Riots will erupt

We haven’t done any ‘housekeeping’ posts for a good while. Or any posts whatsoever for that matter. We’re in blogging doldrums.  That cries out for a calypso; missing Lance Percival now.

Now that the BBC’s leftwing bias is generally accepted, why don’t you and I - the listening public - just stop moaning and carry on regardless, autocorrecting as we go? We’ve got our own antennae, haven’t we? We can edit as we see fit, in realtime.

That is what we do when we hear Mishal Husain introduce an item about riots at Al Aksa, you know, the third holiest site for the Muslims. We know she’ll parrot the Palestinian version of events. It’s expected and we make allowances. Do listen. It’s a bit of a shocker, bias-wise.

     Today Prog; scroll to 2:23:01

As Adam Levick points out, the Guardian sets the tone with its 'erupting clashes':

“…..clashes that erupted when Israeli riot police entered Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound ….”

Clashes erupt! Riots occur!  Vehicles run people down! 

Life’s far too short to peel this kind of onion. It’s a multi-layered vegetable. 

(Mishal, I do wonder who you think “started the riots”? The Jews in 1948, maybe? Or should we go back a few millennia to the origin of the oldest hatred)

Mishal Husain may not be interested, but BBC guidelines state: 

The BBC is committed to achieving due impartiality in all its output. This commitment is fundamental to our reputation, our values, and the trust of audiences. The term ‘due’ means that the impartiality must be adequate and appropriate to the output, taking account of the subject and nature of the content, the likely audience expectation, and any signposting that may influence that expectation.

Mishal, this morning's report on the Today Programme cried out for a balanced picture of the incident, but you talked over and obstructed the Israeli spokeswoman you were supposed to be interviewing and you did so with such cloth-eared belligerence that you virtually drowned her out. You mustn’t do that, Mishal. It’s very biased.  Here's the gist of the part you drowned out. To quote JPost:

The Muslims who stockpiled stones, rocks, logs, and firecrackers in al-Aqsa did not do so for religious purposes. They prepared for a riot – to attack police and Jewish worshipers – not for prayers. Police did not storm al-Aqsa Mosque to “conquer” it. They broke in to arrest the rock throwers who had barricaded themselves inside after Friday prayers. Some of the masked Palestinians waved Hamas flags and praised arch-terrorist Muhammed Deif as they tried to bombard the Jewish worshipers who had come to pray at the Western Wall at the start of the Passover holiday.

Did anyone say "They would say that, wouldn’t they?"  I bloody well hope so, too. Someone’s got to say it, and it certainly won’t be the BBC.  

Maybe Mishal Husain let her utter contempt for the Israeli spokesperson shine through because she knows that listener numbers are shrinking and assumes that those remaining wouldn’t care. 

Continually speaking over her guest in one of her rudest, most schoolmarmish, and sneeriest tones, she outdid even her usual self this morning. The self-righteous, prissy, and sneery timbre to her voice on such occasions is as irritating as the saccharine tones that accompany her heartwarming stories. Perhaps she ‘smiles’ while speaking. I hear that's a technique to make the audience like you.  I'm thinking of trying that.  

I implore everybody to listen (link here again and at the top of the page, scroll to 2:23:00) to Husain indulging that malevolent fanatic Husam Zomlot, no stranger to this site, allowing him acres of air time in which to express his opinions.  But wow! Was he allowed to rant and ramble on, barely interrupted - even though he strayed off-topic, wildly, fancifully, and at great length - and fawned over to the point of servility. Did nobody else notice?

This is almost unbelievable when you consider that Tim Davie was supposed to be addressing the bias. I understood that the BBC’s entire raison d’être for co-opting Tim Davie to the maelstrom  — bringing him aboard - was to iron out the bias once and for all!  But when? This year, next year, sometime never?

Not only with regard to the Martin Bashir and Jimmy Savile scandals, but something more fundamental, namely the BBC’s unspoken mission to normalise and acclimatise the British to creeping Islamification.  Does the public want this? Do people want to pay for it?  

I can’t quite follow my own advice here. I can’t just autocorrect everything as I go along and leave it at that. Someone has to say something. I’m afraid this particular issue is bigger than both of us. 

Oh yes, and has anyone noted the recent absence of the BBC’s most ubiquitous guest on Dateline London recently?   One of his rants has apparently been removed from YouTube but does anyone know if his recent (semi) withdrawal from our BBC screens is a coincidence or part of Tim Davie’s nascent decontamination project? Yes, I’m talking about “Barry Atwan or ‘arry Batwan.

Haven’t seen Mr Atwan lately. Did he creep away quietly, or was there a showdown? (Asking for a few million friends.)

Straight White Male and other languages

Talking of Michael “In Israel they murder each other a great deal” White, indeed, the BBC is losing its stalwarts; they’re dropping like flies. 

******

“How fluent are you in Straight White Male?” Jeffrey Boakye asks his guest Iesha Small as he stands in for Michael Rosen on Radio 4’s Word of Mouth.

What is this funky new language? I bet it’s something to do with white privilege! Ah! It’s a new name for cultivated eloquence. If I remember, one would aspire to it in the olden days if one wanted to get on in life, or get on the radio. But not any more.  Now, if S.W.M. is, like, your first language - it’s, like, a positive drawback. Mr Boakye is a teacher. His subject is English. He should know.

Everything on the BBC - from the radio to the TV and the web-sphere - is devoted to black people explaining what’s wrong with white people; this must be  ‘good’ racism.

******

This morning at 19 minutes past seven  Mishal  Husain spoke to a mother about an incident.

 “….the male turned out to be a 12-year-old with a toy gun.” said Miss, in her ‘sugary’ voice before introducing the boy’s mother who described the incident. "Armed police!" "Toy gun!" "Jogging bottoms!" “Was it cos I is black?”  emoted the boy’s mother, the BBC and Miss Husain. Yes indeed. Everything is because that.

Why on earth was a 12-year-old playing with a toy gun? Surely, at that age he should have had a real gun.

*******

Later, Kemi Badenoch MP Treasury & Equalities Minister, (black,) was subjected to The Sanctimonious Schoolmarm treatment. 

“Are you satisfied with a 12-year-old being treated in this way?” asked Miss Husain, menacingly. 

“Do you feel for the mother who felt that the officers would kill her if we’d moved when they arrived at the house?” she probed?

******

• Why aren’t there enough people of colour in football management? 
• Why did the (black) (ex)security guard mistake the (black) editor of Vogue magazine for a delivery driver? 
• Why must everything on every single programme on every single one of the BBC’s multiple platforms be race-related? (Black-race related I mean. Not just any old race.)  
• When will it be safe to come out again? 

The media is running the country

I’ve been searching online for a piece that most reflects my feelings on Cummingsgate.

Somewhere, during this absolute waste of my time, I spotted a commenter speculating about what would happen if the media loses its all-out quest for a scalp?  Is it a quest or a crusade?

If it wins, the scent of blood will further empower the media, which seems already to be running the show; but if the PM stands his ground, the puffed-up media might deflate like a burst balloon.

Just to clarify, as Mishal Husain repeated several times as she grilled Robert Jenrick with chilling savagery this morning. In her case ‘clarify’ means ‘crucify’, but my position is that I think dancing on the head of a pin to justify Dom’s shoogley defence is 100% counter-productive. 

I just think, in the scheme of things, the media should never never be allowed to play judge, jury and executioner, nor should the BBC be allowed to act as stand-in for H.M. opposition in the absence of a credible Labour Party.

What does the media, particularly Sky and the BBC, actually want? A Labour government? Do they really think that the same bunch that happily abandoned any principles they might have had to campaign for Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister, would have handled the pandemic more competently? I bet they’re wholly relieved that they avoided that unexpected(!) gift of an escape so that they can continue sniping comfortably and sanctimoniously from the sidelines.

Just two relevant examples.

Eric Kaufmann UnHerd

We should be able to distinguish between various degrees of violation of norms, on the one hand, and sentencing, on the other. On the basis of these standards, and the precedent set to date in Anglo societies, he did wrong and should apologise but did not breach the threshold required for him to resign.

Who's to blame? Jonathan Eida

However, the real scandal in all of this fiasco has been the role of the media in deliberately misguiding the public, producing stories aimed to bring down the credibility of the Prime Minister and his office. It also seems, with many outlets, that they had some personal vendetta against Cummings, who himself has been hostile to them in the past.

Mishal Husain was outrageous. It’s not so much the insultingly rude, argumentative interruptions delivered in that exaggeratedly sugary, saccharine “You’re trying my patience” voice, - we’re almost used to that from Husain - it was the undisguised contempt for the government in her line of attack. All the gleeful announcement of that poll.

Killer question

If the Halo Trust wants to bring people together, why does Mishal Husain want to keep them apart?

“It’s nice to see people cooperating,” says James Cowan of the Halo Trust. It’s a pity Mishal Husain hasn’t got the message. She doesn’t seem to know that the six-day war arose because of yet another failed attempt (by the Arabs) to annihilate Israel. (Or if she does know, she isn't interested)

Relying on 'our ignorance' of the facts, she posed the carefully formulated killer question she’d been leading up to on the Today programme this morning. (Scroll to 3:2:59)

You need to listen to get the full effect, but there was almost a note of glee in the venomous-sounding tone she used to probe for the context-free answer she sought.  “Who left them?” 

Here’s the transcript:

MH
“Eleven minutes to nine. Churches on the banks of the River Jordan in the West Bank, abandoned for more than 50 years because of the 1967 Arab Israeli war, will now be available to visit, thanks to de-mining work that has been completed there, by the Halo Trust. Its chief executive James Cowan is on the line; good morning.  

JC
Good morning Mishal 

MH
Describe the sites that you’ve been working on. 

JC
Well Mishal, the Halo Trust normally works with communities to help put them back to normal. We work in countries like Afghanistan and Yemen but this is a very special situation, where these eight churches have been mined and booby-trapped during the six-day war and it came to our notice that, it’s a long time ago actually, in 2014, that they needed to be cleared. So we got the various churches together, asked them if they’d work together - eight different denominations - and then we got the Israelis and then we got the Palestinians, and so all three major faiths, and we looked at how we could do this. All the churches had been booby-trapped and then surrounded by a huge mine-field of eleven hundred land mines, so it was going to be technically complicated but also quite diplomatically challenging, and it was great just walking into the Greek Patriarch’s church with the other members of their denominations, big hats, big beards, twinkly eyes, and getting them to sign, for the first time really, a cooperative agreement to do this work. 

MH
And those mines and booby-traps, who left them? 

JC
So they were put there by the Israelis, ah, during the six-day war as a protective belt. And, of course we were appalled at the laying of the land-mines because they remain in the ground, just lethal, decades after the event, but I think, to Israel’s credit, they were at least prepared to join us in removing that threat. 

MH
And the significance of these churches is that they’re all built around the site where Christ was believed to have been baptised. 

JC
Yes, it’s extraordinary and one of the great sites of Christendom and actually the Jewish faith as well, um, should be treated in this way, so it’s really nice that fifty three years after the event we’ve now managed to finish the last land-mine; we blew up five hundred of them actually, in a huge daisy-chain explosion. When we walked into these churches, it was like walking into a time capsule with beer still on the shelf, the table laid for dinner, and it was just wonderful to return there and now we can begin the process of actually restoring the churches. 

MH
Right. So they’re not necessarily in a fit state to have visitors, and obviously the virus is affecting the West Bank and is certainly affecting people’s ability to travel there from other parts of the world but is there a lot of restoration work that now needs to begin? 

JC
There’s a huge amount of restoration work. You can imagine after fifty three years of being abandoned the churches need a lot of work doing to them. But I think in a time of Covid, as you mention, grim times, it’s nice to have a story like this in which there’s actually a bit of hope, and in a place like the West Bank where these three faiths have competed with each other for millennia its nice to see them cooperating. 

MH

James Cowan of the Halo Trust, thank you very much.

"Palestine" and other non-coronavirus musings for April fool’s day 2020

Part One: Jeremy Corbyn

“Under his dull, dismal leadership, Labour has become a byword for animus against Jews and every strain of conspiracy theory that proceeds therefrom.”

So says Stephen Daisley 

“Every Labour MP returned in December, every Labour activist who knocked on doors or delivered leaflets, knowingly tried to elect an antisemitic government out of sentimentality and tribalism.”

This taints the whole lot of them as far as I’m concerned. Including  Hilary Benn, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall, Uncle Tom Cobley and all.  Might as well throw in the contenders for the leadership and deputy leadership while I’m at it.

“Decorbynisation cannot be a trim job; the diseased roots must be hacked out. As well as reforming the complaints process along the lines proposed by Lisa Nandy, Labour will have to rid itself of the fallen redeemer and his sullen apostles. Expel him. Expel everyone who nominated him. Expel everyone who voted for him. Burn it down and salt the earth.”

I love that expression: ‘salt the earth’. It reminds me of “Quick! Get rid before it lays eggs” if you see what I mean.  Yup. Sanitise all the surfaces, wash your hands to two verses of The Red Flag and mind you don’t catch your keffiyeh in the door on the way out. 

Part Two: Sarah Champion.

I have a long memory. Certain things, such as my longstanding awareness of Jeremy Corbyn’s petty-rebellious antisemitic antics are etched in the hard-wired department of my brain.   

I well remember Corbyn, (alongside characters like Andy Slaughter, Paul Flynn, Grahame Morris and a clutch of Muslim Corbyistas like Zara Sultana lobbying furiously and viscerally against Israel and for “Palestine”, but I won’t be joining the anti-Corbyn brigade when they cite Sarah Champion as some kind of martyr for being demoted by the dear leader for (belatedly) naming and shaming the ‘Pakistani grooming gangs’ that had been operating in her constituency (Rotherham). 

 Some people regard the article in the Sun that got her into trouble with Corbyn as an ‘act of bravery’  - but it took her long enough to get round to writing about a crime that had been going on under her nose for some time and the true nature of the crime had already been pointed out by others as they expressed sympathy with the victims. 

I’m afraid I well remember Ms Champion sitting at the head of the table presiding over a 99.9 % Asian council committee meeting castigating Israel with great gusto at the time of Israel’s 2014 incursion into Gaza. Where Ms Champion is concerned, I believe a large dollop of opportunism is involved as articles on this blog can testify.

Part Three: Lovely Poem

Today Programme

On #R4Today some of the BBC's best known voices will offer their favourite poems of #comfortandhope.

Here @MishalHusain reads 'On Time' from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. https://t.co/tSSau3acnC pic.twitter.com/4NTeotibGW

— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) April 1, 2020

“That was lovely,” said Nick Robinson, choking back emotion.

Part Four: "Palestine"
There’s no sport, due to the lockdown, but sports commentators are still in full swing, so Rob Bonnet interviews 10-year-old skateboarding whizz, Roxanna Howlett, from Exeter. Roxanne is a versatile skateboarder and she has travelled widely through her sport.

RB

"Well, I hear that you travel a lot with your skateboard. Where’ve you been” (as if he didn’t know)

RH

"Palestine, Sweden, Berlin, Amsterdam, America

RB
"Goodness me, you’re the best, well-travelled ten-year-old I think I've ever met. That’s fantastic! What about Palestine? What was that like?

RH
It was amazing, actually. It’s quite a poor country.

RB
What did you do there?

RH

We met up with the State Pal, they’re a charity and they help children from all around the world

RB

How much equipment did they have in Palestine?

RH
They didn’t have very much it was quite bad to see but they had brilliant skate parks

Good to know Rob Bonnet has such a keen interest in …. “Palestine”.

Mixed Bag

At least in my head, I like to think of this site as being something of a 'blog of record' as far as certain BBC-related matters go, so having missed most of the last two weeks I'm feeling the need to fill a few gaps.

Your comments are proving very helpful in helping to plug them, so thank you.

******* I *******

First, there's that anonymous 'whistleblowing' Guardian piece by a BBC insider.

I saw mixed reviews for it here on the Open Thread.

It took me a while to figure out exactly where the piece was 'coming from', but the fact that the writer twice uses the word "reactionary" - once about Danny Lockwood, the other time (literally) about 'people like us' - and then proceeds to call the leavers of the ERG "far-right" left no room for doubt that the writer is a BBC left-winger. And although it puzzled me initially that the BBC Anon sounded queasy on the question of Brexit and was against both Mark Francois and Anna Soubry, reading the longer, unedited version of the piece at The Fence (where Tom Watson and Chuka Umunna came in for snippy criticism), I think it's safe to confidently assume that the writer is a disgruntled BBC Corbyn admirer instinctively defensive of Jeremy Corbyn's fence-sitting over Brexit. (Or am I wrong?)

Still, there was some fascinating stuff in the piece, including all the bits about the grid used by producers on all BBC political shows to ensure 'diversity':

A whiteboard would be marked up with a clumsy grid system. The grid would revolve around a set of key identities such as “woman”, “northern” or “poc” (person of colour). These would then be cross-categorised with political stances such as “Brexiteer”, “Tory” or “progressive”. Our task [as BBC producers] would then be to ensure that any proposed panel contained a complete balance of all these attributes.

If 100% accurate, how 'very BBC' and patronising is that?

I don't doubt for one moment the counting bit of the grid, especially the “woman”, “northern” or “poc” (person of colour) bit. The BBC, despite rejecting the 'number-crunching' of News-watch (and my massive 2009-10 interruptions survey), are total hypocrites in this respect. They put The Count from Sesame Street to shame when it comes to counting things like "women, Northerners and pocs".

Plus, if 100% accurate, it would mean that the BBC uses the labels "Brexiteer", "Tory" and "progressive" in production meetings - and, if the BBC really does label people that way, that would speak loud volumes about the "progressive" outlook of BBC producers.

The writer also writes about the "boozy familiarity" between BBC journalists and "a handful of MPs, deeply entrenched in London’s literary and intellectual circles, [who] treat the BBC like a university common room". These MPs are "slick and power-hungry" Remainers:

Off-camera, a highly influential Westminster social circle revolves around trips to various holiday homes in continental Europe, where various MPs and the journalists who are supposed to report on them have long been playing just as hard as they work.

It's hardly proper whistleblowing though, is it, if the BBC Anon doesn't name names?

******* II *******

The grid may be repellent to opponents of identity politics, but there's no doubt that some people gain from it.

Yesterday's The Times included an interview with regular BBC Politics guest Helen Lewis (formerly of The New Statesman, now at The Atlantic).

She singles out blog favourite Rob Burley, Editor of Live Political Programmes for the BBC, as being responsible for "a seismic change in the inclusion of women in line-ups".

I don't doubt it.

Rob, however, is forever busy in having to fend off people on Twitter comparing his carefully counted and tick-boxed programmes to Loose Women.

Having counted himself, Rob says it works out, over time, at about 50/50 as far as the balance between men and women goes.

(Question: What is it for pocs and us Northerners?)

Male-female-wise, the BBC is just like Is the BBC biased?, the most woke BBC bias blog in the world, only beaten by The Conservative Woman.

******* III *******

It's been an interesting week for Rob.

I do like him, and I understand why he's severely drawn back from being the BBC's chief musketeer on Twitter: I'm assuming too many unreasonable Corbynistas, venom-spouting spider-sporting FBPE types, and Carole Catwalladr cultists - fringe fanatics, all of them, who speak for barely a minor fraction of the public.

Even a rare, admirable, charming (if choosy) BBC engager-with-the-public like Rob must get worn down by totally irrational complaints about BBC bias from 'the other side', despite temptations to continually shoot half-witted fish in tweet-sized barrels.

('Our side', of course, is perfectly reasonable in our complaints, so 'complaints from both sides' can go and take a running jump!)

On which subject, BBC Two's Politics Live came under fire from Guido Fawkes for seeming to accept without question, or any basic journalistic probing whatsoever, what an Extinction Rebellion girl said.

There's no 'seeming' about it though. As this YouTube clip shows, Jo Coburn, seeing protestors wearing miner's hats made of cardboard, simply took it on trust that the protestors surrounding the XR girl were miners and ex-miners, despite them protesting against 'their mines' and livelihoods being extended and wearing cardboard miners hats.

Apparently, they weren't either miners or ex-miners, just climate activists pretending.

Free-range egg on the BBC's face it seems, alongside fried fake news sandwiches.

To rhyme in cliché: 'So/think/before you blink/Jo'.

******* IV *******

Meanwhile (if a bit late in the following day) here's an intriguing nugget from Andrew Billen's Times interview yesterday with David Cameron's deputy chief of staff, Kate Fall:

I was also surprised to learn that Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor at the time, recommended the editor of BBC News at Ten, Craig Oliver, to succeed Coulson as director of communications. “Look, the head of comms at No 10 has nearly always been an ex-journalist, from a paper or from broadcast. I don’t think that is a huge issue.” And Robinson recommended him? “Yes, apparently.”

Who knew Nick Robinson was such a man of influence?

*******V*******

A blog well-wisher really didn't enjoy Tuesday's Newsnight complaining that they had an item about Cyril Smith and David Steel and had Harvey Proctor on to comment. "Never mind that his story had nothing to do with it. And Maitlis kept pushing him towards her POV about the police. And I noticed that the ex-policeman was a cuddly 'John' and the ex-politician was a formal 'Harvey Proctor'". That's our Em!

Still, it might earn the programme another award. Newsnight won 'Daily News Programme of the Year' at the Royal Television Society TV Journalism Awards last week.

I love this photo of the triumphant team, firstly because of Emily Maitlis's theatrical pose and, secondly, because of the total lack of diversity on display. What would Geeta Guru-Murthy say about such "a white crowd"?

*******VI*******

Talking of triumphant people, Samira Ahmed - fresh from her equal pay victory over the BBC - is definitely smiling a lot more on Newswatch. Good!

This week's BBC editor on 'we got it about right' duties was Richard Burgess, UK News Editor for BBC News. He was defending the BBC over that perennial Newswatch complaint about BBC reporters getting blown about and soaked while reporting in the middle of a storm, preferably getting drenched in sea-spray. I think Mr Burgess put up a good defence and, here at least, the BBC did get it about right.

*******VII********

Never mind coronavirus, nothing was going to stop Mishal Husain from going to Paris to interview Asia Bibi for Today. What would Greta say?

Moonlighting

The Times continues to be in hot pursuit of "moonlighting" BBC figures. 

Today they are pointing the finger of accusation at Mishal Husain for taking part in "at least ten private events" organised by the Norwegian gas and oil industry. 

(I know, 'The Norwegian gas and oil industry' and 'Mishal Husain' aren't phrases I'd have naturally placed together either!)

According to the paper, environmentalists are complaining that by "profiteering from polluters" she's risking "the BBC's reputation for impartiality", with someone from Extinction Rebellion adding, "This is yet another uncomfortable example of the insidious relationship between fossil fuel companies and the media." 

The Times adds, however, "There is no suggestion that Husain breached BBC guidelines." 

Indeed. Lots of BBC presenters and journalists moderate at / speak at all manner of conferences, from Evan Davis to Martin Croxall, from John Simpson to Emily Maitlis, Yolande Knell to Mark Urban, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. (Roger Harrabin, the BBC's environment analyst, for instance, has been doing so for some thirty years now.) They are fully entitled to do so. 

So what's the paper's beef with Mishal Husain?:

...However, her willingness to accept money from an industry under fire for its environmental impact raises questions about the potential conflict of interest. She is frequently required to cover climate change on the Today programme and was sent to Sweden in December to interview Greta Thunberg.

Hmm, but surely the problem won't arise unless her coverage of climate change on the Today programme turns out to be demonstrably pro-fossil fuels. (Has it been?). Her interview with Greta Thunberg, for one, didn't strike me as being even remotely unsympathetic and she didn't slyly argue for fossil fuels once during it. 

In fact, I'm much more worried about "the BBC's reputation for impartiality" when the BBC's Newsnight broadcast an investigative report in partnership with Greenpeace. That struck me as genuinely problematic. 

Right-thinkers, wrong-thinkers and the BBC

Yum, yum?

In his new book The FakeNews Factory: Tales from BBC-land David Sedgwick writes:

One of the most pervasive fake news tells of all manifests in the very different treatment meted out to those who agree with the BBC agenda (right-thinkers) and those who disagree with it (wrong-thinkers). An impartial organisation meanwhile would of course treat individuals fairly and equitably in spite of political affiliations.

I read that after listening to Mishal Husain interviewing Liam Halligan and Vicky Pryce on Today this morning. Liam Halligan is the 'wrong-thinker' on Brexit and Vicky Pryce is the 'right-thinker' on the subject of Brexit and, yes, they were treated in very different ways. Mishal interrupted, and challenged, and contradicted, and laughed at pro-Brexit Liam Halligan, and lobbed some pre-prepared, anti-Brexit 'ambush points' at him for good measure. In stark contrast, anti-Brexit Vicky Pryce got a completely free ride. In what possible way could this be considered impartial interviewing? 

Still, we did learn that Liam Halligan likes cuttlefish, so that's something at least. 

Weird gossip

This morning a three-way conversation took place in The Rovers Return between a trio of Trumpophobic Judeophobes. For some reason, it was broadcast on the Today Programme. 2:49

Ena Sharples, Minnie Caldwell and the other one were heard gossiping about a dreadful deal that has been cooked up by two corrupt criminals in order to inflict hardship upon some helpless unfortunates.

One of them sounded like Jeremy Bowen, and the one with acute TDS reminded me of Jon Sopel. The third one was either Gillian Duffy ‘that bigoted woman’ or Mishal Husain. Weird.

Update:

If the BBC wants to be taken seriously, then their superficial analysis and knee-jerk rejection of the ‘Deal of the Century’ should at least be counterbalanced with points raised in this article by Elder of Ziyon. In the interest of balance, someone from the BBC should give it the time of day, even if its pragmatic, objective perspective sticks in their craw.

“The most striking thing about the Trump plan is that its goal is completely different than the goal of every previous plan. 

Every other "peace" plan had a goal of two states, as if that would magically produce peace. Once two states was achieved, then the job was done. Terrorism, the Palestinian economy, overcrowding in Gaza - none of those were addressed. Day Two after the plan would be implemented was always essentially ignored. 

Every other plan was written with the myth that two states is the solution itself, not a component. Because every other plan was written from the perspective that Palestinian leadership wants an independent state above all. 

But they don't. History has shown that their desire has always been the ultimate destruction of Israel, which is why they rejected every previous plan that was an obstacle to that goal.”

Reality Check

There was an exchange on this morning's Today between Mishal Husain and Lewis Lukens, former Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in London.

Mishal Husain: One Iranian analyst earlier in the programme said to us that it was in contrast to how the US handled the shooting down 1988 of an Iranian passenger jet with 300 people on board, that it took the US four years to admit that mistake. 

Lewis Lukens: No. My recollection is that President Reagan, back at the time, actually acknowledged and apologised for that much sooner than four years but I'd have to go back and check my history on that.

It's intriguing that the Today team didn't 'reality check' that claim after the Iranian 'political analyst' made it, an hour before this interview. The Washington Post article headlined Reagan Apologised to Iran for Downing of Jetliner from July 6, 1988, three days after the US downing of Iran Air Flight 655, begins:

President Reagan said yesterday that he apologized to Iran on Sunday for the USS Vincennes' shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet over the Persian Gulf that killed all 290 persons aboard and declared that reparations or compensation to the families of victims are "a matter that has to be discussed." 

Reagan, a White House spokesman disclosed yesterday, sent a five-paragraph diplomatic note expressing "deep regret" to the Iranian government on Sunday, shortly after U.S. military leaders learned that the guided-missile cruiser had destroyed the Iran Air A300 Airbus after mistaking it for an Iranian F14 fighter plane. 

The president's message sought to assure the Iranian government that the attack was an accident, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said. 

Reagan, speaking to reporters as he boarded a helicopter for a visit to ailing Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte at Walter Reed Army Medical Center yesterday afternoon, replied "Yes" when asked if he considered his message to Tehran an apology.

Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down on July 3, 1988. That report says that President Reagan apologised "on Sunday". July 3, 1988 was a Sunday. So President Reagan apologised to Iran on the very day of the shootdown. Therefore, the Iranian 'political analyst' was lying. Will Today clarify that?

P.S. Some of the ranting of this same Iranian 'political analyst', Seyed Mohammad Marandi, was then re-broadcast on the 9 o'clock Radio 4 news bulletin.

Private polling from the BBC

Sir Robbie Gibb, once in charge of the BBC's political programmes before becoming Theresa May's communications chief, has a piece in The Daily Mail today about BBC bias. 

His main beef is with the Today programme - or 'Radio Misery', as his friends call it. He claims that during the election it "bombarded its listeners with a relentlessly negative and sneering tone and painted a picture of Britain that was monstrously out of touch". 

He also argues that it "spectacularly misread" the election with "endless" outside broadcasts from universites dominated by left-wing students and, therefore, missed "the real election story" unfolding in the working class towns of the Midlands and the North. 

The reason? Because its "trapped by its own woke 'groupthink'".

So far, so familiar. 

What's new here is his 'understanding' that the BBC has been carrying out private polling of the public's perceptions of its impartiality (or lack thereof) and that the results  apparently reveal that the Midlands and the North have the least faith in BBC impartiality while metropolitican centres like London and Manchester show the most faith in BBC impartiality. 

Hardly surprising, is it?

*******

Update: I was pleasantly surprised to hear Nick Robinson quote from Sir Robbie's Daily Mail piece during this morning's Today paper review without sneering or editorialising. That's very grown-up, I thought. Unfortunately, just a few seconds after thinking that Mishal Husain promptly read out Today's rebuttal of Sir Robbie's criticisms and then interviewed former universities minister Jo Johnson doing that very BBC thing of picking up a phrase in a piece - "left-wing, entitled, virtue- ignalling students" - and using it to clobber people they don't agree with. Here Mr Johnson was all to happy to take the bait offered by Mishal's invitations to criticise Sir Robbie - an invitation made even clearer by her issuing it more than once and doing so in that slightly jeering tone she adopts when she's signalling something.

*******

Further update: This was Today's case for the defence, as read out by Mishal Husain this morning:

So did this programme's broadcasts from universities mean that it was far from the real story of the election dominated instead by interviews with "entitled students", as put forward in that column by Sir Robbie Gibb? We did go to the Universities of Edinburgh, Cardiff, Oxford, among others, but also to Wolverhampton, to Sheffield College, and reported on constituencies including Mansfield, Darlington, Birkenhead and the views of voters in Crewe, Newcastle and Lyme [sic], and other places as well.

*******

Yet another update: Thinking more about Mishal's read-out statement from Today, were you also curious as to why she said "among others" there? Well, those "others" are Bristol University and Queens University, Belfast. Why not mention them?

And whether Wolverhampton University really merits the "but" it gets there is open to question - yes, it's a Midlands university, but it's a university nonetheless.

Clueless in Gaza

Yesterday BBC Watch described Mishal Husain as ‘clueless’ because of her limited grasp of the Israeli / Palestinian conflict, meaning that she completely fails (refuses) to see the ‘bigger picture’.

One could speculate that this is because of Husain’s innate, tribal ‘AsaMuslim” hostility to Israel. However, as various insiders frequently attest, the Today Programme is routinely preceded by an editorial briefing, therefore one assumes that Husain isn't given totally free rein on the angle through which interviews are framed. So the aforementioned cluelessness probably isn’t solely down to Husain. 

Ever since the recent reports of the killing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader, or ‘commander’ if you like, it seems increasingly clear that the BBC is presenting this as an ‘extra-judicial’ assassination, an isolated incident, solely responsible for ‘kicking the whole thing off’. (‘The whole thing’ being the escalation of violence in which several (allegedly) innocent Palestinians have lost their lives. )

Once upon a time I would have weighed in and taken on the argument (that this was by no means an isolated or random incident) all by myself. But not now. I’m weary and disillusioned. Then, lo and behold, along comes this article in Commentary Magazine and does the job for me.  

Gaza's Cycle of Self-Destruction - Terrorists in isolation

Before I go into any more detail, let me just remind myself of Mishal Husain’s (and the BBC’s) starting point. They regard PIJ (Iran’ s proxy) as a legitimate and properly kosher fighting force. This takes impartiality to its logical conclusion, where the devil and the angel get equal billing.  Some might even say the devil is pitched as the protagonist and therefore captures the audience’s sympathy.

Let me quote from Commentary Magazine: (bold added by me)

“First things first. According to the New York Times’s Isabel Kershner and others, the latest round of violence between Israel and the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization in Gaza was “set off by Israel’s assassination of a senior Islamic Jihad commander on Tuesday.” This is not strictly true.”

(The NY Times is as left-leaning as the Beeb)

“That senior Islamic Jihad commander, Baha Abu al-Ata, was behind a series of rocket attacks on the Israeli city of Sderot less than two weeks ago. That, and other recent attacks against Israel, is what got him killed; the confrontation, therefore, predates his assassination. It’s just that the earlier rocket attacks didn’t make much news outside of Israel.

(Particularly on the Beeb.)

“But since Tuesday morning, the Iranian supported Islamic Jihad has fired 350 rockets from Gaza into Israel, some reaching as far as Tel Aviv. And Israel has been pounding Islamic Jihad targets inside Gaza. The casualty numbers change quickly, but last I saw, Gaza’s Health Ministry claimed that 24 Palestinians have been killed, and 69 others have been wounded—20 of the 24 were Islamic Jihad fighters. In Israel, 48 people were wounded, and none killed.

And so on. Mishal Husain was keen to point out that “Islamic Jihad is not the main militant group in Gaza.” Why say that? Could it be to suggest that Israel’s actions are unnecessarily provocative because “Hamas will be further drawn in” But of course it's PIJ that's doing the 'drawing in', not Israel.

“During this week’s conflict, Israel has not yet targeted Hamas, Gaza’s governing terrorist organization. But there’s now much speculation about what Hamas will do in response to the flare-up. Islamic Jihad has no governing control of Gaza, but, as the current violence demonstrates, it can easily draw the Strip into conflict. And it is Hamas’s failure to curb Islamic Jihad’s continued provocations against Israel that has led to the present crisis.  

As Abu al-Ata ramped up his campaign against the Jewish state, Israel warned Hamas that it wasn’t going to take it forever. “Via publications in various media outlets; messages conveyed by Egyptian intelligence; and warnings via international mediators,” writes Avi Issacharoff at the Times of Israel, “Israel repeatedly urged Hamas to take action.” Hamas didn’t act. Israel did.

Please take a few moments to read the whole thing. Don't be daunted - do read; it's not too long.

It’s a shame that the BBC takes such a superficial, half-a-story approach to all its reporting on this topic. It’s largely because the general public is being misinformed and deliberately kept in a state of ignorance through the BBC's biased, one-sided and Philo-Islamic reporting that the Labour Party is able to get away with its rampantly sanctimonious antisemitism.  

Collateral damage

One might think that the title “Palestinian Islamic Jihad” wasn’t explicit enough. Islamic Jihad. (The word Jihad is defined as ‘a struggle or fight against the enemies of Islam’.)

Now that we are beginning to absorb the fact that ‘Islam’ is part and parcel of modern-day diverse Britain and that criticism of Islam’s ideological principles is deemed racist and politically incorrect it has come to pass that to criticise or to question Islam is tantamount to blasphemy. 

This explains Mishal Husain’s default confrontational manner when speaking to an Israeli, as detailed here. Husain declaims the innocence of the wife of “Islamic Jihad Commander” Baha Abu al-Ata. 

This pro-Islam mission-creep also explains why the subject of the recent, so-called targeted assassination is described by the BBC as a “militant” rather than a terrorist. NVV. No visible value-judgement. 

The trapped and tortured people of Gaza

I missed John Humphrys’s introduction to Mishal Husain’s interview with the filmmakers of a 90-minute film called “Gaza”. I came in when Husain was well into it.

Apparently, this documentary had been shown at The Sundance Film Festival, which was held in Utah during December 2018 - January / February 2019. 

Despite today’s confusing weather, it’s not winter; we’re currently in the second week of August. I couldn’t help wondering why this was considered newsworthy now?  Was it someone’s idea of a ‘filler’  - you know, aural ‘silly season’ padding at the time when the only news available is an expert’s prediction that all the cows in Ireland will have to be slaughtered if there’s a no-deal breakfast. I meant Brexit, but I said breakfast instead. (If only it were pigs rather than cows they could just turn them into bacon, which is a popular breakfast dish.)

Talking of Ireland (Eire) it is extremely disturbing that most Irish Catholics reflexively side with the Palestinians and loathe Jews. I suspect they still blame the Jews for ‘what they did’ to Christ, even though the Pope has forgiven us. That’s quite rude because Catholics are to do what His Holiness says they’re to do, isn’t it?

So why was this on the Today Programme on this day especially? Did it win a prize? No, I don’t think it did. I take that back; it did win some awards in Dublin, so it did.

Anyway, the filmmaker is an Irishman called Garry Keane and his colleague is called Andrew McConnell. There are several rave reviews in the Irish press, where it is described as wonderful, poignant and full of people staring wistfully out to the sea, preying silently for freedom and playing the cello.

Wouldn’t you just know that the one and only review that takes a more circumspect view of the film is in The Hollywood Reporter, and penned by someone whose name ends in ‘berg’ which alone evokes a certain partiality.  

“Directors Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell show what ordinary life looks like in Gaza in a beautifully shot, increasingly manipulative documentary.”

Manipulative? Wow! 

“For much of its running time, Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell's Sundance documentary Gaza achieves its ambitious professed goal, namely opening eyes to the side of Gaza that isn't usually seen in the news, the ordinary lives of people living in an extraordinary place that one subject calls "a big, open prison." 

That it begins by asking "What do the people do when they're not under siege?" and ends by surrendering to what is basically propaganda, not just the footage and view of Gaza we see in the news, but a manipulative and disingenuous version of that view, isn't a surprise. Within the context of the doc, it seems almost inevitable, but I still watched for at least 50 captivated minutes hoping for restraint I probably should have known would eventually be surrendered.”

Other reviews are all but elegiac - the reviewers are incensed by the suffering of the trapped and tortured people of Gaza and, with the collective breathlessness that you always rarely see where Gaza is concerned, they implore everyone to go and see it. 

Paying lip service to ‘balance’ Mishal asked if Hamas had been ‘airbrushed’ out at all, misquoting the words of the Hollywood reviewer, whose actual words were:

“The press notes for Gaza say Hamas is one of the villains of the story, but that's a ludicrous statement. Hamas may be one of the villains of the actual historical record, but it's a non-factor in the documentary. Occasionally we pass by a military-affiliated figure with a rocket launcher or a machine gun, but to watch Gaza you'd think such weaponry was only used to be fired in the air when the Israelis free unjustly imprisoned Palestinians.”

Anyway, now I’ve looked online, I see that BBCWatch has covered the story so I don’t have to go any further with this. It transpires that the BBC’s excuse for featuring the film ‘now’ is that it’s being released here, so everyone can go and see it and be inspired to join the Hamas Solidarity Campaign to help the Palestinians by demanding the right of return for five million Palestinian refugees, open borders for the people of Gaza and the elimination of the Jewish State for the betterment of mankind.

Wasn’t Mishal Husain in Gaza at around the time these fellows were footling around there? I wonder if she bumped into any of them and had time to have a nice chat.