“Not giving money to so-called terrorists”

“Not giving money to so-called terrorists”

So said so-called Diane Abbott towards the end of Monday’s parliamentary debate about foreign aid, which took place at Westminster Hall.  

This was the debate that ‘we’ instigated by signing a petition organised by OMG-The-Mail-on-Sunday. 

It was brought about the Mail’s revelation that money donated by the UK through our aid programme has been finding its way into the hands of Palestinian terrorists. It funds the salaries and stipends of convicted terrorists or the families of deceased martyrs.

The petition quickly received enough signatures to warrant a parliamentary debate, but people signed because they objected far more to funding terrorism than to the principle of funding foreign aid itself. 

In other words, even though 0.7% of our gross national income might well be a big boost to our own underfunded services, the Mail’s indignation was directed against the lack of scrutiny of how the money is being spent and not against foreign aid per se.

However, as these things tend to do, the debate was diluted, a bit like the inquiry into antisemitism in the Labour Party (more of which later) which was expanded to embrace “All racism” or the Holocaust memorial commemorations which certain people insisted had to include “All” holocausts. In the spirit of inclusivity, this debate had to include “All” foreign aid.

You can read the transcript here, but I’ve just selected the bits that I deem relevant to the original petition. You can watch the whole thing here:

The debate was  opened by Steve Double MP for St Austell and Newquay. 

“Mr Double, a devout Christian and lay preacher, employs his wife as a senior caseworker alongside assistant Sarah, who is currently on compassionate leave.”

Far be it for me to cast aspersions on a devout Christian lay preacher who prides himself on  standing for”the traditional fabric of family and community life”  who happens to have been caught with his pants down so to speak, but I have to say the holier than thou stuff emanating from Mr Double Standards is a bit rich.

The debate got off to a good start with Mr. Double refusing to believe that any of DFID’s  funding goes to terrorists. 

Steve Double 

“ There are many myths out there relating to foreign aid spending. One example is that aid money from British and European taxpayers has gone to Palestinian prisoners, including terrorists. That is simply not true. Another is that UK aid to the Palestinian Authority funded an £8 million presidential palace. Again, that is simply not true. The myths go on and on, and they are based on out-of-date information or inaccurate reporting. The Government have been very clear on that.”

The debate might as well have ended there and then. The whole point of the petition was that it did and does go to Palestinian terrorists and other corrupt items , so why not pack up and go home? But no, there’s copious virtue signalling to get through first, which I'll ignore for the purpose of this post.

Ian Austin (Labour Dudley North) piped up: 

“The hon. Gentleman is right about the good work that DFID does, but he is completely wrong to say it is a myth that the Palestinian Authority fund terrorists. The fact is that nearly all of DFID’s funding in the region goes directly to the Palestinian Authority. That is a matter of concern because of the allegation that the Palestinian Authority continue to fund payments to convicted terrorists and their families, which is in direct contradiction to the demands of the international community.”

Alan Duncan was soon off the mark, stating:

 “it would be a tragedy—indeed, it would be repulsive—if it was hijacked by those who want to use it to demonise Palestine and Palestinians? The debate should concentrate on the 0.7% and only that.”

Sir Alan’s dislike of Jews trumps the unpalatable thought that he wouldn’t last long (as a gay man) under the PA or Hamas. 

Over the page, more of the best bits.

Open Thread

Wow! Our second-ever open thread...

Please ignore the tumbleweed.

Reacting to 'Marr'

Do I really have anything intelligent and original to say about this morning's Andrew Marr programme? Probably not. But, as a seasoned blogger, I feel it's my professional duty unto Almighty God to speak my brains regardless. So here I go...

Before the programme even began I'd already spotted Andrew Marr's preview on BBC Breakfast:

Good morning. Well, eleven days to go till the referendum and I've decided to devote the programme almost entirely to the Prime Minister and the leader of the rebel insurgency Nigel Farage. They will be dominating the programme. A lot to ask them of course.

Was that biased? Some people on social media felt it was, though I couldn't work out whether they were classing AM's "leader of the rebel insurgency" bit as being biased towards Nigel Farage or biased against Nigel Farage. (Did they think Andrew was casting the sainted Nigel as a heroic leader of a Star Wars-style rebel alliance against the evil Empire, or as a wicked Taliban-style 'militant' instead?) What way do you read it? Or was it merely a harmless joke? 

The other thing I spotted was a surprising number of people on Twitter said they were placing bets that Nigel Farage would be interrupted much more than David Cameron. (One man said he'd placed a £10 bet that Nige would be interrupted three times more often than Dave). 

One of the things I was looking out for was to see if Andrew Marr mentioned the Sunday Times's rather incendiary headline about the government and the EU allegedly colluding to keep 'hush-hush' the possibility of up to 1.5 million Turks being giving free visa access to the UK until after the EU referendum. Andrew did indeed mention it during his run-through of the newspaper front pages. To the astonishment of many Brexiteers and the reporter at the Sunday Times (Tim Shipman), however, he didn't then follow that up by bringing it up with David Cameron (despite raising the Turkey issue with the PM more generally):

I have to say I found that omission a bit of a head-scratcher myself.

The paper review was unlike any other Marr programme paper review I've ever seen. Andrew Marr seemed stressed and tetchy, and Labour's Dame Baroness Helena Kennedy - one of Andy's most regular sofa guests - got surprisingly tetchy with him after he stopped her from talking at length over everyone else ("It's soooo unfair!", she thcreamed and thcreamed), and he got a bit stroppy with her too. (Trouble in paradise!)

And neither of their unhappy moods was enhanced by the contributions of former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum and Dia Chakravarty of the TaxPayers' Alliance. Mr. Frum kept going all 'non-committal' when pressed to commit himself on Donald/Hillary or Brexit, while Dia was at all times fully 'committal' - far too 'committal' for Dame Baroness Helena Kennedy (though, to my mind, I found her excellent throughout).

As for the 'big interviews', well, I have to say that I didn't find them particularly imbalanced. 

Using stats, I made it 15 interruptions in just over 14 minutes for Nigel Farage and 28 interruptions in 21 minutes for David Cameron. Using my old 'interruption coefficient' system, that's an IC of 1.1 for Nige and 1.4 for Dave - meaning that Dave was interrupted more frequently than Nige (in proportion to the length of the interview). Not much more, but more nonetheless. 

That said think I Andrew Marr took a sharper, more focused line with the UKIP leader than with the Tory leader, pressing Nigel Farage on the HIV/immigrant issue with particular force. But he also had a few zingers at the PM, such as:

David Cameron: I have given my self-denying ordinance which I gave about ten days ago and it remains for the next thirteen...

Andrew Marr: You sent out Amber Rudd to do it for you! 

and:

People believe that you are overstating the case. And if you look at the audience in that ITV debate, for instance, they were sort of glassy eyed. They weren’t listening to you. And the reason they weren’t listening to you is perhaps because the warnings have been too extreme, too specific - all that stuff about house prices falling by 18% and so forth coming from the Treasury which can’t forecast very much ahead. And people are no longer listening. They simply don’t believe you.

Moving on...

All those legions of militant Corbynistas who absolutely clog the #bbcbias hashtag on Twitter with their endless rage against the BBC for not massively reporting the #toryelectionfraud affair might have been mollified by the fact that Andrew Marr did raise it with the Tory leader today. Admittedly not for long and half-heartedly, but it was raised, as they keep demanding, and Mr Cameron was forced to talk about if (briefly). So there! 

Not that the aforementioned Corbynistas even seemed to notice. They just kept on tweeting and complaining that 'Tory' #Marr hadn't mentioned it at all - as usual. Thus: #bbcbias. Hmm.

Plus Alison Balsom played Bach on the trumpet.

And talking of Alison...

The Age of Aquarius passes

It seems I was also premature (around four weeks ago) in giving credit to Dateline London for markedly improving in recent months as regards balance on its panels. Since then it's slipped back sharply into its old ways, with both last week's edition and this week's edition being especially unbalanced over the issues of EU referendum and immigration. 

Last week we had two Guardian writers, Polly Toynbee and Nesrine Malik, plus Greg Katz of the Associated Press and the BBC's Dmitry Shishkin; this week we had Greek leftist Maria Margaronis and Portuguese leftist Eunice Goes, plus Stryker McGuire and Ned Temko. 

The discussions on that subject - and more generally on immigration - from these overwhelmingly left-leaning panels have been something to behold: an absolute outpouring of mutual agreement about why Brexit would be a bad thing and why immigration is a good thing. This week's discussion even involved two guests (Maria Margaronis and Stryker McGuire) explicitly stating that they all agree on the issues (with presenter Shaun Ley rightly distancing himself from that comment!) 

The panels could hardly have been more unbalanced.

For a flavour of the discussion, here's a BBC-on-BBC exchange from last week's edition between Dmitry Shiskin, digital development editor for BBC World Service (a panellist) and Gavin Esler (presenting) (beginning at 11:00):

Dmitry Shiskin: Well, this topic is very close to me personally because I came to this country 16 years ago, having got a work permit from the BBC because Britain couldn't find a Russian speaker to do the Russian broadcasts. So that's one example. Another example would be a Russian physicist working at Manchester University becoming a Nobel Peace Prize...Nobel Physics Prize winner. He wouldn't have come to the country a few years ago because the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme was closed by that time. So I think you're right in terms of saying, yes, highly skilled are needed everywhere but the question is: How many Brits are living abroad and how many of them are qualified to stay in Spain for example? 

Gavin Esler: Well, one of our colleagues from El Pais, the Spanish paper, told me that..estimates differ, but he says that Spanish estimates are that 800,000 British people are living in Spain, many of whom are older and are, as he put it, seen as "a drain on our health service". 

Dmitry Shiskin: Wouldn't have qualified. And the second point is that I come from a very humanist approach to this. I think modern society should be about the flow of ideas and the flow of people and everything else, and potentially we can talk tactics but strategically. I think the world is a connected place...

Is that impartial? 

I see someone has complained about yesterday's programme already:

Serious questions for the BBC

Mail on Sunday headline

Maybe I wrote too soon in giving credit to Newsnight for 'breaking' the story of the alleged sexual assaults on two 14-year-old girls in Newcastle by Syrian refugees. According to the Mail on Sunday, the BBC now stands accused - along with the police - of a Cologne-style cover up of the alleged attacks:

Details on the alleged attacks emerged on Friday in a report by the BBC, which had been following the progress of the refugee defendant’s family since they arrived in Britain last year under the Government’s high-profile scheme to resettle vulnerable Syrians. 

However, the BBC’s Newsnight programme has refused to say when it first heard about the case. 

A police source told The Mail on Sunday the BBC had been informed four weeks previously in early May, when the teenage refugee had been arrested and charged.

 And Nigel Farage has commented:

‘Serious questions need to be asked about both the vetting of those the Government are allowing into the country, and of the authorities, including the BBC, who appear to have been involved in a conspiracy of silence over the case. 

‘When did they know what was happening, and why is it only coming out now?’ 

These are questions that clearly need answering, and quickly. 

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. 

That was then. This is now

We received an interesting comment the other day on a very old thread concerning how to monitor BBC party political bias. 

Part of the comment struck me as worth expanding on because it contained an assertion which I'm seeing more and more often (from the Left) on Twitter:

The overwhelming objective evidence found from analysing political coverage showed that even during a Labour government the amount of Conservative voices aired remained consistently higher than those on the left and under a Conservative government this increased significantly in disproportionate bias. 

I'm guessing that "the overwhelming objective evidence" in question is that (in)famous Cardiff University study (by various far-leftists and ex-BBC high-ups) which used a ridiculously small sample - just five day's worth of various flagship BBC programmes in 2007 and 2012 respectively (including, bizarrely, only half (7.00-8.30) of the Today programme) -  and 'found' that not only was the BBC pro-Tory-biased and anti-EU-biased but also 'found' that Jon Snow's Channel 4 News was pretty right-wing-biased too!!! (Well, Owen Jones, the Corbynista multitude and, intriguingly, various BBC types on Twitter liked it!!)

As I may just have mentioned before, my own intensive period of research from June 2009-April 2010 covered some of the topics in the Cardiff report and examined every interview with a party politician (some 2,200 of them) on all of the main BBC current affairs programmes over this period (including Today, Newsnight, The World at One, PM, Today, The Daily Politics, The Andrew Marr Show, Broadcasting House, The World This Weekend, Westminster Hour, among others!) - all the results of which can be seen at my old blog. There was nothing 'ridiculously small' about that sample!

Between July 2009 and January 2010 (inclusive), I laboriously counted up all the lengths of all the interviews involving those party politicians and, by further laborious counting, derived a monthly 'airtime' total for each political party.

It's the most precise thing I've ever done in the blogosphere, and what it shows is that there is absolutely no truth whatsoever to the claim that "even during a Labour government the amount of Conservative voices aired remained consistently higher than those on the left". 

In fact, the exact opposite is the the case. Except for the month when the BBC covered the Conservative Party conference, the then-Labour government got more airtime than the Tories every month - usually massively more. 

Strikingly, in 5 out of the 7 months survey the Labour government got more airtime than all the opposition parties combined. 

And, looking back at these figures again, isn't it striking just how little interview time UKIP got back then? 

July 2009

Labour - 60.92%

Conservatives - 24.08%

Lib Dems - 10.82%

SNP - 2.08%

Greens - 0.82%

BNP - 0.76%

UKIP - 0.32%

Plaid Cymru - 0.22%

August 2009

Labour - 6 hours 5 minutes 33 seconds, 52.3%

Conservatives - 2 hours 37 minutes 57 seconds, 22.6%

Liberal Democrats - 1 hour 32 minutes 15 seconds, 13.2%

SNP - 1 hour 7 minutes 6 seconds, 9.6%

Greens - 7 minutes 11 seconds, 1%

Independents - 3 minutes 47 seconds, 0.5%

UKIP - 3 minutes 33 seconds, 0.5%

Plaid Cymru - 2 minutes 42 seconds, 0.3%

September 2009

Labour - 12 hours 25 minutes 26 seconds, 61.51%

Liberal Democrats - 4 hours 5 minutes 10 seconds, 19.98%

Conservatives - 2 hours 52 minutes 1 second, 14.03%

SNP - 19 minutes 35 seconds, 1.58%

UKIP - 10 minutes 52 seconds, 0.86%

Plaid Cymru - 7 minutes 34 seconds, 0.62%

Independent - 5 minutes 16 seconds, 0.43%

Greens - 2 minutes 51 seconds, 0.23%

English Democrats - 2 minutes 47 seconds, 0.23%

UUP - 2 minutes 27 seconds, 0.21%

DUP - 2 minutes 15 seconds, 0.19%

SDLP - 1 minute 56 seconds, 0.13%

October 2009

Conservatives - 10 hours 51 minutes 29 seconds, 43.20%

Labour - 10 hours 42 minutes 41 seconds, 42.61%

Liberal Democrats - 1 hour 45 minutes 39 seconds, 6.99%

SNP - 1 hour 0 minutes 22 seconds, 3.99%

UKIP - 11 minutes 17 seconds, 0.74%

DUP - 9 minutes 2 seconds, 0.60%

BNP - 8 minutes 8 seconds, 0.54%

Sinn Fein - 6 minutes 16 seconds, 0.41%

Greens - 5 minutes 20 seconds, 0.34%

Alliance - 3 minutes 26 seconds, 0.22%

Plaid Cymru - 3 minutes 16 seconds, 0.21%

UUP - 2 minutes 27 seconds, 0.15%

November 2009

Labour - 7 hours 44 minutes 21 seconds (41.1%)

Conservatives - 6 hours 25 minutes 11 seconds (34.1%)

Liberal Democrats - 2 hours 16 minutes 19 seconds (12.0%)

SNP- 1 hour 15 minutes 4 seconds (6.7%)

UKIP - 29 minutes 10 seconds (2.6%)

Greens - 16 minutes 34 seconds (1.5%)

Sinn Fein - 9 minutes 35 seconds (0.9%)

Independents - 8 minutes 1 second (0.7%)

Plaid Cymru - 4 minutes 59 seconds (0.4%)

December 2009

Labour - 56.20% (7h 49m 56s)

Conservatives - 29.01% (4h 2m 40s)

Lib Dems - 11.65% (1h 37m 30s)

SNP - 1.21% (10m 13s)

UKIP - 0.99% (8m 25s)

Independents - 0.65% (5m 40s)

Plaid Cymru - 0.29% (2m 46s)

January 2010

Labour - 54.81% (12h 13m 18s)

Conservatives - 22.81% (5h 5m 13s)

Lib Dems - 12.65% (2h 49m 19s)

SNP - 2.25% (30m 10s)

Sinn Fein - 1.68% (22m 49s)

UKIP - 1.44% (19m 28s)

DUP - 1.22% (16m 34s)

Independents - 0.90% (12m 1s)

Greens - 0.60% (8m 4s)

SDLP - 0.48% (6m 46s)

Alliance - 0.46% (6m 18s)

TUV - 0.46% (6m 18s)

Respect - 0.24% (3m 16s)

Of course, that was then and this is now. UKIP gets a lot more airtime these days. The Conservatives are now the government and the BBC, I don't doubt; will have been inviting them on more than their political opponents (even before the present EU referendum debate). 

But how much so?

I half-regret not monitoring these airtime figures in the months after the 2015 election to see just how much more coverage the Tories got than, say, Labour - if they got more coverage. 

I only 'half-regret' it because I've got absolutely no intention of ever putting myself through such a wearying (if strangely enjoyable) monitoring exercise again - even if such a monitoring exercise has now proved its value by totally disproving a much-tweeted assertion about BBC pro-Tory bias from the Left. 

Maybe, if there's still a Conservative government in 2019, I might return to the fray and seriously monitor this issue again for, say, a couple of months (and not during the party conference season) in order to test how things stand under a Conservative government as opposed to a Labour government. 

It really would be fascinating, I think, to see if the Tories are dominating the BBC's airwaves to the extraordinary extent that Labour did when they were in power (in a non-referendum period, of course). 

In the interests of democracy, that is surely a question worth investigating. I probably ought to step up to the mark and do it (in 2019 - if, post-referendum, the government hasn't completely fallen apart to such an extent that the fixed-term parliament act is overridden, an election has been held and Jeremy Corbyn (or John McDonnell) is PM).  

What questions would it answer? Well, questions like:

• Did Labour rule the BBC waves back then simply because they were the governing party? (The 'pro-establishment' v 'pro-Left-biased' question). 
• Would a similar survey show as much of a 'bias', airtime-wise, towards the Tories in the latter stage of their term in office? - and if so, what would that prove? (and if not, what would that prove?)
• Is the BBC biased?

Let's talk about BBC Radio 4

Talking about James Delingpole...

When BBC reporters (et al) talk about 'blue on blue' attacks during the present EU referendum some of us politically-minded obsessives know what they mean. And some of you will easily be able to work out what I mean by calling James's Radio piece in last week's Spectator a definite case of 'Speccie on Speccie' attack. 

As soon as I read it I knew it was an attack on the Spectator's main Radio reviewer Kate Chisholm (who I've always felt is a good deal more New Statesman than Spectator in her political outlook). Dellers criticised those Radio reviewers who pretend that Radio 4 is endlessly fascinating, wonderfully civilised, often transcendent. He thinks it's usually mostly somewhat boring and irritating. And, as a regular listener myself, I think he has a point - though he deliciously overstates it for rhetorical effect.  

Our Kate obviously realised that it was indeed aimed squarely at her (despite not naming her) and her piece this week was a clear riposte. It began by saying, "Just to prove my esteemed colleague wrong" (despite not naming him), then talked about something other than how great Radio 4 is, and then said that there is something on Radio 4 she doesn't like, and then, pivoting round - her coup de grace - coming across another magical BBC moment (someone saying how great it is that "a black man" is now president of the USA) and hymning the wonders of Radio 4 all over again, triumphantly. It brought a tear to my eye. (I was pealing onions at the time).

James Delingpole's original piece was deliciously provocative and struck a chord with me. 

He finds Today "maddening", Mishal Husain biased, Woman's Hour "hateful" and "sanctimonious", Anita Anand the most irritating presenter on Radio 4, and the station's afternoon plays "the ne plus ultra of Radio 4 boringness". 

And I can see his point about all of those. 

He also finds Jim Al-Khalili's The Life Scientific "dreary" and Eddie Mair the second-most irritating person on Radio 4. 

But I disagree with him about both of those. I've enjoyed many a The Life Scientific, and was both amused and delighted to find so many of the otherwise strongly anti-BBC commenters below his piece also going out of their way to exempt the wonderful Eddie Mair from their criticisms. 

Thank goodness for people like Dellers though. Agree or disagree with them, or do both at the same time, but bless the non-BBC contrarians (especially the ones who are often right)!

Shall I compare thee to Blackadder II?

Oh dear, oh dear, oh deary dear...

I've been reading the reviews for Ben Elton's new BBC Two sitcom Upstart Crow and, frankly, many of them have been hardly any kinder to Ben Elton than dying Tudor playwright Robert Greene (as played by Mark Heap) was about William Shakespeare (as played by David Mitchell).

"For there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers," said the Telegraph guy, "that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a former Saturday Live host's hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a BBC comedie as the best of you: and being an absolute Richard Curtis fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Ben Eltony-scene in a countrey". 

(Some of these Telegraph writers, even despite the Barclay Bros., are very old-fashioned and obscure in their writing style, aren't they?). 

Am I the only one, besides James Delingpole, who is absolutely loving it? 

It's the best BBC comedy I've seen for years, I'd say (not that there's much heavy competition for that title), and I'm loving it so much that I've already rewatched every episode at least once. (Has even Dellers gone that far?)

Incidentally, while on holiday I took Bill Bryson's Shakespeare to read. My extended family gasped that I was reading anything so light - i.e. a book by Bill Bryson. They usually accuse me of only reading books with titles like The Life-Cycle of a Costa Rican Fruit-Bat or books about Wagner. I said, as sharp as Malvolio, "So, you're OK with me reading a book about Shakespeare if it's by Bill Bryson?" They laughed, and said 'Yes'. 

True story (more or less). 

As Will Kempe (impersonating Ricky Gervais badly but funnily) might say: Thought I'd share, yeah. New style of blogging, yeah. Sorry yeah, but sometimes it's the only way I have of expressing the breadth and depth of my blogging instincts. So live with it, yeah. 

Laura in the lions' den

Millicent Garrett Fawcett, founder of the Fawcett Society 

Woman's Hour debated 150 years of feminism on Tuesday. 

I enjoyed it, and I suspect you might too if you fancy catching up with it on the iPlayer. 

Unusually for Woman's Hour, Jane Garvey's guests didn't all sing from the same feminist hymn sheet. Three of them did, but one didn't - and the one who didn't was Laura Perrins of The Conservative Woman. 

So it was 3:1 against Laura, but at least someone who thinks like Laura was, for once, invited onto Woman's Hour - which is something. 

Or, more accurately, it was 4:1...and this is really where the BBC bias comes in, I think. 

Jane Garvey could have been non-interventionist and allowed the discussion to flow, or she could have consistently played devil's advocate and 'taken the side' of Laura Perrins, given that Laura was so clearly outnumbered and, thus, the underdog.

But she did neither. In fact, she did the exact opposite.

While asking non-challenging questions to her other guests, it was only Laura who got the challenging ones and all the hostile interruptions - and there were quite a lot of them! (Listen to Jane's interventions here: 6.02, 6.05, 9.49, 14.43, 16.38, 16.54, 17.13, 17.55, 18.12, 20.54).

The BBC presenter was far from neutral, despite one halfhearted devil's advocate question (at around the 19.10 mark).

The first thing to get Ms. Garvey's goat, incidentally, was Laura's citing of a Fawcett Society finding that a mere 7% of British people (9% of women and 4% of men) actually describe themselves as 'feminists'. That would mean (as Laura pointed out) that 93% of British people don't identify themselves as 'feminists' (unlike all of her fellow guests {and all the presenters} on Woman's Hour)....though it must also be said, in counterpoint to that finding, that this same survey did say that 74% of women described themselves as being "sympathetic to feminism". 

Fortunately, Laura was more than capable of holding her own against all of this - and not only against the BBC presenter but against her fellow guests too.

And, naturally, that didn't please everyone.

Here's Newsnight 'senior broadcast journalist' Jess Brammar, for example, nearly choking on her lentil soup over Laura's battling underdog performance:

Update on BBC One's News at Six

And here's an update on our monitoring of BBC One's News at Six and its weekend equivalents' choice of EU referendum-related angle - as ever defined as "which side's angle comes first in either the headlines or the whole bulletin".

We left it with a startling:

21 for Remain

7 for Leave

Here's how things have gone since that last post:


31/5 Tempers fray about the EU referemdum. Meanwhile campaigners to Leave call for VAT on energy bills to be scrapped

1/6 Take back our immigration policy by exiting the EU, say Leave campaigners. 

2/6 The German chancellor Angela Merkel intervenes in the EU referendum debate suggesting the UK is unlikely to get a good deal if it leaves. Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn says the case for staying in the EU and rejects criticism that Labour isn't getting its Remain message across.

3/6 He's accused of scaremongering but the boss of one of the world's biggest banks says jobs could go if the UK leaves the EU.
Jamie Dimon, chief executive JP Morgan: After a Brexit, we cannot do it all here.  And we will have to start playing for that. I don't know if mean a thousand jobs, 2000 jobs. It could mean as many as 4000.

5/6 A former prime minister launches a scathing attack on the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union. Sir John Major, who wants Britain to stay in the EU, says the claims being made by Leave campaigners are deceitful.
Sir John Major: What they have said about leaving is fundamentally dishonest and it's dishonest about the cost of Europe.

6/6 Just over a day to register to vote in the referendum. Millions haven't and opinions are divided.
Vox pop 1: I'm going to vote Stay which is probably what you don't want to hear.
Vox pop 2: Years ago we used to be Out and we managed fine.

7/6 The Archbishop of Canterbury attacks Nigel Farage . He says some comments on immigration legitimize racism.

8/6 The EU referendum. The voters registration deadline is extended after the website crashes.

9/6 A warning from two former prime ministers: leaving the EU could tear apart the UK and threaten stability in Northern Ireland. Sir John Major and Tony Blair, speaking in Londonderry, from different parties but one message today.

10/6 Labour insiders tell the BBC increasing numbers of their supporters want to leave the EU.

11/6 Jeremy Corbyn says he's working very hard to put the case to Labour voters for remaining in a reformed European Union.


Frankly, suddenly things have got slightly complicated. It's not beyond dispute on some occasions here (unlike previously) to decisively assign some of these to one side of the EU referendum campaign to the other. For example, though citing Remain concerns, is the 10/6 one helpful or unhelpful to Remain? (It's so double-sided I can't assign it to either side). And can we give the 6/6 one to Remain just because the pro-Remain vox pop came first? (No, in my opinion). And is Jeremy Corbyn saying something not very specific helpful to Leave or Remain. (I'll assign that to pro-Remain as it's a sort-of pro-Remain statement from someone who's supposed to be in the Remain camp).

Still, by my reckoning that's: 2 more for Leave and 6 more for Remain, changing the ongoing total to:

27 for Remain

9 for Leave 

...which, as you might have spotted for yourselves, is still an exact 3:1 imbalance in favour of Remain (as it was last time).

Please check these figures out for yourselves though. If you disagree, please point out why below.

Update on 'Newsnight'

Catching up with Newsnight's EU referendum coverage....

Here's how things have gone since ITBB's last post on the subject:

31/5

Joint interview: Emma Reynolds, Labour (REMAIN); Chris Grayling, Conservative (LEAVE)

Interview: Jon Cruddas, Labour (REMAIN)

1/6

Joint interview: Kavita Oberoi, Oberoi Consulting (REMAIN); John Longworth, chairman Vote Leave business council (LEAVE)

2/6

Interview: Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former oligarch (REMAIN)

3/6

Joint interview: Alastair Campbell. former Labour advisor (REMAIN); Dia Chakravarty, Tax Payers' Alliance (LEAVE); Simon Jenkins, The Guardian (UNDECIDED)
{Closing images comparing Boris to Trump}

6/6
Interview: Andrea Leadsom, Conservative (LEAVE)
Joint interview: Andrea Leadsom, Conservative (LEAVE); Pascal Lamy, former head of WTO (REMAIN)

7/6

Joint interview: Yvette Cooper, Labour (REMAIN); Kwasi Kwarteng, Conservative (LEAVE)

[Interview: Martin Lewis, Money Saving Expert (REMAIN - but questionable)]

8/6

Joint interview: Lord Haywood, Conservative pollster (REMAIN); Harriet Harman, Labour (REMAIN)

9/6

Interview: Owen Smith, Labour (REMAIN)

10/6

Joint interview: Tim Montgomerie, The Times (LEAVE); Anne McElvoy, The Economist (REMAIN)
Interview: Lord Hill, EU commissioner (REMAIN)

By my reckoning that changes our running total, which was: 

60 Pro-Remain

44 Pro-Leave

12 Questionable/Undecided  

to...

72 Pro-Remain

50 Pro-Leave

14 Questionable/Undecided 

,,,which is something of a regression back towards pro-Remain bias. 

As for the sub-trend of regarding who gets most of all of the solo appearances (i.e. not in joint interviews), well, we left that at: 

Remain - 25

Leave - 14

I now make that:

Remain - 29
Leave - 15

...with Remain fast approaching double the number of one-person interviews that Leave has been invited to attend.

Was Nigel right?

John Sweeney

Last night's Newsnight carried a report from John Sweeney which Evan Davis introduced as a "disturbing" update on a story they'd covered previously.

John Sweeney reported that an 18-year-old man, from one of the Syrian refugee families which the programme followed after the UK government granted them asylum last year and brought them into the country from a camp in Jordan, has been in court, alongside two other men, charged with sexual assault against a 14 year old girl. One of them has also been charged with sexually assaulting a second 14 year old girl, and a fourth man has been charged with assault too (no further details given). All of them, John Sweeney said, are "believed to be Syrian" and all the names read out were Muslim names. All have pleaded 'not guilty'. A fifth man is on bail and a sixth has been released without charge. 

"We will of course follow developments in that case", Evan Davis said at the end of the report.

This is to their credit. They could have ignored the story - as people on 'blogs like this' might have assumed they would - but they didn't. 

And, as John Sweeney's report made clear, the outcome of this trial could have major repercussions for the government's refugee resettlement programme and for the "fraught issue" of immigration (and, unspoken, of Muslim immigration in particular).

I've seen a comment elsewhere about this that I really ought to have let go by without comment but just can't, because it does what people on some 'anti-BBC blogs' have an unfortunate tendency to do (and that's beginning to bother me again)....

Instead of giving any credit to Newsnight for 'breaking the story' to a nationwide audience, they leaped straightaway onto carping about it instead, implying that the programme was 'burying the story' by relegating it to "the last 5 minutes of the programme" (actually it was the second story after the EU referendum and began 22 minutes in, with another story - Muhammad Ali's funeral - to follow) and that "for some reason it wasn’t shown further up the running list".

Why do people do that?

John Sweeney's report was, understandably, very carefully worded. He mentioned that Nigel Farage's comments last week about migrants and sex attacks (in the wake of Cologne) had been "widely condemned" but he left unspoken the obvious point that Mr. F's comments will look a good deal less easy to condemn if this court case finds the accused guilty. 

On the BBC's coverage of the death of Muhammad Ali

Both Newswatch on BBC One/the BBC New Channel and Radio 4's Feedback tackled viewer/listener complaints about the BBC's heavily extensive coverage of the death of Muhammad Ali. 

Both programmes, to their credit, aired complaints that the BBC had gone considerably over the top in the amount of its coverage. And both programmes hauled in a senior BBC editor (Gavin Allen. Controller, Daily News Programmes, on Feedback and Toby Castle, Deputy News Editor, BBC News, on Newswatch) to respond. 

Both senior BBC editors said that the BBC had not only got it 'about right' but had got it 'completely right'. Plus ça change. 

For myself, however, I think Gavin Allen - a highly-practised BBC defender - put the case for the defence rather well while Toby Castle came across as the worst kind of arrogant BBC editor. His performance on Newswatch really need to be watched to be witnessed in all its gory 'glory'. 'Arrogant' really is the word for it. 

(His viewer critics in the studio - especially the young lady - 'rescued' him somewhat though by making eyebrow-raisingly wrong-headed comments).

I have to say though that I bought most of the BBC's arguments about the rightness of their coverage of Ali's death, despite hearing very little of it myself. That 'very little' bit was possibly enough. The bit I particularly remember - last Sunday's Sunday - gave a decent review of The Greatest's involvement with the Nation of Islam and the out-and-out racism (from him) which followed in its wake. But it suggested - as many others have suggested - that his racism softened over time. 

(I was going to recommend an absolutely fascinating comments thread at Harry's Place on the subject that made me think in a far more nuanced way about this aspect of the great man's life {not that I've reflected that here} but, alas, as ever, after seven days, all comments are wiped off the face of the earth).

The main target of criticism was the BBC One early evening news bulletin last Saturday. I saw it at the time and the complaints confirmed my eye-witness impression (which I felt I needed to check, somehow, as I couldn't quite trust my own eyes): that the BBC One had included no other story than Muhammad Ali's death on that bulletin. Not one other story. It, indeed, hadn't.

That would be my only quibble about this. Obviously Ali's death merited massive coverage but to exclude every other story from a major BBC One news bulletin is unusual, and possibly unprecedented (at a guess). 

The arrogant Toby Castle annoyed a good number of people - if Twitter's anything to go by (and it usually isn't). He certainly annoyed me. His defence was flimsy. Even I (I think) could have done better. My defence would have been: Short weekend bulletin, less than half the length of a weekday bulletin, therefore Ali actually got considerably less time than, say, Bowie, who died during the week and got - if I recall correctly - a good eight minutes or so more than Ali.

I don't entirely buy my own unimpeachable argument though. Surely the BBC could have spared a minute or so of that bulletin to give the rest of the news - Fallujah, the floods in Paris, the EU referendum - in brief, and referred viewers to the BBC One tribute to the greatest boxer of all time later that evening.

Why was everything else ignored? Wasn't it a misjudgement?

Is it cool to use the term “Inshallah” ?

There’s a bit of a thing going on about Nicky Campbell using the term “Inshallah” when he signed off on last Sunday’s TBQs.

Was it supposed to be affectionate but slightly ironic? Or was it another example of Islam infiltrating our cultural norms? In other words, does it demonstrate the BBC’s normalisation of Islam in the UK.

Putting into context by taking Nicky Campbell’s and TBQ’s past performances into account, it’s truly hard to say,

Remember, not everyone can be an obsessive BBC geek. Some of us know more than enough about a given BBC employee’s political affiliations and preferences. We trawl their Tweets and document their impartiality lapses, be they overt, covert, subtle, subliminal or imaginary. We might spot something genuinely worrying, or, on the other hand we might get over excited about something that turns out to be nothing.

Nicky Campbell has been eviscerated (and the contents analysed) by connoisseurs of BBC bias over the years, particularly as regards his radio 5 shows, which I’m afraid I’ve never heard. My radio doesn’t go there.

Lookie here. And, on this very blog, there are 12 items tagged Nicky Campbell! (only one was mine)

Personally, I do watch TBQs, not only for the pantomime but also to keep an eye on what’s going on. Watching one’s back. In my opinion Nicky Campbell does tend to over-apply moral equivalence. Not that he tolerates radicalism or violence, but let’s call it an almost rigid adherence to the non-value-judgmentalist, multicultural ethos preached by the BBC. 

On that occasion Campbell’s use of that term may have been tinged with irony, but at the same time, in that particular context there is certainly an element of deference to Islam. Which some of us find sycophantic and -  I don't know - disconcerting. 

As we know, the BBC is used to pleading ‘we must be doing it right because we get criticism from “both” sides’, so maybe Campbell’s gratuitous use of this expression with an infinitesimal touch of irony is pure mischief-making. A way of hedging his bets and leaving enough mystique in its wake to please the Muslims while simultaneously heading off the inevitable cries of bias from the likes of us. Or maybe it’s none of that; just creeping Islamisation.

Meanwhile the normalisation of Islam in the UK grows apace, and if it makes some of us feel uneasy, we must suck it up.  Happy Ramadan.

The "Leave" show

I haven’t watched much TV lately, but something I did watch last night was the ‘Leave’ show, starring Michael Gove and Faisal Islam on Sky. Also present, Kay Burley and “the public”. 

Faisal Islam seems to have turned into Mehdi Hasan. That irritating, non-stop hectoring style is just up Mehdi’s street. I’m really surprised that no-one has mentioned it.

Ah! I’m wrong. Janet Daley has:

In spite of – or maybe because of – being relentlessly barracked and harassed by Faisal Islam, Mr Gove won the room. He repeatedly got spontaneous applause from the audience. In fact, he seemed to gain in confidence as he went on, looking amused rather than defensive even when Islam absurdly likened him to Mr Trump.

I didn’t see the ‘Remain’ show, starring David Cameron (and I haven’t caught-up with it yet) so I don’t know if Faisal Islam was just as exasperating and intrusive with Dave as he was with Mike, but relentless pursuit of a yes/no answer to an ill-conceived ‘killer’ question is pure Mehdi, and a bit Mishal too. 

Have you (or have you not) stopped beating your wife?  Have you? Have you? Have you?

How many economists have come out on your side? How many? Name one. 

Can you guarantee that no-one will lose their job as a result of leaving the EU?  Can you? Can you guarantee that the weather will improve on June 24th? Can you?

No, Faisal made matters much less clear with his obtrusive interventions. A skilled, less terrier-like interviewer would have calmly let the questions and answers flow, one after the other. We would have learned more.

From the reaction of the MSM, I really did wonder whether I’d watched the right programme. Maybe they’d been watching the real one and I’d somehow stumbled upon the dress rehearsal. 

The chap in the audience who compared  Gove’s ‘Leave’ advocacy to a World War 1 general waving the flag and saying "over the top, men!” did have a point, but prediction is not a science, and that particular argument is predicated upon the certainty and stability of a turbulent and unstable EU, which of course there  ain’t. 

Utterly disgusting subliminal nastiness

Craig’s tour de force below is a hard act to follow, but since he’s currently off the radar he might have missed the Vice News documentary that I hear has gawn viral on t’interweb.

He’s probably the only one on the planet who hasn’t seen it, so on the off-chance that he logs in to see if there’s life in the old blog yet, I’m posting it once again.

   

Actually, that might not be the only reason I’m posting it. A certain amount of malice may be involved. 

Anyway if that doesn’t dislodge the last remnants of Labour loyalists who were stubbornly clinging to the sinking ship, nothing will. 

Who, in particular, has disaffiliated? David Aaronovitch has, voluntarily, Rod Liddle has, compulsorily, and perhaps even the BBC has, ideologically.

Corbyn said (of the BBC)

“There is not one story on any election anywhere in the UK  that the BBC will not spin into a problem for me. It’s obsessive beyond belief - they are obsessed with trying to damage the leadership of the Labour Party and unfortunately there are people int the Labour Party that play into that.

The BBC said (Of Corbyn)

Jeremy Corbyn's communications chief claims the Labour leader's preparations for Prime Minister's Questions are being leaked by his own staff. 

In a fly-on-the-wall documentary, Seumas Milne said the "annoying" leaks from his top team were handing an advantage to the Conservatives. 

Mr Corbyn also criticises the media coverage of his party. 

Mr Corbyn also hit out at the BBC over the local elections, claiming "the whole narrative" had been that "Corbyn's going to lose" and saying an unnamed group of political commentators were "shallow, facile and ill-informed".In other footage, the leader's aides discuss their attempts to ensure he dresses smartly and watch him pose for a succession of photographs with supporters.Mr Corbyn is also shown reacting to the suspension of Ken Livingstone from the party after the former London mayor invoked Hitler in a defence of an MP's comments about Israel.

Of course in the film, there’s something for everyone. The bit about Jonathan Freedland is the one that exercises me most, obvs.

Here’s some excerpts from David Aaronovitch’s piece. (£) “Yikes! I might have to vote for the Tories”

Any responsible voter should find a way of keeping Jeremy Corbyn’s obnoxious views well away from Downing Street 

On the night of the local elections the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, went to make a speech in a pub that appeared to have a Cuban communist theme. He was filmed there, beneath the pictures of Che and Fidel, holding forth to the kind of people who still go to Cuban-themed pubs. 

The next day the film-makers interviewed him. “I am not a traditional party leader,” he told them. “I do things in a rather different way.” And then added: “Some people are slower at learning things than others.” 

Are they not? I cannot find a phrase for the telling of an inadvertent truth that everyone else but the teller can see while trying to say the opposite, but perhaps a “Jeremyad” will cover it. Indeed, the half-hour film on Corbyn, released yesterday, begins with a Jeremyad. In a car on the phone to his communications chief, Seumas Milne, Corbyn discusses a Guardian article worrying about Labour’s antisemitism problem. “Utterly disgusting subliminal nastiness” are the words Corbyn uses. About the article, not about the problem.

“That stuff about calling Hamas and Hezbollah “friends” was not some cheap shot or shallow debating point. It is Corbyn’s “just talking” rebuttal that was unconvincing.

I’ll say. Times of Israel:

“Before his election as UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn pressed for a boycott of Israel and called on the British foreign secretary at the time to ban Israeli politicians from entering the country, newly released letters from 2010-2015 show.The letters, sent to then-foreign secretary William Hague, were published following a Freedom of Information request to the government. 

Writing to Hague in February 2012 about East Jerusalem, in particular house demolitions in the Silwan neighborhood, Corbyn, who was a backbench MP for Islington North at the time, urged trade sanctions against Israel. 

“Israel’s current actions and victimisation of the people of East Jerusalem is an abomination that is totally illegal,” he wrote. “Surely the only logical way forward here is to take concrete action to penalise Israel via the most obvious method.” 

“There is clearly no time to lose to take actions via the EU-Israel Association Trade Agreement. Let the suffering of the Palestinian people no longer be so familiar to us that all we do is ‘make representations’ when there are tools at our disposal that our government and other governments are choosing to ignore,” he wrote. 

In another missive to Hague from February 2013, Corbyn wrote that he had just returned from a visit to the Gaza Strip, during which he was asked if Britain “would stop allowing Israel’s criminal politicians to come to our country,” ensure that the BBC “portray Palestine fairly,” and work “to end the siege of Gaza.” 

“Had I not been working on three of these goals I’d have hung my head in shame,” Corbyn wrote. “There was no possible explanation I could give as to why our governments had made no progress in support of such crucial aims.”

Just talking to Hamas and Hezbollah and inviting them to the HoC for tea whilst aggressively lobbying for “Israel’s criminal politicians” to be banned from visiting the UK. Actively working for peace? I think not.

But of course the most revealing aspect of this internet hit is that it allows the sheer incompetence of the Corbyn regime to speak for itself. 

Corbyn’s charmless personality,  his reptilian countenance, his slow-wittedness, the amateurishness of his entourage and most of all his mean-spirited response to an innocuous article in the Guardian by Jonathan Freedland about antisemitism in the Labour Party.

“Utterly disgusting subliminal nastiness, you know. He’s not a good guy at all. He seems kind of obsessed with me, you know?”

We saw a shambolic committee of incompetent sycophants struggling to orchestrate a strategy for PMQs. We saw Corbyn ineptly failing to score despite the open goal he’d been handed. On a plate with a cherry on top.

As someone already said somewhere, this was The Thick of It, minus the laughs. Not just a car crash, but a full blown pile-up.