It's been such a busy week this week that it's been hard to keep up with the news, or to do much blogging - and (apologies in advance) it's only going to get worse over the next couple of weeks.
However, I have been reading a lot of negative stuff (in the usual places) about the BBC's coverage of the latest damning report on the Rotherham abuse scandal, and the subsequent fall of the ruling Labour group there.
A surprising amount of that negative comment has focused on one figure - the newish Labour MP Sarah Champion (the one who found it amusing that Nigel Farage has been blockaded into UKIP's branch office there (by what looked from their banners like the usual crowd of left-wing activists). The BBC has been accused of giving her a soft time and not holding her and her party responsible.
The one exception was Andrew Neil, who was credited with giving her a hard time - as indeed he did, mentioning the word 'Labour' countless times in the process.
I've not seen or heard enough to judge the other Sarah Champion interviewers, but I did see the programme which many a BBC-bashing commenter found especially biased - the first installment of Michael Cockerell's fascinating new series Inside the Commons.
What annoyed them about it was that Miss Champion had been made the star of the show and been shown in a very good light, championing the victims of the Rochester 'grooming' gangs.
Now, I watched that programme before seeing the criticisms of it, and loved it. And it did feature a second newish MP, the Conservative Charlotte Leslie.
However, I did come away from it rather smitten with Sarah Champion. She came across as personally charming, deeply committed and unaffected by the trappings of power. She was shown to be a politically-successful parliamentary newcomer, winning a very rare opposition backbench victory related to helping the victims of child abuse.
And if I felt so positively towards her then I bet a lot of other people did too.
Charlotte Leslie's only victory, in contrast, was in getting to ask a somewhat toadying question to David Cameron at PMQs - a personal victory which followed shortly after a section of the programme where such toadying questions had been held up to ridicule.
Conspiratorial-minded people might judge from that the balance of having one of the two leading ladies from the Conservative Party and one from the Labour Party was a 'false balance' as the Labour MP was shown to be a maverick campaigner and the Conservative MP was shown to be a lackey sucking up to her party and her constituents.
Or that might just be how things worked out.
If Sarah and Charlotte had been followed from the start (as appears to have been the case) and Sarah got her cause incorporated in a government bill while Charlotte merely got to ask a toadying question at PMQs, then that's what happened and how could the programme report otherwise?
I have absolutely no time for Champion. For her to refer to a mob preventing a legally elected democratic politician from going about their business is outrageous.
ReplyDeleteIt either means she is very thick and doesn't understand what is involved in a democracy or it means she does understand and approves of such mob interventions.
The more I thought about that programme after it the more I worried that I'd been beguiled by the results of a piece of artful BBC bias. She came across very well in that programme, but she was given every assistance by the programme - unlike her Conservative counterpart.
ReplyDeleteHer comments Nigel Farage's treatment at the hands of that mob were undemocratic - and possibly also hypocritical if you see her campaigning over the abuse scandal as self-interested (electioneering).
Andrew Neil, incidentally, disappointed me by NOT challenging her over either point.
As i said before the promotion of Sarah Champion is pretty outrageous. She was gifted the disreputable Den McShane’s seat after a contentious short list process and became MP only in 2012. There is no evidence of her condemning the abuse prior to its emergence. Post the election she was concerned with wooing the Muslim community in a UKIP threatened seat, as the now absent pictures on her blog testified. Allowing an MP a free pass on rewriting her role the past is pretty underhand. On 27th August 2014 she says: "Of the 1,400 abusers, I don't know how many were of Asian descent. What I do know is...95%...are single white males." Classic category error, confusing group and single perpetrator offenders. She forgets that the under presentation of Muslims is due to a corrupt legal system that gave them a free pass not available to the rest of us. No equality before the PC law. Her and Casey were part of the problem, not the solution as they scandalously present. She tries to ingratiate herself with the Muslim population by pandering to their prejudices. So she accuse Israel of "murdering children" and they lap it up. Champion is typical modern MP from the New Labour Third Sector without principle but plenty of front. Nobody has got any evidence of Champion trying to break through the PC blockage on his issue. State TV - BBC and C4 and, strangely Sky - has decided to promote her, because she is Labour and they are worried that UKIP or Conservatives will address their corruption.
ReplyDeleteThank you. That's eye-opening stuff.
ReplyDeleteFrom her website:
"Many members of the Rotherham constituency have been in touch with Sarah in the lead up to the debate, asking for her to vote in favour of recognising Palestine. Constituents argued that self-determination is a right of the Palestinian people, and is long overdue".
Quite which "members of the Rotherham constituency" can be seen from the photo in the local newspaper:
http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/local/mp-calls-for-immediate-action-over-gaza-conflict-1-6798061
“I have fought for this issue since my teens. The Palestinians are not just a nation of people, they are people’s mothers, sons, daughters, and brothers, yet they continue to be treated with little regard for the value of human life."
http://www.sarahchampionmp.com/sarah-calls-on-government-to-recognise-palestinian-state/
Thanks for the link Craig. What sort of lunatic would support such a preposterous notion on the basis that, and I quote, “I have fought for this issue since my teens. The Palestinians are not just a nation of people, they are people’s mothers, sons, daughters, and brothers, yet they continue to be treated with little regard for the value of human life."
ReplyDeleteIt is these Palestinian mothers, sons, brothers and daughters who, with no thought for their victims, will engage in terrorist acts, in the name of allah, such as suicide bombing etc.
The barefaced arrogance of Sarah Champion knows no bounds and
her hypocracy is on another level.
Sarah Champion has decided on a strategy to avoid hard questions about Rotherham and her very late response to the scandal, to concentrate on the victims and to suggest some bond she has with them. We have no idea of what that bond is. But this "victim" approach is pretty cynical. In effect she is telling us to move on, think of the future. Now Orwell would cast such a creature as the perfect politician. I've crashed my car into but let's not get into that, let's concentrate on your suffering. Getting some agreement in the Commons regarding victims is pushing against an open door of "image politics", not substance. A politician with integrity would address the culture and legalities of corruption that has allowed wholesale exploitation of under-age girls right under the nose of the local authority, all of the agencies and the police. The Chumpian approach is to steer the electorate away from the actual institutional corruption that has been known for decades in northern towns, including Manchester in the 1980s. The BBC has been aware of it but, well, the class concerned are not of interests are they? The great reformers of the past understood that braying about caring for tor the victims changed nothing; what changes things is addressing what created the victims. Chumpian wants better care, but does not address the system that created them and abandoned them. Including herself? Chumpian has some brass neck. Craig, can I recommend that you change your piece and show that you have not been gulled?
ReplyDeleteThe BBC news has a serious problem with many other issues relating to Muslim criminality and the odious ramblings of Sarah Champion has taken advantage of the BBC's race biased derogation of its news reporting status which damages its credibility as a serious news programme.
ReplyDeleteThe Rotherham child abuse scandal is uncomfortably close and hard on the heels of their own sordid mess involving Saville, Harris and co. so, in circumventing the truth, the BBC is denying the victims of any real justice.
Since these appalling crimes committed in Rotherham and elsewhere, are linked directly to the depraved activities of Muslim/Asian sexual enslavement gangs, the BBC finds itself incapable of reporting the magnitude and scale of those involved with this heinous crime simply to avoid being labeled "racist".
This denial mentality is reflected in the irresponsible actions or lack of them, by the disgraced Rotherham Council and South Yorkshire police, hiding cowardly from fear of being labeled racists.
So the BBC water the evidence to ameliorate their collective conscience.
The BBC has precisely the same difficulty when dealing with Muslim motivated acts of terrorism, notably the Charlie Hebdo massacres when it was acutely obvious the BBC were unable to utter the words "Islamic terrorists"...This is taking avoidance of upsetting the followers of Islam to an embarrassingly new "high".
So "personally charming, deeply committed and unaffected by the trappings of power"? These qualities refer to character and may be interesting but are noticeably not capable of being disproved. I suppose, what I am suggesting is that I have read accounts that attributed precisely those qualities to Hitler and you could not dispute that he was "committed" Well, they say that a successful politician is one that can fake sincerity. All these qualities tell you nothing about the particular policies, interests and issues they support and are noticeable for what they do not include, admittedly many prosaic. For example, I would like MPs to be curious, rational, evidence based and serve constituents without favour. Ms Champion fails spectacularly on those and must be relieved that even Neill did not go down that road. Ms Champion presents herself in a way that a man would never get away which is why "charming" is so valuable. She is in the middle of a scandal and she is getting away with it. Saying she didnt know would be difficult because this is a story that has been rumbling on for decades and PC types like her have been batting away these claims all that time. If she had said, "Yes, I heard about these claims but didn't believe but now the evidence is in, I change my mind", fair enough. but she has to be dragged fighting all the way to acknowledging - even this late - the truth. She still cannot place "Asian"(let alone "Pakistani"), "white", "Muslim" in a sentence without placing a caveat or straight out denied in there.
ReplyDeleteWatching on our www.abc.net.au
ReplyDeleteSarah Champion