Developments

Carole Cadwalldr, possibly wearing Paul Mason's spare leather jacket

Well, what to make of the Information Commissioner's report into the misuse of personal data during the EU referendum, and the BBC's coverage of it?

The BBC is currently leading its news website with Leave.EU and Banks firm face £135,000 fines, concerning Arron Banks and the leading unofficial Leave campaign (or at least it was when I began writing this post. It's now gone back to the US mid-terms!), while also I'm seeing tweets from Tim Shipman, political editor of The Sunday Times, placing a very different emphasis on the Information Commissioner's findings, concerning both the unofficial and the official Leave campaigns:

• Information Commissioner appears to find no evidence that Vote Leave used the Cambridge Analytica dataset or that there was any conspiracy involving them and AIQ.
• Information Commissioner has also concluded that, beyond some initial scoping conversations, Leave.EU  did not use Cambridge Analytica either. Which unravels another thread of the “conspiracy”.
• The claims are that: 1) Banks and Cambridge Analytica worked together on the referendum 2) Vote Leave was secretly coordinating with them via AIQ offshore. The ICO has found no evidence of 1 beyond the original discussions in public domain in 2015, and no evidence of 2.
• The Information Commissioner’s report goes a long way to debunking the data conspiracy claims. The focus will now, rightly, be on the source of Banks’ money.

The BBC's take sounds much less appetising for Leave supporters than Tim's.

And the likes of Guido Fawkes are saying that this "crushes" Carole Cadwalladr's "conspiracies".

I'm going to compliment Rob Burley & Co. today and say that, watching this lunchtime's Politics Live, I think the matter was handled to the BBC's credit. 

Carole Cadwalladr was invited on, given her say and challenged. 

There was a decent range of opinions on the panel, Brexit-wise.

And Liam Halligan was a fine counterweight to Carole in pointing out that Remain overspent Leave massively, thanks to that Government leaflet, and that the Remain campaign also had the whole weight of the state apparatus behind it. 

Jo Coburn also did her duty by reading out Leave.EU's response in full and by concentrating on the Lib Dems' donation to Stronger Together as well - criticised from the ICO. (I smiled when she put that to Carole C. and Liam H. began smiling broadly too as Carole said yes, it wasn't good, and then, within seconds, changed the subject.) 

Credit where credit is due then.

Local voting figures shed new light on EU referendum!!

It’s official!   

Brexit voters are mostly poorly educated pensioners. 

The BBC can confirm their earlier speculative proclamation that most Remain voters are young and university-educated, while Leave voters are elderly and ignorant and really shouldn’t have been given a vote. 

Are the elderly too stupid and selfish to care about their children’s and grandchildren’s future, or is ‘consideration for the next generation’ precisely why the old grannies people voted Brexit?  Hmm. Are the younger generation thinking long-term, or were they a little terrified by the Remain campaign’s dire predictions of short-term economic catastrophe? Who knows.

Given that schools and universities have been ideologically left-wing for long enough to inculcate most of our educated classes with left-wing politics and pro EU propaganda, these findings don't seem very surprising.  i(I’s rumoured that some of this attitudinal inclination has seeped through to BBC.)

Who’da thunk it? Doesn’t really matter though, now, does it? Brexit means Brexit (maybe)

Fiction, paranoia and all

My late mother looked out at me from the bathroom mirror this morning. When I was young I thought the old girl was stupid, but fast forward a decade or three and now it seems I AM her. I can hear myself saying things she used to say (and sounding quite like her as I do so.)

The constant whinge we’re hearing, which is that the old who voted to leave the EU have ruined the lives of the young who voted to stay, is unpleasant and inaccurate; but even if it weren’t, let’s not forget how cringeworthy most of our own youthful attitudes look, in retrospect. The old may not all be wise, but neither may the young. Especially the ones who are complaining now but didn’t even vote.

Since 24th June, when the country delivered that surprise slap in the BBC’s face, the BBC’s political fraternity have been consistently talking the country down. The financial and business gurus have hugely exaggerated the effect on the pound and the ftse. Britain’s glass is half empty, across the board. Sally Bundock and Ben Thompson were at it earlier today, and Thompson even described what would happen “If we leave the EU” - in fact if I remember correctly he even said “If we vote to Leave the EU”. Eh, what?

funny business

The BBC has a choice. An editorial choice. It can report what it chooses to report and ignore what it chooses to ignore. The most glaring evidence of that is, of course, the MSM’s exclusively negative reporting on Israel. The BBC chooses to ignore multitudes of positive stories about Israel yet ignores mountains of easily accessible examples of the Palestinians’ malevolence. 

You know how small children inadvertently reveal what they’re thinking in fantasy and play?

It’s a peculiar characteristic of the Arab world, which followers of the BBC won’t know much about because the BBC doesn’t report it. 

The conspiracy theories and infantile accusations the Israel haters of the Arab world invent could be used as typical psychological case studies of projection.  Like children, they egg each other on, their tales getting wilder and wilder and ever more revealing of their own thought processes and “unconscious impulses”.  This would be almost comical if only the rest of the world saw it for what it is instead of resolutely taking it at face value. The rest of the world lacks a sense of humor. 

Just one recent example of the EU’s gullibility on this score is the speech Mahmoud Abbas gave to a packed auditorium on 24th of this month.

After he had delivered it, fiction, paranoia and all, he received a standing ovation. Thank goodness we voted “Leave’. Any fleeting twinge of buyer’s remorse - dissipated in one fell swoop.

Thanks to Daphne Anson (comment below) I enjoyed reading this piece by Charles Moore,  (Telegraph) particularly:

“.....it is the Labour moderates, with their gloopy admiration for the EU and their uncritical endorsement throughout the Blair/Brown era of the excesses of global capitalism, who are the most out of touch with their natural supporters. “

and the final few paragraphs:

It's as if the BBC wishes the world was falling apart
Funny how Project Fear has been even more strongly pushed by the BBC (and Channel 4 News) after Remain has lost. The poor public are encouraged to believe fantasies, such as that all Poles must now go home or that we shall need visas to visit France. Such tales cannot be authoritatively refuted because poor Messrs Cameron and Osborne dare not admit that most of what they told us the week before is rubbish, and the Leave campaign is not the government of the country. 

Into this vacuum rush the doom-sayers. Yesterday the BBC put at the top of some bulletins the exclusive ("the BBC has learnt") that HSBC will move 1,000 workers to Paris if Britain leaves the single market. The following things were not properly explained – that HSBC was contemplating this, not actually doing it; that we might not leave the single market anyway and certainly won’t for more than two years; that 1,000 workers is only just over two per cent of HSBC’s British workforce; and that most of those sent to Paris would probably be French people currently in London. 

Is there any country in the world – apart from Britain – where the British Broadcasting Corporation would greet the return of parliamentary democracy with terror and dismay? 

  Despite the above, there is one person who should be deported at once. During the campaign, Ken Livingstone said that if Britain were to vote to leave the EU, he would leave Britain. When I last looked, he was still around. He should be put on a plane with a one-way ticket to Venezuela or Iran. 

Libby Purves has some interesting observations in today’s Times:

Hysterical lefties really need to grow upAs the culturati weep into their lattes while demonising the poor, old and insecure, the carry-on has been beyond parody. 

It has been a particularly grim couple of days for a soft-left newsaholic like me with a tenderness for the arts world. To quote one performing artist’s tweet — “Ashamed. Terrified. Shocked. Horrified”. Indeed: but it was not the actual vote that shocked, life having taught me that democracy has rough patches. It was the online squawk of reaction by my timeline, my tribe: cultural icons, colleagues, friends. If they feel “let down, betrayed, distressed” by the result, so did I by the mass response of the liberal media and arts sector to this vote against a 43-year-old administrative arrangement. 

 (That’s the accessible bit) Behind the paywall:

These are directors, actors, critics, cultural titans, intelligent lefties. Yet the carry-on was beyond parody: anguished bunker-mentality tinged with patronising. generalising hauteur about those who voted Leave. There had been nonsense from that general direction in the days before, alarm calls like panicked parakeets about how Brexit meant turning your back on Beethoven, Picasso and foreign cooking.”

Do read it all if you’re a subscriber to the Times online, or buy a copy. I disagree with some of the things she says, but after all, she was a Remain voter, and the obligatory comments about Nigel Farage and ‘that poster’ are par for the course.

My dear departed mother and her generation, (both parents staunch Labour supporters and readers of the pre-historic Manchester Guardian) would be turning in their graves if they could see us now. 

Tom Corbyn. "Palestine campaigner"

Referendum night memories

I feel the hand of history on my shoulder so I suppose I should begin with some insightful comments about the historic events of the past week: Fancy Iceland getting through to the knockout stages of Euro 2016! Who saw that coming?

On the other big Euro-related story of the week, I will continue to stick to my usual, narrow furrow. Never mind what it means, how we've got to where we are, and where we should go from here, I'm going to talk about the BBC. As David Mitchell's Shakespeare in Upstart Crow would say, "It's what I do!"

As I stayed up all night to watch the result of the EU referendum on the BBC I did think about live-blogging it, but decided not to. So thanks to David Preiser for stepping into the breach and giving us such a strong flavour of the night.

All I will say about it is that I found the BBC's election night coverage largely fair up until the moment when the BBC called it for Leave at around 4.40 am. (And I didn't even mind Jeremy Vine's "confusing" graphics.)

One of the two stand-out exceptions, bias-wise, up till that point, was the BBC's economics editor Kamal Ahmed, whose regular pronouncements on the plunging pound and use of that scary-looking graph were delivered in such a tone that he might as well just have gone ahead and announced , "The post-Brexit Apocalypse has begun. Told you so! Why didn't you listen to me?" 

And his reports on the following day's main BBC One news bulletins stuck doggedly to that same plunging pound story - even after, by the time of the BBC One News at Ten on Friday, the pound had already substantially recovered. It was left to newsreader Huw Edwards to point that out, in a few words, just before Kamal's latest overwhelmingly gloomy report.

The other stand-out exception was the way Nigel Farage was repeatedly condemned and sneered at, on and off, throughout. Most of that may have come from their guests but the BBC reporters/presenters kept laughing along with the sneers and never once sought to challenge the criticism of the UKIP leader. UKIP ought to look into those moments very carefully. I'm quite sure my memory isn't playing tricks on me there.

The change in tone after the BBC called it for Leave was so startling that I laughed out loud. It was like something from one of those Chris Morris/Armando Iannucci media-mocking programmes from the 1990s. All traces of remaining jollity vanished. Grim faces and nothing but grim faces arrived from BBC reporter after BBC reporter....

....and so it stayed throughout the following day: 

And for minutes after that announcement the caption across the bottom of the BBC's screen largely stuck to reading, "Pound drops to lowest level since 1985". 

That mood has stuck on the BBC face, like after a changed wind in the old saying, ever since.

Personal stuff

Where I was

On the subject of the EU referendum...

Despite being on holiday with my family in Devon (and, briefly, in Sue's Cornwall) I couldn't avoid the subject. My family wanted to talk about it. Lots of other people wanted to talk about it too - and, contrary to what some might expect (ahem, some at the BBC), none of them seemed bored to death with the subject - even the one member of my family who's only voted about once in forty years and who won't be voting in this one either, despite being obviously and quite angrily pro-Leave. (Is such interest unusual?)

And, though it's not remotely approaching a poll-worthy sample, I was out-and-out surprised at how pro-Leave they all were...and that's not in any way down to me as (away from the blogosphere) I'm not one for talking politics and didn't even try to persuade any of them. (In fact, curiously, I kept finding myself half-heartedly playing devil's advocate with them given how strongly pro-Leave they were. I've obviously spent too long listening to the BBC).

Some were definitely pro-Leave. Some - as definite as can be - have already sent in their postal votes for Out. And others may say they are still undecided but they had nothing but praise for Andrea, Gisela and Boris and nothing but contempt for Angela, Amber and Nicola on Thursday night. (And me too. Gisela Stuart in particular struck me as an absolute class act)...

...and the ones who have already sent off their postal votes for Leave are young (i.e. the ones meant to be for Remain), and I would have placed a near-certain bet on their voting for Remain. Yes, they felt conflicted about it, but they placed their cross on the postal vote, and off they've gone. 

As much of my extended family falls into the previously-Labour-voting-now-often-UKIP-voting working class (and, I reckon, the others I listened to too), I've been pleased to see - in the few glimpses I've had of it over the last week or so - a fair few BBC reports that haven't denied this intriguing trend. I saw a John Pienaar report on BBC One's News at Six that featured a lot of such people as vox pops, every one of whom was pro-Leave. And Newsnight has been reporting the seemingly ever-widening disconnect between the Labour Party and Labour voters over the issue too. And quite right too.

Before I went on holiday, I tried to work out how my work colleagues would vote by just listening to them. (Laurie Taylor's Thinking Allowed would call the majority of them 'working class'). Two of my friends had completely bought George Osborne's 'Your household will lose £4,300 a year if we leave' scare. They said they couldn't afford to lose that. They intend to vote Remain. (I pointed out it didn't mean what they think it means. Have I changed their minds?). The small-in-number-but-loud-in-voice left-wing post-students at work were initially dismissive of the whole thing but they hate Nigel Farage and the Tories and will vote Remain, duh. Plenty of others, however, are firmly, enthusiastically pro-Leave and seem very firm on the issue. One of them really doesn't like the French. I'd say they are very split but, by my reckoning, tending towards Leave. 

I don't know where this is going. The polls are apparently veering the way my 'polls' are veering. Polls are often wrong. Mine could be wrong. We'll soon know. 

#WorldOnThe MoveDay / No ‘even-handedness schism’

There’s a good post in the Telegraph about the BBC’s anti-Brexit bias by Toby Young. Note Toby’s use of those two little hyphenated words in his first sentence. 

"As a Vote Leave campaigner I've been pleasantly surprised by how ****-******** the BBC has covered the Brexit debate"

I missed most of the programmes Toby listened to yesterday, but I did hear Today, and I think Toby is quite right. Sarah Montague’s jaunt to Vietnam was unadulterated pro-immigration propaganda, and not relevant to the current crisis at all. 

I also heard the trailer for #WorldOnTheMove and assumed listeners were in store for an avalanche of emoting and uneven-handedness.

I didn’t listen to Martha Kearney or James Graham’s drama, and by the sound of it I’m very glad I didn’t. I’m allergic to Angela Jolie Pitt. It’s that Angelajolieophobia again I’m afraid, so I didn’t tune in. 

However, as I said somewhere else, despite the BBC’s (at times) fairly obvious pro-remain bias, at least they haven’t made all the Brexit arguments virtually inaccessible, as they have with all the arguments for Zionism, eg., Israel’s side of the history of the Middle East, all objective and honest analysis of the Palestinians’ approach to the two-state solution (or any solution) or indeed any even-handed reporting of  any aspect of the situation as seen from a pro-Israeli perspective. 

With very few exceptions, the pro-Israel point of view is absent from the BBC. Reporting of the Israeli /Palestinian conflict is presented entirely in pro-Palestinian terms, and all arguments take place on these terms, with total and complete censoring of Palestinian racist/religious hatred, incitement to violence and the actual violence itself. 

Unreported. 

Silence. 

If you want to see a heartbreaking example of this kind of bigotry look no further than the NUT.  A must-read article by David Collier.

I realise the NUT is not the BBC, but these people get much of their news and views  from the BBC, and they are teaching the next generation.

For all the education-related do-gooding the anti-Israel campaigners indulge in, they neglect to mention the antisemitic hate-fest that runs through the Palestinian education system. No mention, either, that this is rife throughout the Arab world.

As for this blog, a series of hostile comments from an anonymous commenter have done exactly what I hoped people would not do - recoil at my use of the phrase “even-handed”. I tried to make a subtle point, and perhaps I should have avoided that phrase altogether. It was like a red rag to a bully. 

The Boris and Hitler formulation.

However, let’s be clear, as politicians are known to say, Craig and I are not on opposite sides.  There might be slight differences in emphases, but we do not disagree.

In fact there's nothing to disagree with in Craig’s statistical breakdowns of the BBC’s bias. His efforts are admirable and I don't doubt the veracity of his findings for one moment. I am in awe of the diligence and dedication he shows on our behalf and I believe his analyses give enormous credibility to the view that the BBC is biased against leaving the EU. I share that view, but I don’t think it’s the whole story.

Yes, the BBC has been biased, but at least they haven't made the argument for "Leave' completely inaccessible, as they have done with the entirety of Israel's point of view.  

I have heard the arguments for “Leave” expressed very well on the BBC. That is why I say the BBC has been trying (up till yesterday) to present both sides of the EU argument for our careful consideration, even if some of it has been through gritted teeth. 

How many voters have been seduced by the BBC's pro-remain bias is yet to be seen. Please remember, there is life after the referendum. There will be an aftermath. Whatever happens there will be recriminations,  probably more bias than ever, and somehow, whatever the outcome, we’ll have to adjust, come to terms,  and, yep, we'll just have to suck it up. 

When we started this blog Craig and I aimed to be fair and vowed to avoid becoming self-radicalised. That can happen very easily.  Sorry, anonymous, there is no schism.

We value your custom.  It’s good to receive responses, and I don’t mind a bit if you disagree with me, but ideally you’ll have comprehended what you’re disagreeing with before firing.

Maybe we should have an open thread for all those OFF TOPIC contributions?

Mind your language

Despite the media’s exasperating habit of picking up and running with real “gaffes” and inventing fake ones, I still think the BBC is making a brave effort to portray both EU campaigns even-handedly. To the best of its ability.

The EU referendum has brought about some strange cross-party alliances, which supports the theory that there is but a cigarette paper’s difference between soft left Conservatives and centre-left (old) New-Labourites. Now the biggest divide seems to be between Corbyn’s hard left and all the rest.

A good example of this was Lord (Norman) Lamont and Charles Clarke on this morning’s - no, that’s this afternoon’s -  Daily Politics. They agreed on almost everything. 

I’m easily distracted. I mean, people always have something to say about women’s outfits and hairstyles, and I did wonder for a moment if Charles Clarke’s parents were ever offered the chance of an ear-pinning operation on the NHS. Distinctiveness is just what the BBC is after.

Oh well. While we’re on the subject of trivial distractions, Lord Lamont’s eyebrows are less significant now he’s a Lord, and I think they’ve been trimmed, which is a good thing.

Jo Coburn seems to be letting her hair grow, and do you think she has had it lightened? 

Jo is remarkably unstylish for a BBC babe, but perhaps that’s insurance against being dismissed as a mere babe. Like wearing specs even if you don’t need them to denote intelligence, as in strip cartoons, where the heroine eventually takes them off, and the hero says “But hey, you’re not a swat! You’re beautiful!” and they kiss.

Jo Coburn doesn’t do anything like that, and today she was relaxed and  percipient.

The answer to the quiz was that Newquay might be the venue for a space station, being that it already has an airport with a runway.

What if you accidentally got on the wrong plane? Last time I was at Newquay airport the procedure seemed a little amateurish, so it could happen. What if, instead of Stansted, you ended up on the moooon?

Dear Mr, Porter, whatever shall I do? I wanted to go to Birmingham and they’re taking me to the moon. Send me back to Newquay as quickly as you can, Oh! Mr. Porter what a silly girl I am!

Anyway Chas and Norm got along fine, opining on the economic interests of the UK, even though they are from different sides of the divide and Jo was on the side of the BBC.

The topic of the government’s proposal to ban extremists was more up my street. Obviously the definition of ‘extremism’ is key, and it was agreed that there are already sufficient laws in place to tackle incitement to violence; they decided that if extremism stops short of actually inciting violence it can be seen as ‘opinion’, which is tricky. 

Banning it would be problematic, said Lord Lamont, “to suppress it would be wrong”. However he did mention Sayyid Qutb, and:

“Brotherhood has set up an office in Cricklewood, North West London. Doha’s Al Jazeera channel is a critical Arab media outlet for the Islamists.”

Jo Coburn introduced the EU into that subject and neither guest seemed to know whether we’d be safer in or out.

  

Natalie Bennett appeared. She looked exhausted, but as she has achieved everything she set out to do, non, je ne rerette rien. 

Next up, Max Mosely’s “soapbox”. Needless to say I’m not a fan. His voice is as sinister as his persona. He resisted making a meal out of the obvious comparison between his and John Whittingdale’s misadventures with the press. Very gracious I’m sure.

The most grating part of this particular Daily Politics was of course inviting Rachel Shabi to opine on the ‘antisemitism in the Labour Party’ enquiry. She’s just about the last person in the world I’d have liked to see addressing that, because when reporting for the Guardian her attitude to Israel  frequently crossed the notorious line separating anti-Israelism from bigotry.

We hear that Miss Chakrabarti has been briefing us. She’s launched an enquiry to look at Islamophobia as well as antisemitism. “While it was triggered by allegations of antisemitism, we’ll look at all aspects of racism, including Islamophobia” she has announced.

“It would be a nonsense to just focus on one area, given this opportunity”

In other words, the whole exercise is a nonsense. 

Shami has joined the Labour party herself so that everyone knows she’s acting in the Labour Party’s interests.  Luckily she hasn’t been asked to launch an enquiry into any other party then. Just imagine if she’d launched an enquiry into antisemitism in the Conservative Party (to which Rachel Shabi believes the enquiry should more properly be directed) and had to join the Conservatives, or UKIP.  She’d be facing an insurmountable moral dilemma then.

“This looks like a robust review.” “Is there a problem with antisemitism in the LP?” 

“There is a problem with antisemitism in society.” 

“Do you think there’s a particular problem within the LP itself?” 

“I think there’s a particular onus. We tend to expect progressive parties not to be antisemitic, whereas we don’t have that weight of expectation on the Conservative Party.”

Jo Coburn mentioned the importance of language, with regard to anti-Zionism and antisemitism. 

“Criticism of the Israeli government, illegal occupation of occupied territories, West Bank and Gaza Strip, and anti-Jewish sentiment”

(Does she think Gaza is occupied?)

“Do you think there are people who use that as a proxy for antisemitism?”

That’s an ideal question to put to Shabi. I don’t think.

“I don’t think antisemitism is the same as anti-Zionism, but I do think, obviously people who are Jewish aren’t ... there are going to be things said about the occupation that aren’t pleasant to hear....”

Charles Clarke went on to dispense words of wisdom about language, waving his hands about expressively and evidently knowing very little about antisemitism. He was very moved by Naz Shah’s apology though, and strung together several ‘verys‘ for extra emphasis. 

I must say that Naz Shah didn’t actually “talk about deporting Israelis to America” as Jo Coburn said. Shah retweeted a wretched map, and endorsed the idea in a jocular and very silly manner. Just to be more accurate. 

I mean, if we’re talking about the importance of language, and being very very very careful about it, we might try not inventing fake gaffes.

The EU's funding of the BBC

Do you remember the "brief frisson of excitement" a week or so ago about an article in the Spectator that I myself, sharing in that frisson, described as looking like "a questions-really-need-answering kind of scoop to me, and quite damning against the BBC"?

The Speccie had used FoI requests to force a reluctant BBC to reveal that it had received some £4 million in EU funding between 2011 and 2013.

So what happened next? 

Well, nothing really. The "brief frisson of excitement" subsided, and the BBC's world continues to spin on regardless. 

Aha!...but, via Christopher Booker at the Sunday Telegraph, Richard North of EU Referendum is on their case and his piece presents compelling evidence that the BBC is keeping schtum about a lot more EU funding than the Spectator's FoI requests forced them to admit to. 

Moreover - and slightly surprisingly given all the trouble the Spectator obviously went to - the information the Spectator was already available online, available for all of to see, courtesy of the EU (though not courtesy of the BBC obviously!)

Although Richard North doesn't provide links, nosy bloggers like me can attempt to replicate his findings (I found a few of them, and then gave up) and, yes, they do take you to various EU documents on the EU's transparency website which tell you that the BBC received such-and-such an amount for such-and-such a project. (Try it for yourselves!)

Richard North reckons that the real sum is "an altogether more weighty sum - £20,152,022 (€24,435,906)", which he calculated "is the sum dispersed to the BBC from EU funds between 2007-2012 inclusive."

What is particularly interesting here, though, is that the EU reports paying the BBC £4,345,354.79 (€5,269,083) in 2012 alone, which is considerably more than the £3 million which the BBC claims it received in the 32 months which included the whole of 2012. There seems to be something of a mismatch, which needs explaining.

Some of things the EU paid the BBC to help them with (many sounding very worthy) include: -

- support for the Palestinian media sector

- training assistance to Georgia's public service broadcaster

- "shaping the future of the Turkmen media in the post-Niyazov thaw”

- the "promotion of human rights, gender equity and peace" in Somalia

Richard North then adds:

Figures for 2013 have yet to be posted but, on the current average, the BBC World Service Trust is making slightly over £3 million a year from the EU - well over the £3 million in 32 months that the Spectator is asked top believe. That is enough to make sure that the parent institution isn't too critical of its benefactors.

Furthermore, this isn't the first time the BBC has understated the amount it gets from the EU claiming in early 2012 that it had received £3 million in the previous four years when the actual sum was in excess of £16 million.

The state broadcaster's reticence to disclose the real amounts it is getting from our supreme government thus tells a worrying story. And if it is concealing the truth about its income from the EU, what else is it hiding?

Indeed. 

Still, if the BBC ignored The Spectator, they are certainly bound to ignore Christopher Booker (out of habit) and Richard North (cos he's nowt but a blogger).

Update: 22.30 The Daily Mail online has 'breaking news':

BBC chief is forced to face MPs over claims of pro-EU bias in news coverage

The chairman of the BBC Trust has been forced into a humiliating climbdown over his repeated refusal to appear before a committee of MPs.

Lord Patten has spent months trying to avoid a grilling by members of the Commons European Scrutiny Committee over claims of bias in the BBC’s coverage of the EU.

But yesterday, Bill Cash, chairman of the committee that reviews UK-EU relations, announced that Lord Patten had given in.