The Islamic extremist threat to charities

The head of the Charity Commission, William Shawcross, has told his old newspaper The Sunday Times that Islamic extremism is becoming the deadliest problem faced by charities:

I’m sure that in places like Syria and Somalia it is very, very difficult for charities always to know what the end use of their aid is, but they’ve got to be particularly vigilant,” he says. “The problem of Islamist extremism . . . is not the most widespread problem we face in terms of abuse of charities, but is potentially the most deadly. And it is, alas, growing.

This is the second story on Radio 4's news bulletins this morning and the third story on the BBC News website, so it isn't being ignored.

The BBC News website article, however, gets it slightly wrong, saying

Islamic extremism is the "most deadly" threat to charities in England and Wales, the Charity Commission has said.

Chairman William Shawcross warned that while the issue is not currently widespread, it is growing. 

Mr Shawcross didn't, in fact, say that it's the "most deadly" threat; he said it's "potentially the most deadly", which is something quite different.

Moreover, he didn't say the problem "is not currently widespread"; he said it "is not the most widespread problem we face", which, again, is something rather different, isn't it?


Coda: Though the BBC was initially doing rather well with the Operation Trojan Horse story, even taking an active role in reporting it, the corporation has gradually began sinking back into its bad old ways, and it's striking that none of the revelations begin reported by Andrew Gilligan in the Telegraph are presently making their way onto the BBC News website, which - except for reporting a speech by Labour's Tristram Hunt - has been quiet on the story since Thursday, when Phil Mackie's Operation Trojan Horse: Will we ever learn the truth? was published. That article had the feel of an attempt punctuation mark, probably a full stop. The news has moved on dramatically since then, and no such punctuation mark is possible, but the BBC website is failing to keep up.

Update: Aha. 12.47 today. A new BBC article on the subject: Extremist 'takeovers' in Birmingham schools? And Double Aha. 13.08 today. A second new BBC article on the subject: Ofsted chief Wilshaw takes charge of Trojan Horse. 

The good, the bad and the ugly

I think BBC Four is definitely the best TV channel around, but having steered clear of the bulk of BBC1’s dramas, soaps and other flim-flam, I surprised myself by accidentally enjoying Happy Valley. It was so realistically acted that one could almost suspend disbelief at the plot(s) with multiple misery and mayhem, blood and guts and alcoholism.

 I understand that I’m not the only one who couldn’t grasp every single syllable. It’s that ubiquitous breathy, sigh-speak that’s so incomprehensible, specially when delivered at  breakneck speed in an accent to which one’s ears are not attuned.

*****

No problem with dialogue in Trapped, BBC Four’s 12-part drama, in which the weather plays the starring role.  It’s the subtitles, stupid.

Great fun discussing the story with one’s nearest and dearest, apres ski, so to speak. “What do you think he meant? Who could have known that? Why didn’t she go home”?

The biggest challenge is the characters’ names as the spelling and pronunciation bear no apparent relation to each other and the letters look like random Scrabble tiles.

With all these dark Scandi thrillers one thing you do know. The villain is never the black or immigrant guy. You can rule them out. They always include one or two as a suspect, so you can beat yourself up later for having had those racist suspicions. Nevertheless, it’s quality escapism.

******

I enjoyed the programme about the CPS, also on BBC Four. Having been peripherally involved in a comparatively trivial but complex court case (fraud) which involved an interminable amount of preparatory research, I thought this film was informative and well constructed. It tackled each case fairly, and managed to convey sincere sympathy with the bereaved mother, while avoiding the mawkish “how does that make you feel” line of questioning.

*******

It was interesting to hear William Shawcross of the charities commission talking to Humph this morning. For a second there I almost thought they were going to discuss this:

A British charity that raises money for a Dubai-based Muslim missionary TV channel faces a fine as high as £250,000 ($347,000) over broadcasts According to The Times of London, the Islamic Research Foundation International, based in Birmingham and indirectly funded by UK tax breaks, has given most of its charitable income in the past two years to Peace TV.

But no. It wasn’t even about charities pestering vulnerable previous benefactors with phone calls. It was only about ageUK, which has been in trouble for misleading oldies with some dodgy dealings with energy suppliers. Not very ethical, I know, but doesn’t ‘buyer beware’ apply to people over a certain age or what? It’s just that if you’re going to flag up one charity-related transgression, why not go the whole hog and bring in the rest of them?

********

At the moment the complaints about the BBC’s pro-EU tendency seem to have touched a raw nerve. I don’t know if the fact that Julia Hartley-Brewer, (the author of a pithy piece in the Telegraph about BBC bias) was on the QT panel, but David Dimbleby made a point of mentioning being seen to be even-handed and unbiased in his introduction to that strange edition of the programme last week. 

The precocious 16 year old seems to have made such an internet hit - (went viral, she did) that everyone overlooked Julia H-B’s robust defence of Brexit, Diane Abbott’s ridiculous eye-rolling and absurd hairstyle, not to mention Giles Fraser. 

*********

A more long-term issue surrounds the BBC’s anti-Israel stance. I say stance, but it increasingly verges on outright activism. The repercussions are everywhere, not least within the actual PM. 

So David Cameron was lured into making a throwaway, almost casually pejorative remark about Israel, by one of the Muslim MPs whose antisemitic tendencies are being constantly reinforced by the BBC’s increasingly overt anti-Israel activism.  “Does the Prime Minister agree with me..” goes the question.... 

I daresay David Cameron hasn’t read any of it, (smiley face) but I’ve written quite a lot about CAABU’s Zionist-bashing propagandistic intent, but I do wish he would apply some essential ‘buyer beware’ to the unreliably sourced issues the new  batch of Muslim MPs invite him to agree with them about. Or is David Cameron getting too confused to make up his own mind?

**********

A whole cluster of really ill-informed Israel-bashing stuff has been getting through recently. Ken Loach managed to slip a barrage of unverified anti-Israel slander past Ritula Shah the other evening on The World Tonight. Ritula Shah was ill-equipped to challenge any of it, and what’s more, she probably had neither the will nor the way.

***********

If the BBC is really so sensitive about those accusations of bias, why is it so thick-skinned and insensitive about accusations of bias concerning the one area in which its bias is the most blatant, egregious and cruel  - even dare I say racist - of all? Yes, they probably do get complaints from both sides. But it’s quality, not quantity that counts 

After all anyone can submit a complaint. “Does the BBC agree with me” for example,  “that filthy, brutal, Islamophobic, apartheid entities should never be given the oxygen of publicity” and, if one were minded to, one could count that as a valid antidote to the actual truth. 

The alliance between the hard, secular left and political Islam.”

I've been keeping half an eye on the ups and downs of the Jewish Chronicle. The FT reported the situation while it was still unresolved - I can’t give you the date of publication because won’t let me back into the website now - but here’s the excerpt I managed to grab, explaining the way things stood back then:

“The Kessler Foundation, a charitable trust that has owned the Jewish Chronicle since 1984, submitted an offer to the proposed liquidators Begbies Traynor this week, which would have seen them acquire the assets of both publications and run them as a merged publication. 

But a rival bid from a consortium through lawyers Osborne Clarke has also been submitted, according to two people familiar with the matter. 

The rival consortium is being fronted by former Downing Street head of communications Robbie Gibb, biographer William Shawcross, former Labour MP John Woodcock,
Rabbi Jonathan Hughes of Radlett United Synagogue, and prominent broadcasters John Ware and Jonathan Sacerdoti.”

Most of whom have been featured in this blog - (funny that.) The consortium’s bid was successful and they reinstated Stephen Pollard as promised. 

Those of you who take the Spectator might have read an article by Charles Moore in the magazine.

“………a new consortium moved fast to intervene, and outbid the existing management in order to reinstate Pollard, see the staff right, pay off the debts and secure the future. Headed by Sir Robbie Gibb, a Gentile, the consortium is serious about reinforcing the Jewish Chronicle’s strength rather than shutting it down. Behind all this I detect a battle for leadership in the community. Those who are braver about confronting Islamist anti-Semitism have prevailed over the outdated establishment view that the greater threat to British Jews is from the far right and that Islamists should be appeased in the name of ‘interfaith dialogue’. 

The consortium’s victory is good news. It would have been a weird epilogue to the successful exposure of Labour’s anti-Semitism under Jeremy Corbyn if the most prestigious Jewish paper in Europe had then folded. As the general election result proved, the supposedly anti-Semitic white working class saw through Corbyn. The rising danger to Jews — as, though more surreptitiously, to Christians — comes from the alliance between the hard, secular left and political Islam.”

Ah, the last few words open a Pandora’s box of inconvenient and hard to answer questions.

The reason for this post is simply this. (And it’s even BBC related) 

Stephen Pollard says:  ”According to the BBC, antisemitism is just a political choice”. 

A particularly annoying photo of the BBC’s Fran Unsworth illustrates the piece. In it, she’s looking both startled and extremely pleased with herself all at once. 

The issue concerns a knotty problem. How much does political or personal prejudice affect one’s professional credibility? We’re talking about renowned antisemites being invited onto the Beeb to opine about supposedly unconnected matters. Notably but not exclusively, as per that Panorama.

Maybe there’s an element of  ‘intersectionality’ here? To what extent does a person’s race, class, and gender prejudice create a unique mode of discrimination dent one’s entire credibility? 

Can one’s irrationality in the form of racial hatred - viz  “the cognitively dissonant alliance between the hard, secular left and political Islam” be completely divorced from other areas of one’s personality. For example, does it affect one’s expertise in a seemingly unrelated sphere? Does that make sense?

Let’s temporarily forget Professor Ashton, whom Fran Unsworth says is “eminently well qualified to speak about this subject [public health]”. Let’s examine her reasoning, by using a more extreme example like, say, the late Stephen Hawking. 

Stephen Hawking was so highly regarded as a theoretical physicist, cosmologist and author that his reputation as such is untouchable and sealed forever. But even he fell foul of pressure from the hard, secular left and political Islam in his irrational decision to  join the academic boycott of Israel by rejecting an invitation to attend a conference there (despite relying on Israeli sourced technology  to help keep him alive.)  That was just common or garden hypocrisy, but we’re not concerned with that at the moment.

NYT has:

The conference, called “Facing Tomorrow 2013,” is billed as a meeting place for exploring the developments shaping the future of Israel, the Jewish people and the world. Its program includes former heads of state, academics, artists and business executives. Former President Bill Clinton is to receive an award from Mr. Peres.
Also listed among the speakers is Munib al-Masri, a Palestinian tycoon from the West Bank city of Nablus who has been working to promote internal Palestinian reconciliation.

If that is indeed an accurate description of the event that Hawking boycotted, doesn't the decision to boycott it look a bit stupid and ill-conceived? It does to me. 

However, as I know quite a bit more about factually and historically illiterate antisemitism than I do about theoretical or any other kind of physics, all I can possibly ask is ‘does a specific demonstration of irrationality and prejudice dent one’s whole credibility? A little bit? Not at all?  Does stupidity, prejudice and irrationality run through one like the proverbial stick of rock?

What I do know is that Stephen Hawking’s and professor John Ashworth’s reputations are seriously flawed in the eyes of this non-expert, and as far as Fran Unsworth's reputation is concerned, wheeling out the ‘Freeze Peach’ argument certainly dents the remaining dregs of it.

The issue here is that while antisemitism under the accepted definition is not actually illegal, and we don’t want to create a bespoke version of a blasphemy law to make it so, what can most effectively be done to show disgust and disapproval where anti-Jew prejudice raises its head?

For the BBC, maybe keeping known antisemites out of the limelight would go along with the spirit of the zeitgeist. However, as we’ve been saying for the last umpteen years, the BBC is not minded to keep antisemites out of the limelight. The BBC has tacitly taken the side of the antisemites and promotes the hard, secular left and political (and particularly cultural) Islam at every opportunity. It has made antisemitism a political choice and it’s not afraid to say so.

The BBC's Baroness Thatcher funeral coverage: Who did they interview?

For those of you who are interested, here is a complete list of all the interviewees (excluding vox pops) featured on the BBC News Channel's coverage of Lady Thatcher's funeral between 6.45am and 10.00pm yesterday. 

I believe the list speaks for itself. 

6.50 Andrew Pierce (Daily Mail) & Kevin Maguire (Daily Mirror)

7.15 Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph, biographer of Lady Thatcher

7.45 John Sergeant (ex BBC political correspondent) & Beatrix Campbell, writer (feminist & left-winger)

8.05 John Sergeant (ex BBC political correspondent)

8.14 Bob Broadhurst, former Met Police Commander

8.17 Francis Maude MP (Conservative)

8.35 Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, former head of the Royal Navy

8.42 Denis Oliver, Baroness Thatcher's former driver

9.25 Baroness Shirley Williams (Liberal Democrat), Prof Peter Hennessey, historian (cross-bencher) & Terry Wogan (jovial BBC chap).

9.35 Baroness Shirley Williams (Liberal Democrat), Prof Peter Hennessey & Lord Forsyth (Conservative)

9.41  Baroness Virginia Bottomley (Conservative), Prof Peter Hennessey & Matthew Parris (The Times)

9.46 Maj-Gen Jonathan Shaw

9.50 Lord Dobbs (Conservative) & Matthew Parris

10.10 David Cameron, PM (Conservative)

12.08 Peter Hennessey & Nick Robinson

12.38 Gerald Howarth MP (Conservative) & Andrew Neil, broadcaster

13.36 Ken Clarke MP (Conservative)

13.50 Bob Broadhurst, former Met Police Commander

14.09 Lord Steel (Liberal Democrat)

14.29 Beatrix Campbell, writer (feminist & left-winger)

14.33 Sir Bob Worcester, founder of MORI, & Lord Dobbs (Conservative)

14.46 James Forsyth (Spectator) & Nick Watt (Guardian)

15.10 Lord Lamont (Conservative)

15.15 John Campbell, biographer of Lady Thatcher

15.22 Ruth Davidson MSP (Conservative)

15.32 John Redwood MP (Conservative)

15.36 Margaret Beckett MP (Labour)

15.47 Sam Brownlee (former Falkand Islander) & Sukey Cameron (Falkland Islands official representative)

16.36 Eleanor Laing MP (Conservative)

16.49 John Whittingdale MP (Conservative)

17.16 Sir Ming Campbell MP (Liberal Democrat) & Liam Fox MP (Conservative)

17.44 Michael Cockerell, documentary maker

17.52 Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph, biographer of Lady Thatcher

18.34 Penny Mordaunt MP (Conservative), Andrew Rosindell MP (Conservative)

19.19 William Shawcross, commentator

19.37 David Willetts MP (Conservative)

21.14 Eric Deakins, former Labour MP (lost to Mrs Thatcher in Finchley in 1959)