possible angle with men, was strangely reticent and mild about putting in the odd point from women's perspective. That's the BBC hard at work on our behalf. Well, someone's behalf.
I hear her trail the piece yesterday - and yes she was strangely reticent indeed...as if she knew she was walking on potentially career-ending egg shells. The "progressive" movement, including the BBC, is split on this. But whoever wins will exact revenge on the defeated foe.
Did you know? On looking at Kingston Police's twitter I see that this is Hate Crime Awareness Week (HCAW). They're doing their bit: 'Over the next six days we aim to increase your knowledge and understanding of hate crime, what it is, who can report it, how it can be reported, the effects of hate crime and where you can find support.' You can report it on their app called Self Evident or on some other thing called True Vision. Who dreams up these names? And 'In aid of #NationalHCAW we have written a bespoke fictional story, split into five chapters. Check out our Facebook Page at 5pm each day for the latest chapter. The first chapter of ‘Everybody Hates Crime’ will be released tomorrow, we hope you find it engaging and informative.' They are beginning to sound like the BBC. I wonder if Jo Coburn knows it is Hate Crime Awareness Week. I think she should be told. Of course, the hate crime they are on about is that which affects a small number of select groups and excludes most of the population and probably Gerard Batten.
Old people - regularly told to eff off and die in the Guardian comments.
Brexit voters - regularly told to eff off in the Guardian comments and on BBC "comedy" programmes.
Men - Regularly blamed for all sorts of social ills (war, pollution, crime, oppression of women, peeing on toilet seats) and cited as the villain in a vast conspiracy theories by people who wish them out of existence.
People from Norfolk and Wales and ginger people - You can say anything you like about them, however hateful, according to the BBC.
An item on BBC1 6pm news: I confess I was still seething at the failure of Brexiteer cabinet ministers to resign, so I may not have listened carefully enough to the item on 'hate crime' - the presenter appeared to be mainly concerned with crimes perpetrated against uk muslims by white non-muslims. He gave example of the crimes committed & showed pictures of the perpetrators. He recognised that there had been attacks in, for example, Manchester and Westminster, but, unless I missed it, did not name the criminals, show their photographs or state the motives for their crimes. This did not seem to me to be balanced. My apologies if I have misunderstood.
I had to laugh listening to Katya Adler tonight on the main news when she talked about the UK media as if some third party.
She said EU Leaders were keeping quiet because whatever they say is jumped upon, analysed and twisted by the UK media.
The irony was completely lost on her that the BBC was part of that UK media and not just the right wing newspapers she was implying.
Incidentally she gave a very cheery report, smiling throughout as she always does when we are deep in the mire. She always enjoys and revels in our national humiliation. (As do most of the BBC reporters and editors).
The BBC is being incredibly supportive of May...holding on to nurse for fear of something worse I think - either a popular Conservative administration led by Boris Johnson or a revolutionary regime led by Corbyn that will move swiftly to secure control of the state broadcaster.
Spot-on Sir T! The whole shabby crew - with one or two honourable exceptions like Andrew Neil - have been longing for our national humiliation since at least the Falklands.
Interesting to keep an eye on : (Ex Rebel Media) Faith Goldy's current run for mayor of Toronto. She's being blocked out by establishment politicians and media. It's a pretty small story, but not unfamiliar. The recording of her ads being refused is sobering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oomEzViVhVU
Compare and contrast (and never forget) the Lyndsay Shepherd experience that you never heard about on the BBC.
I've seen quite a lot of her work. She's a very good communicator. I'd be surprised if she didn't do better than expected. But it's very difficult to break through elite-controlled politics.
Venezuala again...I think it is quite remarkable how the BBC avoids charactersing the regime. I heard Mishal Husain introduce an item on Today this morning. Whereas with countries like Poland, Hungary, Austria, Italy and Burma, the BBC is always very keen to stress descriptors like "right wing", "far right", "neo-fascist", "populist", "nationalist" and "military", when it comes to Venezuala there is a complete blank. If they were to do what they do with those other countries they would call it "left wing", "socialist", "leftist", "neo-communist", "left wing military" or some such. But they don't. It's just a nation or a state that has a government of unknown hue and a people! It's hinted it's not a very free country as the media aren't, we are told, allowed to report much from the country. That's about it. The rest you have to guess. Could be a fascist regime for all one might hear from the BBC. I didn't hear the item itself but heard one the other day from the same guy reporting on the extreme poverty in the oil-rich nation - again no description of the government - or its policies such as anti-Americanism, widespread nationalisation and market intervention.
I’ve mentioned on here before how it is always easy to tell who is ‘in the dock’ from BBC reports.
A variation on this theme is - ‘It’s a good thing, it’s bad thing’.
I raise this today having just listened to a BBC radio report about the legalising of cannabis use in Canada. It was evident from the report that the BBC approve.
The words used, the approving tone of the reader and the upbeat and positive campaigner comments at the end leave the listener in no doubt of the BBC position. Not one dissenting voice, word or intonation. Recreational cannabis use is a good thing.
Contrast this with a similar item earlier this week on fracking. A disapproving tone, negative words, and a general feeling of menace and danger were conveyed. The campaigner at the end was aghast about the ruling. Once again, the listener can be in no doubt of the positioning of the report. Fracking is a bad thing.
The good thing, bad thing analogy can be used on many BBC reported issues.
My issue is that it is not their job to make value judgements by hiding behind their remit to educate, inform and entertain.
Increasingly though, every issue they report has a value judgement behind it. It’s political and it’s propaganda and it’s biased!
Yes Sir, the tone of voice used gives us a good idea of where a given story should be pigeonholed within the world of BBC PC ideology. To combat this, I started to watch the BBC News Channel without sound, just relying on sub-titles. These are dreadful. Usually they trail the story to such an extent that the captions for the previous story overlay the images of the next.
Names and places are often simply left out, especially if they are difficult to spell, making the whole story incomprehensible. Funnily enough, BBC Local News has a much better sub-title service. Here the sub-titles are accurate - as in this is one I made earlier - to the extent that sometimes they run ahead of the news story, making them equally incomprehensible.
You might think that the BBC with its access to the latest technology would have mastered the technique of the live streaming of sub-titles.
Yep, same on the business report on Today earlier. Very upbeat about the prospects...no ethical issues raised, even though the business correspondents often raise ethical issues about carbon emissions, diesel, women in business, racial equality, and so on.
Personally I favour legalisation...though you have to go about it the right way. But there certainly are ethical issues involved since the links to psychotic reactions, damage to lungs if smoked (burns at a v. high temperature) and damage to foetuses are well established. The problem we have now is that it is nominally illegal but decriminalised in effect, while the BBC and schools do not give children an accurate portrayal of the dangers.
For me, it is not about whether I support the legislation or not. It’s about the BBC being impartial rather than conveying a moral or political position on the issue they are reporting.
It happens all the time and in my view it is used as a deliberate and calculated tactic by the BBC to influence public opinion.
Quite - they don't deal fairly with the issues. And you are quite right, they seek deliberately to influence public opinion.
I find it helpful to remember that the BBC has an opinion on virtually everything, and in each case one which nearly all its staff adhere to: whether it's the amount of meat we eat, abortion, climate change, Morris Dancing, Russia, China, Islam, or education. They are slightly divided on Corbyn and transgenderism, but otherwise you'd be hard-pressed to find any divisions of opinion with the monolith.
Although there was extensive coverage of the Canabis story on the website, there was a distinct lack of coverage on the main bulletins. No pictures of paste-faced lethargic youths inhaling smoke from hand-rolled canabis cigarettes, or same youths passed out, vomiting or compulsively eating junk food ? Only the bits that suit the BBC agenda (liberal politics, Trueadu is good etc.) get on air.
Leaving aside the pyschiatric and psycho-social effects, it is also very damaging to the lungs (with or without tobacco) - even more so than tobacco as it cause serious ill health in young adults as well as older people. Could you imagine the BBC showing smilingyoung people celebrating tobacco consumption in the same way they show smiling young people enjoying cannabis.
You know how obsessed the BBC are with the "Russian thing"...the idea that Putin was directing Trump's campaign...odd that they can't find any space for the news that Carter Page is suing the DNC.
Did anyone hear this on Thought for the Day last week? Rob Rinder: 'On Tuesday I happened to hear Thought for the Day which I usually avoid (I struggle with religion before noon). Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner was giving a profoundly moving account of some of the challenges of being a parent to a transgender young adult and how we might all get a little better at learning about the topic in general. It was like listening to someone’s heart speaking at its most articulate. I would urge you to take the time to hear it; it’s free to download and takes less than five minutes.' https://www.standard.co.uk/topic/transgender
They had the same rabbi on Woman's Hour yesterday when they were discussing the proposed law on trans. It seems transgender doesn't mean what it used to mean as this woman's child isn't transgendering at all and is neither he nor she but pronouned as they and them. This is why some older trans who went through processes and surgeries have now taken to calling themselves transsexuals to distinguish themselves from those who call themselves trans at a whim, and are seen as rather frivolously wandering about, genderly speaking, with no particular transition or destination in mind.
Woman's Hour does appear to be rather late to the party on this one, considering Today had already been there and so had Politics Live earlier when they had Tatchell on. I wonder if it was a deliberate move to keep it off Woman's Hour till the eleventh hour of the government consultation to avoid anticipated opposition.
Do you ever get the feeling you entered the Tardis, went through the Twilight Zone and ended up in the Land of Narnia...?
With the BBC it feels like that all the time...
Remember when Newsnight spent an hour long special examining in close detail the nation's housing crisis...without once mentioning mass immigration running at about 300,000 net minimum per annum? They really did.
Now Newsnight spends hours and hours examining the "Irish border issue holding up Brexit" without once asking an Irish politician "If there is no deal, how many border posts is the Irish government going to put along the border at the behest of the EU?" The answer is clearly none, not a single one. These producers and presenters may be ideological idiots but they aren't thick. They are avoiding asksing that question precisely because they know the answer and they know that as soon as the audience sees Irish politicians refusing to say they will put in place border posts it will compleltely blow up the whole bogus "hard border problem" which is being used as a lever to prevent Brexit.
Introducing horrific footage which deserves to be better known among pro-Israel campaigners and commenters. It shows cruelty which anti-Israel pro-Palestinian campaigners and commenters couldn't possibly defend. They have a strong tendency to ignore any evidence that the people of Gaza are completely virtuous, or almost so. In general, they can't even be bothered to make excuses.
This video, on mistreatment of animals in Gaza, comes with a warning about the content from 'Animals Australia.'
'Footage uploaded onto YouTube during the Festival of Sacrifice in October 2013 revealed the horrific treatment of Australian cattle in the Gaza Strip in Palestine. It is some of the most shocking and distressing footage we have seen.
The footage documents Australian cattle:
Tethered to poles, trees, and trucks on the streets
Being beaten and dragged by ropes off trucks without unloading ramps
Being dragged, man-handled and chased along streets by crowds of youths in a frenzy akin to bull running
Being stabbed in the eyes
Being kicked, pushed, pulled and tripped over with ropes to be forced onto the ground and under control for slaughter
Having their necks hacked, sawn and stabbed at with blunt knives
Sorry: in my comment above, replace 'They have a strong tendency to ignore any evidence that the people of Gaza are completely virtuous' with 'They have a strong tendency to ignore any evidence that the people of Gaza aren't completely virtuous.'
Searching for Dr Rachel Mckinnon shows that her sporting achievement is an important story. Considering that the BBC like all things American and all things to do with cycling, it seems strange that the BBC has no mention of McKinnon whatsoever in their News website archive.
Well they like all things NEGATIVE to do with cycling ever since ITV and Sky got involved in cycling...they've been trying to show it's a corrupt drug-addled cheats' paradise ever since (it may be but so are the sports that the BBC prefers, like women's boxing and women's tennis). Anyway, that's somewhat irrelevant! The point stands: the BBC are burying this news because it makes them feel conflicted. There's going to be more of this...especially in the more lucrative sports.
BBC Sport have highlighted the transitioning of Charlie Martin, a female motorsport driver. Here though, strength is not an issue. Female and male drivers can compete successfully alongside each other. Why are the BBC silent over other strength and endurance related sports such as cycling?
Earlier in this thread I pointed out how BBC presenters were failing to ask Irish politicians what there exact plans were for building new border posts at the behest of the EU if the UK leaves on "no deal" terms. I suggested the reason they didn't ask the question is because they knew no Irish government will ever erect such border posts, and so the whole allegedly "intractable" Irish border problem is thus shown to be completely bogus nonsense, designed to impede negotiations and frustrate our exit (with the connivance of UK government Remainers, including our Prime Minister).
Pleased to say Guy Fawkes has caught up and makes the same point, further adding that this has already been agreed between the Republic and the EU, which adds another layer of bogusness (if such a word exists) to the whole pantomime:
I have posted here many times about Laura Kuenssberg and Katya Adler when reporting on Brexit.
Having just listened to Theresa May and her latest jittery performance at today’s press conference it is hard not to have some sympathy for the BBC presenters and reporters when dealing with such an inept PM.
To watch her in person, interpret the robotic utterances, the jibberish and the repetitive slogans then write an impartial report must frequently be difficult.
I could see Laura Kuenssbergs frustration and exasperation tonight and rightly so.
Forget party politics and being pro or anti- Brexit, this is our national leader and commander in chief. She is a useless leader, a ditherer who cannot make decisions and is a very poor communicator.
God help us. At the very time in generations when we needed a strong and decisive PM we got TM. Can you imagine if she was PM during WW2......
I detected a change of tone at the BBC today...they have been unusually kind to her in recent weeks while they thought she might be able to squeeze through a BRINO, but now I think they are panicking a bit, as clearly the latest concession, on an extended transition, isn't finding favour with either the Brexiters or the Remainers in the Conservative Party.
I think the BBC's only real option now is to attempt to bring about a Second Referendum. They don't really have any good options. If May goes I think a general election is highly likely unless the EU is prepared to offer a Canada Plus agreement.
It's now crystal clear that the EU are not negotiating but are using the bogus Irish border ploy, which May willingly or otherwise accepts as genuine, to frustrate Brexit and keep us in the EU or as a very close partner unable to pursue independent trade policies. Remember, May has already offered huge concessions on EU citizens in the UK, on fisheries, on corporation tax and a "common rule book".
I confess I was duped by her. I really thought David Davis was doing the negotiating and the UK government were aiming for a sensible Canada Plus agreement, albeit with some concessions I wasn't particularly happy with (eg allowing continuation of the Common Fisheries Policy in some new guise), but hey-ho.
What an act of treachery!...all the time she was negotiating with the EU behind his back while allowing us plebs to believe Davis was doing the negotiating. Nope, it wasn't Davis, it was that twat Olly Robins - you know, the guy who wrote an article in support of the Soviet Union at Uni...
I am not sure we have seen such a level of duplicity (as opposed to everyday incompetence or stupidity) since Anthony Eden secretly took us to war while telling the populace a cock and bull story about what had happened.
Meanwhile we are bombarded non-stop by pro-Remain anti-Brexit propaganda by the BBC. It's impossible to avoid...I just switched the radio on in the car this evening, there was Evan with his Bottom Line or some such with a set up anti-Brexit piece about how we won't be able to import lettuces or fashionable items in the UK after Brexit!
I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of pro-Brexit stories I have heard on the BBC. But I have heard 100s of anti-Brexit stories. It began on 26th June 2016 when we were suddenly told that the FTSE 250 index was the one to watch not the FTSE 100 (they soon gave that up when the FTSE 250 also started going up). BTW, the Euro is now worth 88p. They ain't headlining that on the BBC now are they? - but they loved it when they were reporting it was approaching parity with the pound!
To answer Sir T's question: if May had been around in WW2 the 300,000 allied soldiers rescued at Dunkirk would have been abandoned because it would be too risky to attempt a rescue in her view. When Hitler launched his assault on the Soviet Union, she would have advised Stalin that she could offer him no support as he had not signed the Geneva Convention. On hearing of the attack on Pearl Harbour she would have advised the Americans to reach a peaceful settlement with the Japanese for fear of worsening the global situation and would have criticised Roosevelt's bellicose rhetoric. She would have delayed the D Day invasion until 1949 "when the chances of success I am assured by my adivsors will be much greater".
I'm not very religious but I think now is the time to join in the traditional prayer: "May the Good Lord help us." Or should that be: "May the Good? Lord help us!".
We did nothing to "deserve" May as PM. Cameron ran away (into well deserved obscurity) and May was installed. That was the kick-off for the plan to subvert the referendum result. The obvious sign was the BBC's aggressive anti-Brexit propaganda campaign which has never been challenged by May.
You're right that May has never challenged the BBC's aggressive anti-Brexit propaganda campaign. In fact she has implicitly supported it by continuing the fiction that the BBC is a highly respected impartial organisation (see the Government's response to a recent anti-BBC petition).
I do blame Gove for stabbing Boris "in the front". Another act of supreme treachery! Johnson was a guy who had ruled Greater London for 8 years, put on a successful Olympics in our capital, and had just won a referendum vote nationally against the odds. What abject treachery to announce without further explanation that you don't think he's fit to lead!
Equally to blame are the spineless Westminster MPs who dither and offer a measure of half-hearted support to Theresa May, based upon their own self-interest, as she dithers and gives way to the EU on every point of principle. They, as one, appear to be more interested in maintaining this precarious balancing act which will leave the UK in a position of permanent deference to the EU, than in carrying out the wishes of the electorate - their constituents.
The essential link between the wishes of the electorate and parliamentary democracy is being severely tested and may already have been lost.
It’s becoming crystal clear to us all why May has never challenged the BBC's aggressive anti-Brexit propaganda campaign.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
- Cicero
(I saw this quote as a BTL comment on The Guardians excellent and apt John Crace article on Mays performance today.)
Arthur - Absolutely. But I guess it's always been that way...certainly on the Conservative side. Conservative MPs were nearly all in favour of appeasement when Hitler was on the rise, nearly all in favour of Empire even when Empire had become indefensible, nearly all in favour of joining the EEC, even though they knew it was a European Federation project, nearly all in favour of bringing Communist China into the world system, nearly all in favour of close alliance with Saudi Arabia and nearly all in favour of mass immigration in recent decades. They are completely unprincipled and unthinking sheep. The only time they act wisely is when they have wise leaders who cow or woo them into submission.
Newsnight having a difficult moment tonight...trans rights and women! Yay!! Always amusing seeing PC SJWs tie themselves up in knots and go for each other's throats. Actually, to be fair, it's been slightly better than one might expect...except no one has mentioned just what a small micro-minority trans people are...
I've got a suggestion...why not just record names and parentage on birth certificates (maybe DNA analysis as well, so your biological identity is pretty clear). And then why not equalise all legislation, so no allowance is made for whether a human being is a man or a woman in terms of legal treatment. Replace maternity leave provision with a state scheme to support people who are bringing new life into the world. Currently that will just be "women" (ie biological women) but be in no doubt scientists are working on making pregnancy available to all, so it's only a matter of time before that becomes an available option to all.
I think my solution would work better than the alternatives. We've always known there are manly women and effeminate men, and there have always been a very small minority of men who castrate themselves - and now women can surgically alter their appearance. Modern medical folk can use hormones to further "queer the pitch" if I might be forgiven the phrase.
So I reckon my solution recognises the continuum that has always been there and leaves behind state regulation of gender.
As for toilets well just rename them as "With urinals" and "Without urinals". As far as I know there is no law currently that says a man can't enter female toilets.
As for sport, the sports bodies will just have to define their entry requirements and rename them accordingly. Not women but some mathematical/DNA equation as who is allowed to compete.
Marriage is no longer a problem, since same sex marriage was allowed. Just make it marriage between two people.
The problem with all this trans-self identify, bi-normal, sexless skin sack nonsense is that it will set "women" (remember vagina, ovaries etc.etc?) back years. If an employer has a choice between sexless skins-sack A and sexless skin-sack B and B seems to have periods and be capable of getting pregnant, then job goes to A every time, no "discrimination" just a choice.
Well that's kind of accepting that women are inferior and need legal protection. I don't think that's the case.
We know among bonobo chimps females rule the roost despite their inferior physique and genetically bonobos are our closest cousins.
Women I think are very well adapted for modern office work which tends to be the main type of employment on offer. Any sensible government is going to see the need to protect the position of pregnant women - it's just they will be "pregnant people" as far as the law is concerned.
I don't watch the programme but I can imagine it might have been set up by the teenagers as a bun fight, ye old war between the sexes (notwithstanding the now precarious existence of sexes) resurrected and updated for the new millennium.
The problem as I see it is that although there is a tiny minority of people with a serious and genuine personal dilemma, this whole move is being done in a fairly frivolous manner and from the wrong end. For what is involved is not just the tiny minority but turning the whole of society upside down at the behest of a militant campaigning group intent on getting their own way.
We haven't as a society considered and decided to review and possibly ditch the way in which society defines and organises itself around the distinction of sex. That affects everyone and like the move for mass immigration, this wholesale change has been done - most of it has already been done by the Gender Recognition Act and the concept of a phobia enshrined not only in the law of equality but also that on hate speech so that anyone dissenting is taken care of - without asking the people first. I can believe that almost no one wants to cause suffering to minority individuals but that's no reason to ignore the harm that can be done generally and to specific others by considering only the needs of one small set of people. You now got cross dressers prancing around like pantomime dames being solemnly addressed as she and called by their fake names as if they were genuine transsexuals, transitioning or actually women, because people are too polite or scared to offend. You have people who are worried about their children and worried about themselves and potential loss of privacy, personal safety and comfort which under present arrangements by and large works well for nearly everyone. Yet all you hear from the stupid and cowardly politicians is the sound of rampant bandwagon jumping, including from the PM, perhaps especially from the PM in her pious speeches and promises.
Personally I feel we passed that Rubicon with gay marriage...
I think we have to accept that we have moved into a new era...
On that basis I think gender-blind birth certification is by far the best way forward.
What does the woman/man divide mean in an age where we have IVF, hormone therapy, and - very soon - the ability of men to bear children. Obviously we know the average man will still be attracted to the average woman, but attempting to buttress it through gender-based legislation is unhelpful.
And then this 'wonderful' science will give us artificial wombs, so fetuses can be held outside the body and none of what we hold dear now will matter.
They can already keep sheep foetuses alive in artificial wombs for a long part of the gestation period. It seems inevitable that a "Brave New World" capability will be achieved within the next few decades. It will raise interesting issues about abortion. Would a mother (and the mother alone) have the same rights of termination in respect of a foetus in an external artificial womb that everyone can see? Expect a sudden shift in public opinion when that happens.
On Politics live this week one of the guests stated that 1% of the population identified as trans-gender. I find this astounding, but without knowing how the figure was arrived at it’s very difficult to challenge. But even if this statistic is correct, understanding the psychological reasons why people feel this way seems to have been pushed aside for reasons of political correctness. It fits very conveniently into oppressor/oppressed ideology, but is it really helpful to use terms like LGBT as if all those groups were exactly the same?
The other related aspect is the way the manipulation of definitions has mudded the waters: Gender = social construct, Sex = biological difference. Militant feminists by slight of hand suggest that sex is a social construct.
For a chilling 27 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s57T27M1ZXk
The T was added when activists and campaigners decided to combine and Stonewall took up the trans cause. It's these activists who promote the notion of gender rather than sex.
Terry: '1% of the population'? - No, I don't believe it either. See the Conservative Woman, "Will the Beeb's overpopulated diversity circus fold its tents? Fat chance." You'll need to do some scrolling to find it - apparently 417 BBC employees self-identify as transgender which is, as the author says, probably "417 more than many people outside the Corporation's bubble have ever encountered in the course of their daily business."
Gender is a purely linguistic concept, used to describe sex, among other things, that's been incorrectly appropriated to describe thoughts and behaviours. To say someone 'has' or 'identifies as' a gender is meaningless. They have a sex - what a person does or thinks doesn't change his or her sex. Gender can be then be used in a language to describe a person's sex.
Anon - I don't know you're right. It's more complicated than that surely, otherwise we wouldn't have manly women and effeminate men (although, oddly, I think such nonPC descriptions are effectively banned now). Male-female is a continuum surely. We are autonomous conscious beings...if we are men there is nothing to stop us accessing or relating to predominantly female modes of thought and behaviour. Likewise women can access or relate to predominantly male modes of thought and behaviour (Boudicca, Joan of Arc). So it's not meaningless to say a man can identify as a woman...it's just normally rather tragic and unconvincing in my experience, although Bowie did well in his Man Who Sold the World period.
We used to have sex discrimination, meaning between men and women. Then they added discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation to the law. Scope for confusion between the terms led to displacement of the term sex for discrimination between men and women. Transsexual was also displaced as a word.
Talking about identifying as a man or a woman is strange. A person can be a woman and have a similar type of brain to many men and enjoy doing things men do, or wear male clothes without ever thinking she's a man. The same in reverse for a man. One of the mysterious things is how a woman who says she feels like a man, or a man the reverse, knows what a man or woman feels like. Ordinarily, does a man or a woman know what it feels like or is it something they aren't conscious of because it is naturally what they are - they just are and it just is?
The BBC has been reporting on Anjem Chodarys release and has been very careful to describe him only as a radical preacher and social activist.
One might think he was a Scottish presbyterian or a Methodist minister. Such is the BBCs desire to hide his religion. Bias by omission is always order of the day in cases like his.
Yes. The 6pm BBC 1 News wheeled on Marc Easton to sum up the report on the 20, mainly Pakistani-heritage, men convicted of grooming and abusing girls in the Huddersfield area. His performance - and I use the word advisedly, because the man is a ham actor - made me think of the command beloved of WW2 destroyer captains: 'Make smoke.' In this case, the smoke was intended to hide the ethnicity and religion of the guilty men: to paraphrase, this sort of thing goes on all over the uk & the culprits are teachers, taxi-drivers, priests etc.
The BBC radio reports thoughout the day have neatly sidestepped their ethnicity and heritage, just saying ’ 20 men from Huddersfield’. It’s a relevant and material fact that they have omitted - We know why they keep doing it and it’s an outrage.
Mark Easton’s report is here and despite its length it omits the most important fact, just saying’ The sexual abuse of vulnerable children in English towns by groups of men, often from immigrant communities’.
No Mark, by and large just from one immigrant community. You are seriously misleading readers and falsely including many innocent communities.
Migrants from Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Taoist, Shintoist and Christian communities are noticeably absent from those "photo albums".
Easton says the grooming gangs are "often" from immigrant communities. Often? Often??? How about "in nearly every case".
That's a deliberate lie right there.
Then he's referring to "The grooming gangs of provincial England..." This is very odd. Since when do we refer to places like Newcastle, Manchester and Oxford as "provincial". But of course according to Marxist-Eastonism, England is a hopelessly backward non-country and provincial life needs to be "modernised".
The article is peppered with that old BBC favourite - "men".
It's a pathetic piece, even by Easton's very low standards. Pure damage limitation by diversion and obfuscation and tendentious claims. He claims for instance that child abuse was rarely discussed in public until "recently". That is absolute bull unless he means until about 40 years ago. And it ignores the fact that the abuse was known about by Police and local authorities across the country.
There are two disturbing aspects of the BBC's coverage of this story.
1. By bringing TR into the story:
... 'In May, the former leader of the English Defence League Tommy Robinson was arrested for reporting on the case live on Facebook during the second of the trials....
.... He was jailed for contempt of court but his conviction was quashed because of a number of procedural errors. He faces a fresh hearing in relation to the alleged breach.' ...
This is a clear strategy by the BBC to divert attention away from the ethnicity of the offenders - hinting that to signal out their community's identity, is to be a far-right racist.
2. By failing to establish the community's identity, the BBC are allowing what must be no-go areas within out towns and cities (to anyone other than community members) to flourish and go unreported. Apart from two, one from Sheffield and the other from Dewsbury, all the offenders were from Huddersfield. How can a community that spawns and harbours offenders on such a scale be absolved from any responsibility for contribution to the offenders' mind-set and ideology - yet to suggest such a link be racist?
Easton has this naive belief that 'provincial' England should be a place where all nations and all religions will be welcomed to share in our green and pleasant land, where we can rub shoulders together and get on with a cosmopolitan life-style such as that the BBC would approve of. How can this dream of his be reconciled with the politics and alien religious beliefs of imported cultures (Islam in particular), when their much heralded ideology leads to appalling crimes such as those reported today in Huddersfield?
Having heard Easton berate us for our lack of enthusiasm for turning our green and pleasant land into a building site to accommodate ever increasing mass immigration, I doubt he wants to "share" our green and pleasant land, more like "pave over" our green and pleasant land.
Easton is an extreme ideologue, so he has little attachment to reality. He doesn't seek to square his ideas with the reality of Sharia Law and Islamic practice. He is confident that if his "remedies" are applied gradually everyone will be turned into a PC metroliberal, much like Mr Easton himself and the world will become a happy place.
We wiseacres know he and the BBC are leading us into the dark recesses of the wood where a horrible end awaits this country. So far, all the facts are oun our side. None of the BBC's utopian ideas have come to pass. Certain communities remain as obdurately separated from mainstream society and modern values as ever. It's pure arrogance on the part of Easton and co. to think they can defeat a 1400 year old ideology that is weaponised for generational replication with their pathetic lies, their bogus news and their failed promises.
The only thing that will defeat it here is the laser-like focus of a Trump or an Orban type leader, with full democratic backing. As yet we have no one of that sort of quality in sight.
I agree with your take on Easton and the the BBC. Their philosophical narrative ostensibly comes from a place they see as 'good'. The problem is that the chosen narrative inevitably must become a hair shirt. They insist the viewer wears the shirt too. They refuse to take into account the intractibility of Islam as a doctrine, and what I believe will be word of the year 2019 - agency. They flagellate themselves on their alter every day and insist you sit in the pew cursing your forebears and weeping.
Nazir Afzal was on PM yesterday. Not for the first time, he said that the reason he could say what he says is because he comes from an Islamic background. The BBC thinks this is 'good' because minorities should be represented and criticized by minorities. That's fair in their eyes. It has authenticity in their eyes. But it's actually unbelievably racist.
If that's where Europe is headed - a place where the only people who can criticize a doctrine or racial marker are those from within that 'culture' - then we're really screwed, and I think we are.
The same rules don't operate in reverse - hence Afua Hirsch and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.
My generation was brought up to believe that we were all in the same pack of cards. The modern reality has revealed itself to be that we are all equal until the subject of agency is raised. At that juncture, certain elements of the pack find it necessary to be represented by cards of the same suit. And because of 40 years of drip fed indoctrination, many people find that a reasonable position.
Who's that then? On Wednesday night's Moral Maze they had a witness called Corey Stoughton from Liberty. You may remember a former director of Liberty oftentimes on the BBC; a couple of years ago they got a new one, Martha Spurrier, whom I've rarely seen or heard. But then again, I haven't been diligently watching and listening to all and everything. Now Corey Stoughton is listed as acting director: 'Before joining Liberty, she was senior counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Justice under President Obama.'
Hm...right up the BBC's street. Why an acting director and what of Martha? Is she planning a leave of absence or going back to Doughty Chambers?
I have observed before that these controversial grooming gang and terror trials all seem to end on a Friday...what are the chances of that? Er - very high when our pro-migration elite are managing the news by hook, by crook and by summary sentence to 13 months within 5 hours of a charge being laid.
Heard on Radio 5 Live...Adrian Chiles, wearing his big hearted green credentials on his sleeve, begins interrogation of local Councillor whose council is giving up on plastics recycling and sending it for incineration with an aggressive sounding: "Right, so what are you getting up to there?"
Councillor replies: "I'm sat down having a nice cup of tea and a biscuit..." Collapse of stout party...to say he was flustered by that response would be to put it mildly. He never really recovered through the whole interview, being much more deferential and cautious thereafter.
Politicians should learn from that. They should challenge BBC interview techniques. Take the pee out of your interviewer wherever possible...mention Savile even if not directly relevant...query the questioner's methodology at all times...if the interviewer uses a misleading analogy ask them "Why are you misleading your audience?" - don't elaborate...that makes it too easy for the interviewer to come back, just leave it hanging there like that, so the interviewer has to do deal with it...
I wonder what sort of reactions they reported on Feedback:
'This week marks the end of a government consultation on reforming the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, which set out the legal process by which a person can change their gender. On Tuesday, Radio 4’s ‘Woman’s Hour’ discussed the subject, hearing from voices on various sides of the debate. Feedback hears some listeners’ perspectives on how the issue was discussed.'
I think Feedback is pro-Trans. Newsnight is pro-Trans. Woman's Hour is anti-Trans but not aggressively so. Today is pretty balanced. Looks likes it's a win for Trans and that will soon become official BBC policy. How they square that with their love of "Women's" Sport remains to be seen.
Heard an unfortunate amount of Today this morning. Mishal interviewed a lady representing a group against child sexual exploitation; "20 men"mentioned, but the words immigrant, pakistani and muslim not once. Later she interviewed a female professor and both very keen to move the discussion on to the "all men do it" field; Sarah Champion was then brought on, but when she tried to be specific about the perps, Mishal quickly interrupted and the line soon mysteriously went dead.
The BBC is disgusting. "20 men"! How many more knew, condoned and covered up? How did they do it? No questions.
Oh to cap it, we had Doucett from the elections in Afghanistan wittering about the danger from "conservative" elements, but never once mentioned their actual ideology.
It's really really not a news service in any sense, just a Government propagande and control service.
We had the spectacle of Dominic Casciani on Jeremy Vine yesterday saying the real issue about the Huddersfield 20 was that it encourages the far right. I mean, really! How low can you go to obfuscate. The BBC will do anything to deflect blame and avoid a proper debate.
No questions indeed, unless you are going to count Easton's diversionary questions. This is an important point. There is really no investigation by the BBC into the MO - ironic acronym there. Why?
I heard that. Usually when someone is cut off in an interview, they get them back on when the line can be restored. I waited and waited...for half an hour. They not only didn't get her back on but they didn't mention her again even to explain why she hadn't been back on. Did they think we wouldn't notice?
.. 'People's Vote march: Thousands expected for London protest' ...
Readers from last week-end will remember that there were a set of what we thought were contrived images from a September rally in Liverpool were attached to a story about Nicola Sturgeon. In that case, the images showed a sea of EU flags, so arranged to let us think that this was a sizeable crowd of protesters. Contributors identified the photographer providing the images to Getty Images. Images for this story were captioned 'Pro EU March'.
In today's story, images from the same Liverpool event are used credited to Getty Images, but captioned 'The March for the Many was held in Liverpool last month'. In this image however, in the main EU flags are missing, to be replaced by red placards promoting 'People's vote for the many'.
Was the event in Liverpool, which received little attention from the MSM, merely a staged photoshoot? It must have been choreographed in such a way as to enable two sets of image to be produced, one with mainly EU flags, and a second with mainly 'People's vote for the many' placards.
Of course, the story .. 'People's Vote march: Thousands expected for London protest' ... is not news at all. It's a rallying call by the BBC in support of their call for a rerun of the 2016 referendum.
The BBC has pulled out all the stops in their one-sided coverage of the 'People's Vote march'. There are two separate stories featured prominently on the BBC News website Home page:
... 'People's Vote march: 'Hundreds of thousands' attending London protest' ...., and
.... 'People's Vote march: In pictures' ...
They are relying upon photos and placards to put across their message, which include:
... 'Madelina Kay, 24, was dressed as a policewoman and carried a placard claiming Vote Leave "broke the law". She wore a badge that stated: "It's for the British people to decide'....
... 'Among the targets of the protesters' wrath are key Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage'. ...
... 'A young boy holding a sign proclaiming support for the EU.' ...
This photo includes a placard 'Eton Mess' with phtos of BJ and JRM.
Also is a photo of a teenager with his banner:
... 'I'm 16, Brexit stole my future'. ...
We can see quite clearly that the BBC's so-called 'balanced' coverage has an undeniable pro EU. anti Brexit, anti conservative message as standard.
Sorry Arthur, in my haste to comment on the 'People's Vote' (which we've already had!) I missed your post. As you will gather, I don't believe their statistics!
Fake news alert BBCs Dominic Casciani tweeted: Worth mentioning that the ringleader of this massive abuse ring that we can nnow report was not a Muslim. He came from a Sikh background.
However at the time of the abuse he was a Muslim, is from a Muslim background and converted to a Sikh in 2013. Why didn’t Dominic report all the facts? And why is he trying to divert attention?
I saw this too. I don't expect the BBC to revisit the story, though. It has been archived as a series of half-truths, and that's that from the BBC. On a story like this, news management is the name of the game. - updates and corrections are avoided at all costs.
The 'People's Vote' March. I thought at first that the BBC's website report must have been written by the Telegraph's Michael Deacon. Why? - because the whole thing reads like a send-up. Just to whet your appetite, try this titbit from the Beeb's on-the-spot reporter, Charlotte Gallagher: "Some people marched in groups, there were NHS staff, political parties, members of the LGBT community and dog owners. Many took the opportunity to dress up their pets for the protest." Too little information Ms Gallagher: were these pet dogs transgender or merely transvestites? I mean, this is important, we really need to know. Ms G, you will, by the way, be in hot water with your employer for omitting the, now obligatory, 'Q' from the end of LGBT.
The organisers claim 700,000 participants - the Beeb doesn't question the figure, but states that 'hundreds of thousands' attended the march. Just to make it all more convincing, Ms Gallagher tells us there were 150 coaches - Wow, 150! Oh, wait a minute, average capacity of a coach= 56, 56×150 = 6,400 - a drop in the ocean. As additional evidence of the size of the crowd we are informed that, "Scotland Yard said it was not able to estimate the size of the crowd" - strange that, because the police used to be very good at estimating crowd-size by overlaying a photo of known magnification with a grid; perhaps Ms Dick doesn't want to ruffle any feathers.
BBC news on Radio 2 reported "700000" protesters, then later said, numbers can not be verified. This morning commenting on the potential traffic issues in London today, presenter Dermot O'leary said, "best just join the march rather than try to get around". The BBC is just taking the piss regarding biased coverage of this event.
Remember what Nick Robinson said, ‘The BBC no longer has a duty to provide balanced coverage of Brexit’.
The BBC really don’t care anymore. The gloves are off and are throwing caution to the wind in an effort to overturn the result.
Their programmes and presenters are the driving force behind the voice of Remain, giving oxygen to Blair, Adonis, Khan and the rest of the baying rabble.
Democracy doesn’t get a look in, nor does impartiality.
I might have given the impression that I was listening to Radio 2 all day ! It was on in the car on the way to and home from work. I quite like Radio 2 though (except Vine of course), most shows have some virtue signalling, but until I get DAB in my car, it's the best of a poor choice.
Sis - Good post. I was thinking about the coach figure...I wondered whether I misheard it but it seems not, so a paltry 8,400...that doesn't really square with the claim...
The BBC doesn't remark this was an overwhelmingly WHITE demonstration with hardly any representation from non-white ethnic communities. I am sure our forthcoming (I hope) Million Livid Leavers March will have much more ethnic diversity. :)
MB According to 10.10pm BBC 1 news, the organisers have already lowered the figure to 6oo,ooo participants - careless, that, losing 100,000 people! To back up the claims re: attendance at Obama's inauguration ceremonies, the left-wing media cited the number travelling on the subway on an average day & those two days. I wonder if London Transport could tell us anything. Oh for a decent investigative free press!
Sis - Then shave off the 20% of people just milling around central London at any time...so that takes it down to 480,000. But there's still a question mark over that figure of course...
The Remainiacs are practised liars. They lied that Cameron wouldn't resign in the event of a Leave vote. They lied that we would immediately move into recession following a Brexit vote. They lied that the EU had no plans for an EU military arm. They lied that there were no plans for Turkey to enter the EU. They lied that Cameron's deal had any meaningful content (they soon gave up on that lie). They lied about whether the UK government had any prior knowledge about Obama's "back of the line" statement.
It seems they also lied when they sent a leaflet to every household in the country and stated clearly that the UK Government would implement the Referendum decision.
The BBC's estimates of the crowd numbers will always be treated with the utmost suspicion. If they would have us believe that the Liverpool march on September 23, 2018 was indicative of the UK's views, when there were only 100 or so people there, why should we believe any estimate of numbers relating to today's march. These aerial shots are misleading. Imagine 70,000 football supporters emerging from Wembley Stadium or Twickenham. Would drone footage look much different? Now imagine 10 Wembley Stadiums emptying at the same time. To my mind the numbers on this march can be estimated in tens of thousands - not hundreds of thousands.
I've been looking at the aerial photos on the Guardian and elsewhere - they are obviously trying to make it look as big as possible...I think the 700,000 figure is just one of those BIG LIES that Remainers tell all the time. Couldn't be more than 100,000 in my view. And if they only had 150 coaches to bring people to the protest how does that square?
The Remainiacs are left with two explanations for their 700,000 figure: either masses of people flooded the mainline rail system (any evidence? - that's a lot of flooding!!!) or this was a completely London-centric demo (which kind of feeds into the pro-Leave narrative).
Round my way in London I did see one pathetic old person, clearly a social loner, walking back towards a rich residential area with a "Better Together" placard sticking out of her grubby backpack. Fair play, the placard did look home-made. I've nothing against old people, social loners or grubby rucksacks - just reflecting BBC reportage.
There must always be a couple of hundred thousand people on the move in central London...if you get a big march like that people will stand and stare...so I reckon on any demo if you do an aerial shot of a large demo at least 20% of people are NOT part of the demo.
You are right. The gloves are off. The BBC know they have licence (ha-ha) to be as biased as they like as they are now being watched over by a complicit Ofcom stuffed full of ex BBC types and by a weak, vacillating Government.
Also, I think the BBC feel they have a lot of skin in this game. They can see both how populism endangers their feather-nested future - but also Corbynism does as well. If the populists get control, they will abolish the licence fee...that much is clear now. Gerard Batten of UKIP has confirmed it. If the Corbynistas get control they will immediately move to take control of the BBC. There will be a mass cull of anyone whoever expressed any scepticism towards Corbyn (and that's a lot of the BBC tribe).
I think they are backing either a May surrender or a Second Referendum.
Listened to Any Answers...I know, I know...I felt a sense of duty.
There was a great moment where Anita Anand responded to a caller who said that the grooming gangs problem was primarily an Islamic issue. Anita just happened to have some dodgy stats to hand that "proved" this wasn't the case - and which she quoted from as though it was a slam-dunk for her...The caller was straight on her, noting her stats were from 2012 - ie six years old at a point when the trials were only really just getting going. She then tried a different tack..."But if there was a paedophile ring of priests you wouldn't say it was a Roman Catholic problem would you?" The caller came straight back "Yes I would if they were Roman Catholic Priests and there were organised rings..." (Slight paraphrase but I think that's a fairly accurate representation of the exchange).
If anyone else heard the exchange and can remember the source of Anita's stats I'd be interested to learn where they came from...I think it might have been a campaigning (ie lying) group.
Thanks Anon...there were other more recent reports she could have used - like Quilliam's - which would have painted a very different picture. More to the point I would say - the BBC is a multi billion pound organisation with the biggest news operation in the country. It could easily have done the research itself, if it thought it was important. But of course we can see this is low priority for the BBC.
Anand's behaviour was indefensible. She quoted out of date stats knowingly to defend the PC multiculturalist ideology that the BBC subscribes to. Many callers to her programme would have been intimidated by her misleading use of statistics. It was great to hear one who was able to immediately spot the dishonesty of quoting stats from six years ago before these trials really got going in number.
They do love to produce these rabbits out of hats on the Dimbleby programmes and think they have a clincher. Mention of the Children's Commissioner just triggered a recollection of something I hadn't connected until now. Anand used to work on the Daily Politics and so did a bloke who works for the Children's Commissioner called Giles Dilnot. I wonder if that's who she got the out-of-date figures from.
I’m trying not to be angered by the various “news” items on the BBC website.
Witches curse? Ffs Sturgeon and the far right? 700,000 Peoples Voters? Strange how much more effort was spent on disproving Trumps claims of crowd size.
The archived version of 'The People's Vote' march:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45925542
... 'People's Vote march: Hundreds of thousands attend London protest' ...
From all the photos of the event, I remain unconvinced about the numbers. Clearly, the BBC have back-pedalled from their first claims that 700,000 people attended, by referring to 'Hundreds of thousands'. That would mean at leat two hundred thousand. Where is the evidence to support even this claim?
In my opinion, the one aerial shot shows a number well under 50,000 heads. I superimposed a grid over the photo - my calculation actually showed under 30,000. I believe in their first stories the 700,000 was overestimated by a factor of at least ten.
This has ben another example of dreadful news reporting by the BBC. They have been inaccurate in the reporting of numbers, and the archive shows the headline: Hundreds of thousands attend London protest'.
A protest against what exactly? If the protest is against the UK electorate's democratic decision of 2016 to Leave - then here we have the most glaring example of the BBC interfering with the democratic process by helping to orchestrate yesterday's event, and then by feeding us with biased inaccurate accounts. The showing of placards with outrageously partisan wording has become the weapon of choice from the BBC. They can claim a degree of separation from the message - but we all know why such images are included.
If there were 700,000 people at the march on Saturday, then the London Marathon have for some inexplicable reason been underestimating their own number of competitors by a power of at least 10, and probably closer to 20.
In 2009, there were 35,000 runners officially and the below video shows the numbers of people spread across 2 of the 3 starts. Assuming there is an even spread across all 3 starts, then there is approximately 12,000 runners at each of the 2 starts shown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KOLxQEfmCI
700,000 folk at Saturday's march my hairy backside!!!
This also worth a look - the 2017 start more comprehensively covered.
See from just before 46:00 onwards. Particularly worth looking at however are the huge crowds shown still waiting to get over the start line at just one of the 3 starts from 55:24 onwards - 10 minutes after thousands of people have been pouring over all 3 starts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8KH3HK8pJ0
Taking the pictures from Saturday in the context of these two views of the London Marathon starts, it's quite clear that there was no more than an absolute maximum of 50,000 at Saturday's march, and in all likelihood considerably less than 25,000.
Quite pathetic how the organisers' hyperbolic claims have received so little critical analysis from the media.
Yes Rob, the London Marathon is an excellent comparison for estimating the size of a crowd. Why the BBC aren't pulled up for this inaccurate reporting is a mystery. As broadcasters they give wall-to-wall coverage of the event - delighting in the imagery of a tightly packed crowd setting out from the various start lines.
The other puzzle was why there weren't any banners or placards visible in the aerial shot. Perhaps the BBC hadn't been given any out in preparation for the contrived photoshoots
As I mentioned elsewhere you also have to knock off 20% for people watching the demo from the pavements. Pedestrians naturally slow down to look at passing demos and pavements soon become congested. From the air it looks like they are part of the demo but they're not. Also we should take into account the patlry numbers of coaches booked by the organisers - just 150. Unlikely to carry more than 8,000 people. So why haven't we heard from the rail and tube network about the huge numbers travelling in my train and tube? The mainline rail system would have been swamped by 500,000 or even 250,000 people coming in on mainline rail to Kings Cross, Euston and Paddington. If instead it was 500,000 people jumping on the tube that would have led to such severe congestion stations would have to have been closed because of the risk to life and limb.
I think the 700k figure is absolute BS. I hope someone can be bothered to put in a complaint ao we see the BBC tie themselves in knots trying to defend their estimates - even the hundreds of thousands - ie 200,000 plus.
Anthony Zurcher has gone even more beserker and now seems to be denying that the progressive socialist government of Venezuala has turned it into a dysfunctional, impoverished and hyper-corrupt military dictatorship...or if not that, then he seems to think it's more important to state that the political right use it as a "bogeyman".
Zurcher loves the poor and oppressed unless they happen to be Venezualans.
When BBC favourite and Labour MP Jess Phillips said she "wouldn't stab Jeremy Corbyn in the back, she'd stab him in the front" it's treated as a witty remark up there with some of Wilde's best repartee.
BUT..
When an unnamed Tory MP allegedly makes similar remarks about Theresa May, the BBC goes into its whole shock-horror song and dance act. They spent a massive amount of time on this on WATO. Are they running interference for May? Perhaps - they certainly don't relish the thought of David or Johnson emerging as PM in the next few days.
Let's not forget that John McDonnell said he wished he could have gone back in time to assassinate Mrs Thatcher and also admonished us to honour the IRA...hmmm...Any shock-horror-call-in-the-police? No. All forgotten about, never again to be mentioned.
Spot-on! Everyone knows perfectly well that the would-be May-filleters were speaking figuratively. Yvette Cooper's comment, quoted on BBC News page, is interesting: "This is vile and dehumanising language towards a woman MP..." Does that mean the heated dagger treatment is less vile if it's a man on the receiving end? Sounds sexist to me.
It's like the good old days way back in 2015...migrant horde composed 90% of young men of military age advances to border. They express their hatred for the land they are heading towards, even burning its flag. BBC response? Publish lots of photos of sweet looking children. They should get Jenny Hill there to jump and down and shout "Bienvenido". But somehow I don't think Trump will be inviting them on trains bound for Washington DC. Tasers, tanks, dogs, detention and deportation will be the order of the day.
BTW - has Soros issued a denial that his money is supporting the marching column? I know NYT have done so on his behalf, but that's not quite the same is it?
Interesting to compare the longshot film/stills of the 'caravan' with images of the so-called 'People's Vote' march. We're told there are only 7,000 people on the caravan - which is just 1/100th of the number initially claimed to have marched in London...
It seems everyone is taking the 700k figure on trust from Alistair Campbell, Lord Adonis, Tony Blair, Anna Soubry and the other notably trustworthy persons in the People's Vote Cancellation Campaign.
By the way I just saw that Gary Lineker had to appear by video link at the demo owing to him being otherwise engaged on the "blink and you'll miss it" football highlights programme that used to be known as Match of the Day and is now known as Matchstick of the Day. I trust no BBC facilities were used to enable that video link...
By failing to acknowledge that their figures for attendees at 'People's Vote' march had been amplified in ways that are obvious to anyone who might challenge them, the BBC should be accused of broadcasting propaganda in support of an anti democratic movement.
Its grossness can be likened to the NK state broadcaster telling us in all seriousness that Kim Jong II scored 11 holes-in-one during his one and only game of golf. Yes, there on a par!
Smirky Robinson on Today, Radio 4, remarks correctly on the parallels between the Mail's "Traitors" headline of a year or so ago directed at Conservative Remainers and its current one denouncing "Saboteurs" - directed at Leavers. Indeed, but there are no parallels in BBC coverage. The former headline caused the BBC to go into one of its "New Divisiveness" meltdowns with negative reports across all channels and on every bulletin throughout the day. This one, equally "divisive" (but in a "good way" for lefty-liberal Remainiacs), causes only wry amusment among the BBC folk.
As I said earlier, the BBC's hypocrisy really does have no limits.
Still, surely reporting of this "world class broadcaster" is at least comprehensive? They would surely cover an alleged terrorist attack on UK tourists in Oman? -
Does the BBC track the pregnancies of all celebs based in the USA? No - but "Our Amy" as the BBC likes to think of her has the advantage of being a full on Trumpophobe, so that's why she gets treated as royalty. Same used to go for Rosie O'Donnell, another minor celeb as far as the BBC are concerned, until she started calling for martial law and the end of democracy in the USA - then the BBC went a little cool on her as her Trump Derangement Syndrome was so obvious it was beginning to damage "the cause".
This Doctor Who episode shows just how much the BBC has been stifled in its own imagination by allowing their PC ideology to pervade every part of their consciousness. With the whole of time, and the entire universe at their disposal, the producers evidently can't conceive of a world where their own straightjacketed narrow-minded view might not apply.
The mid-century writers such as Azimov, Arthur C Clarke, Wyndham, Bradbury or Moorcock, given the unrestricted production capacity of the BBC, would have taken us on flights of fancy that would stimulate the mind and imagination in a way that the current BBC output is unable to do.
Yep, this is the real problem in terms of our culture...it's the equivalent of the Victorian suppression of all things sexual, when writers just had to censor themselves or face jail time.
The stultifying effects are felt across the board. Crime dramas have become boring because it is so rare for people from groups with "protected rights", to use the legal term, to be the guilty party (even though in reality, they are actually over-represented in our prisons and courtrooms).
Some previously well known Shakespeare plays are just not being performed now, or rarely so.
Soaps have become ludicrously detached from reality with Muslims popping into the pub or welcoming non-Muslims into the family...children offering sage advice to adults...women always being impressively self-reliant...etc etc.
No doubt many scientists are quietly avoiding working on certain subjects or suppressing the results they do find. I don't think PC has quite reached the content of physics or chemistry but you never know - other totalitarian ideologies have ventured there.
How long before life study is banned? Or has it already been in our art schools?
"I don't think PC has quite reached the content of physics or chemistry..." - No, but don't claim that the study of Physics was invented by men or all hell will break loose. I'm wondering how long it can be before Darwinist theory is expunged from 'A' Level Biology syllabi - it clashes with muslim creationist beliefs. As for life study being banned, we're nearly there - remember Manchester Art Gallery and Hylas and the Nymphs? A new puritanism is descending upon the land.
Anthony Zurcher openly portraying Donald Trump as an "autocrat", yet still wanting us to believe he is an objective and impartial reporter in the grand tradition of John Simpson and Jon Sopel (er - that's sarcasm in case you're wondering).
Last time I looked, he was a democratic politician who abided by election results, who worked constitutionally with the elected members of Congress to pass legislation, who did not engage in illegal acts of war, who obeyed the constitution with respect to the military and governmental structure and who abided by decisions of the Supreme Court. In what way could that possibly be construed as acting as an autocrat unless "acting as an autocrat" means "acting constitutionally to oppose the Democratic Party's plans to destroy the USA"?
6pm News, BBC 1 - a lengthy item on uk sheep farmers, worried about the effects of Brexit, particularly the possibility of going to WTO terms, was immediately followed by the news that the Dyson electric car is to be built in Singapore. Fiona Bruce did not attribute the decision to Brexit but no reason was given & we were clearly expected to infer that Brexit is to blame. Less biased sources this morning explained that Sir James has stated that this has nothing to do with Brexit - it's a question of the supply chain, access to markets and availability of expertise. In this instance, the 'less biased' source is the Guardian!
Dominic Casciani - assigned to cover the Tommy Robinson case, and put the boot in on behalf of the BBC - was ill advised to try and argue the leader of the Huddersfield grooming gang was from a Sikh background...and there are about 300 people so far who have tweeted him to explain exactly why.
But Dominic has obviously been learning from Feedback and Newswatch and offers no apologies for his misdirection of the public.
On his Twitter account Dominic presents himself as a simple reporter...but he's not just that - he's also an activist engaging in matters of intense public debate and controversy, notably a conference on Muslim-Government relations where he shared a platform with Sharia promoters like Dr Bari of the MCB who has stated explicitly he wants all copies of Rushdie's Satanic Verses to be pulped...but of course you'll never hear Casciani describe pro-Sharia Bari as an "extremist", "identitarian" or "Far Right".
has undergone several changes as the reporters including Dominic Casciani try to come to terms with an important story as the day went on. First, the downplaying of numbers of TR supporters - what a joke this is when at the weekend the BBC were exaggerating numbers for the People’s Vote march.
Secondly, Cascani reported the crown as singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and at this to begin with he seemed surprised. Later he qualified his report: ' when they began singing "How they Rule Ya" to the tune of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah'. The BBC didn’t see the irony in the hijacking of a Cohen song, making it into a protest song, when Cohen is held up as one of the 1960s and 1970s elder statesmen - wheeled out - to Glastonbury supposedly in support of what used to be the rebellious free-thinking radicals, the same people that now have become the mainstream Elite Leftist .
Thirdly, the reasons for the case being referred up was (as I understand the situation) because of the strength of TR’s witness statement. It’s there on line for us to read.
On the Politics Show, Jo Coburn floundered when the consensus of opinion was that the press and MSM including the BBC had failed in their duty to report on and expose the failings of police local authorities and other agencies to protect the victims of Huddersfield, Rochdale etc etc. By burying the story after only a few hours, the BBC have attracted blame for their erroneous and incomplete reporting.
Try as she might to drum up some endorsement of the BBC's position, by condemnation of TR as a) undermining the case against the perpetrators, and b) being a racist neo-nazi thug surrounded as he went to court by EDL stalwarts, she couldn’t raise the anti TR rhetoric above bog-standard simmer.
I think today might be the day when TR’s claim that his case is all about ‘who I am’ and not of ‘what I’ve done’ and his claim that the BBC are stirring up hatred towards him eventually ring true.
As far as I can tell, the song with Owen Benjamin's lyrics is from June 2018. There are a few versions on YouTube. Owen Benjamin is an American 'conservative' stand-up comedian and musician. I haven't seen him on the BBC.
A search 'BBC Owen Benjamin' brings up plenty of Benjamin Britten links, but none for Owen Benjamin. As he isn't on the BBC radar, it's understandable that Dominic Casciani wasn't aware of him or this song. How would he be? Err. Unless he was a genuine reporter researching his subject's material thoroughly.
It appears that those tweeting in oppostion to Casciani's tweet have been misled by the mainstream media - this time the Huddersfield Examiner not the BBC.
Apparently it was the Examiner which misleadingly gave the impression that the person concerned had "converted" to the Sikh religion. It now emerges if TWT on Radio 4 is to be believed, that the truth is he was from a Sikh background but did not follow the religion strictly until it came to the point he was being investigated, and then he adopted the full Sikh dress and became properly observant.
So apologies to Casciani for saying he got that wrong - that was due to less than full reporting by the Examiner. But even so, it was rather odd for Casciani to tweet about the religion of ONE of the gang and not the religion of all the rest. What exactly was the point he was trying to make?
And I don't resile from the point I made about the fact he shared a platform with people who support the introduction of Sharia law in the UK and the pulping of the Satanic Verses.
This morning‘s Today headline was about the BBC examining satellite photographs and finding potential detention camps in northern China for up to 1,000,000 Muslims then they bought on a female Labour MP to say this was a bad thing and something must be done how different to the treatment of Sarah champion when she tried to talk about some of the negative effects of unintegrated Muslims nearer to home The report back to my mind about a month or two ago the BBC was castigating the BUrmese government for its treatment of Muslims . Jeremy Hunt they said was to be dispatched to deliver a stern warning to Burma we know the BBC aggressively Criticise East European governments particularly Hungary for resisting mass Muslim immigration of course the BBC is aggressively on the side of the Palestinians against Israel my conclusion is that the BBC has a coordinated campaign to align it’s voice with that of the Muslim world and by extension that of the U.K.’s with
whether They think this is to progress integration or to prepare us for the Islamic State of Britain I am not sure
Yes, that's why the BBC's reaction to the Huddersfield story and by extension, the TR story is so baffling. They are running cared away from serious debate - choosing to mount their attacks upon TR instead of upon the perpetrators of the horrific crimes. It seems that they, with most of the MSM, wish to brush this unspeakable wave of crime under the carpet. This has become the critical political debate. The 2016 vote for Brexit was in part a demonstration by the electorate of the need to control immigration. Again, this elephant in the room has been ignored both by the TM Government and the BBC.
Sadiq Kahn yesterday was promising 11,000 new council houses for London. If deliverable, this is a wholly inadequate gesture to Londoners, who see their population increasing by 100,000 per year - partly if not mainly immigrants.
What is the difference between leftists and cannibals? Cannibals don’t eat their friends. ~attributed to Lyndon Johnson
ReplyDeleteImaginary prize: dinner with Hurl 'News Values' Burl or a boxing match with Jo Coburn.
ReplyDeleteTalking of imaginary games...I came up with one today...
DeleteThink of a statement that sounds pretty uncontroversial, unremarkable and one that would be approved of my most if not all people. So something like -
"I find a coffee rounds off a meal nicely." or
"It's annoying when your coin gets refused by a slot machine." or
"New sheets feel nice on the skin."
Now imagine President Trump said one of these things.
The game then is to think of how the BBC's Senior North American Whatnot, Anthony Zurcher, might misrepresent this innocent comment and turn it into something reprehensible, indefensible or grounds for impeachment.
So for instance, "New sheets feel nice on the skin."
You might have this Zurcher interpretation: "Skin tone as a defining element of your Presidency? White sheets have certainly had their (notorious) place in America's dark history. Surprising the President is not as sensitive to these things, as he is to his ego or the touch of cotton on his flesh - so does he sleep naked by the way? And could Melania care either way?"
Talking of Anthony Zurcher, this tweet is typical Zurch:
DeleteAnthony Zurcher Retweeted NBC News:
@NBCNews
WATCH: President Trump says "Robert E. Lee was a great general" during Ohio rally, calling the Confederate leader "incredible."
Anthony Zurcher added: 11,000 Ohioans died fighting the Confederates in the Civil War.
If you watch the actual video you find that Trump was actually praising the head of the Union army General Ulysses S. Grant - a native of Ohio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pxPIwqv8AA
Yes, that was a classic Zurcher attack! Truncate the text...link to something irrelevant...and hope for the best (ie the worst for Trump). Zurcher is the gnat biting the rhino's hide a thousand times a day. Annoying but the rhino is not brought down.
DeleteLast evening The Great British Menu came to an end with the Grand Banquet - held at Bart's Hospital. As readers here might guess the banquet gave a good
ReplyDeleteopportunity to showcase the BBC's core values. I've commented before that as a true Socialist, Nye Bevan might be turning in his grave over the inclusion of scollops, venison, beef fillet, lobster, langoustines, caviar etc in the regional rounds instead of a humble fare in his honour. Why not stage the event in a village hall in Tredegar?
It's obvious really, the BBC's heartland for this type of show is in London. As a change to the usual format the programme had a vote amongst the diners to elect a 'Champion of Champions' from the four remaining chefs. James won. Why? Because he was representing London and the South East, and his back-story was built up to be the most compelling - regardless of the quality of his dish.
Yes- the core values are in every programme they make now. Virture signalling on a grand scale. I’m sure programmes don’t get commissioned now unless they can demonstrate diversity and inclusivity - the more the better is the motto.
DeleteHowever..the vote was by everyone eating at the banquet so just maybe his food was the best.
You're right Arthur. Humble fare wouldn't get a look in. Dish after dish was rejected by the judges as not spectacular enough and not 'banquet worthy' even when they said it was perfectly cooked and of high quality. Village hall wouldn't be 'banquet worthy' for the worthies who were invited. Comments online noted that the judges went on and on about treating the hardworking staff of the NHS but apart from a token couple of cleaners the guests were senior managers, TV celebrity doctors and those holding awards and honours. And the crass 'champion of champions' nonsense wasn't liked by anyone.
DeleteThe Great British Menu was from beginning to end a BBC propaganda exercise in praise of the NHS. Chefs were chosen as much for their declared indebtedness to the NHS as their culinary skills; every heat was chock-full of messages about what a wonderful institution it is; and the judges vied with each other to heap more superlatives on the selflessness and brilliance of NHS staff. During the final on Friday, the banquet guests, drawn from the NHS, were described as saints. This throughout was the Jeremy Corbyn view of the NHS, ironically held in a week when - despite all the billions lavished upon it - it actually came 35th in an league table of the world's health services, behind even Panama.
ReplyDeleteRobin, you confirmed what I feared. As soon as I heard it was to celebrate the NHS I just guessed how awful it wouldn’t be and refused to watch even though I had seen previous series. I just hope that overall the BBC realise they have a decline in viewing figures but I fear they are so obseywith the message that they don’t realise it is the message that causes viewers to switch off.
DeleteIn the light of Coburngate we can see how far things have moved.
ReplyDeleteBiased BBC will now have to change its name to Brazenly Biased BBC.
This site will have to change it name to "C'm on, No One Anymore Seriously Maintains the BBC Isn't Hugely and Mendaciously Biased." Bit of a mouthful, but the interrogative mode is no longer apposite!
Looking back, when I first went seeking out sites that were registering my concerns about bias on the BBC, I thought it was a rather narrow, political bias that was the concern focussed on the EU and immigration. But now I have to admit this is way more broad and deep and malevolent.
Look at the arrogance of Coburn...it tells you everything. They feel they have complete licence to be biased now.
But far worse than the brazen arrogance (Evan Davis was displaying it as well when dealing with Myron Ebell, declaring the IPCC infallible on a par with some Medieval Pope), is the sense that the BBC is now fully opposed to all the liberal notions they once extolled and which we were once encouraged to believe in.
They no longer support free speech. Speech is to be licensed and controlled. Certain popular figures are not to be allowed to speak on the BBC controlled channels. The BBC supports with real gusto criminalisation of speech of which it disapproves.
The BBC no longer believes in democracy. It has been supporting the campaign to overturn the 23rd June 2016 Referendum result ever since 24th June 2016. It is promoting the idea that young people's votes should be worth more than old people's votes. It think group rights trump individual rights. It has promoted the idea of unelected technocratic government - providing crucial support to unelected technocrats like Carney.
The BBC no longer supports equality of opportunity. It is now fully signed up to the opposing principle of equality of outcome which the Bolsheviks were the first to attempt to implement as a matter of state policy.
The BBC no longer supports the family and is working hard to degenderise the population (whilst - absurdly and hypocritically - promoting gender-segregated sport).
The BBC no longer supports science. It supports a parody of science. Various nostrums are declarted inviolably true. No vaccine ever harmed a child. Anthropogenic global warming is a proven fact and will result in disaster for the planet (despite global warming hitherto having done nothing to interfere with the growth in world GDP or agricultural output). All scientific research shows men and women to be equal in all respects. Darwin was not a malevolent old racist who used his theories to back his racism. Our major scientific advances in the past were thanks to Islam.
The BBC no longer backs Anglicanism or even Christianity. It is working hard 24/7 to promote Islam at the expense of all other religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Bahai and Mormonism. In order to do this the BBC lies about Sharia, the history of the Islamic world, the influence of Islam on science, Islam's involvement in slavery, the life of Mohammed and a host of other issues.
...(continued)
DeleteThe BBC no longer has any interest in our cultural achievements, such as Shakespeare, Elgar, Dickens, Vaughan Williams, or the pre-Raphaelites. You might find something tucked away something so they can show it to Ofcom as their homework, but they certainly are not interested in that sort of stuff.
It wouldn't be quite so bad if the BBC were honest about all this. If they stood up and said "We take your licence fee money and use it to promote religious intolerance, the suppression of free speech, pseudo-science, destruction of the family, and hatred of British culture" I could just about stomach it. But, nope, they hide behind a veneer of respectability ("Look we still sit around tables and have debates, even though, like in Soviet Russia, the debates are all between people who agree with each other.")...Every now and then they come over a bit patriotic for those licensed bouts of patriotism...Poppy Day and so on...
But there is now real mendacity and malevolence behind the mask. They set out to destroy people, to break them mentally and physically. They have the named targets: Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Tommy Robinson and now - of course - Gerard Batten. Having selected the target they are relentless in their misrepresentation, their denial of free speech, their enthusiasm for the violent mobs that go after them.
A final thought...
ReplyDeleteIt's always annoying hearing a bored woman on the BBC pretending to be interested in sport because that's what pays the bills. It was equally annoying hearing Jonny Diamond finally doing something that matched his official title (Royal Correspondent) commentating on the Royal Wedding. This guy clearly has no interest in the idea of monarchy, in the royal family or in the clothes they wear for special occasions. That's not my interpretation - he made it abundantly clear himself with various sarky comments.
The BBC has sports reporters who hate sport, royal correspondents who hate royalty, religious correspondents who hate religions, American correspondents who hate America and Brexit correspondents who...oh yeah, hate Brexit of course!...it's all beginning to make sense at last!! :) I see ...Wait a minute though, why don't they have EU correspondents who hate the EU? :)
Excellent analysis MB. You might add the self-perpetuating nature of the organisation regenerating itself like some hideous creature of myth. With a huge intake of intelligent HR raw material, the BBC is so set up that dissenters to the corporate ideology have become virtually extinct.
DeleteThe well paid incomer to the BBC will subconsciously conform to the ideals. Those of rebellious nature or independent thought will quickly be weeded out and will never succeed in climbing the career ladder.
Employment at the BBC has all the hallmarks of the Politburo. Conformity to to directives from the Central Committee (who in this case are the super-salaried establishment within the BBC - Easton, Simpson, Dimbleby etc) is taken as a precondition to employment there.
Of course what the Low IQ Ideologues like Easton don't realise is that the ideological victory is swiftly followed by a return to nature. Once it is shown that ideology trumps law, decency, civility, humanity...the mulitiplying body of victims and - more importantly - potential victims, soon realise that you can only fight fire with fire.
DeleteIn order to survive, you have to lie just as much as they lie, be as corrupt as they are, be as mendacious as they are - meeting their denunciations with your own denunciations of them...
This is what led the people of Russia to their sorry state in 1956 when even the Communists themselves had become sick of the whole business and wanted to call a kind of internal ideological truce. Mao of course hated that truce...he carried on with the ideological war until the 70s when the Chinese Communists called a truce.
She's still Jenny from the bloc...the EU bloc that is...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45835795
This sounds like wonky-polling to me. Greens up by AfD levelling and CSU doesn't make sense. But Germans are v. careful about presenting the "correct face" in public, so expect Germans to lie about whether they will vote for AfD.
The Greens might be doing slightly better because green energy is a popular policy in Southern Germany (where most of the sunshine is). But if CSU are falling, then most of their votes I think will be going to the AfD.
We shall see.
Well never let it be said I don't own up when completely wrong...the opinion polls were pretty spot on.
DeleteBut I wrote that before I saw the photo of the glamorous, photogenic blonde Green leader in Bavaria posing like a model in a traditional dirdl skirt next to another photo of the male CSU leader in godawful drag at the Bavarian Carnival...Clearly they do things differently in Bavaria!
The trailer after the Marr programme for that dire Sunday Morning Live programme: Was the Supreme Court judgment right in the bakery case?
ReplyDeleteI will wait to see a trailer that says:
Is it right to allow men including rapists to declare themselves women and demand to be called 'she' and women to call themselves men and demand 'he'?
I am beginning to wonder if BBC presenters are paid a bonus for using the Beeb's current hurrah-words, regardless of context. BBC 2 had a repeat of a Monty Don gardening prog. at about 8 a.m. today, on which the star turn was an expert on garden worms; the bit that caught my attention was, "... you will have a DIVERSITY of worms in your garden." Let's hope the Beeb never discovers that worms are hermaphrodites, otherwise they'll be wanting to use the little beggars as rôle models ... Oh,...oh yeah!
DeleteRoger Harrabin has written an article about eating less meat to save the planet.
ReplyDeleteHe doesn’t address whether he will eat less meat himself but instead goes after the climate minister, Claire Perry with loaded language.
‘She would not even say whether she herself would eat less meat.’
‘Ms Perry refused even to say whether she agreed with scientists' conclusions that meat consumption needed to fall.’
‘She said instead of cutting down on meat, we could use (hugely expensive) equipment that sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere.‘
I’m assuming Harrabin added ‘hugely expensive’ and used ‘even’ to discredit Claire Perry and to accentuate his case.
He is the worst type of BBC journalist, always pushing an agenda, using words to deliberately set a tone and forever lecturing on what we should do.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45838997
He looks like he feasts on lettuce leaves.
DeleteRather than getting everyone to change cultural habits that are hundreds of thousands of years old, why doesn't harrabin called for an end to mass immigration and end to population growth in Africa, Asia and Latin America? Wouldn't that be far more effective in protecting the environment?
Both Nick Robinson and Mark Mardell have given this speech by arch Remainer Ivan Rogers their stamp of approval and asked us to read it.
ReplyDeleteRogers is a "rum cove"...something of a perpetual student, he studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure (spelling not guaranteed). He pursued doctoral studies in the history of socio-biology and eugenic thinking on the political left - but didn't complete his degree. He was senior civil servant. PPS to Blair and then our Permanent Representative to the EU. He was an early saboteur of the democratic Brexit vote and had to resign his position when it became clear he was actively frustrating the Government's policy on implementing Brexit.
Well I think we can see why Mardell and Robinson find his pearls of wisdom so attractive.
I could write a book about how wrong headed the article is.
1. He is still pushing the old defeatist line (which even the BBC gave up on) that it takes 10 years or more to negotiate a trade deal. This despite the complex USMCA trade deal having been negotiated within about 18 months.
I do accept it will take 10 years or more is you have people like Rogers around and if we let the EU take that long.
2. He misleads and distorts at every turn. He claims during the proposed transition period "We will, automatatically be
ically and immediately, over any transition period, be
bound by law and decisions over which our representatives and voters had no say." This is absurd. More than 99% of any regulatory framework will have been agreed while we were EU Members. There will only be a small, virtually non-existent, fraction that is new and implemented during the
the transition period.
3. He claims "We all know the 350 million figure on the side of the red bus was specious." but he claims it resonated with the public. I dispute that. The bus would have had little impact were it not for the attempt by the Remain media, BBC to the fore, to try and turn it into a major scandal - Leavers caught out in a "lie". The figure was not specious, it was debatable. It did include our rebate, but the rebate is not guaranteed for all time. It was time limited and due for review (not something Remainers were honest about). It was not a very clever slogan. It would have been better to have stated "£9 billion every year" (our actual payment) rather than £350 million per week. The net billions certainly did resonate. People were asking what are we getting out of this for all that money?
4. He states correctly that you cannot have "access" to the Single Market. The Single Market is a legal construct you're either a (EU) member of it or you're not - even Norway is not part of the EU Single Market. But it is not the Brexiters who have been arguing for continued membership of the Single Market after we leave as though that were a possibility - it is the Remainers and they have been pushing this fiction in order to frustate the implementation of the democratic will of the people.
[...continued and here'sthe link to the article:
Deletehttps://share.trin.cam.ac.uk/sites/public/Comms/Rogers_brexit_as_revolution.pdf ]
5. He uses the offensive term "nativist reactionary" to describe the populist movement and links that to the Brexit cause. He thus tries to make out that Brexiters are opposed to free trade, which is of course absurd. Virtually all main speakers for Leave spoke enthusiastically about free trade opportunities: Johnson, Davis, Farage, Leadsom, Hannan. He's just trying to rewrite history.
6. He claims we were permanently opted out of monetary union. If we were permanently opted out, why did Brown and Blair have policies about how we would join (a number of tests)? We were opted out as long as a UK government was prepared to keep us out.
7. He claims the EU is not working to create a federal state. Really? The EU has its own flag, its own anthem, its own currency, its own central bank, free movement across many of its internal borders, it has its own law making structure, its own parliament, a Common Foreign and Security Policy, and a Common Security and Defence Policy that combines military personnel and assets. It's the dishonesty of these Remainers that is so hard to take. The EU is effectively already a Federal State. It just needs to top it up with a proper army and real fiscal union for it to be there.
8. Lastly, in all his speech which is supposed to be a "what went wrong" exposition as well as a "what won't go right" Remain Moan, he doesn't once mention Merkel Million Migrant Madness. I think that really brought home (a) how Germany can make up the rules as it goes along (b) how much our lives could be affected by a crazy whim of the German Chancellor and (c) how the EU didn't have meaningful borders.
Will Gompertz has given us his considered opinion on the artist Banksy's shredded artwork:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-45818204
... 'Will Gompertz on Banksy's shredded Love is in the Bin' ...
It's worth reading through the article, in which WG gives his own opinion - something BBC reporters are usually loathed to do.
... 'But contemporary art is not valued for its inherent aesthetic qualities (although that is how it is presented to us), it is valued pretty much solely on the basis of an artist's reputation. All that matters is the brand, that it is a Banksy, or a Koons, or a Kusama. For a lot of collectors art has become an asset class.....
... My [GM's] view? It is art. Made by an artist who many don't rate but I do. Why? Because he has something to say....
.... You might not agree with him, but at least he is making art that penetrates the public consciousness; art that is in the world, not detached from it; art that raises questions that need an airing.' ...
The BBC love to report on Banksy. He represents their mindset - anti globalisation, anti big business, and support for the underdog. But, isn't this just lazy reporting by the BBC and their Arts Correspondent? No doubt, Banksy's output will be accompanied by easy-to-reproduce press releases and storylines. To my mind Banksy's work is derived from the Pop-Art Movement. Richard Hamilton's famous list of tenets of Pop-Art: "Popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business, would seem to fit Banksy's output admirably - especially Big Business - his paintings change hands for £millions.
Much like pop stars of the 1960s, without any thought of making their fortunes, pop-artists were rebellious - poking fun at the establishment. Again as with pop stars it was only after the event that Big Business moved in on their backs.
Gompertz applies a shallow level of art criticism to Banksy's work, choosing only to concentrate upon the political statements made by the artists - as he does with Turner Prize winners and shortlist. Some of the BBC's archive programmes on the likes of Augustus John are inspiring as we watch them work. Art appreciation has disappeared from the role of the critic.
Corny - but, through Gompertz, all we are encouraged to see the price of the artwork without seeing its value.
I think Banksy was heavily influenced by the Situationist art movement.
DeleteIs the BBC anti-globalist? I don't think so. They want a kind of PC capitalism but so do a lot of the biggest globalists. I think they oppose traditional free market capitalism.
Is the BBC anti-globalist? It's a good question. If McDonalds are in 123 countries, then to my mind that's globalisation. Because McD's formula is capitalist, then I wouldn't expect the BBC to celebrate their success. If globalisation means that we all eat the same type of food (burgers) then, apart from today's message that we should eat less meat, then I suppose the BBC might support the inclusivity aspect of globalisation.
DeleteI think that, essentially, the BBC are in the pro Globalist camp. That means being broadly supportive of the big tech companies, China, the Obamas, the Clintons, Soros, political correctness and no borders migration policies.
DeleteBut of course the Globalist camp is a broad church...and the BBC is in the soft left corner of the camp...so they whinge about a lot of things to do with capitalism, they generally encourage anti-capitalist ideas in young people and they want to see worldwide regulation of global companies (but a lot of globalist billionaires argue for the same). I think modern capitalism of the Facebook/Google/Amazon/Microsoft type is really much more a kind of monopolostic capitalism, divorced from the free market ethos. Monopolists are normally good at cutting deals with governments and make natural allies of the monopolistically-minded BBC.
"Much like pop stars of the 1960s, without any thought of making their fortunes, pop-artists were rebellious..."
DeleteYes and No. The male pop stars of the 1960s who emerged pre-1967ish were generally the sons of factory workers and plumbers. They started out wanting, not unreasonably, to make as much money in one night playing at The Cavern or Eel Pie Island or even the local village hall as their fathers made in a week of hard, grimy toil (with the added bonus of getting up late, having fun and pretty much their pick of girls).
It was mainly the pop stars of the later 60s who were not so interested in money, or claimed not to be at least.
Many more of the later 60s stars were from middle class or above backgrounds (Pink Floyd, Genesis etc) and had been to art college or university and had less fear or experience of poverty.
Those survivors of the early 60s cohort who appeared to be fashionably less interested in money when the end of the 1960s came along were the few who had a more middle class background to start with and/or had been to art college* such as Lennon and Jagger. Their later attitude to money was no doubt also coloured somewhat by the fact that by then they were phenomenally wealthy.
How genuinely rebellious, in a radically political rather than in a pop culture/personal sense, any of the major 1960s artists were is debatable.
* Ian MacDonald's brilliant "Revolution in the Head" points out how massively influenced British 1960s and 1970s pop music was by the art colleges that existed in every major city. He rightly points out that they were repositories for lots of non-academic kids who were nevertheless bright and obviously had some kind of spark or talent without necessarily knowing what for exactly. Many a pop phenomenon began there and many of their early audiences were drawn from there too. Such places didn't exist in the US and they contributed to the differences between the two countries cultures.
Yes, Revolution in the Head is v. good. Kinks and the Who are another example of the Art School influence.
DeleteWe shouldn't knock this 60s spirit or our art schools. The UK is phenomenally successful in all things related to creative endeavour: music, art, design, fashion, luxury cars and computer games and so on.
Feedback this week had very little listener feedback, it was mostly about the BBC's Climate Blasphemy Laws and promoting podcasts. Finally Roger Bolton gave us one of those little insights into how the conversation around the water cooler goes when he closed by telling us that we live in difficult times and that we need something to make us laugh. Around my water cooler I laugh every time I hear the BBC tell me that we live in difficult times as I know it is just their tears over Clinton and 'Remain' losing.
ReplyDeleteYep. "Difficult times" = Napoleonic wars, Hungry Forties, Irish Famine, WW1, the Great Depression, WW2 and post war austerity/housing shortage...maybe even the 3 day week. What Bolton and the other water coolants mean is "things aren't going our way the way we'd like them to". It has other names e.g. "throwing a tantrum", "stamping your little feet" and "bursting into tears".
DeleteJust keep watching this. It is like a microcosm of what we are facing:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyTPjKpn8Mk
Note Coburn's insane pro-Sharia argumentation. Note her
denying that a religion is an ideology just like any other ideology. She's obviously a secularist and probably an atheist but she cynically dons religious robes to take a shot against Batten.
Note how Coburn hypocritically (having previously given him the same treatment) is now claiming Farage as a "voice of moderation".
Note Batten very admirably pushes back on all her disgusting attempts to turn perfectly normal opinions - anti-grooming, anti-Sharia, anti-terrorism - into some morally reprehensible.
Batten has rise hugely in my estimation. Thanks, Jo. :)
I take it the youtube is the wild ravings of Jo Coburn on Friday. It was clear she had lost her mind when she started snapping that it was a religion, not an ideology - when she herself had been using the word a few minutes before in the same programme. Another thing: she accused Batten of supporting violence and when he objected, she angrily denied she'd accused him, claiming it was a question. As I watched and listened I neither saw nor heard any sign of interrogation but a further hostile accusation in an unedifying stream of antagonism and bullying. Liar, liar, I thought. And a disgusting display from BBC. I wonder when she is going to be interrogated and shouted at for her own bigotry and if it will make the BBC front page when she is forced to issue a public apology. Waiting...
DeleteI hope UKIP get some lawyer to draft a formal complaint. Even though the BBC hierarchy will support Coburn the Barbarian to the hilt, they will still find it difficult to defend her behaviour, so this is a rare occasion where a complaint might make life really difficult for them.
DeleteThat interview decided me to vote UKIP, so Coburn does have a little political influence.
DeleteBBC are in a strange place. You'd expect them to be in seventh heaven: a Conservative Government tottering, in danger of complete meltdown, failure of negotiations in Brussels...surely opporunity for a second referendum.
ReplyDeleteBut no...they are oddly muted. Norman Smith speaks more in sorrow than anger and with none of his usual hyperbolic excitement. Honest Nick doesn't seem to have much wind in his sails. The BBC folk are scratching their collective head trying to see a way forward but can't.
So I am led to the conclusion that the BBC is desperate to shore up May. Their ultimate nightmare would be to see a new, much more popular Conservative PM, who goes to the nation wipes the floor with Corbyn and wins a majority for a hard Brexit if necessary.
I think it is just that Chequers is their ‘least worst’ option after weighing up all possible outcomes in current political circumstances.
ReplyDeleteI agree. But it's instructive to see how they treat something when they are not on the "warpath". Suddenly they are looking to reduce the temperature, to not speculate too much, to report matter-of-factly. They are not referring to the economic damage this impasse is doing... etc etc. It is definitely not their preferred option (that being a second referendum decision to Remain) but if necessary they can live with a Chequers style deal and then hope for a revived Second Referendum later or possibly they will push the "Rejoin the EU" campaign that will be launched by Soros and Co immediately after we depart.
DeleteIt's possible that the BBC are endeavouring to carry their can level in the hope that neither a Corbyn led Government nor a genuine Leave Leader of the Conservative Party were to take May's place. In either case, the BBC's cosiness in their unassailable bubble might be at an end.
DeleteIndeed. I think the higher ups, the more established presenters at the BBC can see the dangers they face from a Corbyn government once Dawn Butler or similar is appointed Comissar for Cultural Affairs.
DeleteFrancis Fukuyama wasn't quite saying the right things on Radio 4 this morning which is why Marr had to ignore them. He stated quite clearly and unequivocally that mass immigration was responsible for the rise in the populist right in Europe.
ReplyDeleteSilence from Marr.
Marr of course as a veteran player knew what required of him out on the field so to speak. We had the "so called" Football Lads Alliance but there was no "so called" when he referred to the Anti-Fascists in the next breath.
Have I discovered a new form of bias or is this an example of bias by soft questioning...?
ReplyDeleteEd Stourton had the Fine Gael rep on. Ed refers (in the correct BBC formulation) to the possibility of the UK "crashing out"..."what then for the border?" he asks...
The Fine Gael guy flannels and then refuses to entertain the possibility that the UK might "crash out". Terrier-like (sarcasm) Ed returns to the fray and, well, kind of restates the question and gets nowhere.
Of course we know why the Fine Gael guy was being so evasive...Stourton should have asked him directly: "If the UK leaves the EU without a deal, will you erect border posts on the border in line with your EU obligations?" We know the real answer is "NO! not in a million years!!" So this whole border issue is a negotiation ploy designed to wreck Brexit and Hapless May, at the behest of her pro-Remain civil servants has fallen for it.
Coburn the Barbarian proudly posted her interview on her Twitter account.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/Jo_Coburn/status/1050732953330962433
She's had 774 tweets in response. Normally she's lucky to get into double figures. And let's say...comments could be going better.
I hope Gerard Batten has lodged a formal complaint. Someone on bBBC spotted that although towards the end of the interview she launches into Batten for referring to Islam as an ideology, it was she who first mentioned ideology in that respect! - that's how biased she was!!
I’m not sure there is really much difference in practice between a religion and an ideology. I am by no means a UKIP supporter, but the ferocity of Coburn’s attack on Batten was quite appalling. Another point that came up during the same discussion, was that it would not be acceptable to condemn the whole of the Catholic church because of the child abuse scandals. Perhaps not, but I would certainly recognise that there are some serious, fundamental problems within Catholicism - which was exactly what Batten was suggesting with regard to Islam. Even the point that Rochdale and other cases were allowed to carry on for so long because of fears about Islamophobia were left hanging in the air without any real discussion. Coburn also rather too deftly brushed aside the Saville references.
DeletePolitics Live seems to have a very pronounced agenda. The topic of a few weeks ago was, “The toxic nature of masculinity”.
There's no real difference between a religion and an ideology. Belief in a deity doesn't separate them since Buddhism, considered a religion, doesn't have a deity and Deism, which does believe in a deity is often considered a philosophical position. Some religions are more overtly political than others and all religions get involved in politics one way or another. Islam has never seen any distinction between religious belief, personal practice, the law and public policy.
DeleteCoburn studied Middle Eastern politics, so it's reasonable to suppose she has some understanding of Islam's history and belief system and how it is expressed through Sharia law. So she must be dissembling, in order to confuse the audience, do down GB and further her ideology - PC multiculturalism.
Kaiser posted and put the video URL
Deletehttps://youtu.be/PGeIEk29Xw0?t=391
You can click the 3 dots and pull up the transcript as a guide cos its not perfect
6:40 You are condeming all Muslim Men. women, chidren if they adhere to anideology
7:29 (angry voice) right it is a religion BTW not an ideology, it is a religion
Ideology = belief system ..and that is all religions , but also other things like communism etc (POLTICAL ideology)
One of the worst every interview atrocities on the BBC, to go along with Evan Davis's interview of Farage and Maitlis's interview of Rees-Mogg.
DeleteGosh, it was cheering to read those replies to Jo Coburn.
DeleteAbsurd prominence given by the BBC to this minor spat in American politics (Trump's joke about Pocahontas). But the weird thing I noticed was this use of "blood" by the BBC, like they were some outfit from the RHSA in 1941. Surely we have moved on from such fanciful notions as our blood carrying our ethnic identity. And in any case I should think at least 150 million Americans have as much Native American "blood" (to use the BBC phrase) in them as she does. She definitely hasn't got as much as Winston Churchill who was one eighth Native American - far more impressive and much admired by Trump.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/BBCWorld/status/1051873759387406336?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1051873759387406336&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbiasedbbc.org%2Fblog%2F2018%2F10%2F15%2Fstart-the-week-open-thread-15-october-2018%2Fcomment-page-2%2F%23comments
Mark Easton is not as clever as he thinks he is, that permanent smirk and the air of superiority that sweats out of him is always a dead giveaway.
ReplyDeleteHis latest Brexit report tonight was the usual doom and gloom designed to prove that the latest survey results show we are split down the middle and divided. As if we didn’t know it, Easton is determined to remind us time and time again.
He picked his way through the survey results, only choosing the ones that suited his argument and personal opinions. As the numbers came up - white meant better, bright red meant worse.
‘I want you to focus on what was written on the side of that bus’ he said- blatantly leading his Swansea panel by the hand to demonstrate that Brexit won’t make the NHS better.
‘List the three things that are most important to you after Brexit’ he said - before excitedly and proudly telling them that on-one had listed immigration.
Mark Easton can’t be described as impartial by any stretch of the imagination. He is your typical BBC propaganda merchant. His modus operandi is usually the same. He takes a survey and cherry picks the data to fit the message he wants. Then he gets the great British public to act as unwitting stooges to get validate the story he has concocted.
He is a dangerous piece of work.
I compare him to the guy you used to have in the Politburo - the Chief Ideologue, who was supposed to keep all the ohter Commissars on the right path and explain away any apparent conflicts between ideology and reality. He is dangerous and tends to give the ideological lead to the BBC sheep: no such thing as England, nationalism is outmoded, mass migration is good, mass migration is changing the country for the better, multiculturalism enriches the country, the old are lost and confused etc etc .
DeleteThere's more anti Trump propaganda from the BBC News website, BBC Trending:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-45861868
... 'Painting of Trump among past presidents seen at White House' ...
This article starts as a straight news story about a painting The Republican Club, by Andy Thomas, hanging on the wall of the Oval Office. We find that Andy Thomas has painted something very similar for the Democrats, showing their Presidents sitting together around a table in a club.
But, the BBC could not help itself. It had to include: ... 'Inevitably, others used photo-editing software to make their own amendments to the scene.' ...
The accompanying composite image shows a photoshopped superimposed paste-in of the Donald Trump inflatable in place of the painted portrait of the real Donald Trump at the table.
This manipulation is shallow, gimmicky, childish, and insulting to the POTUS. It is clearly intended to draw for the article's author Chris Bell a round of congratulations from his friends at the BBC as he jumps on the bandwagon of anti Trump rhetoric flooding out from the BBC. I'm sure this behaviour will confirm, just ib case there was any doubt, that the BBC won't be tolerated by DT, and the likes of John Sopel will continue to spread his bile from a pavement somewhere in Washington DC.
BBC Trending is run by an American Radical who tried to start a Village Voice type publication in London, completely failed and ended up working for the BBC. Hence the things allegedly "trending" are more often than not anti-Trump nonsense.
DeleteR4 prog about the rise of Libertarian bloggers
ReplyDeleteThe progmaker Gavin Haynes seems like an antifa who's been told to turn it down a bit, so as not to make it too obvious.
yet he obviously sneers at Sargon etc. And goes soft on his lefty guests.
Useful info at the beginning Sargon regularly gets half a million views ..which is the same as Newsnight (So that is rather an indication of Newsnight's fall)
That Owen Jones looks like a minnow with his 109K Twitter followers vs PJWs 850K
He claims that Sargon makes £10K/month from viewers and "probably as much from advertising"
Gavin writes for the Guardian...now there's a surprise.
DeleteSargon's the sweary one isn't he? Don't much like him but good luck to him if he's cleaning up while opposing anti-Free Speech PC ideology.
Who writes sceptic as skeptic?
DeleteIt doesn't matter how few followers Owen Jones has. BBC will still have him on as often as they can.
Oh, these politicians and the BBC. This time it's Ed Vaizey:
ReplyDelete'But the sheer pace of technological change and the huge sums of money involved means we need to think hard about how we secure the BBC’s future. It remains the domestic leader in national and local radio, a vital provider of news and the host of national events such as The Proms, still one of the key organisations binding an increasingly fractured nation together.'
That last bit makes me sick. No organisation, apart from the political parties, is more divisive than the BBC, with its Labourist obsession and insistence upon categorising everyone and everything as black or white - or variants upon.
https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/we-need-the-bbc-to-be-more-secure-than-ever-but-its-role-must-change-a3962076.html
The BBC tried to kill the Last Night of the Proms several years ago. Giving the Proms to the BBC to care for is like giving a baby to a pyschopathic nurse. They are doing their best to declassicise it and turn it into something it never was. It's not as though there aren't plenty of outlets for pop, rap, rock and jazz. They've had to give up on their plans to completely change the Last Night of the Proms - but no doubt deep in their modernist breasts they would love to see it off.
DeleteYes, the BBC is probably the most divisive institution in the land, although many of our universities may be running them a close second.
What a pathetic specimen that Vaizey guy is. Lacklustre Cameronian to his bones.
It's ironic, but not funny, when you consider how much time the BBC spends on pointing the finger at everyone else for being divisive and hateful.
I paused while scrolling past Newsnight and noticing the presenter. Couldn't think of his name but anyway... he was looking at the comment sections of the newspapers and when it came to The Times he said, 'Melanie Phillips, controversial columnist' by way of introduction. I don't suppose he'd put the same sort of label on a Jones or a Toynbee, say.
ReplyDeleteWell what cosy chats on the cutting edge Today programme. Cyber attacks: Russia mentioned about 20 times...China (probably the world's leading state-sponsored cyber attacker) not once. Finished up with a discussion about the possibility of a new "third way" party emerging. The discussion was between Nick Robinson, Phil Collins and Polly Toynbee. Pretty much the full range of BBC opinion on show there! The analysis was pretty pathetic. Nick sounded positively enthusiastic when the subject came to who might lead a new third way party..."they might be listening now!" he said excitedly.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC do cover Venezuala but it's interesting HOW they cover. When dealing with Poland, Hungery or Austria, they are only too happy to describe governments as nationalist, right wing, populist or far right as the mood takes them. Reports on countries like Burma are replete with references to military government.
ReplyDeleteBut when it comes to discussing the situation in a country, Venezuala, run by an avowedly left wing socialist government, the BBC makes no reference to the character of the government or its military backing.
It appears as though all the suffering is happening in a vacuum.
Perhaps they are just hoping that given most people are pretty apolitical and know little about South America they will assume Venezuala is run by one of those South American juntas (that actually don't exist any more).
Are they trying to protect Jeremy and Labour's Left - famously supportive of Chavez's left wing rule?
Are they trying to protect their left leaning, anti-capitalist ideology?
What has happened in Venezuala is truly staggering. You have to go back to Mao's feats of socliast mismanagement to find parallels. With all that oil they manage to have power cuts and starvation. This is where anti-entrepreneurial state socialism meets mass Latin American corruption. Horrendous.
The government has been doing a 16-week consultation about changing the law to give people the right to 'self declare' what sex they are and to have a birth certificate stating that sex, among other changes to advance trans rights. The consultation is due to end at 11pm on 19 October, that's Friday of this week.
ReplyDeleteSo Woman's Hour, the programme which brings us a female perspective, allegedly, and always quick off the mark on anything important, such as the latest 'race row', or scrambling to put a famous man with all the maleness intact into its Power List of top women a few years back, took until yesterday, 15 October, to inform and invite listeners to put in their comments on the consultation. And they had a discussion about it today. Yes, that's right. Fifteen weeks went by before they could bring themselves to notice and advise their audience about it or even discuss it.
Jane Garvey, who is usually very eager to get stuck in on behalf of women if there's a possible angle with men, was strangely reticent and mild about putting in the odd point from women's perspective. That's the BBC hard at work on our behalf. Well, someone's behalf.
I hear her trail the piece yesterday - and yes she was strangely reticent indeed...as if she knew she was walking on potentially career-ending egg shells. The "progressive" movement, including the BBC, is split on this. But whoever wins will exact revenge on the defeated foe.
DeleteDid you know? On looking at Kingston Police's twitter I see that this is Hate Crime Awareness Week (HCAW). They're doing their bit: 'Over the next six days we aim to increase your knowledge and understanding of hate crime, what it is, who can report it, how it can be reported, the effects of hate crime and where you can find support.'
ReplyDeleteYou can report it on their app called Self Evident or on some other thing called True Vision. Who dreams up these names? And 'In aid of #NationalHCAW we have written a bespoke fictional story, split into five chapters. Check out our Facebook Page at 5pm each day for the latest chapter. The first chapter of ‘Everybody Hates Crime’ will be released tomorrow, we hope you find it engaging and informative.'
They are beginning to sound like the BBC. I wonder if Jo Coburn knows it is Hate Crime Awareness Week. I think she should be told. Of course, the hate crime they are on about is that which affects a small number of select groups and excludes most of the population and probably Gerard Batten.
People who need not apply:
DeleteOld people - regularly told to eff off and die in the Guardian comments.
Brexit voters - regularly told to eff off in the Guardian comments and on BBC "comedy" programmes.
Men - Regularly blamed for all sorts of social ills (war, pollution, crime, oppression of women, peeing on toilet seats) and cited as the villain in a vast conspiracy theories by people who wish them out of existence.
People from Norfolk and Wales and ginger people - You can say anything you like about them, however hateful, according to the BBC.
Donald Trump
Nigel Farage
Tommy Robinson
Gerard Batten
About Craig's image of the fossil: It might be a form of prehistoric advertising from the Jurassic age: Dino's Diner - all you can eat for $1.99.
ReplyDeleteAt least one of them died happy.
DeleteIt's an allegory: the BBC promotes legislation to outlaw on-line alternatives to its version of the truth, prior to swallowing them up.
DeleteAn item on BBC1 6pm news: I confess I was still seething at the failure of Brexiteer cabinet ministers to resign, so I may not have listened carefully enough to the item on 'hate crime' - the presenter appeared to be mainly concerned with crimes perpetrated against uk muslims by white non-muslims. He gave example of the crimes committed & showed pictures of the perpetrators. He recognised that there had been attacks in, for example, Manchester and Westminster, but, unless I missed it, did not name the criminals, show their photographs or state the motives for their crimes. This did not seem to me to be balanced. My apologies if I have misunderstood.
ReplyDeleteNo you didn’t misunderstand. The story was about hate crimes against Muslims which are up 40% they say.
DeleteThanks Sir T - the 40% was the bit I missed.
DeleteI had to laugh listening to Katya Adler tonight on the main news when she talked about the UK media as if some third party.
ReplyDeleteShe said EU Leaders were keeping quiet because whatever they say is jumped upon, analysed and twisted by the UK media.
The irony was completely lost on her that the BBC was part of that UK media and not just the right wing newspapers she was implying.
Incidentally she gave a very cheery report, smiling throughout as she always does when we are deep in the mire. She always enjoys and revels in our national humiliation. (As do most of the BBC reporters and editors).
The BBC is being incredibly supportive of May...holding on to nurse for fear of something worse I think - either a popular Conservative administration led by Boris Johnson or a revolutionary regime led by Corbyn that will move swiftly to secure control of the state broadcaster.
DeleteSpot-on Sir T! The whole shabby crew - with one or two honourable exceptions like Andrew Neil - have been longing for our national humiliation since at least the Falklands.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to keep an eye on : (Ex Rebel Media) Faith Goldy's current run for mayor of Toronto. She's being blocked out by establishment politicians and media.
ReplyDeleteIt's a pretty small story, but not unfamiliar. The recording of her ads being refused is sobering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oomEzViVhVU
Compare and contrast (and never forget) the Lyndsay Shepherd experience that you never heard about on the BBC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YdFlKaJv4g
I've seen quite a lot of her work. She's a very good communicator. I'd be surprised if she didn't do better than expected. But it's very difficult to break through elite-controlled politics.
DeleteVenezuala again...I think it is quite remarkable how the BBC avoids charactersing the regime. I heard Mishal Husain introduce an item on Today this morning. Whereas with countries like Poland, Hungary, Austria, Italy and Burma, the BBC is always very keen to stress descriptors like "right wing", "far right", "neo-fascist", "populist", "nationalist" and "military", when it comes to Venezuala there is a complete blank. If they were to do what they do with those other countries they would call it "left wing", "socialist", "leftist", "neo-communist", "left wing military" or some such. But they don't. It's just a nation or a state that has a government of unknown hue and a people! It's hinted it's not a very free country as the media aren't, we are told, allowed to report much from the country. That's about it. The rest you have to guess. Could be a fascist regime for all one might hear from the BBC. I didn't hear the item itself but heard one the other day from the same guy reporting on the extreme poverty in the oil-rich nation - again no description of the government - or its policies such as anti-Americanism, widespread nationalisation and market intervention.
ReplyDeleteI’ve mentioned on here before how it is always easy to tell who is ‘in the dock’ from BBC reports.
ReplyDeleteA variation on this theme is - ‘It’s a good thing, it’s bad thing’.
I raise this today having just listened to a BBC radio report about the legalising of cannabis use in Canada. It was evident from the report that the BBC approve.
The words used, the approving tone of the reader and the upbeat and positive campaigner comments at the end leave the listener in no doubt of the BBC position. Not one dissenting voice, word or intonation. Recreational cannabis use is a good thing.
Contrast this with a similar item earlier this week on fracking. A disapproving tone, negative words, and a general feeling of menace and danger were conveyed. The campaigner at the end was aghast about the ruling. Once again, the listener can be in no doubt of the positioning of the report. Fracking is a bad thing.
The good thing, bad thing analogy can be used on many BBC reported issues.
My issue is that it is not their job to make value judgements by hiding behind their remit to educate, inform and entertain.
Increasingly though, every issue they report has a value judgement behind it. It’s political and it’s propaganda and it’s biased!
Yes Sir, the tone of voice used gives us a good idea of where a given story should be pigeonholed within the world of BBC PC ideology. To combat this, I started to watch the BBC News Channel without sound, just relying on sub-titles. These are dreadful. Usually they trail the story to such an extent that the captions for the previous story overlay the images of the next.
DeleteNames and places are often simply left out, especially if they are difficult to spell, making the whole story incomprehensible. Funnily enough, BBC Local News has a much better sub-title service. Here the sub-titles are accurate - as in this is one I made earlier - to the extent that sometimes they run ahead of the news story, making them equally incomprehensible.
You might think that the BBC with its access to the latest technology would have mastered the technique of the live streaming of sub-titles.
Yep, same on the business report on Today earlier. Very upbeat about the prospects...no ethical issues raised, even though the business correspondents often raise ethical issues about carbon emissions, diesel, women in business, racial equality, and so on.
DeletePersonally I favour legalisation...though you have to go about it the right way. But there certainly are ethical issues involved since the links to psychotic reactions, damage to lungs if smoked (burns at a v. high temperature) and damage to foetuses are well established. The problem we have now is that it is nominally illegal but decriminalised in effect, while the BBC and schools do not give children an accurate portrayal of the dangers.
For me, it is not about whether I support the legislation or not. It’s about the BBC being impartial rather than conveying a moral or political position on the issue they are reporting.
DeleteIt happens all the time and in my view it is used as a deliberate and calculated tactic by the BBC to influence public opinion.
Quite - they don't deal fairly with the issues. And you are quite right, they seek deliberately to influence public opinion.
DeleteI find it helpful to remember that the BBC has an opinion on virtually everything, and in each case one which nearly all its staff adhere to: whether it's the amount of meat we eat, abortion, climate change, Morris Dancing, Russia, China, Islam, or education. They are slightly divided on Corbyn and transgenderism, but otherwise you'd be hard-pressed to find any divisions of opinion with the monolith.
Although there was extensive coverage of the Canabis story on the website, there was a distinct lack of coverage on the main bulletins. No pictures of paste-faced lethargic youths inhaling smoke from hand-rolled canabis cigarettes, or same youths passed out, vomiting or compulsively eating junk food ? Only the bits that suit the BBC agenda (liberal politics, Trueadu is good etc.) get on air.
DeleteLeaving aside the pyschiatric and psycho-social effects, it is also very damaging to the lungs (with or without tobacco) - even more so than tobacco as it cause serious ill health in young adults as well as older people. Could you imagine the BBC showing smilingyoung people celebrating tobacco consumption in the same way they show smiling young people enjoying cannabis.
Deletehttps://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/smoking-facts/marijuana-and-lung-health.html
You know how obsessed the BBC are with the "Russian thing"...the idea that Putin was directing Trump's campaign...odd that they can't find any space for the news that Carter Page is suing the DNC.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.foxnews.com/politics/carter-page-sues-dnc-for-alleged-defamation-stemming-from-steele-dossier
Did anyone hear this on Thought for the Day last week?
ReplyDeleteRob Rinder: 'On Tuesday I happened to hear Thought for the Day which I usually avoid (I struggle with religion before noon). Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner was giving a profoundly moving account of some of the challenges of being a parent to a transgender young adult and how we might all get a little better at learning about the topic in general. It was like listening to someone’s heart speaking at its most articulate. I would urge you to take the time to hear it; it’s free to download and takes less than five minutes.'
https://www.standard.co.uk/topic/transgender
They had the same rabbi on Woman's Hour yesterday when they were discussing the proposed law on trans. It seems transgender doesn't mean what it used to mean as this woman's child isn't transgendering at all and is neither he nor she but pronouned as they and them. This is why some older trans who went through processes and surgeries have now taken to calling themselves transsexuals to distinguish themselves from those who call themselves trans at a whim, and are seen as rather frivolously wandering about, genderly speaking, with no particular transition or destination in mind.
Woman's Hour does appear to be rather late to the party on this one, considering Today had already been there and so had Politics Live earlier when they had Tatchell on. I wonder if it was a deliberate move to keep it off Woman's Hour till the eleventh hour of the government consultation to avoid anticipated opposition.
Do you ever get the feeling you entered the Tardis, went through the Twilight Zone and ended up in the Land of Narnia...?
ReplyDeleteWith the BBC it feels like that all the time...
Remember when Newsnight spent an hour long special examining in close detail the nation's housing crisis...without once mentioning mass immigration running at about 300,000 net minimum per annum? They really did.
Now Newsnight spends hours and hours examining the "Irish border issue holding up Brexit" without once asking an Irish politician "If there is no deal, how many border posts is the Irish government going to put along the border at the behest of the EU?" The answer is clearly none, not a single one. These producers and presenters may be ideological idiots but they aren't thick. They are avoiding asksing that question precisely because they know the answer and they know that as soon as the audience sees Irish politicians refusing to say they will put in place border posts it will compleltely blow up the whole bogus "hard border problem" which is being used as a lever to prevent Brexit.
Introducing horrific footage which deserves to be better known among pro-Israel campaigners and commenters. It shows cruelty which anti-Israel pro-Palestinian campaigners and commenters couldn't possibly defend. They have a strong tendency to ignore any evidence that the people of Gaza are completely virtuous, or almost so. In general, they can't even be bothered to make excuses.
ReplyDeleteThis video, on mistreatment of animals in Gaza, comes with a warning about the content from 'Animals Australia.'
https://www.animalsaustralia.org/features/gaza-video-evidence.php
Australian RSPCA makes this comment:
'Footage uploaded onto YouTube during the Festival of Sacrifice in October 2013 revealed the horrific treatment of Australian cattle in the Gaza Strip in Palestine. It is some of the most shocking and distressing footage we have seen.
The footage documents Australian cattle:
Tethered to poles, trees, and trucks on the streets
Being beaten and dragged by ropes off trucks without unloading ramps
Being dragged, man-handled and chased along streets by crowds of youths in a frenzy akin to bull running
Being stabbed in the eyes
Being kicked, pushed, pulled and tripped over with ropes to be forced onto the ground and under control for slaughter
Having their necks hacked, sawn and stabbed at with blunt knives
Being strangled by neck ropes while bleeding out'
Horrific..."what's on their minds?" one wonders...
DeleteSorry: in my comment above, replace 'They have a strong tendency to ignore any evidence that the people of Gaza are completely virtuous' with 'They have a strong tendency to ignore any evidence that the people of Gaza aren't completely virtuous.'
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of Transgender sportswomen, I saw this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cyclingnews.com/news/mckinnon-is-first-transgender-woman-to-win-world-title/
Ollie Wright wrote about this yesterday at:
Deletehttps://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/when-its-men-v-women-it-can-never-be-a-level-playing-field/
Searching for Dr Rachel Mckinnon shows that her sporting achievement is an important story. Considering that the BBC like all things American and all things to do with cycling, it seems strange that the BBC has no mention of McKinnon whatsoever in their News website archive.
... Considering that the BBC like all things American and all things to do with cycling, .... and all thing to do with transgender matters ..
DeleteWell they like all things NEGATIVE to do with cycling ever since ITV and Sky got involved in cycling...they've been trying to show it's a corrupt drug-addled cheats' paradise ever since (it may be but so are the sports that the BBC prefers, like women's boxing and women's tennis). Anyway, that's somewhat irrelevant! The point stands: the BBC are burying this news because it makes them feel conflicted. There's going to be more of this...especially in the more lucrative sports.
DeleteBBC Sport have highlighted the transitioning of Charlie Martin, a female motorsport driver. Here though, strength is not an issue. Female and male drivers can compete successfully alongside each other. Why are the BBC silent over other strength and endurance related sports such as cycling?
DeleteWhat is that, though? From a man to a woman or woman to man?
DeleteThis is the Charlie Martin story:
Deletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/motorsport/45881331
Earlier in this thread I pointed out how BBC presenters were failing to ask Irish politicians what there exact plans were for building new border posts at the behest of the EU if the UK leaves on "no deal" terms. I suggested the reason they didn't ask the question is because they knew no Irish government will ever erect such border posts, and so the whole allegedly "intractable" Irish border problem is thus shown to be completely bogus nonsense, designed to impede negotiations and frustrate our exit (with the connivance of UK government Remainers, including our Prime Minister).
ReplyDeletePleased to say Guy Fawkes has caught up and makes the same point, further adding that this has already been agreed between the Republic and the EU, which adds another layer of bogusness (if such a word exists) to the whole pantomime:
https://order-order.com/2018/10/18/will-not-hard-border/
So why is May the Malevolent going along with this charade?
And why won't the BBC ask the question of Irish politicians?
In fact, why is virtually the whole of our media maintaining this Emperor's New Clothes scenario as having any meaning at all?
I have posted here many times about Laura Kuenssberg and Katya Adler when reporting on Brexit.
DeleteHaving just listened to Theresa May and her latest jittery performance at today’s press conference it is hard not to have some sympathy for the BBC presenters and reporters when dealing with such an inept PM.
To watch her in person, interpret the robotic utterances, the jibberish and the repetitive slogans then write an impartial report must frequently be difficult.
I could see Laura Kuenssbergs frustration and exasperation tonight and rightly so.
Forget party politics and being pro or anti- Brexit, this is our national leader and commander in chief. She is a useless leader, a ditherer who cannot make decisions and is a very poor communicator.
God help us. At the very time in generations when we needed a strong and decisive PM we got TM. Can you imagine if she was PM during WW2......
I detected a change of tone at the BBC today...they have been unusually kind to her in recent weeks while they thought she might be able to squeeze through a BRINO, but now I think they are panicking a bit, as clearly the latest concession, on an extended transition, isn't finding favour with either the Brexiters or the Remainers in the Conservative Party.
DeleteI think the BBC's only real option now is to attempt to bring about a Second Referendum. They don't really have any good options. If May goes I think a general election is highly likely unless the EU is prepared to offer a Canada Plus agreement.
It's now crystal clear that the EU are not negotiating but are using the bogus Irish border ploy, which May willingly or otherwise accepts as genuine, to frustrate Brexit and keep us in the EU or as a very close partner unable to pursue independent trade policies. Remember, May has already offered huge concessions on EU citizens in the UK, on fisheries, on corporation tax and a "common rule book".
Picking up some of Sir Topham's comments...
DeleteYes, what have we done to deserve May as PM?
I confess I was duped by her. I really thought David Davis was doing the negotiating and the UK government were aiming for a sensible Canada Plus agreement, albeit with some concessions I wasn't particularly happy with (eg allowing continuation of the Common Fisheries Policy in some new guise), but hey-ho.
What an act of treachery!...all the time she was negotiating with the EU behind his back while allowing us plebs to believe Davis was doing the negotiating. Nope, it wasn't Davis, it was that twat Olly Robins - you know, the guy who wrote an article in support of the Soviet Union at Uni...
I am not sure we have seen such a level of duplicity (as opposed to everyday incompetence or stupidity) since Anthony Eden secretly took us to war while telling the populace a cock and bull story about what had happened.
Meanwhile we are bombarded non-stop by pro-Remain anti-Brexit propaganda by the BBC. It's impossible to avoid...I just switched the radio on in the car this evening, there was Evan with his Bottom Line or some such with a set up anti-Brexit piece about how we won't be able to import lettuces or fashionable items in the UK after Brexit!
I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of pro-Brexit stories I have heard on the BBC. But I have heard 100s of anti-Brexit stories. It began on 26th June 2016 when we were suddenly told that the FTSE 250 index was the one to watch not the FTSE 100 (they soon gave that up when the FTSE 250 also started going up). BTW, the Euro is now worth 88p. They ain't headlining that on the BBC now are they? - but they loved it when they were reporting it was approaching parity with the pound!
To answer Sir T's question: if May had been around in WW2 the 300,000 allied soldiers rescued at Dunkirk would have been abandoned because it would be too risky to attempt a rescue in her view. When Hitler launched his assault on the Soviet Union, she would have advised Stalin that she could offer him no support as he had not signed the Geneva Convention. On hearing of the attack on Pearl Harbour she would have advised the Americans to reach a peaceful settlement with the Japanese for fear of worsening the global situation and would have criticised Roosevelt's bellicose rhetoric. She would have delayed the D Day invasion until 1949 "when the chances of success I am assured by my adivsors will be much greater".
I'm not very religious but I think now is the time to join in the traditional prayer: "May the Good Lord help us." Or should that be: "May the Good? Lord help us!".
We did nothing to "deserve" May as PM. Cameron ran away (into well deserved obscurity) and May was installed. That was the kick-off for the plan to subvert the referendum result. The obvious sign was the BBC's aggressive anti-Brexit propaganda campaign which has never been challenged by May.
DeleteYou're right that May has never challenged the BBC's aggressive anti-Brexit propaganda campaign. In fact she has implicitly supported it by continuing the fiction that the BBC is a highly respected impartial organisation (see the Government's response to a recent anti-BBC petition).
DeleteI do blame Gove for stabbing Boris "in the front". Another act of supreme treachery! Johnson was a guy who had ruled Greater London for 8 years, put on a successful Olympics in our capital, and had just won a referendum vote nationally against the odds. What abject treachery to announce without further explanation that you don't think he's fit to lead!
Equally to blame are the spineless Westminster MPs who dither and offer a measure of half-hearted support to Theresa May, based upon their own self-interest, as she dithers and gives way to the EU on every point of principle. They, as one, appear to be more interested in maintaining this precarious balancing act which will leave the UK in a position of permanent deference to the EU, than in carrying out the wishes of the electorate - their constituents.
DeleteThe essential link between the wishes of the electorate and parliamentary democracy is being severely tested and may already have been lost.
It’s becoming crystal clear to us all why May has never challenged the BBC's aggressive anti-Brexit propaganda campaign.
Delete“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
- Cicero
(I saw this quote as a BTL comment on The Guardians excellent and apt John Crace article on Mays performance today.)
Arthur - Absolutely. But I guess it's always been that way...certainly on the Conservative side. Conservative MPs were nearly all in favour of appeasement when Hitler was on the rise, nearly all in favour of Empire even when Empire had become indefensible, nearly all in favour of joining the EEC, even though they knew it was a European Federation project, nearly all in favour of bringing Communist China into the world system, nearly all in favour of close alliance with Saudi Arabia and nearly all in favour of mass immigration in recent decades. They are completely unprincipled and unthinking sheep. The only time they act wisely is when they have wise leaders who cow or woo them into submission.
DeleteNewsnight having a difficult moment tonight...trans rights and women! Yay!! Always amusing seeing PC SJWs tie themselves up in knots and go for each other's throats. Actually, to be fair, it's been slightly better than one might expect...except no one has mentioned just what a small micro-minority trans people are...
ReplyDeleteI've got a suggestion...why not just record names and parentage on birth certificates (maybe DNA analysis as well, so your biological identity is pretty clear). And then why not equalise all legislation, so no allowance is made for whether a human being is a man or a woman in terms of legal treatment. Replace maternity leave provision with a state scheme to support people who are bringing new life into the world. Currently that will just be "women" (ie biological women) but be in no doubt scientists are working on making pregnancy available to all, so it's only a matter of time before that becomes an available option to all.
I think my solution would work better than the alternatives. We've always known there are manly women and effeminate men, and there have always been a very small minority of men who castrate themselves - and now women can surgically alter their appearance. Modern medical folk can use hormones to further "queer the pitch" if I might be forgiven the phrase.
So I reckon my solution recognises the continuum that has always been there and leaves behind state regulation of gender.
As for toilets well just rename them as "With urinals" and "Without urinals". As far as I know there is no law currently that says a man can't enter female toilets.
As for sport, the sports bodies will just have to define their entry requirements and rename them accordingly. Not women but some mathematical/DNA equation as who is allowed to compete.
Marriage is no longer a problem, since same sex marriage was allowed. Just make it marriage between two people.
I can't really see any other major problems.
The problem with all this trans-self identify, bi-normal, sexless skin sack nonsense is that it will set "women" (remember vagina, ovaries etc.etc?) back years.
ReplyDeleteIf an employer has a choice between sexless skins-sack A and sexless skin-sack B and B seems to have periods and be capable of getting pregnant, then job goes to A every time, no "discrimination" just a choice.
Well that's kind of accepting that women are inferior and need legal protection. I don't think that's the case.
DeleteWe know among bonobo chimps females rule the roost despite their inferior physique and genetically bonobos are our closest cousins.
Women I think are very well adapted for modern office work which tends to be the main type of employment on offer. Any sensible government is going to see the need to protect the position of pregnant women - it's just they will be "pregnant people" as far as the law is concerned.
I don't watch the programme but I can imagine it might have been set up by the teenagers as a bun fight, ye old war between the sexes (notwithstanding the now precarious existence of sexes) resurrected and updated for the new millennium.
ReplyDeleteThe problem as I see it is that although there is a tiny minority of people with a serious and genuine personal dilemma, this whole move is being done in a fairly frivolous manner and from the wrong end. For what is involved is not just the tiny minority but turning the whole of society upside down at the behest of a militant campaigning group intent on getting their own way.
We haven't as a society considered and decided to review and possibly ditch the way in which society defines and organises itself around the distinction of sex. That affects everyone and like the move for mass immigration, this wholesale change has been done - most of it has already been done by the Gender Recognition Act and the concept of a phobia enshrined not only in the law of equality but also that on hate speech so that anyone dissenting is taken care of - without asking the people first.
I can believe that almost no one wants to cause suffering to minority individuals but that's no reason to ignore the harm that can be done generally and to specific others by considering only the needs of one small set of people. You now got cross dressers prancing around like pantomime dames being solemnly addressed as she and called by their fake names as if they were genuine transsexuals, transitioning or actually women, because people are too polite or scared to offend. You have people who are worried about their children and worried about themselves and potential loss of privacy, personal safety and comfort which under present arrangements by and large works well for nearly everyone. Yet all you hear from the stupid and cowardly politicians is the sound of rampant bandwagon jumping, including from the PM, perhaps especially from the PM in her pious speeches and promises.
Personally I feel we passed that Rubicon with gay marriage...
DeleteI think we have to accept that we have moved into a new era...
On that basis I think gender-blind birth certification is by far the best way forward.
What does the woman/man divide mean in an age where we have IVF, hormone therapy, and - very soon - the ability of men to bear children. Obviously we know the average man will still be attracted to the average woman, but attempting to buttress it through gender-based legislation is unhelpful.
And then this 'wonderful' science will give us artificial wombs, so fetuses can be held outside the body and none of what we hold dear now will matter.
DeleteThey can already keep sheep foetuses alive in artificial wombs for a long part of the gestation period. It seems inevitable that a "Brave New World" capability will be achieved within the next few decades. It will raise interesting issues about abortion. Would a mother (and the mother alone) have the same rights of termination in respect of a foetus in an external artificial womb that everyone can see? Expect a sudden shift in public opinion when that happens.
DeleteOn Politics live this week one of the guests stated that 1% of the population identified as trans-gender. I find this astounding, but without knowing how the figure was arrived at it’s very difficult to challenge. But even if this statistic is correct, understanding the psychological reasons why people feel this way seems to have been pushed aside for reasons of political correctness. It fits very conveniently into oppressor/oppressed ideology, but is it really helpful to use terms like LGBT as if all those groups were exactly the same?
DeleteThe other related aspect is the way the manipulation of definitions has mudded the waters: Gender = social construct, Sex = biological difference. Militant feminists by slight of hand suggest that sex is a social construct.
For a chilling 27 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s57T27M1ZXk
The T was added when activists and campaigners decided to combine and Stonewall took up the trans cause. It's these activists who promote the notion of gender rather than sex.
DeleteTerry: '1% of the population'? - No, I don't believe it either. See the Conservative Woman, "Will the Beeb's overpopulated diversity circus fold its tents? Fat chance." You'll need to do some scrolling to find it - apparently 417 BBC employees self-identify as transgender which is, as the author says, probably "417 more than many people outside the Corporation's bubble have ever encountered in the course of their daily business."
DeleteGender is a purely linguistic concept, used to describe sex, among other things, that's been incorrectly appropriated to describe thoughts and behaviours. To say someone 'has' or 'identifies as' a gender is meaningless. They have a sex - what a person does or thinks doesn't change his or her sex. Gender can be then be used in a language to describe a person's sex.
DeleteAnon - I don't know you're right. It's more complicated than that surely, otherwise we wouldn't have manly women and effeminate men (although, oddly, I think such nonPC descriptions are effectively banned now). Male-female is a continuum surely. We are autonomous conscious beings...if we are men there is nothing to stop us accessing or relating to predominantly female modes of thought and behaviour. Likewise women can access or relate to predominantly male modes of thought and behaviour (Boudicca, Joan of Arc). So it's not meaningless to say a man can identify as a woman...it's just normally rather tragic and unconvincing in my experience, although Bowie did well in his Man Who Sold the World period.
DeleteWe used to have sex discrimination, meaning between men and women. Then they added discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation to the law. Scope for confusion between the terms led to displacement of the term sex for discrimination between men and women. Transsexual was also displaced as a word.
DeleteTalking about identifying as a man or a woman is strange. A person can be a woman and have a similar type of brain to many men and enjoy doing things men do, or wear male clothes without ever thinking she's a man. The same in reverse for a man. One of the mysterious things is how a woman who says she feels like a man, or a man the reverse, knows what a man or woman feels like. Ordinarily, does a man or a woman know what it feels like or is it something they aren't conscious of because it is naturally what they are - they just are and it just is?
The BBC has been reporting on Anjem Chodarys release and has been very careful to describe him only as a radical preacher and social activist.
ReplyDeleteOne might think he was a Scottish presbyterian or a Methodist minister. Such is the BBCs desire to hide his religion. Bias by omission is always order of the day in cases like his.
Oh yeah, just like the Methodist soapbox radical Donald Soper at Speakers' Corner.
DeleteYes. The 6pm BBC 1 News wheeled on Marc Easton to sum up the report on the 20, mainly Pakistani-heritage, men convicted of grooming and abusing girls in the Huddersfield area. His performance - and I use the word advisedly, because the man is a ham actor - made me think of the command beloved of WW2 destroyer captains: 'Make smoke.' In this case, the smoke was intended to hide the ethnicity and religion of the guilty men: to paraphrase, this sort of thing goes on all over the uk & the culprits are teachers, taxi-drivers, priests etc.
DeleteThe BBC radio reports thoughout the day have neatly sidestepped their ethnicity and heritage, just saying ’ 20 men from Huddersfield’.
DeleteIt’s a relevant and material fact that they have omitted - We know why they keep doing it and it’s an outrage.
Mark Easton’s report is here and despite its length it omits the most important fact, just saying’
DeleteThe sexual abuse of vulnerable children in English towns by groups of men, often from immigrant communities’.
No Mark, by and large just from one immigrant community. You are seriously misleading readers and falsely including many innocent communities.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-45918845
Migrants from Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Taoist, Shintoist and Christian communities are noticeably absent from those "photo albums".
DeleteEaston says the grooming gangs are "often" from immigrant communities. Often? Often??? How about "in nearly every case".
That's a deliberate lie right there.
Then he's referring to "The grooming gangs of provincial England..." This is very odd. Since when do we refer to places like Newcastle, Manchester and Oxford as "provincial". But of course according to Marxist-Eastonism, England is a hopelessly backward non-country and provincial life needs to be "modernised".
The article is peppered with that old BBC favourite - "men".
It's a pathetic piece, even by Easton's very low standards. Pure damage limitation by diversion and obfuscation and tendentious claims. He claims for instance that child abuse was rarely discussed in public until "recently". That is absolute bull unless he means until about 40 years ago. And it ignores the fact that the abuse was known about by Police and local authorities across the country.
There are two disturbing aspects of the BBC's coverage of this story.
Delete1. By bringing TR into the story:
... 'In May, the former leader of the English Defence League Tommy Robinson was arrested for reporting on the case live on Facebook during the second of the trials....
.... He was jailed for contempt of court but his conviction was quashed because of a number of procedural errors. He faces a fresh hearing in relation to the alleged breach.' ...
This is a clear strategy by the BBC to divert attention away from the ethnicity of the offenders - hinting that to signal out their community's identity, is to be a far-right racist.
2. By failing to establish the community's identity, the BBC are allowing what must be no-go areas within out towns and cities (to anyone other than community members) to flourish and go unreported. Apart from two, one from Sheffield and the other from Dewsbury, all the offenders were from Huddersfield. How can a community that spawns and harbours offenders on such a scale be absolved from any responsibility for contribution to the offenders' mind-set and ideology - yet to suggest such a link be racist?
Easton has this naive belief that 'provincial' England should be a place where all nations and all religions will be welcomed to share in our green and pleasant land, where we can rub shoulders together and get on with a cosmopolitan life-style such as that the BBC would approve of. How can this dream of his be reconciled with the politics and alien religious beliefs of imported cultures (Islam in particular), when their much heralded ideology leads to appalling crimes such as those reported today in Huddersfield?
Having heard Easton berate us for our lack of enthusiasm for turning our green and pleasant land into a building site to accommodate ever increasing mass immigration, I doubt he wants to "share" our green and pleasant land, more like "pave over" our green and pleasant land.
DeleteEaston is an extreme ideologue, so he has little attachment to reality. He doesn't seek to square his ideas with the reality of Sharia Law and Islamic practice. He is confident that if his "remedies" are applied gradually everyone will be turned into a PC metroliberal, much like Mr Easton himself and the world will become a happy place.
We wiseacres know he and the BBC are leading us into the dark recesses of the wood where a horrible end awaits this country. So far, all the facts are oun our side. None of the BBC's utopian ideas have come to pass. Certain communities remain as obdurately separated from mainstream society and modern values as ever. It's pure arrogance on the part of Easton and co. to think they can defeat a 1400 year old ideology that is weaponised for generational replication with their pathetic lies, their bogus news and their failed promises.
The only thing that will defeat it here is the laser-like focus of a Trump or an Orban type leader, with full democratic backing. As yet we have no one of that sort of quality in sight.
I agree with your take on Easton and the the BBC.
DeleteTheir philosophical narrative ostensibly comes from a place they see as 'good'.
The problem is that the chosen narrative inevitably must become a hair shirt. They insist the viewer wears the shirt too. They refuse to take into account the intractibility of Islam as a doctrine, and what I believe will be word of the year 2019 - agency.
They flagellate themselves on their alter every day and insist you sit in the pew cursing your forebears and weeping.
Nazir Afzal was on PM yesterday. Not for the first time, he said that the reason he could say what he says is because he comes from an Islamic background.
The BBC thinks this is 'good' because minorities should be represented and criticized by minorities. That's fair in their eyes. It has authenticity in their eyes. But it's actually unbelievably racist.
If that's where Europe is headed - a place where the only people who can criticize a doctrine or racial marker are those from within that 'culture' - then we're really screwed, and I think we are.
The same rules don't operate in reverse - hence Afua Hirsch and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.
My generation was brought up to believe that we were all in the same pack of cards.
The modern reality has revealed itself to be that we are all equal until the subject of agency is raised. At that juncture, certain elements of the pack find it necessary to be represented by cards of the same suit. And because of 40 years of drip fed indoctrination, many people find that a reasonable position.
Who's that then? On Wednesday night's Moral Maze they had a witness called Corey Stoughton from Liberty. You may remember a former director of Liberty oftentimes on the BBC; a couple of years ago they got a new one, Martha Spurrier, whom I've rarely seen or heard. But then again, I haven't been diligently watching and listening to all and everything. Now Corey Stoughton is listed as acting director:
ReplyDelete'Before joining Liberty, she was senior counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Justice under President Obama.'
Hm...right up the BBC's street. Why an acting director and what of Martha? Is she planning a leave of absence or going back to Doughty Chambers?
I have observed before that these controversial grooming gang and terror trials all seem to end on a Friday...what are the chances of that? Er - very high when our pro-migration elite are managing the news by hook, by crook and by summary sentence to 13 months within 5 hours of a charge being laid.
ReplyDeleteChilesWatch (or should that be ChumpWatch):
ReplyDeleteHeard on Radio 5 Live...Adrian Chiles, wearing his big hearted green credentials on his sleeve, begins interrogation of local Councillor whose council is giving up on plastics recycling and sending it for incineration with an aggressive sounding: "Right, so what are you getting up to there?"
Councillor replies: "I'm sat down having a nice cup of tea and a biscuit..." Collapse of stout party...to say he was flustered by that response would be to put it mildly. He never really recovered through the whole interview, being much more deferential and cautious thereafter.
Politicians should learn from that. They should challenge BBC interview techniques. Take the pee out of your interviewer wherever possible...mention Savile even if not directly relevant...query the questioner's methodology at all times...if the interviewer uses a misleading analogy ask them "Why are you misleading your audience?" - don't elaborate...that makes it too easy for the interviewer to come back, just leave it hanging there like that, so the interviewer has to do deal with it...
I wonder what sort of reactions they reported on Feedback:
ReplyDelete'This week marks the end of a government consultation on reforming the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, which set out the legal process by which a person can change their gender. On Tuesday, Radio 4’s ‘Woman’s Hour’ discussed the subject, hearing from voices on various sides of the debate. Feedback hears some listeners’ perspectives on how the issue was discussed.'
I think Feedback is pro-Trans. Newsnight is pro-Trans. Woman's Hour is anti-Trans but not aggressively so. Today is pretty balanced. Looks likes it's a win for Trans and that will soon become official BBC policy. How they square that with their love of "Women's" Sport remains to be seen.
Delete07:00 BBC Radio 4. Huddersfield. Nothing.
ReplyDeleteNews management at its best!
DeleteHeard an unfortunate amount of Today this morning. Mishal interviewed a lady representing a group against child sexual exploitation; "20 men"mentioned, but the words immigrant, pakistani and muslim not once. Later she interviewed a female professor and both very keen to move the discussion on to the "all men do it" field; Sarah Champion was then brought on, but when she tried to be specific about the perps, Mishal quickly interrupted and the line soon mysteriously went dead.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC is disgusting. "20 men"! How many more knew, condoned and covered up? How did they do it? No questions.
Oh to cap it, we had Doucett from the elections in Afghanistan wittering about the danger from "conservative" elements, but never once mentioned their actual ideology.
It's really really not a news service in any sense, just a Government propagande and control service.
We had the spectacle of Dominic Casciani on Jeremy Vine yesterday saying the real issue about the Huddersfield 20 was that it encourages the far right.
DeleteI mean, really! How low can you go to obfuscate.
The BBC will do anything to deflect blame and avoid a proper debate.
No questions indeed, unless you are going to count Easton's diversionary questions. This is an important point. There is really no investigation by the BBC into the MO - ironic acronym there. Why?
DeleteI heard that. Usually when someone is cut off in an interview, they get them back on when the line can be restored. I waited and waited...for half an hour. They not only didn't get her back on but they didn't mention her again even to explain why she hadn't been back on. Did they think we wouldn't notice?
DeleteThe BBC News website is showing us the way to recycle a set of images which are consistent with their position:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45925542?ns_source=twitter&ocid=socialflow_twitter&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_mchannel=social
.. 'People's Vote march: Thousands expected for London protest' ...
Readers from last week-end will remember that there were a set of what we thought were contrived images from a September rally in Liverpool were attached to a story about Nicola Sturgeon. In that case, the images showed a sea of EU flags, so arranged to let us think that this was a sizeable crowd of protesters. Contributors identified the photographer providing the images to Getty Images. Images for this story were captioned 'Pro EU March'.
In today's story, images from the same Liverpool event are used credited to Getty Images, but captioned 'The March for the Many was held in Liverpool last month'. In this image however, in the main EU flags are missing, to be replaced by red placards promoting 'People's vote for the many'.
Was the event in Liverpool, which received little attention from the MSM, merely a staged photoshoot? It must have been choreographed in such a way as to enable two sets of image to be produced, one with mainly EU flags, and a second with mainly 'People's vote for the many' placards.
Of course, the story .. 'People's Vote march: Thousands expected for London protest' ... is not news at all. It's a rallying call by the BBC in support of their call for a rerun of the 2016 referendum.
The last set comments on this story about contrived rent-a-crowd images started on the old open thread of 7th October - the week-end before last.
Delete... 'Demonstrators on the March For The Many on September 23, 2018 in Liverpool, England. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)'....
The BBC has pulled out all the stops in their one-sided coverage of the 'People's Vote march'. There are two separate stories featured prominently on the BBC News website Home page:
Delete... 'People's Vote march: 'Hundreds of thousands' attending London protest' ...., and
.... 'People's Vote march: In pictures' ...
They are relying upon photos and placards to put across their message, which include:
... 'Madelina Kay, 24, was dressed as a policewoman and carried a placard claiming Vote Leave "broke the law". She wore a badge that stated: "It's for the British people to decide'....
... 'Among the targets of the protesters' wrath are key Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage'. ...
... 'A young boy holding a sign proclaiming support for the EU.' ...
This photo includes a placard 'Eton Mess' with phtos of BJ and JRM.
Also is a photo of a teenager with his banner:
... 'I'm 16, Brexit stole my future'. ...
We can see quite clearly that the BBC's so-called 'balanced' coverage has an undeniable pro EU. anti Brexit, anti conservative message as standard.
Sorry Arthur, in my haste to comment on the 'People's Vote' (which we've already had!) I missed your post. As you will gather, I don't believe their statistics!
DeleteI wonder why Any Questions? had the leader of the march today on last night.
ReplyDeleteFake news alert
ReplyDeleteBBCs Dominic Casciani tweeted:
Worth mentioning that the ringleader of this massive abuse ring that we can nnow report was not a Muslim. He came from a Sikh background.
However at the time of the abuse he was a Muslim, is from a Muslim background and converted to a Sikh in 2013. Why didn’t Dominic report all the facts? And why is he trying to divert attention?
https://mobile.twitter.com/BBCDomC
I saw this too. I don't expect the BBC to revisit the story, though. It has been archived as a series of half-truths, and that's that from the BBC. On a story like this, news management is the name of the game. - updates and corrections are avoided at all costs.
DeleteI didn’t realise this topic has a separate blog post ‘Leaping in’- which I just did! apologies Craig.
DeleteThe 'People's Vote' March.
ReplyDeleteI thought at first that the BBC's website report must have been written by the Telegraph's Michael Deacon. Why? - because the whole thing reads like a send-up. Just to whet your appetite, try this titbit from the Beeb's on-the-spot reporter, Charlotte Gallagher: "Some people marched in groups, there were NHS staff, political parties, members of the LGBT community and dog owners. Many took the opportunity to dress up their pets for the protest." Too little information Ms Gallagher: were these pet dogs transgender or merely transvestites? I mean, this is important, we really need to know. Ms G, you will, by the way, be in hot water with your employer for omitting the, now obligatory, 'Q' from the end of LGBT.
The organisers claim 700,000 participants - the Beeb doesn't question the figure, but states that 'hundreds of thousands' attended the march. Just to make it all more convincing, Ms Gallagher tells us there were 150 coaches - Wow, 150! Oh, wait a minute, average capacity of a coach= 56, 56×150 = 6,400 - a drop in the ocean. As additional evidence of the size of the crowd we are informed that, "Scotland Yard said it was not able to estimate the size of the crowd" - strange that, because the police used to be very good at estimating crowd-size by overlaying a photo of known magnification with a grid; perhaps Ms Dick doesn't want to ruffle any feathers.
Sorry, typo: 8,400!
DeleteBBC news on Radio 2 reported "700000" protesters, then later said, numbers can not be verified.
DeleteThis morning commenting on the potential traffic issues in London today, presenter Dermot O'leary said, "best just join the march rather than try to get around".
The BBC is just taking the piss regarding biased coverage of this event.
Thanks for the radio 2 info, Marianne. As you say, the BBC continues to extract the urine...and our license fee.
DeleteRemember what Nick Robinson said,
Delete‘The BBC no longer has a duty to provide balanced coverage of Brexit’.
The BBC really don’t care anymore. The gloves are off and are throwing caution to the wind in an effort to overturn the result.
Their programmes and presenters are the driving force behind the voice of Remain, giving oxygen to Blair, Adonis, Khan and the rest of the baying rabble.
Democracy doesn’t get a look in, nor does impartiality.
I might have given the impression that I was listening to Radio 2 all day ! It was on in the car on the way to and home from work. I quite like Radio 2 though (except Vine of course), most shows have some virtue signalling, but until I get DAB in my car, it's the best of a poor choice.
DeleteSis - Good post. I was thinking about the coach figure...I wondered whether I misheard it but it seems not, so a paltry 8,400...that doesn't really square with the claim...
DeleteThe BBC doesn't remark this was an overwhelmingly WHITE demonstration with hardly any representation from non-white ethnic communities. I am sure our forthcoming (I hope) Million Livid Leavers March will have much more ethnic diversity. :)
MB According to 10.10pm BBC 1 news, the organisers have already lowered the figure to 6oo,ooo participants - careless, that, losing 100,000 people! To back up the claims re: attendance at Obama's inauguration ceremonies, the left-wing media cited the number travelling on the subway on an average day & those two days. I wonder if London Transport could tell us anything. Oh for a decent investigative free press!
DeleteSis - Then shave off the 20% of people just milling around central London at any time...so that takes it down to 480,000. But there's still a question mark over that figure of course...
DeleteThe Remainiacs are practised liars. They lied that Cameron wouldn't resign in the event of a Leave vote. They lied that we would immediately move into recession following a Brexit vote. They lied that the EU had no plans for an EU military arm. They lied that there were no plans for Turkey to enter the EU. They lied that Cameron's deal had any meaningful content (they soon gave up on that lie). They lied about whether the UK government had any prior knowledge about Obama's "back of the line" statement.
It seems they also lied when they sent a leaflet to every household in the country and stated clearly that the UK Government would implement the Referendum decision.
The BBC's estimates of the crowd numbers will always be treated with the utmost suspicion. If they would have us believe that the Liverpool march on September 23, 2018 was indicative of the UK's views, when there were only 100 or so people there, why should we believe any estimate of numbers relating to today's march. These aerial shots are misleading. Imagine 70,000 football supporters emerging from Wembley Stadium or Twickenham. Would drone footage look much different? Now imagine 10 Wembley Stadiums emptying at the same time. To my mind the numbers on this march can be estimated in tens of thousands - not hundreds of thousands.
DeleteI've been looking at the aerial photos on the Guardian and elsewhere - they are obviously trying to make it look as big as possible...I think the 700,000 figure is just one of those BIG LIES that Remainers tell all the time. Couldn't be more than 100,000 in my view. And if they only had 150 coaches to bring people to the protest how does that square?
DeleteThe Remainiacs are left with two explanations for their 700,000 figure: either masses of people flooded the mainline rail system (any evidence? - that's a lot of flooding!!!) or this was a completely London-centric demo (which kind of feeds into the pro-Leave narrative).
Round my way in London I did see one pathetic old person, clearly a social loner, walking back towards a rich residential area with a "Better Together" placard sticking out of her grubby backpack. Fair play, the placard did look home-made. I've nothing against old people, social loners or grubby rucksacks - just reflecting BBC reportage.
There must always be a couple of hundred thousand people on the move in central London...if you get a big march like that people will stand and stare...so I reckon on any demo if you do an aerial shot of a large demo at least 20% of people are NOT part of the demo.
ReplyDeleteMB Good point!
DeleteSir Topham,
ReplyDeleteYou are right. The gloves are off. The BBC know they have licence (ha-ha) to be as biased as they like as they are now being watched over by a complicit Ofcom stuffed full of ex BBC types and by a weak, vacillating Government.
Also, I think the BBC feel they have a lot of skin in this game. They can see both how populism endangers their feather-nested future - but also Corbynism does as well. If the populists get control, they will abolish the licence fee...that much is clear now. Gerard Batten of UKIP has confirmed it. If the Corbynistas get control they will immediately move to take control of the BBC. There will be a mass cull of anyone whoever expressed any scepticism towards Corbyn (and that's a lot of the BBC tribe).
I think they are backing either a May surrender or a Second Referendum.
Listened to Any Answers...I know, I know...I felt a sense of duty.
ReplyDeleteThere was a great moment where Anita Anand responded to a caller who said that the grooming gangs problem was primarily an Islamic issue. Anita just happened to have some dodgy stats to hand that "proved" this wasn't the case - and which she quoted from as though it was a slam-dunk for her...The caller was straight on her, noting her stats were from 2012 - ie six years old at a point when the trials were only really just getting going. She then tried a different tack..."But if there was a paedophile ring of priests you wouldn't say it was a Roman Catholic problem would you?" The caller came straight back "Yes I would if they were Roman Catholic Priests and there were organised rings..." (Slight paraphrase but I think that's a fairly accurate representation of the exchange).
If anyone else heard the exchange and can remember the source of Anita's stats I'd be interested to learn where they came from...I think it might have been a campaigning (ie lying) group.
Yes, I heard that. Not sure but was it the Children's something or other? Children's Commissioner perhaps?
DeleteThanks Anon...there were other more recent reports she could have used - like Quilliam's - which would have painted a very different picture. More to the point I would say - the BBC is a multi billion pound organisation with the biggest news operation in the country. It could easily have done the research itself, if it thought it was important. But of course we can see this is low priority for the BBC.
DeleteAnand's behaviour was indefensible. She quoted out of date stats knowingly to defend the PC multiculturalist ideology that the BBC subscribes to. Many callers to her programme would have been intimidated by her misleading use of statistics. It was great to hear one who was able to immediately spot the dishonesty of quoting stats from six years ago before these trials really got going in number.
They do love to produce these rabbits out of hats on the Dimbleby programmes and think they have a clincher. Mention of the Children's Commissioner just triggered a recollection of something I hadn't connected until now. Anand used to work on the Daily Politics and so did a bloke who works for the Children's Commissioner called Giles Dilnot. I wonder if that's who she got the out-of-date figures from.
DeleteLooking forward to the "Million Livid Leavers" March...come on, let's do it! :)
ReplyDeleteTommy Robinson making some rather relevant points methinks:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03MjXIbBuVM
Do share! :)
I’m trying not to be angered by the various “news” items on the BBC website.
ReplyDeleteWitches curse? Ffs
Sturgeon and the far right?
700,000 Peoples Voters? Strange how much more effort was spent on disproving Trumps claims of crowd size.
The archived version of 'The People's Vote' march:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45925542
... 'People's Vote march: Hundreds of thousands attend London protest' ...
From all the photos of the event, I remain unconvinced about the numbers. Clearly, the BBC have back-pedalled from their first claims that 700,000 people attended, by referring to 'Hundreds of thousands'. That would mean at leat two hundred thousand. Where is the evidence to support even this claim?
In my opinion, the one aerial shot shows a number well under 50,000 heads. I superimposed a grid over the photo - my calculation actually showed under 30,000. I believe in their first stories the 700,000 was overestimated by a factor of at least ten.
This has ben another example of dreadful news reporting by the BBC. They have been inaccurate in the reporting of numbers, and the archive shows the headline:
Hundreds of thousands attend London protest'.
A protest against what exactly? If the protest is against the UK electorate's democratic decision of 2016 to Leave - then here we have the most glaring example of the BBC interfering with the democratic process by helping to orchestrate yesterday's event, and then by feeding us with biased inaccurate accounts. The showing of placards with outrageously partisan wording has become the weapon of choice from the BBC. They can claim a degree of separation from the message - but we all know why such images are included.
That the BBC were complicit in the promotion of this event is confirmed by
Delete... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45925542?ns_source=twitter&ocid=socialflow_twitter&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_mchannel=social
.. 'People's Vote march: Thousands expected for London protest' ...
This appeared early on Saturday morning with images of an unrelated march in Liverpool in September as a rallying call.
If there were 700,000 people at the march on Saturday, then the London Marathon have for some inexplicable reason been underestimating their own number of competitors by a power of at least 10, and probably closer to 20.
DeleteIn 2009, there were 35,000 runners officially and the below video shows the numbers of people spread across 2 of the 3 starts. Assuming there is an even spread across all 3 starts, then there is approximately 12,000 runners at each of the 2 starts shown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KOLxQEfmCI
700,000 folk at Saturday's march my hairy backside!!!
This also worth a look - the 2017 start more comprehensively covered.
DeleteSee from just before 46:00 onwards. Particularly worth looking at however are the huge crowds shown still waiting to get over the start line at just one of the 3 starts from 55:24 onwards - 10 minutes after thousands of people have been pouring over all 3 starts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8KH3HK8pJ0
Taking the pictures from Saturday in the context of these two views of the London Marathon starts, it's quite clear that there was no more than an absolute maximum of 50,000 at Saturday's march, and in all likelihood considerably less than 25,000.
Quite pathetic how the organisers' hyperbolic claims have received so little critical analysis from the media.
Yes Rob, the London Marathon is an excellent comparison for estimating the size of a crowd. Why the BBC aren't pulled up for this inaccurate reporting is a mystery. As broadcasters they give wall-to-wall coverage of the event - delighting in the imagery of a tightly packed crowd setting out from the various start lines.
DeleteThe other puzzle was why there weren't any banners or placards visible in the aerial shot. Perhaps the BBC hadn't been given any out in preparation for the contrived photoshoots
As I mentioned elsewhere you also have to knock off 20% for people watching the demo from the pavements. Pedestrians naturally slow down to look at passing demos and pavements soon become congested. From the air it looks like they are part of the demo but they're not. Also we should take into account the patlry numbers of coaches booked by the organisers - just 150. Unlikely to carry more than 8,000 people. So why haven't we heard from the rail and tube network about the huge numbers travelling in my train and tube? The mainline rail system would have been swamped by 500,000 or even 250,000 people coming in on mainline rail to Kings Cross, Euston and Paddington. If instead it was 500,000 people jumping on the tube that would have led to such severe congestion stations would have to have been closed because of the risk to life and limb.
DeleteI think the 700k figure is absolute BS. I hope someone can be bothered to put in a complaint ao we see the BBC tie themselves in knots trying to defend their estimates - even the hundreds of thousands - ie 200,000 plus.
Anthony Zurcher has gone even more beserker and now seems to be denying that the progressive socialist government of Venezuala has turned it into a dysfunctional, impoverished and hyper-corrupt military dictatorship...or if not that, then he seems to think it's more important to state that the political right use it as a "bogeyman".
ReplyDeleteZurcher loves the poor and oppressed unless they happen to be Venezualans.
https://twitter.com/awzurcher/status/1054189187073748992
The hypocrisy of the BBC has no limits.
ReplyDeleteWhen BBC favourite and Labour MP Jess Phillips said she "wouldn't stab Jeremy Corbyn in the back, she'd stab him in the front" it's treated as a witty remark up there with some of Wilde's best repartee.
BUT..
When an unnamed Tory MP allegedly makes similar remarks about Theresa May, the BBC goes into its whole shock-horror song and dance act. They spent a massive amount of time on this on WATO. Are they running interference for May? Perhaps - they certainly don't relish the thought of David or Johnson emerging as PM in the next few days.
Let's not forget that John McDonnell said he wished he could have gone back in time to assassinate Mrs Thatcher and also admonished us to honour the IRA...hmmm...Any shock-horror-call-in-the-police? No. All forgotten about, never again to be mentioned.
It's a big splash on the website as well:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45938754
Spot-on! Everyone knows perfectly well that the would-be May-filleters were speaking figuratively. Yvette Cooper's comment, quoted on BBC News page, is interesting: "This is vile and dehumanising language towards a woman MP..." Does that mean the heated dagger treatment is less vile if it's a man on the receiving end? Sounds sexist to me.
DeleteVery odd - having spent the day getting worked up over the 'death threats', the 6pm BBC 1 News has dropped the story completely. Wonder why.
DeleteIt's like the good old days way back in 2015...migrant horde composed 90% of young men of military age advances to border. They express their hatred for the land they are heading towards, even burning its flag. BBC response? Publish lots of photos of sweet looking children. They should get Jenny Hill there to jump and down and shout "Bienvenido". But somehow I don't think Trump will be inviting them on trains bound for Washington DC. Tasers, tanks, dogs, detention and deportation will be the order of the day.
ReplyDeleteBTW - has Soros issued a denial that his money is supporting the marching column? I know NYT have done so on his behalf, but that's not quite the same is it?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/headlines/45936816/thousands-of-caravan-migrants-reach-mexico
Interesting to compare the longshot film/stills of the 'caravan' with images of the so-called 'People's Vote' march. We're told there are only 7,000 people on the caravan - which is just 1/100th of the number initially claimed to have marched in London...
DeleteYes, good point...
DeleteIt seems everyone is taking the 700k figure on trust from Alistair Campbell, Lord Adonis, Tony Blair, Anna Soubry and the other notably trustworthy persons in the People's Vote Cancellation Campaign.
By the way I just saw that Gary Lineker had to appear by video link at the demo owing to him being otherwise engaged on the "blink and you'll miss it" football highlights programme that used to be known as Match of the Day and is now known as Matchstick of the Day. I trust no BBC facilities were used to enable that video link...
By failing to acknowledge that their figures for attendees at 'People's Vote' march had been amplified in ways that are obvious to anyone who might challenge them, the BBC should be accused of broadcasting propaganda in support of an anti democratic movement.
DeleteIts grossness can be likened to the NK state broadcaster telling us in all seriousness that Kim Jong II scored 11 holes-in-one during his one and only game of golf. Yes, there on a par!
Oops ...Yes, they're on a par - you got it in one.
DeleteSmirky Robinson on Today, Radio 4, remarks correctly on the parallels between the Mail's "Traitors" headline of a year or so ago directed at Conservative Remainers and its current one denouncing "Saboteurs" - directed at Leavers. Indeed, but there are no parallels in BBC coverage. The former headline caused the BBC to go into one of its "New Divisiveness" meltdowns with negative reports across all channels and on every bulletin throughout the day. This one, equally "divisive" (but in a "good way" for lefty-liberal Remainiacs), causes only wry amusment among the BBC folk.
ReplyDeleteAs I said earlier, the BBC's hypocrisy really does have no limits.
Still, surely reporting of this "world class broadcaster" is at least comprehensive? They would surely cover an alleged terrorist attack on UK tourists in Oman? -
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6305275/Two-British-tourists-killed-Oman-terror-attack-victims.html#comments
Nope.
The Mail has the story but not the BBC...not interested.
But don't give up...
Meanwile in important World News Amy Schumer - not exactly a household name here - announces her first pregnancy...
But at least the BBC knows its priorities. What of Amy Schumer? you ask...the BBC is always happy to update you on Amy Schumer...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-45947820
Does the BBC track the pregnancies of all celebs based in the USA? No - but "Our Amy" as the BBC likes to think of her has the advantage of being a full on Trumpophobe, so that's why she gets treated as royalty. Same used to go for Rosie O'Donnell, another minor celeb as far as the BBC are concerned, until she started calling for martial law and the end of democracy in the USA - then the BBC went a little cool on her as her Trump Derangement Syndrome was so obvious it was beginning to damage "the cause".
Meanwhile, self congratulation on your own virtue-signalling is somehow news; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-45939324
ReplyDelete?
This Doctor Who episode shows just how much the BBC has been stifled in its own imagination by allowing their PC ideology to pervade every part of their consciousness. With the whole of time, and the entire universe at their disposal, the producers evidently can't conceive of a world where their own straightjacketed narrow-minded view might not apply.
DeleteThe mid-century writers such as Azimov, Arthur C Clarke, Wyndham, Bradbury or Moorcock, given the unrestricted production capacity of the BBC, would have taken us on flights of fancy that would stimulate the mind and imagination in a way that the current BBC output is unable to do.
Yep, this is the real problem in terms of our culture...it's the equivalent of the Victorian suppression of all things sexual, when writers just had to censor themselves or face jail time.
DeleteThe stultifying effects are felt across the board. Crime dramas have become boring because it is so rare for people from groups with "protected rights", to use the legal term, to be the guilty party (even though in reality, they are actually over-represented in our prisons and courtrooms).
Some previously well known Shakespeare plays are just not being performed now, or rarely so.
Soaps have become ludicrously detached from reality with Muslims popping into the pub or welcoming non-Muslims into the family...children offering sage advice to adults...women always being impressively self-reliant...etc etc.
No doubt many scientists are quietly avoiding working on certain subjects or suppressing the results they do find. I don't think PC has quite reached the content of physics or chemistry but you never know - other totalitarian ideologies have ventured there.
How long before life study is banned? Or has it already been in our art schools?
"I don't think PC has quite reached the content of physics or chemistry..." - No, but don't claim that the study of Physics was invented by men or all hell will break loose. I'm wondering how long it can be before Darwinist theory is expunged from 'A' Level Biology syllabi - it clashes with muslim creationist beliefs. As for life study being banned, we're nearly there - remember Manchester Art Gallery and Hylas and the Nymphs? A new puritanism is descending upon the land.
DeleteAnthony Zurcher openly portraying Donald Trump as an "autocrat", yet still wanting us to believe he is an objective and impartial reporter in the grand tradition of John Simpson and Jon Sopel (er - that's sarcasm in case you're wondering).
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/Zod_Is_Supreme/status/1054563156192686081
Last time I looked, he was a democratic politician who abided by election results, who worked constitutionally with the elected members of Congress to pass legislation, who did not engage in illegal acts of war, who obeyed the constitution with respect to the military and governmental structure and who abided by decisions of the Supreme Court. In what way could that possibly be construed as acting as an autocrat unless "acting as an autocrat" means "acting constitutionally to oppose the Democratic Party's plans to destroy the USA"?
6pm News, BBC 1 - a lengthy item on uk sheep farmers, worried about the effects of Brexit, particularly the possibility of going to WTO terms, was immediately followed by the news that the Dyson electric car is to be built in Singapore. Fiona Bruce did not attribute the decision to Brexit but no reason was given & we were clearly expected to infer that Brexit is to blame. Less biased sources this morning explained that Sir James has stated that this has nothing to do with Brexit - it's a question of the supply chain, access to markets and availability of expertise. In this instance, the 'less biased' source is the Guardian!
ReplyDeleteFor once the BBC are talking about something they have experience of: herding sheep.
DeleteDominic Casciani - assigned to cover the Tommy Robinson case, and put the boot in on behalf of the BBC - was ill advised to try and argue the leader of the Huddersfield grooming gang was from a Sikh background...and there are about 300 people so far who have tweeted him to explain exactly why.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/BBCDomC/status/1053319897697136640
But Dominic has obviously been learning from Feedback and Newswatch and offers no apologies for his misdirection of the public.
On his Twitter account Dominic presents himself as a simple reporter...but he's not just that - he's also an activist engaging in matters of intense public debate and controversy, notably a conference on Muslim-Government relations where he shared a platform with Sharia promoters like Dr Bari of the MCB who has stated explicitly he wants all copies of Rushdie's Satanic Verses to be pulped...but of course you'll never hear Casciani describe pro-Sharia Bari as an "extremist", "identitarian" or "Far Right".
https://www.soas.ac.uk/politics/events/muslimgovtconf/programme/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1568881/Dr-Bari-Government-stoking-Muslim-tension.html
BBC - Bollox, Beneath Contempt
The BBC report:
Deletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45951152
has undergone several changes as the reporters including Dominic Casciani try to come to terms with an important story as the day went on. First, the downplaying of numbers of TR supporters - what a joke this is when at the weekend the BBC were exaggerating numbers for the People’s Vote march.
Secondly, Cascani reported the crown as singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and at this to begin with he seemed surprised. Later he qualified his report: ' when they began singing "How they Rule Ya" to the tune of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah'. The BBC didn’t see the irony in the hijacking of a Cohen song, making it into a protest song, when Cohen is held up as one of the 1960s and 1970s elder statesmen - wheeled out - to Glastonbury supposedly in support of what used to be the rebellious free-thinking radicals, the same people that now have become the mainstream Elite Leftist .
Thirdly, the reasons for the case being referred up was (as I understand the situation) because of the strength of TR’s witness statement. It’s there on line for us to read.
On the Politics Show, Jo Coburn floundered when the consensus of opinion was that the press and MSM including the BBC had failed in their duty to report on and expose the failings of police local authorities and other agencies to protect the victims of Huddersfield, Rochdale etc etc. By burying the story after only a few hours, the BBC have attracted blame for their erroneous and incomplete reporting.
Try as she might to drum up some endorsement of the BBC's position, by condemnation of TR as a) undermining the case against the perpetrators, and b) being a racist neo-nazi thug surrounded as he went to court by EDL stalwarts, she couldn’t raise the anti TR rhetoric above bog-standard simmer.
I think today might be the day when TR’s claim that his case is all about ‘who I am’ and not of ‘what I’ve done’ and his claim that the BBC are stirring up hatred towards him eventually ring true.
... Cascani reported the crowd as singing ...
DeleteAs far as I can tell, the song with Owen Benjamin's lyrics is from June 2018. There are a few versions on YouTube. Owen Benjamin is an American 'conservative' stand-up comedian and musician. I haven't seen him on the BBC.
DeleteA search 'BBC Owen Benjamin' brings up plenty of Benjamin Britten links, but none for Owen Benjamin. As he isn't on the BBC radar, it's understandable that Dominic Casciani wasn't aware of him or this song. How would he be? Err. Unless he was a genuine reporter researching his subject's material thoroughly.
It appears that those tweeting in oppostion to Casciani's tweet have been misled by the mainstream media - this time the Huddersfield Examiner not the BBC.
DeleteApparently it was the Examiner which misleadingly gave the impression that the person concerned had "converted" to the Sikh religion. It now emerges if TWT on Radio 4 is to be believed, that the truth is he was from a Sikh background but did not follow the religion strictly until it came to the point he was being investigated, and then he adopted the full Sikh dress and became properly observant.
So apologies to Casciani for saying he got that wrong - that was due to less than full reporting by the Examiner. But even so, it was rather odd for Casciani to tweet about the religion of ONE of the gang and not the religion of all the rest. What exactly was the point he was trying to make?
And I don't resile from the point I made about the
fact he shared a platform with people who support the introduction of Sharia law in the UK and the
pulping of the Satanic Verses.
You can find Owen Benjamin singing the song together with the adapted lyrics here:
Deletehttps://www.karaoke-lyrics.net/lyrics/benjamin-owen/how-we-rule-ya-song-for-tommy-robinson-885718
And finally, somewhere in the EU;
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45958404
Belgians ?
This morning‘s Today headline was about the BBC examining satellite photographs and finding potential detention camps in northern China for up to 1,000,000 Muslims then they bought on a female Labour MP to say this was a bad thing and something must be done
ReplyDeletehow different to the treatment of Sarah champion when she tried to talk about some of the negative effects of unintegrated Muslims nearer to home
The report back to my mind about a month or two ago the BBC was castigating the BUrmese government for its treatment of Muslims . Jeremy Hunt they said was to be dispatched to deliver a stern warning to Burma
we know the BBC aggressively Criticise East European governments particularly Hungary for resisting mass Muslim immigration
of course the BBC is aggressively on the side of the Palestinians against Israel
my conclusion is that the BBC has a coordinated campaign to align it’s voice with that of the Muslim world and by extension that of the U.K.’s with
whether They think this is to progress integration or to prepare us for the Islamic State of Britain I am not sure
Yes, that's why the BBC's reaction to the Huddersfield story and by extension, the TR story is so baffling. They are running cared away from serious debate - choosing to mount their attacks upon TR instead of upon the perpetrators of the horrific crimes. It seems that they, with most of the MSM, wish to brush this unspeakable wave of crime under the carpet. This has become the critical political debate. The 2016 vote for Brexit was in part a demonstration by the electorate of the need to control immigration. Again, this elephant in the room has been ignored both by the TM Government and the BBC.
DeleteSadiq Kahn yesterday was promising 11,000 new council houses for London. If deliverable, this is a wholly inadequate gesture to Londoners, who see their population increasing by 100,000 per year - partly if not mainly immigrants.