Everyone loves a dachshund video, so what better way to launch a new open thread than with one of the latest specimens of that viral breed?
If anyone can think of a way to connect it to the BBC (maybe even Newsnight's John Sweeney), please feel free to let us know.
If anyone can think of a way to connect it to the BBC (maybe even Newsnight's John Sweeney), please feel free to let us know.
Thank you for your comments and support.
Cue dog...
Cue dog...
What the fluff?! 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/bE3enZb9WA— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) February 9, 2019
Those high notes sound a bit like John Sweeney's high notes in that video where he loses it! :)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxqR5NPhtLI
I never tire of seeing that piece of cool, impartial BBC journalism. :)
DeleteThat, clearly, is the way to deal with backstops...
ReplyDeleteTalking of matters Irish, for some reason...and this is rather Proust-like...I've just remembered my favourite Irish politician from years gone by (my late teens/early twenties), the former Irish Labour leader, Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dick Spring.
DeleteNice one Sis!
DeleteAnd yes Dick Spring was always hurling one.
Thanks for that link MB - just trying to think what I was doing in 2007 that caused me to miss it! On that showing, Sweeney could cause a shortage of hypertension meds, without any help from Brexit!
DeleteWow! This is brilliant!!! No wonder John Sweeney was so quiet in that previous clip! :)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awlswLl0aGg
I've just watched that again and it is a fantastic video! I can't recall a time previously when a biased BBC journo has been subjected to all the bias techniques they use themselves in that way: the carefully selected edit that they are then asked to comment on, after a question has been framed in a particular way. Brilliant!!
DeleteJohn Sweeney refers to white working class people as being like "cannibals from Amazonia" or "creatures from outer space" and assumes they can only communicate through obscene swearing. He's left floundering when TR plays it all back to him...and then in classic BBC fashion, TR doesn't give him time to reply! - he's on to the next clip.
Got to be said this is an all-time win for Tommy. :)
He threatened to use his support fund to make libel claims against MSM journos...a classic feint...it seems like he used the funds to hire private detectives to follow the MSM journos. They were never expecting that!
I hasten to say that I would rather we had a culture of free debate rather than secret recording, dodgy edits and confrontational interviews. But it seems the BBC is finally beginning to reap what it has sown. Every BBC journo has now been put on notice by TR that they can never speak freely in a wine bar, at a conference or anywhere else as a paid informer of TR's may be there.
The Moral Maze has brought us The Moral Duty of MPs. See Giles Fraser and Melanie Phillips questioning one of the political class in a 67% Leave voting constituency, from around 5 to 10 minutes: 'What goes on in your head...?' and a caustic 'What's wrong with that?'
ReplyDeleteThe programme notes provide the BBC with an opportunity for piffle and spin, launching with: 'These unprecedented times also raise a significant question about whether ultimate power should be held by government, Parliament or the people', building a shaky edifice of alternative reality made up of false premises and concluding with an unfortunate: 'the constitutional rule-book'. Apart from the fact that we don't exactly have one of those, any bits of rules we do have, written or otherwise, are torn to pieces and trampled by the very Parliament of weasels such as the one we hear being interrogated here. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002828
Watch out for the phrase "Parliamentary Sovereignty". I've heard a lot of ignorant or deceptive Remainers use that phrase. They confuse two ideas: it is our nation (ie the people/the citizens) which is sovereign while our Parliament is "supreme" under our constitution. Being supreme means it can effectively alter our constitution. It doesn't mean that it has the right to enforce directions to the Executive (unless it chooses to change the constitution or incorporate such directions in law).
DeleteThe very people suddenly most keen on Parliamentary sovereignty now are the ones who have not valued it for years and are even now hoping to give it back to Brussels once they have got their hands on it.
DeleteCraig/Sue - I hope you can make a separate thread for that Tommy Robinson expose of John Sweeney. Probably the single most important cultural moment of the last 10 years.
ReplyDeleteCan do!
DeletePeter Hitchens has a piece about the pro-abortion agenda of a programme Call the Midwives, which I've never seen but can believe, as they do the same on Woman's Hour and possibly other programmes I'm not aware of. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-6686541/PETER-HITCHENS-warned-Thought-Police-coming.html
ReplyDeletePH got into another Twitter engagement with a self-professed snowflake called Simone on the issue, which is worth recording too:
DeleteSimone: Oh poor Peter Hitchens. He just doesn't get it does he? How you can ever call a drama depicting the social, economic and medical horrors of the 50-60's as cosy entertainment. Bless. What's a dose of gangrene or syphilis but a delightful episode.
Peter Hitchens: 1. How can I call 'Call the Midwife' 'Cosy entertainment' @SimoneHealey ? Because that is what it was, when it began. Eg pre-publicity in The Sun 24/12.2011: 'CALL THE MIDWIFE This cosy new period drama about a group of midwives working in London's East End in the 1950s'.
2, Or @SimoneHealey 'The Times' 31st December 2011: 'Midwife does indeed dose its viewers with healthy measures of cobbles,washing lines and cockle-warming Cockneys.' Evening Stabdard same date : 'Call the Midwife, It's fine, if you like your drama strenuously retro.'
3. @SimoneHealey Or The Times review 14/1/2012 'Some people may find it overly ripe and bordering on the sentimental. The rest of us will be blinking frantically and reaching for the Kleenex.'
4.@SimoneHealey .D. Telegraph 16/01/202 : 'It was like Heartbeat with babies; everything seemed to have been shot through pastel–tinted lenses. Even the bombed–out streets of Poplar looked spick and span, the bricks seemingly arranged in neat piles'...
5. In short @SimoneHealey, don't patronise me. 'Midwife' undoubtedly began its life as a cosy drama. Now it's propaganda. That's what I said.
Poor Simone!
You'd better have your facts and figures to hand before you go at Hitchens - he does his homework and will go to the ends to prove his point.
ReplyDeletePeter Hitchens I think divides Beebophobic opinion.
DeletePersonally I don't rate him.
He praises Islam and Islamic faith while completely ignoring the implications of a belief in Sharia law (required of all Muslims with no exception).
I think he is mainly a product of sibling rivalry and an unhappy childhood rather than clear thinking.
Given he is an ex hippy and ex Trot, the fusty aroma of the Lewisian 50s must be a charade.
He takes up quixotic positions like favouring rail nationalisation with no evidence whatsoever. Rail travel has expanded hugely under the privatised rail system - a fact he won't even entertain.
My final point for the prosecution is that the BBC are only to happy to have him on their programmes. Whereas they have pretty much banned Gerard Batten, Tommy Robinson , Katy Hopkins, Anne Marie Waters and others who tell us the dangers we face, sa they see it (and as the BBC don't).
He divides opinion in that my opinions of him are divided. I agree with some things he says. On others I disagree violently and have on occasion thought he sounded wild and almost insane. I don't have to have one position and ignore or dismiss everything he says just because it is said by Peter Hitchens. He hates people to misconstrue or make assumptions about his positions on various issues and cannot bear it if they mistakenly rope him into their belief system. He is a conservative and a conservative Christian but he says he has no problem about homosexuality, for instance. He is an ex socialist from his youth and I think retains some of those attitudes and beliefs. How they fit with some others I don't know. It's hard to work out how far those ideologues of youth change or stay basically the same. There are people, e.g. the ex Archbishop Rowan Williams who I always think of as an old Labour man from youth and will never be anything else. Then Vince Cable. How much is he still Labour although he's Lib Dem?
DeleteNews Channel, 10.30pm, Sunday - The Papers - Re: Brexit, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown gleefully informed us that, "We are now in the worst place we have ever been in peacetime Britain." Really, Yasmin? - worse than that little spot of bubonic plague in the 14th century? Worse than the General Strike? Worse than the Great Depression? Yasmin, alas, seems to have recovered from her own Brexit-inspired bout of the 'black dog' and is, once again, her old bumptious self - looks as though at least one Remainiac has decided her side has won the battle.
ReplyDeleteThe newsreaders on the BBC have been sounding chipper reading the "good" bad news that economic growth shows "the biggest fall in growth nearly 10 years" (bet it took some time for Kamal to come up with that one).
DeleteRobinson v. Sweeney, round 1. How very telling that, to Sweeney, the greatest imaginable insult is to be called 'élite' - despite the fact that he clearly believes himself to belong to one. And isn't it strange that Sweeney has 'dumbed down' his accent & grammar, so that he doesn't sound so very different from his working class opponent: "Me and my mate went for a drink!" Mind you, the second in line to the throne says things like that, nowadays.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny that on Radio 4 tonight they have a programme on about all those ridiculous nonsense conspiracy theories, at the very same time the whole of the UK MSM is engaged, it would seem, in a conspiracy to ensure their viewers, listeners and readers never ever hear about the John Sweeney comments. Congrats to Breitbart London for being, as far as I can see, the only bit of the UK media scene to feature this eminently newsworthy item (even the Guy Fawkes site has stayed clear of it so far!).
ReplyDeleteAsISeeIt over at BBBC has identified a new form of bias, which, when you think about it, is widely used by our national broadcaster. Here is the post:
ReplyDelete..... Tangential Reporting (Have I perhaps coined a new buzz phrase? Something to put up there with Fake News?)
The BBC Breakfast show tells us local councils in the North East have tightened taxi licencing regulations in response to the convictions of certain ‘grooming gangs’.
The authorities (and the BBC) seem to think it’s men with known and checkable prior convictions for ‘serious offences’ who are likely to be a threat to ‘vulnerable people’.
Anyhoo…
BBC Breakfast will be talking to the mother of the woman murdered by a lone 47-year-old white British taxi driver in Swindon. A vaguely related crime, I suppose...
... Tangential Reporting = The treatment of a news or current affairs story which leads public thought in an effort to distract attention away from the reality and facts of the original story into an alternative agenda more comfortable for the journalist...
Yes, don't think that's on the Festive Fifty list of BBC bias techniques - think you might have identified a new specimen there. You might also call it "False Echo" reporting.
DeleteI am currently following with... interest.. the unfolding drama whereby another Rob of the BBC has barely escaped with his life after encountering the clear cannibals that are the great unwashed outside the studio cubicle and finding himself... 'jostled' rudely.
ReplyDeleteNot even a slapped wrist which, in non-BBC terms can see this remaining segment of the limb all that is left having sustained 'injury'.
Best I can see so far is the only wound was to pride, but enough to get the great, good and exes of BBC all of a froth about what clearly amounted to a near death experience, only without the physical harm bit.
The gang rallied manfully, womanfully and any other fully the BBC can muster. Seemed to start with BlindGary, who saw it all. Then Jeremy Bowen, some woman... who was there!.... before spinning into the control rooms of the nations, including that of Classic FM to even get Bill Turnbull a bee in his bonnet.
No word yet from Paul Mason or Gavin Esler, but how long can it take?
I have yet to check those usually on the US beat noting that, oddly, they have at best been reticent thus far. Usually my timeline is alive with the sound of Katty RTing, Anthony sharing and Jon liking like the beauty he is. maybe The Hill has yet to declaim?
And once CNN picks up the baton, who knows, maybe barking, antisemitic or just plain dumb as a box of rocks Congressgirlies and their statement malfunctions can be neatly swept into the memory hole?
It's not unknown is it for members of the public to get into altercations with cameramen (nearly always men) carelessly backing into them with heavy equipment, treading on their toes, whatever. Gary said the cameraman was "going about his job" - suggesting movement.
DeleteI'd like to see a proper clip of what happened before rushing to judgement.
The BBC is always busy rewriting history, 1984-style.
ReplyDelete"The Fatwa" has now become "The Rushdie Affair". The main issue is not an outrageous and murderous assault on our free speech values, but rather an attack on "diversity", with the book (and therefore the persecuted writer himself)being held responsible!
One of the usual Chatham House suspects at 4:20...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42iV2U_nsfY
This is also the theme of Fatwa on Radio 4 - which (despite its title) is keen to promote the Chatham House version of events - how Islamic communities have been the victim.
What the BBC does not do of course is examine what a Fatwa is or how they are used throughout the Islamic world to crush political dissent, feminism, democracy, gay rights and so on. If they did they would have to be a whole lot more honest about Sharia, Islam and the beliefs of the "moderate majority of Muslims" to use Maitlis's BBC-approved phrase.
Absolutely, MB. I was going to wait until the final part before commenting - in fact I was rather hoping that Sue or Craig would feature this as a separate post. But now that the subject has been brought up I have to comment. I have been appalled by the way this series has been framed - essentially from the perspective of Islamaphobia and in many cases a justification of Islamic extremism. I’m sure the internal politics within Islam during this time is of some some historical interest, but to completely disregard what you correctly describe as an assault on Western values is as barbaric as the original Fatwa. In fact rather than acknowledge this the program makers chose to drag on an ex-far right activist, who claimed that Rushdie’s book was “a gift” to their cause.
DeleteWhat the Rusdie affair did reveal was that a large minority of British subjects who had made their home in this country from the Islamic world had no understanding whatsoever of what it meant to live in a modern, free society. We might have moved on from there, but what this program demonstrates is the total capitulation of organisations like the BBC - the very people who would once have been the first to stand up against attacks on free speech. To reference an earlier post, yes this has indeed become the norm.
Terry - Thanks for listening to it for me! lol
DeleteI've only managed three or four minutes at a time before the off switch becomes a necessity, so dishonest is the content.
The MCB appear to be following a "no comments" policy on the anniversary of the Farwa. The BBC's coverage seems to collude in that.
See Guido:
ReplyDeletehttps://order-order.com/2019/02/13/robbins-reveals-dishonesty-of-governments-stance/#disqus_thread
Comments were flooding in, but now are removed to be 'pre-moderated'.
Guido's not to be trusted. Hasn't reported on the Sweeney Scandal!
DeleteAll he says about Robbins and May is true. But he doesn't (and won't)give any credit to Gerard Batten who has predicted this all along. He prefers to slander Batten as a racist extremist on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.
The fix is in but at least we know what the fix is, ahead of time! lol
ReplyDeleteRoland Deschain on BBBC has an interesting observation:
"It’s interesting to study how the BBC covers stories. Oily Robbins’s remarks, which just happened to be overheard by a journalist, were known about yesterday afternoon. Yet there was not a peep about it on last night’s news at 10.
But today it’s all different. It’s all over the airwaves. So what has happened overnight to turn it from “move along, nothing to see here” territory to “OMG, did you hear what he said”? "
I too noticed the lack of interest yesterday. And this morning the graceless Norman Smith failed to credit ITV when talking about the scoop. BTW I liked the way Angus Walker delivered his super-scoop on ITV - a real old fashioned scoop not a "I have learnt from governemnt sources" type of scoop. He did it very straight, deadpan almost. Can you imagine how LK would have been mugging for the cameras and using every overwrought adjective in her vocabulary. This scoop is all the more deadly for being delivered quietly.
Roland Deschain also observes:
"Meanwhile, deathly silence continues to reign at the Beeb regarding the EU Ombudsman ruling that the appointment of Martin Selmayr as Secretary General to the EU Commission was contrary to all EU rules."
And talking of deathly silences, nearly all the media are censoring the Sweeney Scandal news. Why? What possible public interest reason can there be to suppress this news. The only reason I can think is that feel destroying Tommy Robinson is more important than free speech, or maintenance of reasonably high standards of probity within our public broadcaster, the one we pay for through our licence fees. Extremely worrying that our MSM are prepared to collude in this way to keep us in the dark.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47223692
ReplyDeleteAnti-Semitic crime up 10% in Germany and France. The BBC puts the blame solely on far right groups.
No searching questions asked about the cause.
Actually the report does say (well it does now - stealth-edited?) a call for special classes to counter anti-semitism: "The Central Council of Jews in Germany said the classes were needed after a large increased in immigration from Muslim-majority countries.
DeleteIt came after a video went viral showing a man, shouting in Arabic, attacking two Jewish men in Berlin." The video is linked to.
But as always with the BBC the truth is buried deep in article. Before you get there you are led down several garden paths - AfD, Jewish concerns about hostility to other minorities...it becomes so confused that at one point it appears almost that Muslims are being linked to Jews as co-sufferers of anti-semitism!
I don’t suppose we will see this on BBC News any time soon.
ReplyDeleteFive men and woman held after sex attacks on 25 children in parks – and more victims expected
The offences are believed to have taken place in public parks, outdoor locations and various premises across Bury, Lancashire.
No details whatsoever on the alleged perpetrators other than age.
The Moral Maze tonight:
ReplyDelete'Decolonising’ the Curriculum
'A report, commissioned by the Office for Students, has recommended that universities should “decolonise” the curriculum to end the dominance of western values and beliefs, which “position anything non-European and not white as inferior.” While the regulator hasn’t formally adopted the report as policy, campaigners have long argued that the perpetuation of what they see as a colonial legacy in education is immoral. They argue that a ‘white’ curriculum marginalizes BAME writers and alienates minority students, contributing to their low representation and attainment in higher education. ...'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002h1j
How can an academic organisation, supposedly concerned with language and clarity in communication invent such a silly slogan. In what way has the curriculum be “colonised”, and what outside force is responsible for this dastardly act.
DeleteThere's an embarrassing video of a journalist chatting rubbish while drunk and it's going to be featured in all UK MSM media - John Sweeney? Nope,Tommy Robinson! :) Double standards as always!!
ReplyDeleteI don't think many people will be too surprised by the TR video. But TR does work for a public corporation that has the right to tax us for watching their TV service.
Whoops - does NOT work for such a corporation of course!!!
DeleteWhen will you hear the phrase "unborn child" happily bandied about between left-liberal Today presenters and their left-liberal guests? When it's the unborn child of an adult pro-IS Jihad woman, who wants to come back to the Kufr state of the UK to avail herself of its NHS and welfare benefits, and maybe sign a book deal - that's when. Otherwise "unborn children" are of absolutely no interest to the BBC which prefers to medicalise them as "foetuses".
ReplyDeleteRobinson, interviewing a Times journalist, wanted to know if they could undo the indoctrination but didn't bother to ask about a potential risk if she was allowed back. The Times journalist, who turned out to be an advocate as much as a reporter (he was described as a war reporter), assured him that she could be re-assimilated. All nice and cosy then.
DeleteOn Five Live this morning the comments obviously weren't going the right way so Nicki Campbell asked his listeners to, 'think like a defence attorney that was making a case for her to return'. Vee hef vays of mekin you zink.
DeleteAll of the BBC commentary points to their official position - which although unsaid - is that she should be allowed to return and be rehabilitated
DeleteDoobster on BBBC posts the following:
ReplyDelete"Sly BBC … look at the headline about Airbus on this page. Failed due to lack of orders. Nothing at all to do with Brexit. But, the BBC cannot resist. Just under the sub headline “why did the airbus fail” is the words ” Brexit uncertainty a disgrace says airbus” … this is a article from last month and no relevance what so ever but they just cannot leave Brexit out of it !! Pathetic BIAS.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business"
The use of links to previous stories is a subtle but very effective form of bias. The links are very prominent and catch the eye like sub-headings.
I noticed this in the BBC article about increased anti-semitism in Germany. The use of more than one link to AfD and rise of Far Right kind of "flavours" the article, bit like seasoning a soup. Let's call it Artificial Flavouring bias. I think this is used a lot with Trump stories. Even stories tending not to back up Russia-Trump collusion claims will be peppered with links assering such collusion.
I expect this is why the BBC employs desk officers, or editors as it calls them, just so we know what the real story is, not the new facts that have come in 'off the wire'.
DeleteYes, there's an interesting choice of photo in the BBC News website 'IS Schoolgirl' headline story - a selfie giving very little indication of her ideology.
DeleteThat last comment was meant to go into the Nicki Campbell window above. The photo described seeks to 'normalise' the person as a typical schoolgirl who might be forgiven for her actions due to the inexperience of youth. I don't buy that.
DeletePictures tell a thousand words - so the saying goes. We know how well the BBC use this to great effect. The picture they use for the story is a classic in false representation. Just as they intended.
DeleteSadly I heard some of The Evan Davis Show (the programme that used to be known as PM). There was a potentially interesting item on the ERG. Whose unbiased and impartial lengthy soundbite would you use to introduce such an item? - why Ken Clarke's of course! Obs!! And then, presumably, you'd get one of the BBC's hundreds (thousands?) of journalists to present the item...er no, you get someone from a newspaper (Times I think) who can then more easily give their v. biased and partial views of the ERG, leaving the BBC in the clear. Simples! For instance,
ReplyDeletethe biased journo referred to Rees-Mogg as the MP for the Late Nineteenth Century. Good joke, but they don't refer to Ken Clarke as the MP for Jazz, Hush Puppies and Old Fashioned Cottages. :)
The only good thing about the item was that the theme was that the ERG is a nascent party. Good. Let's hope it happens. The Conservative Party is now officially dead, killed by psycho-nurse May who delivered the lethal injection designed to cure its "Nastiness".
Newsnight Snooze-Watch:
ReplyDeleteMaitlis describes Soubry as a "moderate" in the course of her super-soft interview with the London Dry Girl. This alleged "moderate" wants to make this country a region of an undemocratic superstate called the EU with its own army and federal goverment. She wants to allow in all undocumented migrants who arrive on our shores. She wants to end free speech. She wants to have the right to call fellow citizens fascists but not to allow others the same right. She wants all ERG members "slung out of the party". Hmmm, very moderate.
Kwarze Kwarteng's turn now...being interrupted mid-sentence all the time...Why is Maitlis interrupting him so much when she gave La Soubry such an easy ride?
Maitlis seems extremely concerned we might have a no deal scenario...why? I'd personally be very happy with a no deal outcome. Save tens of billions of pounds...escape EU control...get good terms of trade. Maitlis is expressing her personal political opinion.
Next Maitlis, as often happens, refers to a Labour politician by his first name, but doesn't do so with Conservative politicians (unless they are on the left of the party).
Still Richard Watson's report on Lord Ahmed has me smiling. :) In case you don't know him, he's the guy who threatened to bring 10,000 crazed religious followers into Parliament Square if the Government didn't ban Geert Wilders. Our craven government caved in yet another shameful surrender to an alien ideology.
"...he's the guy who threatened to bring 10,000 crazed religious followers into Parliament Square..."
DeleteThat explains a great deal of Government policy.
BBC This Week
ReplyDelete"Ayesha Hazarika discusses aggression in the Spotlight section."
... How come she on the media all the time ?
YAB and Nabila Ramadeen have been on furlough so I think she's got the extra gigs.
ReplyDeleteI mentioned before how some journalism is just crumbling under the pressure of events. This is a good example... Laura Kuennesberg just going "this and that and if and what"...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47247900
Compare and contrast with Angus Walker's scoop!
In her latest article and analysis, Katya Adler speaks for the all at the BBC when she inadvertently gives an opinion on what she would like to happen.
ReplyDelete‘Preferable for the EU would be Theresa May agreeing last minute to a permanent customs union, allowing the EU to dramatically change conditions around the backstop.
Deal done. Brexit over. Allowing both sides to start talks on what really matters to them: the post-Brexit EU-UK trade deal.’
"...both sides...what really matters to them..."
DeleteIn other words, Parliament and MPs and Brussels stitching up everything to their own satisfaction. Let's hope it all falls apart.
Today the government of a major EU country with a land border with British territory has effectively collapsed. One might expect that to be covered, by the European-looking, pro-EU BBC News ?
ReplyDeleteNo, still reporting internal US affairs as headline news.
The BBC is overly obsessed with US news.
DeleteI really don’t understand why.
Partly Marxism - Marxists are obsessed with the USA because it is supposed to be, and I guess is, the lead capitalist-imperialist power in the world.
DeleteSecondly I think there is the whole post war thing...the US was unbelievably glamorous to the post war generation brought up on rationing and rather hidebound British ways: Hollywood, rock n roll, material abundance and louche behaviour...that post war generation is still in charge of things at the BBC...
So I think it's a love-hate thing: they hate the USA politically but they are still in love with it culturally as an exciting place to be. Emily Maitlis always looks ecstatically happy when she's in the USA.
But yes, it's absurd when the BBC tells us our destiny is in "Europe" (ie the EU) and lectures us constantly about the rising importance of China and India.
Some MPs... a bit like some say...
ReplyDeleteSome MPs fear that the backstop - the insurance policy to prevent the return of customs checks on the Irish border - will see the UK will be bound to EU customs rules in the long-term.
This morning on Today:
ReplyDeleteGood to hear Steve Baker of ERG take Justin Webb to task for referring to him as a "hardline" Brexiteer. The "hardline" epithet is never applied to no-borders extremists like Soubry, Grieve, Cooper or Creasy or hardline "independence movements" like the SNP.
Noticed on Radio 4 today just how much the BBC were pushing the school "climate change" strike. Quite shameless promotion of an event which could only put children at risk in all sorts of ways. The newsreaders' vocal tone expressed huge admiration and support for the protest. Similarly presenters were breathless in their excitement and marked this by asking only the softest of questions.
Thus contrasting nicely with your earlier point about Emily Maitlis describing Anna Soubry as a "moderate".
DeleteSteve Baker is one of the thoroughly good eggs to emerge from this whole affair.
DeleteIf we applied the BBC's PC rules to John Sweeney we would have to conclude he is being Islamophobic and culturally insensitive here - mocking modest dress in Islamic societies:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4KdVuPWs8o
He's starting to remind me of that sozzled, rambling old barrister from 'The Fast Show' (wasn't he called Jolyon Maugham QC, or something like that?):
Delete"...In 1992 I was invited...press corps...errr...Iran...heavy duty minders...I hadn't seen a woman's...errr...a woman as a woman...look at her! ..an erotic ankle bracelet...PHWOAR!...afraid that I was very, very drunk".
He errrs on the side of cognac, perhaps.
DeleteI expect the female lure must have been bored out of her mind!
Yes, the Fast Show comparison is very apposite!
Looking at Radio 4's schedules, I am extremely concerned that there remains one programme that has not yet been given a PC makeover - I am referring of course to The Shipping Forecast.
ReplyDeleteIt still has blatantly male-dominated Sea Areas like "Viking" and the white supremacist "Fair Isle". Its presenters still adhere to old fashioned standard English pronunciation conventions. Isn't it time we had someone give the forecast in an impenetrable South Asian accent, or failing that, have Lyse Doucet read it out?
The idea that Hebridean fishermen (why no women?) should be able to understand the forecast is an outmoded concept in a world striving for social justice and equality.
Also - why does the Shipping Forecast never make clear that all gales are cause by carbon emissions? This is an unforgiveable omission on the part of the BBC and Met Office.
How can we have a racist, sexist and climate change denying shipping forecast, when The Archers is striving for full equality of outcome, whether it's in farming, village cricket, business, or family life?
BBC - time to get your act together! The Shipping Forecast as it is currently produced can only make us think "Shame on you, shame on you!".
'Bells on Sunday' is another disgrace. Where's 'Muezzins on Friday'?
Delete(Or is this tempting fate?)
Listening to the shipping forecast, I enjoy the comedy West Indian accent one that occurs occasionally. Now I am looking forward to other accents being used. My favourite would be an Italian one.
DeleteUnknown - Glad to see they are making some progress on the PCfication of The Shipping Forecast...is it the Neil guy (basso profundo with the very idiosyncratic pronunciation system)? His rich tonal quality is very nice...but there's a reason basso profundo (likewise falsetto) types are not generally heard as presenters on radio: it affects clarity. Seems they made an exception in his case...can't think why! lol
DeleteThought this was a rather telling headline off the BBC website...
ReplyDelete"Last real life Great Escape prisoner dies aged 99"
Notice that? - "real life"... The BBC clearly inhabits a world where "real life" stuff is just another category to go along with "actors" or "CGI" or "docudrama" or "documentary".
If that was my relative they were referencing I would be seriously p'd off.
The Telegraph has a glorious obituary about the man.
Deletehttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2019/02/15/squadron-leader-dick-churchill-last-survivor-great-escape-stalag/
.... Notice that? - "real life"... The BBC clearly inhabits a world where "real life" stuff is just another category to go along with "actors" or "CGI" or "docudrama" or "documentary". ...
DeleteI agree with you MB. The BBC reality of historical events is built up by a mixture of rewriting, sanitising or glamourising events, or generally forcing square pegs into round holes. Cinematic history, (especially if Will G has given a thumbs up), becomes the preferred reality. That the "Last real life Great Escape prisoner dies aged 99" merely puts the history 'in the can' - making changes to the narrative unnecessary from now on. Often now, we hear people referring to films as authoritative sources for their knowledge of historical events - Braveheart?
I suspect that it won't be long until before we hear that 'Anon, the "Last real life survivor of The Battle of Orgreave dies aged 99"'. At that point the biased history of that event can be suitably pigeonholed without question.
Until before - duplication.
DeleteTry this:
ReplyDeleteKeep refreshing this page… https://thispersondoesnotexist.com — they aren’t real people, they’re generated by an ML algorithm.
Here we have the makings of a useful Vox Pop tool for the BBC. Use an appropriate face, and write in text below the image. This could be totally convincing without a shred of reality or traceability to it. Worrying Huh?
I can see a flurry of totally convincing anonymous Twitter accounts with cool-looking ML -generated faces.
DeleteOrdinarily I would not be too worried as I, and those I respect, assess opinions by their accuracy and value and not peripheral factors as used too often by the BB.... 'raciiiiiiist!'.
ReplyDeleteHowever, you are right. From the clone editors the BBC is introducing via twitter to their already well-programmed NPC defence drones ... "Asking BBc staff to back a claim up? Raciiiiiist!"... things look set to get further interesting, in a Chinese sense.
Re Arthur Trof's earlier comments on the BBC's approach to history, in Orwell's 1984 the ruling party's slogan is "To control the past is to control the future and to control the present is to control the past."
ReplyDeleteThe BBC has the resources (billions of pounds) and the institutional environment (no effective oversight) to control the present ie to be in a dominant position within UK media, that allows it to control what information is presented to the public.
The BBC has very little interest in real history (what actually happened in the past). Its true interest is in the future, in fashioning what they think will be a sort of utopian society where there is complete equality of outcome in all areas. To help realise that future it has ended up falsifying history: turning the age of the Islamic Caliphate into a golden age of prosperity and peace, inflating the role of some quite minor female figures in art, music and science, exaggerating the achievements of ethnic minority individuals (e.g. Mary Seacole), conflating Thatcherism with the 3 Day Week and the Winter of Discontent, and ignoring whole swathes of history (e.g. Labour's complicity in Appeasement policies up until 1939 has been effaced from the record). Just a few examples! Simplistio interpretations are the norm: the BBC's thirties was a time of depression - true in many parts but it was also a time which saw a huge rise in prosperity and living standards for millions of people as suburban rail lines allowed people to move into the fresh air of the countryside and as any slums were cleared and replaced with good standard council housing.
These distortions are given a further twist through the use of period dramas to ramp up the misrepresentations.
Going through the check-out at a well known supermarket the other day, the bill came to £19.84. I commented to the sales assistant on the significance of that number. This particular twenty something had never heard of 1984 or George Orwell.
DeleteTHOUGHT FOR THE DAY:
ReplyDeleteSeeing interviews with children taking part in the BBC-backed school pupils reminded me of something that we might forget in adulthood: virtue signalling gives people tremendous pleasure. The children were clearly loving being able to bask in the sunshine of moral approval for their ethnical superiority and also in being given a licence to ignore social norms (bunk off school, be rude to grown ups).
Though virtue signalling may appear somewhat tedious to many adults, I think a large minority do still derive huge pleasure from it, especially if they don't really have much talent for anything else. We are status animals, whether we like it or not, and feeling morally superior is a good substitute for feeling socially or intellectually superior.
Furthermore, virtue signallers are able to then indulge in aggressive verbal or physical behaviour without feeling excluded from society. This is a good way of releasing negative energy which would otherwise be turned inward on themselves.
school pupils = school pupils strike
DeleteOn the face of it, this story about Shamima Begum by Dominic Casciani is balanced and factual. But look a bit deeper and the bias is there.
ReplyDeleteThe trio were picked up by smugglers working for the IS group - implying that they weren’t going across the border if their own free will
grooming young women to the cause was key to that plan - implying was she groomed and so controlled and not of her own free will
these guest houses were used to further indoctrinate the women with the group's ideology and prepare them for their new lives - implying she was indoctrinated and not of her own free will
And do it goes on throughout the article supporting the victimhood narrative the BBC want us to swallow.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47240100
Just listened to the new narrative headline that has been spun on the BBC today.
Delete‘Shamima Begum who was fifteen when she travelled to Syria.....
Heard Sheila McLennan (Woman's Hour I believe) standing in for Anita Anand on Any Answers...she was incredibly biased on this subject...didn't even disguise the fact it was her own views she was putting out there.
DeleteI think it might have been her who threw out the "C word" - compassion.
Fair enough you might wish to apply compassion in this case - it's arguable at least...but has anyone here ever heard a Beebot argue that compassion be applied to people they deem (often erroneously) to be "Far Right" extremists? Nope, neither have I.
Did they shed tears over Tommy Robinson being removed from his children for 13 months after summary kangaroo court proceedings? They hardly even covered the story and certainly didn't cover the impact on Tommy's young children.
I’m just trying to work out who is agitating in the background and feeding the media? Who led the Times journalist to her?
DeleteIs it her family, human rights lawyers, Moslem pressure groups?
This is being orchestrated- but by who?
Good point, Arne...these things don't happen by accident. My suspicion would be an NGO operating in the refugee camp. They would have got the Times (back to being "The Appeaser" not "The Thunderer") on to the story.
DeleteIt's amazing how the BBC and UK MSM can deceive us even when we have no intention of being deceived!
ReplyDeleteUntil I read the excellent Leave.EU site just now, I had completely forgotten that Sarah Wollaston "defected" from the Vote Leave campaign to Remain in early June 2016. The idea she was ever anything other than Remain is implausible, so it must have been an act of deliberate deception.
But are we ever reminded of that change of colours by the BBC? I've seen her interviewed probably hundreds of times on the BBC, Sky and ITV and this is NEVER brought up.
Why not? If Boris had change alliegance three weeks before the vote we'd never hear the end of it!
I think you might have corrected me once for saying she had been a Remain campaigner all along. Or maybe that was about someone else. In any case she is a complete drip and I don't know why she isn't a Lib Dem or a Green.
DeleteNot me, I think...but it's confusing at times so you never know! Leavers who were really Remainers, Remainers who were really Leavers, Remainers who are now prepared to Leave as long as the Leaving looks like Remain and Leavers who would rather Remain than Leave on Remainer May's Leave terms. :) You know what I mean?
DeleteArne - the facts of the coverage do suggest collision beyond credulity.
ReplyDeleteIt appears that Sky won a secret bidding war for a gushing 'reporter' to deliver young Rob E. S. Pierre personally.
At least there is still something to celebrate in Newport this weekend.
ReplyDeleteI expect there are urgent meetings going on at the BBC...how are they going to play Chuka's new party? This is going to be a tricky one for them. In many respects it's their sort of party...not so much hard left as soggy left, pro EU and pro no borders. But on the other hand...their instinct is to stick with Labour as the "eternal progressive party", the motor of PC leftism. Hmmm...dilemma time. I guess they will decide the new party has its uses in much the same way that the Lib Dems and Greens have their uses (to float policies the BBC likes and to gnaw away at the Conservative vote).
ReplyDeleteAnybody think Blair will use the party to re-enter UK politics? Blair standing in Corbyn's constituency could be interesting...
DeleteBlair may well be funding it and giving support in other ways. I think the BBC will support it because their politics are very much Blairite.
DeleteAs for the electorate, there are too many dyed in the wool Labour supporters who will place their vote that way whoever is leader and however left wing and controversial the politics. As will most who are recent or first generation immigrants.
Isn't Chuka the BBC's preferred Labour party leader?
DeleteAnd now he had gone and chucked the party!
On the basis of The Evan Davis Show it would seem at least the Davis faction within the BBC is against the centrists, I guess on the grounds they think it will strengthen "The Tories".
DeleteIt’s amusing really for months and months the BBC and MSM have been predicting a Tory party split along similar lines.
ReplyDeleteThe Evan Davis Show, Radio 4 (what was previously "PM"). Evan is straight out of the starting blocks telling that Honda's decision is an example of economic news post-Brexit has been going badly. Er - sorry to interrupt Evan, but we haven't actually yet Brexited. And Honda is moving production back to Japan, not elsewhere in Europe. In fact this shows how bad the EU-Japan trade deal was. Not the sort of thing Trump would have concluded.
ReplyDeleteNewsnight obsessing about the UK's yellow vests and conspiracy theories.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever heard the BBC challenge conspiracy theories of the Far Left? Er no. Conspiracy theories from families of people who die in police custody? Conspiracy theories about deaths at military barracks? Er no. Conspiracy theories about Grenfell? Er no.
But a conspiracy theory from a populist movement about how three boys came to be mown down by the driver of a car? That's challenged. Even one of the grieving mothers is challenged forcefully. And of course Katie Razall gives only snippets of the conspiracy theory, so the viewer can't make sense of what is being claimed.
Towards the end, Newsnight start the comments section with a quote from Rachel Sylvester - as always!
MB - in the BBC bubble they all inhabit, the main threat to a cohesive sociely is always from the far right. It can never be from the left because left wing is good and far left are just fighting harder for the oppressed, the dispossessed and the disadvantaged.
DeleteYep, I think that's how they see it. For the Soggy Left BBC, the Far Left are "hearts in right place but head in wrong space" - so there is never the visceral disdain and hatred on display for the excesses of the Far Left.
DeleteI think it's virtually impossible for a Beeboid to feel even a faint glimmer of moral outrage at Mao's Famine, or Stalin's Purges, or the genocidal suppression of Tibet.
They might have some sympathy with individuals caught up in these events but they do not feel the events deserve to be condemned in the same way that atrocities or mass murder of the Far Right are. They see these events as policy errors, not moral outrages.
On the main BBC News last night Simon Jack spent the majority of his Honda report talking about how the uncertainty caused by Brexit is affecting business. Thus linking the two.
ReplyDeleteThis morning Honda say the closure is nothing to do with Brexit.
From the BBC there will be no apology. They will consider it job done by opportunistically linking bad news to Brexit and making sure the viewers are given the that impression.
However their reputation and integrity, already holed below the waterline will take another hit.
The groupthink globalist attitude that pervades means they are totally unaware of how they have fatally damaged trust with the public.
There is a tweet (Views own; do not imply endorsement) that summarises this up well.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/MatgoStyles/status/1097769717614419968
So much fake news to choose from on the BBC but this one got me riled...
ReplyDeleteThe BBC have been making much of the Macronite March to protest against an anti-semitic incident involving Yellow Vests. I did think there might be something fishy about the story. Just found this on Breitbart suggesting it was a Yellow Vest Islamist who was responsible for the incident. Somehow the BBC don't seem to know that, despite their billions of pounds of resources.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/02/19/yellow-vest-islamist-caught-hurling-anti-semitic-abuse-at-french-jewish-intellectual/
Or on Jeremy Vine where the first topic was - Honda say that the closure isn’t because of Brexit but we ask whether those made redundant because of Brexit should insist those who voted leave go first.
DeleteThat item was followed by a news bulletin saying unemployment at 4% was at its lowest since 1975. And there are more vacancies than ever before and that wage growth at 3.5% is comfortably stripping inflation.
You couldn’t make it up!
I haven't been viewing the BBC News but I noticed a reference on one of the threads here to a headline about an IS schoolgirl.
ReplyDeleteIt's the BBC use of language that caught my attention. There's been a trend in the media in recent years to refer to school pupils as students - In fact I thought it had become standard.
Are they now reverting to terms like 'schoolgirl', implying youthful age and childhood rather than the grown-up 'student'? If so, why?
'Schoolgirl' suggests a measure of misguided naivety, whereas 'Student' suggests an application to some cause or other - a maturity of sorts. Shamima Begum was a student of IS ideology when she left the UK. I don't buy the schoolgirl label.
DeleteGuido is having a go at the BBC for bias...
ReplyDeletehttps://order-order.com/2019/02/19/bbcs-think-tank-funding-hypocrisy/
The BBC took film crews into the Taxpayers’ Alliance and Institute of Economic Affairs for a Politics Live feature today, ostensibly to help viewers “make their own judgements” about whether them making their donors public is “relevant” to their ability to take part in public debate. It quickly became clear that the BBC was more interested in portraying them as pantomime villains than letting viewers “make their own minds up”…
guido also on James OB, quoting his show earlier in Feb
DeleteSilvio Carlo : “I used to work at Liberty, Liberty doesn’t publish who funds it. Open Rights Group doesn’t publish who funds it…
O’Brien: “No, but I’m not troubled by their agenda.”
\\ This brazen hypocrisy reveals the fundamental lie at the heart of the unrelenting ‘Who Funds You’ smear campaign //
https://order-order.com/2019/02/19/brazen-hypocricy-james-obrien
The principle is that it's not the messenger that counts, but the message.
DeleteEach argument stands on its on feet no matter who makes it.
The argument is not invalid just cos a small boy makes it.
Nor is the suit fine, just cos its tthe Emperor who says it it.
Now who infuences UK policy ? Grantham NGOs funded by the Big Green Hedgefund man, and Client Earth the lawyers funded by anonymous network of US Greenfunds
knowing the source of a reports funding does not disprove its argument, but it does help me decide I am going to put in to looking in to it.
typo: Now who infuences UK climate policy
DeleteThere's a question re James O'Brien: how on earth was he ever considered to be a suitable objective presenter of a supposedly flagship news programme like Newsnight. Who appointed him to that position? Why? Did they realise he was so rabidly unbiased?
DeleteThe BBC allegedly ignores / finds a way around its own editorial guidelines when a trans activist person who 'still has her male anatomy but has lived as a woman...', refused to appear on a programme alongside a female academic, alleging Ku Klux Klan and similar lurid comparisons against the women's organisation represented by the academic.
ReplyDeleteThe programme was to discuss an article by Martina Navratilova about men who've become or proclaimed themselves trans women and want to compete against women in sports.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6718921/BBC-no-platform-row-axing-guest-discussion-transgender-athletes.html
BTW I wonder if Saturday's doco will start with the theme tune from The Sweeney ?
ReplyDeleteI wonder if it will be mentioned by anyone in the UK MSM...if not, then we should be afraid, very afraid.
DeleteMore project fear from Paul Johnson of the IFS.
ReplyDeleteThe article says the GBP exchange rate falling is all bad news.
The fact that British exports are cheaper is discounted as ‘some say’.
I’m increasingly concerned about favoured external think tanks and experts being allowed to publish BBC articles on their website. It’s not obvious that these are independently commissioned opinion pieces and I suspect that the BBC will predominantly choose views that mirror their own.
Bias by self validation maybe.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47212992
Why is that when BBC reporters write about potential US Democratic Party candidates (and they write about them a lot!) they always sound like a concerned friend, not an objective observer...it's always "how well can they do?" "can they do better than x,y,z?" "can they deliver victory against Trump?"
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47229621
They are people who do a lot of fretting about one thing or another. Fretting on behalf of their preferred party candidate is another way of showing bias: Vicarious Fretting Bias.
DeleteVFB Bias - I like it! :) There's a lot of VFB going on...Ms Begum has had more VFB than all the hundreds of Yazidi women who saw their fathers and brothers murdered in cold blood before they were sold into horrific slavery.
DeleteFunny how things go...it's like the BBC and maybe the UK MSM more generally have lost interest in the whole Brexit thing...despite the fact we are now moving into the most vital phase! After all those thousands of speculative but meaningless hours of broadcasting since 2016.
ReplyDeleteIs this incompetence? Laziness?
Or is it just that the BBC now know we are leaving one way or the other, that there is no way to stop it, whether it's May's Abject Surrender or a No Deal or a Customs Union...we will formally be leaving the EU, no Second Referendum...
It's almost like they've taken their ball away and said they ain't gonna play.
MB - Here is the the Today Show claiming the best of their day is spent taking on Trump.
ReplyDeleteRefreshingly honest, though they do know they are unaccountable.
https://twitter.com/BBCr4today/status/1098190539764256768
Peter Hitchens has entered the labyrinth that is the infamous BBC complaints system, following a programme called Call the Midwife which had a story about a backstreet abortion. BBC agenda at work?
ReplyDeleteHe shares his tips on using the system and quotes their own guidelines back at them. Not for nothing do I call him Mr Persistence. Whether it will get him anywhere is another matter.
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/