Describing the Tory Remainers who defied the Conservative whip and voted against the Government-backed amendments not as "rebels" but governemnt loyalists.
Desribing the Tory Leavers who supported the Government-backed amendments as "rebels".
Justin Webb accidentally referring to the Tory Remainer Rebels as Remainers and not as advocates for a soft Brexit. Slap on wrist for Justin.
Despite the £5 billion in its coffers, BBC has no interest in investigating where the resources (houses, GP surgeries, hospitals, schools, roads, trains, buses, parks, leisure centres) are going to come to serve the latest 280,000 net migrant arrivals (minimum) over the last year. BBC seems to think the infrastructure drops out of the sky. But if one Polish nurse returns to Cracow because of Brexit, that is a national disaster.
Also no interest in how come the moribund post-Brexit economy continues to prove so attractive to millions of migrants from overseas...
BBC Fakes News: reporter claims that Trump said Putin was "extremely strong and powerful" rather than that Putin's denial was "extremely strong and powerful".
Christmas has come early. Brexit campaign broke electoral law. Referred to Police for further investigation. Put up the bunting. Roll out the barrel. Fiesta time is here. What's that you say? Electoral Commission refuse to investigate similar claims against Remain campaign lodged with them by Priti Patel? Sorry...you're cracking up...can't hear you...
We have heard very little from Jeremy Corbyn lately. His vision for Brexit was to remain in the single market and the customs union. Ditto the Lib Dems, who wanted the referendum decision reversed so that we stayed firmly in the EU.
Have their voices become a distraction to the BBC, who now have their eyes set on the biggest prize of all - the softest of soft Brexits, a policy for the UK of acquiescence to the all-powerful EU?
The only real political debate at present seems to be about Leave or Remain - a strange derivation of two party politics. Even stranger is the overwhelming favouritism and preference that the BBC shows towards the Remain group at the expense of the democratic alternative.
It's possible that the BBC are adding fuel to the flames, a beacon heralding the collapse of the Conservative Party into its two opposing factions - Leave and Remain. If the Conservatives were to self-destruct in this way, then the way would be clear for a Corbyn government. If this is the case, the BBC should be careful what they wish for.
I just heard Stephen Gethins (SNP spokesman) on the BBC News channel describe 'Brexiteer Conservatives' opposed to Theresa May's soft Brexit as 'Hard Right'. His view, which coincides closely with The BBC's own, seeks to label MPs who wish to carry out the will of the majority thus.
Someone suggested that this story - "UKIP councillor Stephen Searle guilty of killing wife" (they don't even bother with the "former" UKIP councillor) was designed to damage UKIP:
Bit paranoid you might think...so I tried googling on Councillor + found + guilty and was amazed to find that the only miscreant Councillors given their party labels were UKIP and DUP in the ones I looked at! So maybe not so paranoid after all!
Here's one I've nicked from Biased BBC. A variant: " Bolton men". https://biasedbbc.org/blog/2018/07/18/midweek-and-t-robinson-thread-18th-july-2018/comment-page-2/#comment-930752
Damages to Sir Cliff have been awarded of £190,000 from the BBC for invasion of privacy over the helicopter coverage of the police raid on his home. The judge awarded him £20,000 aggravated damages because of the sheer arrogance of the BBC nominating the story for the Royal Television Society’s ‘Scoop of the Year’ award... From Guido.
As usual the sting is in the tail - legal costs, for which the BBC will be liable, are estimated at £5 million. I can't see anywhere an apology from the BBC - only 'that they may appeal'.
Also, was there any reprimand or disciplinary action taken against the BBC reporter Dan Johnson, who, as a result of a tip-off from someone within the South Yorkshire Police, 'broke the story'? No, on the contrary, his career seems to have flourished with appearances over the Grenfell Tower disaster, and more recently the Thai cave drama.
Who will pay out these £millions of legal costs, and much more besides if the BBC take the matter to appeal?
The BBC are still brazen on this, their website story says it is a dark day for journalism, they are talking about dangerous precedents on the news bulletins and are using Jeremy Vine to push their side of the story. Having been found guilty, which other organisation would try to shape opinion and influence in such an overt way? Once again they are using their channels as propaganda.
What are they up to? I am sure the BBC previously did not refer to Soubry, Greive and the others as "Remainers"...but they do now...I am pretty sure they have only started this recently...must be an editorial decision. Is the intent to blur the boundaries? Remember, most of them still claim to respect the Referendum result and indicate they are not trying to frustrate its implementation...previously they have hidden behind legal challenges, the rights of Parliament, amendments from the Lords, various process aspects...but maybe that's it, maybe the BBC are now trying to condition the public to the idea of the Referendum result being overturned by first admitting that there is a Remain lobby trying to keep us fully in the EU.
Anyone else noticed this change in usage? Previously they tended to refer to them as "rebel Tories", "opponents of hard Brexit", "those wishing to keep us in the Single Market" and so on.
Yes, the BBC were straight on to labelling Brexiteers as the rebels and portraying the Soubryites as a loyalists...which meant they got tied up in knots when the Government accepted the "rebel" amendments and rejected the "loyalist" ones. The BBC were a bit caught out there. I think perhaps the change in label indicates that the BBC had been hoping they could connect May, loyalty and Remainerism, the better to confuse the public.
Blatant bias on BBC 10o’click news tonight. Katya Adler saying that if we crash out if EU without a deal, our planes might not fly, our goods will be stuck in docks and we won’t have access to security intelligence.
No mention that the EU would be hit harder than us. Even arch remainer in chief, Mark Carney admitted that today.
Totally one sided with no balance. Her excuse previously is that she is BBC Europe editor so has to take the EU/European stance and view.
Then on Newsnight, rather than focussing on Boris's speech, they have a cosy, soft as a cuddly toy bear interview with Bullshitter in Chief Chris Patten allowing him essentially to call Boris a liar.
I’ve screen shotted it in case it changes but there’s a classic example of BBC photo bias on the BBC news app at the moment covering the story “Johnson - it’s not too late to save Brexit.”
There’s an MP behind him (who happens to be my MP) with his head in his hands. Problem is I’ve watched the speach and he was nodding and smiling all the way through, they must have selected that one still specifically for that gesture. Obviously the BBC would deny it but we all know it happens all the time. #Bias by photo selection.
Simon Jack on WATO...he's a serial high profile offender in the bias stakes. He said it will be "absolutely catastrophic" if we leave the EU with no deal, on WTO terms. Now call me resilient but I tend to think of "absolute catastrophes" as world wars, major earthquakes with hundreds of thousands dead, major tsunamis, an asteroid strike...that sort of thing. I don't call a shortage of grapes from France or a lorry park near Dover an "absolute catastrophe".
If the IMF report had been focussed entirely on the potential negative effects of Brexit on the UK, I have a feeling that it would have been in the News section on the front page. As it is, I can only find it under "Business" and even then only under the "Experts" section, not as a separate news item...odd that!
Chris Mason (the BBC's laughingly named Reality Check chief) was being interviewed by John Humphries on Today today about 6.30am (those "two way" are a good way to smuggle in opinion, as we know).
On this occasion though, he had to respond to a question about Leo Varadka's absurd suggestion that Ireland was going to deny the UK access to its airspace in the event of no deal. A moment's glance at an air space map will tell you how daft an idea that is.
Mason was put in a difficult ethical position. His Euro-religion prevents him from uttering anything deprecatory about any pro-EU EU leader or the EU Commission or against the EU negotiating stance. But clearly on an intellectual level he could see this was just about the daftest thing said in relation to the EU negotiations so far by anyone. He sounded embarrassed as he tried to find a response that wouldn't offend his religious principles. The best he could do was aver that people on "this side" weren't too happy about the proposal...
Maybe he knew Adonis and Campbell would be listening in, taking names...maybe he was just intimidated.
Just had to share this...from Breitbart. A survey showing that Londons - yes that wonderful citadel of progressive thought that the BBC wants the rest of the country to emulate - is the LEAST socially tolerant and progressive region of any in the country?
Just goes to show why the BBC progressive lobby, the Eastons, the Maitlises, the Davises, and all the rest of them, for all their efforts, have simply been digging a very large hole, in which their [progressive values are going to be buried.
If you're puzzled by the results remember London has the largest RoP population in the UK and also the highest representation of African/Caribbean evangelical churches.
Yes, London has an identity crisis. Immigration has brought native intolerances from many different cultures and from many different countries. How many people in London any longer identify themselves as English?
The British Open is on and the BBC are focussing on Tiger Woods. He’s not on the leaderboard and he’s not in the top 100 rankings but he ticks the right boxes so he gets top billing.
The most interesting, but depressing, couple of weeks in UK politics for a long time found me stuck in a gîte half-way up a mountain in the French Jura with perfect BBC reception via Freesat but utterly bereft of wi-fi. Am now catching up via ITBBCB? & Guido - glad to find the 'Open-Threaders' share my enthusiasm for Kuenssberg & Co's coverage of May's betrayal!
A new "news comedy" programme on Radio 4 ("Where's the F in News?")...a tried and trusted formula as far as the BBC are concerned (HIGNFY, Mock the News, News Quiz, The Mash Report) which allows them to pump out biased news in industrial quantities. Any criticisms of the format can be laughed off - "where's your sense of humour?").
Well this was the usual liberal-left trash dressed up as humour. Mostly seemed focussed on Trump and Brexit, with a bit of race grievance thrown in ...what a surprise. Given it was an all-woman format the bitching against Melania Trump wasn't exactly sisterly. There was also an express desire to see Trump killed (the sort of stuff that can trigger vulnerable types to act out such fantasies as we saw previously with one of our own disturbed types going over to the States with that in mind, or at least he tried to grab a gun off a Police officer at a Trump event).
Only just found out the presenter Jo Bunting is the producer from HIGNFY - so one wouldn't have expected anything else...v. low grade "humour".
I heard the start of that and turned it off once I realised it wasn't Dead Ringers but one of their awful comedian / panel programmes.
In case anyone missed that opportunity for a bit of Trump bashing, the lead item on Radio 4 news was about a tweet from Trump about his former lawyer. I mean, how ridiculous is this Trump obsession! Who writes this trivia and thinks it's news?
It's weird isn't it? On the one hand the BBC believes we are a European nation that should be a fully paid up member of the EU and pursue our own agenda...but on the other they are completely obsessed with American politics and culture, and act as though we were the 51st state of the union.
Five Remainers (including the Chair, Emily Maitlis of course) versus one Leaver (a not v. media-savvy slightly eccentric type, rather than say Nigel Farage or Juliet Hartley-Brewer).
"Christopher Montgomery is a Conservative who's worked for the DUP as well as for Vote Leave - a body just this week referred to the police and fined."
I'm just checking out the BBC News website. I think they must be in a state of some turmoil. There are no Brexit stories on their home page or UK page. There's Brexit stuff on their Politics page but most of it is two days old. Let's not forget this is a news organisation with hundreds of millions of pounds at its disposal!
There's nothing about Raab's ultimatum to the EU (no withdrawal payments if no trade deal).
I'm getting the feeling this is the moment when the Remainer citadel is starting to fall...we'll see. No doubt they have some counter-attacks ready.
One clue to BBC thought processes - after a v. brief honeymoon when it looked like the Remainers were in the ascendant, when they chose some photos of Theresa May looking relaxed and confident they are back to the edgy, anxious pics of May.
We need to be aware just how much the media in the UK is being squeezed by the globalist PC elite. They have already turned the Mail on Sunday into a pro-EU anti-Boris vehicle. The Daily Mail is gradually following suit now they have a new Remainer editor. The Express has been taken over by the Mirror Group and is now being gradually "turned" as well. And of course the globalise PC lobby already have the BBC, Sky, ITV, Mirro, Guardian, Global news, and Independent in their pocket. Leaves the Telegraph which is in truth all over the place with no consistent line.
Just found this recent tweet from Gerard Batten, UKIP leader:
"My supporters sometimes ask why I am not interviewed in the newspapers? Six weeks ago I did a long interview for the Sunday Express. It never appeared. The editor was overruled by the new Mirror Group owners, who are pro EU. This tells you all you need to know about the press."
The BBC obsesses about who controls Sky, but really we should be far more concerned about who is controlling the news agenda. There are a lot of "dark forces" at work - pro-globalist billionaires, Saudi and Qatari investors, plus Russian and CHinese Government cyphers controlling our media.
Correct! For which reason I have just joined Tory Party in hope of contributing to deselection of my sitting MP &, if possible, voting against the treacherous May. It is clear from Raab's lame appearance on Maar that Conservative HQ is quite happy to have a biased Electoral Commission - now, why would that be?
The speaker equates denial of free speech to a one way only protection racket. Efforts by any group opposing the far-left to make their voices heard is met with violence. This should ring a few bells in the UK. Pro Brexit voices can seldom be heard.
6pm BBC1 News. Kuenssberg & Co have clearly realised that the Chequers proposals concede most of what Remainers wanted - even Martine Croxall must have worked that one out - so are 'normalizing' May's proposals by forgetting to mention that they are extremely unpopular - not least with Tory voters.
So that's the "new line"? I think they've been a little unsure since the resignations whether to support the Chequers plan or not...it is a risky strategy because of course it looks like the EU are going to reject it...the more the BBC big up the plan as a a fair and reasonable framework for an agreement, the more unfair and unreasonable an EU rejection will appear to the GBP (Great British Public).
Of course I may have been fooled yet again by May. Perhaps it's all choreography and Merkel has told her they will accept it nearly whole after some shadow boxing.
Later in that 6 pm bulletin I heard project apocalypse... medicines are being stockpiled, food not yet but needs to be in case UK “crashes” out with no deal. The correspondent had the nerve to tell us that the Government was scared to tell us these things in case of alarm. They think we are fools! These messages are just what May wAnts us to hear ... get behind her merkel approved chequers deal or face the apocalypse.
We have had several glimpses in recent weeks of Mays ruthless duplicity. I am 100% sure that remainbbc’s messages are coordinated with her.
As a leading news organisation with professional journalists surely the BBC should be reporting that we leave with a WTO deal or we leave with an EU deal. I think those are the two options.
I'm not sure 'crash out" without a deal is an outcome.
Indeed. And the BBC should have pointed out what is in Article 50:
"The Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union." You'll see that there is only one single agreement referred to and that it should take into account the framework for its future relationship between the EU and the UK. So where did all this bull about "sequencing" come from, separating our settling of accounts with the EU from future trade? And why did our useless government agree to the sequencing?
Yes, Newsnight has a very balanced approach...Maitlis (is she fearful of losing her job? - she seems to have turned up her bias knob to 11) introduced the usual "Brexit Is Horrible" item with a negative reference to the Brexit Bus and a use of the word "disaster" to describe what potentially faces us as a result of the Brexit vote. She, a Remainer, then interviewed ex Guardian pro-Remain Nick Watts and Fully Paid Up Remainiac Sarah Woolaston about the issues. No Brexiters in evidence, so that's all right.
I am becoming increasingly concerned about the way May operates - the deceit levels are possibly worse than in any other prime ministership: fooling us that David Davis was undertaking negotiations...now manipulating public opinion with a second Project Fear...but tying this all into her wider extremist PC agenda (which of course doesn't fit at all with her Big Lie of supposedly trying to reduce net migration to under 100,000).
No one can say for sure what lasting damage will be done to your democracy - all for what? To keep us closely bound to the EU, in contravention of the clear meaning of the Referendum vote.
Today, this morning. "Cosy chat" interview with John McDonnell by Justin Webb (I think). Only problem was McDonnell misspoke and said clearly the Labour Party was antisemitic. :) Will the BBC be as unforgiving of this slip of the tongue as they were of Trump's recent "misspoke" moment? Hmmm...let me have a think about that for one ten thousandth of a second...er, no.
OT, but any techy types know why I can get automatically recognised and published here via my Mac Mini, but nothing, not anon or the other options, are any good now via my iPhone or iPad? No biggie, but this site can inspire me when out and about too.
When a Labour MP is accused of something, refer to them simply as an MP and bury the Labour connection in a convoluted paragraph halfway through the story.
The Guardians Zoe Williams says "The Daily Politics show is no more, but the corporation’s current affairs programmes are still dominated by rightwing commentators and agendas"
In the article she claims that journalists from The Express and The Telegraph represent the far right.
Do the left liberals truly believe this or is it all part of the game?
All part of the "deadly game" as I would call it, since the game ends with the death of British culture which can be traced back with some certainty over the last 1500 years and which has produced some real wonders like Chaucer, the Shakespeare cannon, the English translation of the Bible, a rich vein of humorous writing, including Dickens of course, and lots of excellent music and songs from Gilbert and Sullivan to Elgar to the Beatles and their contemporaries. We can then add to that our common law our parliamentary democracy, staging the first major republican revolution against a monarch...thousands of life-changing inventions...I am going to have to stop before this gets out of hand - but all the stuff the BBC refuses to celebrate, in essence.
Whether useful idiots like Zoe Williams realise that's how the game ends, with the death of British culture, I don't know. I've seen her on TV. She seems quite pleasant if daft. Maybe she thinks somehow British culture is preserved as part of a wonderful new World Culture that is emerging. I've got a question for her: what Shakespeare play will be approved for performance in this new World Culture where all offence must be avoided?
If Zoe were brave enough to come on here and defend her opinion I would point out Newsnight has panels to discuss Brexit composed of 5 Remainers and one Leaver or 3 Remainers and no Leavers. And why does Newsnight always goes to the New York Times and CNN for info on the USA, and never to Fox News. Newsnight accepts the claims of organisations like Black Lives Matters, the Democratic Party, the EU, Antifa, Hope Not Hate, Greenpeace, the TUC, the Women's Equality Party and so on with virtually no oversight at all.
Andrew Neil is about the only person who could be described as a right winger on the BBC staff. And he's going. But remember Neil was editor of the Econmoist. He's really a globalist at heart with a strong attachment to capitalism. He's just less prepared to go along with the PC/leftist/no borders nonsense in the way younger globalists are. But he's in no way a populist right winger. A populist right winger could never get a job on the BBC.
Just an aside really...you might think the BBC is the most biased prominent broadcaster in the UK. But I think Global News - who provide news services for many outlets including Classic FM - definitely give them a run for their money.
Apropos the story about the acid attack on the toddler in Worcester, Global News reported that (I paraphrase) "Initially there were fears it was connected with a demonstration by the English Defence League in the town.."
I haven't heard that suggested by Police, or on the internet or by any other broadcaster. But that was their first bullet point!
There are no clear clues as to why Global News is so rabidly PC and globalist in its outlook. Its owners are very rich people with no high profile in politics as far as I can make out. It might be a case of "this is what journalists do if you let them" - a bit like Sky News which doesn't seem to have any effective oversight. If anyone knows anything more about Global News I will be interested to hear that.
Incidentally our rules of sub judice, fair hearings, contempt of court etc just seem to be in a state of total confusion. We've had all sorts of info released about this acid attack case, including info reported as being from the police that it involved a dispute between different communities. It will definitely have coloured the views of any potential jurors. But TR is serving 13 months for something that would have had close to zero effect on the trial he was referencing.
And today's word on Today is... "problematic" - such a useful word!
Used by the lady from Chatham House (now there's a surprise, the BBC going to Chatham House for advice on "problematic" countries, despite CH's long record of getting things wrong e.g. on the so-called "Arab Spring") when referring to the election of Imran Khan,with the full bakcing of the military. The word "problematic" was being used mainly to gloss over his pro-Sharia views.
I feel an increased level of disgust for the BBC as they continue to publicise their defendant's role in the High Court case brought by Sir Cliff Richard - pretending to be the injured party. The BBC have already said earlier today that they will seek to appeal the Judgement. Just now, another breaking news 'story', prominently positioned (in fact the main headline) on the subject has appeared on the BBC News website:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44963548
... 'Sir Cliff Richard: BBC agrees to pay £850,000 legal costs' ...
Not only is there no sign of regret or remorse for having wrecked Sir Cliff's life, and that there will have been a court order for costs which will have been served on the BBC, cynically, they take the opportunity to re-run their defence, which so clearly failed to cut any ice in court:
... 'The raid was part of an investigation into historical child sex allegations.' ...
The photograph shows Cliff Richard as if he is praying - a clear jibe at his Christian faith. To cap it all, right next to the image of Cliff Richard, is another headline and photograph for another story (Features) carried by the BBC News website:
.... 'I was given HIV at eight - and couldn't tell a soul' ...
Accompanying this headline is a photo of a male youngster aged about 8, 9 or 10 years old - without any photo credit at all. There is no doubt in my mind that this is no coincidence. As we often say, nothing happens by accident so far as the BBC are concerned. It is intended as an item to shore up the Cliff Richard matter.
Incidentally, I gather that in order to appeal, the BBC will be required to make a fresh application to the Appeal Court directly. Who will be paying for that?, we ask.
MB' mention of Donald Trump below reminds me there was another would-be subliminal message in the BBC Article about Sir Cliff:
... The BBC wants to challenge the judge's findings, including that Sir Cliff had a right to privacy while a suspect in a police investigation - trumping the broadcaster's right to freedom of expression to publish his name and cover the raid.' .... Is this an association between DT and Sir Cliff politically speaking?
BBC giving Imran Khan the old soft-pedal treatment..."Five things to know about Imran Khan."
1. He went to Oxford. 2. He was a famous cricketer. 3. He tried the old charity dodge of setting up a cancer hospital. 4. He founded and led the PTI party which grew steadily under his leadership. 5. He's hoping to be Pakistan's next PM.
What an informative list!
Well that wasn't v. informative was it? How about he is strongly supportive of Sharia law? That he married Jemima Goldmsith? That he was found by an American court to have fathered an illegitimate child who he refused to acknowledge? That the Pakistan Taliban named him as their preferred representative in talks with the government? Or that it has been widely alleged in Pakistan that he is the candidate of the military and that he has been given preferential treatment as a result?
Nope that's not the dope according to the BBC.
Can you imagine them holding back if equivalent things were true of Trump?
The BBCs 2nd highest paid presenter is calling for a second referendum. Instead of reminding him of his contractual obligations regarding conflict of interest and impartiality, they give him a prominent and supportive news article.
I think you have to see things from the point of view of these ageing presenters. If Lineker had not put himself firmly in the van of "progressive" politics he would long ago have been replaced by someone from an ethnic minority or a woman. It was a smart career move. The choice is stark: PC or P45. Can you imagine how long a BBC presenter would last if they announced they supported UKIP's policies? There is no evidence Lineker actually believes any of the nonsense he comes out with, but his agent must be relieved he does.
It still winds me up that BBC lead stories are regularly about themselves. Three of the top stories today are about them. Cliff Richard Logan Paul interview (who?) Gary Lineker
Yeah there are lots that don’t share an opinion and the population voted 48% to 52% there must be lots of secret leave and remain voters knocking around, even at the BBC.
No, that's the problem, I doubt there is even one person with any influence who voted leave, I'd be surprised if they even know anyone who voted leave. Anyone who admitted voting leave would probably have their career prospects severely limited as they would be branded as a far-right bigot.
The misleadingly worded item on the BBC News website ... 'Sir Cliff Richard: BBC agrees to pay £850,000 legal costs' ... has been drastically relegated in its importance since the Judge refused Right to Appeal. You can find it tucked well away from view on the Arts and Entertainment pages.
The near disappearance of this much heralded story has presented the BBC with something of a challenge. It has been parked into the Arts and Entertainment pages for the time being. There will be committees and focus groups hard at work within their walls charged with finding a suitable off-beat follow-up narrative. 'How often are Appeals successful?' might be one, or, 'Is the judiciary straight-jacketed by outdated precedents?'. Such a diversionary story would of course mention [the BBC's perceived injustice] of the Cliff Richard case, and repeat the false accusations made by the BBC against him whist focussing upon one of the BBC's favourite narratives.
Had the outcome of yesterday's court hearing been different (unlikely I know because the Judge is unlikely to grant an appeal upon anything lacking in his own judgement), then this story would have continued to have pride of place as a headline on the BBC News website Homepage.
Reportage of this case goes beyond the BBC's everyday bias that this site records so effectively. It has become a bitter attack upon Sir Cliff and all that he stands for - an by extension, criticism of his supporters as well. He deserves a proper apology not some mumbo jumbo muttered into the pavement from a carefully prepared statement.
Simon Jack is one of the most biased presenters on the BBC. This latest piece of baloney (ha-ha) regarding the "Brexit threat to sandwiches" is a classic:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44960293
Does anyone seriously think the EU is going to illegally prevent trade in salad vegetables, thus harming its member states' agriculture?
I can't think of any other scenario specifically related to Brexit where major "disruption" might occur.
The article applies appallingly low journalistic standards. Here we are talking about an economic issue, and the article has anonymous sources which could easily be made up for all we know:
""The soundings we are getting from government is that if we are facing disaster, we could simply extend Article 50 (the two-year Brexit stopwatch that started running when it was triggered in March 2017), said one."
Said one, some say!
One reason for anonymity might be the sources know they are scaremongering (for their own interests - not wishing to be exposed to world competition) but don't want to go on record and make fools of themselves by being caught out in a lie.
Also the article fails to set out to explain the mechanism by which ports will be "overwhelmed" in the event of Brexit.
Well unusually for a Brexit scare story, there is a "Have Your Say" and, as one might expect, comments could be going better. This is a representative comment:
"£4Bn a year in licence fees demanded with menaces for this tripe."
Not surprisingly, although the comments were quickly closed when the BBC saw just how negative the reaction was.
According to Wikipedia "Before entering journalism, Jack worked for a decade as a corporate and investment banker in London, New York and Bermuda. He has said that he neither liked the work, nor showed much ability at it" A failed offshore banker with a self-confessed low skill level...perfect for the tax-dodging, low achievement BBC.
No, no, no ... You, and I, are wrong, as usual, and the BBC is right. How do I know that? Well, they told me...
"Many thanks for getting in touch regarding the BBC News Website article 'Brexit threat to sandwiches'.
I understand you felt it was inappropriate to quote unnamed sources within the article.
The use of anonymous sources is a standard and long standing journalistic practice. Occasionally our news reports must protect the identity of interviewees, particularly if they’re speaking on a controversial or sensitive subject.
In these instances we conduct appropriate background research and take it in good faith that the interviewee is offering a reliable account of their story.
Impartiality is the cornerstone of our news and current affairs output. News teams aim to identify a range of significant views rigorously and fairly on behalf of the audience. A fundamental part of the role of our correspondents and editors, such as our Business Editor Simon Jack, is to offer analysis, using their experience and knowledge, but this is not indicative of bias or 'fake news'.
With regard to the Wikipedia page on Simon, as this is not related to the BBC and the website is available for third party editing, we are unable to offer any comment.
We do appreciate your feedback and please be assured that I have made your complaint available to the production team on our daily Audience Feedback Report that is circulated right across the BBC.
Thank you for taking the time to contact the BBC."
So implementing the result of a democratic referendum in line with the statements of all party leaders, government statements, legislation and an HM Government leaflet sent to every household is now "controversial" and "sensitive" according to the BBC! lol Only to Guardian readers, mate.
If I were you I'd reject the response and ask them if anyone senior to Jack has reviewed his sources and how Jack doesn't know he's being used by these anonymous sources who may be lying for their own purposes.
IDS never struck me as 'hard-right', or 'a rebel', but these comments, coming from a Conservative Brexiteer, seem to me to be a fair assessment of the state of play.
Yes, a fair assessment. It seems extraordinary that a UK PM would offer £40 billion as final settlement in the absence of a trade deal, when there isn't a single provision in EU law requiring us to make such a payment.
I am not oonvinced the current Barnier roadblock is for real. It could be part of the sham negotiations.
I agree MB. I think its a done deal other than a few loose ends for Raab & Barnier to clear up to make it look like real negotiations. May signed off the deal behind close doors with Merkel and Juncker. Softest possible Brexit, customs union for goods and trade, regulatory alignment for services, £39b already conceded. Which is why the BBC have given a sigh of relief and gone relatively quiet and onside with the Government.
Yes. And also, why, I would surmise although there has been much talk recently about preparations for a "no deal" result you'll have noticed that Airbus, BMW and all the other corporate whingers have gone strangely silent...it's almost as if they know a deal has been done... :)
I'm very much afraid you're right. The only hope would be for Tory MPs, of both factions, to be given such a drubbing by their constituents over the summer that they realise that, if they want to stand any chance of re-election, they have to dump May & the Chequers proposals now. If they've been reading the letters section of the Telegraph they should be very worried indeed, & there's no comfort to be had from the polls.
I just loved that 4.1% figure. Even the dumbo newsreaders knew they had to read it like they were describing the people who attended a funeral. :) And of course the BBC have not exactly being leading with that important story. :) I am now expecting an apology from the 314 economists that Newsnight has had on telling us Trump would be bad for the American economy. :)
Sopel's wording betrays bias? Oh yes it does doesn't it? This story could be told as a professional who has completely abandoned his code of ethics and sought to compromise his client. The whole idea of a lawyer-client relationship is that the client tells the lawyer something in his own words without necessarily compromising themselves in terms of the lawfulness of their actions. Liberals used to have this as one of their central tenets of a free society as opposed to a fascistic or totalitarian one. It seems Sopel is keen to abandon this principle and find out what Trump said to his lawyer. :) Can we please apply that to all criminal cases in this country as it will definitely up the Met Police's appallingly low 9% conviction rate! :)
I had to have a chuckle at the BBC News report tonight on fake news which appears to be blaming mainly social media. The correspondong BBC website article says “The report warns that the "relentless targeting of hyper-partisan views, which play to the fears and prejudices of people, in order to influence their voting plans" is a threat to democracy.”
Pot calling kettle black - but of course the irony is lost on them.
I've heard several fake news bits on the BBC recently, that all went unchallenged.
Among them, Blair Peach was apparently "murdered". As far as I know, no authority or court in this land has ever suggested he was murdered. Murder does require an intent, or implied intent (as in, well you should realise you could kill someone), to kill someone of course.
BBC also broadcast that the New Cross Fire was a "massacre", which - in context - seemed to mean a massacre by white supremacists (rather than a Black person who knew many of the victims). As far as I know that has never been established by any authority or court and indeed the main suspect mentioned by many investigators is Black.
Then we had Simon Jack claiming there was a realistic possibility that people would not be able to purchase sandwiches with fillings if we "crashed out" (as the BBC like to put it) of the EU with no deal. That's absolutely Fake News - appearing under the news section of the BBC Website with no warning labels. So licence fee payers are entitled to presume this is gold standard news and not some made-up nonsense.
Then there was a load of Fake News about some Swedish Snowflake trying to stop the deportation of a violent Afgan migrant from her country back to the country he came from. The BBC decided not to tell us what this migrant had got up to while in Sweden, presumably because it wasn't v. nice. They also discussed the disruption in terms of interrupting your holiday rather than stopping you getting back to your home country for your mother or father's funeral say.
It's horrible to hate but if you have got to hate then probably the BBC is the most hateful institution in our country, with v. few redeeming features. It is self-serving, corrupt, covers up abuse of minors, broadcasts drill music which encourages Black people to engage in gun violeance, sends poor people to prison to secure its income, pays men more than women, facilitates tax avoidance or tax evasion, produces fake news, suppresses legitimate opinion, and subverts democracy - whilst all the time virtue-signalling that it is the most moral, most efficient and most loveable institution in the land.
More on the BBC website about fake news this morning. And guess what, it is published by the biggest fake news organisation of them all. (As you have pointed out above MB).
Heard a discussion of the MPs' report on "fake news"...(aka as free speech, opinion, just stuff they don't like). Very concerning that one of the contributors said that the Electoral Commission should regulate this important area of free speech. We are really heading for a complete extinction of democracy, if the Electoral Commission is allowed to determine what are politically correct ads.
They are really pushing the fake news story today, I imagine they believe that they are free, fair and impartial so have a duty to inform but it shows a lack of awareness.
It was manna from heaven that the select committee homed in on social media and Facebook in particular as the sole purveyors of fake news.
The general public are more savvy than the BBC and MPs give them credit for.
Back in the bad old days (maybe 1995 but I'm not sure) the BBC Proms used to be about music. Thank God, we have now moved on and progressed and it's now all about virtue-signalling - or, even better, virtue-signalling on bhealf of people whose religion bans music. :) That makes a lot of sense, according to the Pro-Sharia BBC.
During the extensive celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the NHS, I have been expecting to hear from the BBC more about another Labour Government policy initiative of the same year, 1948 - The Nationalisation of Road Haulage.
At the grand age of 17, my father had taken digs in the East End of London in order to open a transport depot in Tooley Street on behalf of my grandfather's road haulage firm that had been established in the Midlands by a handful of owner driver partnerships. The London depot sought return loads for the fledgling service.
Having survived the blitz in the first years of WWII, when the whole of the East End dockland area was alight, flattened by bombing, my father joined the RAF. He was demobbed in 1946-7, and naturally, he expected to return to the family business. His expectations were short-lived as, along with many others, the firm's nationalisation was completed.
Nationalisation is not some idealistic socialist dream any longer. It will become a reality - the inevitable consequence of the election of a Labour government. This is why we should all be appalled by the connivance of our PM and the Remain group of Conservative MPs (and a dodgy Chief Whip, and an oily civil servant), who have managed to carry her through. As Sisyphus said above, we should be confronting the duplicitous Conservative MPs, who were elected from areas where there was a Leave majority, and yet maintain the pretence that they are our intellectual superiors, and know what is good for us, and have conspired to produce this 'change the name but do the same' BRINO white paper. Theresa May has ruined the Conservative Party by alienating her core supporters (this started with the manifesto commitments in the run-up to the 2017 General Election). It has become a laughing-stock. The Labour party don't need to do or say anything - just stand by and watch the train crash. It's a matter of where all those disaffected Con votes will go. Either we need a new centre-right Leave party (UKIP II), and this would need to be - now, or we need an emerging strong new Conservative leader to displace Theresa May, and reconnect the Conservative Party with their voters.
Agreed LC! It looks, from the Sunday Telegraph's lead article, as though the rebellion is already underway: the paper has found that seven chairmen of Cabinet ministers' Conservative associations either opposed the Chequers plans in their current form or would withdraw their support if Mrs May offered any further concessions to Brussels. The chairman in Andrea Leadsom's seat said the Government had, 'lost the sense of leaving', and called for Mrs May to be replaced by 'a statesman'. The response from the Conservative chairman in Theresa May's seat was less emphatic: he felt that if the Chequers deal "were to be diluted it would ultimately not be acceptable." Well, the constituency that chose to be represented by a vegetable isn't going to set the bar very high, is it?
It would be good to think so. I have posted elsewhere that the only hope for national unity and preventing a Corbyn government is for the Tory Remainer MPs to mount a rebellion, get Boris elected as leader (by the membership) and then go to the country, on the basis of a true Brexit vision for the future. He can win a general election. But the timing is now terrible of course.
But I think there is much smoke and mirrors stuff going on at the moment.
... 'that the only hope for national unity and preventing a Corbyn government is for the Tory Remainer MPs to mount a rebellion' ... The difficulty is that the Remainers (assuming you haven't made a typo error MB) are those, including the new-look cabinet, assisting Theresa May in this deceit. It's unlikely that they will rebel.
Yes Loondon, not for the first time, I've mixed up my Leavers and Remainers! lol It's becoming increasingly common as the rebels become loyalists become rebels again, some leavers side with remainers who claim they are leavers and some leavers support the government's plan to leave while still remaining, even though they amend in a way that some say means it is no longer a remain plan. No wonder I got confused! :) So, yes, I meant a Tory Leavers' rebellion is the only hope for the UK.
Have they updated the boundaries yet? If not, I don't think they can win. That was the error May made in following her advisers and the opinion polls in calling the 2017 election.
It's really very concerning the direction this country is taking. Now we have a government proposal to bar "online trolls" from becoming MPs or Councillors. So we can have murderers, ex Jihadis, knife attackers, muggers, bank robbers and rapists becoming MPs but for some reason "online trolls" can't? It wouldn't be so bad if "online trolls" meant people who vost vile abuse...but we know from countless cases that our politically correct authorities consider political invective and making perfectly reasonable arguments about "sensitive" subjects to be "trolling". Under these draconian laws, Aneurin Bevan, Lloyd George, Enoch Powell and Winston Churchill would all have been banned from public office had they posted some of their views online. The most worrying thing is we don't have a single MP who is prepared to stand up for free speech and real democracy.
Jon Sopels bias on full display in this interview. He betrays his true thoughts in every answer.
He also says “In the age we’re living in, we need aggressive impartiality.” In his case that means sneering and mocking Trump rather than just reporting.
Sopel says: "I had to dig out the presidential flight manifest" to prove Trump wrong about where he was just before the Brexit vote. Trump wasn't president in 2016, so why would the "presidential" flight manifest have any bearing on this...Yes, it's easy to make trivial mistakes isn't it, Jon ?
But more to the point, since Sopel is such a pedantic stickler for the truth (assuming he is right about the Trump golf club visit)...can he tell us about all the times he went after Obama on such matters of detail as: not revealing his birth certificate despite 4 years of inquiries and court cases, suppressing all but the barest details of his higher education, why he chose America-hater Rev Jeremiah Wright as his pastor, why he bowed so low to the King of Saudi Arabia, calling his wife Michael, not admitting he went by the name of Barry Soetero for many years, not admitting he was registered as a Muslim at a school in Indonesia, getting his oath of office wrong at the inauguration, what was said during the "tarmac meeting", stating he was unaware of the details of the Trump-Russia investigation, etc etc. That's just for starters...
The BBC news on Radio 2 is featuring a soundbite quote from a professor (I think from Strathclyde University?) saying that if the Labour Party had adopted the full IHRA definition of anti-semitism they could have a avoided lots of silly and irrelevant criticism. Did he really mean to say that?
The Labour Party could adopt a 100 IHRA declarations in full. It will amount to nothing if they welcome into the Party (as they do) more and more followers of Sharia - a system of law based on an ideology that is thoroughly anti-Jewish (as well as anti-Christian and anti-Hindu).
Maitlis on Newsnight - her stunning ignorance on display. She has three guests on - a pro-remain Sandwich Industry jobsworth, a pro-Remain Tory MP and a pro-Leave MP. The first two get complete soft questioning, but she lays into the pro-Leave guy with constant interruption, comic disbelief looks, and suggestions he's talking nonsense. But it's Maitlis who displays her ignorance. She is clearly under the impression that you have to apply the maximum tariffs allowed under WTO rules when you leave the EU...er, no, you don't. That's why they are called a maximum. We can have zero tariffs. And why would we want to make Spanish tomatoes cost more than they need to if we can't produce enough tomatoes ourselves?
I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time she's made this schoolgirl error.
It was clear the sandwich guy's real concern was not having access to cheap EU labour to make their sandwiches. My God! - they might have to invest in robot sandwich makers and that might harm their profits for a couple of years and we all know UK industries can't see more than two years ahead.
I couldn't watch more than five mins of it. The Leave rep seemed to have been especially chosen by Newsnight. I am sure people like Farage and Batten would be happy to come on and explain things but Newsnight seem always to find some media-toxic slightly eccentric Tory.
The BBC saw The Chequers plan as as their best option to support as it became clear the brexit would happen. We may see a shift in coming days/weeks as the second referendum idea gains momentum. They seem to be testing the water by floating the idea on their mainstream programmes. e.g. Jeremy Vine. The One Show.
In war it's a mistake to assume the various actors are in control of events, understand fully the implications of the alliances they make, or are even very good at strategic thinking. Sometimes a big war just gets too complex for people to understand the strategic implications of their actions. I think a similar rule applies to Brexit...
Really a faction of British society - globalist Euro-fanatic soft-leftists - decided to declare war on the democratic process because they didn't like the result of the referendum. The war has gone on and on through various phases - legal, parliamentary, extraparliamentary etc and the narrative has become increasingly complex. The BBC's big guns were certainly on the anti-democratic globalist side. But they don't have a crystal ball. They don't know how to win...
You should have heard Ashdown being interviewed by Peter Hennessy on Radio 4 this morning about his wonderful life and his love of democracy. Hah! Self knowledge, how are you? The man has been a fanatical would-be overturner of democracy since the day of the referendum result. And funnily enough it also came out that he didn't and doesn't much care for David Owen, who by coincidence has been speaking about democracy and the referendum.
So it now transpires that Corbyn was present at the meeting where Peter Willsman ranted about Jewish Trump fanatics.
I first read this on Guido, but although I've not looked extensively elsewhere, it has certainly now also been reported on both Sky News (https://news.sky.com/story/jeremy-corbyn-told-to-expel-ally-peter-willsman-over-anti-semitism-rant-11455287) and the Grauniad (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/31/labour-under-pressure-peter-willsman-antisemitism-remarks).
The BBC report however, at the time of writing, mysteriously ignores this rather key fact: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45014771
It is completely unthinkable that this would not have been reported by the BBC if this scenario was playing out for a right of centre party, and is further confirmation that the BBC, astonishingly, is moving ever further left and more firmly into Corbyn territory than even the Guardian.
Thee BBC are the worlds best at reporting News with key omissions. It is their no.1 fake news tactic. But they have overplayed their hand because an increasing number of their readers, listeners and viewers are wise to it.
I haven't followed all the ins and outs of who was where and who did or said what but it appears someone recorded the NEC meeting. Presumably that wasn't an official recording but something done by a person present at it?
In The Guardian editorial leader today it says “The Guardian is independent of Labour, but an effective Labour party remains absolutely fundamental to the implementation and upholding of the paper’s values in international and domestic affairs.”
Given the close association of the Guardian and The BBC, you could substitute the word(s) BBC in that editorial because I think it sums up why The BBC are so supportive of Labour despite Corbyn, anti-semitism and Marxist traits.
I have said before, I think the BBC's view of the far left can be characterised primarily as "indulgent".
They don't agree with the Corbynista analysis and prescriptions but they like the revolutionary spirit, the obduracy and the fear they can inspire in centrists and conservatives. In short, they like to have them "onside" in a cultural sense.
Obviously anti-semitism is a complex fault line. I think here the old line about "You don't have to be Jewish but it helps..." is relevant. Jews in the soggy left spectrum favoured by the BBC obviously are pained by anti-semitism but people like Chukka Umana obviously (looking at his relative silence on the subject) are not. There are a few non-Jews who side with Jews in the soggy left on this but they are not very numerous. How often do you hear virtue signallers like Yvette Cooper or Stella Creasy reference this? Not much I would say.
The BBC chooses to give prominence to a photo of SWP posters stating "racist Robinson belongs in prison". This is the old "bias by poster" trick the BBC always chooses.
I hope Robinson's lawyers will cite this article as prejudicial to a fair retrial.
Good spot MB. Their use of pics is always critical to the story. Classic propaganda technique. Where TR is concerned, The BBC also get in early with him being the EDL founder/leader and a far right extremist or activist.
It took them quite some time to change the text below the headline, i.e. that TR had plead guilty to contempt, 'even though' he had won his appeal. They can never mention him without putting in a reference to his EDL past. Maybe we should do the same: "The BBC, famous for its comedies in the 1960s,.."
...'Far-right activist Tommy Robinson has been bailed after partly winning an appeal against a finding of contempt of court, which he admitted.' ....
By 'partly' I imagine the BBC is trying to make sure we don't forget the prepared narrative for TR dusted off on every occasion 'Founder of the far-right EDL' etc.
There are a number of questions that arise from this judgement, among them:
1. Why was TR arrested on a breach of peace but that charge was dropped? Was there a political aspect to that decision?
2. How in this day and age can someone end up in prison for 13 months when they have only a few hours to prepare for their trial and the time allowed is not sufficient to engage your personal lawyer?
3. Has anyone else other than TR ever been treated in this manner by a Court - summary charge, trial and judgement, all within 24 hours? I cannot think of any such equivalent case in this century at least.
4. Why are so many of these grooming cases subject to such severe reporting restrictions? As far as I can make out it is because some defendants appear at more than one trial? Is that a good enough reason to trample on freedom of the press? I don't think so.
5. Was there ever any prospect of TR's live streaming "collapsing" the trial in question? I very much doubt it.
6. Was anyone else livestreaming in a similar manner to TR? Were they charged?
7. Why aren't the demonstrations against Tommy Robinson today with people holding placards denouncing him as a racist who belongs in prison (televised by our national broadcasters) considered prejudicial to a fair re-trial? It seems the courts are only interested in fair trials when the defendants are not of TR's sort of background.
8. Why did Judge Brian Leveson initially consider he was qualified to hear TR's appeal even though he had stated clearly in a radio interview that TR was guilty?
Some observations on the BBC's 10PM News item on Tommy Robinson...
The BBC gives time to spokespeople from both Stand Up to Racism and Hope Not Hate without explaining what these organisations are. Why? They are very happy to "explain" TR is "far right" and was a Member of the "far right EDL"...etc etc. But when it comes to these other organisations it's as if they are floating free in the ether.
Stand Up to Racism appears in fact to be controlled by the Muslim Council of Britain and Labour Party MPs or MEPs.
http://www.standuptoracism.org.uk/about/
Its President is Diane Abbott who was widely criticised for her claim that West Indian mothers were more protective of their children than mothers from other ethnic groups, and who has also been criticised for taking her child out of a state school in an inner city school, an area of high immigration, and placing him in a private school.
Also note that, unlike reputable organisations, Stand Up to Racism does not set out the sources of its funding on its "About" page.
If anyone can make sense of the organisational structure of "Hope Not Hate" from their website they are doing better than me! It appears to be made up of a private, profit making company with a charity arm.
Looking at the website, it appears to concentrate its energies almost entirely on hate on the right and not hate on the left or within religious movements. I think a while back they used to have a few token anti Islamist campaigns but they seemed to have given up on those completely. They never tackle left hate e.g. Class War, anti-Jewish leftists etc.
I'm all in favour of people exposing those on the right who wish to overthrow our democracy and pursue the politics of hate. But there are those on the left who want to do that as well. In fact Hope Not Hate seems to be a Far Left organisation.
No wonder the BBC doesn't attempt to explain to the viewers what organisations these people are speaking on behalf of.
His appeal is now downgraded to being "partially" successful...nice touch.
They are playing up the possibility of a "collapse" of grooming trials. I call that BS. The authorities are not going to let any of those trials collapse - it would be a political disaster.
Playing a clip from the pro TR demo previously shown. They seem to accept at least they are losing control of the narrative to social media - at least Gatehouse has some realism.
Gatehouse uses the P word when discussing the grooming gangs but not the I or M word. That is always a clue to structural bias. These gangs have included Somalis, Libyans, Albanians, Afghans and others. They have not included people from Christian, Hindu or Sikh communities. But Gatehouse only uses the P word.
He is claiming the MSM originally put the grooming gang scandal in the public sphere. That's not factually correct. I have always opposed the BNP as a neo-Nazi movement but it is factually the case that it was the BNP that first brought the grooming gang scandal into the public sphere. As a direct result a couple of their leaders were prosecuted for religious hatred. It was only after that (as BNP continued to eat into the Labour vote) that the Labour government changed tack and decided to aggressively prosecute the gangs. The Andrew Norfolk expose was NOT the beginning of public knowledge of the scandal.
To be fair I think Gatehouse is at the top end of BBC journalists. But that's not saying much.
Anonymous - I think we can do better than "The BBC, famous for its comedies in the 1960s,.." - How about "The BBC famous for facilitating Jimmy Savile's crimes from 1964 to 2004"
The Corbyn story was the lead item on the BBC website all morning. Suddenly it’s gone, it was most read story, it’s gone from there too. As we know stories can stay on main page for days, even weeks. This one was dropped suddenly. ( it’s still there if you look hard enough, hidden away on the politics page).
City of London expanding at rapid rate say BBC London News (despite Brexit!) but of course they have to add that calls into question what will happen once Brexit takes place... :)
Personally I tend to cheer when people say our economy will be less dominated by the finance sector. The City's dominance drives a "high pound" policy that damages industry and its exports. It focuses wealth in the already overheated capital. It is a key motor of high immigration which in turn creates dysfunctional effects.
I thought he looked thin!...The wonderful Ezra Levant explains why:
"If there was a fatwa on your head, and your prison food was cooked by prisoners in a Muslim gang, would you eat anything unsealed? Tommy’s family or friends would have arranged for outside food. But starvation, along with solitary confinement, was Theresa May’s order. A scandal."
This is indeed a scandal...a Jihadi target is told by prison authorities to eat food prepared by Jihadis? That's torture, for sure.
It's about 20 mins long - but really, I do recommend it...this is stuff you won't have heard from the BBC...it's incredible how many legal flaws there have been. Ezra Levant is brilliant - where have all the UK journos and lawyers been? Joshua Rosenberg, using his radio programme, just threw Tommy to the wolves with the help of Judge Brian Leveson. Did Amnesty International protect him? No! Thank God for Ezra is all I can say.
You're absolutely correct about Ezra Levant and Rebel Media. It wasn't much but thank goodness I contributed to both Ezra's costs to come to London for Tommy's appeal and to Tommy's legal costs.
One of these days the self styled reporters at the far-left bbc, employer of Jimmy Savile, Sky, Ch4, LBC, the guardian, etc, will also be persecuted by the state and no one will care a damn about them.
Tommy Robinson is a reporter, a better one than they will ever be but because he is better than they are and does a better job of reporting than they do, rather than try to emulate him, they'd rather poor scorn and hatred upon him. They make me sick.
The Rebel Media/Ezra Levant video uses as its starting point the written text (a three page summary) of the appeal hearing by the court. It is, as EL says, written in plain English and is not difficult to understand. It makes for a trusted record of the judgement.
Q. Why has the BBC failed to reprint this document or to tell us of its existence?
Bias by an inability to see outside of the BBC bubble? I’m am afraid Evan Davis revealed his bias very on during BBC 4’s “Sweet Reason” this morning when he introduced Jordan Peterson as “Marmite”. The same adjective could easily be applied to his second guest, Shaista Aziz. Obviously it wasn’t.
Yes, it is by the little things you shall know their dishonesty. :) Marmite could also be applied to Evan Davis. And possibly "cold sick" could as well. Reminds me, we haven't heard much from Mark "No Such Thing As England" Easton recently.
Oh, he is still around writing stories that show his hatred of all things British. There is always an undercurrent of joylessness and evident self loathing to his writings.
Last I heard Easton was rolled out on R4 quite recently was to blame "British Society" for some past child abuse by a doctor in an NHS hospital. Whenever he crops up, you know that it's something significant to protect the BBC narrative. This one was to deflect any blame from rNHS while also getting the boot into the past "British Society". He's really a nasty pos.
Interview of Tommy Robinson by the wonderful Ezra Levant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoAxe0J3k3c
His treatment in prison was scandalous - but what is even worse is that there isn't a single MP, a single BBC journalist, a single human rights lawyer or a single cleric in the land who will condemn that treatment. And even people like Melanie Phillips seem to rejoice in his incarceration.
Have you ever heard Martha Kearney refer to Sinn Fein representatives' criminal records (you know, murder, bombing, maiming, that sort of thing) when interviewing them or quoting them? Nope, neither have I. But she seems very keen to put on air every misdeed and misdemeanour of Tommy Robinson however minor (and compared with Sinn Fein they are minor offences)...wonder why there's this discrepancy? She certainly isn't neutral. Her questions are full of emotive imperatives "But you have to...you must surely recognise...but how would you feel..." and partisan interpretations of the law.
I think you overlook some rare, or comparatively rare, strengths of the BBC in this particular comment of yours, Monkey Brains.
Against all the odds, Sue and Craig have created a very attractive blog on a very unattractive subject, the bias of the BBC - a fair-minded, well written blog, one which is well documented, very varied, a blog which does full justice to harsh realities but which never loses sight of the essential human values, such as kindliness and human decency, which soften the harshness of reality. I'm glad that Sue and Craig don't concentrate all their attention on bias. They examine other aspects as well - isthebbcsuperficial, isthebbcmediocre, isthebbcmoronic - very, very often, the BBC is superficial, mediocre and moronic. I appreciate your incisive contributions to the comments sections, and the comments of other people.
Although you're right to claim that Martha Kearney doesn't refer to the criminality of some Sinn Fein representatives, so far as I'm aware, it wouldn't be fair to claim that the BBC gives a relentlessly biased view of Irish and Northern Irish matters. It's even less fair to claim that the BBC is 'the world's premier Fake News agency.' In the dissemination of fake news, the BBC are beginners compared with so many others, such as the Iranian and Chinese.
On the subject of Northern Ireland, the BBC's record is sometimes heartening. This is about one small area of the world and I'll confine my attention, to begin with, to one single incident.
I was in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. I lived in one of the safest areas, but visits to other areas, above all, Belfast, including some paramilitary areas, left an indelible mark. Not long before I left Northern Ireland, I heard the sound of a massive explosion,followed by another. This was in Coleraine, County Londonderry. The Wikipedia entry on the Coleraine bombing gives a graphic record:
'Railway Road was a scene of carnage and devastation with the mangled wreckage of the Ford Cortina resting in the middle of the street, the bodies of the dead and injured lying in pools of blood amongst the fallen masonry and roof slates, and shards of glass from blown-out windows blanketing the ground and people 'rushing from the scene and others going to tend the wounded who were screaming in agony.'
The provisional IRA claimed responsibility. The bomb which killed and maimed these people had been planted by Sean McGlinchey, who became mayor of Limavady after his release from prison.
The BBC's page on this man and the resistance to him makes no attempt whatsoever to excuse him. The BBC's bias isn't always in evidence. Outright condemnation of a deeply flawed organization may not be the best way of getting an organization to mend its ways and do better - although my own view is that the BBC is so far gone that the prospects of it becoming transformed are remote.
The BBC page 'DUP anger as bomber appointed Limavady mayor' https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-13593097 doesn't give nearly enough detail , but it can't be claimed that it's biased, I'm sure.
A far more adequate BBC page is this one, 'Armed forces chief vows to fight false Northern Ireland claims,' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45050693
This is about the hounding of Northern Ireland veterans, the people who risked their lives during the Troubles and who now face the risk of malicious prosecution. Here, it's not the BBC who should be ashamed, it's the government, for overlooking the devastating effects on these veterans and the potentially devastating effects on military morale and military recruitment.
BBC Web information and commentary may sometimes have strengths, more so than BBC broadcasting, very often, but I wouldn't wish to defend all of it or most of it - so much of it is propaganda. It shouldn't be equated with the propaganda of Goebbels or Stalinist Russia, but it has to be opposed.
BBC bias seems to be becoming a topic of discussion beyond the dedicated blogs such as this one.
There are some interesting examples of alleged bias here and a swipe at Hall and Clementi but Go easy on our nice middle-ground media, is the plea from this one in the London Evening Standard: https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/be-careful-what-you-wish-for-by-going-in-too-hard-against-the-bbc-a3903236.html Well they would say that wouldn't they?
"At the moment, the BBC holds the unenviable position of having both Nigel Farage and declared Communist Ash Sarkar invited to broadcast. It is trying to do balance between various political factions that grow ever more extreme."
I wouldn't have a clue who or what Ash Sarkar is or does if s/he / whatever turned up on my doorstep so seems an odd choice to put up with Farage. How about a well known national political figure such as say, Yvette Cooper or John Mc Donnell or Dianne Abbott? Is Nigel Farage becoming ever more extreme?
Incidentally, mention of Clementi reminds me that Andrew Green of Migration Watch got him to pull some "educational" guidance for teenagers on how to discuss immigration because it was full of BBC agenda and bias. The broader question is why is the BBC advocating for so-called refugees and immigrants in the first place? It has been doing this across radio and television and numerous programmes. Isn't its job to report and inform? It's not supposed to be political and this is a highly political subject.
Thanks for the link to that ES article. It says: Our other great national treasure, the NHS, is worshipped. The BBC used to be. It is now in a weaker position, left exposed by scandals about journalists on plump salaries, on the defensive over accusations of bias and led by a rather wet director-general in Tony Hall and invisible chair David Clementi. But if we, the public, continue this assault, we risk diminishing the centre ground in British media.
But that last sentence misses the entire point. It no longer occupies the centre ground!
There was another piece, in the Daily Mail, about lower BBC audience numbers. From the comments I've read (too many to read all),there are plenty about bias and scrapping the licence fee and some well- thought out opinions and suggestions.
Is the BBC toxic? Tonight on Radio 4 at 10 15: Is English Nationalism Toxic? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bclbms "... Nick Cohen, columnist for the Observer and Simon Heffer, columnist for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, to debate the question 'Is English Nationalism Toxic?'"
Can anyone bear to listen? I think I'll stick with Radio 3 - there was a really good Jazz Record Requests followed by the Preservation Hall Band from New Orleans (finished now but on iPlayer) and even better, Louis Armstrong with his All Stars at midnight, then back to classical with a concerto for three cellos, followed by a Beethoven symphony. And that's without the Proms - and Bach playing at the monent.
Salvini demonstrated the two apparently contradictory skills that any successful populist politician needs: a core message, and the willingness to adapt or abandon this message whenever the need arises.
A sweeping generalisation. Biased and opinion rather than fact. This sort of writing is all too common on The BBC.
"Felines, nothing more than felines..."as Morris Albert used to sing...
ReplyDeleteBBC Trending:
ReplyDeleteDescribing the Tory Remainers who defied the Conservative whip and voted against the Government-backed amendments not as "rebels" but governemnt loyalists.
Desribing the Tory Leavers who supported the Government-backed amendments as "rebels".
Justin Webb accidentally referring to the Tory Remainer Rebels as Remainers and not as advocates for a soft Brexit. Slap on wrist for Justin.
Despite the £5 billion in its coffers, BBC has no interest in investigating where the resources (houses, GP surgeries, hospitals, schools, roads, trains, buses, parks, leisure centres) are going to come to serve the latest 280,000 net migrant arrivals (minimum) over the last year. BBC seems to think the infrastructure drops out of the sky. But if one Polish nurse returns to Cracow because of Brexit, that is a national disaster.
Also no interest in how come the moribund post-Brexit economy continues to prove so attractive to millions of migrants from overseas...
BBC Fakes News: reporter claims that Trump said Putin was "extremely strong and powerful" rather than that Putin's denial was "extremely strong and powerful".
Christmas has come early. Brexit campaign broke electoral law. Referred to Police for further investigation. Put up the bunting. Roll out the barrel. Fiesta time is here. What's that you say? Electoral Commission refuse to investigate similar claims against Remain campaign lodged with them by Priti Patel? Sorry...you're cracking up...can't hear you...
We have heard very little from Jeremy Corbyn lately. His vision for Brexit was to remain in the single market and the customs union. Ditto the Lib Dems, who wanted the referendum decision reversed so that we stayed firmly in the EU.
ReplyDeleteHave their voices become a distraction to the BBC, who now have their eyes set on the biggest prize of all - the softest of soft Brexits, a policy for the UK of acquiescence to the all-powerful EU?
The only real political debate at present seems to be about Leave or Remain - a strange derivation of two party politics. Even stranger is the overwhelming favouritism and preference that the BBC shows towards the Remain group at the expense of the democratic alternative.
It's possible that the BBC are adding fuel to the flames, a beacon heralding the collapse of the Conservative Party into its two opposing factions - Leave and Remain. If the Conservatives were to self-destruct in this way, then the way would be clear for a Corbyn government. If this is the case, the BBC should be careful what they wish for.
DeleteI just heard Stephen Gethins (SNP spokesman) on the BBC News channel describe 'Brexiteer Conservatives' opposed to Theresa May's soft Brexit as 'Hard Right'. His view, which coincides closely with The BBC's own, seeks to label MPs who wish to carry out the will of the majority thus.
ReplyDeleteSomeone suggested that this story - "UKIP councillor Stephen Searle guilty of killing wife" (they don't even bother with the "former" UKIP councillor) was designed to damage UKIP:
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1019221010346926081?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1019221010346926081&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbiasedbbc.org%2Fblog%2F2018%2F07%2F16%2Fstart-the-week-open-thread-16th-july-2018%2Fcomment-page-4%2F%23comments
Bit paranoid you might think...so I tried googling on Councillor + found + guilty and was amazed to find that the only miscreant Councillors given their party labels were UKIP and DUP in the ones I looked at! So maybe not so paranoid after all!
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Councillor+found+guilty&ei=Ow5OW-SNOMP5gQac57yACg&start=20&sa=N&biw=1600&bih=743
Why couldn't they have reported it as 'man' found guilty? It's not as if they don't have precedents!
ReplyDeleteSorry, "Man" is only used for crimes they wish to cover up...Whodunnit is always mandidit in those cases.
Delete'Man' is making a return tonight. The 4th-placed story on the BBC News website is headlined:
DeleteMan guilty of plot to kill PM
Here's one I've nicked from Biased BBC. A variant: " Bolton men".
Deletehttps://biasedbbc.org/blog/2018/07/18/midweek-and-t-robinson-thread-18th-july-2018/comment-page-2/#comment-930752
Another gem from a commenter on Biased BBC: "A college drop-out" who planned to kill the PM in revenge for a death in Syria.
DeleteDamn these hippies! lol
DeleteThere's another unusual use of wording here in this BBC News website headline:
ReplyDelete... 'Cliff Richard: Ruling on singer's suing of the BBC due' ...
Should the wording be something like:
... 'The outcome of Cliff Richard's claim for damages against the BBC is due to be announced by the High Court' ... ?
Damages to Sir Cliff have been awarded of £190,000 from the BBC for invasion of privacy over the helicopter coverage of the police raid on his home. The judge awarded him £20,000 aggravated damages because of the sheer arrogance of the BBC nominating the story for the Royal Television Society’s ‘Scoop of the Year’ award... From Guido.
DeleteAs usual the sting is in the tail - legal costs, for which the BBC will be liable, are estimated at £5 million. I can't see anywhere an apology from the BBC - only 'that they may appeal'.
Also, was there any reprimand or disciplinary action taken against the BBC reporter Dan Johnson, who, as a result of a tip-off from someone within the South Yorkshire Police, 'broke the story'? No, on the contrary, his career seems to have flourished with appearances over the Grenfell Tower disaster, and more recently the Thai cave drama.
Who will pay out these £millions of legal costs, and much more besides if the BBC take the matter to appeal?
And the apology should be twofold: to Cliff Richard and to the license-payers.
DeleteThe BBC are still brazen on this, their website story says it is a dark day for journalism, they are talking about dangerous precedents on the news bulletins and are using Jeremy Vine to push their side of the story. Having been found guilty, which other organisation would try to shape opinion and influence in such an overt way? Once again they are using their channels as propaganda.
ReplyDeleteWhat are they up to? I am sure the BBC previously did not refer to Soubry, Greive and the others as "Remainers"...but they do now...I am pretty sure they have only started this recently...must be an editorial decision. Is the intent to blur the boundaries? Remember, most of them still claim to respect the Referendum result and indicate they are not trying to frustrate its implementation...previously they have hidden behind legal challenges, the rights of Parliament, amendments from the Lords, various process aspects...but maybe that's it, maybe the BBC are now trying to condition the public to the idea of the Referendum result being overturned by first admitting that there is a Remain lobby trying to keep us fully in the EU.
ReplyDeleteAnyone else noticed this change in usage? Previously they tended to refer to them as "rebel Tories", "opponents of hard Brexit", "those wishing to keep us in the Single Market" and so on.
They have switched labels for a reason.
DeleteI think it may be cleverly hidden side taking by the BBC. If Brexiteers are now labelled as rebels, the remainers become loyalists.
Yes, we have already seen pro Brexit Conservative MPs labelled as hard right.
DeleteYes, the BBC were straight on to labelling Brexiteers as the rebels and portraying the Soubryites as a loyalists...which meant they got tied up in knots when the Government accepted the "rebel" amendments and rejected the "loyalist" ones. The BBC were a bit caught out there. I think perhaps the change in label indicates that the BBC had been hoping they could connect May, loyalty and Remainerism, the better to confuse the public.
DeleteFrom the Mail:
ReplyDelete"Figures show foreign-born mothers accounted for 28.4% of live births last year"
Can't find this story covered on the BBC Website.
I suspect they will bury that stat.
DeleteBlatant bias on BBC 10o’click news tonight.
ReplyDeleteKatya Adler saying that if we crash out if EU without a deal, our planes might not fly, our goods will be stuck in docks and we won’t have access to security intelligence.
No mention that the EU would be hit harder than us. Even arch remainer in chief, Mark Carney admitted that today.
Totally one sided with no balance. Her excuse previously is that she is BBC Europe editor so has to take the EU/European stance and view.
Utter rubbish and disingenuous.
Then on Newsnight, rather than focussing on Boris's speech, they have a cosy, soft as a cuddly toy bear interview with Bullshitter in Chief Chris Patten allowing him essentially to call Boris a liar.
DeleteI’ve screen shotted it in case it changes but there’s a classic example of BBC photo bias on the BBC news app at the moment covering the story “Johnson - it’s not too late to save Brexit.”
ReplyDeleteThere’s an MP behind him (who happens to be my MP) with his head in his hands. Problem is I’ve watched the speach and he was nodding and smiling all the way through, they must have selected that one still specifically for that gesture. Obviously the BBC would deny it but we all know it happens all the time. #Bias by photo selection.
Why does the BBC always use the phrase ‘crash out of brexit without a deal’. I’ve heard it used three times this morning.
ReplyDeleteIs it because ‘crash’ implies something bad whereas ‘leave’ is too neutral and passive for the BBC narrative and stance?
Yes.
Delete"Without a deal" also suggests something less than desirable, whereas "on WTO rules" is neutral.
DeleteSimon Jack on WATO...he's a serial high profile offender in the bias stakes. He said it will be "absolutely catastrophic" if we leave the EU with no deal, on WTO terms. Now call me resilient but I tend to think of "absolute catastrophes" as world wars, major earthquakes with hundreds of thousands dead, major tsunamis, an asteroid strike...that sort of thing. I don't call a shortage of grapes from France or a lorry park near Dover an "absolute catastrophe".
ReplyDeleteIf the IMF report had been focussed entirely on the potential negative effects of Brexit on the UK, I have a feeling that it would have been in the News section on the front page. As it is, I can only find it under "Business" and even then only under the "Experts" section, not as a separate news item...odd that!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44884830
The Blair Broadcasting Corporation in full swing on Newsnight. Happy for him to waffle away about Brexit but tougher with him on Iraq.
ReplyDeleteChris Mason (the BBC's laughingly named Reality Check chief) was being interviewed by John Humphries on Today today about 6.30am (those "two way" are a good way to smuggle in opinion, as we know).
ReplyDeleteOn this occasion though, he had to respond to a question about Leo Varadka's absurd suggestion that Ireland was going to deny the UK access to its airspace in the event of no deal. A moment's glance at an air space map will tell you how daft an idea that is.
Mason was put in a difficult ethical position. His Euro-religion prevents him from uttering anything deprecatory about any pro-EU EU leader or the EU Commission or against the EU negotiating stance. But clearly on an intellectual level he could see this was just about the daftest thing said in relation to the EU negotiations so far by anyone. He sounded embarrassed as he tried to find a response that wouldn't offend his religious principles. The best he could do was aver that people on "this side" weren't too happy about the proposal...
Maybe he knew Adonis and Campbell would be listening in, taking names...maybe he was just intimidated.
Pathetic, biased, wrong.
Just about every Reality Check published is now anything but. It states the BBCs reality which is something completely different.
DeleteJust had to share this...from Breitbart. A survey showing that Londons - yes that wonderful citadel of progressive thought that the BBC wants the rest of the country to emulate - is the LEAST socially tolerant and progressive region of any in the country?
ReplyDeleteJust goes to show why the BBC progressive lobby, the Eastons, the Maitlises, the Davises, and all the rest of them, for all their efforts, have simply been digging a very large hole, in which their [progressive values are going to be buried.
If you're puzzled by the results remember London has the largest RoP population in the UK and also the highest representation of African/Caribbean evangelical churches.
https://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/07/20/research-londoners-least-tolerant-gay-couples-religious-differences/
Yes, London has an identity crisis. Immigration has brought native intolerances from many different cultures and from many different countries. How many people in London any longer identify themselves as English?
DeleteThe British Open is on and the BBC are focussing on Tiger Woods. He’s not on the leaderboard and he’s not in the top 100 rankings but he ticks the right boxes so he gets top billing.
ReplyDeleteThe most interesting, but depressing, couple of weeks in UK politics for a long time found me stuck in a gîte half-way up a mountain in the French Jura with perfect BBC reception via Freesat but utterly bereft of wi-fi. Am now catching up via ITBBCB? & Guido - glad to find the 'Open-Threaders' share my enthusiasm for Kuenssberg & Co's coverage of May's betrayal!
ReplyDeleteA new "news comedy" programme on Radio 4 ("Where's the F in News?")...a tried and trusted formula as far as the BBC are concerned (HIGNFY, Mock the News, News Quiz, The Mash Report) which allows them to pump out biased news in industrial quantities. Any criticisms of the format can be laughed off - "where's your sense of humour?").
ReplyDeleteWell this was the usual liberal-left trash dressed up as humour. Mostly seemed focussed on Trump and Brexit, with a bit of race grievance thrown in ...what a surprise. Given it was an all-woman format the bitching against Melania Trump wasn't exactly sisterly. There was also an express desire to see Trump killed (the sort of stuff that can trigger vulnerable types to act out such fantasies as we saw previously with one of our own disturbed types going over to the States with that in mind, or at least he tried to grab a gun off a Police officer at a Trump event).
Only just found out the presenter Jo Bunting is the producer from HIGNFY - so one wouldn't have expected anything else...v. low grade "humour".
I heard the start of that and turned it off once I realised it wasn't Dead Ringers but one of their awful comedian / panel programmes.
DeleteIn case anyone missed that opportunity for a bit of Trump bashing, the lead item on Radio 4 news was about a tweet from Trump about his former lawyer. I mean, how ridiculous is this Trump obsession! Who writes this trivia and thinks it's news?
It's weird isn't it? On the one hand the BBC believes we are a European nation that should be a fully paid up member of the EU and pursue our own agenda...but on the other they are completely obsessed with American politics and culture, and act as though we were the 51st state of the union.
DeleteNormal balanced panel on Newsnight...
ReplyDeleteFive Remainers (including the Chair, Emily Maitlis of course) versus one Leaver (a not v. media-savvy slightly eccentric type, rather than say Nigel Farage or Juliet Hartley-Brewer).
Yes, a typical Newsnight panel.
DeleteAnd what a way to introduce the one Leaver:
"Christopher Montgomery is a Conservative who's worked for the DUP as well as for Vote Leave - a body just this week referred to the police and fined."
Again, the wording is carefully constructed to mislead - implying that Vote Leave has been fined as a result of having been referred to the police.
DeleteMontgomery is good. He doesn't mince or waste his words. I wish we saw more of him.
DeleteI'm just checking out the BBC News website. I think they must be in a state of some turmoil. There are no Brexit stories on their home page or UK page. There's Brexit stuff on their Politics page but most of it is two days old. Let's not forget this is a news organisation with hundreds of millions of pounds at its disposal!
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing about Raab's ultimatum to the EU (no withdrawal payments if no trade deal).
I'm getting the feeling this is the moment when the Remainer citadel is starting to fall...we'll see. No doubt they have some counter-attacks ready.
One clue to BBC thought processes - after a v. brief honeymoon when it looked like the Remainers were in the ascendant, when they chose some photos of Theresa May looking relaxed and confident they are back to the edgy, anxious pics of May.
You're right - they'll be showing her in hideous hyper-close-up soon!
DeleteWe need to be aware just how much the media in the UK is being squeezed by the globalist PC elite. They have already turned the Mail on Sunday into a pro-EU anti-Boris vehicle. The Daily Mail is gradually following suit now they have a new Remainer editor. The Express has been taken over by the Mirror Group and is now being gradually "turned" as well. And of course the globalise PC lobby already have the BBC, Sky, ITV, Mirro, Guardian, Global news, and Independent in their pocket. Leaves the Telegraph which is in truth all over the place with no consistent line.
ReplyDeleteJust found this recent tweet from Gerard Batten, UKIP leader:
"My supporters sometimes ask why I am not interviewed in the newspapers? Six weeks ago I did a long interview for the Sunday Express. It never appeared. The editor was overruled by the new Mirror Group owners, who are pro EU. This tells you all you need to know about the press."
The BBC obsesses about who controls Sky, but really we should be far more concerned about who is controlling the news agenda. There are a lot of "dark forces" at work - pro-globalist billionaires, Saudi and Qatari investors, plus Russian and CHinese Government cyphers controlling our media.
Correct! For which reason I have just joined Tory Party in hope of contributing to deselection of my sitting MP &, if possible, voting against the treacherous May.
DeleteIt is clear from Raab's lame appearance on Maar that Conservative HQ is quite happy to have a biased Electoral Commission - now, why would that be?
Sorry, make that 'Marr'!
DeleteThis Youtube clip has appeared on the Not a Sheep link:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pImRwD4eQTo&feature=youtu.be
The speaker equates denial of free speech to a one way only protection racket. Efforts by any group opposing the far-left to make their voices heard is met with violence. This should ring a few bells in the UK. Pro Brexit voices can seldom be heard.
We have already heard Geert Wilders being told that 'his safety cannot be assured' if he comes to the UK.
Delete6pm BBC1 News. Kuenssberg & Co have clearly realised that the Chequers proposals concede most of what Remainers wanted - even Martine Croxall must have worked that one out - so are 'normalizing' May's proposals by forgetting to mention that they are extremely unpopular - not least with Tory voters.
ReplyDeleteSo that's the "new line"? I think they've been a little unsure since the resignations whether to support the Chequers plan or not...it is a risky strategy because of course it looks like the EU are going to reject it...the more the BBC big up the plan as a a fair and reasonable framework for an agreement, the more unfair and unreasonable an EU rejection will appear to the GBP (Great British Public).
DeleteOf course I may have been fooled yet again by May. Perhaps it's all choreography and Merkel has told her they will accept it nearly whole after some shadow boxing.
Later in that 6 pm bulletin I heard project apocalypse... medicines are being stockpiled, food not yet but needs to be in case UK “crashes” out with no deal. The correspondent had the nerve to tell us that the Government was scared to tell us these things in case of alarm. They think we are fools! These messages are just what May wAnts us to hear ... get behind her merkel approved chequers deal or face the apocalypse.
DeleteWe have had several glimpses in recent weeks of Mays ruthless duplicity. I am 100% sure that remainbbc’s messages are coordinated with her.
As a leading news organisation with professional journalists surely the BBC should be reporting that we leave with a WTO deal or we leave with an EU deal. I think those are the two options.
DeleteI'm not sure 'crash out" without a deal is an outcome.
Indeed. And the BBC should have pointed out what is in Article 50:
Delete"The Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union." You'll see that there is only one single agreement referred to and that it should take into account the framework for its future relationship between the EU and the UK. So where did all this bull about "sequencing" come from, separating our settling of accounts with the EU from future trade? And why did our useless government agree to the sequencing?
It’s ok, Everything will be fine. May’s taken over the negotiations from DeExEU and the BBC are supportive.
DeleteYes, Newsnight has a very balanced approach...Maitlis (is she fearful of losing her job? - she seems to have turned up her bias knob to 11) introduced the usual "Brexit Is Horrible" item with a negative reference to the Brexit Bus and a use of the word "disaster" to describe what potentially faces us as a result of the Brexit vote. She, a Remainer, then interviewed ex Guardian pro-Remain Nick Watts and Fully Paid Up Remainiac Sarah Woolaston about the issues. No Brexiters in evidence, so that's all right.
DeleteI am becoming increasingly concerned about the way May operates - the deceit levels are possibly worse than in any other prime ministership: fooling us that David Davis was undertaking negotiations...now manipulating public opinion with a second Project Fear...but tying this all into her wider extremist PC agenda (which of course doesn't fit at all with her Big Lie of supposedly trying to reduce net migration to under 100,000).
No one can say for sure what lasting damage will be done to your democracy - all for what? To keep us closely bound to the EU, in contravention of the clear meaning of the Referendum vote.
Today, this morning. "Cosy chat" interview with John McDonnell by Justin Webb (I think). Only problem was McDonnell misspoke and said clearly the Labour Party was antisemitic. :) Will the BBC be as unforgiving of this slip of the tongue as they were of Trump's recent "misspoke" moment? Hmmm...let me have a think about that for one ten thousandth of a second...er, no.
ReplyDeleteOT, but any techy types know why I can get automatically recognised and published here via my Mac Mini, but nothing, not anon or the other options, are any good now via my iPhone or iPad? No biggie, but this site can inspire me when out and about too.
ReplyDeleteI’ve found that you have to log in to your blogger/google account on your iPhone. You then have to choice to ‘reply as:’
DeleteTVM.
Delete... turns to google to find out how to do that....
It was not always the case.
Ever since I was asked to connect my devices on 'the cloud', no end of grief has ensued.
Sorted. Tx for the tip.
DeleteWhen a "Tory" MP is accused of something, blazon it across the headline.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-42818293
When a Labour MP is accused of something, refer to them simply as an MP and bury the Labour connection in a convoluted paragraph halfway through the story.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-44957896
Well and truly buried, no mention on BBC 1 News tonight
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/25/how-can-the-left-get-heard-amid-the-bbcs-political-mudslinging
ReplyDeleteThe Guardians Zoe Williams says "The Daily Politics show is no more, but the corporation’s current affairs programmes are still dominated by rightwing commentators and agendas"
In the article she claims that journalists from The Express and The Telegraph represent the far right.
Do the left liberals truly believe this or is it all part of the game?
All part of the "deadly game" as I would call it, since the game ends with the death of British culture which can be traced back with some certainty over the last 1500 years and which has produced some real wonders like Chaucer, the Shakespeare cannon, the English translation of the Bible, a rich vein of humorous writing, including Dickens of course, and lots of excellent music and songs from Gilbert and Sullivan to Elgar to the Beatles and their contemporaries. We can then add to that our common law our parliamentary democracy, staging the first major republican revolution against a monarch...thousands of life-changing inventions...I am going to have to stop before this gets out of hand - but all the stuff the BBC refuses to celebrate, in essence.
DeleteWhether useful idiots like Zoe Williams realise that's how the game ends, with the death of British culture, I don't know. I've seen her on TV. She seems quite pleasant if daft. Maybe she thinks somehow British culture is preserved as part of a wonderful new World Culture that is emerging. I've got a question for her: what Shakespeare play will be approved for performance in this new World Culture where all offence must be avoided?
If Zoe were brave enough to come on here and defend her opinion I would point out Newsnight has panels to discuss Brexit composed of 5 Remainers and one Leaver or 3 Remainers and no Leavers. And why does Newsnight always goes to the New York Times and CNN for info on the USA, and never to Fox News. Newsnight accepts the claims of organisations like Black Lives Matters, the Democratic Party, the EU, Antifa, Hope Not Hate, Greenpeace, the TUC, the Women's Equality Party and so on with virtually no oversight at all.
Andrew Neil is about the only person who could be described as a right winger on the BBC staff. And he's going. But remember Neil was editor of the Econmoist. He's really a globalist at heart with a strong attachment to capitalism. He's just less prepared to go along with the PC/leftist/no borders nonsense in the way younger globalists are. But he's in no way a populist right winger. A populist right winger could never get a job on the BBC.
Econmoist = Economist! lol I think I prefer my misspelling! :)
DeleteJust an aside really...you might think the BBC is the most biased prominent broadcaster in the UK. But I think Global News - who provide news services for many outlets including Classic FM - definitely give them a run for their money.
ReplyDeleteApropos the story about the acid attack on the toddler in Worcester, Global News reported that (I paraphrase) "Initially there were fears it was connected with a demonstration by the English Defence League in the town.."
I haven't heard that suggested by Police, or on the internet or by any other broadcaster. But that was their first bullet point!
There are no clear clues as to why Global News is so rabidly PC and globalist in its outlook. Its owners are very rich people with no high profile in politics as far as I can make out. It might be a case of "this is what journalists do if you let them" - a bit like Sky News which doesn't seem to have any effective oversight. If anyone knows anything more about Global News I will be interested to hear that.
Incidentally our rules of sub judice, fair hearings, contempt of court etc just seem to be in a state of total confusion. We've had all sorts of info released about this acid attack case, including info reported as being from the police that it involved a dispute between different communities. It will definitely have coloured the views of any potential jurors. But TR is serving 13 months for something that would have had close to zero effect on the trial he was referencing.
And today's word on Today is... "problematic" - such a useful word!
ReplyDeleteUsed by the lady from Chatham House (now there's a surprise, the BBC going to Chatham House for advice on "problematic" countries, despite CH's long record of getting things wrong e.g. on the so-called "Arab Spring") when referring to the election of Imran Khan,with the full bakcing of the military. The word "problematic" was being used mainly to gloss over his pro-Sharia views.
I feel an increased level of disgust for the BBC as they continue to publicise their defendant's role in the High Court case brought by Sir Cliff Richard - pretending to be the injured party. The BBC have already said earlier today that they will seek to appeal the Judgement. Just now, another breaking news 'story', prominently positioned (in fact the main headline) on the subject has appeared on the BBC News website:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44963548
... 'Sir Cliff Richard: BBC agrees to pay £850,000 legal costs' ...
Not only is there no sign of regret or remorse for having wrecked Sir Cliff's life, and that there will have been a court order for costs which will have been served on the BBC, cynically, they take the opportunity to re-run their defence, which so clearly failed to cut any ice in court:
... 'The raid was part of an investigation into historical child sex allegations.' ...
The photograph shows Cliff Richard as if he is praying - a clear jibe at his Christian faith. To cap it all, right next to the image of Cliff Richard, is another headline and photograph for another story (Features) carried by the BBC News website:
.... 'I was given HIV at eight - and couldn't tell a soul' ...
Accompanying this headline is a photo of a male youngster aged about 8, 9 or 10 years old - without any photo credit at all. There is no doubt in my mind that this is no coincidence. As we often say, nothing happens by accident so far as the BBC are concerned. It is intended as an item to shore up the Cliff Richard matter.
Incidentally, I gather that in order to appeal, the BBC will be required to make a fresh application to the Appeal Court directly. Who will be paying for that?, we ask.
MB' mention of Donald Trump below reminds me there was another would-be subliminal message in the BBC Article about Sir Cliff:
Delete... The BBC wants to challenge the judge's findings, including that Sir Cliff had a right to privacy while a suspect in a police investigation - trumping the broadcaster's right to freedom of expression to publish his name and cover the raid.' .... Is this an association between DT and Sir Cliff politically speaking?
BBC giving Imran Khan the old soft-pedal treatment..."Five things to know about Imran Khan."
ReplyDelete1. He went to Oxford.
2. He was a famous cricketer.
3. He tried the old charity dodge of setting up a cancer hospital.
4. He founded and led the PTI party which grew steadily under his leadership.
5. He's hoping to be Pakistan's next PM.
What an informative list!
Well that wasn't v. informative was it? How about he is strongly supportive of Sharia law? That he married Jemima Goldmsith? That he was found by an American court to have fathered an illegitimate child who he refused to acknowledge? That the Pakistan Taliban named him as their preferred representative in talks with the government? Or that it has been widely alleged in Pakistan that he is the candidate of the military and that he has been given preferential treatment as a result?
Nope that's not the dope according to the BBC.
Can you imagine them holding back if equivalent things were true of Trump?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-44966301/pakistan-election-five-things-to-know-about-imran-khan
The BBCs 2nd highest paid presenter is calling for a second referendum. Instead of reminding him of his contractual obligations regarding conflict of interest and impartiality, they give him a prominent and supportive news article.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44957901
I think you have to see things from the point of view of these ageing presenters. If Lineker had not put himself firmly in the van of "progressive" politics he would long ago have been replaced by someone from an ethnic minority or a woman. It was a smart career move. The choice is stark: PC or P45. Can you imagine how long a BBC presenter would last if they announced they supported UKIP's policies? There is no evidence Lineker actually believes any of the nonsense he comes out with, but his agent must be relieved he does.
DeleteYou may be right but I suspect he is a believer.
DeleteIt still winds me up that BBC lead stories are regularly about themselves. Three of the top stories today are about them.
Cliff Richard
Logan Paul interview (who?)
Gary Lineker
Yeah there are lots that don’t share an opinion and the population voted 48% to 52% there must be lots of secret leave and remain voters knocking around, even at the BBC.
DeleteNo, that's the problem, I doubt there is even one person with any influence who voted leave, I'd be surprised if they even know anyone who voted leave. Anyone who admitted voting leave would probably have their career prospects severely limited as they would be branded as a far-right bigot.
DeleteThe misleadingly worded item on the BBC News website ... 'Sir Cliff Richard: BBC agrees to pay £850,000 legal costs' ... has been drastically relegated in its importance since the Judge refused Right to Appeal. You can find it tucked well away from view on the Arts and Entertainment pages.
ReplyDeleteThe near disappearance of this much heralded story has presented the BBC with something of a challenge. It has been parked into the Arts and Entertainment pages for the time being. There will be committees and focus groups hard at work within their walls charged with finding a suitable off-beat follow-up narrative. 'How often are Appeals successful?' might be one, or, 'Is the judiciary straight-jacketed by outdated precedents?'. Such a diversionary story would of course mention [the BBC's perceived injustice] of the Cliff Richard case, and repeat the false accusations made by the BBC against him whist focussing upon one of the BBC's favourite narratives.
DeleteHad the outcome of yesterday's court hearing been different (unlikely I know because the Judge is unlikely to grant an appeal upon anything lacking in his own judgement), then this story would have continued to have pride of place as a headline on the BBC News website Homepage.
Reportage of this case goes beyond the BBC's everyday bias that this site records so effectively. It has become a bitter attack upon Sir Cliff and all that he stands for - an by extension, criticism of his supporters as well. He deserves a proper apology not some mumbo jumbo muttered into the pavement from a carefully prepared statement.
Simon Jack is one of the most biased presenters on the BBC. This latest piece of baloney (ha-ha) regarding the "Brexit threat to sandwiches" is a classic:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44960293
Does anyone seriously think the EU is going to illegally prevent trade in salad vegetables, thus harming its member states' agriculture?
I can't think of any other scenario specifically related to Brexit where major "disruption" might occur.
The article applies appallingly low journalistic standards. Here we are talking about an economic issue, and the article has anonymous sources which could easily be made up for all we know:
""The soundings we are getting from government is that if we are facing disaster, we could simply extend Article 50 (the two-year Brexit stopwatch that started running when it was triggered in March 2017), said one."
Said one, some say!
One reason for anonymity might be the sources know they are scaremongering (for their own interests - not wishing to be exposed to world competition) but don't want to go on record and make fools of themselves by being caught out in a lie.
Also the article fails to set out to explain the mechanism by which ports will be "overwhelmed" in the event of Brexit.
Well unusually for a Brexit scare story, there is a "Have Your Say" and, as one might expect, comments could be going better. This is a representative comment:
"£4Bn a year in licence fees demanded with menaces for this tripe."
Not surprisingly, although the comments were quickly closed when the BBC saw just how negative the reaction was.
According to Wikipedia "Before entering journalism, Jack worked for a decade as a corporate and investment banker in London, New York and Bermuda. He has said that he neither liked the work, nor showed much ability at it" A failed offshore banker with a self-confessed low skill level...perfect for the tax-dodging, low achievement BBC.
No, no, no ... You, and I, are wrong, as usual, and the BBC is right. How do I know that? Well, they told me...
Delete"Many thanks for getting in touch regarding the BBC News Website article 'Brexit threat to sandwiches'.
I understand you felt it was inappropriate to quote unnamed sources within the article.
The use of anonymous sources is a standard and long standing journalistic practice. Occasionally our news reports must protect the identity of interviewees, particularly if they’re speaking on a controversial or sensitive subject.
In these instances we conduct appropriate background research and take it in good faith that the interviewee is offering a reliable account of their story.
Impartiality is the cornerstone of our news and current affairs output. News teams aim to identify a range of significant views rigorously and fairly on behalf of the audience. A fundamental part of the role of our correspondents and editors, such as our Business Editor Simon Jack, is to offer analysis, using their experience and knowledge, but this is not indicative of bias or 'fake news'.
With regard to the Wikipedia page on Simon, as this is not related to the BBC and the website is available for third party editing, we are unable to offer any comment.
We do appreciate your feedback and please be assured that I have made your complaint available to the production team on our daily Audience Feedback Report that is circulated right across the BBC.
Thank you for taking the time to contact the BBC."
That's me told then...
So implementing the result of a democratic referendum in line with the statements of all party leaders, government statements, legislation and an HM Government leaflet sent to every household is now "controversial" and "sensitive" according to the BBC! lol Only to Guardian readers, mate.
DeleteIf I were you I'd reject the response and ask them if anyone senior to Jack has reviewed his sources and how Jack doesn't know he's being used by these anonymous sources who may be lying for their own purposes.
If you haven't already, please read this:
ReplyDeletehttps://brexitcentral.com/eu-wants-negotiate-government-no-room-whatsoever-concessions/
IDS never struck me as 'hard-right', or 'a rebel', but these comments, coming from a Conservative Brexiteer, seem to me to be a fair assessment of the state of play.
Yes, a fair assessment. It seems extraordinary that a UK PM would offer £40 billion as final settlement in the absence of a trade deal, when there isn't a single provision in EU law requiring us to make such a payment.
DeleteI am not oonvinced the current Barnier roadblock is for real. It could be part of the sham negotiations.
I agree MB. I think its a done deal other than a few loose ends for Raab & Barnier to clear up to make it look like real negotiations. May signed off the deal behind close doors with Merkel and Juncker. Softest possible Brexit, customs union for goods and trade, regulatory alignment for services, £39b already conceded.
DeleteWhich is why the BBC have given a sigh of relief and gone relatively quiet and onside with the Government.
Yes. And also, why, I would surmise although there has been much talk recently about preparations for a "no deal" result you'll have noticed that Airbus, BMW and all the other corporate whingers have gone strangely silent...it's almost as if they know a deal has been done... :)
DeleteI'm very much afraid you're right. The only hope would be for Tory MPs, of both factions, to be given such a drubbing by their constituents over the summer that they realise that, if they want to stand any chance of re-election, they have to dump May & the Chequers proposals now. If they've been reading the letters section of the Telegraph they should be very worried indeed, & there's no comfort to be had from the polls.
DeleteJon Sopel calls Michael Cohen "Trumps ex-lawyer and personal bag carrier". That wording betrays bias.
ReplyDeleteBBC News gives more prominence to the story than to the US economy growing at 4.1% or $209billion for the first 3 months.
That shows bias.
I just loved that 4.1% figure. Even the dumbo newsreaders knew they had to read it like they were describing the people who attended a funeral. :) And of course the BBC have not exactly being leading with that important story. :) I am now expecting an apology from the 314 economists that Newsnight has had on telling us Trump would be bad for the American economy. :)
DeleteSopel's wording betrays bias? Oh yes it does doesn't it? This story could be told as a professional who has completely abandoned his code of ethics and sought to compromise his client. The whole idea of a lawyer-client relationship is that the client tells the lawyer something in his own words without necessarily compromising themselves in terms of the lawfulness of their actions. Liberals used to have this as one of their central tenets of a free society as opposed to a fascistic or totalitarian one. It seems Sopel is keen to abandon this principle and find out what Trump said to his lawyer. :) Can we please apply that to all criminal cases in this country as it will definitely up the Met Police's appallingly low 9% conviction rate! :)
I had to have a chuckle at the BBC News report tonight on fake news which appears to be blaming mainly social media. The correspondong BBC website article says
ReplyDelete“The report warns that the "relentless targeting of hyper-partisan views, which play to the fears and prejudices of people, in order to influence their voting plans" is a threat to democracy.”
Pot calling kettle black - but of course the irony is lost on them.
I've heard several fake news bits on the BBC recently, that all went unchallenged.
DeleteAmong them, Blair Peach was apparently "murdered". As far as I know, no authority or court in this land has ever suggested he was murdered. Murder does require an intent, or implied intent (as in, well you should realise you could kill someone), to kill someone of course.
BBC also broadcast that the New Cross Fire was a "massacre", which - in context - seemed to mean a massacre by white supremacists (rather than a Black person who knew many of the victims). As far as I know that has never been established by any authority or court and indeed the main suspect mentioned by many investigators is Black.
Then we had Simon Jack claiming there was a realistic possibility that people would not be able to purchase sandwiches with fillings if we "crashed out" (as the BBC like to put it) of the EU with no deal. That's absolutely Fake News - appearing under the news section of the BBC Website with no warning labels. So licence fee payers are entitled to presume this is gold standard news and not some made-up nonsense.
Then there was a load of Fake News about some Swedish Snowflake trying to stop the deportation of a violent Afgan migrant from her country back to the country he came from. The BBC decided not to tell us what this migrant had got up to while in Sweden, presumably because it wasn't v. nice. They also discussed the disruption in terms of interrupting your holiday rather than stopping you getting back to your home country for your mother or father's funeral say.
It's horrible to hate but if you have got to hate then probably the BBC is the most hateful institution in our country, with v. few redeeming features. It is self-serving, corrupt, covers up abuse of minors, broadcasts drill music which encourages Black people to engage in gun violeance, sends poor people to prison to secure its income, pays men more than women, facilitates tax avoidance or tax evasion, produces fake news, suppresses legitimate opinion, and subverts democracy - whilst all the time virtue-signalling that it is the most moral, most efficient and most loveable institution in the land.
More on the BBC website about fake news this morning. And guess what, it is published by the biggest fake news organisation of them all. (As you have pointed out above MB).
DeleteHeard a discussion of the MPs' report on "fake news"...(aka as free speech, opinion, just stuff they don't like). Very concerning that one of the contributors said that the Electoral Commission should regulate this important area of free speech. We are really heading for a complete extinction of democracy, if the Electoral Commission is allowed to determine what are politically correct ads.
DeleteThey are really pushing the fake news story today, I imagine they believe that they are free, fair and impartial so have a duty to inform but it shows a lack of awareness.
DeleteIt was manna from heaven that the select committee homed in on social media and Facebook in particular as the sole purveyors of fake news.
The general public are more savvy than the BBC and MPs give them credit for.
Back in the bad old days (maybe 1995 but I'm not sure) the BBC Proms used to be about music. Thank God, we have now moved on and progressed and it's now all about virtue-signalling - or, even better, virtue-signalling on bhealf of people whose religion bans music. :) That makes a lot of sense, according to the Pro-Sharia BBC.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-arts-44980425/bbc-proms-i-m-making-my-dreams-real
During the extensive celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the NHS, I have been expecting to hear from the BBC more about another Labour Government policy initiative of the same year, 1948 - The Nationalisation of Road Haulage.
ReplyDeleteAt the grand age of 17, my father had taken digs in the East End of London in order to open a transport depot in Tooley Street on behalf of my grandfather's road haulage firm that had been established in the Midlands by a handful of owner driver partnerships. The London depot sought return loads for the fledgling service.
Having survived the blitz in the first years of WWII, when the whole of the East End dockland area was alight, flattened by bombing, my father joined the RAF. He was demobbed in 1946-7, and naturally, he expected to return to the family business. His expectations were short-lived as, along with many others, the firm's nationalisation was completed.
Nationalisation is not some idealistic socialist dream any longer. It will become a reality - the inevitable consequence of the election of a Labour government. This is why we should all be appalled by the connivance of our PM and the Remain group of Conservative MPs (and a dodgy Chief Whip, and an oily civil servant), who have managed to carry her through. As Sisyphus said above, we should be confronting the duplicitous Conservative MPs, who were elected from areas where there was a Leave majority, and yet maintain the pretence that they are our intellectual superiors, and know what is good for us, and have conspired to produce this 'change the name but do the same' BRINO white paper. Theresa May has ruined the Conservative Party by alienating her core supporters (this started with the manifesto commitments in the run-up to the 2017 General Election). It has become a laughing-stock. The Labour party don't need to do or say anything - just stand by and watch the train crash. It's a matter of where all those disaffected Con votes will go. Either we need a new centre-right Leave party (UKIP II), and this would need to be - now, or we need an emerging strong new Conservative leader to displace Theresa May, and reconnect the Conservative Party with their voters.
Agreed LC! It looks, from the Sunday Telegraph's lead article, as though the rebellion is already underway:
Deletethe paper has found that seven chairmen of Cabinet ministers' Conservative associations either opposed the Chequers plans in their current form or would withdraw their support if Mrs May offered any further concessions to Brussels. The chairman in Andrea Leadsom's seat said the Government had, 'lost the sense of leaving', and called for Mrs May to be replaced by 'a statesman'. The response from the Conservative chairman in Theresa May's seat was less emphatic: he felt that if the Chequers deal "were to be diluted it would ultimately not be acceptable." Well, the constituency that chose to be represented by a vegetable isn't going to set the bar very high, is it?
It would be good to think so. I have posted elsewhere that the only hope for national unity and preventing a Corbyn government is for the Tory Remainer MPs to mount a rebellion, get Boris elected as leader (by the membership) and then go to the country, on the basis of a true Brexit vision for the future. He can win a general election. But the timing is now terrible of course.
DeleteBut I think there is much smoke and mirrors stuff going on at the moment.
... 'that the only hope for national unity and preventing a Corbyn government is for the Tory Remainer MPs to mount a rebellion' ... The difficulty is that the Remainers (assuming you haven't made a typo error MB) are those, including the new-look cabinet, assisting Theresa May in this deceit. It's unlikely that they will rebel.
DeleteYes Loondon, not for the first time, I've mixed up my Leavers and Remainers! lol It's becoming increasingly common as the rebels become loyalists become rebels again, some leavers side with remainers who claim they are leavers and some leavers support the government's plan to leave while still remaining, even though they amend in a way that some say means it is no longer a remain plan. No wonder I got confused! :) So, yes, I meant a Tory Leavers' rebellion is the only hope for the UK.
DeleteHave they updated the boundaries yet? If not, I don't think they can win. That was the error May made in following her advisers and the opinion polls in calling the 2017 election.
DeleteIt's really very concerning the direction this country is taking. Now we have a government proposal to bar "online trolls" from becoming MPs or Councillors. So we can have murderers, ex Jihadis, knife attackers, muggers, bank robbers and rapists becoming MPs but for some reason "online trolls" can't? It wouldn't be so bad if "online trolls" meant people who vost vile abuse...but we know from countless cases that our politically correct authorities consider political invective and making perfectly reasonable arguments about "sensitive" subjects to be "trolling". Under these draconian laws, Aneurin Bevan, Lloyd George, Enoch Powell and Winston Churchill would all have been banned from public office had they posted some of their views online. The most worrying thing is we don't have a single MP who is prepared to stand up for free speech and real democracy.
ReplyDeleteJon Sopels bias on full display in this interview. He betrays his true thoughts in every answer.
ReplyDeleteHe also says “In the age we’re living in, we need aggressive impartiality.” In his case that means sneering and mocking Trump rather than just reporting.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jul/29/jon-sopel-bbc-trump-gener-pay-gap-interview
Sopel says: "I had to dig out the presidential flight manifest" to prove Trump wrong about where he was just before the Brexit vote. Trump wasn't president in 2016, so why would the "presidential" flight manifest have any bearing on this...Yes, it's easy to make trivial mistakes isn't it, Jon ?
DeleteBut more to the point, since Sopel is such a pedantic stickler for the truth (assuming he is right about the Trump golf club visit)...can he tell us about all the times he went after Obama on such matters of detail as: not revealing his birth certificate despite 4 years of inquiries and court cases, suppressing all but the barest details of his higher education, why he chose America-hater Rev Jeremiah Wright as his pastor, why he bowed so low to the King of Saudi Arabia, calling his wife Michael, not admitting he went by the name of Barry Soetero for many years, not admitting he was registered as a Muslim at a school in Indonesia, getting his oath of office wrong at the inauguration, what was said during the "tarmac meeting", stating he was unaware of the details of the Trump-Russia investigation, etc etc. That's just for starters...
The BBC news on Radio 2 is featuring a soundbite quote from a professor (I think from Strathclyde University?) saying that if the Labour Party had adopted the full IHRA definition of anti-semitism they could have a avoided lots of silly and irrelevant criticism. Did he really mean to say that?
ReplyDeleteThe Labour Party could adopt a 100 IHRA declarations in full. It will amount to nothing if they welcome into the Party (as they do) more and more followers of Sharia - a system of law based on an ideology that is thoroughly anti-Jewish (as well as anti-Christian and anti-Hindu).
DeleteMaitlis on Newsnight - her stunning ignorance on display. She has three guests on - a pro-remain Sandwich Industry jobsworth, a pro-Remain Tory MP and a pro-Leave MP. The first two get complete soft questioning, but she lays into the pro-Leave guy with constant interruption, comic disbelief looks, and suggestions he's talking nonsense. But it's Maitlis who displays her ignorance. She is clearly under the impression that you have to apply the maximum tariffs allowed under WTO rules when you leave the EU...er, no, you don't. That's why they are called a maximum. We can have zero tariffs. And why would we want to make Spanish tomatoes cost more than they need to if we can't produce enough tomatoes ourselves?
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure this isn't the first time she's made this schoolgirl error.
It was clear the sandwich guy's real concern was not having access to cheap EU labour to make their sandwiches. My God! - they might have to invest in robot sandwich makers and that might harm their profits for a couple of years and we all know UK industries can't see more than two years ahead.
I couldn't watch more than five mins of it. The Leave rep seemed to have been especially chosen by Newsnight. I am sure people like Farage and Batten would be happy to come on and explain things but Newsnight seem always to find some media-toxic slightly eccentric Tory.
The BBC saw The Chequers plan as as their best option to support as it became clear the brexit would happen. We may see a shift in coming days/weeks as the second referendum idea gains momentum. They seem to be testing the water by floating the idea on their mainstream programmes. e.g. Jeremy Vine. The One Show.
ReplyDeleteIn war it's a mistake to assume the various actors are in control of events, understand fully the implications of the alliances they make, or are even very good at strategic thinking. Sometimes a big war just gets too complex for people to understand the strategic implications of their actions. I think a similar rule applies to Brexit...
DeleteReally a faction of British society - globalist Euro-fanatic soft-leftists - decided to declare war on the democratic process because they didn't like the result of the referendum. The war has gone on and on through various phases - legal, parliamentary, extraparliamentary etc and the narrative has become increasingly complex. The BBC's big guns were certainly on the anti-democratic globalist side. But they don't have a crystal ball. They don't know how to win...
You should have heard Ashdown being interviewed by Peter Hennessy on Radio 4 this morning about his wonderful life and his love of democracy. Hah! Self knowledge, how are you? The man has been a fanatical would-be overturner of democracy since the day of the referendum result. And funnily enough it also came out that he didn't and doesn't much care for David Owen, who by coincidence has been speaking about democracy and the referendum.
DeleteSo it now transpires that Corbyn was present at the meeting where Peter Willsman ranted about Jewish Trump fanatics.
ReplyDeleteI first read this on Guido, but although I've not looked extensively elsewhere, it has certainly now also been reported on both Sky News (https://news.sky.com/story/jeremy-corbyn-told-to-expel-ally-peter-willsman-over-anti-semitism-rant-11455287) and the Grauniad (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/31/labour-under-pressure-peter-willsman-antisemitism-remarks).
The BBC report however, at the time of writing, mysteriously ignores this rather key fact: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45014771
It is completely unthinkable that this would not have been reported by the BBC if this scenario was playing out for a right of centre party, and is further confirmation that the BBC, astonishingly, is moving ever further left and more firmly into Corbyn territory than even the Guardian.
Thee BBC are the worlds best at reporting News with key omissions. It is their no.1 fake news tactic. But they have overplayed their hand because an increasing number of their readers, listeners and viewers are wise to it.
DeleteI haven't followed all the ins and outs of who was where and who did or said what but it appears someone recorded the NEC meeting. Presumably that wasn't an official recording but something done by a person present at it?
DeleteIn The Guardian editorial leader today it says
ReplyDelete“The Guardian is independent of Labour, but an effective Labour party remains absolutely fundamental to the implementation and upholding of the paper’s values in international and domestic affairs.”
Given the close association of the Guardian and The BBC, you could substitute the word(s) BBC in that editorial because I think it sums up why The BBC are so supportive of Labour despite Corbyn, anti-semitism and Marxist traits.
I have said before, I think the BBC's view of the far left can be characterised primarily as "indulgent".
DeleteThey don't agree with the Corbynista analysis and prescriptions but they like the revolutionary spirit, the obduracy and the fear they can inspire in centrists and conservatives. In short, they like to have them "onside" in a cultural sense.
Obviously anti-semitism is a complex fault line. I think here the old line about "You don't have to be Jewish but it helps..." is relevant. Jews in the soggy left spectrum favoured by the BBC obviously are pained by anti-semitism but people like Chukka Umana obviously (looking at his relative silence on the subject) are not. There are a few non-Jews who side with Jews in the soggy left on this but they are not very numerous. How often do you hear virtue signallers like Yvette Cooper or Stella Creasy reference this? Not much I would say.
BBC Website covers Tommy Robinson's release.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-45029755
The BBC chooses to give prominence to a photo of SWP posters stating "racist Robinson belongs in prison".
This is the old "bias by poster" trick the BBC always chooses.
I hope Robinson's lawyers will cite this article as prejudicial to a fair retrial.
Good spot MB. Their use of pics is always critical to the story. Classic propaganda technique.
DeleteWhere TR is concerned, The BBC also get in early with him being the EDL founder/leader and a far right extremist or activist.
It took them quite some time to change the text below the headline, i.e. that TR had plead guilty to contempt, 'even though' he had won his appeal.
DeleteThey can never mention him without putting in a reference to his EDL past.
Maybe we should do the same: "The BBC, famous for its comedies in the 1960s,.."
Earlier reports from the BBC had this wording:
Delete...'Far-right activist Tommy Robinson has been bailed after partly winning an appeal against a finding of contempt of court, which he admitted.' ....
By 'partly' I imagine the BBC is trying to make sure we don't forget the prepared narrative for TR dusted off on every occasion 'Founder of the far-right EDL' etc.
There are a number of questions that arise from this judgement, among them:
Delete1. Why was TR arrested on a breach of peace but that charge was dropped? Was there a political aspect to that decision?
2. How in this day and age can someone end up in prison for 13 months when they have only a few hours to prepare for their trial and the time allowed is not sufficient to engage your personal lawyer?
3. Has anyone else other than TR ever been treated in this manner by a Court - summary charge, trial and judgement, all within 24 hours? I cannot think of any such equivalent case in this century at least.
4. Why are so many of these grooming cases subject to such severe reporting restrictions? As far as I can make out it is because some defendants appear at more than one trial? Is that a good enough reason to trample on freedom of the press? I don't think so.
5. Was there ever any prospect of TR's live streaming "collapsing" the trial in question? I very much doubt it.
6. Was anyone else livestreaming in a similar manner to TR? Were they charged?
7. Why aren't the demonstrations against Tommy Robinson today with people holding placards denouncing him as a racist who belongs in prison (televised by our national broadcasters) considered prejudicial to a fair re-trial? It seems the courts are only interested in fair trials when the defendants are not of TR's sort of background.
8. Why did Judge Brian Leveson initially consider he was qualified to hear TR's appeal even though he had stated clearly in a radio interview that TR was guilty?
Some observations on the BBC's 10PM News item on Tommy Robinson...
DeleteThe BBC gives time to spokespeople from both Stand Up to Racism and Hope Not Hate without explaining what these organisations are. Why? They are very happy to "explain" TR is "far right" and was a Member of the "far right EDL"...etc etc. But when it comes to these other organisations it's as if they are floating free in the ether.
Stand Up to Racism appears in fact to be controlled by the Muslim Council of Britain and Labour Party MPs or MEPs.
http://www.standuptoracism.org.uk/about/
Its President is Diane Abbott who was widely criticised for her claim that West Indian mothers were more protective of their children than mothers from other ethnic groups, and who has also been criticised for taking her child out of a state school in an inner city school, an area of high immigration, and placing him in a private school.
Also note that, unlike reputable organisations, Stand Up to Racism does not set out the sources of its funding on its "About" page.
If anyone can make sense of the organisational structure of "Hope Not Hate" from their website they are doing better than me! It appears to be made up of a private, profit making company with a charity arm.
Looking at the website, it appears to concentrate its energies almost entirely on hate on the right and not hate on the left or within religious movements. I think a while back they used to have a few token anti Islamist campaigns but they seemed to have given up on those completely. They never tackle left hate e.g. Class War, anti-Jewish leftists etc.
I'm all in favour of people exposing those on the right who wish to overthrow our democracy and pursue the politics of hate. But there are those on the left who want to do that as well. In fact Hope Not Hate seems to be a Far Left organisation.
No wonder the BBC doesn't attempt to explain to the viewers what organisations these people are speaking on behalf of.
Newsnight on TR:
DeleteHis appeal is now downgraded to being "partially" successful...nice touch.
They are playing up the possibility of a "collapse" of grooming trials. I call that BS. The authorities are not going to let any of those trials collapse - it would be a political disaster.
Playing a clip from the pro TR demo previously shown. They seem to accept at least they are losing control of the narrative to social media - at least Gatehouse has some realism.
Gatehouse uses the P word when discussing the grooming gangs but not the I or M word. That is always a clue to structural bias. These gangs have included Somalis, Libyans, Albanians, Afghans and others. They have not included people from Christian, Hindu or Sikh communities. But Gatehouse only uses the P word.
He is claiming the MSM originally put the grooming gang scandal in the public sphere. That's not factually correct. I have always opposed the BNP as a neo-Nazi movement but it is factually the case that it was the BNP that first brought the grooming gang scandal into the public sphere. As a direct result a couple of their leaders were prosecuted for religious hatred. It was only after that (as BNP continued to eat into the Labour vote) that the Labour government changed tack and decided to aggressively prosecute the gangs. The Andrew Norfolk expose was NOT the beginning of public knowledge of the scandal.
To be fair I think Gatehouse is at the top end of BBC journalists. But that's not saying much.
Anonymous - I think we can do better than "The BBC, famous for its comedies in the 1960s,.." - How about
Delete"The BBC famous for facilitating Jimmy Savile's crimes from 1964 to 2004"
The Corbyn story was the lead item on the BBC website all morning. Suddenly it’s gone, it was most read story, it’s gone from there too.
ReplyDeleteAs we know stories can stay on main page for days, even weeks. This one was dropped suddenly. ( it’s still there if you look hard enough, hidden away on the politics page).
Brexit hit to City less than feared
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45026726
Well hidden in the deep recesses of the BBC website. Given no prominence at all but they can say “well, we did report it”.
Of course the original story of 75000 job losses was lead news.
Bias.
City of London expanding at rapid rate say BBC London News (despite Brexit!) but of course they have to add that calls into question what will happen once Brexit takes place... :)
DeletePersonally I tend to cheer when people say our economy will be less dominated by the finance sector. The City's dominance drives a "high pound" policy that damages industry and its exports. It focuses wealth in the already overheated capital. It is a key motor of high immigration which in turn creates dysfunctional effects.
Poor guy's been through the mill...he's not the man he was but he's still got spirit...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3a4r_2cA4w
You can like or dislike Tommy, what he says, the people he associates with, or what's he's said in the past...
But we have to oppose his persecution.
I thought he looked thin!...The wonderful Ezra Levant explains why:
Delete"If there was a fatwa on your head, and your prison food was cooked by prisoners in a Muslim gang, would you eat anything unsealed? Tommy’s family or friends would have arranged for outside food. But starvation, along with solitary confinement, was Theresa May’s order. A scandal."
This is indeed a scandal...a Jihadi target is told by prison authorities to eat food prepared by Jihadis? That's torture, for sure.
A brilliant report by Ezra Levant - referencing everything censored by BBC, ITV and Sky...
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6yjbQye5RM
It's about 20 mins long - but really, I do recommend it...this is stuff you won't have heard from the BBC...it's incredible how many legal flaws there have been. Ezra Levant is brilliant - where have all the UK journos and lawyers been? Joshua Rosenberg, using his radio programme, just threw Tommy to the wolves with the help of Judge Brian Leveson. Did Amnesty International protect him? No! Thank God for Ezra is all I can say.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6yjbQye5RM
You're absolutely correct about Ezra Levant and Rebel Media. It wasn't much but thank goodness I contributed to both Ezra's costs to come to London for Tommy's appeal and to Tommy's legal costs.
DeleteOne of these days the self styled reporters at the far-left bbc, employer of Jimmy Savile, Sky, Ch4, LBC, the guardian, etc, will also be persecuted by the state and no one will care a damn about them.
Tommy Robinson is a reporter, a better one than they will ever be but because he is better than they are and does a better job of reporting than they do, rather than try to emulate him, they'd rather poor scorn and hatred upon him. They make me sick.
The Rebel Media/Ezra Levant video uses as its starting point the written text (a three page summary) of the appeal hearing by the court. It is, as EL says, written in plain English and is not difficult to understand. It makes for a trusted record of the judgement.
DeleteQ. Why has the BBC failed to reprint this document or to tell us of its existence?
Answers please.
Bias by an inability to see outside of the BBC bubble? I’m am afraid Evan Davis revealed his bias very on during BBC 4’s “Sweet Reason” this morning when he introduced Jordan Peterson as “Marmite”. The same adjective could easily be applied to his second guest, Shaista Aziz. Obviously it wasn’t.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is by the little things you shall know their dishonesty. :) Marmite could also be applied to Evan Davis. And possibly "cold sick" could as well. Reminds me, we haven't heard much from Mark "No Such Thing As England" Easton recently.
Deletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-45020144
DeleteOh, he is still around writing stories that show his hatred of all things British. There is always an undercurrent of joylessness and evident self loathing to his writings.
MB, SirTH
DeleteLast I heard Easton was rolled out on R4 quite recently was to blame "British Society" for some past child abuse by a doctor in an NHS hospital. Whenever he crops up, you know that it's something significant to protect the BBC narrative. This one was to deflect any blame from rNHS while also getting the boot into the past "British Society". He's really a nasty pos.
His type populate the BBC. And you are right , he is a pos.
DeleteInterview of Tommy Robinson by the wonderful Ezra Levant:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoAxe0J3k3c
His treatment in prison was scandalous - but what is even worse is that there isn't a single MP, a single BBC journalist, a single human rights lawyer or a single cleric in the land who will condemn that treatment. And even people like Melanie Phillips seem to rejoice in his incarceration.
Yes, a newly identified form of mutism brought on by the fear of being ostracised by bosses and peers within the BBC.
DeleteHave you ever heard Martha Kearney refer to Sinn Fein representatives' criminal records (you know, murder, bombing, maiming, that sort of thing) when interviewing them or quoting them? Nope, neither have I. But she seems very keen to put on air every misdeed and misdemeanour of Tommy Robinson however minor (and compared with Sinn Fein they are minor offences)...wonder why there's this discrepancy? She certainly isn't neutral. Her questions are full of emotive imperatives "But you have to...you must surely recognise...but how would you feel..." and partisan interpretations of the law.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ujLZm-kQi4
The BBC - the world's premier Fake News agency.
I think you overlook some rare, or comparatively rare, strengths of the BBC in this particular comment of yours, Monkey Brains.
ReplyDeleteAgainst all the odds, Sue and Craig have created a very attractive blog on a very unattractive subject, the bias of the BBC - a fair-minded, well written blog, one which is well documented, very varied, a blog which does full justice to harsh realities but which never loses sight of the essential human values, such as kindliness and human decency, which soften the harshness of reality. I'm glad that Sue and Craig don't concentrate all their attention on bias. They examine other aspects as well - isthebbcsuperficial, isthebbcmediocre, isthebbcmoronic - very, very often, the BBC is superficial, mediocre and moronic. I appreciate your incisive contributions to the comments sections, and the comments of other people.
Although you're right to claim that Martha Kearney doesn't refer to the criminality of some Sinn Fein representatives, so far as I'm aware, it wouldn't be fair to claim that the BBC gives a relentlessly biased view of Irish and Northern Irish matters. It's even less fair to claim that the BBC is 'the world's premier Fake News agency.' In the dissemination of fake news, the BBC are beginners compared with so many others, such as the Iranian and Chinese.
On the subject of Northern Ireland, the BBC's record is sometimes heartening. This is about one small area of the world and I'll confine my attention, to begin with, to one single incident.
I was in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. I lived in one of the safest areas, but visits to other areas, above all, Belfast, including some paramilitary areas, left an indelible mark. Not long before I left Northern Ireland, I heard the sound of a massive explosion,followed by another. This was in Coleraine, County Londonderry. The Wikipedia entry on the Coleraine bombing gives a graphic record:
'Railway Road was a scene of carnage and devastation with the mangled wreckage of the Ford Cortina resting in the middle of the street, the bodies of the dead and injured lying in pools of blood amongst the fallen masonry and roof slates, and shards of glass from blown-out windows blanketing the ground and people 'rushing from the scene and others going to tend the wounded who were screaming in agony.'
The provisional IRA claimed responsibility. The bomb which killed and maimed these people had been planted by Sean McGlinchey, who became mayor of Limavady after his release from prison.
The BBC's page on this man and the resistance to him makes no attempt whatsoever to excuse him. The BBC's bias isn't always in evidence. Outright condemnation of a deeply flawed organization may not be the best way of getting an organization to mend its ways and do better - although my own view is that the BBC is so far gone that the prospects of it becoming transformed are remote.
The BBC page 'DUP anger as bomber appointed Limavady mayor' https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-13593097 doesn't give nearly enough detail , but it can't be claimed that it's biased, I'm sure.
A far more adequate BBC page is this one, 'Armed forces chief vows to fight false Northern Ireland claims,' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45050693
This is about the hounding of Northern Ireland veterans, the people who risked their lives during the Troubles and who now face the risk of malicious prosecution. Here, it's not the BBC who should be ashamed, it's the government, for overlooking the devastating effects on these veterans and the potentially devastating effects on military morale and military recruitment.
BBC Web information and commentary may sometimes have strengths, more so than BBC broadcasting, very often, but I wouldn't wish to defend all of it or most of it - so much of it is propaganda. It shouldn't be equated with the propaganda of Goebbels or Stalinist Russia, but it has to be opposed.
Thank you Paul for your kind comments. Greatly appreciated!
DeleteBBC bias seems to be becoming a topic of discussion beyond the dedicated blogs such as this one.
ReplyDeleteThere are some interesting examples of alleged bias here and a swipe at Hall and Clementi but Go easy on our nice middle-ground media, is the plea from this one in the London Evening Standard:
https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/be-careful-what-you-wish-for-by-going-in-too-hard-against-the-bbc-a3903236.html
Well they would say that wouldn't they?
"At the moment, the BBC holds the unenviable position of having both Nigel Farage and declared Communist Ash Sarkar invited to broadcast. It is trying to do balance between various political factions that grow ever more extreme."
I wouldn't have a clue who or what Ash Sarkar is or does if s/he / whatever turned up on my doorstep so seems an odd choice to put up with Farage. How about a well known national political figure such as say, Yvette Cooper or John Mc Donnell or Dianne Abbott? Is Nigel Farage becoming ever more extreme?
Incidentally, mention of Clementi reminds me that Andrew Green of Migration Watch got him to pull some "educational" guidance for teenagers on how to discuss immigration because it was full of BBC agenda and bias. The broader question is why is the BBC advocating for so-called refugees and immigrants in the first place? It has been doing this across radio and television and numerous programmes. Isn't its job to report and inform? It's not supposed to be political and this is a highly political subject.
Thanks for the link to that ES article. It says:
DeleteOur other great national treasure, the NHS, is worshipped. The BBC used to be. It is now in a weaker position, left exposed by scandals about journalists on plump salaries, on the defensive over accusations of bias and led by a rather wet director-general in Tony Hall and invisible chair David Clementi.
But if we, the public, continue this assault, we risk diminishing the centre ground in British media.
But that last sentence misses the entire point. It no longer occupies the centre ground!
Yes, that is a very interesting, misguided ES piece. (David Aaronovitch has been saying something similar recently.) Thanks.
DeleteThere was another piece, in the Daily Mail, about lower BBC audience numbers. From the comments I've read (too many to read all),there are plenty about bias and scrapping the licence fee and some well-
Deletethought out opinions and suggestions.
Is the BBC toxic?
ReplyDeleteTonight on Radio 4 at 10 15:
Is English Nationalism Toxic?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bclbms
"... Nick Cohen, columnist for the Observer and Simon Heffer, columnist for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, to debate the question 'Is English Nationalism Toxic?'"
Can anyone bear to listen? I think I'll stick with Radio 3 - there was a really good Jazz Record Requests followed by the Preservation Hall Band from New Orleans (finished now but on iPlayer) and even better, Louis Armstrong with his All Stars at midnight, then back to classical with a concerto for three cellos, followed by a Beethoven symphony. And that's without the Proms - and Bach playing at the monent.
I’ll wait for “is Islam toxic?” .... and wait ....
DeleteMaybe Mishal Husain has some kind of chart of degrees?
Deletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44921974
ReplyDeleteSalvini demonstrated the two apparently contradictory skills that any successful populist politician needs: a core message, and the willingness to adapt or abandon this message whenever the need arises.
A sweeping generalisation. Biased and opinion rather than fact. This sort of writing is all too common on The BBC.