Showing posts with label 'Inside the Commons'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 'Inside the Commons'. Show all posts

Sunday, 15 March 2015

Still Championing Sarah?



There's a 'breaking news' story at the moment about Rotherham Labour MP Sarah Champion claiming, on parliamentary expenses, the cost of a poppy wreath for Remembrance Day - something which will obviously offend many people, and that inevitably harks back to the parliamentary expenses scandal of 2009.

Sarah Champion was one of the stars of the recent landmark BBC documentary, Inside the Commons. She was presented as someone untouched by the expenses scandal, and vigorously determined to be a parliamentary outsider. 

She came across very well, thanks to the BBC. (Even I fell for her). Plus, she's been all over the BBC in the wake of the Rotherham paedophile scandal. 

A search on Google News shows that the Rotherham Star reported this 'breaking news' first - about five hours ago. The Daily Express followed four hours ago. The BBC reported it two hours ago. The Daily Mail one hour ago.

For those who think the BBC has been championing the Rotherham Labour MP, in the wake of the Rotherham paedophile scandal, this is surely encouraging. They are reporting it, after all. 

If you look carefully you can even see it on the BBC News website's homepage, about two-thirds of the way down the page in small print (in the 'England' section) with the unspecific headline MP claims £17 poppy wreath expenses. (No name, no party - unlike the Express and the Mail who loudly trumpet 'Labour' in their headlines).

Still, they are reporting it - at least online. We'll have to see where they go from here.

Sunday, 22 February 2015

Champion of democracy

While hundreds of Rotherham girls were being groomed abused and raped and their complaints ignored by the police and the council, MP Sarah Champion was sitting at a large table with about 16 Asians and one ‘white’ man, saying  ”Personally this is something I’m very passionate about”
No; not about that. You’d know if you watched the video. Her passion was about Palestine, where, according to Sarah Champion so many civilians are being murdered and so many more are having to flee their country.” Of course this was taking place in the summer of 2014, during Operation Protective Edge, when the BBC and all the other news channels were disproportionately bombarding Britain with graphic images of what they insisted was Israel’s disproportionate bombardment of Hamas.

“The violence that Israel is showing is completely disproportionate as far as I am concerned” said Sarah Champion.  “Our government has really got to do something to create a ceasefire because it’s untenable, this level of violence.”

“I’m terribly glad that Ed Miliband has come out incredibly strongly against what Israel is doing [.....]I’m seeing the people in Gaza being slaughtered”

She is indeed seeing the people in Gaza being slaughtered. She’s seeing the dead and injured paraded before the cameras at the invitation of Hamas, and she’s seeing it courtesy of the BBC.


The flaw in western democracy is that in order to function as intended, voters should be engaged enough to go out and vote and (reasonably) well-informed enough to understand what they’re voting for. Ever since the Labour government decided to secure its position ‘forever’ by importing hoards of potential Labour supporters willy nilly from the undemocratic third world, the western democratic vision has fallen apart. 

If the financial crisis hadn’t come along when it did, this ploy might have succeeded, and who knows how much worse things could have been. Remember the ‘democracy’ that brought in fanatical Islamist regimes during and after the farcical Arab Spring? The BBC didn’t get it at all. Even now people are still calling  Hamas ‘democratically elected’. Once elected, majority rule says democracy has reached the terminus, and the bus will never move on again.

Sarah Champion must pander to the followers of Allah, or else. If she doesn’t someone else will.
The definition of Islamic democracy (contrary to western democracy) is simply that the government is essentially Islamic and it is controlled by whichever sect, tribe or group has the majority of members. This is always the essence of democracy: rule by the majority. In Iraq and Iran the majority groups are the Shiites. Therefore the only possible type of democratic government in Iraq and Iran is a Shiite Islamic Republic. The majority (i.e. Shiites) of Iraqis want democracy, but they want Islamic democracy not the American style of secular democracy. Whenever Bush uses the word democracy, he means western secular democracy. Whenever the Iraqi people use the word democracy, they mean Islamic democracy. The difference between these two concepts is crystal clear to anyone who takes the time to think about it. 
For ‘Bush’ you can easily insert ‘the BBC’.

Since much local politics has been taken over by Pakistani or Bangladeshi Muslims, antisemitism and the anti-Israel lobby rules okay. See what is happening at Tower Hamlets. See how Sarah Champion is duped, first by the BBC’s inflammatory reporting, then by the necessity of pandering to her constituents. She has to, otherwise she’ll be out on her ear.

What makes it worse is that she is not alone in deciding to be passionate about the Palestinians. Why? What, other than the blanket coverage given to their anti-Israel propaganda, is so special to Sarah Champion about the Palestinians?

There was a huge puff piece about her by Damian Whitworth in last week’s Times (£). Michael Cockerell’s ‘Inside the Commons’ has propelled Ms Champion to a more favourable variety of prominence than would have been the case had she not starred in the first episode of the programme. 
Here is an excerpt from the Times:
“Sarah Champion is one of the few politicians in Rotherham to have emerged from the child sexual exploitation scandal with any credit. She describes herself as a “freak” among MPs who was regarded with suspicion by colleagues at Westminster when she agreed to take part in the fly-on-the-wall TV series “Inside the Commons”
She is loathed by many members of Rotherham’s disgraced local Labour party, and is so unimpressed by traditional squabbling between the political parties nationally that less than three months before a general election she is happy to describe David Cameron as “decent”and held a private meeting with him to try to advance the cause of abuse victims.”

Call me cynical but some of her behaviour, her remarks about Nigel Farage for example, don’t coincide with this spin.

I agree with Craig that “Inside the Commons” is an enjoyable and fascinating series. The viewer was given privileged access to some of the mundane, everyday, housekeeping aspects of our great parliamentary institution, and we could glimpse some familiar faces coming and going, but we still knew that the  editing sets the tone. Editing is the master. I’d love to see what ended up on the cutting room floor. No I wouldn’t - it would mostly be boring stuff, but you know what I mean. 

The ones who ‘agreed to take part’ must have had an idea of how they were likely to come across. Fly on the wall films are not random. Otherwise how come we saw Steve Rotheram MP the former brickie on his roof, dismantling a chimney? If he didn’t want to be seen as a brickie he could easily have not performed this rooftop exercise in front of the cameras. 

An MP who was sitting in Rotherham at the time of an enormous scandal would normally be bearing the brunt of a barrage of criticism. But somehow Sarah has come out smelling of roses. 

Acting on behalf the abused women and passionate about it.

Friday, 20 February 2015

Rother(h)am MPs and the BBC


I've continued to enjoy Michael Cockerell's marvellous documentary series about the House of Commons, Inside the Commons. It's informative, brilliantly filmed, and highly entertaining.

This week's edition focused on four politicians - "the [Tory] MP for the 18th Century", Jacob Rees-Mogg [Radio 4's Broadcasting House's most-invited-on Tory toff]; right-wing Eurosceptic Tory "joker" Peter Bone [of "Mrs Bone" fame]; sweet, baby-carrying, nervous tic-afflicted Lib Dem whip Jenny Willott; and former 'brickie' [shown still 'brickying' in his spare time - despite, pace Wikipedia, his 'brickying' beyond a long time in the past now!], Scouse Labour MP Steve Rotheram,

Entertaining as I find Jacob R-M, I can well imagine that 'ordinary' voters might find him a bit too much of a 'nice-but-dim' 'Tory toff' - especially as he was presented here. And Peter Bone (who I also like) might have been hampered by Michael Cockerell's commentary, presenting him as a "joker". Poor Jenny came across as deeply lovable but utterly useless. 

The clear star of the show, however, was Steve 'not the member for Rotherham' Rotheram.


Like the actually member for Rotherham, Sarah Champion [in the first episode of the series], Steve was first show as charming chappie (a lovable scally), then as an earnest campaigner for the public [campaigning on the issue of the danger of old tyres on vehicles]. 

And, like her, he won out, in getting his campaign enshrined in a bill. [A successful MP!!!!] A female member of the public, personally affected by the issue, wept in gratitude on his shoulder. [I put that cynically, on reflection, but it was hard at the time not to be touched by her depth of feeling]. 

Good ol' Steve Rotheram MP (Labour), not of Rotherham!

******

As for the real Labour MP for Rotherham, here's a video - and many thanks to a reader for sending this to us - of Sarah, the Champion of the World, bare-armed, sucking up to a certain, pious demographic segment of her constituency (can you guess which?) at the time of Operation Protective Edge:

Saturday, 7 February 2015

Sarah, the Champion of the World



It's been such a busy week this week that it's been hard to keep up with the news, or to do much blogging - and (apologies in advance) it's only going to get worse over the next couple of weeks.

However, I have been reading a lot of negative stuff (in the usual places) about the BBC's coverage of the latest damning report on the Rotherham abuse scandal, and the subsequent fall of the ruling Labour group there. 

A surprising amount of that negative comment has focused on one figure - the newish Labour MP Sarah Champion (the one who found it amusing that Nigel Farage has been blockaded into UKIP's branch office there (by what looked from their banners like the usual crowd of left-wing activists). The BBC has been accused of giving her a soft time and not holding her and her party responsible. 

The one exception was Andrew Neil, who was credited with giving her a hard time - as indeed he did, mentioning the word 'Labour' countless times in the process.

I've not seen or heard enough to judge the other Sarah Champion interviewers, but I did see the programme which many a BBC-bashing commenter found especially biased - the first installment of Michael Cockerell's fascinating new series Inside the Commons

What annoyed them about it was that Miss Champion had been made the star of the show and been shown in a very good light, championing the victims of the Rochester 'grooming' gangs. 

Now, I watched that programme before seeing the criticisms of it, and loved it. And it did feature a second newish MP, the Conservative Charlotte Leslie. 

However, I did come away from it rather smitten with Sarah Champion. She came across as personally charming, deeply committed and unaffected by the trappings of power. She was shown to be a politically-successful parliamentary newcomer, winning a very rare opposition backbench victory related to helping the victims of child abuse. 

And if I felt so positively towards her then I bet a lot of other people did too. 

Charlotte Leslie's only victory, in contrast, was in getting to ask a somewhat toadying question to David Cameron at PMQs - a personal victory which followed shortly after a section of the programme where such toadying questions had been held up to ridicule. 

Conspiratorial-minded people might judge from that the balance of having one of the two leading ladies from the Conservative Party and one from the Labour Party was a 'false balance' as the Labour MP was shown to be a maverick campaigner and the Conservative MP was shown to be a lackey sucking up to her party and her constituents. 

Or that might just be how things worked out. 

If Sarah and Charlotte had been followed from the start (as appears to have been the case) and Sarah got her cause incorporated in a government bill while Charlotte merely got to ask a toadying question at PMQs, then that's what happened and how could the programme report otherwise?